The Zen Of Chinese Adaptogenic Herbs: An Interview With The Inventor Of World's Most Potent Adaptogens.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, even though the big chemical is important, it's the ratio or synergy between that ingredient and the other ones in it that make it work. The way it does. The working of it is regulate your nervous system, regulate your glandular system, have everything easily go into balance or homeostase. But again, you have to look at the whole idea of stress and what happens during stress. People get weak adrenals, they get worn out. American ginseng grown in this country is cultivated, and it's nothing compared to the energetic of a wild root, especially one that grows eight to 20 years.

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.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And my guest on today's podcast is a guy by the name of Roger Drummer. Now, I've personally known Roger for over five years, maybe even a little bit more than that. I think it's been about three years since I've actually had Roger on a podcast. Roger was actually on a podcast that we did on Chinese medicine. Well, I figured it was high time that I had Roger back on the podcast. Not just because we've actually been talking quite a bit about plant based medicine and wild crafted herbs and things like that in podcasts of late, but also because Roger is the formulator of one of my favorite potent little packets of Chinese adaptogenic herbs called Tian Qi, which he actually just released a sugar free version of. And so I want to ask him a little bit more about that and what goes into that formulation as well. So who is Roger? Well, Roger is a Chinese herbal adaptogen formulator. He's also a certified nutritionist and a diplomat of Chinese herbology. He has a patent for a process to grow biologically active anthocyanin enriched medicinal mushrooms. And don't worry, we'll ask him about exactly what that is. And Roger really is, in my opinion, one of the best kept secrets in natural medicine and health enhancement. You don't hear him on a lot of podcasts. You don't hear him as a guest making all the rounds and everything like that. But he's a wealth of information, particularly on things like tonic herbs. Roger, interestingly, has also trained in shiatsu, jinshindo, reiki, kriya yoga, and he's also a former triathlete, he's a runner, he's a cycling enthusiast. I know he's got three girls and he's a family man as well. So really interesting guy, wealth of knowledge. And today we get the pleasure of learning all about adaptogens, mushrooms and much more with Roger. So, Roger, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Oh, you're welcome. I'm really glad to be here.

Yeah. And which part of the country are you in right now?

I just moved last year to Henderson, Nevada, which is a little suburb of Las Vegas.

Interesting. Yeah. You know, I didn't, I didn't get a chance to talk about this with you, but I'm headed down to Henderson next month to race the world's toughest mudder down there. Have you heard of that event?

Whoa. No, I haven't. I know they have a triathlon here. Oh, that's pretty tough. I haven't heard that one.

They have a very tough triathlon there. They used to have the triathlon world championships down there for Half Ironman in Henderson, Nevada, on Lake Las Vegas. And this year they're also doing as they have, I think, the past two years, the world's toughest mudder there, which is, I believe it's a 10 mile loop with as many rounds of that 10 mile loop as you can do in 24 hours. And I think the winner last year did something like 95 miles, which to run that in 24 hours is pretty impressive. But to run it with obstacles, you know, monkey bars and swimming and cliff dives and stuff like that, is smoking.

Yeah.

Yeah. So anyways, I'm curious, you know, you being a Chinese herbologist and a formulator of a lot of these adaptogenic compounds, what do you actually, what do you do? Like, you know, when I close my eyes, you know, I picture you as, you know, wearing some conical stripes, Chinese harvester hat, bent over a garden harvesting compounds. But I'm sure it might not be entirely like that. How exactly does your day go?

No, because Chinese herbs obviously aren't grown in this country. You can get them in dry form, and I have quite a few buckets of those around the office here. But most of the work you do with is extracts. The Chinese have perfected the art of extracting herbs. And I mean, they've been doing it for thousands of years, it seems it's just you can't get a better herbal extract than something that's made out of China. And since I specialize in that type of herbs, I have jars and kilo bags of probably 50 different extracts that I use on a regular basis. And I formulate or mix those whenever I need to play around with a formula or to taste it or get samples of it. But pretty much I get my most of my herbs from one source because I know they're wildcrafted. I know how they make every single one of the extract. They're not made like most companies just make a five to one or something like that. They're specifically made to that particular type of herb and its chemical makeup and its physical attributes of the herb.

Now how is an herb actually extracted? I mean, what is it that they're doing in China, for example, that makes that extraction method something that you would trust so much?

Well, again, they've had thousands of years of working with that particular herb and they know the exact part of the country where the best comes from and where you can get wildcrafted. And then what they normally do will make a hot water extract just like they used to make teas, only they have the temperature regulated at a certain temperature. There's a timing mechanism on it. Something might cook slow, cook for days. Something might only cook for a few hours. If it has essential oils, it has to be taken off and then put back in when at the end of the process. So it's part of the extract itself. There's something different that goes on with almost every single herb. But the beauty of the source I have for herbs is the fact that they recognize that every herb has its own maximum extract strength. In fact, it was so funny, when I ordered started ordering herbs for tmg, the first thing they said to me, do you really want to buy that good herbs? That costs a lot of money. I said, yeah, I want the really good stuff. And they go, nobody buys that, you know, but we'll make it for you. So and so they have every single herb like, like you take an herb that's glutinous, you know, like asparagus root, eight pounds of that is, you know, between four and eight pounds is all you can use to make a pound of extract. Whereas an herb like reishi mushroom, depending on the season, that has to be a 12 to 15 to 1 extract. Because it's a woody type mushroom. It takes more of it to make or get a certain level of active ingredient. And the one that always cracks me up is Eleuthero Ginseng because people will look at the label on Eleuthero and go, wow, that's a 50 to 1. That's really powerful. No, not really. It takes you a minimum of 50 pounds of that herb because it looks like a piece of wood that you ran over with your lawnmower. Right. Tree limb. It takes 50 pounds of that to even get a pound extract out of it. So that's just a typical number.

So for eleuthero, you'd have 50 pounds of the actual root and that gives you 1 pound of the actual powdered extract that would be used to make, for example, a supplement.

Yeah, that's true. Yep. Takes £50.

Wow. And they're extracting that with, you said with just temperature controlled water. There's not like oils or alcohols involved.

No, there are alcohols involved in certain herbs, but those are ones that have a bit of essential oil or active ingredient that just doesn't come out right in water. And so you might do that for particular herbs, but generally it's a hot water extract. And it's just the time varies for each one. And they have to render the herb into a form that's extractable. So they have to pulverize it, chop it into certain, you know, certain sizes to make it extract. Well, like a reishi mushroom, you want to be able to slice it thinly so more of it is exposed to water. But then it's just a long cooking process. And then at the end they spray dry it and remove the water and you're left with an essence. And this is again something unusual we do. We buy just pure herbal essence. We don't use any spray, even filler on the spray. Like a lot of times they'll spray it with a starch, a maltodextrin, or they'll spray it out and dry it on a licorice powder. And we don't use any of that. We just have straight herbal extracts.

So what does it mean for an herb to be wild crafted? You use that term a couple of times so far. I'm curious what exactly that is.

That means they're not farmed, they're not grown on a farm. They don't have a big plantation where they're just planting that particular herb. And the people of that area just go out and harvest wild herbs from the forest and out in nature and they bring it in to be tested and sold at market. So they bring it into the factory to be tested and if it's accepted, then it's made into an herbal extract.

Is There an advantage in doing that. I mean, I had a guest who does like extractions, a guy from a company called Urban Moonshine on a few episodes.

I listened to that. Yeah, it's great.

Yeah. And he talked about higher levels of antioxidants in the wild grown plants because they've been exposed to higher amounts of, you know, environmental stressors and animals and sunshine and cold and heat and stuff like that. Is that why you would want to go with a wild crafted or is there some other reason?

No, that that is why. Well, the other one is it's that it's never been sprayed. But the main reason is there's a wild energy to it, there's a potency and you could call it, you know, in western terms like he talked about more antioxidants, more levels of different, you know, chemicals in the plant. But the reality is there's, there's a wild energy to it. It's just more potent and it, you know, it's not really any different than people. If you have someone who grows up and everything's given to them and they never have to do anything most their life and they encounter a crisis, they will handle it the same way as someone who's had, you know, you know, lived a wilder life where he didn't have everything done for them and they had to struggle and they knew what struggle and hardship and winning was all about. It's the same people develop character through hardships.

Couldn't you just like, couldn't you cultivate the herbs? It seems easier. Like, couldn't you cultivate them, farm them and then just for lack of a better word, beat the crap out of them somehow by like, I don't know, introducing some kind of stressor into a farmed environment. To me, that seems like it would be more productive from a business standpoint. But is it, I mean, is there a reason they don't do that on farms?

Well, probably because it's, you know, it's too labor intensive. But you know, in China, there's so much of that country is this wide open wild space. You know, they have huge amounts of herbs growing everywhere. And you know, millions and millions of pounds of herbs are harvested all the time. And you know, for instance, ginseng, not too many people ever really experience great ginseng. And that's an herb that, you know, if it's cultivated, it's practically has, in my opinion, very little use. And yet that's most of the American ginseng grown in this country is cultivated. And it's nothing compared to the energetics of a wild root, especially one that grows eight to 20 years.

How do you know where you're at? Like, when you order this stuff from China and it gets to you, are you just like tasting it and seeing what you feel like? Do you have some kind of analysis equipment that you're looking at? Are you just going by feel and experience? How do you actually know when you get something that it's good?

Well, I've been working with herbs for so long, and the company I actually get my stuff through specializes in wildcrafted herbs, and I've been using them since the early 90s. So I'm real familiar with that company and their whole process and how many times they're inspected in China and everything that goes into that. But I also have a real intuitive feel for certain extracts and herbs. And because, you know, in Chinese medicine, part of it is just energetics. And you kind of learn through your own process of how to become more in tune with that and feel it. Plus, you know, studying things like Jinshindo and Reiki. It's all part of this healing modality thing. You become a little sensitive to things. But I can taste this company's extracts and they're just off the charts compared to other companies. Extracts, you can just almost, when you look at it, you can see the vibrancy of it and you have a feel for it. And we used to do experiments in the herb shop I worked at where we would get in kilos from five different companies and we wouldn't tell anybody and we just sit out bags and we'd all taste it and feel it. And it was always the same company, every single time, everybody picked the same company.

Interesting. Almost like blind tasting wine, huh?

Yeah. And, you know, ginseng roots, if you. Ginseng roots, you can't buy off of anybody. You actually have to go down to a Chinese store in Chinatown that specializes in wild roots, and you have to go through the trays yourself to pick those out. So if you're going to make an extract of that, you have to make the trip to la, which has great ginseng shops, and you have to go through the trades and go through the roots one by one, and you'll know exactly which ones you want. If you're. If you're doing that. It's just. It's almost like the route picks you out while you're standing there. Kind of hard to explain how, you.

Know, you're in your office, you've got like buckets of these herbal extracts around. Et cetera, you know, dried powders, extracts from, you know, 50 pounds of ginseng, you know, that's been brought down to, you know, £1 of concentrated extracts. How do you decide, like, when and where to use the herbs, how to mix them, etc. What goes into that?

Well, that's part of a process that's been going on for so long that you have a basic knowledge about how all of them work and how to combine them. But the amount and all that comes from just the experience of standing behind a counter and putting people on program since around 1990, you know, so it's been a long time. So I have a feel for how things work. I've given them to tens of thousands of people, and I know how they react, and I know, you know, and besides just giving them, I always get feedback. So I'm always working with the same people over that span of time. So I spent a good 14 years doing nothing every day but putting people on programs, cooking people specific herbs. We had a cooker in the store, putting them on capsule formulas, powders, making them drinks. I have a feel. It's a feel that you just get for herbs. I'm sure just about any herbalist kind of has that same thing. Things intuitively come to you, but it's based on a knowledge that you have about everything and how it works. And even Tian Qi is based on information I started gathering about adaptogens clear back in the mid-90s.

For people who don't really understand that term adaptogen. Can you explain exactly what an adaptogen is?

Sure, and it's pretty simple if you can think about just the word adapt. What is adapt? You're adapting to a situation. You're changing slightly to function better in a situation. That's what adapting is. Your body does it. Every time you walk into a room with air conditioning or you walk into a hot room, it adjusts itself. It's part of homeostasis, right? Well, an adaptogenic herb is an herb that works on a particular part of your glandular system, because your glandular system is your internal, almost regulating system that is part of homeostasis that regulates how your body reacts and adjusts to almost everything. And so an adaptogen will have an effect on one of the major glands, usually the pituitary, the adrenals, the hypothalamus. And some of them will have an effect on every single gland in your body. And it's pretty fascinating that you can, if you have a really good adaptogen, like wild ginseng or reishi, Mushroom is another one. Reishi mushroom is amazing in that if you take it and you have a weak thyroid, the energy will go to your thyroid for about five minutes, and then it'll move and go somewhere else.

How are you tracking that?

We used to. I used to belong to a group of healing, did a lot of healing, hands on healing and where you train yourself to feel energy, to feel energy effects. You could hand somebody something and actually measure how energy is affecting a certain part of their body. I know it sounds out there, but when I started doing it, I thought, this is crazy. But you know what? After a year or two doing it, I became really good at it. And if you have 10 people do, you know, on different occasions, measure something that someone's holding, and they all come up with the same idea and they don't know what the subject, you really start to see that it's something that actually is happening. You can track how things actually move.

Like muscle testing or kinesio testing, that type of thing where you see whether.

Or not you could be asking through kinesiology, you could test. I was part of a group that met twice a week for years that just was a healing clinic. So there was a lot of energetic medicine going on, a lot of healing. And so it's just, you know, asking people how they feel it, where they feel it in their body, where does it, you know, where does it affect them?

Are there clinical ways to test these type of things or technologies that exist to show that, for example, a particular adaptogen might be increasing cortisol when cortisol is low, or decreasing cortisol when cortisol is high, or that type of.

Of thing? Well, there's a lot of scientific tests on adaptogens like Ashwagandha and Eleuthero ginseng that all shows effects on cortisol. Probably the one herb that has the most clinical research that I know of for lowering cortisol and actually regulating it, it's not just a lowering effect. It can bring it back up, is Ashwagandha. Ashwagandha seems to have the most clinical research on it for working on cortisol issues. In fact, in most research, it'll adjust your cortisol so it'll lower it if it's excessive by up to 25 to 30% within a month if you're taking a certain dose of it and it's not that high.

That was one of the reasons. One of the reasons that I began using and began recommending Tian Qi is because I was dealing with adrenal fatigue issues related to Ironman training specifically, and was using that to help with cortisol regulation and some of the other symptoms of adrenal fatigue. And I want to kind of delve into some of these formulations a little bit and exactly what they mean, because frankly, I don't know how many dozens of different herbal extracts that you have in Tianchi, but there's a few that I want to ask you specifically about. And I guess this ashwagandha that you mentioned may be kind of a good starting point. I noticed that on the label next to ashwagandha, it says KSM 66. And by the way, if any of you want to view the label, it's over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com AskRoger Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com askroger. You'll be able to see the show notes. But next to ashwagandha, Roger, it says ks. What exactly does that mean?

That is the brand name of an organic ashwagandha that's grown in India. And I love this particular ashwagandha, not only just because it's organic, but it's made by a single family company and that's their only thing they make. And it's one of the highest qualities and one of the only ashwagandhas that's made traditionally. In other words, they're just using the root. And the root is what has always been used and studied in Ayurvedic medicine. It's the only part that they ever really use as an extract. And so it's also one of the only ashwagandhas I know that's been through rigorous testing for sports and has absolutely no negative effect on blood tests.

Interesting. So they'll take specific strains and evaluate their purity based on things like whether or not you might get tested and banned for doping or something like that.

Well, because they do have Olympic athletes on it, they pretty much got a profile now for that particular herb and where they grow it. And it's the extract strength, too, that makes a difference. You don't ever want to extract an herb out to a single chemical for one reason. A single chemical type herb, if you take too much of it, might show up as something. Right. But it also won't work the same way in your body. If you extracted an adaptogen, let's say, out to just one large amount of a chemical that you thought was its only chemical, the herb probably would not work as an adaptogen anymore because there's literally thousands of things in an herb that support the function of what you think might be the big chemical, even though the big chemical is important, it's the ratio or synergy between that ingredient and the other ones in it that make it work the way it does. And so, you know, you just have to find a company that recognizes that and makes a really good pure extract. And energetically, I just felt better taking that ashwagandha than any other one I've ever taken.

Interesting. So in the field of herbology, when you see something like ashwagandha or ginseng or something like that, they'll then take specific strains and extracts and give them names like this, like KSM66, so that you know that that's the word for that specific strain that's been tested in a manner and extracted in a specific manner.

You know that that particular root has been tested with athletes. It's been put through testing for, for regulating cortisol. It's been put through testing for increasing sexual energy and testosterone. It's been put through all these different tests and you can just find it real easily on the website, on the Internet to check it out yourself.

Got it. Now another thing that I noticed on the label is the resveratrol. You have a form of resveratrol that's called 98% trans resveratrol. And that's something new that changed on this most recent version of Tianxi. Why is that significant? What is resveratrol 98 resveratrol.

98% is trans resveratrol, which is the active form of resveratrol. And that's the antioxidants that's been getting so much research at Harvard and all over the world for being an anti aging supplement. It regulates your blood sugar, it stops or lengthens your telomeres, which is that cap on the end of your DNA that has to do with. It shows how much you're aging and how fast you're aging. It's an amazing antioxidant. The reason we put the 98% on the label is because that particular nutrient is one of the few herbs that you should extract the active ingredient out of and get rid of most of the other herbs because the herb is a medicinal type of herb that shouldn't be used in a formula like we have. And it's pretty much, you know, not have, doesn't have any use as a tonic herb. It's more of a medicinal thing. So you want to just extract out the 98% and then put it into something else to Enhance the energy of it. Most people are selling 50% trans resveratrol extracts, and they're not very, you know, they're just not very pure. And that particular extract, again, is an organic extract that we get that's grown on an organic farm on a plateau in Tibet. We didn't put organic on the label just because the rest of it is wild crafted. So having one thing that's organic doesn't stand out that much, but that is an organic herb from a 10,000 acre farm on a plateau in Tibet.

Wow. And a plateau in Tibet just sounds sexy.

Oh, it does. The pictures are amazing.

When it comes to resveratrol, wasn't there a little bit of controversy behind that anti aging research? I mean, I remember seeing something like you'd have to drink 40 bottles of wine to get the equivalent of the resveratrol used in. In those studies, et cetera. What wound up being the final verdict on resveratrol and anti aging from that study? Because I remember it was a few years ago and there was a little bit of controversy surrounding it as everyone rushed out to drink three rather than one glass of wine with dinner.

Well, it's the truth that to have a good dose of resveratrol, which we have in our product, we actually have 100 milligrams of it in our product. And we use that much because that is a real potent dose, standard dose that you would want to have of resveratrol every day. So we put that in each drink. Right. Well, to get that amount of resveratrol. And this is where the controversy comes in. It's because, you know, the wine industry promoted, you know, drinking wine because it has that in it. And they think that's why the French don't have as much heart attacks and things, because they drink red wine. Well, you probably have to drink between, depending on the wine, between a hundred to a thousand glasses of wine to get that same dose we have in Tianji. It's almost impossible to get it. That's what they call the French paradox, by the way. They think that it's the resveratrol in the wine, but it has more to do with eating habits. Yeah. And the fact that they don't live on junk food like most Americans. Yeah. Or.

Or snack as frequently as us. That. That's another thing I've heard about, is that. Yeah, you don't have the freedom to come in and out of the kitchen and just grab things out of the refrigerator willy nilly when you're a kid.

Yeah. So, you know, I would. Every time I've been to Paris, I've never seen a single person walking around with a bag of snacks, eating anything, chips, anything, just. I just don't see it.

That's interesting, but the whole.

Yeah, the whole controversy on resveratrol was not whether or not it worked or whether it did all the things that they claimed that it did. It was the fact you couldn't get it out of wine. But, you know, it. When that research originally came out, the wine sales in America went crazy, and they've never slowed down. Yeah, it was the greatest boost to the wine industry of all time in America.

That's right.

Change the whole. That's right.

We all. We all took great pleasure in the fact that we were having our cake and eating it, too. You know, indulging in wine while at the same time living longer. I do personally still have a glass of red wine every day, but I. I can't say it's because I think that it's got. It's got boatloads of resveratrol in it. It's more just a good way to unwind. I think it's more the ethanol than the resveratrol that I like.

Yeah, I drink red wine occasionally, too, and I'm not going to lie and say it's because there's antioxidants.

So I'm curious because I've talked before on shows and in articles about how I consider Tian Qi to also be somewhat of a smart drug in terms of a neurotropic compound that can help to enhance cognitive performance. And you notice that a lot of these smart drug and herbal formulas for mental performance now are using derivatives of choline like phosphatidylcholine or other forms of choline. And I did notice that Tianchi does have a form of choline in it, but it's called Vitacholine. I'm curious what exactly Vitacholine is and if it's different than, say, like, the type of choline I might get in my fish oil, for example.

Yes, Vitacholine. The reason we use that, and they've trademarked the name, is that it's a specific line of cholines. And the one we use comes without any off taste or odor to it. Basically, they've made a really highly clean extract. Most people don't put a lot of effort into cleaning their choline up much. So it smells. I mean, it's kind of almost like a fish. And so the Vita choline is very clean and has one of the actual highest levels of the actual choline in it. People don't realize when they read choline on the label, it could only be 10% of the actual extract is choline, or 20%. And so we went with Vitacholine because of the latest research shown in Europe, and it was very fascinating. Europe has these standards you have to meet to be able to get anything sold in Europe. We had access to this research because someone tried to claim a highly purified extract and get it into the European market, and they had to prove that it was basically just choline, right. And not the, you know, the ultra expensive sounding ingredient that it was. And so what they basically proved in their research is that all choline, it doesn't matter what the form is that you ingest, goes to your place in your intestines, and there it's all broken down to just basic choline and absorbed. So it doesn't matter what form you're taking it, it all comes to one place. And the body takes the essential choline out of it and uses it. And so vita choline is, besides being clean, it tastes great. It has the highest levels of choline of anything on the market. It's around 40, 42% somewhere around there.

What is it that choline is doing to cognition that's important?

Well, the main thing is if it's combined with the right vitamins, your body has to have niacin, B6, B5. It's one of the things we have in TMG. When you have that, it's able to be metabolized into acetylcholine. Which is one of the four major neurotransmitters in the brain. But it's the one that's most important for attention, focus, accessing memory, laying down memories. It's the speed by which your brain works. In other words, your ability to process information at a high rate, depending on the level of acetylcholine activity in your brain.

Okay, gotcha. That makes sense. And from what I understand, when you use things like aniracetam or piracetam or many of these smart drugs, they actually increase the rate of choline use or the rate of acetylcholine turnover. And so if you add in things like fish oil and walnuts or other sources of choline, apparently, you know, you get more out of using something like a smart drug.

Right? You can't just take any supplement and then not have a great diet backing it up. Every little thing you do, whether you want to classify it as a nootropic or not has an influence on your brain. In fact, most people, when they look at our formula, they think the whole brain activity of it is the proprietary nutraceutical blend. But actually the herb blend of adaptogen is one of the most important things you could actually incorporate in your life if you want to balance how your brain's actually working.

Why is that?

Because an adaptogen balances your glandular system. Your glandular system is what is involved in the stress response. When you're having excessive stress response to where it's not shutting off properly because your system's a little worn out, or you're just involved in so much stress, you have a tendency for the energy of your brain to drop down to the center in your brain that's just involved with reacting to stress. And so if you're always residing in that area, the next time you have a stressor, you just go right into a stressor. Whereas an adaptogen, because it will activate your pituitary and balance your hypothalamus pituitary, that tends to have your brain energy then reside more up in the frontal cortex, which is where you have creativity, focus, pleasure, all these different things happening. And if you're more in that center of your brain, it's not that you won't go into stress, but it's harder to go into stress. It's harder to go into full on stress because you're just seeing life differently. You're seeing the bigger picture. Yeah.

Okay, so that makes sense. So basically what you're doing is on one side, you're trying to provide the brain with things it needs, like choline, for example. And also something else I want to ask you about in a moment. This d ribose. But then on the other end, you're trying to regulate this HPA axis, this hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal axis, so that you're not under a lot of stress, so that you're not got, you know, for example, pouring water on the fire on one end and gasoline on the other end.

Right. And you know what the beauty of it is? That you can have your stress response because we're all going to have them. But your body being in a more balanced state, will then go back into the healing phase where it shuts it off and regenerates again. And for the people that you know that are just caught up in their stress, they never experience that shutting off that self regulation. So the body never fully goes into homeostasis, even when they're sleeping.

Gotcha. You also have something called d Ribose Bioenergy D Ribose. And I noticed that on this note, new label, that it's been raised from 1 gram of D ribose up to 4 grams of D Ribose. What exactly is the reasoning behind that?

Well, one of the reasons is that ribose is probably the simplest way for your body to just rebuild energy stores. It's used in the metabolic process of making ATP. So if you are someone who works out a lot, really hard, or you're extremely stressed, you have a lot of issues going on that way, or let's say you've had a heart attack and you're trying to recover, all these things involve using a tremendous amount of energy and then having to make it again and having D Ribose in your system because it's the building block on how that whole process starts. It's really easy for your cell to just replenish continuously having the ribose in your system. And so when we went through the process of deciding that we. We needed to take the sweetener out of our drink, you know, we used to have 6 grams of fructose in our drink, and we decided that we would try, you know, replacing it with something. And derivose was just a natural way to do that. It looks like sugar. It flows. You know, flow is really important because all these powders have to go through a machine and it needs weight, it needs bulk, and it helps the herbs break up and all these different things. So D Ribose, we just thought it was perfect for that because we have so many people that are athletes anyway using our product and if we can enhance their experience and at the same time take the sugar out and then, you know, D Ribose is just as good for your brain as, you know, as it is for your heart and for anything else. It's, you know, it's an amazing nutrient. Your cells need energy no matter what the process is you're talking about. And so it was just a natural thing to increase and to make our TMG with.

So basically, D Ribose is something that your body uses like sugar without actually spiking blood sugar. But it produces enhanced ATP levels.

It does. In fact, D Ribose actually regulates your blood sugar. It has an effect of lowering it and regulating it. So again, it's a perfect type of nutrient to add to your drink. Blood sugar issues are huge in this country.

I wanted to ask you about sugars too, because in the past when I've talked about Tianchi, one of the biggest things that people have brought up is that the label says fructose or used to say fructose. And it used to, when you looked at the total amount of sugars, I forget how many grams, but there was enough grams of sugar in there to where I would frequently get emails and inquiries from people who wanted to know why I would recommend using, for example, this little packet of Chinese herbs in the mid morning when it was potentially spiking blood sugar levels. What did you do to the formula to reduce the sugar or the fructose and what exactly did you replace it with, if anything?

Well, part of it was the ribose. We took 6 grams of fructose out and we added an extra 3 grams of ribose. So we have 4 grams of ribose in each pack, which is a really good dose. And so if you're taking ribose or buying it by itself, the, the standard dose is between 4 and 5 grams. And so the other thing that we did though is we used an herbal sweetener and we used different forms of it. In fact, a lot of people don't know that, you know, everybody's familiar with stevia and stevia has been one of those things that's extracted out into a white powder. It's 99% pure and it's the one molecule, stevia side that's really sweet. But you know what, that does not have any body to it. So you can't really cover anything up with stevia by itself. It just doesn't work. Right. But we found an extract that was one of the first forms of stevia that ever came out on the market. It's actually a brown herb. If you notice in the Tian Qi formula that we actually have stevia listed in the herbal formula itself. That's because the herb, the herb, when it's extracted and used as an herb, actually has a blood sugar regulating effect on your system and it tastes like molasses. Right. But nobody in this country makes it. We have to have it specially made for us out of China and have it imported ourselves because nobody has it. So we found that we started using that extract and because we had the D ribose level brought up and because that's slightly sweet, by combining the two stevias we are actually able to come up with a flavor profile that completely got rid of the sugar in it.

Interesting. Yeah, I was actually pretty happy to see the sugar lowered. Even though for many active people the amount in there initially was, I don't remember what it was like 3 or 4 grams or something like that, but essentially a speed bump for an active person. It was still interesting to see that the sugar was removed. And I know there's a lot of, a lot of folks in like kind of the paleo ketogenic low carb environment who will appreciate that.

Well, you know, they, they inspired us to actually do that. And you know, I have to admit myself, I didn't mind the sugar, but once I got the sugarless, I don't want to take the one with the sugar.

Yeah, yeah, no, it holds a special place in my refrigerator. Right. I actually like the new taste better than the previous taste. So I'm curious in terms of the overall formula of the Tian Qi complex, it's a shotgun of stuff, right. Like if you look at the label and again, I'll put a link to the label if folks want to check it out over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com AskRoger Roger, is there a rhyme or reason behind the herbal blend in terms of the amount of things that you put in there, or does an herbologist say, okay, these, whatever, you know, 15 things are good for you, so I'm going to mix them all together. I mean, how exactly does it work in terms of choosing what goes where?

Oh, no, no. Yeah, yeah. It never, never works like that. What you do is you come up with an idea of what you want to do. And you know, Chinese herbology, the standard, you know, thousand year technique of making a formula is you have the, the king herbs, you have the, you know, the herbs that support the king, and then you have the little peasant herbs down at the bottom. And they have this system by which they have standards of herbs. And the king herbs means that it's the herbs that the formula is centered around. And that's the reishi mushroom, Schisandra, the, you know, the ashwagandha, Rhodiola, Eleuthero, those are all adaptogens. Now, even though they're all adaptogens, you might wonder why we have five. But each one of them, even though they regulate glandular system, most of them have a predominance for one gland and they have other attributes to them. Like Schisandra, which is the first herb, is an amazing herb for detoxing your liver and energizing your lungs. It builds lung qi so you breathe deeper, you make more out of your breath. Every time you breathe, it has a clearing effect on your mind. And so it's one of the best adaptogen or what we'd say tonic herbs as a food source herbal. It's one of the things you could have in your system every single day. And it's Just beneficial for you. It's used in beauty formulas all over China because it has an amazing effect on the quality of your skin. It's a very powerful antioxidant. Then you have Reishi mushroom, which we talked about earlier, has an effect on every gland in your body. But particularly it does have a very powerful effect on your pituitary for regulating your entire system. Eleuthero is a famous one, but it's more of an adrenal type of herb. As you can see, they all have different aspects to it. But that is the main gist of the formula. The main working of it is regulate your nervous system, regulate your glandular system, have everything easily go into balance or homeostasis. Again, you have to look at the whole idea of stress and what happens during stress. People get weak adrenals, they get worn out, they get burned out, right? So then you look at things like we have epimidium, we have Cistance, Comia Lyceum, He Shou Wu. All those herbs are actually what are considered to be kidney tonics in Chinese medicine, meaning that they support the health of your kidneys, your adrenals, your skeletal system. Those are all herbs somebody could take if they broke a bone or had a fracture, because it would just heal your skeletal system so much quicker. And when you add them to adaptogens, now the adaptogens can regulate your glandular system. And when that happens, actually your adrenals go to that phase where you want to shut off the stress response, then they want to soak up energy. You have the herbs there to do it.

Okay.

You know, energetically. Everything's set there to actually do it. And then we have some other herbs at the bottom that just supports the action of the whole formula. Things like polygalla opens your heart, so you're more in a heart centered space, which works really well with adaptogens, especially Reishi mushroom. Just a little bit of licorice actually makes the herbs. The energetics go into every meridian in the body and so it doesn't take much. Licorice is kind of like throwing a pinch of salt in a dish when you're just done cooking it, it just makes everything taste better, right? And work better. And that's kind of how that works. The whole thing has an energy to it. So when you put something together like that, what we, you know, I kind of look at that as being just like one herb. You know, it's because it's all become almost like a meal to direct the body into its own state of balance. And it has everything there to support that process no matter what the person has going on.

And it's best to use this type of thing on an empty stomach, correct?

It does. It works best on an empty stomach. Although if you're pretty healthy, it doesn't have to be exactly empty.

Okay. Now there's also one other thing that you formulate and it's not a packet of powder, it's a capsule and it's called Inner Peace. It's something that I'll sometimes like for an afternoon nap. I'll take two or three prior to lunch and then I'll settle down after lunch for a nap. And it's relatively fail proof in terms of settling me down for a good 40 to 60 minute nap every time I take it. But the label appears somewhat similar to Tianxi. What are the primary differences though between Tianxi and Inner Peace?

Well, Inner Peace is the herbal portion of Tian Qi. And the whole idea was that certain people didn't want to be up like when they take, you know, Tian Qi is formulated to get you up to have fun, to be able to handle work, to be focused, to be engaged, to do all these things. Inner Peace is more for that person who's extremely stressed or just wants to unwind at the end of the day. You know, it helps your body go back into circadian rhythm real easily. So it helps people sleep at night. It shuts off the stress response, it helps your body regroup. And a lot of people just take it with their evening meal. They sleep better, they tend to shut down from their stress at the end of the day. So it's really just taking the herbal part of it, making a separate formula almost as the recovery formula for your day. That makes sense, really the difference. TNT has all these supporting brain nutrients and all these things that make you really focused and clear for performing, no matter if whether it's athletics or just work.

But you could theoretically use if you needed to, for example, like Tiang in the mid morning and Inner Peace before bed.

Oh yeah, you could, you can use. It all depends on the person. But the average person falls into that take, you know, TMG in the morning, Inner Peace late afternoon. But we've had people with, you know, anxiety, panic attacks and they'll take nine Inner Peace a day. Wow. And you'll just space them out and it just works perfect for them and within a few weeks they cut it down to something else. But you just have to kind of find your dose and what's actually going on in your life and see how it works.

Yeah, that's interesting. I've never personally taken more than three, so nine sounds like a boatload to try that. N equals one out sometime when I have a bed nearby. So another question that I have for you, and this was actually a question or a topic that you brought up to me in an email exchange, it's something I want to talk to you about. You said that one of the things that you find important is the role of stress reduction in epigenetics. And then also, and this caught me by surprise, quantum physics. When we're talking about wild crafted herbs, reducing stress, et cetera, how exactly does quantum physics fit into this equation?

Well, quantum physics is kind of a hobby of mine. And what I find fascinating about quantum physics, if you look at any of the books written by Amit Goswami, he's been writing a lot on theoretical quantum physics. And basically quantum physics is explaining to me things that they talked about 5,000 years ago in Ayurvedic and in Taoism, you know, out of China and out of India. The principles which everybody thought were so based on spirituality, like tantra and certain aspects of Daoism, are easily explainable by quantum physics because they're really talking about different dimensions of energy and that we're all not just a physical body. There's other energy aspects going on in our health. And if you've ever read anything about morphogenic fields by Rupert Sheldrake, it gets into how science has never actually figured out how a human being develops from one cell into all the different things that are going on in your system. Think about it. You start out as one cell and it starts dividing. How does that cell, at a particular junction, turn into your toe, and one of them turned into your eye and one of them turned into your nose. They're all the same cell with the same DNA interest. There's no program actually in it. So there's got to be a field, which has been classified as morphogenic field, that actually carries the blueprint by how everything develops. Now, you think about this, which is really fascinating when. When a human being is conceived, it goes through a process. And at one part of that process, it actually has a tail and it has fins, and then you lose them. So why does that happen? Right. They don't know if you're going to be a snake or a frog, right? Yeah, the tadpole stage. So why does that happen? Well, there's a. There's a pattern in nature. There's a field that directs everything. Science recognizes that, but they don't know how to explain or how it works. And the same thing is talked about through for thousands of years in different spiritual practices. So what you kind of decided is something actually spiritual or is it just part of the human experience? We haven't explained, you know, and that's where quantum physics comes in and epigenetics is really about. They're saying how what determines your expression of DNA is actually a signal above the cell. It doesn't happen in the cell. It's a signal telling the cell what to do. Where does that signal come from? A lot of times they talk about it just being your emotional state, because your emotions do make up the signal that actually goes into every cell. But it might just be that extreme emotional states shut off the signals to your cell and there it's responding in that way. So that gets back into what is the field above everything else that's influencing your whole body, so that it determines how to make everything. And then how can you tap into that to make sure that your body is following the same blueprint to be in its best position, to always be in a radiant state of health? It's not just the stuff you take into your body that your physical body makes. It's the reaction of your body to the field around you. And that's why one of the reasons why whole foods are so good for you, the whole food plant, and this is measurable by certain photography, a whole food plant has an intact energy field and different nutrients. You know, it has different nutrients than a processed plant. Right. And it has a different stable energy field that is incorporated into your system and has an effect separate from the nutrient. This is why you want to take your herbs extracted. Right. Why you want to have organic, clean, whole foods. It all has an effect.

So basically, this morphogenetic concept is that when, say, like a human being is developing, you get areas of cardiac cells that eventually become heart tissue and areas of limb cells that eventually become arm or leg tissue. And that even though we don't quite understand why cells are differentiating to become those specific regions of the body that that doesn't stop when we're being formed in our embryonic stage. That basically other things such as stress or let's say perhaps even like electrical pollution or water or poor relationships or anything else can also continue to affect us biologically even after we're born.

Yes. And all those things you mentioned are forms of stress, environmental stress, emotional stress. All these things tend to block your energy and how you're connected to that field. So eventually, maybe in the future medicine will be involved in how to put you in a state where that feel because it contains the original blueprint by which everything in your body was made. So what if you could tap into that with certain illnesses and things and have it direct the body back into regeneration and changing a disease processing? It's pretty fascinating.

Yeah, it is. It's kind of a cool thought experiment. Well, you know, we could go on forever, but ultimately I think that. But if someone is listening and if you haven't yet tried this Tianchi stuff, these wild crafted herbs, I'd recommend you get your hands in a box. Try a packet. My preferred method is mid morning on an empty stomach or else about 20 to 30 minutes pre workout on an empty stomach. And like I mentioned, I like the inner peace capsules prior to for example, like an afternoon nap, I pop a few before lunch and then fall asleep for an afternoon nap. But if you want to look over the full label and all the ingredients in very specific form, or if you want to ask Roger or myself a question or you have a comment about Chinese herbology or something else that you want to clear up from this podcast episode, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com askroger and over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Askroger I'll have a link to Roger's website and Tian Qi Into Inner Peace and all these other pretty cool Chinese herbology concepts. So Roger, that being said, thanks for giving your time and coming on the show today, man.

Oh, I loved it and be glad to do it anytime you want.

Awesome. Awesome. Cool. Well, I will drop you a line. If I survive the Tough Mudder and have any time to kill down in Henderson, I'd love to come come over to your place and sniff a few buckets of these wild crafted herbs and see them up close face to face. So I may be in touch here. We'll just have to see if I survive the actual event or whether or not I end up dying. Yeah. Thank you. You can come out and watch. All right. All right.

Well, cool.

Well folks, thanks for listening in. And again, you can visit BenGreenfulFitness.com AskRoger for the show notes. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Roger Drummer signing out. 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.

Sa. Sam.