The Physician Who Personally Advises The World's Leading Health Authorities, And His Tiny Invention That Pro Athletes Swear By.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

It's a liquid crystal. It can hold information. When you organize the molecules into a way and we get them into these figures, they can self organize and then create these layers so it's structures. And then the more organized it becomes, we find along the surface of semipermeable membrane that charges begin to separate. What I have found is the combination of when those particular crystal electrolytes or crystal structures disassociate into solution that they lend that charge to that liquid. Does it take a a minute off of your mile now, but does it make water work more efficiently?

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. I have several friends who I would kind of consider to be like VIPs or big wigs or leading authorities in the fields of health and biohacking. And although I want to respectfully keep them anonymous, I've noted that a relatively large majority of those folks have one specific guy who actually serves as their personal physician. And he's actually the same guy who advises some of the world's top Spartans and strong men, competitors and obstacle racers like April D. And Hector Mendoza and Orla Walsh and Frank Franco and Joey Petroleum. And some of these folks who are who are pretty elite athletes, especially in a lot of these obstacle racing and strongman type of events. Now this physician's name is Dr. Anthony Beck, and Dr. Beck is actually my guest on today's podcast. He's an author, a speaker, he's got over 20 years of experience in everything from functional medicine to Chinese medicine to clinical nutrition to orthomolecular medicine, hormone replacement therapy, sports medicine, exercise physiology, you name it. So he's a wealth of knowledge on some pretty advanced health tactics, medical testing, combining biohacking and exercise performance. He also has helped to invent and is kind of the mastermind behind a hydration tactic that I've personally been tapping into. For some of my races, some of my post sauna sessions, some of my airline traveling is this little shot of water called oral IV So we'll talk about that too, because it's something that I've been using, but I don't fully understand myself. So I'm wanting to ask Dr. Beck a little bit about that too. But anyways, in this interview, we're going to delve into a ton of Dr. Beck's health secrets. Dr. Beck, or should I call you Anthony?

Either one.

Or do you care?

Whatever rolls off the tongue. I'm not pretentious.

Dr. Beck just sounds so much more respectful. But anyways, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Hey, man, thanks for having me. Been a fan of yours for a while, for sure.

Oh, cool. Well, that's good to know because I've actually heard, like I said, I mean, I'm serious. I have all these friends who I really respect in the health industry and they're all like, well, Dr. Beck says this. Dr. Beck says that he's my personal doc. And I'm like, I'm intrigued as to that would be the case. And actually that might be a perfect place to start. I mean, with all these really smart people in the health industry and a lot of even top pro Spartan racers like I talked about, looking to you as their personal physician. I'm curious, what makes your approach unique? Why is it that you think these folks are turning to you?

Well, there's a couple folded because I've actually even asked them that because you try to get that think is first and foremost, I'm a clinician and a teacher. I'm not a, you know, a marketing guru or any that kind of fun stuff. And so I kind of learning to get out there and I've learned to be called the space, the wellness space. And you know, and the thing is, I think they like just. It's a very candid point of view and what I call is my balanced understanding. I really like to find myself centered and grounded in the middle and seeing all the different dogmas and really getting into the epistemology of things, why they think the way that they think, and then being able to, number one, put them at the very center of everything that I do and recommend. I don't use a homogenized approach or think that everybody is of the same biochemical individuality or genetic uniqueness. I look at everybody as a category of one. And that sets the stage for my entire prism in which I look through. And then of course, I have a method called balance protocol, which is a framework that I use to help give a person a way to find their n equals 1, how they can actually do Things in the right order as opposed to just doing a whole bunch of things. And it just seems to make sense. They've said, man, this is, it makes sense. It answers the questions why this person says this and these other ones say this. And I go, well, what they're all missing is you, the patient. Right? We talk very homogenously. We see that in medicine quite a bit. You know, we have some useful studies in rats and monkeys and other guinea pigs and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, the human being is just so phenomenally complex and beautiful.

So let's, let's say that I, that I came to you and you were going to find out as much as you could about me or kind of get started down the road of making me a better athlete or helping me to perform better physically or mentally. What, what would you start with as far as quantifying? Like, do you have specific medical tests that you prefer to run, folks?

Yeah, I do. But the first thing that platforms all of that is the unique story of the individual all the way back as far as they can recall or elucidate based upon records, even, you know, in vitro. So the patient's unique story is unfolded to me and I basically become their autobiographer. I have them give me their story and I give it back to them to make sure I understand as if I was writing a book about them. Because I'm going to dial in specifically to everything that makes them uniquely them. Where they live geographically, how they eat, drink, are exposed to light, non native emf. I mean, the entire gamut of what makes them in their unique symphony, their orchestra together. And so we start there. I start with their story. I have a really extensive intake. I won't get into all that, but it's, you know, it takes about a, it takes a While. It's about 15 questionnaires, so it works out to be about 40 some pages. But basically telling their story. So we start there and then I ask them, well, what is it, their goals, what are they looking to achieve so I can make it about them. I've always felt that as doctors, we're teachers and the patient is the boss, not the doctor. And I work for them. That's kind of where we start, is their story.

So after someone fills out questionnaires, what do you test as far as blood or saliva or hormones or things of that nature?

Well, basically I do have an initial workup that works within my framework because the thing about it is it comes down to assessing a couple of things. We go from the path of least resistance, up and move from there. So we always want to find out, of course, you know, food is medicine, but what foods work for that person is very individualistic. So the first thing I'm going to do is we're going to take a look and find out what their metabolic tendency or type is. We do that through, of course, hair tissue mineral biopsy. Get a good idea of are they more towards fast, slow, mixed or balanced oxidation. So we can definitely.

What'd you call it? A hair tissue mineral biopsy?

Yeah, hair tissue mineral analysis. There's a couple of different ways of calling it. Basically, it's a hair sample that they do. And of course, there's a big difference out there. There's a lot of labs. Oh, my goodness. That have different ways of doing it, but I use the ones that don't wash the samples, and that's a whole other story. But so we start with that. So that, that starts to get me into, of course, are they leaning. Where do we lean their macros? Right. More towards, you know, higher in fats, lower in carbs, more carbs, higher in fats. Because not everybody is the same. So I do that so that way I can start feeding them. But then as we start feeding people, we need to know what they're reactive to. So I use a particular food intolerance test called ELISA Act. It's a lymphocyte response assay by EAB Labs. It's the only one that I use. All the other ones, from Alcat to Cyrex to Novas, and all these different people that are just looking at iggs or particle size or cell volume stuff, they're all false positives, really.

That's interesting, because I've heard, and even most recently, like Chris Kresser, for example, just talked about this on a recent podcast about how the lymphocyte testing tends to create false positives. And he's more of a fan of the Cyrex testing. So what's your take on that?

Well, I have a lot of respect for Chris in a lot of things, and as we say down south, bless his heart. But the difference is this is that. And this is why this is important to know. Because if we're going to use food as medicine for the individual person, we have to make sure that we're not artificially inducing cascades of inflammation or immunological reaction based upon foods that we think are healing. They could be anywhere from, oh, my God. I mean, I have patients that are reactive to coconut and avocado and could you imagine? So the thing about it is the problem with something like say a Cyrex is that it's just an IGA IGG measure. It just measures antibody response, which only tells us that we were exposed to that and the body reacted. It does nothing to differentiate. Was that a healthful or a harmful reaction? The body's doing exactly what it's supposed to do and it responds with immunoglobulins. Right. So just because you might have elevated IGA or IGG or IGG4S, that does not mean that that was a negative reaction. You know, the example I use is like, you know, you have a bunch of people show up to, you know, unexpected for, you know, a holiday dinner, and you have to take out, you know, more chairs and you have more dishes to clean up afterwards. Well, if it was cousin Eddie who we didn't want to show up, well, that kind of sucks. But if it was, you know, some, your son coming back from Iraq and surprised you like, oh, that's a great problem. So it's not that just the increase in chairs and plates or IGGs or IGAs increasing, it's was that a healthful or a harmful response? And the only way to differentiate that is by an, an ex vivo test where you can actually differentiate and see all the difference between immunocomplexes, type 1, type 2 and type 4 immunological responses. And Cyrex just doesn't do that, doesn't tell you anything about function. It just says that they went up. And then here's the other thing that's for the missing component. A lot of times about the time I work with people being in chronic disease, rectification is that they don't have the immune response. So it requires you to have a certain amount of immunoglobulin response. And if you're in a weakened system over time, you can't even mount enough to move the numbers. But if you have enough to where we can observe them in specific, you know, advanced cell technique, little wells, you definitely can. Doesn't matter. You don't have to rely on a whole bunch of them. So it's a big difference out there, you know. So I don't find any usefulness for particle size or immunoglobulin tests whatsoever.

Interesting. Now, do you test for specific hormones or do you have like full blood channels that you do as well?

Well, the next one I do. So we do the hair and get the metabolic types. We can adjust the macros, number two, rule in or rule out foods and supplementation molecules that would be helpful or harmful. Then number three, I'm sure you've heard of the Nutrival Nutrival plasma from Genova. Fantastic lab because it's going to give of course indicators of malabsorption, dysbiosis, literally all the markers of citric acid cycle. Got to know what, you know, what our mitochondria are doing, neurotransmitt, B vitamins, amino acids, oxidative stress, all the lipid profile. When it comes to taking a look at status of your liver, your kidneys, how your GI is doing, it's phenomenal. So that is really my big hit. That gives a tremendous amount of insight into the individual sit rep at the time.

And you said that one's called the Nutrival Nutrival plasma. Okay, so that one's the Nutrival plasma. The food allergy panel is which one?

ELISA act, lymphocyte response assay by EAP labs.

Okay, gotcha.

Yep. So that's, that's it. The hair tissue you can either do through ARL or trace element dei. Two great companies. All the other ones they wash those sample and skews the results. So yeah, so that's inside those three labs. I'll start there. That's baseline. I don't get into hormones initially because so much of what we're gonna do to correct their environmental inputs when it comes to their water, light, emf, food is going to change all that anyhow and address the things that we would see there. Then number two, their gi, their gastrointestinal health all the way from the hooter to the tutor. And then we get into mindsets. Key number three, I save hormones really all the way to step number seven of eight because the body has the ability to modulate hormones, but we can replace hormones all we want. But if your GI is not right, if your eating is not right, if your environment and your lifestyle is not right, you are just going to be chasing hormones up and down and all around. And so I don't do hormones initially. I usually won't get into that until about four to six months into program.

So when you got into all this in terms of medicine, have you always kind of thought outside the box when it comes to the type of testing and the type of analysis that you do and having people do like you know, 40 page questionnaires when they come to work with you and that type of thing, or did you have a personal epiphany somewhere along the way in your medical career that led you to this approach?

Yeah, it was. It was a little combination of both. I mean, I started out, you know, you get through some. Some schooling and stuff, and then you're like, oh, man, I can't wait to use all these herbs and stuff and points and stuff. And then when you find out that people are really going to come to the vast majority, they're going to go, okay. Fatigue, poor sleep, musculosul pain, gastrointestinal things, and libido. That's my furious five. And so I'm like, oh. So I really found that I got myself into chronic stuff as opposed to acute care. So, yeah, probably for the first couple years, I didn't quite grab it. But then after you see a couple thousand patients, at least for me, the way I think, because I think in pictures. You know, the thing about it is, I was like, well, how can I retell this patient's story and understand this? And then balance protocol kind of unfolded in front of me. I go, well, hold on a second. There is just like, we had Euclidean geometry, and then we came up with fractal geometry, and we see things that way. And I go, well, hold on a second. Well, we've got health the way we do it, but then there's a math. There's an order. There's actually a bunch of chaos, but it organizes itself in a very repeatable order. If you just look at the body in a different way. So this was back in late 80s, early 90s, when I was living in Virginia beach, did some studying, you know, Edgar Casey's place at, you know, association for Research Enlightenment. You know, really fruity biscuity stuff, and really just started expanding myself and that kind of stuff. But then, so after about five years, I started to go, hmm, there is an order of operations. There's. You could do a bunch of stuff, but if you don't do them in the right order, you won't get the same result. So it really dialed in for me back in 2003. So about 13 years ago is when Balance protocol was actually kind of born. And it really became a framework that was just, like, manifested. I'm like, wow, that's really neat.

And you call it the balance protocol.

Yep, Balance protocol.

Now, you said there were eight different things that you look at in that.

Yeah. So I basically call it my 2, 3, 5, 8 framework. You know, 2 stands for two questions. What do you got to add? What do you got to remove? Three are the three phases. We always nourish, balance, purify. There's a lot of people today that love detox. I do too. But I call it more biotransformation than detoxification. But you want to do detoxification last. You don't want to start forcing out stuff that's sequestered in systems into a weakened system. So you want to always focus on nourishing first, then balance things. And then last you go to clean out. The five stands for the five causative factors of all disease known to mankind, which are nutritional deficiencies, stressors, microbes, allergens and toxins. That's it. So it's only one of those five. And so number eight are the eight keys of balanced protocol. So key number one being optimizing environmental inputs. Then we move on to gastrointestinal and elimination. Number three is mindset number four. We get into immune and clearing inflammation. Then we get into cell and physical structure. Then we get into oxidative stress and energy production, then hormones, neurotransmitters, and then lastly biotransformation and detoxification. So I walk patients through that framework. It's not rigid to where you got to go step by step through it, but that's the order of precedence as you're presented with things that you have to add and take away.

How long does that take for somebody to go through that whole process?

Everybody's a little bit different. Some like you, who's pretty savvy, and it's, it's not their first rodeo. We could really work through protocol in about three months. Other individuals, it takes six. Some people takes about a year. Just depends upon the demographic of that individual person, you know, kind of what their avatar is. So again, it's self steering. The person is the center to it. It must form and work within that person's unique story. And everybody's biochemical individuality is different. What their capacity is to change their environment is what really determines the pace.

That'S set with somebody like you who seems to be always researching, you know, these, these cutting edge medical tactics. What exactly? I'm just curious, like when you wake up, do you have a daily routine? Like do you have specific things that you do each morning or each day? Or do you, is your day kind of random or how do things work for you as far as like when you wake up, if you meditate, you have breakfast. Can you walk me through a few your little protocols?

Yeah. And that's. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I started way back in the day when going through the, you know, Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes schools of stuff and NLP and that kind of fun stuff. So yeah, I've been doing my, you know, morning power hour and miracle mornings and all those different ways and stuff for, you know, quite a long time. So yeah, when I wake up in the morning, I usually, you know, I don't wake up before, you know, nine o'. Clock. I sleep in because I'm a big fan of.

You sleep until 9:00'? Clock?

I sure do.

What time do you go to bed?

Generally between 10 and 11.

Holy cow. Isn't there a law of diminishing returns with sleep? Like once you pass nine hours, there's increased mortality.

I don't know about all that. There might be the case, but again, I wasn't in that study, so. See, that's my thing. I don't know. Is that rats, monkeys, humans.

Do you exercise a ton that you want that recovery? Are you just somebody who just likes to sleep?

Well, no, I just. When I say sleep. So in other words, there's a big thing out there about thinking that humans were really kind of built to sleep all the way through. So if I go to bed, it's usually more towards 11 than not. So I'm a 9 to 10 hour when I say out of bed or whatever. So I'm usually my brain wakes me up at about 7:45-8:15 automatically. I don't use an alarm clock or a phone or anything of that nature. Plus I have a two and a half year old, so you know how that goes. So the thing. Yeah, well, you know, we have a nanny, so that helps when she comes in the house, usually about 8 o', clock. So I'm in bed. So in other words, I don't go rushing to pop up. I like to use that time when I awake to go ahead and walk through my day. I mentally am there. So I start breathing, I kind of wake, you know, I come out of that, you know, sleep state and then address my body to be able to, you know, make a determination to get up. I don't do the Jerry Maguire where I jump up and slap my hands and both feet on the floor and go for a run. And so basically I wake up and I think I kind of walk through my body. I do a little bit of, you know, a little bit of heart math, but without my little, my little M wave on and you know, you mean.

You do like heart rate. You do the, what do you call it, the quick coherence technique.

You got it.

Okay, gotcha.

So I start my day with that and then I walk myself through Basically everything I have to do, I always pick one big thing, two little things, two gimmes. One thing I must get today. You're a must. So that was pretty cool. Everything worked around that. So I get up and then I do hydration and hygiene. So, you know, I go, you know, brush the teeth, you know, empty the bowels, that kind of fun stuff. Go, you know, grab a little beverage and then, then I go outside, I get barefooted and I ground up and I breathe and I just kind of walk in the grass or look, you know, pick my tomato plants a little bit or work in the garden a little smidge for a couple of minutes. Then I come in and then I eat and kind of get in on the day that way. Nothing really too complicated as far as like exercise and that kind of stuff. I probably only do physical training per se, you know, I'd probably say, I don't know, three to six times a month. The rest of the time I'm just active. I love to just. I like to get on my bike or I'll play or do fun stuff like that. I'm active. I don't really like. I'm not a big needing to do performance or stuff like, you know, those like yourself do to where you gotta, you know, rock and roll an OCR course or something. So.

Right.

Yeah. So that's kind of how my day starts. I mean. Yeah, so I have a pretty structured day. I see my patients virtually via Skype and stuff like that from all around the world. So I let my daily schedule work around that kind of fun stuff. But yeah, it's pretty simple. I mean, a lot of things that you're familiar with is, you know, that kind of thing is starting the morning out with getting into some quick coherence and hydrating, eating properly and stretching, grounding, shower up and then just go for the day. I mean, I really just run a real low stress type of amplification.

Let's say somebody wanted to look good naked and live a long time. What kind of exercise protocol or exercise approach would you recommend for them?

Well, the thing about it is I would tell them to play and to sleep. That's it.

And when you say play, you mean the kind of things that you do where you're just like commuting on your bicycle and going for walks in the morning.

But you know, good old military, I was going to call them PT or calisthenics. You can do that kind of fun stuff. You know, you can do some hiit training, different things like that. I have really found because I'm answering your question on that. If you really just want to look good naked and you want to live a long time, you really need to train less, rest more and be calorie restricted. I mean that's really it.

Yeah, that makes sense. Now what about these professional racers who you work with? And I'm just using their name because I know that they've said they work with you and you've got this, like April D, for example, who's one of the top female Spartan racers out there. When you work with an athlete like that, what are you doing with them? Are you doing the same type of functional testing with them? Are you giving them their workouts? How does that work?

Yeah, yeah, April, she actually is top. She's the top and she's a beast. I love her to death. The thing about it is, see in that particular case, if a person elects to drive hard in that, well, that's a different story. That's a different thing between looking good naked and living forever. So. But yes, started with the same process. The prison that we look through is still the same, but it's dictated upon their unique story. So for her, she competes for a living and wants to kick butt. So we start with the same thing. Yep. All those functional tests that I've talked about we've done and completed. Of course another one on top of that is, you know, we do a GIFX 2203 day collection. So we want to take a look and you know, sequence the genome in the biome.

What did you call that one?

The GI effects. I love that test. It's a stool sample, three day collect to where, you know, we take a look and see, you know, how they're breaking down foods and stuff. Is there any inflammatory mark, their bacterioid A's versus bacteria.

Right, the comprehensive stool test.

Yeah. Rule in or rule out, you know, what their bacterial strains are, yeast and parasites and that kind of fun stuff. Because GI is central. If you're going to operate elite wise, you better know what you're going on in your gi. So yeah, we did all that kind of stuff. So that's what it is. So I work with her virtually same kind of thing where she's out in Colorado based and we just go over, we do weekly dietary reviews and of course, you know, I work with her when it comes to supplementation and dietary tweaks, different things when it comes to her training regimen. She has a family, fantastic coach there on site that pushes her like a, like a Spartan.

So Sometimes he's actually her coach, is the same guy that coaches me.

Oh, he's awesome.

Yancy Culp.

Yeah. So the thing about it is I love to have that collaboration like that because that's kind of where his passion is. Mine's more on the biochemical side. And then sometimes I have to remind her to kind of, you know, give the body rest time. We got to really make sure that we have rest and recovery. So I work with her that way and we just kind of let it go that way. Now we're getting, of course, her ready for work worlds here in just a few weeks and she's dialed in, man, it's just, I'm so proud of her. We just had a follow up last night, so that's why I'm kind of giggling. But geez Louise.

Now when you say she's dialed in, is that, are you running specific tests on her? Are you just basing it out on, on how she reports back to you?

Oh, no, no, no. I take a look at her, you know, like I said, her, her poop, pee, saliva and blood. We, we monitor all that kind of stuff.

How often do you monitor that in an athlete?

Well, depending upon where they're at, we really don't need to do it any sooner than a three month interval. But three months, if you're really trying to, you know, get paid, doing it for a living, if you're doing it recreational and things like that. I do recommend biannually every six months, but as you're training, your body will kick into certain, you know, epigenetic expression. So we need to be able to be mindful of what those could possibly be doing. So then we do tweak that along the way. Plus, depends upon the time of the year, we're symbiotic beings with our environment and the outdoors and things of that nature and the light cycles, how much blue versus red and that kind of fun stuff that hitting our eyes and altitude and things like that and all that kind of stuff changes the person. So we have to move the physiology to match the environment in which we're training. I know that sounds a little fruity biscuits, but, but it really makes all the difference in the world. We're not the same in the spring as we are in the fall.

Yeah, it sounds somewhat similar to what I do. I do a full blood test and a three day stool collection. Well, I do a three day stool collection about once a year and then I do a full blood test once every four months or so. However, I don't Run some of these things that you've talked about like the Nutrival and the hair tissue mineral analysis quite that frequently, but it's really interesting to hear about what you're doing. I'm always curious about like what the gold standard would be if you had all the resources necessary to test everything that was going on inside your body. What about genetic testing? Because there are companies like DNAFIT or other organizations that will export and import your 23andMe data to find out like your, you know, whether you're a power responder or an endorser responder, that type of thing. Do you do any DNA testing on your, on your athletes or the folks you work with?

With? Yep, everybody's got to have a 23andMe and I'll put it through my supercomputer and those kind of guys like that too. The difference is is what do you.

Do with your supercomputer?

Yeah, I got my little software, you know, different things. In other words, you could. Yeah, because there's certain snips that I'm interested in and other people might not be interested in. Of all the raids, of course is COMT and mthfr. Well, it just kind of depends on the person but there's a lot of other different things. But I started looking into all that stuff. I remember doing functional labs prior to a human genome project. Remember that didn't finish up until early 2000s till the data came out like 05ish 0205. And so people are still scrambling to kind of figure out what it is. And there's a whole lot of noise and confusion out there about the SNPs and things and people are making decisions based upon their DNA. So what they're doing is they're getting lost in the forest amongst the trees and they forget that DNA might not necessarily change. I don't necessarily think that we know that yet. But at the end of the day with what we have, is more going to be, you know, all these things, you know, epigenetically being expressed or not. That's where the real rubber hits the road. Not getting stuck and going okay and making decisions of how you should eat or supplement based upon what your MTHFR zygous is. That's just ridiculous because I know people who are, who have that predisposition to be poor methylators. They don't have a problem in the world with methylating and if they were to upregulate methylation they'd be over methylating and creating some other problems that are Very similar in the bell curve to the deficiency. So you can't treat or modulate based upon the genetics. They are a great thing to talk about predisposition or antecedents, but they do not reveal triggers or mediators. And that's what we have to really focus on because those things change month to month. So that's one of the reasons why.

You'Re talking about, like, epigenetics and the expression of genetics versus the actual genes themselves.

You got it?

Okay.

Genes are not ticking time bombs. Just because you have a single nucleotide polymorphism of the VDR does not mean that you're going to have problems with vitamin D. And you should pop a bunch of vitamin D pills because vitamin D is magnesium dependent both on its conversion and binding to a shared receptor for Retin A. So the thing about it is, is what you need to do is get a sit rep. Well, what's the health of your kidneys? What's the health of your bowel? And are you outside in the sun? Are you getting, you know, pushing up your DHA and, you know, keeping it, you know, sources from SN2 position? Are you getting things, you know, right for you, not just going, okay, well, I have this whatever, so I'm going to take this pill. That's what I see is the noise and confusion that's out there. People making decisions of diet and supplementation based upon genetic findings. You're missing the boat. You need to know what your sit rep is, and that's why.

What are you calling it? Your sit rep. Oh, yeah.

Situational report. I'm sorry. It's a military thing. Yes. So I work with a lot of, you know, spec ops guys. So were you in. What's a sit rep? I was. Yeah.

Okay.

I didn't go active duty. I was a midshipman at Old Dominion University when I was doing my undergrad.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

So, you know, I'm a medical director for Task Force Dagger Foundation. We provide benevolent care to military special forces operators and their families.

So cool. Cool.

Pretty neat stuff.

Yeah, we actually. We had an interview with Matt Rymanu, who has this website called ph360 where you go in there and you upload, like, your body type and where you're traveling in the world, your sleep cycle, stuff like that. And it kind of spits out exercise and nutrition recommendations based off not just your genes, but more the expression of your genes and the environment that you're living in. It sounds like your approach is kind of similar. Where you're not just looking at programming based on genes, but also the expression of those genes.

You got it. And the difference. Nothing replaces the one on one communication with an experienced clinician to be able to sort through the outliers, the confounding variables. I love softwares and supercomputers, different gadgets and things like that. But bringing the patient grounded back into being a category of one is super important. They can kind of get lost with these things that have neat little layouts and interfaces and stuff like that. So where it really makes a difference is finding out what makes you uniquely you. And you can take a look at this biochemical individuality, what your status is. Yeah, kinda like the hair. That's one of the things I like about it. It doesn't tell everything. Some people will take one of these topics and they'll just go buck nuts, assuming that it makes a whole bunch of other information, but it just doesn't. But it's a live tissue. It's a real repeatable thing that you can repeat every two to three months and see the ebb and flow of what's going on in your body. So that's why it's useful. Plus it's really inexpensive. Nutrival, on the other hand, it's kind of salty. It just kind of depends upon where you're at, whether you have insurance or not, or if I'm your retained physician. What that would investment would be not to be confused with the Nutrival fmv, which is a urinary amino acid collection, which is not useful for most folks unless you're older and you have muscle wasting. So has to be the plasma. But yeah, it gives you such great insight. I mean that really is that between that and the lymphocyte response assay, dude, I mean that's the game changer.

And the lymphocyte response assay is this ELISA act food allergy testing you were talking about.

You got it. Okay, cool. And I've played with them all for dude for over two decades. And then we all have our different ways. And there's other people that get great clinical results too. So it's not like I'm the only bearer of it. It's just that I definitely feel that I can do it more efficiently and more specialized by the way I do it. I love patients being interested in it. But if we're in the biohacking or quantified self movements and stuff, most people are making a lot of decisions based upon no self quantification. They're really Working off of homogenization.

Yeah. No, it makes sense, especially when we live in an era where it's so easy to quantify. I want to switch tracks a little bit here and ask you about this oral IV stuff because I know that you, am I correct that you played a role in helping to design it?

I was the entire designer.

Okay, makes sense. So, first of all, I got a box of it and full disclosure, oral IV sent me something to try. And I've been experimenting with it because every day I do infrared sauna where I just sweat the heck out of my body for 30 minutes. And I've been taking one after that. It's like a little shot, less than an ounce, I think, in one of these little twist off caps. And I was talking to one athlete, I think it was, I want to say it was maybe Ryan Atkins, I believe. Could have been another professional spartan athlete, I forget. But he keeps him in his little arm sleeves when he's out doing his races and just takes them out of his arm sleeves and will pop one right in the middle of a race. I've been using them during some of my longer training sessions. I just got back from hunting elk up in the Colorado altitude, around 12,000ft, where you lose a ton of water. And I was taking a couple every day up there where we were hiking around for hours every day. It tastes, though, just like water. Tastes like you're just drinking this tiny, tiny little shot of water. So I'm curious how this actually works. What is the science and the idea behind oral iv?

Well, the one thing is, I usually kind of like to get into where it came from. That'll kind of parlay into there, if you don't mind. Because that was the thing I've always been questing to figure out. How can I maximize nutrient molecule delivery into cells. Because as you know, it's. You got to go in the mouth, in the intestines, through the intestines, jump that gap into vascularity, out of vascularity, into the cell, into the next neighboring cell. You got to go in and out. A lot of semi permeable membranes. Right, right. And it truly just, you know, beings of light, if you will. Right. We're just. It's electrons, man. It's all the body electric. And so for me, I started playing with how do I get nutrients intracellularly most efficiently, without a lot of need from, you know, the, the body's power and also getting the byproducts of cellular respiration out efficiently. Even taking into consideration that the biological terrain of the individual might not be conducive based upon toxins, allergens, microbes, different varying phs, and different things like that. So I figured, well, let's look to nature. If we, you know, the big problem is we don't get out of nature's way enough and we don't pay enough attention to it. Most of the groundbreaking designs that we see when it comes to all kinds of cool stuff today is they go, oh, well, that grip system came because we looked under the microscope of gecko hands and we reproduce that. So when you look at nature, it kind of will reveal a lot of things. And so that's where I look to. I go, well, how do plants get their minerals? Right? Because we're not really built to chew and eat rocks. Of course, I don't believe we evolved from rocks. But the thing about it is, I said, well, how do plants do it? Well, I kind of thought of a way to reproduce that type of an approach using that mechanism. Because microbes is the answer. I've always said, I've been saying it for years. And I'm really glad we're getting more voice on the microbiome. And its importance is bugs got us here and they're going to get us out. So we bugs are super, super important. They are. They actually digest and break down rocks. Plants don't, you know, squirt digestive enzymes into the soil. They have a symbiotic relationship.

So you're saying microbes in the earth will break down rocks to create minerals, and those minerals are then absorbed by the plant.

You got it.

Okay.

In the fields of the electromagnetics of the earth. And then, of course, you know, light. And so when you, when you bring microbes, electromagnetic fields, light and water together, they do amazing things.

Things.

So there's you, you. But how to do that was a whole nother deal. Right.

Can you repeat what those four elements were? You said electromagnetic fields and what else?

Okay. Electromagnetic fields in an aqueous environment that would fancy for water under the influence of, you know, electrical current. Water. Right. So you have, you know, the base material, if you will, you know, rocks, atoms, and, you know, dirt. But then you have to have water to be the solvent.

Right.

Then you need microbes to do the work. Light and electricity. Right. So all those things is what allows plants to, you know, photosynthesize. Right. And I know, I happen to kind of believe that the body can also. But that's where people start going, ah, there you go. Here, here's the woo, woo.

No, I, I actually agree with you because there was, there was recent research and we talked about it on the podcast about how there, there was a study that just came out out showing that the human body can actually synthesize ATP from a combination of sunlight and chlorophyll, very similar to a plant. And this is, you know, brand new research, but it shows that there are, there are ways that we can create energy in addition to just like, you know, eating chicken and bread.

Yeah. And that's it. I just don't believe that, you know, ATP is the energy current of the body entirely. If you do the math, you just can't produce enough. And so I believe the answer is light and water. That good old dipole.

Right. We've had Dr. Jack Cruz on the show before and he would definitely agree with you that light is an integral component of creating energy, not just in plants, but also in human beings because of its ability to change your electrochemical balance.

You got it. And that's where the protection has to come. Which goes back to why not everybody's thing is going to be the same. It depends upon, you know, what light spectrums are you being exposed to and at what altitude and in what other fields of all these towers and cell phones. You know, you got to think about it, man. Just a decade ago, not everybody had them and all of a sudden now we all have these big old non native EMF bombs and everybody's got one. I mean, even five year olds, for crying out loud, staring at these boxes. And it's all thrown into the environment and we're having disruption. Right. So things have changed. And whether you live in Colorado or Florida, like I do, things are different. Right. So the plants still have a way of operating within this environment and doing just absolutely magical things. So that's where Oral IV came from. And in that process it's. I used to not talk about it much because people just wouldn't understand. I've been attacked a few times with, you know, just intellectually impotent people, from arm wrestlers to biohackers to different people that just think that, you know, it's, it's all salts, it's, it's all, you know.

Well, I definitely want to dig into this a little bit more. So you said that basically microbes will break down rocks and that's where a plant gets minerals. And that's just basic science. The plant will bring minerals in through its roots and use sunlight and CO2 to create energy, to create carbon, et cetera. So where do we jump from that into this little Shot of water that I'm drinking when I'm out on a run.

Right. So basically then in life there's always movement and flow. Even in plants, right? They don't have pumps per se, spinning little centrifuges of, you know, half horsepower, you know, impellers, they can move stuff based upon, you know, electrical current. Things will move. It all comes down to electrons. So basically I sought to kind of make a recreation of that particular process in aggregate to where we take a particular plant sourced material. I don't use rocks because then you're skipping us, you know, you're already behind a step. So you can use a plant derived source of elements, give them to a specific array of microbes, put them in aqueous environment, stimulate them with a spectrum of light for a period of time under the forces of electromagnetic fields and electrical current while being moved and vortexed and that kind of stuff. And they will, just like earthworms, eat the soil in one end and cast it out the other. Well, the electrolytes that we use are a byproduct of that process. And so we collect those electrolytes. That's why I call them crystalloid, because they have a different shape and charge, different influence. Then we add them into a structured water and then we structure it again. And what I have found is, is the combination of when those particular crystal electrolytes or crystal structures disassociate into solution, that they lend that charge to that liquid. And then when the body consumes that, it hits a mucosal membrane. It basically hits. It's like, for lack of better term, it's not nine volts, but, you know, sticking up nine. You know, guys, I guess we do it more than chicks, but you know, stick a 9 volt to your tongue, you get a little zap and the entire body gets it. And what does that do? Well, that's what muscles work off of, is the body electricity. And if you can just give it an increased bioelectrical potential, the body will come back online and work a little bit more efficiently. Now, does it take a minute off of your mile? No. But does it make water work more efficiently? Well, of course. Of course it can. So I'm not. Well, it is technically easy water, but it's not. You don't drink easy water. Get easy water. The trick is to encourage and facilitate the body making its own.

It's been a very, very long time since I've mentioned the term structured water or easy water on the show. I actually interviewed Dr. Gerald Pollack from University of Washington, who wrote this book called the Fourth Phase of Water, which I actually highly recommend. I'll put a link to that book in the show notes over@bengreenfieldfitness.com oraliv it's not hard to understand, but the book will help you wrap your head around how not all water is created equal and how water can actually carry an electrical charge. But that being said, Dr. Beck, for people who right now don't have the time to go back and listen to that episode or read that book, can you explain what structured water is and also what an EZ is?

Well, the simple way to look at it is we think of water as H2O, but it's really H3O2. In other words, it's more than just that one molecule. Okay, so this is one of the things that Pollock's work has done. And man, the guy's just a genius. I'd love to give him a hug one day. Big inspiration. I know, of course, prior to that, with his cells, gels and engines of Lifebook. But the thing about it is water can have structure. It can organize because we have vascularity in the body that really, really small that a red corpuscle or a red blood cell can't fit through it. It has to kind of squish it. And so the thing about it is there's got to be a situation where there's more to water than we actually know. And that's what Dr. Pollack covers in his book. So the thing about it is structured water can get organized. In other words, the molecules, the dipoles of hydrogen and oxygen can organize into two layers under different physiological conditions or influence. You know, when it comes to pressure, temperature, light, electricity, sound kind of familiar. So what happens is, when it has structure, I find it's my theory there's not a ton out there. Of course, I humbly submit that. Where's all the science? Well, we don't know everything about water that it's writable. You know, it's a liquid crystal. It can hold information. And so when you organize the molecules into a way and we get them into these figures, they can self organize and then create these layers. So it structures. And then the more organized it becomes, we find along the surface of semi permeable membranes that the charges begin to separate and you create this ez or exclusion zone water. There's nobody that talks about it better than Dr. Pollack, of course. And he's got better hair than me, but I love his hair. The thing about it is, you have a situation where you're literally creating a charged or battery surface between the molecules that are in water versus the actual hydrophilic membranes that are our vascularity. So if that energy is running there, you're basically creating this whole systemic superconductor. Right. And so structured water is when water is influenced to become more organized based upon its molecular structure. Easy. Water is exclusion zone water that's created when you have a buildup of these layers of organized water up against these semi permeal membranes.

Gotcha. So the exclusion zone is basically a way that water that is charged or structured is able to, in the case of the human body, be able to get through a cell membrane more easily or to carry a charge more easily within the human body.

You got it. Because remember, membranes are made up of cells, and then cells have their membranes. And so the real control of cells is not the nucleus, it's the membrane. Everything that really happens, happens there. And we don't have to just rely upon, you know, the gates and the antiporters and uniporters. It's electric. All of it is electrical signaling. And so if we can influence that in some way, well, then there we. Then we go. So that's where oral IV comes into play. And again, this isn't a commercial. It was something I stumbled upon, and we're still learning to understand it more. But it certainly has an influence on increasing the body's bioelectrical potential at the cellular level along that membrane based upon that charge. So that's at least what we assume that it is.

Now, theoretically, if you are getting more water delivered into cells by, say, using oral iv. Well, actually, even before I dig into that, let me ask you this. If I take a shot of oral IV and then I drink a glass of regular unstructured water, what happened? Does the electrical charge from something like oral IV transfer to the regular uncharged water and change the structure of that water?

We have found that it does to a degree.

What do you mean you've found that it does? You've done research on that or you just suspect or what?

Right. So I'm going based upon in vitro studies. Have I put it into water in the little baths and containers and put the nafi on under there and the little, you know. No, I haven't done all that stuff with it. That's coming forth with. I mean, it's just. It's expensive to do.

But Dr. Pollock's done that?

Oh, yeah, he has. I'm just saying, not with oral iv. Okay. Yeah. So I just want to make sure, I'm clear. I'm not saying we've established more than what we have. What I'm saying is, what we found is, is that when, when the charge, when it's consumed it, when it hits the body, that water metabolism works more efficiently. It's not a matter of getting more water into the cells, it's about making it work more efficiently. Why? Because, you know, cells, you know, they polarize and repolarize and depolarize. Right. And all that polarize that again, we're coming back to that body electric again, the electron. So when oral IV lends its charge to the body, I believe that it resets that to a degree. Of course, the varying ability to do that is based upon the terrain of the individual. You can only overcome so much, Right. So if you have a whole bunch of things that are displacing, say, easy water production, you're not going to overcome it with just a vial of oral iv, Right. If you're under the influence of certain medications or molecules or stimulants and different things like that. So. So it's not a panacea per se, but yeah. So hopefully that answers your question when it comes to that then. In other words, what I'm saying, we're finding that based upon the athletes that I work with and what I've been able to do when it comes to seeing changes in functional labs, putting molecules of nutrients into a person's body in the absence of these crystal electrolytes, then now adding them, making that be the only change and seeing differences in what their response is metabolically. When we take a look at markers.

Could you theoretically drink less water if you were using something like this, like oral IV? If I took a shot of oral IV, if I normally need, let's say 30 ounces of water during an Ironman triathlon, would I be able to drink less?

Without a doubt. Matter of fact, you can pretty much, much, you know, assume that you will because the re.

One of the reasons I asked that is because I, like I mentioned, I took it on my hunting trip recently and there was about a 24 hour period of time where we ran out of water. We got so high up and so far away from all the creeks and everything. And both of our water filters were empty, our little filtration bags. I had one, I had one shot of oral IV. I took that over the, that 24 hour period and function just fine the entire day, actually. The guy was out hunting with, he was cramping, he totally bonked. He had to lay down After a while and I just, you know, I kind of kept going and, and you know, I don't again like I haven't seen the science behind it. But that, that means a lot to me because when I go race Lake Tahoe, Spartan World Championships, you know, Spartan races are a little bit, shall we say, Spartanesque in terms of the amount of water that they give you on the course. And so I can take, say get an arm sleeve and put three or four oral IVs in there and take those every couple of hours during the race. Theoretically I could drink less if I do that 100%.

And that's the cool thing. And I'll be there in Tahoe by the way. I'm going to be there when April wins it. But about it is, is it absolutely will do that because see people, there's a. We don't. That's the one thing I love about Dr. Pollack is he actually makes this thing we just a lot about water. We just don't know. One of my other favorites is of course Dr. Tim Noakes were fantastic book Waterlogged. It's another must read. The thing about it is, is.

Oh well that's interesting. I wanted to ask you about Tim Noakes because he says you don't need that many electrolytes. But what you're saying like, like with oral IV it's not electrolytes as much even though you're using these microbes when you create oral IV to bring minerals into the water. But it's more the electrical charge that you're drinking the structured water more than it is that you're relying on it as like a salt or a mineral source.

Exactly correct. And that's just it. We don't have a large concentration of the electrolytes in the there. That's why, you know, some people have actually, you know, a couple years back I had a couple of, you know, just real not good guys just try to come at me personally about that because the dogma is, is that you need these salts. Well listen, I've never met a patient who is deficient in salt ever. We have 70 to 80,000 milligrams in us at our, in our reserve at any given time. Nobody in a developed country has a salt deficiency. You just don't and you won't. The only time it's a problem is when you're losing liquid from the bowel. Right. So most hydration science is based upon bowel dysbiosis, you know, cholera and diarrhea and things like that. Well that we're not having Montezuma's revenge. When you're on ocr, you're just not. So all bets are different. So that's the first thing. So we don't need to add all these salts to make it do what it does does. It's really again the body electric. And that's what cramping is, right? It's not a lack of these salts or the pickle juices and things like that. It's the loss of bioelectrical potential. And so the thing about it is, people go, well, I got all this salty sweat. Well that's because that's your body going, hey, listen, I don't need all this dog gone salt. And it's literally milligram for milligram. What you take in excess is exactly what you're going to sweat out. Right? Years ago we didn't even need.

That's what Tim Noakes says. Like salt. Salt intake drives salt excretion. And so if you're taking a bunch of electrolytes and salt capsules during exercise, it's going to drive those out. And that was why, you know, I interviewed Dr. Noakes three years ago when he first came out with this research. And it was two months before I went to race the Hawaii Ironman and I decided to use myself as an N equals one for what he said. And I went out and did Hawaii Ironman and I didn't use a single electrolyte capsule or a single electrolyte pill based off of his research and some of the studies he cites in his book that, for example, they've put military personnel through 48 hour freaking death marches and found that their plasma sodium levels stayed elevated because they were simply mobilizing their stores. And that, you know, I raced whatever, I think I raced like a 9:36 or something like that that year at Hawaii Ironman and had no cramping whatsoever. And I think, you know, people ask me about this and I tell them, hey, the salt pills and the electrolyte capsules, those don't hurt you, but they're just one extra thing that you have to carry and worry about that you may in fact not need. The caveat that I would bring up is that the taste of something salty can reverse a cramp. It can, it can reverse like the, the alpha motor neuron reflex that causes a cramp. And so that was one thing. Like I, I had a little Ziploc bag full of electrolyte capsules during the Spartan World Championships last year and it got so cold at one point during the race, this was on the traverse rope that my, my calves were cold, I was hanging above the water and my calf cramped. And so I literally just opened one of those capsules, just like pickle juice or mustard or whatever and put it under my tongue. But it wasn't because the salt was helping you, it was just the taste of something salty. You don't even have to swallow it, you just taste it and it reverses a cramp.

And see, I would just kindly and respectfully disagree that they actually do cause harm. And that's just it. See, you didn't have to absorb the salt and have it go into the system in order to have a thing when you had that taste, you could. So for me, I don't think salt tabs have any place whatsoever.

So how would they cause harm if they were going to cause harm? Because I was always under the impression if you just take them in, your body's going to excrete more.

Yeah. And then that would make sense. But remember this, this is, this is kind of like maybe an aha moment is that if something has the potential for good, it must therefore, in diphasic model, have the potential for harm. Right. It's the yin and yang of things, Right. So it's the same thing like with light, Right. So it can be helpful, it can be harmful. Well, the salt, remember, if you were just taking it in, well, now what is your body going to do with that? Remember, these are charged molecules also in a certain ratio, that also have their memory. And so then what ends up happening is that the body now has to process them, right? So they have to be brought in, shuttled, metabolized, taken from the mouth through the intestines into vascularity, out of that vascularity, through tissue, and then out your sweat or your hearing.

So there's basically, there's a metabolic cost.

You got it. If you, Anytime you. Yeah. Anytime you're moving something, there is a metabolic economy associated with it. So I don't believe that they're benign at all. I actually find that they create a dependency and they have a net negative on the body. So the take home, I would say, is it actually proves my point in that you can take something salty or even something sweet, put it in your mouth, get the zap, spit it out, and then guess what? You just got the effect. Well, there you have the thing of when it comes to something like an oral iv, of course I'd rather you swallow than spit. But the thing about it is get it in the body, it does what it does. And so again, it's about electrical impulse pulses. And that's what I believe where we need to be looking at is hacking into that. And then of course, those work better. If you have optimized levels of hydration, minerals, DHA light spectrum and EMF in your life, all that stuff runs better. So it absolutely will cause the body to use less water. It makes it work more efficient and stay with you longer. And quite frankly, the people who are running, you know, from the sprints to the beast, if you're, if you're going in just three hours or so, well, some of us a little longer than that. You don't need anything, you don't need water, you don't need salt. You should train to be acclimatized and not need either. So that's the key, that's the performance. Because the people who lose the most weight and have the higher body temperatures are always the ones that win.

Yeah.

So it's not a matter. You can't say, well, I want you to lost 2% of your total body weight. You've lose 20 of your, your. That's baloney. We'll tell that to the, the skinny, you know, Kenyans and stuff that we're in the marathons.

Yeah, yeah. They're like what, 8 to 10% or more.

Oh, more, yeah. And it's, it's amazing. Now everybody's different on the continuum again. Why? Back to the. Their biochemical individuality, genetic uniqueness. But you want to train. So that's what we work is we help people to really figure out what makes them and where they find that and encourage them to go from that. Now listen, if you're carb adapted, you're going to want carbs when you're running these races and competing. If you're fat adapted, you can rock and roll on fat. You don't need any of those goos and gels and all that other kind of stuff, which is another big problem. People are putting those in and then now your demand for water goes up because the big Cho molecule that doesn't have its own charge to move through the membranes has to be shuttled. And so your requirement goes up. So the key is you can work on supply side economics or demand side economics. So I encourage people to stay away from the salts and the goos. If you're under exertion under three act hours. And then, you know, of course, if you talk to notes, you know, as they, I'm a drink ad libitum guy, there's only one Symptom to dehydration and that is thirst. When you're, when you have a desire to drink and you sink fluids, drink them, drink them, you know, 4 to 600 mils. And if half hour later your body wants that again, then do it. If it doesn't want it for another two hours, then don't drink it. It's a beautiful system.

How often, or I guess I should ask it this way. What's the minimum amount of oral IV that I could use during let's say a six hour race like Spartan World Championships? Would you just take one every hour? Every three hours? What's the recommended dosage?

Well, here's the thing because remember we're working on the efficiency and the function of water. So it's my recommendation to take one prior to the race. If in the race you feel a decrease in performance or you might feel that whatever, you can take one while you're in the race at whatever interval you are. There's no cookie cutter thing. See, I'm going back to the litmus test. That prism of everybody being unique and then of course, you know, taking it as part of a recovery because when, that's why I tell people whenever you think of water and its function, think of oral iv. So whenever you have water, that would be it. Now I would love to tell everybody, hey, drink as much as you can, but quite frankly you don't necessarily need, need to. So minimum one, one vial recommended probably more towards three.

Three over the course of like a six hour race, it's like one every two hours.

Before, during, after.

Okay, that makes sense.

I mean of course I'd love to be, oh, I want to sell somebody something and have a bunch. But no, quite frankly, I mean that doesn't work like that.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Now I've talked about this before on the show, so ever since I started to research the fact that water can carry an electrical charge. And that water that's say like racing through an underground spring over rocks underneath the earth, it's charged, it's moving, it's in a vortex. It has a lot of these exclusion zones that Dr. Pollock talks about in his book and researches at University of Washington. But by the time it gets to your house, sits in a cistern, goes through a filter, whatever, it's a lot of times void of many of those electrical charges or doesn't have those same exclusion zones present. So I have a structured water unit in my house. Like I actually have a, you know, a pipe that water goes through after it passes through my iron and my manganese filters, because those are the two main things that I found in my well water. I restructure it, I structure it. Do you, do you personally, aside from Oral iv, use any type of special water filtration units or structured water or anything like that?

Yeah, I most certainly do. I am water. It's like. It's like, well, who do you love more, you know, your mom or your wife? It's like, who do I love more, you know, microbes, light or water? It's like. So, yeah, so water is super important to me. So, yeah, I have a whole house system. I have an RO system in the kitchen with a remineralizer. But then I do have a. A, an inline restructure as well.

Cool. So. So you use reverse osmosis, and then you have a remineralizer to add back the minerals that the reverse osmosis takes away. And then. And then you have a water structuring unit that. That passes through afterwards.

That's it. It makes amazing, easy water ice to go in a glass of Yamazaki whiskey.

Nice. And that was actually, that was why I originally asked the folks to. At Oral IV about their supplement that they sent to me, because I drink structured water at home in my training and everything. But I don't have it when I go to a race, and I can't carry my big old water structuring units when I'm at a race. Otherwise I would honestly just put structured water in a water bottle and drink that instead. But, yeah, this Oral IV thing, it makes sense. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to get you on the show, was because I was curious. Curious about how it's actually made. So do you guys, you literally have, like, microbes in your manufacturing facility that are churning out these minerals into the water, and you're creating essentially structured, electrically charged water that's in this tiny little tube that you can just take out with you during the race, twist off, put into your mouth. Do you drink it or you need to hold under your tongue or is.

No, it doesn't matter. So the thing is. But one thing that's missing, not to keep, you know, because I don't think anybody can. I mean, God bless you if you could reproduce it. But the thing is, so, but remember, the crystal electrolytes are recaptured out of solution into a powder. Prior to going into the secondary process of what makes Oral iv, There is a special process to where I reconstitute those crystalloid electrolytes back into solution under another Influence of a certain gals of electromagnetic field for X amount of time under X amount of light spectrum. And then we put that into a supply of the water to fill these 15 milliliter vials through a blow fill process. So it's multi step. And so just to kind of clarify, that's kind of how that works, do.

You worry at all about this stuff being in plastic and getting hot or is there a special kind of plastic used?

Yeah, it's a special plastic. It's for that. And no, because I mean I've tested it to make sure that we don't have any of the BPAs but not just BPAs but some of the other polymers and some of these things that leach most of the time. The problem that we have with plastics has to do with the chemical makeup of the water, the ph of the water and exposure to other type of fields. We're pretty protective of that kind of fun stuff but it's really never in there long enough to where it's to going. Going to be an issue. I have not seen it to be an issue so I'm not concerned about it. What I'd be more concerned about is putting something in glass, the liability and things you have to deliver it to the end user somehow. So we either have glass, plastic or metal.

Makes sense.

So it's kind of a rate limiting factor. So we have to go with that and we do the best we can there.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I'll do for folks who are listening in, I've been taking a lot of notes about not only all these medical tests that you run, but also some of the resources we've talked about. As far as my previous podcasts with Dr. Pollack and his book the Fourth Phase of Water, your website, the oral IV stuff and plenty more. So if you're listening in and you have questions and you want to leave some comments that Dr. Beck or I can reply to, or if you want to get oral IV or anything like that, you can go to BenGreenfield Fitness.com OralIV and again like I want to give full disclosure to everybody listening in. Like I, I approached Oral IV when I heard that there was the possibility of me being able to use structured water while I was out racing. They sent me some and I'm, I'm coming on board with them as one of their, their athletes because I'm such a firm believer in this stuff after using it and after digging into, into the science a little bit. So I just want to make sure that everybody knows that. But I Definitely like this stuff. I think that you should try it. If you don't have the capability or the ability to carry, like, structured water with you during a race, this gives you a way to do it. And I'm a big fan. So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.comOriALIV and you'll be able to access the show notes for this episode and read up more on this stuff. And also, Dr. Anthony Beck's website is dranthonygbeck.com I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. If you want to work with Dr. Beck on anything from like food allergy testing to some of these other components of his balance protocol. And Dr. Beck, I want to thank you for giving your time today and for coming on the show and explaining all this to us.

Hey, man, thanks for having me. I definitely have a huge respect for the work that you do. You know, as you mentioned about me at the beginning, I'd like to, you know, issue that same type of thing I hear about you. I have everybody, hey, listen, you got to talk to Ben. And because I kind of have an unconventional personality, too, because I'm, you know, I'm just a good old boy from North Carolina. But, you know, we're friends on Facebook, so I see you and your kids and the outlets, stuff like that. I'm an archer myself. I even fletch moan arrows. We do a lot of fun, a lot of things in common, man. So I have much respect for you as well. And I really want to just say, hey, I'm grateful that you have a voice out there that's balanced, fair and reasonable as well.

Sweet, man. Well, I'm sure I'll see you in Lake Tahoe. Keep my fingers crossed that your athlete, April D. Wins over there. And I'll keep in touch with you if I have more questions about this oral IV usage. And again, folks, if you're listening in and you have questions for Dr. Becker, I just go over the comments@bengreenfieldfitness.com oraliv that's O R A L I V. Leave your questions over there. Thanks for listening in and have a healthy week.

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

Sam.