Sirtuin For Longevity (& Other Longevity Hacks), How Much Sleep Is Too Much, Hangovers From Running & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, longevity hacks how much sleep is too much, hangovers from running, how endurance athletes can gain weight, and much more. He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movements get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Ben, you're back from the Sufferfest. How you feeling?

I'm good. Well, I'm. I'm beat up. And I will, I will tell you right now, I feel like I'm operating at perhaps 80% or maybe even closer to 8% capacity mentally and physically, but I'm all right. For those of you listening in, I just got back literally in the wee hours of the morning from the Spartan agoji, which was 48 plus hours of extreme racing and suffering at temperatures as low as 38 degrees below zero. Really put my body through the ringer, but I came out the other side. I finished it. However, I can guarantee you that this podcast could be interesting. It may just be me drooling and stuttering.

So how was it compared to Selfit? Was it harder?

Here's the deal. Here's the deal. I know everybody wants to know all the nitty gritty details. I'm working on this big, epic. I love to throw around that word epic blog post that's going to come out Monday. At the time you're listening to this podcast. Stay tuned Monday. I'll write a big blog post on it. I can tell you right now if you're into adventure, wilderness survival, navigation, orienteering, triathlon, obstacle racing, marathoning, anything that would challenge you to pick up a bunch of skills for any of those type of things, while also, you know, checking off kind of a big crucible when it comes to a challenge. You'll definitely want to pay attention to that blog post and you'll definitely want to consider doing one of these agojis for yourself. And, oh, one other thing, one other thing that may even contribute even more to the drooling and the stuttering that I'm guaranteed to produce. During today's episode, we interviewed that guy who, like, he advises and sponsors electronic gamers. Did you listen to that episode?

I did, Zach. Yes.

Yeah. Zach Burks, he sent me some of this neupept and some of this adafenil that he talks about during that episode that these gamers use. And since I've been up since about 3:30 this morning, I actually took some, I guess it would have been about four hours ago. It's around nine right now. So I've actually got some actual smart drugs. Not herbs, but actual smart drugs.

And how you feeling? What's happening? Tell us everything.

My liver doesn't hurt and I'm still awake.

That's dot.

So there's that anyways though, so this, this promises to be an interesting show. Good.

All right, well let's go ahead and get into the news flashes.

News flashes.

So remember, you can receive these news flashes and more every single day if you follow ben@twitter.com BenGreenfield Instagram.com BenGreenfieldFitness and Facebook.com BGFitness what have you got for us, Ben?

I wonder if anybody actually remembers those URLs when you rattle them off. You know, I certainly don't. I would say go to the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 346. We'll put a link to all those little social media dealios in there because I know some of you, for example, listen when you're swimming or bicycling or running and you probably don't do it with a notepad, although I had a really good idea, Rachel, that I tweeted the other day. So they actually do have things like underwater notepads for swimmers and a lot of cyclists and runners. I used to do this when I trained for Ironman. I'd always have a Sharpie up my sleeve or in my jersey that I could write down ideas with on my wrist and my hand. But a lot of people go into these float tanks now. Have you heard about this?

I have, yeah. I've done it.

Yeah. And people will take. And I've done float tanks before too, right? And some people will take a creativity or mind altering drug, you know, like THC or mescaline or psilocybin or something like that and go into these float tanks. My issue is when I'm in a situation like that, I have these big brain dumps, right? And I want to be able to remember them. And it annoys the heck out of me that I can't write. So my idea for you float tank owners out there is put like a digital recorder inside the float tank where people can just like speak their thoughts really. And then when they get out that's transcribed for them or it's sent to them as like an MP3 file. What do you think?

That's incredible. I love it. Those smart drugs are working.

Exactly. So that's my million dollar idea that I want full royalties on for my.

You need to patent that thing full out.

Take owners. Anyways, though, we digress.

News flashes.

News flashes. So the first thing that was really, really interesting, and I've seen a lot of articles coming out about this, this idea of sirtuins. Have you heard of sirtuins before?

I haven't, Rachel.

Okay. To me, it sounds like some kind of a brand of cereal. It does, but it's not. Sirtuins are actually genes. So they're kind of like these housekeeping genes in your body. And they're proteins. They're a family of proteins. And what they do is they regulate a bunch of different fun in your body, like cell death and inflammation and longevity. And what that means is that if you're able to activate sirtuins, you could produce better cellular cleanup. Supposedly, sirtuin activation also causes increases in brain plasticity and memory formation and also regulates your telomere length. The idea being that the. The faster the rate at which your telomeres shorten, the faster you age. So when you activate these sirtuins, you would theoretically decrease the rate at which telomeres shorten, increase your brain plasticity, increase your memory formation, et cetera, et cetera.

So, okay, so how do we activate them?

I found a really interesting article that actually talks about foods, some foods that activate sirtuin. And these are foods that you may want to consider making a part of your diet. Many people already eat these foods, but I thought I'd give you the quick list and then you can go read the article for more details. But a few of the foods. One is black currants. Black currants. So there's currants, but then there's black currants. And apparently black currants are one of the top sirtuin activators that are out there. And these are just these tiny. Have you seen them before? The tiny little berries? Yeah. So black currant, that would be one. Green tea is one. So there's that. Which is obviously something that's pretty easy to get your hands on. Dark chocolate. Oh, yeah, baby. Dark chocolate is a sirtuin activator. Kale. Kale is actually a sirtuin activator. And also, of course, something that's great to add to your smoothies to keep you pooping all day long. Olives Olives and extra virgin olive oil. Those are sirtuin activators. Parsley. Parsley is something that I throw into my smoothies. Turns out that's a sirtuin activator as well. Capers. And by the way, another thing that capers are good for, a lot of people don't realize this. You hear about things like St. John's Wort for helping with depression. Capers actually help with depression as well. Capers. And see that the little happy flower bud you can put on salads or put on salmon.

I like to have salmon with dill and lemon.

Yeah, I do that at that. Like hotel buffets they have where if you go to the really good like international hotel buffet you go to and it's got like the Japanese section and I don't know what the, what the caper and the salmon section would be. Would that be like the Jew section?

I don't know. They've always seemed really Mediterranean to me.

Yeah, Mediterranean, whatever.

Anyway, whatever.

If you know, go to the comments and pipe in anyways. Capers though, I'll. I'll go to the buffet. Like a breakfast buffet. Usually it's. It's with bagels. What do you call it? Locks. When you do the smoked salmon on the bagel with the cream cheese and the capers. So what I'll do is I'll just get the salmon and the capers and some lemon. I'll throw some yogurt on there and eat that.

Incredible.

Instead of doing the bagel and the cream cheese so I don't die activating sirtunins all along the way. Sirtuins. Rachelins. Come on. I'm the person who's low on sleep and half frostbitten. You gotta be able to sleep.

You're also way more knowledgeable than me. So.

Okay. Onions are another one. Red onions, specifically turmeric, which we talk about quite a bit on this show and we all know and love. And I put on my salad every day and then finally fish oil. So those are all natural food based sirtuin activators. So there you have it. And I'll link to the article if you want to go read on how these actually work. But I thought that was really cool. And there's a lot of talk right now in longevity research about getting more sirtuin activators.

Well, there you go in your life.

And I've got another little longevity hack for you. This was an article that appeared in Fast Company on the Fast Company website. It's about a new anti aging startup that is planning on helping to clear out the body's retired cells. So here's how this works. There's this concept called cellular senescence that means that your cells can stop dividing, but they stay in your body in this kind of a purgatory. And as the number of these cells increase, it's theorized that they start to produce inflammatory byproducts that result in aging. So if you can somehow get cells to be removed from the body, you can prevent this age related decline from just this mass buildup of cells inside your body. So what they've done is research on mice where they've actually figured out a way to activate genes that lower the number of cells. These senescent cells that build up in mice, they're essentially like figuring out how to suck away senescent cells. Yeah, I think they could actually call this the senescent cell sucker.

So I went and checked out this article because I thought, wow, that's kind of fascinating. And I would encourage listeners to check this one out just to see the difference in the mice in that photo.

It's really crazy. Like the mice that got the cells sucked out versus the mice that, that didn't. It's a, it's a night and day difference. One looks like all old and wrinkly. Not that mice are that attractive anyways, but, but let's just say that the, the mouse that underwent the senescent cell removal is a far more attractive mouse.

It is a more attractive mouse and it looks a lot healthier as well.

Healthier, Cuter, Big eyes, furry whiskers.

Very.

Anyways, though, the, the interesting thing, Excuse me, frog in my throat, smart drugs in my throat, smoothie, whatever's in there, maybe even my throat is frostbitten from the brutal Spartan. Anyways, though, the idea is that one of the things that can also clear out senescent cells should you not want to pay the likely thousand dollar cost of getting senescent cells sucked out once this does become a widely available technology, One of the things that does the same thing is. What do you think, Rachel?

Drumroll.

Drumroll, please.

Fasting.

Fasting. You got it. Did you cheat? Did you see my tweet?

I always, I always check your tweet.

Yeah, you could save your money on the senescent cell something. And every time you fast, you actually clear out senescent cells. So this, this is why like I personally, every day I do a 12 to 16 hour fast. For every 24 hour cycle, I go 12 to 16 hours. Of course, most of it is while I'm sleeping without eating. And then like I've mentioned on the podcast before, and like, I encourage folks to do one or two times a month, try to go 24 hours without eating little.

How does fasting clear the map, Ben?

It's via this process called apoptosis, or programmed cell death. And the idea is quite simple. When you aren't dumping a bunch of nutrients and calories, et cetera, into your body, then you. You essentially clean up all the cellular debris that is in there because you're not piling calories on top of calories. So it's just a cool way to clean up the body.

And is that, I mean, are we talking like, the same level of sucking the cells out as what this is talking about, or is it on, like, a more minuscule level? But it's got, like, it's more sustainable because you're doing it kind of frequently versus whatever they're going to do with this study.

Well, to figure that out, they'd have to do a study, wouldn't they, to compare them both, to compare fasting with senescent cell sucking.

Oh, my God.

So one other thing I wanted to mention in today's news flashes, and that is another kind of cool article entitled eat like your grandma why you should skip the kale salad. And this article goes into ancestral nutrition and how our diets should be based off of what our grandparents and their grandparents and their grandparents would have eaten, because our genetics are specifically programmed to handle certain types of food. And the article itself is fascinating. Well, of course, what I've just described is something that kind of makes sense intuitively, right? I really like some of the details that they go into in this article. So, for example, you take, like, the cretins, right, like the Mediterranean diet, and you put a bunch of Northern Europeans on a Cretan diet, and those Northern Europeans might actually respond to that deleteriously. And here's why. Cretins, based off of the thousands of years that they've been consuming, like, copious amounts of oils, especially like olive oil, they've developed a genetic adaptation to that oil. It's been shown that they have this thing called a lipoprotein gene that makes it so that they actually don't experience a really big surge in triglycerides or a bunch of small cholesterol particles in response to these high amounts of oil. Whereas a Northern European who tries to suck down as much olive oil as someone from a Mediterranean climate might have traditionally eaten might actually respond to that with a less than favorable lipid panel or cholesterol panel, for example. They also bring up the folks in Thailand and Papua New guinea who might be eating lots of bananas and rice and how in folks who don't necessarily come from a population that eats those type of foods, the person who comes from that population that's not eating a lot of those type of foods might have a higher blood sugar response to those foods and a higher amount of insulin produced by the pancreas in response to those foods. So this is, yet again, why I'm a huge fan of getting your genetics tested. I finally broke down, by the way, this week and ordered a 23andMe test for my wife, who eschews and rarely does any type of self quantification. But I've convinced her to at least get a genetic test because I've gotten my genes tested. I know all of the things that I might be prone to from a health standpoint. I'm gonna throw this out there right now, and this will probably keep me from getting insured or hired by any corporation, but I'm going to put it out there anyways. I have a higher than normal risk for three things. Prostate cancer, gout, and type 2 diabetes. So what do I do about that? Well, I don't eat too much meat and red meat because of the gout and the uric acid component. I include a ton of fresh tomatoes and lycopene in my diet for the prostate cancer component. And I personally choose a lower carbohydrate intake due to the diabetes component. I also know that I come from a primarily Northern European and Jewish heritage, and so that can influence my diet as well. Right. Like, I'm not a person who's going to do well with citrus fruits and with rices and things like that. And the reason that I know that. That I'm not Asian, the reason that I know I'm not African and I'm not a Pacific Islander is that rather than looking in the mirror and seeing that my skin isn't black or my eyes don't slant upwards, I instead just got a genetic test. Right.

Because it's deceptive anyway. You can't necessarily tell what's in your genes based on.

No, I'm. I'm actually joking. I would probably know if I was black or Chinese. Just saying.

Why is Jessa apprehensive about getting genetic testing done?

Yeah, she's just. She's just not. Like, she's. We're yin and yang. Right.

I love it. I just love it so much.

I collect my poop and Send it off in FedEx prepaid labels to Metametrics and I collect my saliva in a tube and I, I do my blood testing and do it frequently, like every month I'm in and she doesn't do any of that stuff.

So he just doesn't, she's just not.

Interested, doesn't do it. I've gotten her to do a blood test once and her numbers were fantastic. But we're yin and yang, baby.

I love it so much. I love it.

Listener q and a.

Hi Ben, Gina from California here have a question about sleep. I think I might be getting too much of it. About nine to nine and a half hours. I sleep like a rock star according to my sleep sensor in a very dark room. I'm not depressed. I don't get up during the sleep, maybe once to go pee, but not every night. I'm think I'm over training. I'm more of a yoga and meditation kind of girl. So my question is, should I continue listening to my body and spending more than third of my day sleeping? Should I start waking myself up after seven and a half, eight hours? Or maybe it is an issue of supplementation. Thank you.

Well, I can tell you how much sleep is not too much, Rachel. And that's the amount that I've been getting.

Oh, that's not very good. Especially after your big weekend.

No, I think in the past seven days I've slept about 15 hours.

Oh my gosh, Ben, I think it's you that told me that sleep deprivation eventually leads to death.

It does, but we've also done, we've talked about studies on the show before that show that the effects of chronic sleep deprivation can be reversed with as little as 2 to 3 days of catch up sleep of 10 to 12 hours. So what that means is once life settles down and then the reason I'm short on sleep is not because I endorse like taking a bunch of smart drugs to power through lack of sleep. It's simply because, you know, I went and did this spartan agoji and then I flew back and now I'm working and eventually I will get to a point probably this Thursday or Friday where I will literally go to sleep at like 7pm and I'll sleep until 7am for two days in a row and that'll catch me up and I'll be good. So yeah. Anyways though studies have shown that spending too much time in bed can be associated with some specific health problems. And we've talked all sorts of times about how too little sleep can have A deleterious effect. But too much sleep acts in a different way. So for example, there was one study that found that folks who sleep nine plus hours per night. And when I say folks, I'm talking about average people, I'm not talking about professional athletes because a lot of professional athletes will sleep. And I have a whole article about this@BenGreenfieldFitness.com talking about professional ironman athletes like Andy Potts and Djokovic, the professional tennis player and Steve, what's his name, the point guard for the NBA. Blanking out. His name. Kerr.

I don't watch the NBA.

Sorry, you don't watch the NBA. Shame on you.

No, I just don't get around to it. It's not. Keep going.

Okay, well anyways, the idea is that these athletes sleep for 10 plus hours per night, but they're anomalies, right? They are spending anywhere from three to six hours per day engaged in training. And when you have that level of tissue inflammation and neurological, it's not neurological damage, it's just neurological wear and tear. Right. From that amount of activity and focus and learning, you need more sleep. However, for the average people, one study found elevated levels of something called C reactive protein and that's a systemic marker of chronic low grade inflammation that's typically associated with heart disease or with excessive muscle damage. And they found this among folks who are sleeping nine plus hours per night versus folks who are sleeping in that seven to nine hour per night range. So one thing it turns out that sleeping too much may do is increase inflammation with the possibility that part of that may be due to circadian rhythm disruptions. And what that means is that when you're spending too much time in a dark bedroom under the covers with your eyes closed and not getting light or sunlight exposure during a normal cycle, you actually are not able to produce the same amount of natural endogenous antioxidants and anti inflammatories that you'd be able to produce if you were having a normal light dark cycle comprised of say, going to bed at 10pm, having things be dark, getting up at 6am, seeing the light and going from there. Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes absolute sense. So would it matter at all the quality of sleep that she's getting? Even though she says that she's getting good quality sleep if you were sleeping nine to nine and a half hours per night, but it wasn't very good quality with that?

Yeah, I'll get into that in a second because there is something to be considered there. But there was Another study that they did just last year that found that people who sleep too much, again, and by too much, it's usually nine plus hours. That's what we're talking about for the average person. They found that these folks were at as high a risk of developing diabetes as people who slept less than seven hours per night. So it turns out that there can be a disruption in the hormones responsible for controlling blood sugar when you sleep too much as well. So there was another study that looked at this diabetes issue. There was a study in 2012 that found that people who slept actually, in this case more than eight hours a night were just as likely as the folks who slept less than six hours per night to have angina, which is chest pain or discomfort that's often a symptom of heart disease. So there appears to be a slightly higher risk of coronary artery disease when you sleep too much as well. So those are the biggies. A higher risk of coronary heart disease or coronary artery disease, higher risk of diabetes, and then a higher risk of inflammation when you spend too much time sleeping in the bedroom.

So that's nine plus hours per night.

Yep. And one of the primary medical conditions that would potentially. Well, there's two actually. There's two medical conditions that would potentially cause someone to have a propensity for sleeping too much. And again, we're going to make the assumption that you're not a professional athlete. You're not training three to six hours a day, you're not at that level of physical and mental use of your body. So hypothyroidism, that's one thing that can cause you to feel like you need to spend way more time in bed and cause you to feel not very rested no matter how much time you spend in bed. This is something that you could get tested, right? You can test levels of what's called TSH, T3, T4. You can get a full thyroid panel. Wellness FX, for example, is a company that offers just a basic thyroid panel. You don't have to do the fancy thousand dollar performance panel of all your hormones and your lipids and everything if you want to. And if you go to greenfieldfitnesssystems.com and you click on labs, I have some of my favorite lab tests that I talk about over there. And one of them is just a basic thyroid Panel. It's reverse T3, T3, T4 free T3 free T4, TSH, and something called thyroid antibodies. And by getting that done, you could see if you have or are at risk of something like Hypothyroidism, in which case what I've personally done in the past, because I have, and this is a complete rabbit hole that we won't really go into, but from combining strict ketosis with very high levels of physical activity I have experienced in the past thyroid hormone deficiencies. And the way that I've addressed those has been with a supplement called Thyro Gold. It is a blend of T1, T2, T3, T4 and some herbal thyroid stimulating compounds. They're from like pasture fed New Zealand cows. So like all countries except New Zealand and Argentina are able to give a bunch of hormones to cows and then those hormones can wind up in the thyroid supplements or powders that you take. But if you get your thyroid supplements, like a whole thyroid powder or thyroid capsule from New Zealand or Argentina, you don't get this same level of risk for having hormones in your supplements. And so yeah, this stuff is called Thyro Gold. I believe it's natural. Thyroid Solutions is their website. So that's what I've done in the past regarding hypothyroidism. Not a doctor, don't misconstrue this as medical advice, but I'm a much bigger fan of that approach than like synthetic isolated T3 such as you might get in like Synthroid or Levothyroxine. Another reason that folks would feel like they need to sleep a really long time and that they don't feel rested no matter how long they sleep is something that we've done a couple of podcasts on in the past and it's obstructive sleep apnea where you have like interrupted sleep or at least surges out of your deep sleep phases because you have a drop in oxygen levels from obstructive sleep apnea. And typically that's treated with a customized mouthpiece or what's called a CPAP device, which is a mask and a hose and an air pump which helps improve airflow into the lungs and which sounds like a, a fantastic, wonderful thing to have attached to your face as you sleep. But anyways, we've done podcasts before with this doctor named Joseph Zelk, Dr. Joe Zelk from the Sleep Medicine Group. And I'll link in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com346 I will link to those Joe Zelk episodes so that you can listen and learn a little bit more about obstructive sleep apnea. But first thing I would do is I would look into hypothyroidism or obstructive sleep apnea if you feel like you just are not rested no matter how much you sleep. And then the other thing is there are sleep tracking devices that will give you information about sleep latency, which is, like, how long it takes you to fall asleep, and also give you some basic information about how many sleep cycles you're going through during the night, right from stage one to stage three or from stage one to stage five sleep. And ideally, during the night, you should go through four to five stages or four to five cycles of sleep where you're going from, you know, your. Your regular brainwaves down to your delta brainwaves. And a couple of my favorite sleep tracking devices. One would be the Beddit, which is a little strip that goes underneath the sheet on your bed and that tracks your sleep via.

And it just doesn't. Movement by movement.

Yeah, yeah. And then there's one called the Motion X that I've used on my iPhone before. And we're talking about accuracy that is within about 70 to 80% of what you might get if you were to go to a professional sleep lab. If you. If you really want to get, like a really good test done, you could go to this sleep medicine group's website and you can actually pay them and have professional sleep monitoring equipment sent to your house. And that would give you a really good idea of your sleep latency and how good you were doing going through sleep cycles and all that kind of stuff. But that's what I would do. So I'd look into thyroid, I'd look into sleep apnea, and then you could do sleep quantification. I personally don't really quantify my sleep for two reasons. Number one is a lot of these sleep tracking devices use Bluetooth, and I just don't want to have any type of radiation next to me all night long. And then the other thing is, like, I've found. I don't know what you think about this, Rachel, but I've found that when I constantly track my sleep, I don't sleep as well because I'm thinking about it, what my sleep's going for in the morning.

Jake, my partner, is obsessive about tracking his sleep. And I'm like, I'll ask him in the morning maybe, how did you sleep last night? And he's like, let me check the data.

Exactly. Now what I do, and I talk about this in the recent article that I wrote. And if you're listening and you didn't read this article, you need to check it out. I wrote an article about this device that I've been putting over my brachial plexus while I sleep. And this device emits this tiny little. It's a 0.05 Gauss signal, which is like nothing. So we're talking about nothing to the extent that Bluetooth or WiFi would do. But what this little tiny signal over your brachial plexus does is it activates nerves feeding to your brain and causes your brain to start producing tissues. Delta brainwaves that just shove you into deep sleep extremely quickly. This thing's called a delta sleeper. I did a big blog post on it. And the idea behind this is that it allows you to get into your deep sleep phases more quickly. And in that article, I also talk about how rather than doing sleep tracking, all I do is I just measure my heart rate variability when I get up. And that's just a really quick five minute measurement. It tells me how well rested, how recovered I am. Lately it's been in the crapper for obvious reasons, but that's what I recommend. Rather than tracking your sleep all the time, however, what Gina may want to do is at least for a month, track her sleep, get some good numbers. Don't feel as though she has to do it her entire life, but I would do a little bit of sleep tracking just to see. You'll learn your respiration rate during sleep and you'll learn your sleep latency, how long it takes you to fall asleep. And you might even learn that if you're in bed 10 hours, you're sleeping six of those, which is significant. So those are some of the things I'd do.

So one more thing. What I really got out of that question was she's sleeping nine and a half hours a night, max. She sleeps really well. She knows she's not depressed, she's not over trained. Now, is it bad for that to happen if her body feels good, if she's waking up feeling like she's popping out of bed, feeling really good throughout the day, and she's sleeping nine and a half hours a night, Is that something that you would be worried about?

Yeah.

Wow.

Again. Again. Because research has shown that once you exceed about nine hours, you get these issues with coronary artery disease and diabetes and inflammation, crp. So yeah, I mean, it's something I think about.

Even just an extra half hour. Or not.

Yep, exactly. Could be Bad News Bears. I'm just saying.

There you go, Gina.

Could you could be Bad News Bears. Although at some point this week, I guarantee I'm gonna sleep like 18 hours and I'm not gonna give a crap.

Hey, Ben, quick question here for you. Last night I was rolling the outside of my leg with my foam roller and I noticed that the area around like the middle of my it band was kind of bumpy. I guess, for lack of a better term, under the skin. It's like I could actually feel the roughness with my fingers. It's not visible outside of the skin, but so it's not like a superficial problem, but it's mildly painful when I press on that bumpy area. My question is, what causes this bumpiness? Is it muscle or is it fascia? I always thought that it syndrome appeared by the knee or the hip, not generally in the middle of the leg. What's the best method to relieve it? Be it stretching, rolling, icing, or something else that I should be doing. Thanks for your help. Really appreciate the podcast.

I'm going to hazard a guess here, Rachel, and I'm going to say mosquito bites.

Mosquito bites under the skin.

Bumpiness could be.

We covered that.

Okay. Assuming that you don't have mosquitoes or bedbugs or ants hanging out in your home, there are a number of skin conditions that can cause lumps and bumps to appear under the skin. And there's a bunch of them. There's like skin cysts, right? And these are like non cancerous closed pockets of tissue that can be filled with fluid or. Happy thought here, pus. And they can appear anywhere. And they're usually kind of painless and they're smooth to the touch, but when you roll over them, you can feel them. And a lot of times cysts are something that get drained, but in most cases, like, if this is something that's frequently appearing, it's not going to be a cyst. There are angiomas. Angiomas are also known as cherry angiomas. And these are like bright cherry red bumps that are underneath the skin. And those are typically addressed via like a laser, right? They'll go in and they'll get rid of the. The cherry angioma with a laser. So that's another one that you'll tend to see. There are these things called dermato fibromas. Dermato fibromas. There's your word of the week. And these are actually skin growths. They're. They're growths of the derma and they contain scar tissue, like hard scar tissue, and they feel like hard lumps under the skin. And modern medicine actually isn't quite sure what causes them, but they can be tiny, they can Be like as small as a BB pellet. And typically it's just like scar tissue that appears over time. And usually they would get rid of those with liquid nitrogen. So break out the liquid nitrogen and the lasers. There's something called folliculitis. Folliculitis is an inflammation of the hair follicles and that can also cause bumps under the skin, although more often than not you would have those on your head. There are skin injuries that can occur and when skin injuries occur, you can get kerato and asynthomas keratoacenthomas. I am sure that any dermatologist or skin physician listening in right now is about to rip my head off my pronunciations. But these are little red dome shaped bumps with central craters in them. I would imagine that you'd know if there was a crater in the middle of the bump. And so I'm guessing that this is probably not the issue. There are lipomas and lipomas are just like this excess fat tissue. A lot of times you'll find that with something like cellulite, but again, you would usually see that. And then there are also neurofibromas, which are these little soft, fleshy growths under the skin. And they're actually harmless tumors, like non malignant benign tumors. And a lot of times those are related to nerves. And when you touch them, you would feel an electric like shock when you touch them. And so again, you'd probably know if you had those too. So obviously cysts and lumps and bumps can be caused by a huge variety of issues. But I can tell you that in most folks, in most folks, there is an issue that. And I've experienced this. Most athletes who I work with and I've seen have experienced this, this microscopic scarring of elastic connective tissue. And it's called a fascial adhesion. A fascial adhesion. And fascia is just, it's really interesting stuff. As most folks know, it surrounds muscles and it surrounds muscle bundles and groups of muscles and blood vessels and nerves. And fascia consists of a bunch of really extremely thin layers in which the musculoskeletal system and the circulatory system and the nervous system all kind of unite. And you know, I've been doing quite a bit of work lately. In the morning when I wake up while the coffee is brewing, I've been doing a little bit of foam rolling and then I've got these really thick mobility bands that I attach to my arms or my legs and I just stretch out my body almost like, you know, almost like in the, in the medieval times when they'd quarter someone with a horse, right? Like I'll attach these bands to poles in my house and then step away and just let them pull on my shoulders and pull on my hips and pull on my ankles. And I feel like a million bucks after I do this because I'm foam rolling first to get rid of some of the knots and then I'm doing this fascia work, this fascia mobility that helps to stretch out and align all that fascia. And when I do that, not only do I feel like a million bucks, but it gets rid of like little bumps and knots and areas of adhesions within my body where little collagen fibers have been torn just from day to day activity and working out. But fascia also, because it's part of your nervous system, it also can produce or release neurotransmitters. And so you can get these big dumps of like serotonin and dopamine when you work on fascia. And that's why a massage in many cases can feel so good as you break up these fascial adhesions. And so as you're foam rolling and you're feeling bumps and stuff like that, you in many cases are getting rid of some of these fascial adhesions. You're remodeling scar tissue and that's what keeps you mobile. And one of the things that I think you could probably try is after you foam roll, try to stretch out this fascia, right. Like you're stretching, like you're pulling hard on a rope to just smooth out the rope. And you can do that with these thick mobility bands that you attach to a pole or another non moving object or like a table or, or, or, or a bed. And then you, you mobilize, you do what's called traction. Google it. Traction. Anyways, though, so, so those are some of the things that I would recommend that Anna do.

So where can we get that mobility band?

You, you could get at any sporting goods store. The rogue fitness website should sell it. Amazon would sell it. Lot of different places. So.

Okay, and are you going to, are you going to do us a video on how to do it?

Do you a video? Actually, my friend Kelly Starrett has a great website called mobilitywod. So if you go to mobilitywod.com he's got a ton of videos on there. And that's what I personally use to teach myself different areas. So if I've got an area that's tight. I go to Kelly's website, I do a search for that specific area and typically he's got a pretty good video that shows you how to do it. So that's what I would recommend for Anna.

Hey, Ben, I would love to know what I can do to prevent or recover from a running hangover. I can't figure out what is causing the feeling. But after short runs, long runs and other hard exercise like a long bike ride, I feel like I do if I've had way too much to drink. I get headaches, feel nauseous and super awful. Really hard to get motivated to work out when this is a result. I have tried electrolyte tabs, coconut water, different foods, preloading electrolytes, drinking lots of fluid before, during, after. Nothing seems to help. Would love your opinion on what I could do to help fix this. So thanks very much for all that you do. I appreciate everything. Thanks. Bye.

You know, I always thought the hangovers from running would be something primarily produced via the beer mile. Have you ever run a beer mile, by the way?

I haven't, no. But it sounds fun.

I'm not really a beer guy. No. I, I've never been good at chugging beer. That's never been a skill of mine. And I also. Running doesn't come that naturally to me. And so when you combine the fact that I'm not the best runner on the face of the planet and I really suck at chugging beer, I think the beer mile would be a real uphill battle for me.

It would be really funny to watch though.

Probably would be, yeah. No, I think I'll. I think maybe I could possibly do like the beer swim lap.

Just the single lap.

Turn that into an event. Yeah, just, it's just single lap. You swim down to the end of the pool, you chug a beer, you swim back. Maybe, maybe.

That sounds so dangerous.

Maybe to swim 400, right?

Americans are hilarious. This is definitely an American thing. I've never heard of this.

Yeah. You think that, that the Australian beer mile would be, would be something. Yeah. You know, you, you run around, you grab a Fosters, you fight a shark, you go surfing, you have some vegemite.

That's the best depiction of Australia I can think of.

So running hangovers. Yes. When you get back from a run and you feel like crap, let's just say you have, you've. You've taken care of your hydration. Right. And you've taken care of your electrolytes and you've taken care of your nutrition. Let's Just take for granted that Kait has done all that stuff and you still feel like crap after a short run, a long run, hard exercise, et cetera. I have five ideas for you if you're listening in and exercise is just a suffer fest for you. I mean, not that exercise isn't, you know, exercise is supposed to kind of sort of hurt. Some people will say that it shouldn't. I say when you're putting work into your body to become more fit, yeah, it's sometimes uncomfortable. So I'm not one of those guys who says that it should always feel super duper easy.

Right.

So at the same time, however, you shouldn't feel like you have to go sleep, you know, for four hours after you work out. You shouldn't feel like you have a hangover after you run. So what can you do? First of all, I recommend that, you know, I mentioned this hscrp, this inflammatory protein associated with muscle damage. There's another inflammatory protein called homocysteine. There's another one that is called cytokines. Cytokines are another component of inflammation. You can actually get tested for inflammatory markers or inflammation as part of an overall whole blood test or just as a standalone test. You can go get an HSCRP and a homocysteine evaluation and you can see if you simply have a lot of underlying inflammation. And in many cases, since exercise is an inflammatory activity, if you're dumping inflammation on top of inflammation, you feel like crap, to use the highly technical term.

So she might just have a ton of inflammation to start with.

Yeah, from like food allergies can cause inflammation. Mold and fungi in your house can cause inflammation. Environmental stressors like toxins can cause inflammation. If you're allergic to your personal care products or household cleaning chemicals. So go find out if you've just got a bunch of chronic low level inflammation. I'm a fan of. For example, for me personally, I feel like a million bucks when my levels of HSCRP are below 0.2. Okay, so to give you an actual number, that's what I shoot for when I'm on. When I'm doing a blood test, I shoot for HSCRP being below 0.2. So there's that. By the way, I'm going in for a blood test on Monday, like a full on blood panel. Because I'm doing it. I'm doing another guinea pig test.

So what's the guinea pig test this time? Here's what I've done, just testing everything.

You know the, you know how I have this, this cannabidiol this nature CBD supplement that I designed, that's got, like, lemon balm and ashwagandha and cannabidiol in it, but it's. It's a nanoparticle, right? So it's a super duper small particle. I worked with this lab to produce this for me. So you got to use about one tenth of the amount of cannabidiol to get the same focus and relaxation effects that you'd get from higher amounts of cbd. So I approached these folks and I said, what if we took everything that's been shown to increase testosterone, right? Zinc, magnesium, vitamin D, creatine, all these components, not too many of the funky herbs, but more of just, like the proven stuff that especially men tend to be deficient in that can cause testosterone deficiencies. What if we take all this, we use this same nanoparticle technology, and we nanoparticarticularize. I just made that word up. Nanoparticularize all these components, and we put them in a capsule. And so they said, okay, well, let's try it. So I had them do this, and I had them create four bottles for me. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go in and do a full blood panel within a special focus on testosterone, sex hormone binding, globulin, estrogens, everything responsible for male libido and male function. I'm gonna get all this tested, and then I'm going to, for a month, take this stuff, and then I'm gonna retest. I'm gonna see what happens.

And I'm all like, oh, Jessa, it's gonna be a fun month for you.

Yeah. I want to create the most potent testosterone enhancing compound on the face of the planet. That's, like, one of my goals this year. So, no, I have this all planned out. I'm going to call it nature.

I love it.

I'm going to call it nature. Male. But just like anything, right, I want to try stuff out before I just make it. So anyways, so I'm going in for a blood test, so stay tuned if you're listening in. This year might be the year that I actually come out with a testosterone enhancing compound that actually works and is legal, doesn't have all these little nasty herbs in it that can get you popped on a blood test if you compete in an anti doping associated event. Okay, so that's first test for inflammation. Number two is test for adrenal stress. In many cases, folks who have, like, stage two or stage three adrenal fatigue, their Cortisol levels are dysregulated and when that happens, blood pressure is dysregulated. Dizziness during exercise ensues, a very blah feeling post exercise ensues. And you can get an adrenal stress index. It's a salivary test. So four times during the day you test your saliva, you sniff something that really gets your saliva flowing. For me, it's like peanut butter. I'll sniff a jar of peanut butter, drip the saliva into the tube, you send that off to the lab and you get your cortisol levels back. And if your cortisol is dysregulated, in most cases, super duper low throughout the day or super duper high throughout the day, that can cause these type of exercise based hangovers. By the way, I totally forgot to mention this morning, in my smart drug infused stupor, I did a swab, I did three different swabs. I swabbed my tongue and I swabbed the skin on my forehead and then I wiped my ass after I took a crap and I swabbed my poop and I put each of these swabs into a tube because I'm doing the American Gut project.

Oh, what's that?

They analyze the mouth and the skin and the fecal microbiome of your body. And what they're doing is they're developing this database of as many folks on the face of the planet to see what type of bacteria is associated with what type of ethnicities, what type of diseases, what type of personalities, what type of diets, et cetera. So I'm taking part in this project. It's called the American Gut Project. You can Google it. And I got my kit last week and so I did all the testing this morning.

So that sounds super fun. And hey, Ben, I feel like the smart drugs are really starting to kick in over there.

Am I going off on too many rabbit holes?

There's a lot of them happening and there's a lot of energy and it's just. You're back to normal.

All right, well, good. Okay, so number three. Number three is what we just talked about. Mobility, work and fascial adhesions. These fascial adhesions, if there's too many of them, you can feel like crap. From a neuromuscular standpoint, like I mentioned, not only can fascia store things like serotonin and dopamine, but when fascia is knotted and adhesed and connective tissue is not working properly, your whole body can feel very, very tight and less than stellar post Exercise. And so this is again, why while my coffee is brewing every morning, I hit my foam roller, I hit my little lacrosse balls, my little, you know, I got like the little, the two lacrosse balls that are duct taped together to roll up and down the spine. And I just find any area of the body that's tight, I roll it out. And now my newest thing is after I roll it out, I do a little bit of traction on it with these mobility bands. And I can do all that in five to 10 minutes while the coffee is brewing. And that adds up. That means that 60 minutes, 70 minutes each week I'm doing some really targeted fascia work. And that's the way that I do it, right? It's the same way I practice guitar. I practice guitar for about an hour and a half every week, but it's all in like 15 to 20 minute segments in the evening at the end of the day. You know, I write in my, in my book of fiction, right? I'll write a good 10,000 words, you know, every week or every week and a half. But that's in like little 15 minute segments at the end of the day. And my fascia work, you know, it's all these little 10 minute segments at the beginning of the day. So mobility work and fascia work. That would be number three. In addition to testing for inflammation and doing an adrenal stress index for your cortisol. Number four is that a lot of times feeling like crap, especially after a run or a hard workout, can be due to body temperature, really elevated body temperature. And here's the deal. Cryotherapy. Cold water soaks using these cryotherapy chambers that has actually been shown to inhibit muscle growth, muscle hypertrophy, if you do it post exercise. So if your number one single goal is building muscle as quickly as possible, you shouldn't actually take a cold shower right after a weight training session or do a cold water soak right after you've been working on your biceps or your abs or your booty. But because there are so many other positive side effects. Shutting down inflammation, lowering core body temperature so you sleep better, enhancing production of nitric oxide for oxygen and glucose delivery to tissue. I'm still. Unless your number one goal is just getting swole, I'm still a huge fan of doing cold shower or cold soak or cryotherapy post workout because it can really help you to feel amazing and help to quell a lot of that crappy, hangoverish feeling post workout. So my method is I just step into the Shower for five minutes or I step into the cold pool outside my house for a few minutes and just let the body cool down, cool the core. So that would be number four and then number five. I didn't really think this was an issue until when I was a personal trainer, I would coach some folks who would just, they get nauseous and they'd want to throw up after the workout. Even after workouts that weren't that hard. Right. So when you do a workout and you produce a bunch of lactic acid, lactic acid can stimulate your vagus nerve to cause you to have to throw up. It's why after a really hard workout, you, you throw up. That's lactic acid, and it's specifically lactic acid aggravating your vagus nerve. But some people, even if they haven't worked out that hard, even if they haven't produced that much lactic acid, they still get this same nauseous feeling. And that's just basically motion sickness. It's the up and down, back and forth motion of exercise. And in folks like that, using ginger or using peppermint can help out tremendously. There's a few different ways to skin that cat. For example, you can get peppermint essential oil and you can put it on your upper lip. You can get peppermint tums, and you can have a peppermint tums once or twice during the workout. You can get these little ginger chews, and you can have these ginger chews. I'm not as big a fan of those because they have a lot of sugar in them. I'm a bigger fan of just taking ginger root, boiling it, and chewing on some of that. But both ginger and peppermint can help with the nausea or the motion sickness type of issues that can make you feel like you have an exercise based hangover.

So you would be susceptible to this if you were susceptible to motion sickness in general or.

Yeah, if you're the type of person gets car sick or you can't, you don't do well on boats a lot of times. Exercise can also make you feel kind of crappy. So, okay, so there you go. Oh, and also don't work out on a boat or in a car. Kate, if that is the issue.

Yeah, it's a double whammy.

Avoid the treadmill on the cruise ship. So those are some of the things that I would do. Kate, if you, the listener, are listening in and you found some other methods that work well for you, we're all game for this to be a team event. And for you to pipe in in the show notes. So you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com346 and you can pipe in with your own comments for Kate if you'd like. So we've got one more question, however, so shall we do it? Oh, and by the way, if you're listening in, sorry, don't leave yet after our last question because we also have a special tip that's coming up. A special tip that's coming up, recorded by a friend of mine that we're going to play towards the end of this episode shrouded in mystery. Stay tuned. But first, let's address a question from listener Ellen. Hi, Ben. My name's Ellen.

I'm a marathon and ultra runner with celiac disease and I'm on a plant based diet. Basically I want to increase my appetite and my weight, but I don't want to reduce my training. Can you make some suggestions to help because I'm going around in circles. Thanks, Ben, for your help. Bye.

Well, Rachel, did you hear the episode that we did with Mark Sisson?

I did.

Okay. Yeah. We talk about in that episode how like chronic repetitive motion sports, you know, they cause a lack of lean mass and an increase in appetite and a drop in testosterone. All these things that can cause endurance athletes to get that skinny fat look. But some endurance athletes, you know, they're doing their training properly and they aren't necessarily making all the mistakes of just like a bunch of the type of black hole training that we talk about in that episode. Right. Like the junk mile training. But they still want to gain weight, you know, round out, maybe put on some muscle, maybe not look like a gaunt Ethiopian poster child I just made. Oh, Ben, that wasn't nice to say. I'm not racist, I promise. Just it's, it's an, it's a fitting analogy. They have these posters with really skinny Ethiopian kids on them and sometimes that's what runners look like. I'm just saying bony shoulders and, you know, shallow cheeks and all that jazz, so. Or sunken cheeks. Anyways, though, so what do I recommend? First thing, Ellen, is I'm a huge fan for folks who want to gain weight. Like my brother in law is just like this super skinny ectomorphic guy who none of his strength and conditioning coaches in college could put weight on him. And my wife one year for Christmas told me that she wanted to get him a training plan and a nutrition plan from me. And so I wound up helping him put on a good 20 to 25 pounds of muscle that he'd never been able to put on. And a big part of that was frequent feedings with really nutrient dense calorie dense snacks. So for fat burning efficiency and for ketosis and all that stuff, I am totally a fan of eating only three square meals a day maximum, eating four times a day. However, if your goal is putting on weight, doing smaller, more frequent feedings, using some of these nutrient dense and calorie dense meal replacement powders, that can come in really handy. So one of my favorites, there's this stuff called Living Fuel Super Greens. Living Fuel Super Greens and Living Fuel Super Greens is this blend of. It's a ton of stuff. It's digestive enzymes and it's probiotics. But then it's blended with, for example, brown rice bran and wheat grass and whole raw chia seeds and organic beetroots and carrots and broccoli and spinach and oats. Oats. And just there's a ton of stuff. They even got sea vegetables in there, right? Like dulce and kelp powder. And it's just like this really dense, you know, very nutrient rich compound. But unlike, you know, say like we were talking about like the green juice powder earlier, right? Like the Fitlife green juice powder. Most green juice powders like athletic greens or that Fitlife stuff, they're low calorie, right? They're maybe whatever, 10, 20 calories a pop. This stuff is 265 calories in a serving. And so you're able to just dump a bunch of really nutrient dense calories into your body without dumping a bunch of non nutrient dense calories like say white rice in. So I'm a huge fan of having something like that on hand that you use at frequent points throughout the day if you're trying to gain weight. So that's number one. There are also certain supplements that increase your appetite and that will make you hungry. And they're not all weed. Even though that works sometimes, you may not want to use weed frequently throughout the day to increase appetite. So some of the things that can work instead. One is plum extract. And we did a podcast a while back about appetite stimulating supplements. So I won't spend too long a time explaining these. But plum extract, and I'll link to this in the show notes, that can actually cause a release of the appetite stimulating hormone that your body produces called ghrelin. They did a study in the journal Peptide on this. So plum extract, it's something you can get in supplement form. For example, on Amazon, you take it about 30 minutes before you eat, and you'll eat more when you take in plum extract. So listen in all you skinny runners and all you high school athletes who want to put on a bunch of muscle for football, try some plum extract. Echinacea. Echinacea alkalamides. So these work very, very similar to cannabinoids to increase your appetite without you having to smoke a joint. So the echinacea plant has these cannabinoid like supplements called alkalamides. And there was a study done in the Journal of Biological Chemistry that showed that they can have a potent appetite boosting effect. So that's another one. That's another one you could get, for example, on Amazon or at a supplement store. You want to make sure that you do your research. I like the website, for example, labdoor.com we did a podcast with the folks from labdoor.com to look into whether or not supplements had efficacy or whether or not the components of a supplement agree with what that supplement says that it has in it. Because obviously the whole supplement industry is wild, wild west. So make sure you do your research. But at the same time, Echinacea alkalamides. And then another one is fish oil. They've done a study where they showed that people who take fish, fish oil before breakfast actually have increased appetites for breakfast specifically. This seemed to be more potent in females than in males. So it turns out that for some reason in females, fish oil, fish oil is another one. So there you go. And then finally, the other thing to keep you catabolic and keep you from cannibalizing muscle, especially if you are an endurance athlete, is during any of like your runs or your bike rides or anything like that that is exceeding about 90 minutes. Anything that is exceeding 90 minutes, I'm a huge fan of each hour consuming the equivalent of about 10 grams of essential amino acids to keep blood levels of amino acids elevated and to keep yourself from cannibalizing your lean muscle tissue. Now, branched chain amino acids will work for maintaining energy levels, but they won't stave off your body cannibalizing its own lean muscle mass compared to essential amino acids. So again, if you're an endurance athlete or if you're like trying to build muscle as quickly as possible, I would recommend that during exercise you maintain as high a level of blood amino acids as you can using something like an essential amino acid supplement in the dose of right around 10 grams per hour. So that would be my recommendation to Ellen to stay off of the Ethiopian poster child posters. So there you have it now we are nearly to the point in the show, Rachel, where we do our review, but for the next few shows, we're going to do something a little bit different. So the reason for that is my friend Jordan Harbinger over at the Art of Charm, the Art of Charm podcast. You go to theartofcharm.com, you can check him out on itunes. He offered to send us over some tips. He said he had some charming tips, some tips on how to be charming for specifically fit people. And I, out of the goodness of my heart, I said yes. So Jordan has actually recorded some special tips for us and we're going to be playing them in a few of the the upcoming episodes. And today you're going to get to learn from Jordan about how to use nonverbal communication skills rather than just say a nice fit body to enhance your ability to be charming. So that being said, here you go. Hey, I've noticed a lot of people who are fit especially have a really bad set of nonverbal communication, and that's likely because they're actually quote unquote, too aware of their own body and they're not aware of how their body's communicating to others and what it's communicating. A lot of really fit people, especially men, they tend to take up lots of space. Men tend to puff their chest out a little bit. Try focusing less on how you're perceived by others and more about how others are feeling when they're around you. And this might sound like the same thing, but the difference is really subtle. I'm not asking you to manage other people's feelings, but simply become aware of them. You're going to get a lot better at reading nonverbal communication, which will allow you to not only read others like a book, but will also allow you to fine tune your own nonverbal communication to get the desired reaction from other people. So it's kind of like a superpower. And I've noticed that people who tend to be really fit or really athletic tend to be less aware of others non verbals and much more aware of their own, almost to their own detriment. So try this out and see what happens and I'd love to hear how this works out for you. So, Rachel, what I hope you've learned from that is that you really don't have to flex your. I know you're big into flexing your muscles. When you walk into a room.

Muscles are huge to make an impression, but they're like so big.

Yeah. Using these tips from Jordan Rachel, you no longer have to wear your welcome to the gun show T shirt at every social function that you go to.

Thanks, Jordan. Because it was getting kind of weird.

You have Jordan's permission.

Real small stop.

So a big thanks to Jordan for that tip. And then finally, finally a big thanks to listener Striz24. So stress24 left us a review on itunes. Now, if you leave us a review on itunes and you hear your review read on the show, then boy, oh boy, oh, boy, do we have something for you. We send you a Ben Greenfield fitness beanie, a BPA free water bottle that will not give you cancer or cause lumps or bumps or cysts to appear underneath your skin, and a cool tech T shirt. Not like a big cotton T shirt that's like a tent that doesn't make your body look good, but like a nice tech T shirt. So we're going to send that to anybody who leaves a review that we read on the show. All you got to do, if you hear your review read on the show, very simple. Send your T shirt size to gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's gearreenfieldfitnesssystems dot com and you'll get Magic sent to you in the mail. So that being said, Rachel, we've got a review. It's called the fitness podcast of all fitness podcasts, it's five stars. You want to take this one away?

Yes. All right. To all those looking to become an extremely fit, fat destroying lady killer machine, the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast will give you the knowledge to become as fit as you desire. Weather building.

Striation.

Sorry. Infused body, Sleeping like the peaceful baby Jesus or reaching to the top of Mount McKinley in your running shorts. Ben has it all. His jovial sense of humor and specialized vernacular has provided an entertaining experience to my health. Journey, learn, experiment, and take as much information as you can muster from the legendary Ben Greenfield. Your life experience will change along with your diminished waistline and magnified cognitive function. Thank you, Ben. Wow, that was a good one.

So my special favors from that particular review, aside from giving me an extremely big head, was a lady killer machine. Yes. That's not. That's not sexist at all.

That's true. I was gonna add man.

Man killer striation infused body.

Still don't know.

I'm just. Striations are like the. You know, it's like when. When a muscle, when you can see, like all the little fibers of a muscle, when someone flexes.

I love that it now makes complete sense that I don't have any idea.

What that means sleeping like the peaceful baby Jesus. How do you know that baby Jesus didn't cry? I'm just saying he may have been like a colicky baby that just screamed all the time.

He had a really big life ahead of him.

There you go. Or reaching the top of Mount McKenzie. What was the other thing he said? The vernacular, the specialized vernacular. And my jovial sense of humor.

I love that.

Makes me sound like Santa Claus, our little Santa Claus. I am the Santa Claus of fitness. All right, well, that was a fun review. That was a fun review. And if you're listening in, you can leave your review over in itunes. Spread the karma, spread the good cheer, spread the love. And that being said, I will put a link to everything we talked about for from the studies on Sirtuin to our discount on, like, Chimera coffee and the Harry's Razor to the Biohackers Summit in London and Paleofx to that weird thing I've been putting over my brachial plexus before I sleep. All that stuff we'll put links to over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 3, 4, 6. And the smart drugs haven't worn off yet, but I think at some point in the next couple hours, Rachel, I will go and collapse. And, oh, stay tuned for the agogi blog post, too. If you're listening in, you're gonna want to read this one. Trust me, you're gonna get like, frozen fish and blindfolded skiing and 38 degrees below zero and all sorts of fun stuff. But in the meantime, Rachel, Ben, have a great day. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice. Sam.