The Official CBD FAQ: Everything You've Always Wanted To Know About CBD, Combining Psychedelics With Cannabinoids, Smokeable Ayahuasca, Microdosing With Plant Medicine & Much More!

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, I was trying to heal people in a one on one setting. I soon realized that I needed to do it on a bigger scale. Sure, there's a lot of medical doctors that really know their stuff and they care about their patients, but a lot of times that's just not the case, especially when they think their way is the only way of doing things.

Are you saying you would attribute that to the hcg, the fsh, the meditation manifestation, or, you know, in your opinion, knowing yourself, what do you think had the greatest effect? Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, howdy ho, folks. I. I got my friend on to talk about plant medicine, cannabis, cbd. My friend Adam from Florida, you're dig this cat. He's a good guy. All right, so I think it was two, maybe three years ago I was in Miami, Florida and I was staying at this pretty cool facility. It used to be Canyon Ranch down there. I think it's called the Carillon Spa or something like that. Now my guest on today's show will be able to clear that up for us. But anyways, I met the guy who you're going to hear me interview here momentarily. And he was a really well informed and kind of badass trainer who was there at the gym and he was coaching me and another physician who was there through this crazy protocol like rowing machines and rock wall climbing and kettlebells. It was a ton of fun. And I got to know him a little bit afterwards. We went out to dinner and wound up being able to keep in touch via phone afterwards for several months. And it turns out that he's actually got a really, really cool background. He grew up in Miami in a Cuban Jewish household and, and began martial arts at a pretty young age. He actually has a pretty extensive jiu jitsu practice now. He's a brown belt in jiu jitsu and trains in boxing and Muay Thai kickboxing. And he also went to the University of Florida. But anyways, what happened was he went through a bunch of injuries in college, even though he wound up graduating in physiology and kinesiology. But because he got injured, and I'm sure you can share some of this with us, he delved into a ton of stuff like plant medicine and Zen Buddhism and some more fringe aspects of spirituality that kind of turned him into a little bit of a unicorn when it comes to knowing both the physical and the spiritual aspects of health. And then he really delved into the world of cannabis and cbd. And he has a lot of history and other aspects of plant medicine, too. Even though we're gonna be talking a lot about CBD today because he began formulating these CBD products. And actually, I've talked about one full spectrum CBD product that I use called Element. Um, if you guys follow me on Instagram, you may have seen me mentioning that as the way that I turn off my monkey mind at night. And it's pretty much, in my opinion, the only CBD I know of that can put an elephant to freaking sleep. Because this stuff is just, like, something about it. It's so potent, so powerful. We'll talk about that a little bit on the show today too. So anyways, if you'reif you're kind of curious about all things CBD and cannabis, if you want to hear a fun chat about THC and CBD's effect on fertility, on pets, on extraction methods, on vaping versus edibles versus oil, above and beyond, then you're tuned in to the right show. Everything that you hear about today, you'll find@bengreenfieldfitness.com CBDFAQ that's bengreenfieldfitness.com CBDFAQ so my guest. I didn't give you his name yet. Is Adam Wengauer. Did I pronounce your name right, Adam? I just realized I've never actually said your last name.

I don't think in public it's a Winger.

I was close. I think when Gaur sounds more refined, dude, you just change it.

Warrior. Ish.

Yeah, yeah. But we'll get. We can go with Wenger too. So. So, Adam, welcome to the show, man.

Man, what an introduction. Thank you so much.

Yeah, yeah. Obviously, we. You and. You and I know each other pretty well and have gotten to know each other, but, you know, I know you have this. This whole kind of history in the mashup of, you know, extreme fitness and badassery and martial arts, but then also, you know, CBD and plant med, kind of the whole spiritual and even the mystical aspect of things. And you even told me you kind of have used a little bit of a shamanic approach to healing, incorporating meditation and plant medicine and psychedelics and cbd. So I'm curious if you could. We got time. Don't worry. Share. Share a little bit of your backstory and just how you became the unicorn that you are when it comes to merging fitness and spirituality.

Cool. Let' slet's get started. So growing up in South Florida is pretty unique experience. Fighting is sort of a way of life down here. Fighting and drugs. At least when I was growing up, we basically fought for everything.

Yeah. And I don't know if I told you I'm interrupting, you know, this early into your story. My dad grew up in Miami. I spent a ton of time in Miami growing up. And, yeah, my dad had a lot of. Kind of run ins with. With fights and drugs, and his brother got. Got murdered, which is why he wound up moving to Idaho, my dad. But, yeah, it's a. It's a crazy place down there.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a little bit different now, but, I mean, that's a crazy story, man. I didn't know he was from down here.

Yep. Yeah, I've spent a lot. I used to go to Miami two or three times a year from the time I was like three until 12, 13 years old.

Yeah, I think we actually met like three or four years ago. Maybe 2017 even.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was a cool workout.

What was the name of that hotel with the huge rock climbing wall?

The Carillon Resort and Spa. Carolina.

Yeah, I remembered. Right. All right, cool. Yeah, used to be the Canyon Ranch. Cool, cool spot.

Yeah. Well, you. Basically, you were staying at some, like, conference. Conference hotel. And I'm like, man, Ben cannot stay in a conference hotel. He's got to check this out.

Yeah, it's a good spot for anybody down the Miami area. A lot. A lot of cool things, including a giant rock climbing wall where Adam punished me. So anyways, dude, I interrupted your story early on.

No, don't worry about it. Fighting was just something we did. It was part of our culture, I guess. I mean, even if we were getting in a car, four guys, and I called shotgun, someone else said, no, no, I got shotgun. We circled up and we fought, and the loser had to go in the back seat, whoever gave up. So it was just kind of like a way of life for us. And I didn't really know that it was abnormal until I got to college.

You mean fighting that much?

Yeah, fighting that frequently. It was. I mean, this was before MMA got very popular.

Yeah.

But eventually it turned into more competitive stuff with Jiu jitsu, Muay Thai, kickboxing and the like. But yeah, as you were mentioning before, we, of course, we party. Did a lot of drugs, too. That was just part of the, I guess, the fun of growing up in Miami, being a port city. But I had a severe injury. I remember it was. I think it was Muay Thai practice. I took a shot to the leg and my foot grew up Blew up to like a balloon, my foot and I couldn't walk on it. I was on crutches. A couple months after that I took, I had a crack in my spine from rowing. So it was very detrimental injuries that you don't want to go through when you're about to go to college. So I ended up getting to the University of Florida and I was prescribed OxyContin which is. We can get into it a little more later. Yeah, high doses of OxyContin, almost the equivalent of 60 percocets a day.

Oh geez.

And yeah, yeah, I mean I still got, got through school. Everything I did.

I think pretty much everybody listening in is familiar with that as an opioid narcotic pro problematic issue these days.

Oh my God, it's horrific. Now it's a little bit harder to get. But back then in South Florida they were just giving it out. So I ended up trying to get off those drugs and realized it was not as easy as it seemed. I ended up getting into Zen Buddhist meditation, getting into a lot of different modalities on top of my traditional fitness. Realized it was just becoming harder and harder. Like you don't really deal with your emotions so well when you're using these addictive type drugs. So I was always looking for different ways to expand my mind and body and to be able to get off of these things that require all of your daily energy. It's hard to explain. Most people won't understand that when you're so reliant on something, an outside thing for your daily happiness, it's a very painful, painful experience all the time. Yeah, it takes away part of your spirit, you know, and you feel like this is how it's going to be the rest of your life.

I think a lot of people are, I mean not necessarily to say that everybody's on OxyContin, but a lot of people do rely upon, you know, as Anthony DeMello so succinctly and beautifully puts in his book Awareness, a lot of these external stimuli, not just drugs but you know, plant medicines or supplements or exercise or nutrition and a diet, diet or alcohol or sex or anything like they literally rely upon it for happiness. It becomes built into the hypnotic day to day trance. And yeah, when you try to remove yourself from it and you're not happy, that's a pretty big sign that you were overly dependent and attached on it. And then, you know, and I've been writing about this recently on my site, you know, people will be like, oh well that's cool because I heard on a podcast that I could fill that hole with something else, like music or reading fiction or, you know, like something else is just like, you know, maybe doesn't seem quite as, as prone to addiction, potential or attachment. And then they get, you know, four years down the road and they've bought, you know, every single guitar they can find on Sweetwater and Guitar Factory and, and they're unhappy again. And, you know, this all comes down to. And probably a little bit more of a rabbit hole than we have time to delve into today. But this whole idea of like a, a God shaped hole, you know, the need for something eternal outside yourself to fill that hole. But. But yeah, I mean, like, you know, something like oxycontin. I've heard that over and over again from folks. I think it was Chris Bell who I interviewed about opioid narcotics and he used Kratom to kind of wean himself off of those. I do certainly think that some attachments are super unhealthy and can be replaced by healthier things that are still attachments but less problematic.

And you know, the phone, that's another thing we just mentioned. Just technology is like one of the greatest addictions now. It's unbelievable.

Don't get me started on that. So anyways, you went through this injury and you're on the oxycontin and you had to figure out a way to get yourself off of it. You got into Buddhism, you got into meditation. What other kind of things did you learn along the way?

Yeah, meditation is something so profound that many people don't understand. And it's very challenging these days. I even find it challenging. I do it every single morning. And sometimes I use an app like the Insight Timer to help me out because there's so much noise. There's just this like consistent noise that we all have all the the time, especially living in a metro metropolitan style city like a Miami or New York. So meditation was one of like the greatest tools that helped me out. But then I also started getting involved into plant medicine. And for people that don't understand what plant medicine is, it's kind of like a key word in the spiritual communities now. It's basically the use of a psychedelic, but usually done in a more ceremonial setting. So what I mean by that is a lot of people have taken psilocybin mushrooms, they've taken LSD and they've done it and gone to a concert. But the idea is that you're taking it for a true purpose. You're taking it to gain some insight. That you wouldn't have normally. Part of a little bit of a philosophy that I've kind of come up with over the years. It's about balance. Obviously, we all talk about balance all the time, but I find that CBD and psychedelics work very well as part of this balance. Because we talk about the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. This is kind of like the perfect metaphor for that, because CBD is a way that we support our body, we bring comfort to our body, but in a natural way. And plant medicine is sort of the opposite. It's actually a challenge for the mind and body and actually for the spirit. It creates somewhat of an adversity, kind of like an uphill battle that we need to overcome. And the two go very hand in hand together. I can get more in depth with that sooner.

Yeah, I actually would like to learn a little bit more about that, Especially the idea behind the endocannabinoid system being different than a lot of these serotonin receptors that psychedelics act on, you know, so. So we know, you know, those two distinct serotonin receptor binding sites, you know, five HT1A and five H2T. T2A. Right. Though that's where a lot of the psychedelic compounds or these plant medicines are acting. But cannabidiol, you know, it's not, well, cbd, I should say specifically because that's the one you mentioned that you really like as, like a combination with some of these other things. You know, it's also, from what I understand, interacting with some of these serotonin genoic. If I could talk serotonin receptors just as much, or if not more than its interactive. Interacting with some of the classic cannabinoid receptors like CB1 or CB2. So have you looked into much in terms of, like, how or why CBD seems to work so well, especially when combined with some of these other, you know, serotonin tweaking compounds.

So I want to also clarify, like, what we sell at Element Health is full spectrum. I'm like the biggest proponent of full spectrum over any other type of cbd.

Now, now what. What is that and why is that?

Okay, so there's basically three types of cbd, CBD products that are out on the market. On one end of the spectrum, we have CBD isolate. This is basically CBD that's been stripped out of the plant, nothing else inside. It's usually mixed with an MCT oil. It's quite cheap to produce, and you find that in everything. It's usually flavorless. So a lot of times these drinks that they sell on the market or food products, they throw this CBD isolate in there. I'm not a huge fan of it. I guess it does have its place in the market, but to me it's on the cheaper end of CBD style products. On the opposite side, you have full spectrum. And full spectrum, I like to say, is how nature intended it. It's what's called a whole plant extract. And the extraction techniques we use, we pull every single thing out of the plant, all the beneficial components. So it's not just CBD that we're talking about. We're talking about all the different cannabino flavoids, the biological terpenes, the flavonoids, the essential oils. It has everything that works together synergistically to produce a more complete effect. Well, basically what they call the entourage effect. So you're getting so many different angles of beneficial use versus just cbd, which is somewhat limited. Like you said, it doesn't even bind directly to the CB1 and CB2 receptors. So those are the two far ends of the spectrum.

Now with the full spectrum, which is what I know you guys make, and perhaps that's why it knocks me out so well at night, because it has all these other terpenes and active compounds in it. But a lot of people I've heard are concerned that the full spectrum could also present more of an issue with there being larger amounts of THC in there, which, you know, if you're getting tested at work or you're an athlete or something like that. Is that worth considering when it comes to full spectrum?

Oh, absolutely. Full spectrum. While under the Farm bill Act in 2018, you required to have under 0.3% THC and this amount might seem negligible. You're not going to get a high or stoned effect when using a full spectrum product. But it is very possible that over time it builds up in your system and you can test positive. So a lot of companies, they're trying to work their way around that with what's called a broad spectrum. The thing is, these companies, they're not really held accountable. They'll say, hey, we have a broad spectrum. There's no thc. But I've looked at the third party tests and, and there is still a minuscule amount of thc. And for customers that don't want to risk their job, you really want to go with a CBD isolate or something that absolutely has zero percent thc.

Okay, so, so your, your element stuff, it's full Spectrum. But would you classify, you wouldn't classify as an isolate then, right?

No, the only, we carry one isolate product and that's in our vape formula. Because I wanted to have one option for people that are drug tested.

Okay, I got you. So the isolate, you can, you can vaporize. But then if you just want, let's say you don't even care about any of this stuff. You're just like, I want the most benefits out of CBD specifically for the reason, whatever. Ben uses it for relaxation or sleep. Like a full spectrum, super powerful CBD extract would be the way to go versus a CBD isolate.

A hundred percent. There's just so many more benefits. You know, the terpenes, all the different cannabinoids, there's so many different effects. It's really incredible, especially with the new science coming out on CBG and cbn.

Now, now what about, what about broad spectrum, though? Because broad spectrum isn't the same as full spectrum. They just take out the thc.

Right? But at the same time, there's still a minuscule amount of THC. It might be.001%, but I have heard of people testing positive while taking broad spectrum. And at the same time, if you're looking for the maximum benefits, you want the THC in there, it might be such a small amount that you're not getting a stoned effect, but it is contributing to the overall health benefits of the plant, of the compound.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I, because you know me, I guinea pig everything if I do. So I actually pretty much only use your highest power stuff. What is it? The 4800mg of CBD. So I'm probably taking around 100 to 200mg or so of CBD at night, but. And I think that comes out to like three, four dropper fulls of your element stuff. And I just hold it in my mouth for 60 seconds and I'm, you know, within 20 minutes I am just like, I sit back, I read, and then I'm just, just dead to the world. Not in a way that I couldn't get up if the house caught on fire, but I, I just like, I don't care about, and I'm ready to fall asleep and the racing thoughts are gone. And I, I have in the past just thought, okay, so if this stuff works so well, what would happen if I just, you know, doubled the dough? So, so one night I did eight dropper fulls. And I have to admit, I, I woke up at like 2am and I did feel kind of high, like, kind of like I would if I took like a Rick Simpson oil or something like that. So I, I'll, I'll bet there's probably like micro amounts of THC in it or something. Or maybe it was just like that much big of an effect.

Well, I think you might be taking a lot more than you think because one dropper full should be 80 milligrams.

Okay, so 8, 16, 24, 30. Yeah, I'm probably getting closer to 300 milligrams a night, which is admittedly though and you've probably heard me talk about this on podcasts, if you actually look at CBD and sleep research. So I'm not talking about anti anxiety effects or focus effects, you know, which are typically as low as 10 to 20 milligrams. But if you look at human research on sleep cheap, it's in most cases 300 to 600 milligrams of CBD.

Were those tests done with CBD isolate? The only ones I saw were with a CBD isolate. I believe in like a hexane. I mean it was kind of a funky test to begin with, wasn't it?

I don't know what form of CBD they were using. I assumed they had just isolated and were using pure cbd. I'm not quite sure. But either way, you know, some, something about this bottle that you send me, this full spectrum stuff just knocks me on my butt. But I mean that's a good explanation that you just gave between the versus the broad spectrum versus the CBD isolate. But we, we got on this discussion as we were talking about, you know, why you think that plant medicines or psychedelics pair well with cbd. You know, I was talking about some of these receptors but, but really, you know, cbd, I think this is important for people to understand. It does interact with the serotonin. I'm just going to say the serotonin system because I can't talk today. So it interacts with, with the serotonin system and you know, kind of like anandamide, which is also a cannabinoid compound does. But you know, I looked into this a little bit because I was noodling on, on why if you take cbd, I'm just gonna put this in super simplistic terms. You don't have a bad trip or whatever you're using in conjunction with it in terms of a psychedelic or a plant medicine feels better afterwards. And it turns out that, that the 5ht1a receptor, that first part of the serotonin system, you know, that's the one that decreases blood pressure, that lowers body temperature, that slows the heart rate, that lessens pain, and that just basically makes you feel chill. And CBD is an agonist for that, meaning CBD is going to upregulate all those kind of like anxious feelings. And so you're probably getting like a little bit more of like an ego dissolving effect in terms of the way CBD is interacting with the 5ht1a. And then for the 5ht2a, that one is the one that causes like a real hallucinogenic effect, can cause headaches, can cause mood disorders. Like, that's kind of like the bad trip part of the serotonin system. And apparently CBD is an antagonist for that one. So you may not hallucinate as much as you might normally, but you're also far less likely to just basically have headaches, mood disorders, neurotransmitter imbalances, and all the things that would happen if the 55 HT2A was over activated. And so it's, it's really interesting how CBD is just kind of almost like a, like an expert clock or clockworker. You know, it's kind of like tweaking the 5ht 1a towards a better experience while kind of turning down the dial a little bit on the 5ht 2a.

That's really fascinating because I haven't taken them together. I usually use CBD more in the evenings or at night, you know, and I try to do my psychedelics more in the morning because when I get kind of a blast of serotonin, I like it during the day. I find that it interrupts my sleep a little bit. In fact, I like to do plant medicine more first thing in the morning. But circling back to CBD for a moment, caryophylline, which is pretty much the most prevalent terpene in our CBD formulas, which it should be in most CBD formulas that does directly interact with the CB2 receptor. So maybe that explains a little bit why when you took a good amount, you felt kind of high because the amount of THC still fairly low. But the terpenes, I mean, there is so much new science behind them now about the amazing anti inflammatories, analgesic antibacterial effects.

Oh, yeah.

Even like the anti suppressant stuff, which is that.

That's a good point because like, you know, nutmeg, the classic, you know, prison plant medicine, you know, cheap hallucinogenic compound, if you if you take enough of, can certainly tweak some dials in your brain that has a host of terpenes in it that, from what I understand, are kind of similar to some of the terpene hydrocarbons you'd find in cbd. You know, it's got things like limonene and sabinene and pinene and some of these other things that CBD has in it. So that could actually be the case that I'm actually feeling. You know, the high, high dose of terpenes that I take as well when I. When I use your stuff.

And the thing with the cbd, everyone forgets that it's really all about the endocannabinoid system. And so many people. I mean, we can get into that in a little bit, but the endocannabinoid system is just like the perfect balancing agent for almost every part of our body. I like. I love using the phrase optim. I mean, the term optimize. I always got it from Jay Campbell, one of your previous guests. Because optimization is just the way that we achieve greater balance versus just pushing everything to such extremes. I mean, I might seem like I'm pushing it to an extreme with the psychedelics and the plant medicine and then using the CBD to kind of bring it back, but it's really amazing what the endocannabinoid system has been like being discovered, hard as to do right now with in terms of so many things like fertility, hormone production, liver function, bone growth. It's really fascinating stuff.

And, you know, there's a lot of avenues I still want to delve into when it comes to a lot of the questions that I get about cbd. But one thing you mentioned that I'd be remiss not to ask you about is you said that you, if you're gonna use plant medicine, that you like to use it first thing in the morning. Now, in the past, on the podcast, I've talked about, you know, the fact that, you know, know everybody from, you know, executives to Silicone Valley folks to writers and artists and beyond will microdose with, you know, psilocybin and lion's mane and niacin, or microdose with, you know, LSA or lsd. You know, it's something to basically enhance focus or creativity during the day. That's pretty commonly known. Now that that's a practice. But I'm curious for you, is that pretty much what you're referring to, or do you have some other favored compounds that you would use to. To really help you charge through a Day effectively, if you're using plant medicine in the morning.

Yeah. So let's dive into that. That's exciting stuff. I like I was saying I will test out some different plant medicines, some different psychedelic compounds in micro doses to improve my general focus or even improve compassion and creativity a little bit. But when I'm referring to plant medicine, I'm seeing it more for deeper healing in myself. I want to. I mean, it's funny, like, since I met you, I love talking to you because you've sparked so many different new areas of interest in my life. When we met, I was trying to heal people in a one on one setting where I was trying to bring them different health benefits by teaching them stuff in a lecture or in a class. I soon realized that I needed to do it on a bigger scale, kind of like what you were doing or what you are doing right now. And I wanted to understand how to do that. So I turned to plant medicine. And in 2012, I had my first ayahuasca experience. I'm sure you've discussed that a little bit.

Yeah, you know, I haven't done a lot of. A lot of ayahuasca specific podcasts per se, but yeah, it's come up a lot, but go ahead.

So I developed a smokable version of ayahuasca. So it basically has the intense. The thing about ayahuasca is it really requires a lot of preparation. It requires you to fast for a few days or at least diet. It really takes a lot of your energy to put into it, so you can get a lot out of it. And that's a great thing. But for guys like us who are super busy every day of the week, seven days a week, sometimes I want a little bit of a shorter experience that still has a lot of the same benefits. So there's a type of smokable ayahuasca that not many people know about. I mean, there's so many things on the market, well, not on the market now, on the underground, you could say. And with this one, it utilizes the MAO inhibitor effects of the ayahuasca vine with DMT and other herbs to give you what feels like an ayahuasca experience in about 20 minutes. So I actually, every morning I wake up, I write in my journal. This is something I've just done for a few years now. Everything I appreciate, everything I love about my life and what I want to achieve, everything I'm grateful for. So morning meditation is just a game changer. As you know, you've been meditating A good amount of time now. And once I've kind of cleared the space, I was trained and I've learned a lot of cool shamanic techniques from guys. In fact, from one guy who married me and my wife in 2017, he just wrote a book on Amazon, it's now on Amazon. It's called Ayahuasca Wisdom. This book is called Achieving Personal Spiritual Healing with a Quantum Model of the Psyche. I mean, this is the game changer for people that want to understand plant medicine, medicine and spiritual healing, but from a scientific approach. And anyhow, he really showed me the way of shamanic understanding of the world, which is basically paying homage to the earth using our willpower and understanding the great other, the thing that has a thousand names but is also unnameable. And to have so much gratitude in your daily, just on a daily basis that you create what you want in every moment. So I try to get this mindset and then I sit down outside and I load up whatever smoking device I feel like at the time. And how do you explain it? You take a few little hits to get the ball rolling and you feel like reality is changing.

It's almost like an extended DMT experience, like a 5CEO experience.

Right. And we just add a few other things to it.

Yeah, yeah, because I, I have done this. You, you sent me some and you know, I loaded up, I loaded up a bong and I, I have never done well with DMT vape pens. I've, I've never really enjoyed much that kind of full ego death lights just, just blast off experience that you get for five to 15 minutes with DMT. And so I had some, some reservations just kind of like knowing between that and my previous Ayahuasca experiences, I just, just for some reason those particular medicines or compounds have never really agreed with me. They typically take me to a little bit more of a dark, almost the best way I can describe it is almost like a darker, kind of like a demonic place that for some reason, you know, because, you know, plant medicines will work differently for different people. But every time I do it, as soon as I drop in, my body's like, no, no, get out. Not for you. No. Okay, just breathe through it. And so it was a very, very interesting, you know, this smokable Ayahuasca experience that you referred to that, that I also tried. It is very, very interesting. It's not for me, at least at this point in my life. And I think set and setting for me is super important too. And for me, and I did it Kind of like you do it in the morning before a day of work, et cetera. And I just think I had too many other things going on also. But yeah, it's very, very unique, this idea of being able to use. And obviously this stuff isn't really accessible for people to just go out and purchase, like C. But yeah, it's. It's a super interesting approach that this smokable ayahuasca type of experience.

Yeah. The issue with pure DMT is that it's just so fast and so chaotic, but what a lot of people understand is these psychedelics and plant medicine are not supposed to be fun. And Terence McKenna, one of my favorite authors and, and speakers, he always says everything you do is an art. And the first few times I did it, it was like you said, you have these, like, reservations, and it's a scary thing. It's like, it's a little bit dark. But I think confronting your shadow side is part of the experience. Yeah. So sometimes I get. You dive right in and you experience wholeness with the entire universe, and other times it just toughens you up spiritually and mentally.

That's. That's a very interesting point, especially your point about safety and trust, because anytime that I do any of these type of things on my own, I never have as good an experience as I would if I have someone sitting with me, watching over me, ensuring me, you know, it's okay, your. Your dosage is okay, your protocol is correct, you're going to be fine, you're not dead. Breathe through it. So I, I would imagine, you know, if. If you had been sitting by my side, it would have probably been a different experience. And I, I think for me, that's a big, big part of it is I'm one of those guys who's constantly looking out for Dange. Kind of like analyzing my environment, my surroundings, you know, looking around the corner everywhere to make sure everything's okay, planning, preparing, etc. And so for me, sometimes just to be on my own, whatever, you know, sitting in my sauna, trying something I haven't tried before, I think, I think that's probably not the best way for me personally to approach stuff either. Right.

I like to be outside. There's something about having your feet in the grass, and that's also part of my morning routine, waking up. I think you even spoke about this on a podcast. Watching the sunrise and trying to watch the sunset while you're grounding. While you're grounding.

It's a. It's amazing. I mean, and granted I cheat because I. I often don't get up early enough in the morning. And this is where the nerdy biohacker comes out. I have a grounding mat at my desk and my juv lights. So I'll go in there in the morning and drink my coffee, bathed in red light, standing on a grounding mat. And yeah, it's not as natural as being outside in my bare feet looking at the sunshine, but I can also do that at 7:30am versus, you know, the ungodly hour of 4:45 or whatever. So plus, you know, on a snowy negative 10 degree day in Spokane, Washington, sometimes you just don't want to be standing outside barefoot at 5am searching for the sunshine that isn't there.

Anyways, I'm with you though. I'm plugged into the wall right now. I got a little bracelet on. I'm grounding myself.

Yeah, nice. I do want to make sure that I tackle a few of the CBD topics that I know you can speak well to. And I did have a couple other questions for you specifically related to cbd. And one is about all these different extraction methods that are out there. Like, you know, one that's commonly talked about, I believe is called a CO2 extraction. Is that one right? Yeah. Talk to me about these extraction methods and what you think people should be looking for and why.

There's three main methods. There's a hydrocarbon method and this is kind of old school. This is using butane or hexane. This was used initially when they were getting all those THC vape carts. Do you remember back in the day? I'd say like 10 years ago and everyone was coughing up lungs. Yeah, not the, not that new vitamin E acetate, but I'd say 10 years ago everyone was coughing and they were saying vaping is like the worst thing for you. That's because they were using butane extractions on everything because it's very efficient. But there's just a lot of byproducts afterwards and a lot of leftover solvents. You don't want to inhale this stuff, you don't want to ingest it. So there's two main extraction methods. The first one I like to talk about is ethanol. It's a polar solvent. It's more hydrotropic. I've had my farms use these. These methods work phenomenal. You can do very large yields of CBD or create very large yields of full spectrum CBD from it. And within that you have warm ethanol baths. You have cold ethanol baths. And the Warmer ones, basically. They're better for smaller batches and they leave very little residue. But you have to do a lot of processing later with the cold one or the room temperature one. It's. You can kind of pull out more specific cannabinoids and it definitely reduces the amount of pigments and the total cannabinoids. So there's like a little bit of a balancing act there. I like ethanol extractions personally, but the farm that we work with, that I have a contract with, that produces the exact CBD I want, they're really focused on doing CO2 extractions. This is like the.

Before the CO2, you know, what you just described, that's pretty much considered like a solvent extraction method. Right. Using ethanol or low grade alcohol. Butane would be another one. From what I understand there, there is a problem with the solvent because the extraction liquid apparently can not only strip away a few of the cannabinoids and some of the flavor from the plant material, but from, from what I understand, you do get a higher risk of, you know, for example, chlorophyll concentration. Absolutely. Contaminants, some of the other chemicals or the harsh chemicals, frankly, that are used in a solvent extraction method.

Exactly. And I personally like a dark colored, earthy flavored CBD, but they've just found that CO2 is just a more beneficial means for extracting full spectrum cannabinoids these days. I have no problem with ethanol because the newest MET methods, they are stripping out any residual solvents and all types of stuff that you wouldn't want to ingest. But you know, as times change, there's more expensive materials, there's more quality equipment, so you might as well go with the best.

Yeah, okay, got it. And that is an interesting note because, yeah, your, your element stuff, it tastes very. It's very. It tastes very earthy, I guess is the best way I can describe it. I, I personally like the flavor. It's not harsh at all. But. But you're using. Now you're using CO2, right?

Right.

So talk to me about that.

The original way that they used CO2 was a supercritical method, which is very efficient. You can do higher yields, but it tends to damage. I mean, we're going for full spectrum. That's what we want. That's what we've always just decided is the best way to do this. It might be the more expensive product, but it's the most efficient product. I'm trying to bring healing to as many people as possible all over the world. And if we're Pulling out or damaging terpenes and any phytocannabinoids, we can't go with that method.

So, and so the subcritical. That's lower temperature and lower pressure. It'd be like if we were gonna use. Let's even talk about canola oil, right? Which. Which obviously gets a lot of flack these days. There's like Whole Foods and I even mentioned this in my book Boundless. Like, I have less of an issue with the canola oil at the whole food salad bar, even though it is still, you know, an inflammatory vegetable oil because it's cold expeller pressed canola oil. So it's low temperature and low pressure extracted canola oil. So the rapeseed is not getting exposed to quite as much oxidation and pressure and temperature. And so when you're talking about subcritical extraction of cannabis, essentially you're talking about the same thing. Lower temperature and lower pressure. So less damage to the terpenes or the omega fatty acids and things like that.

Right. I mean, let's be honest, if it comes from whole foods, it's gotta be healthy, right?

Exactly. We all know that that giant bag of dark chocolate covered almonds is just gonna be fine no matter how much weight you're trying to lose.

Their cakes are great, man. So gotta be healthy. Someone told me that like a year ago. And I definitely use that excuse every time. Now. It's Whole Foods. It's health Whole Foods.

Cinnamon rolls, baby.

So, yeah, now there's combinations, there's ways that they can use subcritical and supercritical together. So you're getting the best of both worlds. There's a mid critical that retains terpenes and all the essential oils and sensitive materials. So really it's a variation of subcritical, like you just mentioned, with the canola oil oil. That's probably the best way. That's what we use. And you get all the beneficial components of the hemp plant.

So. So It's a subcritical CO2 that you use and then. And then you go for. For a would. It's a full spectrum subcritical CO2 extraction.

Right.

Okay.

They're showing me new techniques where there's like a mid critical. Now, it kind of goes a little bit above my knowledge base here, but. But I've tested everything and we get everything back with all the terpenes that I want in there, all the specific cannabinoids, and I'm so happy with the formula, so I just let them keep going. Yeah, well, they want to get more Innovative. And hey, yeah, we can try it out.

But I know some hacks at home who will just like take, take their plant, their, their raw plant and do like their own decarboxylation or. Yeah, I guess it is a decarboxylation of the raw plant material. They'll do that in like an oven, you know, at like 250, 270 degrees and use their own olive oil extraction method, you know, which is kind of like a home method. If you're growing your own plants, you literally heat it up in the oven for like 30 to 60 minutes and then you add a bunch of olive oil to it and continue to heat it for a couple of hours. And that, that's kind of like the poor man's home version if you're growing your own plants.

Exactly. The only issue is it's not as concentrated. So you'll be taking tablespoons of olive oil or coconut oil.

Yeah.

To get 20 milligrams of CBD, you know.

Yeah. Now what about the delivery mechanism? Like you mentioned that if you're going to do like a, like a super safe non THC CBD isolate, you prefer like one of your guys vape pens for that. But obviously there's edibles, there's oils which, and that's, that's the form I use from you. I use your little tincture based dropper bottle because I've, I've found that to be for me the best even versus capsules and soft gels, et cetera. But of course there's also capsules and soft gels. And so in terms of delivery mechanisms, what do you think is the most effective way in terms of actual bioavailability? Or does it matter that much?

They've found different results with testing the specific delivery methods and then actually people experiencing specific effects and the levels of CBD in their bloodstream. Technically what they say is that when you use a vape formula it instantly gets inside your body, but it also leaves your body in about two to three hours. So there's always that inverse relationship between how fast you, you can ingest the product and get it going, get the positive effects, but how quickly it leaves your body. So I like vaping. They say vaping is ideal for people that are dealing with extremely stressful situations or they're feeling like intense anxiety, like right before public speaking. You can use the vape pen and it'll hit you pretty quickly. You're not going to get high from it like we always talk about, but it tones everything down. It Reduces that excess noise so you have more clarity and focus. The next version would be sublingual or mucosal. And that's the way I believe you take it. That's the way that I like to take it, yeah.

Do you leave it in your mouth for like I usually go about 60 to 90 seconds. Do you think that's too long or what do you think?

I do it for as long as possible till I forget. I go about two minutes.

Okay.

Yeah. I just think they say a minimum of 30 seconds, but longer is not going to hurt. And essentially that's going to stay in your body for approximately four hours. And then if we ingest it orally, if we're taking it just swallowing it, it usually can take 60 to 90 minutes and then it'll stay with you for about six hours. So you always have that trade off between how hard you want it to hit or how fast and how long it's going to last. I personally just stick to sublingual. And the good thing about it is it's building up in your system. That's what we want. We don't want to take it in a time of emergency. We want to take it consistently for endocannabinoid system optimization.

Okay, got it. So the vape pen would be, if you need that super quick effect and then the sublingual absorption would be for the most bioavailability and then the. Like the oils or not the oils, but I guess like the soft gel or the capsules, you know, that you're actually ingesting or even the edibles, obviously you're not going to feel it as quickly because it does have to go through liver first pass, it does have to go through the stomach, get absorbed, et cetera. But do you know if there's much loss of the actual CBD during that process? Or perhaps like with thc, there's actually a conversion process in the liver that might allow for you to have access to different components of the cannabinoids that you wouldn't get via say like sublingual or vascular vaping.

Dr. Oh, absolutely. I mean, with oral, as you said, it has to go through the liver first. And I've seen all the studies that say 5 to 15% is what's bioavailable if you're ingesting it orally or as high as maybe 30%. But so if we're talking about capsules versus oils, I always just say unless you have this complete aversion to an earthy taste, you shouldn't need capsules. You should definitely just take the drops directly in your mouth. And some people, they just don't like dealing with an earthy taste. So what we do to bypass that is we put it in like a soft gel form. At least what our company, what my company does, and we use piperine, we use a little bit of turmeric. Turmeric. They say that that can help with absorption. What I find though, is sublingual and mucosal is just the optimal way of ingesting it.

So for cbd, that would be the case. But. But what about for thc? I mean, obviously, if you were to eat like a THC edible, you're getting, what's the conversion in the liver? Do you remember thewhat THC gets converted to in the liver?

Delta 9 THC. I forget the percentage of what it actually converts to. But it also helps to have a high fat meal, at least for cbd. I tell people that if you're gonna swallow it or even if you're gonna use it sublingual, try to do it around mealtime time. And I find that you just seem to get a little bit better absorption that way.

Right. And what I'm getting at for people who are confused is that it seems kind of paradoxical. Right. So like with thc, if oral THC is less bioavailable, then why would edibles be so strong? And the reason for that is because unlike inhaled cannabis or sublingual cannabis, oral cannabis gets processed by the liver before it produces any effects. And in the liver, something like THC gets broken down into that 11 hydroxy THC, which is technically able to cross the blood brain barrier and have different effects than if you were to just take THC via vaporizing and so that, that kind of like first pass effect, so to speak. I guess what I was getting at was, you know, is there some kind of a first pass effect with CBD that if we were to eat a CBD edible or a capsule or a soft gel is going to give us a different effect of that CBD than if we vape it or tape it, take it sublingually? See what I'm getting at?

Yeah, yeah. I haven't found there to be any type of different effect in terms of breakdown. Maybe there's a new study on that. THC is the only one that converts to a totally different compound.

Okay, got it. That, that makes sense then. Okay, so another question for you that I wanted to ask, and then I also want to touch on another couple topics while we have time that, that I know You've been kind of visiting when it comes to fertility, which I think is super interesting. But what about stacking? Like, obviously we talked about the interaction with some of these serotonergic receptors. Whoa, I just said it correctly. Serotonin. All of a sudden, my coffee must have kicked in. Took a while. All right, so the interaction these. Serotonin. Serotonin. Now I'm serotonin receptors. CBD's effect on 5ht1a and 5ht2a we talked about. But what about other things that would stack with cbd? Like things that you think would work well in terms of effects on focus or sleep or relaxation. Is there anything that you're messing around with in terms of stacking certain things with your cbd?

Oh, absolutely. It's pretty interesting because I was reading your recent article, or maybe I was listening to it, where you talked about taking breaks from caffeine at least one week out of the month. And at the exact same time, it was like the perfect timing because my wife, Kristen, she's in the IVF process, which we'll get into, and they told her she needs to stop drinking caffeine. So I just found it was like the perfect synchronicity right there. She quit caffeine. And it just so happened that I forgot to drink my morning tea a few days in a row and I had no withdrawal effects. And I was taking CBD with it, a little bit of lion's mane and cordyceps. And I found that all my friends, anyone I know that drinks coffee consistently has withdrawal effects from traditional coffee. I think it's something with the theanine in the tea that I drink. I drink a very simple blend from Yogi but brand, and it's a combination of black tea, green tea, theanine, and a few other ayurvedic herbs. And it gives you like a nice little kick of 80 milligrams first thing in the morning. And I'll do that with CBD to get a little extra focus. If I want to have more focus and more neurogenesis type effects. I'll add the lion's mane and psilocybin with it, which is pretty well documented.

So you'll microdose? Well, not, I guess, lion's mane would be a microdose, but psilocybin would be a microdose. You'd add lion's mane and then you'd take CBD at the time. Same. Same time.

Right.

I'm assuming you're taking smaller amounts of the CBD for daytime Function, you know.

I could take up to 30mg, 50mg and not really get tired. Everyone's a little bit different. Then we're getting into the diurnal effect of the endocannabinoid system, which is just such an amazing topic in itself. I find that if I take CBD in the morning, it purely improves focus and relieves stress from me. If I'm taking it in the afternoon, I get more stress relief, but in the evening, that's when I'm just, like, out cold, like you had mentioned.

Hmm. Okay. Got it. Yeah. I mean, for me, I have. I have, you know, some 10 to 20 milligram delivery mechanisms that are actually, what. I'll tell you exactly what I have is it's not your product. I get it from Thorn, right? No, it's. It's alive by nature. I think it's alive by nature, but it's an NAD CBD nasal spray spray. And so if I do like a couple of sprays and that in the nostrils when I wake up in the morning, you know, I'll sometimes do NAD injection sublingually. Sometimes I'll dissolve one of those alive by nature NMN tablets under my tongue. Like, for me, I'll kind of play with different forms of nad. And I find I respond to it a lot better when I. When I do indeed play with different forms of nad. But one thing I really like, if it's more of a, like a clairogenic effect, I'm kind of looking for, like, head clearing type of effect. I'll do that cbd, NAD compound from alive by nature as a nasal spray. But I think I'm probably getting like 10 milligrams of CBD versus the 300 plus we already mentioned I'm taking at night.

Right. That's a perfect dose, I think. I mean, people don't really need that much in the morning unless they're getting ready for work and driving in all tents, you know, or maybe they just didn't get a good night's sleep the night before. That's something that I found really helps if I'm kind of groggy in the morning because for whatever reason, I had a lot on my mind. And you wake up if you use a little bit of CBD with breakfast or even if you're fasting. Fasting. I find that it kind of takes that grogginess away.

Okay, got it, got it. So you like lion's mane? You like psilocybin? Any. Any blood flow precurs, like arginine or citrulline or beet or anything like that?

Oh, yeah, I take a beet extract. What is it? Organic beetroot powder. It's very simple. So it's not even an extract? Yeah, yeah.

All right, cool.

I love taking ancestral supplements. Grass fed animal organs. That's something you turned me onto recently when we were talking about fertility.

Yep. They have good stuff. And what about at night? If you're sleeping, do you go with just CBD or. Because for me, what I use primarily is, is your Element Health, full spectrum, super powerful cbd. But then if I'm traveling, I will take melatonin. Either the, the high dose melatonin suppositories from John Laurence or if it's just like fewer time zones I'm traveling across. I like the quicksilver sublingual Melatonin. And then occasionally if I wake up up at like 3 or 4am and I don't want to get up yet, I'll take some kind of an inhibitory neurotransmitter precursor like a gaba, for example. This would be like Holy Basil or Tulsi or another one I like is Quicksilver Scientific has one called Lipocalm that's kind of like an inhibit. But that, that's some I'd only use. I have it on my bed stand. If I wake up at 4am and I'm like, I'm thinking about work, I don't want to get up quite yet. I'll do a few squirts of that and then just fall back asleep.

So that happens to everyone. They wake up at 3 or 4am thinking about stuff.

It happens to you? Yeah. I think it's called entrepreneurs.

Yeah. Once in a while.

Yeah.

I'm working on it though. For the most part I sleep really well. But when I have a lot of stuff going on, it's like you wake up and I'm just ready to go. Yeah. You were taking precursors, you said. So you're not actually taking gaba, Pure Gaba.

No, no, it's. I forget what all is in the Quicksilver Light book Home. But. But it is, it is something similar to. To Holy Basil. Basil. Another example would be passion flower. Right. Like that's a GABA precursor. Chamomile has some GABA precursors in it. Trying to remember what other botanicals. There's one other. That's. What did I say? Chamomile Passion. Oh, skullcap. Skullcap is another one, I think. I think they actually have skullcap in Lipocalm. But you know, they may actually have pharma gaba in that too now that I'm thinking about it. I think I was talking with Chris Shade who runs that company about this and they have some kind of a fermentation process process where they're fermenting Gaba and once they ferment it, it becomes more bioavailable and then they add that in with like skullcap and passion flower and chamomile and stuff like that. So seems to work well for kind of like those early, early morning wakenings when you just need to shut down. Some of those excitatory neurotransmitters start to flood your brain and you just want to, you know, fall back asleep for an hour or two but not wake up groggy.

Yeah, in the evenings I like to use, I'm very Precise, I use 2.5mg of THC. I don't like to take too much much. I find that, I don't know, it inhibits too much of my, inhibits my dreams. I feel groggy the next day. But 2.5mg is so minuscule. It's like perfect with about 50-80mg of CBD. Occasionally I'll go Ben Greenfield style and just throw a few droppers back. I used to love, remember like the old school ZMA for like, like they.

Sell it as like a bodybuilding doctor. I used to take that when I was bodybuilding.

Yeah, exactly. Well, the zinc and the magnesium is fantastic stuff. So I take pretty high doses of magnesium. It's pretty funny. I was working with a functional medicine doctor that's at University of Miami. She's an integrative medicine doctor. Sorry. She told me just take as much melatonin as you can and the next morning if you find that you have diarrhea, take it back. One or two pills. So I found like, like a sweet spot of about 800mg which really helps me recover from the hard workouts. Been loading up on zinc ever since all this news about COVID And I use some high dose melatonin as well. They're showing like a lot of the neuroprotective effects now. And preventing Alzheimer's. There's a compound pharmacy, I believe you can even buy it from them. Nutrascriptives I believe is the name. And they have pharmacy grade everything. B vitamins, melatonin. I mean they're a phenomenal company. Yeah, they prescriptive.

Alright, I'll write that down by the way, for those of you who are just, like, trying to keep track of all this. I'm keeping track of all the notes. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com CBDFAQ you you guys can just jump on over there if you want all this in one place. So what'd you say again?

Nutra Prescript Nutrascriptives. So it's a compound pharmacy called MedQuest. And. And whenever they need, like, special stuff made for whatever hormone doctors in Miami or wherever you're going, they also have a supplement line called nutriscriptive. So they'll have something like melatonin, vitamin D, but all compound pharmacy grade, so you don't have to worry. Yeah, yeah, it's so much better than buying something on Amazon and hoping it's.

What it says on the label. I mean, obviously for supplements, you know, 90% of the time, if I can get it from Thorne or get it from Kion, I'm pretty much Thorne and Kion. Those are my two top sources. But I always have my. My finger on the pulse of the supplement industry as well, because there's certain things like, let's say dhea, for example, you know, which I'm always looking for a good. A good pharmaceutical grade version of for some of my clients who need help in the. In the hormone department that, you know, is one perfect example where, you know, I can't necessarily get it from Thorne or from Kion. So. Yeah, that. That's. That's good to know.

Well, actually, NutraScriptives has great DHEA.

Oh, there we go. All right.

Yeah. And forgot to mention Kion. I live on that stuff, so of course you turned me onto it.

Yeah, but, well, I own the company, so. Yeah.

Yeah, but it's very different because I can trust what's in it. I'm taking your essential amino acids EAAs, like, morning and night for two different workouts. I take the flex, which is, like, helping my joints. I'm about 37 now, and I'm still fighting in jiu jitsu and lifting weights and doing Muay Thai. And I also use your Kion lean because I just love that. Yeah, it's fantastic.

You're preaching to the choir now. And now we got to get this podcast sponsored by Keon. Okay, so I got to ask you, though, man, Fertility, because you have been delving into this stuff hardcore. You've sent me some interesting anecdotes on this, and so I can't let you go without asking about what you found in your own journey or process of. Of fertility for. For you or your wife, because you've, you've found some pretty interesting things even related to the cannabinoid system. So can you talk to me about that?

Yeah, for sure. And this is something I was like so hesitant to bring up. I don't know why, I just didn't think it was that important or if people would be interested in it. But I just found that men don't like discussing this type of stuff if they are having issues conceiving. There's always this like stigma behind it. But I just don't care. When you do enough psychedelics as I have, you kind of, kind of don't really give a shit, to be honest. I just want to help as many people as possible and get the knowledge out there. So when I was in college, I was bodybuilding and I didn't think I was going to live past 35. I just didn't think that far ahead. So I was using an absurd amount of steroids on top of doing all those addictive drugs. And I really screwed up my endocrine system. So eventually I got in touch with some hormone optimization doctors and I started working with them on like testosterone optimization. But the downside to all of this stuff is that your sperm count can go to like zero. So you'll feel amazing.

Dr. The down, the downside of which stuff?

Of using testosterone.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

I mean, even if it's through a doctor using healthy levels that put you in natural ranges for a male regardless of the age. And this is something that they don't discuss when young men are trying to get jacked up and taking a shortcut. You just think, oh, yeah, I'll just have kids later. You won't think about it, but it can have severe long term effects. I ended up getting married and we wanted to have kids and it just wasn't happening. So I went to a doctor and had sperm counts checked and they told me you were at zero. Like literally zero. Wow. Which they're like, usually we see like half a million or something along those lines. So I got it rechecked and it was the same thing. So that's actually when I called you and we talked about, we talked to. Who was it? It was Jay Campbell. Exactly. You put me in touch with him. And right before that I had seen another doctor and this fertility doctor was supposed to be the best doctor in the southeast United States. And they treated me like I was a piece of cattle. They just like put me in, had other doctors poke and prod at me and then told me, okay, get off testosterone. Call me in three weeks, and then we'll put you on meds. I'm like, this doesn't really sound like a very holistic or integrative approach to healing, but hey, I went along with it, and I felt horrible, just like death. And they gave me all these prescriptions for different meds, and they said it could raise your fertility levels, your sperm count, motility, all this. I felt so bad, I didn't even want to have anything to do with anyone. I go to work angry one minute, happy the next. I mean, emotions up and down, your hormones are fluctuating. So then I talked to Jay Campbell, and he said, you can't listen to these people. You have to take matters into your own hands. And sure, there's a lot of medical doctors that really know their stuff and they care about their patients, but a lot of times that's just not the case, especially when they think their way is the only way of it doing. Doing things. So he told me about hcg, which I had heard about from bodybuilding. Everyone knows about it. Yeah. But also follicle stimulating hormone.

Mm hmm.

So I ended up getting those.

Dr. F.H. for maintaining sperm count in guys who are using SARS, testosterone. Thosethose are both prettypretty effective compounds for that.

Right. For maintaining. But once you're at the point where you've lost that sperm count, it's tricky. But I did find some studies that showed that people were still on testosterone, utilizing testosterone and getting on HCG, and their sperm count went. Went up like 25%. So I said, what the hell, let's give it a shot. I cut back on the cannabis use. I only used a tiny amount at night.

Both CBD and thc or just thc.

I kept doing cbd. I believe that when you optimize your endocannabinoid system, everything else works more efficiently. So I cut back on the THC a little bit, and to be honest, I meditated on it a lot. I would meditate on fertility. I'd visualize my family. I picture healthy sperm coming out. I picture my life ahead, almost like a life review one year ahead of time. So at the end of 2021, what I want to accomplish, and I pictured exactly this, having a beautiful, healthy child. I did that enough. And then my wife said, hey, just go get your sperm checked. So I went, got it checked out. And they said, you have normal levels of sperm, exactly what a normal guy would have at like in his 20s or 30s.

No kidding.

So we were just baffled.

And wait, are you saying you would attribute that to the hcg, the fsh, the meditation manifestation, or, you know, in your opinion, knowing yourself, what, what do you think caught had the greatest effect?

I think it's a combination of. It has to be a combination of everything. I believe it could have happened without the HCG and the fsh. Because I didn't use high, they wanted me to take three times the dose that I was taking. Taking. I just, I didn't want to deal with that. I just had a feeling just pumping excess hormones into the body is not the way to go. So I stuck to fairly low doses. And I believe it's the power of intention. And that's something you talk about so much. And your, your journey's changed. I read in your Sabbath ramblings. And it's like, it's such a powerful thing that people need to understand. And it's not just, oh, I can feel better. You can make biological changes in your body. You can change every day of your life. You can change the next year of your life.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Did you log or write a blog post or kind of keep track of everything that you did for sperm count and fertility? And the reason I ask is it would be really cool to have some kind of a link in the show notes for people if you ever wrote anything like that down, because I get a lot of questions about that stuff.

Really? No, I mean, I have it all written down just because those are the instructions I gave myself on a week to week basis. But yeah, I could make it more of like an official guide.

Yeah, well, if you do and you share it with me, I'll put it up@BenGreenfieldFitness.com CBDFAQ if people are interested in something like that, which I'm sure some people are, and I'm sure people have a lot of questions about a lot of the other stuff that we talked about. Also, anything else that just while you're here, you didn't get a chance to mention regarding CBD or anything else that you, you just really wanted to make sure you got a chance to say or we were just that good.

Think about that for a second. Let me think about that for a second.

Yeah, I mean, one thing I should note, by the way is Jess and I are totally on the CBD for Pets bandwagon and both of our pets now use cbd and they're just like, they're, they're good kids, you know, and yeah, just. It seems to just settle down the dogs. And I know it has a Lot of other anti inflammatory and anti anxiety and joint health and other benefits for pets particularly, which is why a lot of people dig it for their pets. But if you have a pet, especially if you have, like a more hyper pet and you're not using some kind of a CBD biscuit or CBD compound or CBD oil or something with them, CBD for pets is pretty amazing.

Yeah. We have a pet line, actually, and it's just like proof that. Yes. On our website. It's fantastic. You should see the reviews. We got a review about a guy and he thought he had to put his dog down. Like it would sit on the couch. They had to carry it off the couch. Couch wouldn't eat. They started the CBD and now it jumps off and on the couch eats like a normal puppy.

Is it just like an oil that they're putting on the food or.

Dr. Yeah, we just put it in our food. I mean, we use the max strength on our dogs. Cause we have three hyper little pit bull types.

Yeah.

But you can use any of our formulas. But we do have a pet specific one. And we just put it on their food in the morning and night, and they just. They're like the healthiest pets. It's unbelievable. Everyone thinks they're puppies when they're about five years old. So no kids.

Kidding. Huh. That's interesting. I didn't know you guys had a pet line. But I'll. What I'll do is I'll. I'll link to all of your stuff in the show notes. And I think. Don't we have some kind of like a. I want to say when I've been posting your CBD to Instagram, I have like a code or something. Yeah, I'm forgetting what it is.

Ben 15.

Ben 15. Okay, so it's Ben 15. It was that 15%, right?

15% off for all your listings.

Okay, so I'll. I'll put that in the show notes as well. Or if you guys wind up over on the element CBD website, I think you. They can just automatically. Automatically put that code in. And then the other thing I should mention is the one that I use you guys just in case y' all are wanting to get the exact one that I knock back for sleep. I use the full spectrum cbd. Max. I shouldn't say this because I. I need my own supply. If you sell out, you have to make more. Adam. But I use that. I use the element CBD, the full spectrum CBD oil. But it's the maximum strength. The 4800mg. That is the bee's knees, you guys. For. If you want something, they'll just knock you on your ass.

So anyways, yeah, and email me. If anyone has questions, email me. I respond super fast. And this is what I'm passionate about.

Yeah, but okay, I guess, yeah, hopefully, hopefully you have somebody filtering that because.

No, you can cut it out there.

Yeah, no, no, it's okay. Like, honestly, just what I would do is set up, set up a robust email filtering mechanism before this podcast gets released. No, it won't be too bad. My, my listeners are all very nice, friendly, kind, considerate people. Unless I, unless I tweet about like, you know, vaccinations or abortions or something like that. And then I, I, I get read the riot act like I did yesterday on Twitter.

So anyways, great. I didn't see that.

Yeah, yeah, go check out my Twitter feed. It's, it's pretty. What? Oh, gosh, I don't even want to say on this podcast what I tweeted. Okay, so here's a thought exercise for you guys. I'll tell you what I tweeted, but I'm not gonna get into a big conversation about it with Adam because frankly, we're out of time. But what I tweeted yesterday was how come a woman's body is my body, my choice when it comes to abortion, but not my body, my choice when it comes to wearing a COVID 19 mask. And I don't, I was just thinking about that as a society, like, you know, we, we tell women they can do whatever they want with, with their bodies, except, oh, by the way, you have to wear this, no questions asked. And to me, I was just thinking about that from a societal standpoint, it seemed a bit paradoxical, but should be.

Able to talk about whatever you want to talk about.

Yeah, I just threw it out there as a question and you know, just to generate some discussion and I got, I got reamed. So I think I lost a few thousand followers in the course of 10 minutes, which was, and I probably just lost a few thousand podcast listeners. But it's okay, you guys. I like platforms for discussion. Okay. I, I'm not a troller. I simply like to put questions out there that get people thinking and then I am constantly learning I'm the most open minded guy you're ever gonna meet. So when you guys hear me say something, I also got called out. What was the. Oh, I was talking about Thrive Market and how Thrive Market supports blm. And I had A lot of people come in on the comment section, get super upset about that. But. But, you know, again, you guys, like, that's why, you know, somebody like me will just say things that I think need to be said or talk about something a company is doing that needs to be said. And, you know, that's a platform for discussion. I'm not putting out there as a platform for hating, just a platform for saying, okay, let's talk about this. Let's actually have a discussion. So what do you guys think about blm? Let's talk about it. Not. Not like, BLM is bad, BLM is good. Let's all hate each other on blm. It's just, yo, let's. Let's talk about it. I've got a comment section. You know, I'm all about discussion that elevates that makes people better. That also allows people, when necessary, to change their worldviews about something or, you know, in a very humble way, be persuaded one way or another, or at least. At least be open to other people's opinions. Like, you know, that's. That's a big part of what this platform. Platform is about. And I'll get off my soapbox here, but ultimately what I'm saying is I'm not a hater in. In the least about any of this stuff. All I like to do is just talk with people about stuff. I enjoy it. You know, Socratic dialogue is amazing for people making each other better people. And so, you know, I would encourage everybody listening in. You know, anything that we talk about that I might bring up on my platform, let's talk about it. Let's not hate about it. Let's talk about it. And so, so you know that. That's my perspective.

Exactly. We all come from the same source. We all can respect each other. We all can speak and just be right. We don't have to judge everyone.

Right.

And jump off a bridge or go crazy. Right.

Exactly, exactly.

It just seems like common sense. But hey, I'm with you, man.

Yep, yep, Totally. All right, well, that. That went. That went in a direction I didn't expect. But either way, we're out of time anyway, so. So anyways, BenGreenfieldFitness.com CBDFAQ is where the shownotes are. That's. You can. You can link up to the element health CBD. My code is BEN15. If you guys want to use that for a discount, knock yourself out, literally and figuratively. And Adam, dude, thank. Thanks for being a friend and thanks for coming on the show.

Oh, thanks for having me, man. It's always an honor. And I appreciate everything you do, bro. So much. From my heart, man.

Awesome. Thanks, bro. I can. I can feel the heart thumping. All right, talk soon, folks. Until next time, I'm Ben Green Greenfield, along with Adam Wenger signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever, ever recommended for hormones, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.