The Latest On Longevity, Natural Ways To Increase Testosterone, Should You Drink Coffee On An Empty Stomach, The Ultimate Airplane Biohacking Guide & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, the latest on longevity, natural ways to increase testosterone, should you drink coffee on an empty stomach, the ultimate airplane biohacking guide, 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.

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.

So I saw some alarming photos of your face on social media over the last few days.

Photos of my face are always alarming, dude. I don't know what you're talking about.

Well, a little bit, but these were extra alarming because they're bloody, a little bit puffy, little swollen.

Yeah, I got hit by a car. I was at Paleofx. I got hit by a car. People are asking me if I got in a fight down there with a vegan or poked in the eye with a cucumber. Actually, you know what? My face feels pretty good. It's healing up really fast. I actually have. I called the US Stem cell clinic in Florida where my stem cells are stored. And because I got a concussion when the car hit me and I made love to the pavement, I figured combination.

Of things to do. Yes.

I figured for neurogenesis, that it would help me to have stem cells in my body. So I called them up. And tomorrow morning, arriving on a little styrofoam box of ice, are two vials of stem cells that I will inject. I'll mix them with mannitol, which apparently allows them to cross the blood brain barrier and affect neural tissue a little bit better. So it's illegal for a doctor to inject you with those, but I can inject myself with them.

Mannitol is a sugar substitute. Right. Like a sugar alcohol.

Wonderful. And energy bars also great stem cells in your. In your veins.

So you just mix it in with some yogurt and some mannitol, little berries on top. Chia seeds. Yeah.

Of all the places for me to get hit by a car while riding my. I was actually riding one of those stand up elliptigo bikes.

So they hit you on purpose because you looked like a dork.

Yeah, him swerve. I had several extra feet that I. That I fell. Anyways, though of all the places to get hit, being at Paleo FX was a great spot because they had like a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in the, in the VIP room there for the speakers. And so I spent nearly two and a half hours laying in that. So I laid in there with my phone and worked while I did hyperbaric.

It's really good for tbis. Really good, yes.

I met with a couple of different Cairos there who kind of adjust. I had three ribs out of place so I could barely breathe and they popped those back into place along with my neck. People are basically farting ketones now at any of these, hemorrhaging them. I was able to be in ketosis. You know, ketones are well indicated for brain injuries, so I was able to get on those. And there was a lot of DHA there. And that's also very, very helpful if you get in a concussion or something like that. The only thing they didn't have at Paleo effects, oddly enough, because ancient man did not drink this, apparently it was water. Water. Ancient man only drank coffee and ketones, so they didn't have any water.

Very expensive coffee.

I went to Whole Foods and I bought a bunch of tapo chico and so I punished a ton of tapo chico every day. And my only concern now is I'm going in for X rays actually after we record, I'm hopping in my car and driving to my Cairo to get X ray to see if my neck's broken because it all up and down my neck on the right side, all the scalenes and the paraspinatus and all that area, it's all kind of locked up and adhesed and no matter how much cold and magnesium and I've been doing pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. I have a whole bunch of toys at home.

You got some stuff?

I got access to pretty much everything like a high end physical therapy clinic would have access to. I've been blessed with folks sending me a lot of cool things that I can use in my body. But it's a very strange kind of dull achy sensation all up and down my cervical spine. So I want to check and make sure that my neck is not broken because I'm supposed to do a spartan race this weekend and I don't want to do a spartan race with a broken neck. I don't want to be that guy who flips a tire and becomes a paraplegic.

Yeah, that's contraindicated, I believe. Yeah.

So I've had a rough week. How are you? I'm Great.

I just got back from Bermuda. I was down there for an ITU triathlon race and.

No kidding, you did the ITU in Bermuda?

You know, I, I wish I could say I did. The idea, the plan was that I was supposed to go, go there and actually race, but I've been fighting with this stupid. I know. I've brought this up on the podcast before. The plantar fasciitis is now like it's still there, but it's also now it's turned into like a. What's the. The little calcaneus right in between the ankle and the. And the foot bone is now all jacked and it's just going on and on. So my training was not on point. So maybe I think that's the next step is to actually go get a. Hey, actually we'll be X ray buddies. I'll go.

There we go. You have a spur. You could at least ride a horse. You know, that's.

The.

Built in spurs is useful. Well, between the two of us, I wonder if we're just getting old, Brock. You know, we're, we're the, we're the OGs of this fitness podcast, I think. You know. How long have we been doing this? Almost ten years.

Yeah, eight.

Yeah, maybe we're just getting old, man. Maybe we need to start golfing. I don't know. Anyways though. So speaking of getting old, shall we talk about longevity?

Why not?

News flashes.

All right, this is the part of the show where I talk about some of the cooler articles and research papers that have come across my plate recently.

I'd put cooler in quotation marks and cooler. Place that with nerdier.

Well, yeah, I spend a few hours every morning. You know what? That's an over exaggeration.

That'd be a lot of time for.

Probably 45 to 60 minutes every morning just pouring through the latest research and articles and my blog feeds and everything else. And the thing that I found a lot of recently was some interesting studies and papers and articles on longevity. And this one was really great. The title of it, it's on a website called Darwinian Medicine and the article is called Do Traditional People hold the Key to a Healthy Life? Now I'm going to put a link to this over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 385. But it's an interview with a researcher named Pedro Bastos and he's part of this group of scientists who have kind of spearheaded the research on what's called evolutionary nutrition and health. And should you not believe in evolution and say we didn't come from fish or monkeys or whatever combination of the two. There's still the fish, monkey, host of very, very intriguing information in this particular article. For example, in the interview, and this one would take you about 10 to 15 minutes to read. It's kind of a longer article. One of the main reasons why traditional people in a lot of these ancestral cultures, like, say, like the Kitavan tribe, is one that he talks quite a bit about. They don't suffer from a lot of the chronic health problems that people in America suffer a lot with. People in Western civilization suffer a lot with like diabetes and cardiovascular disease and colon cancer. And he gets into a lot of the alterations that we tend to see in folks who live in more civilized societies compared to ancestral societies.

And some, I think westernized would be.

The more acceptable West, Westernized, civilized, which.

Makes you sound like a colonial.

Yes, that's true. Civilized loss of muscle mass is one. So the allocation of what they call glutamine and glucose to the immune system is affected by this loss of muscle mass. Another one is higher insulin resistance in liver and muscle and adipose tissue. We see increased coagulation, reduced levels of vitamin D, decreased testosterone. But he goes into detail in terms of how this actually affects us in civilized or westernized, as you say, Barack society from a health standpoint. Another really interesting one is he gets into the physical activity of a lot of these folks, you know, the Hasda of Tanzania and what? And the Inuits from Canada, the Semani horticulturist of Bolivia, hunter gatherers in Paraguay. And it's really interesting that they have very high physical activity levels, you know, like 150 minutes in many cases each day. But it's extremely low level. You know, there's no CrossFit Wads, there's no hardcore exercise sessions. It's just they're moving all day. And I know a lot of this stuff. I'm preaching to the choir and it seems to make sense. But in the end, you know, the big takeaways. If you don't have a chance to read this article, I'm just going to give you the big takeaways at the end because they're very simple and they'll take me just a second to tell to you. But they are as follows. An omnivorous diet, meaning not carnivorous, not vegan. Omnivorous diet of whole foods, a bit of everything. Regular sun exposure every day. Not excessive, but regular. Lots of time in nature. A more natural circadian rhythm, specifically a regular bedtime A regular, like going to bed at the same time every night, preferably based on circadian biology. By the way, the. That's prior to 1030 in 99% of people. Regular bedtime. Minimizing exposure to plastic and industrial chemicals. It's a very interesting one. You don't see a lot of plastic in these cultures adopting stress management techniques. And that would include things like. Two biggies that he brings up are meditation and sports, which is interesting. You know, like kicking a soccer ball around or playing a hacky sack or.

Yeah, more like playtime than serious sports.

Playtime. Having a sense of purpose, right? And that. That could be religion. That could be belief in a higher power. That could be simply identifying why it is that you exist and what unique characteristics you possess that can help other people. And living your life based on that stuff.

That's a. That's a huge one. I think we overlook that way too often in our society. Like just, we go to work to make money. That's not purpose.

Right? What's your purpose, Brock? Oh, seriously, I'm putting you on the spot. What's your purpose?

It's. I. The reason I laughed is because it's one of those, like, it sounds really, really hippie dippy. It's like, it's to help people. I mean, the reason that we do all these podcasts for free and write blog posts for free and stuff is really to just to help people and help people understand things a little bit better, educate people.

Mine is mine. I have very, very succinctly defined. It's to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. That's my purpose. That's why I get out of bed in the morning. To enable people or empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life.

See, I need to filter mine down to something I can write on a business card.

And there's no rule that it can't change. As you get to know yourself better and as you develop new skills or new ideas, or perhaps you're insp by anything from plant medicine and an ayahuasca or a DMT trip or something like that, or inspired by God or whatever it is, perhaps that sense of purpose may change. But ultimately, having the ability to clearly define that sense of purpose is very important. And this article, in of itself, I think, is worth a read. So I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But the buck doesn't stop there. There's a few very interesting additional articles on longevity that I found.

Actually, I Interrupted you before you got to the last point, which was the antibiotics and nonsteroidal like the NSAIDs and proton pump inhibitors and stuff that they avoid. Oh, that one. That was the. That was the last point in that.

Was that in there? Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So don't take ibuprofen or antibiotics. Yes, overuse.

He specifically says overuse.

But yeah, yeah, exactly. That's another one. Here's an interesting article. The Vampire Approach to Longevity. Young Blood Revives Muscle, Brain and More. And this is yet another study on the young blood concept. You familiar with this one, Brock?

Yeah, I'm trying to think of what the real word is for it. There's a. There's a really. There's a fancy term for. And it's not transfusion.

Plasma transfusion. Plasma transfusion. There's. There's actually a few humans who have done this. It's quite controversial. I believe I may be speaking incorrectly here, but I think Peter Diamandis may be one of the guys out there who has actually gotten his hands on. On blood of young people and been able to inject those into his body. There's even a company, I think they're a Berkeley based company. Are you familiar with this company that does blood transfusions? It's like a twelve thousand dollar procedure. You can get blood from a healthy young teenager and get it injected into your body somehow.

Did you ever watch that, that TV show Silicon Valley?

No. What is it?

The guy who's sort of the Steve Jobs Bill Gates kind of guy in that show. Is he. He sits around with this like young strapping lad attached to him with a. With an I.V.

Bag.

Yeah, the transfusion.

Yeah, it's. It's ambrosia, by the way. It's Ambrosiaplasma.com is the company that will actually do this for you. And in mice they've seen a whole host of. They've seen regeneration of myelin sheaths. They've seen a reversal of age related cognitive impairments. They've seen vascular rejuvenation, repair of the blood, brain barrier, enhanced immune system. A really interesting host of effects from the injection of the blood of young mice into old mice. So perhaps, maybe that's what I should be doing instead of stem cells. Maybe I just need to, I don't know, go find some help.

You have two children?

I do, yes. Geez.

Would Child Services be at your door if you did that?

Definite ethical considerations here. But ultimately I suspect that we may wind up seeing this as a. And more common. Proceed. Maybe you can eventually waltz into Walgreens or CVS and have the young blood of a well screened donor injected into your body in the same way that you can now hunt down fecal transplants from young healthy people with healthy guts and have those implanted into your body. So it's very interesting. It's very interesting. And this article appeared on Suppiversity and they give the vampire approach to longevity about how young blood revives muscle, brain and more. They also in that same article give six healthy alternatives which are as follows. They're not very sexy. Maintain a normal body comp. Do physical activity, eat a healthy diet, sleep, stress management and limit your use of alcohol and tobacco.

Whatever.

Whatever. Yeah, I want to get some young blood. Give me my martini, my steak slightly burnt and crusty on the outside and some young blood, baby.

Yeah. From, from what I remember from this study, the, the mice study in particular was that it didn't last very long, which was the, the bummer. It's not like you get injected once and you're like cured. It's like you have to keep it up. You gotta do this on a very regular basis.

Yeah.

Trying to, trying to find the, the duration.

In this latest study, they grew human muscle cells in a petri dish and they condition them with plasma from healthy male participants that were either younger or older. And they found that the muscle cells. Again, this was an in vitro, not an in vivo study. Right. So this is in a test tube. But they did find that on human muscle cells there was a significantly enhanced effect of muscle growth and repair when those muscles were exposed to plasma from young people in the 18 to 35 year old age range. So you have that at least. I don't know how long the effects lasted, but either way you can just keep on coming back for more blood if you need to. So I'm, I actually I think I have a call later on this month with the folks from Ambrosia to talk a little bit more about it and I'm. I might wind up going down there and guinea pigging a procedure on myself. Not that I would ever guinea pig anything on myself, but no, never.

I'm actually just looking at Ambrosia Co. It looks like you have to do it every, no two day treatment every other week as $208,000.

No. $208,000.

Yeah. Only every other week puts a $2,200 $8,000 to $260,000 price tag on the treatment. That is as of yet.

That would be, that would be per year, I would imagine.

Maybe, maybe I don't know, it doesn't. It words it really poorly.

But it's.

Yeah, that's the twice.

That's a business model. They only need nine or ten. Nine or ten customers sure. To make a buck. They need Richard Virgin and Peter Diamandis and I don't know who else.

Who's the Richard Branson?

Yeah. Did I say Richard Virgin?

I meant Branson. Thought that was somebody I didn't know.

Yeah, that's what I meant. So, yeah, I bet there's enough rich guys interested in living a long time.

Who would go, Elon Musk.

Yeah, Elon Musk. There you go. All right, so here's another interesting one. This was a calorie restriction trial in humans for longevity and it's pretty straightforward. They found that cutting calorie intake by 15% for two years. So it was a pretty long study, but they restricted calories by 15% for two years and they tracked these human beings and they published a study in cell metabolism that showed a significant decrease in what they call systemic oxidative stress, which has been tied to age related neurological conditions like alzh, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and a host of beneficial effects on reversal of or control of chronic disease risk factors. Now, interestingly, at the same time, the men and women who cut calories by 15% over two years, they saw a significant decrease in their oxidative stress. They also saw significant slowing of their metabolic rate. So a lot of people, it's interesting, they don't want to slow down their metabolic rate. They don't want to get fat. Fat. But ultimately by then I have to eat less. Yeah, it's the tortoise effect. You ever seen the tortoise at the zoo who's like 200 years old, they move at a snail's pace and they look like maybe they can eat a blade of grass a day and not get fat. That's the idea here is, yeah, you decrease your metabolism. So to me, I want to strike a sweet spot between having decent levels of insulin like growth factor and growth hormone and libido and testosterone and the ability to be able to, you know, sprint and you know, play football and just enjoy life and not be cold and hungry and skinny all the time and also be able to live a decently long life. And you know, it's interesting how much these folks metabolism decreased. But 15% is not that much. Right? 15% would mean that I usually eat about, I would say I eat 3,000 to 4,000 calories a day. So I'd still Be able to eat a decent 2,500 to 3,000 calories a day and see this decrease in oxidative stress. But this is where a lot of these newer diets, like cyclic diets that involve fasting on certain days come in handy. Or protein restriction on certain days or, and I like this approach, intermittent fast of 12 to 16 hours every day. Which is pretty simple, right? All that means is you don't eat from 8pm till 8am Number two, a 24 hour fast one or two times a month where you're going from say Saturday dinner until Sunday dinner without eating. That also is pretty simple for most folks to do because all you gotta skip is a Sunday breakfast and a Sunday lunch and then you go stuff face again on Sunday evening. And then the final one would be. And I like this idea too, you know, the whole Meatless Mondays concept where you donate meat on Mondays.

Isn't that like Catholic thing?

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. But anyways, the idea of protein by having certain days. I talked about this with Naomi Wattel, the author of Glow 15, a book on autophagy and cellular cleanup and cleaning up cellular junk in the body. And we get into this idea of simply on the days that you don't exercise hard or tear up muscle, you eat a lower amount of protein. You know, like, like Normally I recommend 0.7 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. And on your lighter days or your easier days, maybe let's say you know, throughout maybe like a Wednesday or a Sunday where you're not going to do hard exercises or a CrossFit wad or something like that, then on those days you cut protein down to around 0.5 grams per pound. Right. So this idea of some amount of protein restriction daily, intermittent fast and a relatively regular 24 hour fast, I think that that allows one to into a lot of these benefits of calorie restriction for longevity without necessarily adjusting your entire life for every, every single day to be eating 15% less than you're used to eating. So sounds good.

I can do that. Yeah, I think it's doable to do that. I think it's doable, yeah.

So there was one other thing that I wanted to mention that was a study on muscle mass. On muscle mass. And this study actually looked at mortality in the US and compared it to muscle mass. And they concluded that muscle mass was inversely associated with the risk of death. And I actually don't like this study. I don't like this study because Muscle mass, in the absence of any other considerations is actually something that I think is a reason that a lot of bodybuilders we see dying young, we see them getting left ventricular hypertrophy and what's called cardiomegaly because they have way too much muscle, especially in their heart cardiac tissue. They have a lot of muscle to carry and cool, which is metabolically expensive. The more muscle you have, the more free radicals are generated from muscular activity, so the more antioxidants you need. And I think that these studies that look at muscle mass in the absence of actual muscle quality are flawed because there are a couple of studies that I've been able to find and I'm working on a book right now on longevity, believe it or not, that's maybe why I'm so geeked out on longevity right now. It turns out that the insulin resistance of a muscle, the fast twitch, slow twitch muscle fiber capacity of a muscle, meaning a muscle that's, that's more equipped with explosive fast twitch fibers, appears to confer longevity benefits more than the slow twitch endurance based muscles. The ability of a, of a muscle to have motor units that are recruited like the nervous system's ability to be able to grab more muscle fibers and recruit them. The ability of a muscle to be able to burn fatty acids, the mitochondrial density of a muscle, essentially the quality of a muscle trumps the quantity of the muscle. And this returns way back to when I interviewed Paul Geminet like six years ago and we talked about these fascinating studies on guinea pigs and the antioxidant requirements of very large amounts of muscle in the guinea pigs versus small amounts of muscle. And it turns out that bigger isn't always better, and that quality of the muscle trumps the quantity of the muscle. And that what you want is like small, wiry, explosive muscle with a very high amount of power generation capability, not necessarily a large amount of muscle mass per se. And I think a lot of people read these studies on muscle mass being associated with longevity and they think their goal is to just go do bodybuilding style, what we call hypertrophy training, to put on as much muscle as possible. When in fact what I would recommend more would be an approach like that, say, like Nick Kerson from Speed of Sport recommends you go to the gym, you lift as explosively and as quickly as possible, or a guy like John Bruni from Neuromass recommends where you do kind of like your slow grinding movements, but you always finish them up with these explosive, powerful movements. I think there's a Time and a place for the super slow stuff. There's a time and a place for the bodybuilding style workouts, but you really need to make sure that you're also focusing on building muscle that's wiry and that's explosive and that you're able to do things like powerlifting with and high force generation capabilities over a short period of time with. And it appears that the quality of the muscle in those situations is going to confer greater longevity benefits than the actual quantity of the muscle or your ability to, as science says, get swole.

Now, I, I don't disagree with what you're saying. I think absolutely, you're absolutely right. But just like down out there in the trenches working with people who basically have little to no muscle mass right now, that's probably over complicating things for people. Like I'm looking at a study here. It says defined, they defined low muscle mass as being 5.45 kg to the body mass squared in women and 7.26 in in men. So they're not talking about like that's not much. Like these are, they're, they're defining what I would say low muscle muscle mass is actually like the, the general populace where you give them like a 20 pound weight and they're going to be crying for, for four days because yeah, they just don't have any strength.

Yeah, you're right. It does depend on, on the starting point, I guess. You know, a lot of our podcast listeners, a lot of the folks who are like, you know, buying supplements from, from Kion or who are listening to this show either kind of out of couch potato mode.

Right?

Like I think like our, our, our internal dialogue at Kion, for example, is our customer Avatar. Are those people who are already out kind of living an adventurous life out of couch potato mode have already discovered, you know, sports that they love. They're usually most of them are signed up for some kind of a triathlon or a Spartan race or at least have thought about that or are capable of doing something like that. And so yeah, it does depend too. We're not necessarily talking in many cases to McDonald's enthusiasts.

I hate to again argue with you, but being the guy who actually receives the emails from the I want to be coached by a Keon coach. There are a lot of people who have lost complete touch with physical fitness at all. And they're coming to Kion because they don't know where to start. Like they don't know how to get back into it. They never were into it. They're worried about their longevity. Like, it's. It's. It's surprising. Like, just because we're preaching this stuff, a lot of people out there are listening to us, but not necessarily doing everything.

It's interesting. Yeah, that's always been a tough one for me. Opening the kimono, figuring out, you know, who's out there listening, and the actual customer demographics. Probably because I'm a complete dummy when it comes to analytics and surveys and stuff like that.

But I may be getting a skewed populace, too, because they're writing to us because they want coaching. And then the people who are listening out there, they've got it nailed down, and all they need to do is listen to the podcast or read the blog posts. So. So, yeah, we're sort of. I think there's. There's a lot of people out there that. Yeah, they're all over the place, but. So you folks who are trying to get swole. You stop it. You people who aren't lifting at all, start. Yeah, how about that?

I think. I think that's a good way to sum it up. Rock.

That's actionable, right?

Listener Q A.

Hey, man, I love your work.

I just wanted to know if coffee.

Is okay on an empty stomach. Somewhere I've read that it's not a.

Good idea to drink it on an empty stomach.

And I fast for a long time, so I just wanted to know if.

It'S okay if I drink it. Thank you.

Yeah. With this whole. This whole Kion coffee thing, we've been getting inundated with questions about coffee.

Like, people are. People really want to do their coffee right these days? I remember, like, even 10 years ago. I was going to say 20 years ago, but even 10 years ago, people are just like, coffee, drink it.

Do I use a paper filter or a French press? Do I lie on everybody's, like, left side of my right side when I'm doing my coffee enema?

Is this first wave, second wave, third wave coffee?

Exactly. Can I watercolor paint with coffee? And you can. It turns out you can actually watercolor paint with coffee. There's some very cool YouTube videos of people watercolor painting with coffee. That's actually something that's on my list of things to do this month is I want to make a. Because I paint watercolor. I drag out my canvas and everything at least once a week and paint because it's wonderful for meditation and relaxation and creativity and learning a new skill and neurogenesis. But I've never done it with coffee before. So I'M going to paint with coffee. It's amazing. Anyways, though, coffee on an empty stomach. Well, with the fasting deal, first of all, let's address that. Does coffee break a fast? Does coffee break a fast?

Well, it depends on who you are or who you ask.

Yeah. So the idea with coffee and fasting is that coffee does accelerate your ability to utilize fatty acids as a fuel. So it's going to be perfect for things like ketosis and fat burning. We also know that coffee will improve your insulin sensitivity and your glucose tolerance, and so it enhances the effects of fasting. We also know that coffee enhances and actually induces cellular autophagy, the cleanup of cellular junk in the liver and in the muscle tissue and in the heart. So coffee is actually something that is extremely beneficial to drink during a fast. One of the things that it does is it triggers what's called ampk, which is an enzyme that inhibits fat storage and promotes fat burning and activates antioxidant networks and again, triggers cellular autophagy and even promotes mitochondrial biogenesis. So drinking coffee when you're fasted is actually a way to. I don't want to use this term too much, but I'm going to use it anyways. To biohack your fast. So, anyways, though, the idea.

I was gonna say accelerate your fast.

Yes, to accelerate your fast.

It's like kicking your fast in the ass. Yeah.

All right, here's the deal. If you add butter or MCT oil or coconut oil to your coffee, that breaks your fast because it has calories in it. Okay. If you add sugar or whipping cream or heavy cream to your coffee, that breaks your fast. Now, none of those things, aside from the sugar, will spike your glucose levels or be insulinogenic. So it's technically better than just about anything else that you could eat. But you're still breaking a fast. Now, there are things you can add to the coffee that might even enhance coffee's ability to enhance your fasting, if that's enough of a cyclic statement anyways. Like cinnamon. Cinnamon reduces insulin resistance. Right. So adding cinnamon to a fasted cup of coffee would be just fine. Adding stevia. Stevia lowers your blood glucose and it lowers your insulin levels. And actually adding some organic stevia to a cream free, sugar free, fat free, butter free, coconut oil free cup of coffee when you're in a fasted state technically enhances the effects of coffee in a fasted state. Monk fruit extract has a very similar effect to stevia in that respect. So that would be another one people ask about collagen. Collagen is another one. Collagen, or essential amino acids, those are technically not that big of a deal. They have a very small amount of calories in them. Much, much lower number of calories though, than you might find in butter or MCT oil or coconut oil. And so, you know, if you're injured or you're trying to maintain muscle in a fasted state, for example, that would be about the most I would add to the coffee. I mean, so you could add a little collagen, little stevia or monk fruit extract, a little cinnamon or nutmeg to coffee, but I'd just be careful with doing a lot more than that when it comes to coffee. But ultimately I'm a huge fan for the insulin sensitivity and the fat burning and the cellular autophagy and this amp K enzyme upregulation of drinking coffee when you're in a fasted state. So I'm actually a fan of that. But of course, when you're in a fasted state, unless you've somehow figured out to fast with a full stomach, which I think is technically impossible in our current universe, you are going to be drinking coffee on an empty stomach. And there is some research out there that has looked into what happens when you drink coffee on an empty stomach. For example, caffeine in coffee can stimulate your stomach cells to release more hydrochloric acid, which is a digestive aid. But a large amount of stomach acid can actually promote a highly acidic environment. And for some people, especially people who might have a weak mucosal layer, a weak protective barrier of the stomach, it can cause the risk of damage or ulcers. So if you have leaky gut issues, if you have a torn up gut, if you've been on an antibiotic regimen and you haven't repaired your gut with things like glutamine or colostrum, or bone broth or marshmallow extract, or any of these things that can help to repair a leaky gut or a less than favorable mucosal lining of the gut. You may not want to drink coffee on an empty stomach if you've got a torn up gut. I mean, it's one of those things where you need to repair your gut first before you begin to use coffee to enhance a fasted state. So that's one thing. Another thing that coffee can do is it relaxes what's called your esophageal sphincter, and that's the gatekeeping muscle valve that allows food into your stomach. And make sure that the Food stays there.

And if it's supposed to be a one way valve.

Exactly.

Not a two way valve.

Exactly. And again, if you have, and this typically happens to people who have poor bacterial balance, a lot of times they tend to have esophageal reflux or heartburn. And in many cases that can be fixed by restoring proper flora to the gut, taking probiotics, eating a wide variety of fermented foods, et cetera. If you're one of those people who deals with heartburn and esophageal reflux, then the answer is not to take Prevacid or any other heartburn medication or proton pump inhibitor, but it is instead to restore the beneficial flora in your gut. And in many cases, that's one of the best fixes for stomach acid issues. So once again, if you deal with acid reflux, I wouldn't drink coffee on an empty stomach until you've restored the flora of your gut. Coffee can also, and we've seen it, to be able to trigger an immune response that can result in bloating and cramping and gas and diarrhea and inflammation. And anybody who has a condition such as gastritis or irritable bowel disorder or colitis or Crohn's disease. And so because of that, if you have any of those issues, I really don't think that, you know, and I understand that this is shooting myself in the foot since I now own a coffee company to a certain extent, I wouldn't go near the stuff if you have any of those issues until you've sorted them. I'm not saying don't drink coffee for the rest of your life, but I am saying get on, for example, a paleo autoimmune diet or a healing protocol such as the SCD diet, the specific carbohydrate diet, or a low fodmap diet, combined with some of those things I mentioned earlier, like glutamine and colostrum and bone broth and many of these gut nourishing compounds so that you fix the issues so that you, you can enjoy a nice cup of coffee in the morning. There's a few other things that the coffee has been shown to do. For example, it can accelerate digestion, it can accelerate peristalsis, it can cause the stomach to release its contents into the small intestine. And if you have eaten a very large meal, and this kind of goes outside the fasted state issue, but if you've eaten a very large meal, I don't think that this like post meal cup of Coffee is such a good idea because it can inhibit the ability for that food to be fully digested. Once the coffee accelerates the emptying of food from the stomach into the small intestine before the food has had a chance to engage in the full digestion process, or at least a part of the digestion process that occurs in the stomach, such as the initiation of the breakdown of proteins, the release of some acids that can help to pre digest that bolus of food that you've just ingested. So another time, in addition to if you have a lot of gut issues, you wouldn't want to drink coffee in a fasted state, or I wouldn't have a big cup of coffee after a meal either. You know, that's where I'm a bigger fan of, you know, maybe a little bit of a, like a, you know, a decaf black is something I'll have after a meal often, or a small shot of espresso. But I'd be a little bit careful with it with a big cup of coffee after a meal as well. And then finally, coffee can, as I alluded to earlier, stimulate peristalsis, or intestinal wave action. And that's because the caffeine and coffee causes a decrease of something called gaba. Gaba? Aminobutyric acid, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So coffee can lead to overactive bowels. And if you drink coffee in a fasted state and you find that it just sends you rushing to the bathroom, which is actually why I like to drink coffee. Yeah. In the morning, you may want to back off or drink a little less. You know, if you happen to be in a situation where you got to be at work and you don't have a chance to use the restroom until lunch or something like that, that's another situation where you'd want to at least be careful with how much coffee you drink, because it does have that ability to be able to stimulate peristalsis and a bowel movement pretty effectively. So that's another area where if you're drinking on an empty stomach, that effect is going to be accelerated even more. Ultimately, though, coffee enhances a fast. Unless you have gut issues, it's fine on an empty stomach, or unless you got to just be, whatever, sitting at work and, you know, or walking into a meeting and you don't want diaper pants going on. That'd be another situation where you'd want to be careful if you're very sensitive to that type of peristalsis. But, you know, I Believe we call.

That a poo mergency.

Anyways though, coffee's okay on an empty stomach in most situations, but hopefully that kind of clarifies and, and I, I think the pros outweigh the cons of a good fasted morning cup of coffee on an empty stomach.

Hi Ben, I'd really like your help with joint pain and flying. I just returned from a surf trip in El Salvador and once again, about halfway through the flight I felt like I was about to fall apart. I'm doing all the right things. I'm fasting before and during the flight, taking activated charcoal, staying well hydrated, and I stand up periodically and walk down the aisle. My jet lag is fine, much better than it used to be. But mid flight I feel like I have the flu all over my body. Now I have to say that I've broken a lot of bones in previous accidents and have quite a fair number of plates and screws in me. But I'm wondering, is this due to the cabin pressure or the lack of oxygen? I understand some of the newest planes, like the Boeing Dreamliner, maintain cabin pressure at a much lower altitude than the industry standard, but they don't fly to most places. So I'd really appreciate your ideas here as you've always been a great solid source of information. Thanks very much.

Well, this question is near and dear to my heart because I fly a heck of a lot. A heck of a lot.

I flew for eight hours yesterday and boy, are my arms tired.

Your lats, your lats are just super fatigued. And you're serratus. All that winging action, flapping and flapping all the way back to Canada. Anyways, though, yes, I have a very, I guess I would say thorough set of things that I do when I fly on an airplane that have allowed me to turn an airplane into a very relaxing and productive and less unhealthy experience. But there is a. And I'll tell you what that is in a moment, I'll give you my ultimate airplane. I'm going to use the word again. Biohacking guide. My ultimate airplane biohacking guide. But before I get into a lot of the geeky stuff that I do on the plane to give myself better sleep and a better feeling when I step off that plane. First of all, there is a reason, Peter, that you get joint pain when you fly. There's a reason a lot of stuff happens when you fly. So first of all, one thing that you need to know is that because of the low amount of moisture on a plane and the high cabin pressure, not only does that cause a little bit of a seepage of some of the moisture from the actual joints, but also seepage from the skin. So cabin pressure and this dry, recirculated air, it zaps moisture from your body. Now, this is why you not only want to stay, of course, adequately hydrated on a plane, but you can take olive oil or sesame oil, and you can line the interior of your nasal passages with a little bit of this oil. And it can actually help to keep things lubricated when you fly. Interesting. There was a scientific review that found that pilots and flight attendants have more than twice the risk of developing melanoma compared to the general population. That might be because the plane windows don't sufficiently block the harmful UV rays from. From coming in. Which is one reason that you'd want to kind of close the. Close the window curtain on the. What do you call it, the little sliding window thing.

Brock, the window cover.

I don't even know what they call that shade. Yeah, the window shade. Yeah, you want to close that if you can, if you're sitting next to the window. And that'll help out a little bit. But ultimately, oil on the joints, like a balm, on the joints of the knee joints, the elbow joints, et cetera. Also some kind of serum. You know, we have a serum at Kion, like a skin serum at Kion that would work. An olive oil or a sesame oil or even a coconut oil would work up in the nasal passages. That's one way that you can protect your skin and your joints from that dry, recirculated air and the effect of cabin pressure. Now, another thing that happens, of course, is on the airplane, blood collects in your legs and your feet because you're sitting for a long period of time. And when it leaves your veins for the surrounding tissue, you get this mid flight foot swelling. And you know, it can sometimes escalate into blood clots for that or for joint pain. I'm a huge fan of compression gear. Compression socks or compression shorts. I wear both when I'm flying. I wear both. Some really good compression shorts or compression socks. Or I'll wear just full length compression pants. That will not only help with your joints, it'll help with, with the actual movement of blood to reduce the formation of a blood clot.

And in this case, it's important to have full socks, right? Not those sleeves, because you want the pressure on your feet as well.

They call it gradated compression. Gradated compression, it kind of starts tight towards the bottom and and. Or starts. Yeah, it starts tight towards the bottom and milk stuff up towards the top. There's a few different companies that do it, you know, Zensaw, I think Beaker Concepts is another one. What you want to do is if you go to Amazon, for example, just search for gradated compression gear. Gradated compression gear is the best kind. Hylete is another company that does compression that I wear quite a bit. So if you see me wearing old man compression gear walking around anywhere, that's usually an indication that I've just gotten off of an airplane. But gradated is what you want to look for. Another thing that happens when you fly is on a plane, your taste buds go numb. Your taste buds go numb. And they've actually looked at this in studies and they found that dry plain air, like I just told you about, that evaporates your nasal mucus. The cabin pressurization can cause the membranes to swell in the nose and both of those can prevent you from fully detecting food scents. And so you're likely not enjoying meals to their fullest potential when you're on a plane. And a lot of times your perceptions of sweet and saltiness drop. That's why, first of all, airline food is so crappy, because it can be crappy because you don't taste it as much. It's also sometimes why you crave foods on airplanes, because whatever food that you eat doesn't seem to satisfy you as much because you don't taste it as well. So it's very interesting. And, and being aware of that is good because you now know, well something that you're eating. You would want to not pay as much attention to whether or not you feel full or feel satisfied and just pay more attention to the quantity of what you're eating. Because some of your ability to be able to engage or get this dopaminergic response to food, it decreases when you're flying. So that's another one to pay attention to.

Crazy.

Yeah. And I'll tell you some of the things that I fly with as far as food goes, in a moment. Gas. Gas is another big one. The gas in your intestines expands on the plane. So any of you who have ever had that issue where you feel like you've crop dusted the entire flight as you walk down the aisle to the bathroom, or any of you who have been stuck in a window seat and something slips out, and all of a sudden you look around as though you're trying to figure out who farted and you hope you Keep your fingers crossed. There's a child behind you that you can blame this on.

You point it.

Yes, yes. And not getting rid of the gas just causes to pain or bloating or other horrible issues because that body gas just gets stuck from the plane rising and the cabin pressure dropping. And the gas fluctuations also affect your ears. Right. So the tube that lets air in and out to maintain pressure doesn't react quickly enough during a plane's descent, so air can't pass through and pressurize your ear properly. And that's why I always, always carry gum on the plane. I always carry gum on the plane as well. Of course, there are circadian rhythm issues, you know, as your body has to adjust to the daylight and the darkness. And then finally there is the issue with moisture and the air pumped into a plane cabin. Like I mentioned, it's incredibly dry. And moisture wants to jump from places of high concentration, like your mouth and your respiratory tract, to places of low concentration, like the cabin that's around you. And exhaling all that moist air gives you water loss. You become dehydrated. And a lot of times you crave salty things. And so again, in many cases, they pass by with that beverage carton. You want tomato juice or salty pretzels, or you begin to crave something else. So I always travel with a really good salt and a lot of water on the plane as well. Okay, so based off of all this, what do I do to not only ensure I don't get all this joint pain when flying, but that I also am able to sleep when I fly? That I'm able to keep my, my nasal passages lubricated, I'm able to keep minerals on board. I'm gonna give you my exact flight protocol. My exact flight protocol. You ready for this?

You're gonna drink a ton of apple juice. Right?

Okay, so first, isn't it weird, like, how.

Why do people drink so much? This is totally off topic, except that I just marvel at this every time I'm on a, on a plane. Like adults ordering apple juice.

I don't know.

Why does that happen so much?

I don't know. I don't know. A normal sane adult on a plane suddenly craves apple juice.

Yeah.

I'm not sure.

So much apple juice going on.

Yeah.

What the hell, people?

Yeah. When I was in Poland, people drank a lot of apple juice and apple cider mixed with vodka. That's another.

Well that I understand. Yeah, I don't know.

Complete rabbit hole. I don't, I don't know. Maybe someone can leave a comment. Okay, so I'll put a list of all this stuffing. Biohacking guide. I'll put a list of all this stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 385 A. You get onto the plane, you're wearing gradated compression gear, right? Socks, pants, shorts. I even have compression gear for my upper body and you can get that stuff. There's a company called alignmed. Alignmed. They actually make shirts that are compression gear and support for your upper body as well as your lower body. So gradated compression gear. Plenty of water. Goes without saying. I'm not going to kick that horse to death. I always buy a few bottles of water in the actual airport. I pay the $6.99 for the 16 ounce bottle of water. I take that on the plane. Now what I do is I get sparkling water and I turn it into this amazing vanilla cream soda flavor. And that allows me to not order sodas, cocktails, tomato juice, apple cider, etc on the plane because I have this amazing cream soda esque sparkling water. The way that I do that is I put a few drops of Omica Organics Vanilla Stevia into the sparkling water when I'm on the plane and it tastes freaking amazing. Okay? So that's how I keep myself motivated to stay hydrated when the water gets boring.

You love your stevia, don't you? You just love that drippy stuff.

The other thing that I carry on the plane that I mix into water are these electrolyte tablets. I get mine from Hammer Nutrition and they're just these little electrolyte tablets with no artificial sweeteners or anything in them. I'll typically have one of those an hour or so on a flight and I'll often put those in water or even just dissolve them in my mouth. And those help quite a bit with me being able to retain the water that I am drinking. And again, it's something that I can consume that keeps me from overeating on the plane and feeling as though that salt craving that I have needs to be satisfied via salty pretzels or big old tomato juices or Bloody Marys or whatever. So that's another one. The other thing that I do from a salt and a hydration standpoint is I have a big bag of this. This Kalima White sea salt. This Kalima White sea salt. And not only do I carry that when I'm traveling to just about any restaurant that I go to because it'll take any meal you ever have and just make it pop whether it's a steakhouse or whether it's a, you know, just a salad bar from Whole Foods or whatever. This Kalima sea salt. It's this coarse sea salt that just tastes amazing. I don't use it on the airplane as much as I use it on a meal that I might have before or after a flight. And that also helps me to retain a lot of the hydration, a lot of the water that I'm consuming. Okay, so I've got my vanilla stevia with my big bottles of water, my Hammer Nutrition electrolyte tablets, and then my Colema sea salt that I'll use on a lot of meals. So the next one is, what do I eat? What do I eat on the plane? Well, one of the main things that I bring are these spirulina and chlorella tablets, because they've got a whole bunch of amino acids and fatty acids in them, and they're super nutrient dense. They quell your appetite, but they're very low in calories. Now, they can dye your mouth green. So you want, of course, the water to swish around in your mouth. Because I don't swallow them. Even though the company tells you how to swallow them, I chew them. So I travel with these energy bits and these recovery bits. And what I do is I'll always have some little packet of nuts. Like macadamia nuts are the best with these. But if you're at an airport, you can usually find like, just basic raw almonds or cashews or any type of nut. Sometimes even, like walnuts, for example, are another good one. And I'll just take a handful of nuts, and I'll mix them with a handful of this spirulina chlorella. And you can even put a pinch of the sea salt in there as well if you want to. But ultimately, it's a very satiating little handful of stuff and just algae and fats. And that's one of the only meals that I'll eat when I'm on the airplane, aside from all this water and stevia and electrolyte tablets. And it keeps your blood sugar from spiking. Again, if you sprinkle a little bit of the salt in there, it kind of satisfies some of the salt cravings. So that's generally what I'll eat on the plane. Okay, so the next thing that I do is I have a very. I sleep a lot on planes. I'm usually either sleeping or riding on planes.

Me, too.

I have a very elaborate sleep setup, and I can Sleep like a baby on planes. I didn't used to be able to sleep at all on a plane. Plane. And now I'm asleep in like two minutes flat. And I'll sleep for sometimes, you know, 45 to 60 minutes at a time on a flight, you know, so I'll get on a two hour flight, I'll sleep half of it and I'll write half of it. So the way that I do my sleep is a. I have one of these J Hook travel pillows. It's an amazing pillow. You can get these off of Amazon and your head just kind of rests on one side of it and it's perfect. If you're a side sleeper and you have difficulty sleeping on your back as you would on a plane with the seat reclined, this fixes all of that. It's called a J Hook travel pillow. Now I blow up this J Hook travel pillow. It's inflatable, right? So it just fits in a very small like deck of card side space in my travel bag. And then I've got my noise blocking headphones and they're just, you know, just the very simple Sony noise blocking headphones. I use the ones that have a cable attached to them. So I'm not getting a lot of like Bluetooth up by my ear. I just don't like the Bluetooth going on. There's enough radiation bouncing around the plane anyways. But I use the wired noise blocking headphones and then I have a full wraparound sleep mask, right? So I have the headphones, I wrap the sleep mask around that. I've got my J Hook travel pillow. And those are kind of the three pieces of gear that I'll use to sleep. But then the other thing that I'll do prior to sleep is I have two things. I have CBD oil because you can travel with that and it's fine. You're not going to get that confiscated by TSA or Insecurity or anything like that. It's totally legal.

The DEA jumps onto the blade.

Exactly. I've got guns blazing. Two that I've been using lately are the. There's a company called Elemental that does a really good CBD oil. There's another company called Primal Hacker that has a new CBD oil. You know, there's a lot of different CBD oils out there, but those are two that I like and I do a few dropper fulls of that. You hold it in your mouth for about 60 seconds, then you swallow. In addition, the company, Thorne, Thorne just came out with a brand new hemp and not only is it CBD with no THC in it, so again, totally legal, but they blended it with beta carophyllene, which is a form of a phytocannabinoid. And then they added some clove and some black pepper in there to make it more bioavailable. They've increased the concentration of what's called copaiba oil, which also makes it more bioavailable. And they have a very, very, very good source of hemp. This stuff hits you pretty hard when it comes to sleep. And it's brand new, it's from Thorn, and it's, you know, Thorne does super high quality stuff. Anyways, as anybody who listens this podcast regularly knows that I use a lot of stuff from Thorne. So Thorne has a hemp oil. It's basically in a capsule, like a fish oil cap. And then I like the Elemental CBD oil or the Primal Hacker CBD oil. So I do the CBD and I blend that with Reishi with the four Sigmatic Reishi. So I do two packets of four Sigmatic Reishi and I just dump it in my mouth, I chase it with the CBD oil. I let that whole tasty cocktail sit in my mouth for about 60 seconds and I'm just like out like a light. But the cool thing is I'm not groggy when I wake up from the nap because usually when I wake up from my nap on the airplane, I'm going to start riding or the plane's landing and I got to go off to a meeting or a conference. So the cbd, the Reishi, the wraparound sleep mask, the noise blocking headphones, and the J hook travel pillow, that's how I sleep on the plane. That's how I sleep on the plane.

That is complicated.

It's not that complicated once you get this stuff. And just like anything, once you systematize it, super easy. So a couple other things that I do. A, I have activated charcoal capsules. So if I get the bloating or the gas, I'll take about four to six of those and it just soaks everything up. This is especially useful for international flights. So you're not that person who's crop dusting the entire plane. That one's pretty simple. Charcoal explains the fricking size of a football field in your gut. So that works really well. And again, it's just something you can have in your bag. The only thing is that if you're taking other supplements, know that the charcoal will soak up some of those other supplements. So don't take some expensive, I don't know, multivitamin and then chase it with charcoal. Try to separate the charcoal from the other things that you're consuming on the plane. If nutrient density is something that's important.

To you BY like what, 45 minutes.

I usually go for about an hour or two. So that means that, for example, if I am traveling, I'll pop some activated charcoal at the airport or in security line or whatever. And then, you know, like when I do the Reishi and the CBD oil, it's, you know, an hour, hour and a half later when I'm on the actual plane. So a couple of other things that I would recommend. A. I have one of these human chargers in my bag that I can use to expose my body to a lot of light when it's morning of wherever I'm traveling to. If I'm traveling across multiple time zones, a lot of people think that things gimmicky, but it actually works. It's just a bright blue light in your ears for it's actually a white light for about 12 minutes or so. And I swear by that thing. I like it because it's small and it fits in my bag. I don't like to check bags into the belly of the airplane. I like to land where I'm going and just go and, you know, skip the baggage carousel because I want to get to where I'm going. But that human charger fits really well. Now when I've finished a whole bunch of travel and I've come home, I use something slightly larger, which are these retimer glasses. And they do the same thing as the human charger, but for your eyes. And if you have enough space in your bag or if you want to have this set up at home when you arrive home, you can use both at the same time. And it's very simple. You just use those when it's morning of wherever you happen to be traveling. Very, very simple concept. So the re timer and the human charger are those two. And by the way, BenGreenfieldFitness.com 385 I'll give you guys a full list of all this stuff. I'm almost done. A couple other things that I do. Move movement for the joints, for the blood flow. Very important. My protocol is as follows. Anytime I go to the bathroom on the plane, I do 20 squats, but has to touch the toilet seat. And that is just my rule. If I'm fatigued, if I'm groggy, if it's an international flight whatever. I do 20 squats with my pants on. Dude, my pants on. Not pants off, touch the toilet seat. But like, I just don't.

Don't touch the toilet.

I mean, no, dude, the. The lid is down. Right? My pants are on.

Okay.

You know what I'm saying? Okay.

Not putting your hands on the seat.

Yeah. The other things that I do is I've got a protocol where I do calf raises, shoulder shrugs, neck circles. I lunge back with each leg 10 times, which you can very easily do in that skinny aisle of the airplane, especially at the back of the plane. And I raise my arms overhead as I lunge. And then I do this stretch called the coil. The coil. If you go listen to my interview with Dr. Or not Dr. With Mr. David Weck, the inventor of the Bosu ball, this coil is like the best exercise for like stretching out all the things that tend to get tight on the plane. It's called the coil. You could also just do a YouTube search for the coil stretch and you'd see it. Or you can go listen to my podcast with David Weck and I'll link to that one in the show notes to see the coil exercise. But that's another one I can easily do in the airplane aisle. It's very hard to describe on the podcast. So just go, go listen to my podcast with David or just do a search online for the coil.

I just did a search. I got some kind of crazy machinery.

Yeah, I would imagine, like do like the coil stretch or the coil. David Weck. So those are. Those are the majority of the biggie. So in review, I got the spiraling and chlorella with the macadamia nuts or walnuts or almonds as the food that I eat. And sometimes I'll sprinkle the kalima salt on top of that. I have the activated charcoal that I'll have at a different time if I'm concerned about gas, especially during a long flight. I've got the stevia and the electrolyte tablets that I'll mix with water. I have the CBD oil and the Reishi that I use for sleep. And then the gear for sleep is very basic. J hook travel pillow, noise blocking headphones, wraparound sleep mask. I've got the compression gear, the align med shirts, and then also gradated compression gear for the lower body. You've got your coil exercise with shoulder shrugs, lunging stretch, calf raises, and then my 20 bathroom squats rule. And those are, I think those are the biggies. Is that everything? I think I listed it That's. Yeah, I'm gonna list it all in the show notes. But I travel a lot and I keep my body pretty well put together when I travel and I think some of this stuff is how I do it. So Peter, hopefully that helps you not only with your, you know, the joint pain on the flight, but also with just everything else you can do to keep yourself healthy when you're flying on an airplane. Did I miss anything, Brock?

The only thing I'd add is like when you arrive at your destination, getting out into nature and somehow like this morning for example, I got out and luckily I like, I'm lucky enough to live really close to a beach. So I ran over to, to the ocean, to the beach, got barefoot, got some sun on my face, inhaled a lot of good like negative ions from the, from the crashing waves and, and grounded my feet. And I find that makes a huge difference just in terms of feeling like I'm ready to go again, especially if you've traveled. Like I went four time zones yesterday. So it was a significant.

Just a big lovable hippie. You should bring, you should take a plant with you on the airplane. That's what we missed. A plant. So that you can get nature therapy. Just bring a giant houseplant with you onto the plane.

You could just make a hat.

Oh, there you go. Then it doesn't use up one of your carry ons.

Yes, giant hat.

It could be like one of those giant pineapple fruit cornucopia hats with a plant coming out of it.

Yeah. Carmen Miranda style.

Yes.

Like it.

That is the next thing that we are going to have available at Kion soon. The Kion travel hat for nature therapy.

Hi Ben, this is Wendy Spies from Mountain View, California. I enjoy geeking out on your podcast. I am internationally competitive in a water regulated weight class sport, Olympic weightlifting. I listen to your podcast and do lots of research on my own. In order to maximize muscle and strength building while keeping lean and very, very clean. I would love a rundown of all the natural ways I can, especially as a very lean woman, increase my growth hormone and testosterone in order to build and maximize my strength. Thanks a lot.

So Brock, we describe Wendy then as a scrawny white woman with poor testosterone. You think that would offend her?

I, I think she'd be okay with that. I think she, she. Yeah, she's down with that. Although she may not be white. I'm making a leap of assumption there. Leap logic.

Internationally competitive in a WADA regulated weight class sport of Olympic weightlifting. And she wants to Increase her HGH and her testosterone in order to build and maximize her strength. We could definitely go for a long time with this one. I know, I know this podcast is getting a little long in the tooth, but let me go into a couple of things for you that are, that are relevant and new. First of all, a study just hit the streets, so to speak, on protein gains for men versus women. It's called the effects of high versus low protein intake on body composition and maximal strength in female physique athletes who are doing an eight week resistance training program. So not like, you know, untrained females, but folks like Wendy who are pretty well trained and they looked at protein intake and protein requirements for females and actual muscle mass and muscle gain. And what they found was that female physique athletes for the actual muscle gain effect should be eating somewhere in the range of about 2 and a half grams per kilogram of protein per day. Brock, while I'm chatting here, go ahead and look up and do the conversion real quick for grams per pound just so we make sure we get that out to folks. 2.5 grams per kilogram. Now considering that most research suggests athletes get about 1.55 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of protein per day, that's a very significant increase over what we've been led to believe before. And before a lot of this research had been done on men. But it turns out that women to gain muscle, need a pretty frickin high amount of protein. Do you know what it comes out to in grams per pound, Brock? Mr. Canada?

No, I don't think my conversion went okay.

We'll keep working on that.

It says 0.0025.

No, it's higher than that. We should be. See I think that comes out to closer to like 0.8 to 0.9 grams per pound. Possibly higher. 2.5 grams per kilogram. It's actually, that's actually I think it's an excess of one gram per pound. But you continue to do the math on that while I talk. Ultimately what it comes down to is, Wendy, a lot of protein from either, you know, really good protein sources and maybe even consider supplementing with something like essential amino acids. Essential amino acids are a way you can get that much protein without a frickin boatload of calories. Because that's a lot of calories from protein. It's a lot of nitrogenous waste. You want good amino acid bioavailability. Bioavailability. So I mean even consider doing something like an essential amino acid supplement to get I mean, you can get 20 to 30 grams of what you're taking in per day from something like that. So first of all, high protein intake. Next is that there are a lot of kind of controversial hormone stacks out there for insulin like growth factor and growth hormone, which a lot of women who are in heavy amounts of training tend to be low in. But before you turn to those kind of synthetic ways to increase IGF1 and growth hormone, there are things that you can do to naturally increase growth hormone. For example, drinking alcohol has been shown to significantly blunt the effects of igf. So I would be very careful with alcohol consumption. Getting seven to nine hours of sleep has been shown to raise IGF and growth hormone. 30 to 60 minute sauna sessions have been shown also to raise IGF and growth hormone intake of whey protein intake of colostrum, intake of a digestible milk. Like I'm a fan of, for example, a goat milk or a goat milk powder. That's another one that can increase IGF and growth hormone and then colostrum. Colostrum supplementation is another way that you can increase growth hormone. So a stack would be, for example, a really good goat based protein powder or goat milk, essential amino acids and then colostrum. And in addition to that, frequent sauna sessions and regular sleep and low alcohol intake, but relatively high protein intake. Do we know how much protein intake yet, Brock?

Mr. Calculator, I now have 113,392.

We've established Brock sucks at math. All right, keep, keep working on that.

So that's not correct.

Wait, how much did you say?

113,398.

No, this is grams per kilogram, dude. Two and a half grams per kilogram. All right, so that would be. I'm.

No, I'm never even.

It's around a gram per pound. It's around a gram per pound. I'm trying to talk and I can't do math at the same time because I want this to be a good podcasting, not silent calculator clicking podcasting. But ultimately it's a decent amount of protein you, you can do. You can. I think Wendy's international anyway, so I don't know why we're doing a conversion for her. She's probably very well versed in grams and kilograms. Okay, and then we get. When IGF1 and growth hormone are looked at from a supplementation standpoint, we also have these different stacks that are IGF injections and growth hormone injections. Now, please know that there is of course a sweet spot with IGF and growth hormone. And we've seen multiple animal rodent fly worm studies where high IGF1 and growth hormone are directly correlated to a decrease in longevity. So this next strategy.

I got it, I got it.

Really fly in the face of longevity. Put that thought on hold, Brock. But there is a stack that you can use and I will link to an article that I wrote that really details this, how to use a growth hormone stack. If you want to use peptides to increase growth hormone and insulin like growth factors. So the basic stack is you'd want something called ipamorelin, ipamorelin, something called MOD, GRF, and then also IGF1, LR3, okay? Those are all peptides that can significantly enhance growth hormone. And essentially one is a growth hormone releasing hormone. One is a, what's called a GHRP, which will release a pulse of G8s and then the other is what would be called an insulin like growth factor protein. You stack those three together and that's very common. Now most of this stuff is banned by wada, it's banned by usada, it's banned by most international governing bodies of sports. So you should not use any of these compounds if you are competing in a sanctioned sport, which Olympic weightlifting, last I checked was. So if you're somebody else listening in and you're just wanting to increase growth hormone or igf, this would be one way to do it. I have a big article that I wrote on how to use growth hormone stacks and everything you need to know about using growth hormone stacks. So I would go and read that article. But ultimately you can use peptide injections as well pretty efficaciously for a significant increase in growth hormones. So that's another one that you can, you can, you can look into.

And people are getting busted for the peptides too. So that's it. It is something they're testing for and it's apparently quite easy to detect.

I have another article called should you use the controversial hormone marketed as a natural fountain of youth. And in that article I get into a lot of kind of the, the, the safer alternatives like colostrum, like amino acids, like a good raw organic goat's milk, that type of thing. So I would definitely look into that as well. Wendy. And then when we turn to testosterone, I have so many articles out about everything from red light therapy to saunas to all these kind of fringe ways to increase testosterone. You're already lifting heavy stuff and probably using long rest periods if you're Olympic weightlifting, which we know are two ways to Increase testosterone. There's one set of research studies that shows that forced reps can help you to generate more testosterone. So this would be something far different than the power lifting that you're doing and would involve heavier lifting with a spotter to force yourself through the last few reps. Research has shown that those, those sets to failure can increase testosterone. That's why I do like single set to failure isometric training on this thing called the peak Fit Pro. I do that once per week and I really do feel like a beast after I finish that. So that would be one way to do it would be single set to failure training. Another way to do it is sprinting. Any type of high intensity interval training that involves the legs appears to cause a pretty significant increase in testosterone. So using your legs for sprinting specifically would be another one to add in. Finally, I don't know how much chronic cardio you're doing, but any long term cycling, long running, long swims, any of that has been shown to lower testosterone levels. So you'd want to avoid any amount of chronic cardio. Any cardio that you do should be high intensity interval training, preferably done with the legs, you know, so we're talking about sprinting, long rest periods. And you could also do cycling with long rest periods. Air assault, bike, anything like that will also do the trick. So those are some of the biggies when it comes to increasing igf, increasing growth hormone, increasing testosterone. I also have an article on how to use exercise to increase testosterone. I will link to that one where I get more into those exercise concepts that I just alluded to. But that would be another strategy that you could use whether you're Wendy or someone else listening in. Probably Wendy's current exercise protocol is pretty supportive of testosterone if she's Olympic weightlifting. But some of these other things would be really helpful as well. And if you go to Ben Greenfield Fitness and you search for testosterone, I've probably got what Brock like a dozen articles on, on testosterone as well there.

So at least. Yeah, now I know you use the, we're using the red light you actually like pointed at your gonads to, to stimulate testosterone. For somebody like Wendy, where would she point?

Well, the, the Leydig cells and the testes of a male would be responsible for increasing testosterone. Females, I haven't seen any evidence that females with infrared light exposure are going to get the same effect. So this would be more of a strategy for males. Unfortunately, Wendy, unless you have balls that we don't know about. So I wouldn't use the red light therapy necessarily. But sometimes I like to throw in things that'll help the male listeners as well. So I'll link though if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 385 to the two articles I wrote on on growth hormone stacks, both the peptides as well as more natural stacks. I'll link to some of my favorite sources for colostrum and for amino acids. And then also this study on protein intake so you can see the actual dosage requirements since Brock can't do math.

No, I got it. It's 5.51.

No, but grams per pound. No it's not.

2.5 grams per kilogram equals 5.515-5655 grams per pound.

You did that backwards. It's closer to 1 to 1.2 grams per pound. Trust me on this. Yes.

This is what goofy.

You're gonna kill her kidneys. Don't do that, Wendy. Don't listen to Brock, Wendy. Okay, so. Oh, let's give something away. We do like to give stuff away on this show, so we're gonna give something away. This is the part of the show where if you hear your review read on the show, then we will. If you send us your T shirt size, send you a handy dandy gear pack, you go to itunes, you leave a review, preferably a 5 star one if you can find it in your heart to do so. And then simply email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's gear@greenfieldfitnesssystems.com we need to change that URL since very shortly Greenfield Fitness Systems is pretty much all going to become Kion and all that will go away. So note to self soon and we'll need to change that to like gear@getkeon.com or something. But anyways. But for now have a Review read from Neurobot19. You want to take this one away, Brock?

Yeah, it's called this podcast will save you tons of time and money. And Neurobot 19 says, I've been listening to Ben's podcast for three to four months now. And as a supplement and health food junkie, the Ben has saved me thousands of dollars on BS Supplement supplements.

Bs.

I like how you're the Ben. I'm gonna start calling you the Ben from now on. Also save me money on the quality supplements, not just the BS ones because you've got discount codes. Lots of us are busy with our nine to fives and don't have time to go down into the rabbit hole. Every vitamin, mineral on every vitamin and Mineral. So Ben, does you become dyslexic over.

The course of of your trip?

I perhaps.

Okay, keep going.

There was a lot of. What are those things called? Dark and Stormies. Yeah. Anyway, so Ben does that for us. He's a very educated, incredible source for all your health info. Even as a scientist, I learn 101 new things every day on his podcast.

He's a scientist. Of course, with a name like Neurobot, he'd be a scientist.

I'm guessing a neuroscientist.

I'm glad. Thousands of dollars on BS supplements. That's a lot. But I can tell you one thing. You say saved money with the discount codes. I do dial in some pretty fat discount codes. People a lot of times will give us discount codes for this podcast, like 10% on stuff. I come back, I tell them, give us 15, give us 20. So you guys do get good deals on stuff listening to the show. I'm just saying I go to bat for you because I love you. Anyways, though, that's fantastic, Neurobot. Thanks for the review. Email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com an email address we will soon change probably to geren greenfieldfitness.com I'm guessing. But for now, just email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems dot com let us know your T shirt size. We'll send you a nice little Ben Greenfield fitness gear package with a tech shirt and a beanie and a water bottle. And Brock, speaking of longevity, this has been a long podcast. I suppose it has.

We only answered three questions, but we still managed to go frickin wrong as frick.

We're so long in the tooth, we're so full of knowledge. So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 385 for all the show notes, the studies, and even that ultimate airplane biohacking guide. We'll have it all there for you. Thank you for listening. Until next time. Have a healthy week. A long week. And Brock, when I talk to you next time, hopefully I'm not paralyzed and I don't have a broken neck or.

Wearing one of those halos. Yes, the screws into your skull. That's the thing. I'm. That's what I'm picturing.

I don't want one of those or one of the dog cones that your dog gets after they've been to the vet. I don't want either of those. Please. Thank you. All right, Brock, I'll talk to you later, man.

If you do get one, Instagram the hell out of it.

I will.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.