The Official Edgy, Explicit & Epic Podcast With Me & The MindPump Crew: Longevity, Religion, Parenting, Biohacking, The Joe Rogan Debates, Snake Oil, Pseudoscience & Beyond.

Oh, hello, ladies and germs. Why do they call them ladies and germs? How come the ladies get to get called ladies and the gentlemen have to get called germs? I don't know, actually. I kind of know. There was a comic who coined the term. His name was Milton Berle. I know nothing past that and why he decided to call gentleman germs. But that was his traditional greeting, this comedian. So, anyways, there's your fun fact for the day. Hey, this is Ben Greenfield, and I am very stoked to release today's podcast. Why am I stoked? And why am I talking like a surfer? Because I was able to sit down for, I believe it was over two and a half hours with my buddies down in San Jose at the Mind Pump Studios, and we churned out a pretty epic podcast for you that you're about to have the pleasure of listening to. I will warn you that because it's a bunch of bros hanging out, we curse, we talk about drugs, we talk about sex. This one might be an earmuffs for the kids episode. Or if you're like me, at least if your kids listen to it, explain things to them so that they understand what's going on type of episode. It's probably not something your kids are going to be super interested in anyways, because I don't know how interested kids are in things like THC and psilocybin, LSD and life philosophies and where we're going to go when we die and all the crazy stuff that we talk about on today's show. So enjoy. And I am going to put all the show notes because they are hefty. All the show notes for you for today's episode are going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com MindPump4 that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mindpump the number four. Because this is, I believe, the fourth episode that I've recorded with these cats. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. What I've decided to do is provide people with what they need to almost like, satisfy this whole Maslow's hierarchy of needs or the things that I know are really big pain points for people. Sometimes I'll thumb through that book before I head off on a trip where I know I'm gonna have beautiful women thrown at me and I'm gonna be in that situation where all of a sudden that temporary gratification seems super, super interesting and really fun compared to Leaving Legacy and love. Finn Greenville dies. One of My two Jerry and dwarf goats butts me when I'm the only human left gets the same. Gotta keep you alive. Spe $3,000 a month on his longevity. Killed by his goat. He's an expert in human performance and.

Nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and.

One of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there when you 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.

They, they got a bunch of going on right now because of the pollution that's happening from all these nicotine vapor pens and stuff. It's, it's getting out of control and like the amount of kids that are.

Oh yeah. I mean, and those things are just chock full of propylene glycol, most of them. So I've got reservations about that.

Crazy, right? Yeah, I saw.

So that's huge in the uk. Hyper concentrated amounts of THC in some of those vape pens. Yeah. I mean, way more.

Yeah, no, it's pure. I mean, I have a, I have a cousin who actually produces for the pens and it's, they. He produces clear and clear is 99.9% pure. So the THC levels are just insane. It's almost 100 THC.

It just. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm all about better living through science, but once you get to the point where you're isolating an unnaturally high level of an extra. It's just like essential oils. I mean, a lot of those can be bad for you.

Right.

If you're, if you're consuming the equivalent of like 20 turmeric roots from a few drops of turmeric essential oil, which is essentially what that is. I mean, that, that's a lot of turmeric.

Yeah. Oh, wrong.

Well, that's, that's, that's what we do. Right. We, we find a little bit of science that supports something cool, you know, or that positive benefits and then we abuse the.

Out of it.

Well, it's hard to, it's, it's hard to overdose on an individual compound when you take it in its natural form. Very easy to do when you extract it. Like try to eat too much enough food to have too much vitamin A in your system.

Good luck.

White world bark.

Yeah. Or even in the world of nootropics like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Right. And St. John's Wort is a perfect example, a very good natural antidepressant. And river and Tarrant and I actually harvested a bunch of St. John's wort.

Do you really?

We concentrated it.

You find it naturally growing.

It's a beautiful little yellow flower with a little bit of oil in the bud and you can harvest it. It's very easy to pick, very easy to identify. You just put it in vodka for four weeks and then you strain it. You can do. We did like a mortar and pestle beforehand with the flower and the bud and a little bit of the leaf, you put it into the vodka and then you strain that and that goes into a little dropper bottle that works as an SSRI. But I mean, you would have to eat enough St. John's Wort fiber and all the natural plant defense mechanisms and all the little things in there, it would actually give you a tummy ache if you were to eat a whole bunch of that.

You'd get sick from eating too much plant material before you eat.

A natural built in stop mechanism that a lot of these people.

I find that fascinating when you think of even things as like sugar. I mean, could you imagine someone trying to do obese on.

You ever shoot on sugarcane? Right. Yeah.

I mean, one soda. One soda is like eight feet of sugarcane.

Right. It's like my jaw is tired. And you get through like, you know, a tiny little chunk of sugar cane which is the equivalent of like half a teaspoon of sugar.

Or you find honey, which is pretty concentrated form, but you have to get through bees.

Yeah. A tree. It's messy, it's sticky, it's a little bit different. We came out. I always find that dose corn syrup.

Don't you guys find that crazy fascinating though, that, that the. How it's all been put on the earth as it is. And then now as we've manipulated and changed all this over the. Now we have all this disease and stuff.

The two beliefs are you have the creationism. Yeah. You have the creationist belief, which is, you know, God put them on earth that way. Then you have the evolutionary, you know, belief, which is we evolved. Co evolved with all these compounds and plants and stuff. And so it just works better that way because that's how we co evolved or both. Right. But.

Right. Dr. It's an art and a science though, because a lot of these things that we're talking about, like say isolating processed sugar from sugar cane or some other Sweetener and then concentrating, that we know that that produces, you know, insulin insensitivity and oxidation with the high blood glucose in the bloodstream and all these side effects. But there are other compounds that you concentrate and we get a great deal of benefit. Right. It's like the St. John's Wort thing, right. Like, I'd love to have a really good SSRI dopamine and serotonin precursor I could have around, but I'm not going to keep a bunch of bushels of St. John's Wort in my pantry. So some is good and some isn't.

There. There's. The ways that we used to concentrate, things were different, though. Like if you were, you would make a tincture or. And it's just not the same as when you go in a laboratory, extract it. And it's just on a whole nother level. I mean, they can reach concentrations with. In laboratories that would be virtually impossible with old methods.

Absolutely. I mean, have you guys ever done like synthetic 5 Meo DMT?

No.

I mean, you know, you can go to the Sonoran Desert and hunt down a toad and catch it and isolate everything or lick the toad or however you're going to get that extract. Or I mean, you can order for pennies on the dollar from a website like Lysergy. You know, 5 Meo DMT that's synthetically created, that's incredibly concentrated and that's essentially the same molecule.

Is that the. That's a, that's a powerful psychedelic, right?

It is.

Wow. Now, in that form, when it's synthetic and that concentrated, there's a toxicity issues, Right. People can die from and it lasts.

A really long time.

Really?

Yeah, There's a lot of DMT derivatives and, you know, if you were to inhale dmt, you know, typically the responsible way to do it, and I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not a shaman, believe it or not. But from, from what I understand and what I've experienced, the way to do is you take Ayahuasca and then leading into the, the dmt, you've already kind of primed the punts in terms of prime the pumps, in terms of the, the MAOA inhibitors that the Ayahuasca is giving you. And then when you take an inhalation of dmt, when you take a hit of dmt, you know, it hits you really quickly and in your happy place for 10 to 15 minutes and then, you know, trips over and, you know, you're still, still kind of, kind of journeying for a little while afterwards. But like something like 5 Meo DMT that hits you and stays with you for God knows how long, depending on. On how much you took and how pure it was.

It's funny, I was just on. I was on online the other day and there was this video of this kid who was smoking synthetic thc, the synthetic cannabinoids. They actually sell these. They call them like spice or something like that. And this kid was. He took like two hits. He did. He had a gravity bong, which I haven't seen in. In years. Have you seen. You've seen those, right? And he took like two big hits off of that thing and he lost his mind. Like, it was. It was a scary thing to watch. Poor guy. Really, really freaking out and probably didn't end up very well. And there's been deaths associated with these synthetic cannabinoids. You try doing that with cannabis in its natural form. You can't. You can't kill yourself. You could try. I know people have tried to smoke too much.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, and I take CBD now, CBD is just one of my favorite molecules. And I'm not that into THC. Like, I use THC maybe two or three times a week, but CBD, I mean, I'll sometimes take a good 50 to 60 milligrams before bed and sleep. Like, that's actually my. My sleep combo is. I take.

We gotta. We gotta introduce you to Ned. Then we just actually hooked up as for a sponsorship with them. Really, really like that company.

Yeah, they do full spectrum hemp extracts. But, you know, because you're seeing that a lot now in the market, right? CBDs become the new thing.

Thorne has a new hemp extract. And I actually have to be careful because I talk about CBD and you guys know how it works in the podcasting industry. You talk about something and everybody comes out of the woodwork. Right. But, you know, full disclosure, you know, I do some advising with Thorne and help them with their supplement development. And so I have, you know, basically financial ties to Thorne as one of their affiliates and their advisors. Same thing with this other company called Bio CBD out of California. You know, I help them with their formulas, I'm an investor in their company.

You know, they. So here's the thing with the market now with cbd. I just read a report with these independent researchers who went and tested a lot of these hemp extracts. And what they found was many of them had very little cannabinoids at all. And what they'll say in the bottle is like pure hemp extract. Some of the companies will have some and that's why we like Ned was because they actually will list the concentrations of the different cannabinoids. And you want what you do, you do want a total plant extract. Although CBD is the one that we know now provides all these benefits, it actually works better when it's, when there's other cannabinoids present. And they're finding now some of these other cannabinoids are very fascinating like cbc. Cannabichromium I think is the name, has been shown to grow new brain cells. It's actually been shown in animals. Yeah, in animals. Very, very fascinating stuff.

So similar to like a psilocybin or a lion's mane or any of these other neurogenesis based compounds.

You know, I don't know if they work in the same way because I know that those are all tryptamine based molecules. But they did some studies with some cats and that's what they found. So there's no human studies. Really smart cats. No, it's, it's really, it's really, really fascinating stuff. The thing about CBD that really fascinates me is because we've only identified two cannabinoid receptors. Right. The CB1 and CB2.

Right.

One is much more prevalent in your, you know, the peripherally and the other one is much more prevalent in your brain.

Yes.

CBD doesn't attach to either one.

Right.

It doesn't attach to either one of them.

Allosteric modulator of those two different receptors.

That's the theory. Right. And yes, it helps you use your own endocannabinoids better. And this is why I like that. Here's, here's something a lot of people aren't talking about because cannabis is so popular now. You use a lot of cannabis or cannabinoids or THC in particular that really lock down and hammer onto the, you know, CB1 and CB2 receptor. Like anything, if you use a lot of it, those receptors downregulate. And because your body creates its own endocannabinoids, you could be getting your body to produce less of its own cannabinoids and being, you know, start to create kind of this cycle where you're, now your body produces less, you have lower receptors now you have to use more THC to get the same effect or even just to keep yourself, you know, normal.

Right.

CBD doesn't do that. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that actually maybe upregulate cannabinoid the two cannabinoid receptors. So it's really, really fascinating. But I do, I do wanna, you know, I'm very careful because now what we're seeing in our space, especially in the muscle building space, there's fucking cbd, protein, cbd, pre workouts, they're dusting on everybody.

I've gotten, I actually have back home, I got a bunch of packets. I forget what company sent them to me, but it's like cbd, it's got some caffeine. It's like a pick me up. I've always found my own personal response to CBD to be that it settles me down. I don't like to take it before because it decreases stress to the point where I just, you know, I'm a little bit too easygoing.

Do you have.

Now this is also why a lot of ultra runners and trail runners will use cbd because you just put on your deep house. They want to chill. Yeah.

Are you. How sensitive are. Because I see you whenever we hang out, which I love hanging out with you by the way. But every time we hang out, I'll see you drinking, you know, coffee or caffeine. You seem to have a pretty high tolerance for stimulants.

Yeah.

Would you say you do?

Well, I grew up on freaking espresso. Okay. My dad was a gourmet coffee roaster and repaired espresso machines. My parents were not too clued in to nutrition, to biochemistry, or to healthy eating in general. Meaning that for example, I would consume the equivalent of almost a gallon. Of what? You know, the big plastic gallon jugs that you get from the grocery store of 2% milk. Just crappy commercial cow's milk. And every night I would go to bed with a stomachache and my parents thought I just had a really bad case of the stomach flu. All the time they would give me antibiotics and I get and medications and I go to the doctor and you know, it turns out later on I found that I have a pretty severe lactose intolerance. You think, I love you, mom, dad, but you'd think somebody would think about that back then. Yeah. And same thing with coffee, right? Like, I would easily do like six, seven shots of espresso when I was 12 years old.

Holy shit.

Just throwing that stuff down. Now granted, and actually related to the BDNF thing, I want to come back to that because there's kind of an interesting genetic factor here. But I am a very fast coffee oxidizer, genetically in and out of my system.

I'm slow I'm a very slow caffeine oxidizer. I have a whole new means to.

Put it in though.

That's good.

That's true. I process it slowly. So for me caffeine can be edgy. And so when I combine it with cbd, best combination of all time. I get the elevation from the caffeine. I don't get the edginess. And CBD or cannabinoids also change how the liver actually metabolizes caffeine. And I'm not quite sure. So I read an article. I mean I don't remember exactly what the article said, but it said that there may be some benefit to combining the two for some people. I think I'm one of those people. It's one of the best combinations.

Yeah. L Theanine, you know, you put 200 milligrams of L theanine, tulsi and astragalus are two compounds that four sigmatic is blending with their instant coffee blend. Now love that company and same thing, you drink that coffee and you get just this kind of, kind of stabilized non jittery energy from the coffee but it lasts longer. So yeah, Theanine, astragalus, tulsi. I have not tried CBD and caffeine.

But I love it. You could also do grapefruit seed extract. What's that compound in there? It's N, I, A G, something like that. Anyway, it's grapefruit seed extract will actually slow down the rate at which you get rid of caffeine. So for someone like you, if you want it to last longer or stronger. Yeah, you could take grapefruit.

That's the interesting thing about. Great. That's what people tell you. Don't take grapefruit juice with, with medication.

Yes, it'll. It'll get the blood concentration too high.

Right.

Increases the half life, I think.

Yeah, exactly.

Pretty, pretty.

Medications can do damage if you take them with grapefruit juice.

Now you were talking about coffee. I see your, I was just going.

To pull that out.

Coffee right here in front of me. So replacement. Now put that next to the thc.

Let's talk, just talked about that.

Let's talk about your, your, your supplement company for a second. Not because I'm trying to plug anything, but I'm very curious how well it's doing. What is the process of starting a supplement company and getting that going? Because I've always, I've always been curious about that. I've always been curious about. Oh, you know, maybe I want to put some together, sell some but it feels like such a monster. Well, is it a monster? Was it just a big, massive endeavor to get going with that?

I want to reply to that question, but I want to close one loop, if I may do it, and that's that part about bdnf, because I mentioned genetic testing and I recently found this out, that 23andMe doesn't actually test for all the SNPs and actually tests for a pretty small amount of them. And so I got tested up in Canada and I tested both of my twin 10 year old boys too. And we got all of our data back. And it turns out that all three of us guys produce very low levels of endogenous bdnf. We possess a gene that makes us lower in that miracle grow for the brain.

Interesting.

And so now my kids are drinking lion's mane tea before school. They're doing the infrared sauna three times a week because sauna is another way to increase bdnf. They're not fasting because I don't think fasting is all that great for highly metabolic kids. Yeah, yeah, wait for the social workers to show up. But I'm doing a lot more attention to fasting and some amounts of calorie restriction.

What are some of the side effects or potential negatives of having low levels of endogenous bdnf?

Is that increased risk of dementia later in life? Yeah, increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's earlier in life. Just not having your cognitive performance as high as you would want. I mean, we found all sorts of things.

You're not as smart as you could be. Get the fuck out of here. Well, no. Oh, shit.

Long term, it could come back. And I found out a few other interesting things too. Like we, none of us boys possess the gene that allows you to produce vitamin D in response to sunlight. Oh, shit. I get a ton of sun. You know, even when I was an Ironman triathlete, I'd be out in the sun for like eight hours a day. And now I take my shirt off and I go outside and you know, I'm in my backyard naked a lot of the time. I get a lot of sun and I got a drone. I love it. And obviously I'm getting all the circadian rhythm benefits and the near and far infrared benefits. But it turns out that there's a reason that despite me doing that, my vitamin D levels when I test are always like 30 to 50 max. Right? And you'd expect my levels to be like at least 50 and maybe close to 70 or 80. And so now, same thing, my kids are supplementing with vitamin D. I'm taking a vitamin D, vitamin K blend. And so this thing about genetics, it's just like a fascination of mine of late because I've got this 50 page report that I'm going through that's highlighting all these things I didn't even know about my body and also my kids. It's kind of fun to be able to see how I can help my kids to live a better life, to be smarter or to detox better or to have higher levels of vitamin D for their bones or their teeth.

Now, do you ever think to. Because sometimes I wonder. Right, so let's say you will use the example of the bdnf, right? You naturally have low endogenous levels of bdnf. But what if there's this genetic variance that goes along with it that we don't know to test for where your, your body is adapted or at least it knows how to use the low levels optimally and increasing it beyond that may be detrimental. You know what I'm saying? What if there's something like that because.

I start to get brain cells coming out my ears? Yes. You know, too smart. I see what you're saying. Yeah. I wonder, what if it would be.

A steep cliff, you get brilliant and then it just dives off. Would you rather that or would you rather be like the average IQ for your entire life?

Oh man.

What would be worse? Being brilliant and then a steep fall off or like an average IQ your whole life?

That's actually my concern too. And I realize I'm completely ignoring your question. I'll get to it.

Yeah, we'll get to it.

When we were talking about the upregulation of CB1 or CB2 receptors or desensitization in response to heavy THC use, the same thing scares me when it comes to what seems to be the darling of the fitness or the health industry right now, and that's specifically either synthetic smart drugs or psychedelics. Same thing. You get this huge flooding of the synaptic cleft with dopamine and serotonin, and depending on the supplemental lot of these ampokines like Ritalin that people are using, norepinephrine, and you see an increasing need for a lot of these neurotransmitters, increased sensitivity, a need for increasingly higher dosages. I got on the psychedelics bandwagon for a while. I was doing the every three days dose with psilocybin and doing the weekly microdoses of lsd. And I'm a lot less, I guess, infatuated with those compounds now, just based on my hunch that it can create some pretty significant, specifically like a dopamine insensitivity. Right. If you have an insensitivity to dopamine, that's not good, and you're not feeling good when you have sex or when you eat a chocolate bar or, you know, anything else that you might just need more and more of to feel good. That's kind of a serious issue.

Yeah, I think we have it. We have a tendency, people, humans in general have a tendency to find something powerful and fascinating and then abuse the shit out of it. That's what we do. And I think that's what's happening right now with a lot of these.

Don't you think?

That's how we also naturally evolved. And we need that, though, don't you think? It's necessary to swing the pendulum?

We need survival mechanisms where equipment, the tribe is starving and oh, hey, there's honey in the tree. Let's eat as much honey. Sid Richards. We can fucking shove the bullet because, you know, who knows, we might see honey again. And now we live where you can go buy giant mason jars full of honey at Whole Foods and eat as much as you want. And all of a sudden there's. There's kind of this ancestral backfiring mechanism.

Yeah, I think that's our. So back to, back to. What is that? What was that like? Getting it started and then I want to know how did you source it.

And all that, kind of go into.

Detail your decision making with it and.

How well is it doing now? Because you've had it now for you went live with it. How long ago? Wasn't that long ago, right?

Oh, it's already been eight months. Almost a year. I think it's. Coming up on almost a year. We launched with several, several flagship products, right? So we had a colostrum for the gut, oregano for the immune system, something called Flex, which is this joint support compound that's just got everything in it that you'd need for tart, cherry and ginger and turmeric, and one of those shotgun formulas for the joints, skin serum. And frankly, a lot of compounds that I had already either private labeled or worked with other companies to create for me and was selling under Greenfield Fitness Systems. And a few years ago, I made the decision that rather than having my name tied to a company and having a company rely upon me as the face and name, you know, despite me still being, you know, one of one of the prime kind of, kind of, you know, faces and names. For Keon, I didn't necessarily want to be burdened with the idea of my entire company being dependent upon me being dependent on a key man. That whole like if I get hit by a bus type of thing.

That's some serious foresight because it takes a little bit of. You have to have a pretty healthy, comfortable ego because the opposite tends to happen. People want to be the face of everything, right?

Exactly. I don't have a deep desire, at least when we talk about the supplements industry to be like the Tony Robbins or the Tim Ferriss or somebody who knows you based on your name versus knows you based on your product and your brand. As an author, my dream is to continue to be known for my nonfiction books. And my goal by the time I'm 50 is to have a best selling five part fiction, fantasy fiction series. And for those type of things, I absolutely want people to know my name. I want them to see new book came out by Ben Greenfield, go buy this book. But with Keon, I couldn't care less if people know whether or not I'm the CEO or the founder. My role right now there is, I am behind the scenes developing formulations and that's what I love to do. So what we have are formulators who we work with who go out and find the raw ingredients, the best ingredients or the ingredients that we want to put into a compound and then those are produced. They're manufactured in a CGMP facility or we're private labeling or white labeling certain supplements from companies or even having them modify those before they send them to us. Or we're partnering with companies like Thorne because I have a lot of athletes that follow me and I want something that is either NSF certified or TGE certified or is super duper clean. I mean, that's very expensive for me to do. Let's say the colostrum I get from a small goat farm in western Washington, you know, it's wonderful. Grass fed, grass finished, organic goats and the product is amazing. But that's a very spendy process for me to NSF certify that. So I'd rather have some options. So then show up in their drug.

Tests and all that.

Right. So we've partnered with Thorne. If you, if you buy a product from Thorne and you look at the label of any of the products I've partnered with them on and a lot of people don't realize this, you see a Keon logo on all the Thorne supplements and that's Because I've chosen to partner with them for some of the things. I want to have NSF or TGE certified.

So how long of a process was it getting to getting your own brand together and then finally being able to launch it? Did that take a while?

Yeah. Well, you. Can I ask you?

It was about two and a half years.

Oh, wow. Okay.

I mean, in terms of me making that decision and then developing the logo, I mean, internally we follow a certain. Like a book called Traction where we use their document. They also have a wonderful book called Rocket Fuel Eosys Eosystems. We follow their entire formula for a few reasons. First, my operations manager is. He would be considered the executor in the whole Rocket Fuel type of relationship, whereas I'm the visionary. I say I want this to happen or hey, these are the last eight books I read on mitochondria. And this is currently what we're in the middle of. I want to create a full formula that's got PQQ D, ribose, coenzyme Q10, magnesium, full vitamin B complex, if we can afford it and if it makes sense in the supplement, if the price point is right, can we put nicotinamide riboside in there? And I go through everything that I want in the ultimate supplement and many times I'm scratching my own itch. I'm like, I want this supplement so I can take it in the morning. There's got to be at least a thousand other people who would use something like this. And then he goes to our team and works with the formulators, works with the manufacturers, works with our team who runs the warehousing facility in Salt Lake. And then we've got a whole marketing team now we have a social media team, we have a customer support team that's a monster. And most the lion's share of our team is based out of Boulder. Right. So we have a brick and mortar offices in Boulder and then we do a ton of our work on. On, excuse me, Slack is the two main apps that I use to run the team is Slack and Voxer. Just because Voxer allows you to do very high bandwidth audio communication and play it at two to four times speeds the same way. So I coach nine people who I just help out with their health, their sleep, their heart rate variability, their diet, their training. So I still do some personal training online. And for these people we use, they use Voxer, right? So anytime my clients talk to me, it's on Vox.

What's the, what's your, I guess your most Popular product. And is it, is it something that's gotten a pretty good response now or.

You're right now the bar, I mean. And that was.

We eat the shit out of those.

Don'T last long in here.

Yeah, yeah, I keep them. So I quit buying cacao nibs. I keep the bar in the freezer. And my favorite thing is a frozen kion bar. I'll eat that as dessert after lunch. I like to sprinkle it on top of halo top ice cream for like a, like a dessert in the evening. Like you sprinkle on some cinnamon roll or some chocolate peanut butter cup or oatmeal cookie flavored halo top. It's just bomb. We eat it. So yeah, what I wanted to do was make, make a real food bar that wasn't ketogenic and that wasn't like some greasy oily thing that you pull out of a wrapper, but that instead just tasted like real food. Almost like a healthy trail mix in a, in a bar form.

Speaking to ketogenic, I have a question for you because another big trend that we're seeing in fitness, and we called this a while ago, is exogenous ketones. And everything, everything's got ketones. And we were talking to Rob Wolfe a while ago and he brought, he posed some pretty interesting questions and he said, you know, we don't really know what the effects on the body are long term when you have the presence of ketones with, you know, full glycogen stores. Because that doesn't really happen. It does in nature. Unless you're diabetic.

Oh, no.

Or maybe at that level.

Our ancestors ate organ meats. You know, liver, liver has extremely high endogenous levels of beta hydroxybutyrate. If you consume organ meats, a lot of times, you know, you have, you know.

Now is it the same liver?

I don't know that with meat. And so is that as high as.

Like when you would supplement with like 7 grams of beta hydrate, Is that the same?

I don't know what the levels would be. Okay, but you take another scenario. You're in a fasted state, you're hunting, your endogenous ketone levels are high. Your ancient man who's looking at your ketone pee strip ketones, have your breath ketone monitor out there just to make sure you're at 1 millimolar or above. Otherwise you're not gonna be able to go out on your hunt. And then you come across a, kill an animal and you're gonna eat a bunch of protein. You're gonna stop and get the honey out of the tree, right, and eat a bunch of honey. And automatically by shoving all those nutrients in your body, you're putting glucose on top of relatively high amounts of endogenous ketones. And I don't see that it flies in the face of an ancestral mechanism. And furthermore, when you look at something especially like a ketone ester and to a lesser extent a ketone salt, there's some really cool things that those things do to the NF kappa B pathway in terms of mitigating inflammation. They act on the mitochondrial membrane to enhance the function of the electron transmission.

Are you coming out with a ketone supplement, Ben? Is that what you're doing?

No, it's coming hot. So one of the products that I was interested in developing, and if you guys want more of kind of like the opening of kimono on Kion, this is related to that. Because I'm not going to develop this now, I don't think was. I wanted to do kind of like a ketone supplement that was a complete ketone meal, but that also included amino acids, your full vitamin complex, ketone salts and some type of flavoring, a little bit of protein and a little bit of MCT oil. So it'd just basically be a powder. That would be everything that you'd need, a full meal with all your vitamins and nutrients and everything in a keto form. But what I've decided to do with Kion is to quit going after all these long tail concepts and to instead provide people with what they need to almost like satisfy this whole Maslow's hierarchy of needs or the things that I know are really big pain points for people. What would those be? Sleep hormone Balance basics. Longevity. Your joints. Right. We've got five or six different needs that we are creating flagship formulas for, like that longevity formula I began to describe, which longevity is almost synonymous with mitochondrial support. Right. And so that's where I'm steering Keon now is towards formulas that allow someone to say, open their cupboard and you've got six different supplements and that's it. You're not going to the four corners of the planet to fill in the gaps with this and that. And GUT is another one that we're working on now.

Is this because of the market response and market research and finding that, okay, if I make this super specific, insane supplement, you know, I'm really limiting myself to a very, very small audience.

Exactly. You have to create.

You were thinking too much about yourself.

Yeah, exactly. You have to create a high number of skus. Right. And have like a hundred skus that you're selling a pretty decent amount of. Or you need to have a huge following in that one tiny specific sector that you're starting to target. Like say, you know, a ketone meal. So I instead want to have like, my dream would be you go to Kion and. And there's only like seven or eight SKUs. That's it. There's not this huge shopping bag full of supplements.

We've learned that lesson with our podcast where sometimes we get really deep in the weeds because that's what we want to talk about, because we've been doing this for so long. And then we'll do an episode that's like, how to work your hamstrings in the best way possible. And just people download and share it like crazy.

Number one. We forget about that.

Totally.

Yeah. I mean, you know, elephant in the room. We're talking about books just before this. Right. And it was like, you know, we weren't making fun of it, but we were kind of, kind of critiquing it.

Yeah.

Critique it. Oh, you know, don't snack too much to elevate your metabolism because that's a myth, you know, or it turns out that saturated fats might not be bad for you. And you know, we're kind of laughing. Like, it's so basic, it's so element. But honestly, that that's what a lot of people want to hear or need to hear. Yeah. Or need to hear. Haven't been exposed. If your goal. Now on the flip. Flip side, though, ironically, I'm writing a book right now and it's on these really cutting edge concepts in terms of longevity and biohacking and energy medicine. All these things that would be considered pretty far out, far fetched. Woo. Woo. Biohacking stuff. That's gonna be. It's gonna be a big. Excuse me. 500 page, 8 1/2 by 11 hardcover style Costco book with a $60 price point. I mean, it's not something that the masses are gonna buy. We talked about in your magazine article.

That you just recently did with. Was that Outdoor magazine or something like that?

Outside, Outside, Outside in a big difference. I don't know if there is.

Yeah, well, yeah, maybe there is.

Probably just offended them. What did I talk about in that?

I. I don't remember.

I was asking.

I just remember your pretty face on the COVID So.

Yeah, that's fine. That was a fun photo shoot that took me to this loft in LA near Culver City and they had like you walk into this loft, and they literally have a whole room the size of your studio for people listening. This is a big studio. You know, how many. What is this, like, 500 square feet?

Maybe a little bit more than that. 600 or so, I'd say.

Yeah.

And it's just like, stacked with, like, all these hangers with clothing. Like, literally 6,000 bucks worth of clothing in this room. And then you walk into another room, there's camera equipment, another room, and they've got camera equipment set up there. I mean, they. They just plan this photo shoot out to the tee, and they've got you, you know, wardrobe and hair cutting and different lotions on your face. I mean, they go to. Dude, he was blue.

Steel heart. Did you guys see that?

Yeah, I did.

That's your handsomest.

And then they finished up with almost an hour of shooting in the cold tank like that. The front cover photo of Outside magazine is. Is me with my face in ice while I was laying in an ice tub. And they would take a bunch of photos. I get up, I drive myself off. They're like, okay, round two. We need to do some different photos, different angle. You know, they gotta. They gotta quit shooting and go through all the photos to see if they've got the shadows and the angle and the clarity that they want. They throw you back in the ice tub, and, damn, it was quite the process.

And it was real ice.

Feels like torture.

It was a real ass ice tub. So you have fake ice?

Well, I mean, they do fake weights for.

You know, and then they put dry ice in it, too, so you get, like, the smoke kind of coming. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's clever.

That's nice.

I don't want you. I don't want to leave the key on talk because I actually. How much of the backside will you share? I mean, you've already alluded to using eos, but what about, like, will you. Will you share with us kind of, like, how much. How much it takes to even start something that big? Like, how much capital did you need and partnerships and Runway time to actually turn it into where it's green, like, and is it. Is it green yet?

And I just took on 100k from a friend of mine. I invest in a lot of different health and fitness companies. Like, I mentioned that CBD company. I've invested in some bone broth companies. My portfolio is kind of growing in terms of fitness and nutrition and supplement companies. And I have an LLC that I co run with another guy who's like my investment partner, and he's got more cash than I do. So a lot of times in some of these investments, he'll bring cash to the table and I'll bring more of my influencer and affiliate stack to the table. And usually I'll put in for an investment like 10 to 20k. And so we partner up, we invest in a company, and then I do my best to ensure that that company really does a good job. I do advising for the company to make sure that. That. That the CEO is getting their questions answered or I'm able to help them fill in holes in the market, stuff like that. But this guy who I run this with, he wanted to invest in Kion and he's also on the board of Kion. I've got five people on the board of Keon who are. They're smart and savvy in the business world. They built big companies, they're savvy at raising money, those type of things. So 100,000 is how much I've taken on. But that was just in the past few months. And that was primarily for the bar. Like, the bar was just so popular, we had to get more bars in stock and just didn't have the amount of cash flow necessary to buy enough raw ingredients and product to make that happen. So that's all that we've taken on. Everything else, I personally financed. I mean, I literally financed everything myself.

And are you in the green? Are you still working back to be, even for how much you've invested in it?

We are. We're in the green.

Wow. Less than a year.

Nice. Yeah, we are. From what my CFO told me about, and this was when we were about nine months in, we were at the same growth curve of what he sees in companies that have been around for three years. So I think a big part of that was I just kind of had a platform. It's not like we were a traditional startup.

Right.

I had a bit. You know, I have 100,000 people on my email list, and we have a lot of podcast downloads. And so going into the launch of Kion, we had pretty good traction to start with. And then frankly, and this is what I tell a lot of people in the fitness industry who are just getting started, you know, fledgling personal trainers or people who want to start a supplements company, or people who want to be like, a nutritionist or an author, whatever, relationship capital is huge.

Oh, my gosh. That's everything. I mean, that's old business, that's old business knowledge. Never changed.

Going out, like the book Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazi. Going out to conferences, boots on the ground, flesh and blood interaction, talking to people in the back hallways, having a glass of wine at the bar, and really almost just like working the industry in terms of relationships and in terms of Rolodexes. And probably half my Rolodex is, hey, which bar are we going to go to after this? Let's meet up. Oh, hey, what's your number? And you put the number in the phone, but then maybe a month later, you're actually doing business. You know, you're not drinking and not. Not. I don't want to sound like a lush. You guys know me.

That's kind of how we met, though. We met the first time. I think we hung out over a Moscow mule.

Exactly. But it's relationship capital. A lot of people think it's like cold call emails and, you know, virtual.

Masterminds or asking people for favors right away. You got to build that relationship first, right?

Exactly. You want. You want to go out and throw down a good workout with somebody at the gym or go out to the bar after a conference or just like. Like skip a bunch of talks when you're at some friendly hand job, hang out in the hallway. That's like a back row. That's a big part of Kion, too, is I literally have a spreadsheet that's essentially like a virtual Rolodex with the names of over 300 influencers, most of whom you'd probably be familiar with their names in the fitness industry, but it's their number, their address to receive free product, their phone number. So if my COO emails me and tells me, hey, you should text so and so and let them know if they want to send out a quick tweet about this bar launch, you know, so that kind of relationship capital is. Is huge. It's. It's how you grow exponentially.

Was that part hard for you or was that easy for you? That. That part of the business? Just knowing you, I think you're a personable individual, but knowing how you grew up and we've hung out so many times, you know, you were. You did a lot of things.

Say it. I'm socially awkward. Well, he's like. He's all nice about it right there.

Just fucking say it, bro.

I've already admitted it. Well, I don't think you are, but then again, I may be. So who knows? But was that a hard part for you? Or is that something you had to develop, or was that easy?

It is not hard for me to talk to people. It's harder for me to ask for favors. I don't like to feel like I owe people something. And frankly, you do. I mean, if I call in a favor for somebody, then I know that down the road I'm going to be. The industry term is mailing out for them or returning the favor by featuring something they send me in, a tweet or an Instagram. There's some of that that goes around. Now, granted, for people listening in who think that this is all just folks buying each other off and bribing. That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is products that are amazing that you like and you getting the word out to people about high quality ethical products, but using other people's channels to do so because you're friends with those other people because you've made smart business moves to develop relationships.

Well, here's the bottom line. If you're, if you're Ben Greenfield, people are probably throwing ideas at you all the time, every day, all the time. And at that point, when you're getting that much stuff thrown at, you just don't listen. You don't listen to anybody. So making relationships becomes important because someone gets to know you, they like you, and then they'll listen. Okay, well, let me hear what you have to say at that point. Now, you still have to have a good idea, you still have to have a good product. The person still has to believe in what you're doing for them to, you know, want to connect and promote your thing. But that relationship is what opens the door. And if you don't open the door, then, especially with influencers, good luck, they're not gonna listen.

Which, by the way, I'm gonna put you majorly on the spot because, yes, Brianna told me, remember, to ask this. And we're talking about Kion. For the event. We want to be able to have cups of coffee being brewed the entire.

Time pod Hard event in Tahoe. Yes, yes.

So if you could be the coffee that is supplied to all the. All the podcasters that will be podcasting, I would love that.

Yes, absolutely. I would love that, too. And of course, the way I run my business is, is I then say, I don't know. Here's my partner's team. I ruthlessly guard my time. And, yeah, I do the same thing. Right.

I respect that.

You guys do a good job at this, too. For example, when we wanted to schedule this podcast that we're recording right now, you know, I texted you guys and told you I was going to be in, you know, San Jose, et cetera, et cetera. So you want to. You want to sit down and do an episode. But I think I got maybe like one text back from you guys after texting all three of you. And it was something like, katrina will be in touch or something like that. And then I pretty much don't hear anything for a while. But then I do the same thing on my end, right? So I have an assistant, I have an executive assistant named Penny on my end. And she just sends me the Excel spreadsheet two days before I fly out. And I look at it. It's like, oh, okay, I have a podcast with Mind Pump on on Friday at 2:30. And honestly, some people think that that would be stressful to kind of like be in the dark about what's going on behind the scenes with your way less stressful with your own schedule. But oh my gosh, like, even having something as simple as a virtual assistant in the Philippines, which was the first, I put a Craigslist on Manila. Really vanilla Philippines Craigslist ad. Back when I was trying to write and create my first, first ever triathlon product, right? And I needed this Excel spreadsheet created. How old are you?

How old are you?

This would have been 10 years ago. So I was 27. And I wanted a list of all the different triathlon clubs and triathlon coaches in the usa, along with the email addresses and phone numbers so that I could email them and offer them affiliate percentages of any sales that they generated from the triathlon training product that I created. But I knew that would be incredibly laborious for me. And I'm trying to write out these workouts and training plans and periodize everything. I'm trying to do what I do best. And what I do best is not research people's contact information and then like, one by one, insert the first name and send out the email to them and all. So I hired this.

Your time's better spent other places.

I hired this gal from the Philippines to do it. And, you know, and since then, over the past 10 years, I have rinsed, washed and repeated based on Gary Keller's book, which you can get for free on Amazon. One thing, you want to crush it at your one thing. And if there's any one thing that you also want to crush it at that you're not good at, you find an amazing person, you hire them, you add them to your team, and you have them crush it. They're one thing. And you rinse, wash, and repeat that. That's how I've built my entire company.

To your point of the relationships. I mean, we have somebody. I saw this opportunity in the podcast space when we first really started taking on sponsors because we're just now starting to see this flux of companies that are coming into the podcast space and starting like big companies dropping money now on podcasts and they really don't understand how it works. No one has any really good systems back and forth. So we actually have a position. This is what Rachel does for our company and that's all she does, is manage these relationships and we're making it so much easier for the sponsors. And on top of that, she's, she's coached by us or by me to touch these, all these sponsorships on a regular basis to let them know what's going on with their company and making sure that anything that they need or if they are rolling out something new with their business, that we're being informed so that we can communicate it. And I just didn't see a lot of people doing that. And because of that, we're like one of the highest performing podcasts for every one of our sponsors because we go that extra mile. And so that really pays off that, that understanding how important that relationship is in all aspects of the business.

Amazing. You know what you need to do next though is get like ass cheek implants and start your own separate Instagram account where it's pretty much you with the, with the featured sponsored products in a bikini by the edge of the pool.

That's just her.

I guess if you're a guy, Justin.

Doesn'T need the implants.

Calf implants. People. People don't realize how much those Instagram girls make, like just feature a product. I mean, I think they're doing like 5 to 10k one of them one time. Oh yeah.

You know what though? They have to have so many to make that much.

They don't have that big of an.

Impact and it's not a sustainable business model. I tell people this all the time. Like if you're chasing likes and followers in hopes that you're going to build a business and you, and you're chasing that so hard, you don't even really have a great product or you're not providing them a lot of value to someone's life. Even if you do cash out because you get to 2 million and then you start flipping T shirts or 20%.

Commission on supplements, then the question becomes, what are you gonna be proud of? Right? So Ryan Holiday, author of Ego is the Enemy, has this other book he followed it up with and now I'm embarrassed. Obstacle is the way. No, not Obstacle is the way. Another book about writing a really good book. Like writing your classic, writing your masterpiece, writing something you'd be proud of. I. Forget it.

Maybe it must be his newest one. Is that his newest one?

It's a Ryan Holiday. Maybe it's a Ryan Holiday article, but I could have sworn it's an actual.

Book because I was only familiar with Osceola's Way and the Ego is the Enemy.

Well, we'll find out. Steven Pressfield has some very similar ideas in his books like the War of Art, about creating a masterpiece. Something you're going to be really proud of. For me, this is my 100% focus on this book I'm working on right now. I've turned down publishers, I've turned down agents, people who want to get this thing to big New York publishing houses. Because I know that the kind of huge, life changing last book you'll ever need for health kind of book that I want to write is something that, like I mentioned earlier, it's not going to be like that popular book that's going to be potentially something you see in airport bookstores. But I want to create something not only with Kion, but also with my books that I can stand by and be very proud of. And if you build your entire business around some Instagram account where you're featuring products and getting paid 5k for whatever, A, that's. It's difficult to be proud of that as a life changing business. And B, what are you gonna do when you're, you know, 70 years old and wrinkled?

I don't think it's an empty well. I also don't think it's gonna last very long. I don't think it's gonna be. I think it's popular right now because it's so fresh and so new and it works.

Oh, perennial.

Perennial seller. Yeah. Sorry, Adam.

No, no, all good. I wanted to know what it was anyways.

Perennial seller. Yeah, 2017.

Oh, it's. It's a newer one.

There's also a big. There's also a massive, massive risk in terms of your own sanity when you so strongly identify with your appearance and how you look and how sexy you are. Because at some point that's going to change. At some point you're going to age like you said. And I know you make the joke. What are you gonna do in your 70? You know, here's all the evidence you need. Look at, look at all these celebrities who are reaching their 40s, 50s and 60s. The amount of plastic surgery and the Botox and the drug abuse and things that start to happen because you identify so strongly with your appearance and people love you for it. But then it goes away. And then what? Who are you and what are you? It is a very scary place to be.

The fastest triathlete on the face of the planet is gonna have joint degradation some point. Swimsuit Illustrated cover model is going to, according to pop culture standards, probably look like shit when she's 85, at least with her clothes off. And even, even the CEO who's ultra successful, which is kind of a different form of almost like a, you know, a potentially shallow thing that you could put too much trust in, you know, eventually that money's going to be gone and they're going to be laying on their deathbed, you know, or that money isn't going to be as important. And so I think even deeper than this, even deeper than building a business is just you, yourself, right? Building you. Rather than just focusing on the body or just focusing on biohacking the brain.

Actually focusing now in defense of people in defensive. People, though, that haven't reached the level of success that you're at right now. Much of them are in a different state right now where they're. It's survival still to make a level of income just to get by in this world and to make it and to be able to eat and do whatever they need to do, like, right?

You know, when you. You see very few people on there deathbed saying, I wish I'd made more money. Of course I had more time in my business. I wish I had more time with family. I wish I had slowed down to smell the roses. I wish I had. You know, you hear people talking about, like, meditation and visualization, all these things that we never remember to do until we slow down. And those are the things that you regret not doing later on in life. And those are all the spiritual practices, Right? What are the spiritual practices? Fasting, gratitude, meditation, belief in a higher power, some kind of devotional reading or something that betters your soul or your spirit. The website the Art of Manliness, which is a great website, they have a shout out to Brett McKay, who runs that website. They have a really good series on the spiritual disciplines, and many of them.

Revolve around some form of abstaining or abstinence in something.

So whether you're very stoic, that's right.

Either you abstain from food or from sex or from electronics or from something you find that There's a lot of, a lot of growth because whatever you have trouble abstaining from is probably something you're using to distract yourself with.

Right.

And so there's a lot, there's a lot that comes from that.

And then we look at the actual effect that that does have biologically. Right. We know that we don't have to kick this horse to death, but fasting has a profound impact on mitochondrial health and on longevity and on that BDNF that we were talking about earlier. We know that meditation decreases plasma and salivary cortisol and also can increase bdnf, a gratitude practice lowers blood pressure and reduces hospital visits. I mean, it's amazing how much of this stuff has biological crossover for people who, who actually are still mostly interested in their body and their health and maybe aren't even that interested in their spirits, still has an impact.

I was talking to somebody who I know who's in the fitness space, very much into fitness, understands abstaining from certain foods to maintain their health and fitness and all that stuff. But then they also have this opposite belief that. Or what seems to be, in my view, opposite, where, oh, you know, I'm here to enjoy things, so I'm just gonna sleep with as many people as I can and I'm gonna do all these different things. And it was funny to me that they couldn't, they didn't see that they were opposing. So I told him, I said, you know, I think you might find more meaning if you abstain from so much of that. He's like, no, we're supposed to be here to enjoy things. And we're just, we're monkeys. We're pleasure monkeys also. Whatever. I said, listen, I said it's no different. I said, it's no different than why you abstain from processed food. You do that because you notice it's better for your health and you obviously get more benefit worth more than the immediate pleasure of eating the, you know, hyper palatable food.

And that' swe talked about this a little bit on our last episode. We did the whole Chris Ryan Sex at Dawn thing.

Yeah.

And I mean, it is fucking hard to do that. I walked through the lobby of Rosewood Sandhill last night, you know, Thursday night, a bunch of rich stockbrokers hanging out in their beautiful women everywhere, right? And I'm walking through after dinner at 8:30. And you know, I'm gorgeous. I'm dressed to 9 and you're gorgeous. I've got my, I could see it right now. Got my clone on my Hair is slicked back. I'm not wearing my blue light blocking glasses. Maybe you're feeling I could have walked out within about 10 minutes with one or two beautiful women on my arms. And. And when I'm in that situation, I'm walking through that lobby, it is fucking hard for me. And I have to remind myself that what I have decided, the option that I have chosen is to build an amazing family to raise two young boys who are going to grow up to make this world a better place. To have a legacy that I create that I know could get really fucked up if I'm sleeping around and if I've got whatever jealousy and my wife is all of a sudden embittered and feels belittled and betrayed. Like there's a ton that you throw out the window for that temporary pleasure. And you know, it feels good. Don't get me wrong. I mean, that kind of shit is a lot of fun. But you know, I. To bring this down to even more just like more specific terms for people. I have a book on my bed stand. And it's amazing and it's one of the most incredible ways for me to continually remind myself about the importance and the magic of love and legacy and fidelity. And it's this book that is. It's thick. It's like 500 pages long. It's all the love letters between Winston Churchill and his wife.

Oh, wow.

They wrote themselves letters almost every day. And Winston traveled a ton and his wife was really busy too. And they didn't see each other a lot. And they were on the road a lot, you know, like this kind of like the modern traveling salesman kind of thing, except he was a politician, an orator and a warrior. And he would write these beautiful love letters to his wife and she would write letters back. And you see pictures of them holding hands. Power couple, change the world. Amazing legacy, amazing family and children that they created, but they were true to each other. And for me to just be at home and sometimes I'll thumb through that book before I head off on a trip where I know I'm going to have beautiful women thrown at me. And I'm going to be in that situation where all of a sudden that temporary gratification seems super, super interesting and really fun compared to leaving legacy and love.

Right? And I think a lot of people, you know, they think the only consequences that occur from. And we're focusing on sleeping around. But this is for anything. This is for anything in life that you, you know, becomes excessive. We think that, we know some people May think, oh, the consequences are my wife is going to find out and I'm going to get divorced, therefore I'm not going to do this. That's not the only consequence. Even if you didn't have those kinds of consequences, there is a lot of growth that comes from understanding how to abstain from, you know, indulging in all these types of senses. It's what's. It's what makes us human. It's why we're not animals. And, you know, we talk about the gift of consciousness. Well, you know, part of the gift of consciousness is knowing, you know, to not do those things or at least knowing that there's benefit to not doing those things. And like fasting, there's this. And we use. I'll use the word spiritual for lack of a better term. There's. There's a lot of return from that kind of stuff. It doesn't make it easy. In fact, the fact that it's hard is one of the reasons why you get so much out of it. Because if it was easy, then it would probably wouldn't get much out of.

It, which we have.

Doctor, I mean, sorry, one quick thing. In terms of what our friend Aubrey Marcus, who disagree with about 99% of what I just said, says about food, though, you know, it's temporary mouth pleasure, right? You're getting temporary mouth pleasure. But the long term is, you know, a whole bunch of ATP available to the mitochondria. So you get free radical leakage and, you know, increased longevity and oxidation and all these things that come along with punishing the pint of Ben and Jerry's, not Halo Top. Sorry, I interrupted you.

No, no, I already forgot my thought because now you got me thinking about how Aubrey would disagree with half of.

What we're saying right now.

I have something I want to ask you that was more related to. I know that a lot of your morals probably come back from the Bible, right? I believe that it sounds like a lot of what you talk about. And I'm really curious, with someone at your level of intelligence, when you learn something new about science, do you tend to go backtrack it into the Bible or do you read something in the Bible and then try and look for scientific stuff to support some of the lessons in it?

I'll give you an example. And it might not be a great example, but I'm going to give it. You see, one of the very first things created in the Bible was light. Light is a big one. Light is super important. It was like one of, like, it Wasn't trees that were made first. It wasn't like dirt that was made first. It wasn't even a human being that was made first. It was light. Right? And then we turn around and we look at the human body and we've always thought that the primary way with which cells communicate is neurotransmitters or hormones or the propagation of neurotransmission across the myelin sheaths. And it turns out that the primary way with which cells are communicate is biophotonic signaling. Right. We are literally light machines. That's how our cells actually communicate. It's also one of the nature of our body. Yeah, our body responds profoundly. As you guys know. You guys have talked to the folks at Joovv, infrared light and near infrared light and far infrared light and the effect that that has on the aqueous matrix around the cells, the effect that that has on the body, which is basically one big human battery. Well, when I see that type of signaling, then I look at the Bible and I see like one of the first, first things made was light. It just basically makes me think, well, on the totem pole of what I should really prioritize from a health standpoint. I should probably be thinking really damn hard about the light in my home and the light in my office and the light that I surround myself with that I'm traveling and whether or not I'm gonna put those blue light blocking glasses on and I've replaced all the lighting in my home with clear incandescent and red incandescent and created the perfect lighting scenario there and get out in the sunlight every day. I realize that doesn't directly answer your question, but in many cases I'll find something interesting and then almost like wonder in the Bible whether that's backed up. Then there's the nutrition piece too. There's a reason I'm not paleo. You look at the Bible, there's honey and milk and bread and all these things that are either vilified in our modern dogmatic calorie restriction, no fructose type of, type of environment, you know, things that are kicked under the bus. But you know, we see these type of things in the Bible, right? Like when you're, when you're rich and you're wealthy and you're crushing it in life and you're spiritually sound. In the Bible you're surrounded by honey, bread and milk and dancing virgins, you know. But yeah, it's very interesting how I think to a certain extent and then coming to full circle to where we started with cannabis and plants and St. John's wort. What was the very first job that humans had in the Bible? They were gardeners.

That's right.

The very first man, Adam, he was called to garden the earth and till the earth and take all those plants and all those trees. And it says everything was good. Weed is not bad, and St. John's Wort is not bad, and psilocybin mushrooms are not bad. You know, all of these things were created for our enjoyment and for us to actually learn how to garden and how to potentially make extracts of and tinctures of and. And so, yeah, I think there's a lot that we can learn from that.

Well, here's my, here's my take.

I'm laughing. Adam's trying to open. Then they became carpenters trying to open the Moxie's Mint thc.

Bro, are you kidding me?

It's probably found them. It's worth it once you get in. Here's a few things about those, those THC mints you're trying to open. Not only is it worth it because they put like ginkgo bilobi.

Doug, can you help me get scissors or something over there?

Ginseng and all sorts of little herbs in with the thc, but because they're packaged so much like that, you can't smell them if you're traveling with them.

Yeah, well, it's in like a super.

Vacuum sealed bag sniffed out by dogs. What are they, 5 milligrams? And also my kids aren't gonna open that tin and think it's Altoids.

That's right.

Toss three in the mouth.

You know, that's a big one. My take on the whole, like science and the Bible or spirituality is that there's, you know, there's, there's objective scientific truth, and I think there's, there's spiritual truth. And I, and I think they're just two different tools and you try to put them together. I think all those tools help explain life and help us move in a direction.

Before we had science, that's where that was science.

Religion was science before science.

I think it was, I think it was spirituality. I think science is its own thing. It does a very good job of what it's supposed to.

To do.

But here's a great example. I'll give you a great example. When people say we should just only have science and have. No, don't worry about objective like a moral code or don't have spirituality, you can't do that because science itself eliminates that. Science is only cause and effect. There is no is this right, is this wrong? So you need both of them. If scientists ruled the world and it was just a bunch of atheist scientists who didn't have any moral belief or anything based on anything that they learn, they would do a lot of tests and do a lot of shit just because they could, because that's what science tells you to do. There wouldn't be a, well, there's no need for morals. There wouldn't be like, hey, I'm gonna clone a bunch of humans. There wouldn't be someone saying, but should we? You know, I mean, I don't know if we.

Should we just do it right? You know, we have some kind of built in inherent morality that I think that sometimes science denies. But I do think that all of us kind of know what's good and what's bad. Like, despite science potentially arguing that we're all just here to survive on a giant rock floating through space to either fuck or survive or see who can live the longest time, I think that there's a little bit of a built in inherent morality that lends some amount of stability to culture. And I actually first came across this. I think it's the teachings of Aristotle in which he goes into a built in inherent morality. You know, one of these old philosopher dudes, I don't remember. I went to a classical Christian college for my first two years at University of Idaho. I was dually enrolled in a college called New St. Andrews, Wonderful institution down in Moscow, Idaho for a liberal arts education. I got kicked out for breaking the code of conduct. What'd you do multiple times? Pretty much everything that I could do to break the.

I mean, were you intentionally trying to get kicked out?

I was just, you know what, I was a horn homeschool Kid, K through 12. And once I got cut loose and into college, I committed every sin I could commit.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So you were a little rebel.

I went off the deep end in college for a while until I met my wife. I A, met my wife and B, decided I want to be a doctor. Those are the two things that straightened me out. But yeah, but for those first couple years I did go to this college and I learned a lot. And one of the things that you read are a bunch of these, like, what are we talking about?

Like upside down cake stands and running around naked. Like, what are you doing?

We're talking about getting drunk frequently, sleeping around a lot. I didn't use a lot of drugs aside from alcohol, so that was an issue for me. Frankly, I got into drugs and those got me out of alcohol.

So normal college kid stuff, just not.

At a Bible college. Normal college kid stuff, but the stuff that would very quickly get you kicked out of a Bible college where, as my mom said, who also went to a Bible college, you can't have home holes in the knees of your swimsuit, ladies. And nothing against that college. I think it's wonderful. And frankly, I think if you want to be a lawyer or an author, I think a liberal arts education is great. But I didn't do well at that school because I was not living a very upright life at the time. But one of the things that I learned at that school was that human beings do have. And philosophers and teachers have kind of built this into a lot of religious systems for a long period of time. We had like this inherent built in morality.

So, Ben, tell me, when you're. When you're hanging out with Aubrey and you guys couldn't have more polar opposite ideas when we. What we were talking about before, do you just bite your tongue or do you guys go back and have like a debate about it?

Probably just appreciate each other for whatever.

Honestly, Aubrey and I have never talked about open relationships or.

Oh, really?

I've. I've hung out with him and Whitney several times. Sorry. Whitney hung with him and Whitney, you know, a lot. We've gone hunting for a week together, you know, Hawaii.

You were together? Been down in Texas multiple times.

Yeah. And, you know, we've got another hunting trip coming up with a group of us, you know, again down in Hawaii. And we hang out a lot, but it's never something we've really even talked about. I mean, maybe part of it is it's pretty obvious with me as, you know, a father and extroverted as a devoted husband that, you know, it's just kind of not really something that is. Is on the table for me. But no, we've never really had a discussion.

It's probably like a mutual respect.

Kind of a boring answer. But we've never really talked. No, no.

I was just curious.

I just.

I actually figured that it would come up. I imagine that because you have done multiple trips, I thought for sure you'd be put in opportunities like that and maybe have to have a discussion. You never know. Like, I thought for sure you guys.

Have at least discussed it.

Like parties we weren't invited to, you know, those kinds of things.

Did we not invite you to a party?

That's just. You get these crazy parties.

Yeah. So you. When you did text us that you'd be in the area. It's because you have clients that you travel to and work with. And these are, I guess, executives like, you know, people who really want to work with Ben Greenfield. What kinds of things do people hire you for? Because I can assume and you don't have to say anything on air, but, but I'm assuming you don't cost what a personal trainer would charge you. Probably a very, very high fee, especially because you're flying from Washington to San Jose to work with someone or wherever. What are they hiring you for?

Yeah, you're just doing squats for an hour. I know that's usually learn how to make scrambled eggs. That's a big one because you need your protein for breakfast. Do a lot of bench pressing work on the chesticles, sometimes a bench pressing form and then how to sit in a sauna. Practice properly. Proper sauna, cold sauna, posture. No, typically there are, especially among wealthy, high achieving, hard charging executives, some pretty serious built in issues with specifically sleep, how to exercise and keep yourself in shape for things like golf or tennis without actually stripping away time for your business or in some cases your family or other hobbies. Alcohol mitigate. How do I go out to all these dinners and meetings and mitigate the damaging effects that alcohol might have? And a lot of times folks will just want to pick my brain about what I do in those type of scenarios. Blood and bio work or biomarker interpretation is a big one. A lot of these folks are willing to or have already paid the money for a complete blood panel, gut panel, some type of urinary hormone analysis, salivary genetic analysis, telomere evaluation. And they've already either started down the self quantification road or are very interested in it and they want somebody other than their kind of like ho hum, Western medical trained physician who's going to tell them, oh, cholesterol's high, get on statin to actually go through their blood work and their biomarkers with them and not only help them interpret those, but help them set up a customized diet and supplement plan. So what I do for all these clients is I sit down every week to every two weeks, typically on a Saturday, and I write out every workout they're going to be doing. They upload their travel, they upload where they're flying and when I program out everything they're supposed to be doing from an exercise standpoint, they pay me a monthly fee to do that. They all have an Instagram account that's a private Instagram account that they share with me. Where they take photographs of everything that they eat and same thing on the weekends I go through all their food, I leave comments, I adjust anything that needs to be adjusted. I have a meal plan that I deliver to them. That's not, it's not a very strict meal plan. It's basically like, okay, so it's probably.

Used, made to optimize their blood, your body.

Like here are your breakfast options, here are your lunch options, here your dinner options for home, for travel. A lot of them have chefs, a lot of them have nutritionists. So these are the types of, of things that they share with their chef or their nutritionist so that they can be eating according to their genetics, their blood, their biomarkers, et cetera. And then most of them either wear something like the OURA ring or use some other self quantification device. Some of them use an Apple Watch. You know, most of the time II go through air, light, water, electricity. If I'm visiting their home, we do a full walkthrough their home environment and by the time we've done that, most of them aren't using these wifi enabled self quantification devices like the Apple Watch. But some of them still have some of these older devices. But either way, whatever they're using to collect sleep and heart rate variability, I also analyze that each week and track how their sleep and their heart rate variability is corresponding to nutrition, to supplements, which I also set up customized and then exercise. So I'm essentially acting as the CEO of their health and I'm either coaching people like that or I'm doing one on one a la carte consultations where it's just, I'm not going to have you as my month to month coach, Ben, but you're going to work with me for you know, 60 minutes or 90 minutes. I'm going to fly in, have lunch with you and just pick your brain for an hour.

Well, I want to follow that up too because you also do consulting with like professional teams and was it the NBA heat that you went in and kind of went through their facility and set them up?

Right, yeah. So what we did with the Miami Heat for example was we began to inspect some of those variables. I just alluded to like what's the air lighting? We know the indoor gym pollution. There was actually a study that just came out that showed the amount of cognitive impairment that occurs from air pollution.

How much? What did it say? Do you remember?

It's significant. I don't know the percentages, but it's significant. And so we've got these HEPA air filters, these molecule air filters set up in different corners of the gym. Same thing with light, right. Like we're going with a more biologically friendly light frankly. Incandescent lighting and these old school clear incandescent bulbs are not an option for a facility like that. But there's a company called Walla that does more of like a biologically friendly led, very similar to lighting science. And even though LED creates a lot of flicker which can be disruptive to the retina and can deleteriously affect circadian rhythm if the lighting is pretty high off the ground, you know, like your guys studio is a pretty high ceiling. We're not talking about like a bedside lamp that's right in your face. LED is not as big of an issue. It's kind of like a WI fi router. Right. Like the damage that it causes exponentially decreased based on your distance from the router. So the worst place on the planet to have your router is in your bedroom. For a team like that. We don't want WI fi routers in the gym. Same thing with the water, right? Like we get rid of the water fountain where they're getting whatever, you know, fluoride and chlorine that the Miami municipal water has in it and instead they're drinking. What they're doing at their facility is hydrogen rich water which is a pretty potent anti inflammatory and antioxidant water. You can go to the molecular hydrogen foundation, look at some of the research on that and then electricity customization of nutrition and diet based on blood work and biomarkers. So a lot of the things that go above what there are a lot of strength conditioning coaches out there who are miles ahead of me as far as their knowledge of movement. It's fascinating to see what's happening in modern high speed video. I used to run a physiology lab and a biomechanics lab where we'd surround triathletes running on a treadmill or riding their bike with high speed video cameras and do gait analysis or a bike fit. But now you freaking step into a pod and you do a squat and then you do an overhead. And rather than a trainer putting you through an FMS like the actual machine is doing it. Oh wow. I mean some of this technology like, you know, there's stuff at facilities like this I was unaware that even existed.

Wow.

But what I'm doing is going in and looking at all those little variables that are going to affect a player's. You're like an interpreter, long term career health career, etc. And attempting to make those tiny micro adjustments that take a team from good to great or take a player's career from 10 years to 12 years.

How did that relationship happen?

That's a good question.

Is that I know Aubrey was connected to the Heat at one point.

Was it? I don't remember. I think their coach listens to my podcast. Happens a lot. Someone listens to your podcast and then they try to get a hold of you.

Sure.

And sometimes I'll get texts. I don't even know how somebody got my number. And you know, there's, there's some, some texts. I've gotten one. Kidding me. This is a joke. And you know, a lot of times they've discovered your podcast and, and they're getting a hold of you and asking you something.

Or do you find that these executives.

Opening a support ticket on your website?

Do you find that these executives and stuff you work with hire you because they want to perform better, to out compete their competition? Or are they hiring you because they're having health problems and issues? Like, is it a phone call?

Like, oh, it's because they can't get an erection, they can't sleep and they feel like crap after these multiple wine fueled dinners and they, they travel to Tokyo or to Miami to do business and they feel like shit during all their meetings during the day because they're jet lagged and they don't know what to do to manage jet lag and they fly home and they feel like shit when they're with their family because again, they're jet lag coming back to the west coast. All those pain points, frankly, I mean, as simple as it sounds, I just want to feel good.

Let's talk about some of the stuff that you're really well known for, which is figuring out how to mitigate the negative effects of things that may happen when you're, let's say traveling. For example. What's a great strategy to mitigate jet lag? If I'm a business person, I travel and I want to reduce the amount of time my body takes to get used to a new time zone or whatever. What are some strategies that I can do?

The circadian rhythm, our natural 24 hour biological clock responds to three primary circadian cues. Light, movement, and food. So those are the three lowest hanging fruits when it comes to keeping your body on a regular clock when you travel. So what does this mean? It means that you get exposed to the natural light in whatever the places that you've traveled to on that clock as quickly as possible.

Okay, meaning so if the sun's up.

Be in the light when you step off that plane. If it's night, you've got your, not your blue light blocking glasses, but you're really like your red amber glasses like from raw or from TrueDark or from One of these companies that has a really good blue light blocking glass. You walk into your hotel room and you pull out these LED light blocking stickers and you put them over the TV and the router and anything else that's blinking like Christmas lights in the hotel room. And then as soon as it's light where you happen to be, you get yourself into as much sunlight as possible. And if you can't step outside of your hotel room and get out in, in the morning sunshine or go for a quick walk to make your morning calls, whatever. You know, when you're on the west coast, back to the east coast, whatever the scenario is, you get as much sunlight as possible. And if you can't get outside because you wake up at 7am and you gotta go straight into that 7:30 or 8am meeting, you've got the human charger in your ears and you've got something like the Retimer glasses on your eyes and you're using light as much as possible to re regulate your circadian rhythm. And you're doing the same thing when you come back home. So light's one, food is another. The more you eat on an airplane, the more out of whack your circadian rhythm is gonna be.

You sure you should fast?

Well, on the airplane we talked about ketone esters, really potent anti inflammatory. The NF kappa B pathway is one of the inflammatory pathways that tends to be most affected by flight, by being off and away from the planet Earth and all the oxidation, solar radiation, et cetera. Two of the best ways to affect that type of inflammation are ketosis and or ketone esters, meaning that it's best to fast or eat minimally when you travel. And then sulfur rich antioxidants. So having a lot of your first meal when you get to where you're going, when you are going to eat, which I'll get to in a second, is cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, if you don't have sibo or something like that, you can handle garlic, onions, a lot of these sulfurous vegetables or sulfur based antioxidants and ketone esters act similarly. So that would be the next thing is you want to be sure you're not stuffing face on the airplane and What I do is typically I'll have like some algae, like some of these little spirulina or chlorella tablets. This would be for a longer flight right now for like a two hour gig, but like, like overseas.

Sure.

Something that, that's a relatively slow release fuel, like macadamia nuts, a liquid or a powder based ketone ester, like a, you know, one of the, one of the keto prime meal packets or one of, one of the human little bottles of ketone ester or something that's going to keep ketones elevated. And then a lot of gum, a lot of stevia, a lot of these little effervescent electrolyte tablets, things I can put into water to kind of keep my appetite satiated. So fasting when you travel and when you get to where you're going, whatever time you get there, you wait until that place's first regular meal time to.

Eat because it tells your body it's time to get up when you start.

Flight lands in Tokyo at 10am I might be just ready to chew my arm off from having eaten very little on that nine hour flight Seattle to Tokyo, but I'm still gonna wait until about 12:30 to eat in Tokyo, so I get on that regular meal time.

Oh, so you wait till for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Yeah, you wait for breakfast. Same thing. If you land at 2am like and you get into your hotel room and you're starved and you open that mini bar and there's a dark chocolate and you go to, you know, you take your CBD and I take a lot of melatonin when I travel as well because that's a really good way to reset the circadian rhythm. It is also an anti inflammatory, a really good anti inflammatory. You go to bed and then you don't fast, you don't skip breakfast. You know a lot of people on this intermittent fasting bandwagon when they travel like it screws up your circadian rhythm to skip breakfast. So one of the things I'll do is I'll actually go out of my way to eat a nice big good breakfast, especially when I travel internationally to realign that circadian rhythm. And then the last one is movement, right. So regularly timed movement whether you're getting home or whether you've traveled to a certain location is important. So what I mean by that, you know, if you exercise in the morning at 7am at home, get up at 7am and work out when you've gotten to where you're going at that time in the afternoon. Yeah, at that time, wherever you happen to be, you want to use movement to begin to get yourself circadian rhythm into the same alignment that it was back home. There are other things too that help. Hot cold thermogenesis, like doing the sauna and the cold pool.

That's what I've heard you say before. I was waiting for you to say that because you've told me before, a lot of times you'll look for an infrared sauna as soon as you get into a place.

Not even just an infrared sauna. What I'll do is I'll look for. There's two things I look for when I get into a hotel. I look for the nearest, well, three things really. Look for the nearest gym and it's a big bonus if it's got a sauna and a pool. Because water and heat are two things that really help a lot with jet lag. They help with the blood flow, they help with the mitochondria, which are drastically affected again by the elevation and the solar radiation. And then the cold is very helpful too at shutting down inflammation. The other thing I look for is a park, any patch of green near whatever hotel I've traveled to. Because the park allows you to get out, get the sunshine. It allows you to typically get into your bare feet, which a lot of times you can't do in the concrete. And that allows you to, to get the grounding and the earthing effect that can decrease jet lag. And you know, if you know of a park near your hotel, if your hotel has a crappy gym, you all of a sudden. Because I always travel with a resistance band and a suspension trainer, I have a place where I can go to train, I can make my own outdoor gym. And then the last thing, if the gym doesn't have the sauna or the pool, I'll search for a local spa or a local sauna, you know, like Banya 5 in Seattle or air spa in New York City, you know, or one of these places that has some really good heat, cold. So I can put on my underwater mp3 player and go and chill in the sauna and then go to the cool pool and go back and forth for a while.

Have you ever put this together like what you just said to us in an easy to read blog or article or guide or something? The reason why I ask is because so many people travel for work so much and they don't realize how much jet lag negatively affects their performance. And of course in long term their performance at work and their pocketbook and all that stuff and then their health, like, something like that. Because I know I have family in Italy, so we travel to Italy. It would always take me like three or four days to adjust, and it's fucking horrible. I couldn't imagine going somewhere and then like, you got a meeting tomorrow and you got to perform or, you know, whatever.

I try to fucking do an iron man triathlon. Right, right. Like that. That was how I tapped into a lot of this stuff was on a Thursday. It's like, oh, shit, I got a race for 10 hours on Saturday. Deep in the pain cave. What can I do to feel good within two days when I'm in Thailand or Japan doing an ironman? So to answer your question, A, there's a few resources. A, I have a small section of my book beyond training that has a jet lag and sleep management section in it. B, on my website, website, I have an article I wrote that's even more updated than that about six months ago called the last resource you'll ever need to get better sleep. Excellent. That's just on my website. Number three. Or C, Did I start off with A and B? I hate it when that happens. That THC might be kicking in. Okay, so a, B, three is that I have a document. So a lot of my clients that I work with, I just have shared Google Docs, and anytime I come across something interesting to add to that doc, I just add it. So they have like my jet lag tips cheat sheet and they'll just delve into that and then. Speak of the devil, Aubrey's book own the day. There's a lot in that on jet lag management too. And Aubrey and I talked a lot when he was writing that book about what to include in those sections. So that's a good guide as well.

Talking about cool stuff. I know when you and I were texting each other a little bit before you came here, I asked you what you wanted to talk about and you said right now you're getting. You're really, really into anti aging and.

Longevity and halo top ice cream.

Yeah, and halo top ice cream.

Hey, are you rocking the Voris these pants? Well, these pants are Vori. Yes.

How do you like them?

Aren't they great, dude?

We love them, man.

I have a lot of viori now. They're actually one of my podcast sponsors.

No way. When did you start working with them?

Obviously, even if they weren't a sponsor, I'd wear their clothing because it feels good and it's like Lululemon for dudes.

Yes.

I don't know if Fiori likes me to say that, but it's like Lululemon for dudes. I think they accept it. And then I'm wearing my special trampoline jumpy socks because I take my kids. The big trampoline park just got built by our house.

Why are you wearing them here, you big dork?

Special socks.

Sometimes you never know when you're going.

To encounter a trampoline, but they're actually really comfortable socks. And then I'm wearing Paul Check's underwear.

Like literally his underwear. Are they pre worn or.

Last time I was at his house, he had these bamboo underwears. Like these are a little. I think they were a little small because he had big athletic ass and I got tiny hips and tiny butt.

So he gave me Paul Check his underwear.

Yeah, he gave me a special Bam. Bamboo underwear. And I love them. They're super comfortable. So I'm wearing Paul Checks underwear. Not like new underwear, like his actual, like used underwear underwear. Yeah. And this shirt this German guy gave me who's developing a clothing company to block emf. He gave me pants that block EMF and a shirt. So what I'll do after we podcast before I get on the flight back home.

You're giving me Paul checks underwear?

No.

Oh my God.

Damn it. I'll pull my. My German EMF blocking pants. This is what I travel with. They even have a clip at the bottom that you can attach to your Uber cars. Like anything metal in the car or even in the airplane when you land to ground or earth. Right. When you land without even need to get outside barefoot.

Oh my God.

The shirt blocks emf. The pants block emf. I have EMF blocking underwear, but I probably won't. I'll just keep Paul checks lucky underwear on for the flight. Cuz it's not a super long flight.

Do you understand how it is, how important it is for us to keep you alive till 150 years at least? You know that, right?

Yes. I'm gonna look like an idiot one of my. One of my Jerry and dwarf goats butts me, you know, when I'm. When I'm the only human left gets the keep you alive. Spent $30,000 a month on his longevity. Got killed by his goat.

Yeah, longevity.

Let's talk about that longevity.

Is there anything new or interesting or fascinating that you're just learning now about, you know, extending lifespan?

Hmm. I would say that we do know about all the overlap between all the blue zones that I think a lot of people are aware of right now. Right it's no smoking. High amount of wild plant intake, which act as a hormetic stressor to the body. High legume intake. Not, I think, because there's anything magical about beans and legumes, but they're eating a low glycemic index carbohydrate rather than processed starch and sugar. Large amount of outdoor physical activity, low level outdoor physical activity. Not exercising, but just moving. Outdoor gardening, hunting, gathering, whatever. And then a lot of time spent with family, social relationships, you know, family dinners, that type of stuff. So we know a lot of these tried and true things. As far as some of the more interesting things I haven't talked about yet, you know, such as ketone esters and fasting, there are calorie restriction mimetics that are very interesting.

That's interesting.

That trigger the same type of pathways. So the way that it works, like resveratrol. Yeah, resveratrol is one, Rhodiola is another. Astragalus may possibly act. There's this company making this thing called TA65, which may act as a calorie restriction mimetic, but it may also be acting as just like a mitochondrial support compound.

So they stimulate like cell program death and cell autophagy or.

No, the way that it works is veryso. When you look at cold thermogenesis, very simple example, we know that cold thermogenesis upregulates something called uncoupling proteins. So uncoupling proteins would be what you'd find a higher amount of in brown adipose tissue. When you get exposed to cold, you get a conversion of white fat into metabolically active brown fat, which, rather than taking calories and oxygen to produce ATP, instead produces heat. Now, why is that important? Well, because when we look at the electron transport chain in the mitochondria, we know that once you have a certain amount of ATP and ATP is no longer being depleted, what happens is there's almost like a backup in the electron transport chain. And free radicals begin to leak out of the membrane as electrons build up in the chain because they no longer need to be used for conversion into ATP because ATP stores are full. Now, that doesn't mean free radicals are bad, because free radicals serve as signaling molecules to tell all of the mitochondria within the cell whether or not they need to down regulate or up regulate how much ATP or how much energy they're producing. So it's a very good way for your body to be able to keep track of its metabolic rate.

Interesting.

But what happens is, if You've got too much ATP around, too many free radicals build up, too many spill out into the body. And this is why fasting has such a profound effect to a certain extent, because you deplete ATP and by depleting ATP, you have the ability of the electrons to move through the transport chain without getting backed up and having free radical spillage back into the inner cellular membrane.

And does this mean that then Interpreter in here, does this mean then that supplementing with creatine and just dramatically increasing ATP stores and keeping them high all the time could potentially have a negative effect from, from that point, too much of that could.

Now, at the same time, we know that ATP is a healthy cellular energy compound. And furthermore, the more ATP that you can get without a large amount of calories and a large amount of digestive distress and some of the oxidation that occurs from breakdown of proteins and carbs and fats is good. This is why some of the best nutrients for longevity from an ATP standpoint are creatine and D ribose, because D ribose is a very low glycemic index sugar that rapidly restores ATP availability in mitochondria without excessively producing ATP.

Interesting.

But as far as on the other end, kind of draining ATP levels or at least causing calories to produce less ATP and to instead produce something like, say, heat. We know that brown fat does a very good job at that because there's a higher amount of these uncoupling proteins that essentially uncouple the little transporter that causes ATP to be produced by a cell and instead simply cause heat to be produced by a cell. And so some of these things actually increase UCP and they act as calorie restriction memetics. That's what a calorie restriction memetic is, is. It' sit's basically right now someone's gonna.

Sell them as fat burners, but keep going.

So we're talking about things like astragalus, like rhodiola. One interesting thing is sea urchins. Sea urchins actually have a very high amount of the molecules that increase your availability of the, or the upregulation of these UCPs, you know, and there's some people out there, like Dr. Jack Cruz, who kind of gets painted with a, you know, in a poor light sometimes because he's a little bit controversial and relatively dogmatic. But he believes that most humans grew up, or humans originated on in coastal areas where we had a high availability of shellfish, dha, sunlight, and really mineral rich water. And so by getting A lot of these things in our diet, we're actually enhancing our health from a very ancestral standpoint. And you could say these sea urchins might fall into that category of supporting mitochondria and uncoupling protein.

Just goes to show and highlight just how complex the body is in the sense that on the one hand you want to increase ATP, you want to have a lot of ATP. Study shows build more muscle, muscle burns more body fat. It's got cognitive boosting effects. Seems to be some antioxidant effects, at least for the heart. Doctors are now prescribing or at least telling people or recommending to take creatine when they have things like anxiety and depression. But on the other hand, it's very important to also encourage a process that depletes ATP. Things like exercise, you know, these fasting, mimetics, and then of course, the ultimate, which is fasting. Now here's something that's fascinating. I want to ask you a question on this. We had a Stan Efforting on our show the other day. He's a, the world's strongest bodybuilder. Really, really cool guy. 50 years old now, but at one.

Point he had one of the highest bodybuilders. Strong.

Oh, he, this guy's very strong dude. He's got one of the highest three lift totals. No, no, no, no. He's also a power lifter.

8, 900 pounds.

Very, very strong. So. And you know, we were talking about fasting and he's like, no, you know, I'll never fast. I always want to feed my body and feed my athletes. And I told them my personal experience with fasting, which I thought was fascinating. Now, I didn't go into fasting for any kind of performance enhancing benefit. I employ 48 or 72 hour fasts every other month now or so for things like gut health, longevity reduction, inflammation. I get a spiritual effect from it in the sense that it clears my mind, helps remove me from food and all these other benefits.

May I say something real quick for people listening, especially my audience listening right now? Sal is not like a skinny ass, fasted like cold emancy. I do like he's built. Yeah, you're still fasting 48, 72 hours and maintaining muscle.

Yeah, in fact, I was doing a 48 to 72 hour fast once a month and I did that for about seven months. And here's the side effect that I got. And I did it for gut health. I did it for all those other things that I mentioned, the spiritual effect, the detaching from food, the low inflammation, longevity, all that stuff. The benefit I noticed, which was fascinating, was about two or three days after I started to refeed. So I, you know, 72 hour fast and I start to slowly reintroduce food about two or three days later. Some of the best workouts I'd ever had, incredible pumps. And I built more muscle during this entire process. Now part of me thought, okay, maybe it's because my gut health got so much better, I'm better, I'm able to assimilate more food. Well, I've since retested this and by the way, I had a similar effect years ago. Years ago I started employing once a week vegan day, but really what it turned into was a once a week, 600 calorie day.

Like a meatless Monday kind of thing.

Yeah, but it really was like 600 calories. So it was kind of like this low calorie day. Now I always noticed the day after when I'd eat meat, I get like this rebound effect. And bodybuilders have seen this for, I've talked about this for a long time. One of the most anabolic periods you'll ever that they'll ever experience is post show after hardcore dieting. So after these long fasts, I refeed. Two or three days later, I'm building more muscle and I'm wondering if it's, you know, resensitizing me to protein, it's increasing the way I used glycogen and it's giving me some of this effect that we're talking about where I'm depleting ATP and then I'm giving myself more ATP. Have you ever noticed anything like that from fasting or when you start refeeding? Dr. Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because thethe human body in general seems to respond very well in terms of whatever ATP depletion and then ATP restoration or caloric depletion and caloric restoration to this idea of cycling. Right. We know this is the basis of periodization and that stair stepping effect to get better fitness. You build, then you recover, then you build, then you recover. We now know that there are cancer researchers doing what's called press pulse cycling of. I believe it's glutamine, the high glutamine and low glutamine. High glutamine, low glutamine.

This is during cancer treatment.

Yeah, it's called, I think the term for it. And I don't know a lot about it because I know glutamine can feed what's called. Yeah, Exactly. Which is why I think it's glutamine, but it's called press pulse cycling.

Interesting.

I think Thomas Seyfried is the guy to look up to who's looking into a lot of this research on this type of dieting for cancer patients. We see guys like Dr. Dan Pompa, who I interviewed on my podcast, doing feast famine cycling, right? 5 days low calories calorie restriction, 1 day fast, 1 day ad libitum calorie refeeds as many calories as you want. We look at the Bible God built, and he worked his ass off for six days and then on the seventh day he rested, right? So we see. There we go. Adam, I just responded to your question. So, yeah, the idea is it seems the body responds very well to, I mean, freaking high intensity interval training, right? Same thing, 30 seconds hard, 4 minutes ease.

There was a study that came out within the last five years where they compared, because the old way of approaching dieting, at least from a fat loss standpoint, in our space, in the fitness personal training space, was let's figure out how many calories you're burning. Let's put you at a deficit, and then that's your new calorie intake, and we'll do your macros or whatever, but that's your new calorie intake every single day. So if your body's burning 2000 calories a day, I'll put you at 1500 calories a day, and then this is what you're going to eat every single day. And that was the old way of approaching it. Now, through my experience working with clients and doing myself, I always noticed that people got better results from staggering that. So I would still average out to, at the end of the week, a 3,500 calorie deficit, which is what 500 calories a day adds up to. But it wasn't 500 calorie deficit every single day. Some days it was a thousand, some days it was no deficit, some days it was a surplus, and so on. And I saw better results. Part of me thought, you know, I wonder if it's the psychological effect from that, because some days you feel like you're eating more or less or whatever. Well, they did a study and they actually controlled for that, and they compared two groups of people that ate the same calories, both in a deficit. One group, same deficit every single day. The other group kind of staggered it, and the group that staggered it got better. More fat loss, preserved more muscle, got better results. And here's the best part mitigated the metabolic adaptation that happens from restricted calorie diets, which is one of the biggest problems that you'll run into, especially for people who compete in bodybuilding and stuff like that. Or even people who just diet real hard. When you drop your calories, your metabolism adapts downward and becomes very efficient, which we all know is extremely frustrating. You know, you lose 20 pounds and then you're fucked. Your metabolism slowed down, now you're doing all this cardio, you're eating low calories and it's like you eat anything over that and you just gain all the weight back real quick. Staggering, it seems to mitigate that metabolic adaptation really, really fast.

Now, do you still, when you're fasting like that for that 48 to 72 hour cycle, what do your workouts look like?

None, actually.

What do they feel like?

No. So what I do during that period is I'll walk or I'll hike, I'll stretch, I'll do mobility work. If I do do resistance training, it's very low intensity, full range of motion. I'm not trying to stress the body anymore. I'm not trying to increase my performance. I'm not trying to get stronger, burn more body fat.

Really.

I was treating it like a, like a spiritual experience, if you will, but. But when I would come back, I'd get stronger and felt so much better, really.

I still work well, you know.

You know, taking time off from exercise I think is important too. But anyhow, it's funny because now I get a text from Stan and he's like, I did my first 24 hour fast. So I actually was able to convince him to give that a shot. And I think it's because I told him there may be some muscle building benefit from it.

When I am at home, I try to do a Saturday to a Sunday night dinner fast every week. So I do 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast every day. Aside from the days where I'm traveling internationally or across many time zones where I'll eat breakfast at whatever the time zone is where I happen to be at. And sometimes that means it's not 12 to 16 hour fast, but I do that 24 hour Saturday dinner to Sunday dinner fast. I've got two other things regarding longevity. Yes, One would be, and I don't know if you guys have talked about this much on the show before, but these NAD or NR precursors, no, they're becoming more and more popular. Companies like Tru, Niagen and Elysium Basis. Thorne has one called Niacel and It's called NR nicotinamide riboside.

Oh, there you go.

And it's a precursor to nad. And we know when it comes to longevity, mitochondrial health, inflammation seems to be.

A very strong role.

Dr. To NADH ratios are incredibly important. And so now you can buy supplements that have some really good research behind them. Last week article came out, I think it was the New York Times about the pill that cost less than a cup of coffee that can make you live to 150 years old.

Doctor, I read that.

Dr. Well, 10 years ago was resveratrol, you know, now it's nicotinamide riboside. And the way that you can also. And there are companies now who are selling patches, Nasal sprays, injections and IVs are very common at a lot of these anti aging clinics now. Yeah, so I actually, once every two weeks I have a company in Texas that sends me NAD in a syringe. I'm not allowed to, I'm not allowed to do IVs. I'm still competing in a wad of sanctions.

Oh, so you can't do any ignore.

I can't put more than 30 milliliters into my body.

Oh, interesting.

So I can't do a drip iv, but I can do a push iv. So I do a push IV of NAD and super uncomfortable injection. Like your gut burns and your body feels like it's on fire. Long ass needle or you finish and you feel freaking unstoppable. It's, it's a really.

You actually feel a difference?

Yes. And in tracking my telomere length, it drastically reduced telomere length when I began using not just NR in between my NAD injections. Right. So I do NAD injections once every two weeks. I do NR every day to keep my NAD levels up. I drink a. There's a tea. Dr. Mercola introduced me to this tea. It's called Pau d' Arco bark tea. That's also an NAD precursor. So I have a batch of that tea in the fridge and I'll just drink that as one of my beverages throughout the day.

I like that because I like that because it's a natural form. And here's why. Because, and I'm always careful because, for example, you know, 15, 20, 30 years ago, all this research showing antioxidants are great for you. They fight free radicals. You need lots of antioxidants. Then they did studies where they gave people high fucking doses of antioxidants that you wouldn't necessarily find in nature. And what ended up happening was increased risks of cancer and other problems because it's not the same.

And now you know why. What are some of the primary signaling molecules in your body? Free radicals. Free radicals.

So you eliminate those and they can't touch them all.

The mitochondria, whether energy is high or energy is low, we take all those away and all of a sudden the mitochondria don't know which way is up and which way is down.

Get cancer.

Right.

Wow.

So they go into these states of unobtrused energy production.

So the NR precursors, nr, nad, there's.

Injection clinics popping up all over the place. And there's some really good research behind this. I go to a lot of these anti aging conferences now. NR and nad and stem cells are probably two of the biggest things that anti aging docs and folks at a lot of these conferences are talking about. But you know, stem cells, I think that's a horse that's been kicked to death. You know, I've talked about stem cells a lot, but it's interesting. There' sthere's one other category in my research for this book that I found really interesting, and that was a profound improvement in rodent lifespan with fecal transplants with actual bacterial replenishment, especially in mice.

So you're shoving someone's shit up your ass now.

No, I'm not. I'll get to that. Especially in mice with issues like clostridium difficile. C. Difficile seems to cause a decrease in lifespan, but by replacing colonic bacteria with some kind of extra fecal matter for from someone else, there appears to be some kind of an immune modulating effect now, even though there's clinics now, like the tame out clinic in Britain, there are websites where you can purchase stool from a healthy donor, have it shipped to you, and some pretty straightforward videos about how to do your own at home fecal transplant. Forget the Palchek underwear. I would rather like eat a lot of really good prebiotics and take care of my gut and hopefully keep my gut to. To the point where I'm not getting clostridium difficile. But if you tested and you did have it, it might actually be prudent to do something like fecal transplant therapy. But what I find more interesting, and this is something I started doing after seeing some of the data on this working very, very similarly from a longevity standpoint in terms of immune system modulation and gut health, is this whole old friends hypothesis. The fact that we live in this ultra clean culture with antibacterial Hand soap and antibacterial and super clean hospitals and antibiotics, and you don't want your dog to kiss your kid, God forbid. And so what happens is you see a decrease in beneficial bacteria in the immune system becoming stronger in response to germs and bacteria. And so a lot of people now are eating fermented foods and they're letting their kids go to petting zoos and play with farm animals. And now word is beginning to get out that it's pretty good to get dirty and to get in touch with bacteria and dirt. But then you take that to the next level because many of these things, measles, parties, I talked right over you. But that was actually pretty funny. Some of these things are a little bit lesser known, like, say, whip worms or tapeworms. These actually have some very potent immune modulating effects, and many of them are not parasites because a parasite has to do damage to the host and. And live within the host to be classified as a parasite. But if it lives within the host, that doesn't do damage. And one could even argue mitochondria fall into that category as an ancient. I think it's a eukaryotic organism that got enveloped into a cell.

I read a book on this. There was a guy who wrote a book who had terrible Crohn's disease and started reading about how people who would get infected with, like hookworm, for example, had much lower rates of symptoms from the Crohn's disease. So he actually went to a third world country because nobody would give him hookworms to infect himself with. And he walked barefoot around latrines and stuff, got infected, and his Crohn's disease pretty much went away today. Now, I don't think you can find any of these clinics in the US But I know in Mexico, right? In Mexico, they have some of these where you'll go there and they'll actually infect you.

They'll inoculate you.

Chris Kresser's talking about that.

Here's the problem with that. Those live within you and they don't go away. So a lot of people who do this, let's say with, like, tapeworms, you know, they go to Mexico and they get inoculated. You start, like, pooping the tapeworm babies, and your asshole itches. It can create a situation where you are intensely aware that something is living within you. And some people lose weight because it begins to eat a lot of your calories and food stuff. But at the same time, weight loss, there are certain forms of. Yeah, Exactly. Along with your. Along with your fat burning, calorie restriction, memetic. We feature hookworm. Kion hookworms anyways, though. So some don't actually have the capability to survive for long periods of time within the body, but still cause immune system modulation. And there are specific forms of rat tapeworms and pig whip worms that I researched for this book. And for the past four months, every two weeks, I've been dosing with.

Oh, my God.

Whipworms.

God damn it.

And tapeworms. Literally, you drink them down. That's like this little salty.

I'm not making out with you anymore.

It's like a shit. You're sitting in my seat right now. I'm shitting or I'm sitting.

You're sitting in my seat.

What I have noticed is my gut feels much better, particularly when I travel. Right. So I used to get some gut issues and constipation. My gut would just feel kind of funky when I'd go overseas, that went away, and my immune system feels like it just feels better, you know, I didn't get sick a lot anyways, but I feel, you know, I know I'm doing a lot of things. There's a lot of confounding variables, but ultimately, just the.

Is it the injection of the nadp?

Just the data alone on dosing with. With. It's called helminthic therapy.

Right. There you go.

Now, therapy.

Now you have to keep. You have to keep taking them because they die. Right? So it's not like if you stop.

Yeah.

Your body gets rid of.

For me to dose for four months, I think was about 1700 bucks. So it's, you know, it's a spendy protocol for you to do. And I don't know if I'll keep doing it, but I at least wanted to try it out and see how I felt. People used to feel pretty good.

People used to pay to get rid of those things. You're paying to get them. But anyway.

No, I want to know.

I want to know how often, like, so you. I know you've tried so many.

I mean, you're the guy, too, for sure.

I love reaching out to. I did the BPC157, by the way, for my Achilles, and it was miraculous for that.

It really was. I know Sal was anti.

Oh, no, I don't like the way.

It made me feel, but it's. It was huge for me, so sensitive.

Coffee, bpc.

Yeah. Did you know. Did you know it actually may influence the way that the dopamine acts in the brain and there's some studies showing that they'll give BPC to rats and then give them amphetamines. And the amphetamines won't affect them the same way because their brains become less sensitive to dopamine.

No, I'm kidding. Oral administration.

Yeah, they were doing ejection and so I took a few shots of it.

And I felt flat subcutaneously.

I did and I felt flat and so I stayed away from it.

Shot into your gut, right?

Yeah, I did.

Wow. Yeah, wow. I've injected in the joints, I've never done like the, the subcutaneous. Into the gut. That's interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But anyways, I'm asking this because you've, you've put so many things probably in.

Your protocol for a while.

How often is it that you eliminate something that maybe you've been doing for a while and you're just like, okay, just the hassle to do that. I'm not seeing or noticing the benefits that much. It's not going to become something very regular for me. I can't imagine you can keep up everything.

Yeah. Pretty regularly. Pretty regularly. There, there's stuff like. Yeah. What were some of the last things that fell off? I guess the last couple. I, I hate to say so because I feel like I'm shoving people under the bus. I also have to be radically honest and just say how it is appreciate like you know, like the Ukraine, you know, like, like theacrine which was developed by one of my friends Sean, and it's supposedly the super potent creatine precursor that gives you energy for days, et cetera. I went through two bottles of it and just didn't feel a thing. And I was hoping it would be the next new biggest creatine and it could be just me because I know they have some good data behind it and some decent clinical research, but I didn't notice anything from it. So that's one example. Another one would be of course like CBD for energy. I haven't really seen any benefits from something like that, but I haven't used too much of those. Like pick me up energy focused caffeine, cbd, pre workouts. I have them at home to try probiotics. Almost zero probiotics have I noticed much of a difference from.

Is that because you do such a good job of eating foods that are fermented.

But you know, but they say probiotics increase cognitive of performance and see, I.

Only feel that's true for people that are not probably getting it in their.

Deficient increased rating of perceived exertion and improved sleep. And they've actually, I'm not, I'm not depressed, but markers of depression and I don't notice that much.

They've connected probiotic use for some people with increased risk of sibo, believe it or not.

And I. One of the formulas I want to do for Kion is a complete gut formula. You know, I want Sulforaphane and I want, I want Colostrum.

And you're not putting whipworm in there?

No, I'm not putting whipworm in there. Mostly it's just that's not scalable, you know, cost. It's not NSF certified for sports anyways, though. I also want to include a form of probiotic that could potentially seed the gut. And so I'm an investor, I'm not going to say the name of the company right now, but I'm an investor in a probiotic company developing a probiotic that could potentially seed the gut and stay in there and not get degraded by the stomach acid and prevent none of the difficulties that are currently presented with probiotic absorption. And if that one turns out to really flesh itself out in more clinical trials, that's what I would include in something like a supplement that would be a probiotic that I take. But I've tried 12 different kinds of probiotics and just never kept up with them because I haven't noticed a thing.

I haven't heard much about Colostrum. Could you go like further into detail from that? Isn't that from breast milk?

Yes, it's. It's the first part of mammalian milk. It has a lot of immunoglobulins in it. It has a lot of growth factors in it. It's a precursor for both growth hormones.

That's an old school bodybuilding supplement.

Insulin like growth factor. Old school bodybuilding supplement. Studies have shown that it helps to heal a leaky gut by improving the stability of zonulin, a protein in the gut lining that can, when it's not moderated, cause leaky gut like increased gut permeability. It's also been shown to allow athletes to experience less gut distress and less gut permeability, especially when exercising under stress in hot conditions. So the fact that it's relatively anabolic has some pretty good gut barrier protective capabilities. Make it something that I like, but that is something I cycle based on the fact that it's such a potent growth hormone precursor and IGF precursor like you don't want to be in a constant anabolic state. Return to our Press pulse discussion. So I load with Colostrum. I'm on Colostrum right now. I take eight kion Colostrum every morning because I have the Tahoe race coming up right here in a week. So I know my body's gonna be going to battle for. I think that race will be 20 something hours. No, for me that'll be like a two and a. I raced the big long one there, but this year I'm racing the Fittest CEO challenge, so I'll be racing pretty hard for about.

Who the hell's going to compete with you at that?

Dave Asprey? I heard you, stupid.

I have a triathlon on Sunday that I'm racing. I like to do some short fast race. So multiple reasons for me to take Colostrum, so I don't take it year round. But what I do is whenever I have a big event coming up, I load with it for two weeks prior in the same way that you, you'd load with beet juice for two weeks prior to an endurance event.

Did you dab, did you jab Dave.

Asprey twice in this show? No, jab was just once.

No, he jabbed him once.

Well, that was off air.

Thanks. Captain Obvious.

Have you ever messed around with the anabolic effects of cholesterol? Dietary cholesterol? This is something that bodybuilders have used for a long time. And I've experimented with doubling or tripling my cholesterol levels intake for, you know, a week or two. Strength increases every single time. Every single time I get strength increases from doing that. Have you ever messed around with anything like that?

Do you think that that's because of the availability of fat soluble vitamins or because it's an increase in cholesterol?

Increasing cholesterol?

The reason I ask is that there' sthere's some, there's some research out there that shows that food does not have a big impact on cholesterol level.

Well, so you're right. But here's what's interesting. And I just read that what you're talking about. But here's what's interesting. So I control for all those factors. So I control for all those factors. But also there are several studies that support what I'm talking about, where they'll take. There was one in particular where they took people between 50 to 60, so they were a little bit older, and they broke them up into three groups and it was a low cholesterol, moderate cholesterol, and very high cholesterol intake. And they compared them all to each Other and the biggest difference was strength and muscle strength and muscle gain. And it was directly related to the amount of cholesterol that they were consuming. And it came from egg yolks and bodybuild. Like Vince Karanda, who was one of the old school scientist bodybuilders back in the 19, maybe 40s, used to put his athletes on these high cholesterol, you know, full fat, dairy, lots of chicken liver and beef liver and egg yolk type diets. And people would see these crazy gains since I started experimenting with this. I said.

And you're saying even when controlling for all the other anabolic factors like, you know, more protein, more calories, more fat.

Correct. And so I startedi've now told several people they've tested it themselves and they've also noticed the same. Doug, in fact, I think Doug, didn't you, you do the same thing and notice the increase in cholesterol gave you some more strength. So yeah. So I would love for you to look into that. Cause you dive deep into things and I think, I think it's a fascinating, especially because we've been told for so long that it's not good for you.

Is it, is it an increase in HDL or LDL cholesterol? Do you know if you know if they've done blood tests?

I don't do any blood tests. No. It's just I literally will go from eating on average two egg yolks a day to, you know, 12 egg yolks a day. So dramatic increase in diet and I can tell within a day or two. I literally can feel it when I work out and it almost feels like my CNS fires harder when I lift weights.

I've never intentionally tried to raise cholesterol, but I guess I kind of have in that I try to keep my total cholesterol above 200.

Oh yeah, so you'd actually get yours tested.

Yeah. The cognition enhancing and the effects on the cell membranes and having high cholesterol, assuming you don't have familial hypercholesteremia, assuming you don't have high blood glucose, which can oxidize that cholesterol, assuming your HDL to triglyceride ratio is favorable, meaning you don't have high cholesterol, but also high triglycerides, which would indicate overeating or high intake of vegetable oils or some or even non alcoholic fatty liver disease or something like that. And finally, assuming you don't have high levels of inflammation like high HSCRP or high homocysteine or high fibrinogen in the absence of any of those factors that make cholesterol a cardiovascular risk factor, it's a good idea to keep your cholesterol elevated. You just have to, in my opinion, this is where I like blood testing. You gotta kinda pay attention to some other variables or at least know intuitively what's gonna affect those variables. Like if you're eating a high cholesterol diet, processed sugar and vegetable oils are probably worse for you than the person eating the low cholesterol diet because you've got more around to be oxidized, right? You've got more around toto build these foam based plaques in the arteries. So yeah, like I'm, I'm a, I'm a fan of keeping cholesterol elevated, but it needs to be couched in terms of you also mitigating risk factors.

What about sodium? Do you manipulate that at all? Are you paying attention to that?

As an athlete especially, I have really been geeking out on minerals, meaning a lot of minerals. Less water, more minerals. Based on all the stuff I've been doing with light and the fact that your body needs to be rich in minerals in order to properly respond to light based signals. Whether, whether it's, you know, the juve or sunshine or whatever. And just drinking more water is not necessarily going to increase your level of minerals. You must actually drink like salt water or, you know, put Himalayan sea salt. I hate to say this, but it's high in iron, it's high in metals. It's one of the reasons it's colored, that's why it's pink. Even though it's pretty high in minerals, Celtic salt is actually higher in minerals and clean. If you're going to have a salt, yeah, you have the Celtic salt. So big fan of that. There are companies now selling like these super salty sachets. There's one called Quintron, another one called Quintessentials. I showed you like I was pulling out my magical Mary Poppins bag. I showed you like these, these trace liquid minerals that I travel with on a plane. So I do a lot of minerals. But I got into that way back, back in the ironman days again when I would go to bed and I could hear my heart rate pounding in my ears, right? And I knew there was some kind of blood pressure regulation issue or something. It turns out I just went for a long period of time. Mineral depleted. And we used to have an exercise physiologist come in and use a sweat sodium analysis patch to test all the athletes when I trained for Team Timex.

To see how much sodium they lose when they.

So you see your sweat sodium loss. I was two to three times most of the other athletes.

So you just sweat out a lot of salt.

I have robust sodium excretion mechanisms which dictates that, that I need to take more sodium in or more minerals in. And the interesting thing when we talk about genetics is that I come from a heavily northern European heritage where traditionally there is a lot of fermentation, a lot of salting, a lot of pickling. It's what is used to cure food. And so it makes sense that the body would respond by developing a mechanism that allows it to get, get rid of excess sodium or excess salt so that you don't see too high of a rise in blood pressure or. The other thing that can happen is it can have a little bit of a de alkalinizing effect in the body.

Let me tell you something that I just did recently and I want your opinion on it, like what you think it might be. So something happens sometimes when we get so caught up in work here, we'll work like a 12 hour day, we're talking like crazy. I don't get a chance to eat. I do make sure because I've teased this out to make sure it's not that I hydrate myself, but I'll sometimes start to get these headaches and I getthey're pretty bad headaches and you know, I've gone home and tried thinking it's hydration, drinking more water, thinking it's oh, I just need food.

Your period, right?

So we wewe were having this conversation, we GW got into a talk about sodium the other day and I thought, man, I wonder if I'm just like really depleted and I wonder if my body goes through it really fast because I also noticed too, like, like I can hold and release lots of water too. And so I wonder if I just have this ability to use it up really quick and my body's needing that. Maybe it has something to do with blood pressure. Maybe that's what my headaches were happening. And so I. The last three times this has happened, I've ate two dill kosher pickles and the headache has gone away like almost instantaneous. It's crazy. And it's a pretty serious headache. What do you think that is?

Pickle fetish. Stupid, stupid pickle fetish. Terrible. I mean it. Very good. Very. Gargling very well could be related to a mineral deficiency. Although with headaches it's typically magnesium. And I don't think pickles are very high in magnesium. But it certainly could just be as simple as what you've just elucidated. Right. It's a mineral issue causing blood sugar dysregul or blood pressure dysregulation, which is resulting in a headache.

I'm three for three right now, so I don't know yet for sure. But I mean, this has happened to me three times. Three times I've gone back to that, and it's like instantly, it's.

It's relieved me. Do you also crave things like bananas, sausages? Because we can have a discussion about this later. There are some other things that could be at play here.

Okay.

Keep talking, nerd.

Keep talking. Shit.

So, so, so two more things you were. What were we just talking about before Adam? His headaches. Oh, the minerals, the genetics. So when you look at the African American population, right. Not a strong heritage of salting and pickling and fermenting foods. Not to stereotype, I know this sounds horribly racist, but time spent in. Especially in the southern American areas, time spent on slave ships, losing a lot of sweat, losing a lot of. Of sodium during those long periods of time in boats transported over from Africa, and potentially the development of some pretty robust sodium retention mechanisms. You put someone with that type of genetic ancestry, that's a fact of heavily salted foods, and all of a sudden you see an epidemic of high blood pressure in African Americans that you don't see with the same type of salt intake in northern Europeans.

It actually says it in medical journals that Africa, African Americans tend to be more sensitive to sodium in relationship to high blood pressure. That's actually in the. If you were to read medical journal, it would actually say that.

Yeah.

Do you. Because your body gets rid of sodium so quickly, do you find. Do you test your other minerals? How are you with your calcium, for example? Are you worried about building up too much calcium?

So I test on a quarterly basis hydroxy vitamin D, which can be relevant to calcium levels. Because if you have too much, which I rarely have based on the reasons I was talking about earlier, you can get excess calcification. I test calcium. I test red blood cell magnesium, potassium, CO2, which can be indicative of minerals, because a low bicarbonate level can indicate that you have, for example, too much unopposed sodium that you're consuming, which would typically be from packaged food. And I test chloride levels. So those are the minerals that I analyze on my blood. And really the ones I pay closest attention to would be that chloride, that bicarbonate level, which can Indicate overall net acidity in the body, meaning not a good state. You gotta eat less sodium, less caffeine, less alcohol, less red meat. Step up your intake of dark leafy greens, that type of thing. And then magnesium, which I think is one of the most important minerals. And it's just called an RBC magnesium test. Super simple test. But, but those are the minerals that I pay attention to on a quarterly blood analysis. So, yeah, I do track that stuff.

Excellent.

And the interesting thing about pickles, this was the second thing I was gonna say is that this is relevant for all those people listening in who might be racing Tahoe next week or who are athletes, is that it turns out that cramping during exercise is very rarely due to mineral depletion or due to dehydration, Especially in people who are already paying attention to those variables. They're using electrolytes, they're salting their food regularly. Going into a competition, they're staying adequately hydrated. I cramped during my race or during my workout. What the hell? How could that have happened? Well, it turns out that the majority of cramps are due to a protective mechanism, an alpha motor neuron reflex that basically causes the muscle to go into a protective spasm or cramp so that you don't tear it or rip it. It's generated by the Golgi tendon organ. So what you can do to reverse this cramp, and we know this works because when you do this, there's not enough time for any of these things to get absorbed into your system and absorbed into your muscles and provide salt to your muscles instead. It's all neural so you can inhibit this alpha motor neuron reflex when you cramp by tasting anything incredibly salty or incredibly spicy. And this is why there are companies now developing high priced, like, you know, like these gel shots that are like carbohydrate gel shots. Well, they're doing like pickle shots with cayenne pepper and things that are like, you know, like mustard powder with incredibly high amounts of salt. So there's almost like this gag reflex, but as soon as that hits you, it's a trick to reverse a cramp. So what I do when I'm racing is I carry these electrolyte capsules that if you ever break open an electrolyte capsule and dump in your mouth, it's horribly like gag reflex salty. But if you cramp within 20 seconds after that thing hits your sublingual or the inside your cheeks or anywhere else where you can taste it, the cramp goes away. What it's crazy.

Now why does not every athlete have these on hand?

Now is it because the, because they.

Don'T listen to mind puff.

Is it because of the taste? The taste is signaling something in the brain to reverse this.

Exactly. The taste of something salty or spicy causes what's called a motor neuron reflex and the cramp loosen.

Now this is something that you're, you're talking about. People are making products for it. So I'm assuming that this has lots of science supporting it and it's a taste that sends a signal. So with that, this is one of the arguments I tend to, I make a lot with people in our space who try to say things like artificially flavored products with zero calories have no negative effects on the body. And I always tell them the taste alone, even if the, even if what you were eating was inert, the signal of taste alone does tell the body to do certain, certain things.

It does. And did you see the study that came out this week on sucralose, Splenda?

No, which one? What was it? Oh, that it stored as well.

You need to afford it to activates glucagon like peptide GLP1 and that actually results in insulin insensitivity with frequent sucralose intake. Now granted, because, you know, you mentioned Lane Norton, I'm sure a guy like this is going to know this, is going to say this, that's with the equivalent of close to a dozen packets of Splenda per day, that equivalent of sucralose. But frankly, when you look at a lot of these energy drinks and whey proteins and artificially sweetened compounds, there's the equivalent of a good two to four packets of Sucralose or Splenda in just a single serving of those. So there's a lot of people in the fitness industry, possibly especially in the.

Fitness industry, how common is this? And we've talked about this, we've shared this on the show before where I would have, you know, two or three of these in my coffee in the morning because I'd have two or three cups, cups of coffee. So I'm getting at least three there. I have a protein shake, I have a protein bar and have some sort of a pre workout, doctor pre workout shake or something easily. We were over that easily.

And there's also duration. I'm using it for years because this is what I do every day.

Yeah. And granted, I realized that this might sound hypocritical coming from a guy who regularly uses stevia, but I've never said That I believe that stevia may not be having an impact on incretin hormones or on insulin. For me, the pros outweigh the cons. I think it's less artificial and less potentially neurotoxic than aspartame or sucralose. And it allows me to restrict calories very easily when I'm, for example, on a long plane flight and I put some organic vanilla Stevie into my seltzer water to make it taste like cream soda. Right. So for me, the pros outweigh the cons of using an artificial sweetener. But even for that, I use either monk fruit or organic stevia. So, yeah, yeah, the artificial sweetened thing.

I'm with you.

Yeah, good point, though. Based on the fact that when you taste something, it can reverse a cramp, then why wouldn't it be that when you taste something, it can cause an insulin release or at least a release of, you know, cholecystokinin or some other incretin hormone?

Well, we need to remember that these signals exist for a reason. Why do we even perceive taste to begin with? Because it tells us a lot about what's happening around us or inside of our mouths. And that signal by itself, over, you know, thousands of years of evolution, that signal itself already starts a cascade of events before whatever was anticipated acts on the body. And so it only makes fucking sense. So we manipulate all these different senses, thinking, oh, but the calories aren't there. It's inert or has zero effect. Wrong. That's impossible. Now, there may be a less of an effect or maybe a cost benefit analysis that you do, but there's definitely a fucking effect. And you're. I'm the same way. I would. I would err on the side of something that's natural versus something that's synthetic, just because it's been around longer. And we tend to know and react better to things have been around longer than things that are. What do you.

What. How do you feel when you. When people refer to you as, like, the pseudoscience guy?

You know, I saw that comment a lot after you did your Rogan interview. People like, oh, there's a lot of trolls on there. Yeah.

How do you feel about that when someone says that?

Technically, some of the things that I talk about are pseudoscience, such as religion and spirituality, which is very difficult, or I would even say impossible to prove in many circumstances. But I would argue that some of the things that I talk about, such as the fact that cells communicate via biophotonic light signaling has been a proven scientific fact since almost the 1700s. It's just that a lot of this stuff is not common knowledge or people are to a certain extent afraid of it because it disrupts societal expectations. Meaning when you find out that plastic bottled water that you always knew had some of these plastics and phytoestrogens in it and is probably bad for you, also has a different electrochemical structure than the spring water that you get from a natural spring. That sounds like pseudo science. And people kind of get a little bit uncomfortable about the fact that, gosh, does that mean I need to replace the water filter in my house and go to findaspring.com and start drinking more natural water? I think a lot of people, it's uncomfortable and it's inconvenient to accept the fact that sometimes pseudoscience, what we call pseudoscience, can tell us things that we get very uncomfortable with. Yeah, I mean, those are the two things that come to mind. And then I think the last would be that there is a certain amount of industry influence. Everything from the pharmaceutical industry influencing most medical physicians stance that essential oils would be useless or worthless simply because there are pharmaceuticals that could do the same thing, or there's a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor that beats out the St. John's Wort that we were talking about. So using St. John's Wort as an antidepressant could potentially be pseudoscience. You know, Ben's out collecting yellow flowers with his kids in the wilderness. Let's make a ha, ha, you know, skipping naked through the meadow joke about Ben. Because you should just take Prozac. Right? Exactly. We have all these studies on Prozac. Why wouldn't you just take that? So I think a big part of it, too, is that there's some amount of industry manipulation. Same thing when I say that, oh, you should have. If you're gonna have milk, have it from cattle with an A2 genetic history, because that protein compared to A1 is better absorbed by the human body and results in less of an allergenic response. But if you're really wanting to dial things in, then you should drink milk and prepare for all the trolls to jump in and laugh here, like, cue trolls. You should drink something that's a little bit more thermodynamically favorable for the human body, Meaning it has a smaller protein than cow's milk, like goat's milk or camel's milk or water buffalo milk even has a smaller protein than cow. And that's where everybody jumps in and laughs because this is the stuff that either people aren't talking about or there's a big, you know, there's a lot of industry influence from the American Dairy. Was it the American Dairy Association?

Probably.

I think it's the. I forget if that's the exact title of the Dairy Association. Dairy Farmers Association, Whatever you call it. Whatever you call it. So I think those are a few of the things that you need to bear in mind is a yes, Some of the stuff I talk about religion and spirituality, that is pseudoscience, admittedly, and I'm okay and comfortable with that. I think if you could prove it, it would not be as magical as it is. If you could prove in J.R.R. tolkien's book that the dragon was there and the ring actually works, and here's the science behind how the ring could work, and here's how Gollum could have lived to be as old as he lived. All of a sudden, all the fun is stripped out of. Out of this magical pseudoscience book. You could say the same thing about religion and spirituality in the life that we're leading. In addition, it's inconvenient for a lot of people, and people just tend to basic evolutionary, ancestral mechanism, be afraid of something they don't understand or something that's going to end, inconvenience them. And then C. There's the C. Or 3. I don't remember. Again, the industry influence that I think also pretty dramatically influences consumer choices.

Ben. Yesterday's pseudoscience was microbiome health. It was leaky gut syndrome. I mean, I remember talking about these things to my doctor clients, I don't know, 14 years ago, and them laughing at me like, oh, that's hocus pocus. That's. That was considered pseudoscience today. That's real science. They're real stuff coming out.

That was the reason why I asked, because I would imagine because we know you really well and so, and we have a lot of respect for you. And I think anybody who doesn't know you very well and they ask about you, like, to us, that's the first thing that they say to me is like, oh, that pseudoscience guy. I'm like, oh, you really don't.

And I'm guilty of that myself. I make fun of Dr. Mercola for talking on the phone on his first fricking selfie stick. But you know what? Maybe when people are dropping dead of brain cancer 20 years from now, everybody's gonna say, gosh, that's pretty smart of him to do. Right? So I'VE been in that chair before where I've laughed at him doing that or the fact that he wouldn't get in it. And I'm sorry if he's listening in. I'm not throwing him under the bus. I'm just using this as an example.

I love him, by the way.

Yeah, I love Dr. McCloud, too. I learned a shit ton from him. But he wouldn't get in the car to travel with. With me from LA to Malibu to visit a friend over there that I wanted him to hang out with because of the EMF potential on the highways and all these 5G power lines.

How did he get there?

But he didn't go, so he teleported. And you know what? You know what? 10 years from now, rather than me raising an eyebrow at that and thinking, oh, geez, just live a little. You can't prove that by taking a car from LA to Malibu you're going to get cancer. You know what? That. All that quote pseudoscience unquote that people might accuse him of, he could be laughing at us 10 years from now when. When the people that followed his advice are far healthier and living a longer time.

I agree. I agree.

Well, you have to. You have to judge. You have to juggle modern life with a lot of these risks. But I think he's somebody who. I mean, he lives it and breathes it. And so he goes in.

That sleeps in a Faraday cage.

Faraday cage, Right. So. And people like you, I appreciate people like you do that kind of stuff so that the rest of us can pick and choose what we think is important based on what you're doing. So you may be doing all this other shit, all kinds of crazy stuff, and I'm gonna take two or three of those big rocks or the big ones that I see make the biggest difference.

Right. And apply when my dick falls off, you know, to avoid doing anything. Ben did do his dick. Yeah, that's right. Don't do dick shots. By the way, speaking of.

Of your dick. Yes.

Nice segue.

I'm listening.

Talking about my dick.

Totally shoved my. My. Whoa, hey. My mouth. Tread lightly. I can't say anything. Lane Norton, speaking of dicks. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Folks, people, actually, we made some jabs today. Never. I've never hung out with Lane. He did.

He was trying to talk about him.

Wait, wait a little bit.

But.

But honestly, we're gonna go on rogue. Everything I've heard of him, he's like. He seems like a very, very cool, grounded Nice, dude. So I, I, I meant nothing by the dick segue, but I was actually referring to the fact that I guess he's going to be debating Dominique d' Agostino on the Joe Rogan podcast about ketogenic diet.

How do you think that's going to go? Your opinion?

I wish you were on there.

Yeah, I know. I kind of wanted I saw you.

Throw your name in the hat.

Well, no, I'm not a PhD, you know, but both of those guys are doctors.

Right.

So lame reasons. Yeah. I think if you're gonna have a death match, doctor against doctor versus doctor against, like, you know, pseudoscience guy. Technically, I'm an exercise physiologist and nutritionist, but I'm not board certified in exercise physiology and I have a master's degree in it. But, you know, there are, there's a whole bunch of reasons why I'm less qualified than both those dudes. So I think it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be way more humble.

Way better ego than those guys.

I'm not sure. And I think there's another guy that's gonna be debating on there. Joel Kahn, vegan dude. I don't know who he's gonna be debating. Chris Kresser, I thought, right, it could be.

It is Chris.

Yeah, it could be. Yeah. Chris. Gosh.

Interesting.

It's hard because everybody I've just listed except Lane, and it's just we haven't had the opportunity to hang out. They're kind of sort of my friends and acquaintances for me to make a prediction in public. But you know what? There's also something to be said for radical honesty. So I'm sorry to say this, Joel, but I think Chris is gonna kick your ass in that debate.

Just because.

I think he's a little less dogmatic, perhaps. I love you, Joel. You know that. And then regarding Lane and Dom, I suspect that that's going to turn into a polite exchange of ideas versus an actual debate. I think both of those guys, they're.

All, they're both friends, too.

Yeah. They might be on a little bit too friendly of terms, or. They are. It's way too friendly, polite and gentlemanly. And I think it's just gonna turn into a scientific exchange of ideas.

It's just gonna be them. Yeah.

If.

No, it's gonna be like that.

I could see that. Yeah. Especially, I mean, you know, I've hung out with Dom. He's like a big, cuddly teddy bear.

Oh, he's a great guy.

He's not gonna Rip your head off and say, you know, that's.

No, I'm actually a little disappointed in Joe as matching. I don't know if Joe made the decision or somebody else is matching those two up. Because if you wanted some good radio, you would have put something fiery on the other side of like his. Lane can be that, like.

Yeah, yeah, Lane can.

If you poke it.

Lane, you'd have Lane and Gary Tubbs or something like that. Because that was who he was going after initially. I think. Yeah, that's what he should have done. I think he would have made better radio. Dom. I know Dom2 is going to be. And I know Lane, like, Lane will throw some points out, but then. And Dom. Oh, okay. In that case, I could see that. But in most, it's going to be a lot of agreeing back and forth on their points. I don't see him challenging him that much. Right.

Well, the older I get, the less I give a shit about what people actually care about me and the less I find myself being a people pleaser. Which is probably why, you know, the old men in the locker room walk around, their hips thrust out and their.

Dicks blow dry their balls.

Blow dry their ball because they don't really give a shit anymore.

I do that now.

You know, same thing. If I were to go on that podcast and debate somebody, I would be blow drying my balls all day long and calling out right and left because I really don't give a.

That's great.

We love you, bro.

We love you, Ben. Yeah, we love you, brother. Always a good time when we, when we. When we run into you and. Always a good time, man.

Yeah. When you take off.

When you.

Tonight or tomorrow?

I'll fly out tonight. I think like seven or something, so. And it's out actually out of San Francisco, so I should probably probably.

Oh, God.

You better get wrapped up pretty soon. Maybe maybe pop a few of these wonderful candies that we have laying around.

Yes, sir.

You already did. Yeah, I counted, so I think you're okay.

Yeah, yeah, maybe. Maybe four. I don't know what I told you. No, just. Just a couple. By the way, I want to finish with this. That I only endorse responsible use of any mind altering substance. And furthermore, I think that it's perfectly fine for bros to sit around shooting the shit and, you know, dropping F bombs and everything else. But you know, when I'm. When I'm around ladies and in a polite etiquette situation, I am. I'm not a foul mouth druggie, I guess is what I want to say. Great disclaimer. I'm glad you cleared that up for everybody.

No, no, you are, you are a very stand up person. You have tremendous integrity. You're very humble.

But I also like to hang with the dudes.

You know, we're just having a great time. And you're in mind Pump Studio. And this is how we, this is how we roll, how we do it. We much, we appreciate it. Thank you.

Awesome. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.