Why Water, Sunlight, Grounding & Relationships Are The Key To Your Health & How To Feed, Clean & Protect Your Body Forever: An Interview With Ben Greenfield's Father Gary Greenfield

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, I was looking for anything and everything I could to get me out of this lifestyle I was in. Most of what I've done, just self motivation, figuring it out, going to wherever I needed to go to learn whatever I needed to learn, and then just doing it.

They're thinking that everything could be solved with proper diet and proper movement. But unless you have the electrical part of things figured out in terms of the actual electrical and frequency structure of the human body as a battery, you're going to fight an uphill battle your entire health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Hey everybody. Hey. So I highly recommend that for today's podcast, you stick around until the very end. Don't leave early because it gets pretty powerful at the end, in my opinion, at least for me. And I would love to share what happens at the end with you and have you be a part of that. I am interviewing my dad, my dad, Gary Greenfield, on today's podcast. By the way, he is an expert in all things water, but has a pretty deep history in the health industry and just a very interesting past. And honestly, so seldomly do many of us get in touch with our parents later in life, write a letter to our parents, connect with our parents in a deep and meaningful way. And I thought what better way to do that than to record a conversation with my father and release it to you and not have it just be some woo woo, I love you, dad, I love you, son, conversation back and forth, but to instead be chock full of what I hope are really cool, practical and actionable takeaways for you. I do have one request for you. After you listen to today's episode, think about contacting your own mother or your own father, if they still survive. And just talk to them a little bit about how you feel about your childhood. Thank them for taking care of you, for bringing you up. Be grateful to them, right? All gratefulness, no regrets, no regrets about trauma, abuse, anything like that. Just full gratefulness, full love and full forgiveness. I encourage you to contact your parents if you need any other, I guess, encouragement to do this. I would also recommend that you go to YouTube and you watch a YouTube video that I will link to in the show notes. The name of that YouTube video is Virgil Klunder Speaks on Gratitude. Extremely powerful. And it's just a very heartwarming story of how the practice of gratitude and especially the practice of staying connected with your parents and even writing your parents a letter or speaking with them later on on in life and in a very deep and meaningful way can be life changing for them and for you and for the world and for your legacy. So I will link to that video in the show notes. I'll link to everything that my dad and I talk about in the show notes. And those will just all be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gary Greenfield that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gary greenfield well, dad, welcome to the class in the forest.

Thank you, Ben. It's a pleasure to be here.

It's kind of funny. You've been here a lot and we have never recorded a podcast, even though you were the guy who, you know, who's my first exposure to health and medicine. And even as we'll probably talk about in the show today, raw foods and strange water concepts people don't know a lot about. So I think it's high time.

Yeah, that's great. I'm excited to be here, man.

Yeah. And honestly, you know, for people listening, you know, part of this, too, is that, you know, you, you the listener, you spent a lot of time listening to me. And, you know, I'll try not to get too emotional on this episode. But, you know, there, there, there are, not to use too crass a term, loins that I was derived from that, that influenced and created pretty much anything that I ever put out that have touched you guys and said loins are sitting with me right now. So that might be a funny way to put it, but, I mean, it seems like folks should kind of know who you are and where I came from.

Yeah. Well, let's do it.

Yeah. All right. So, and then one quick housekeeping piece for everybody listening. I'll put all the show notes for today's show over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gary Greenfield, the name of my father. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gary greenfield so, dad, you have, you have a story. Unfortunately, we have time. We're out here in the guest house, far removed from my house, where Jess and the boys are probably creating some smorgasbord for us to dive into after we finish. And I know you, you came from Miami. You wound up in Idaho.

Yeah.

And now you're in the health world. But, but how did you, how did you wind up in Idaho? How'd that, how'd that all come to happen?

Yeah. Well, you know, I, South Florida was the fun and son capital of the world.

Yeah.

And, yeah, Miami. And, and I had a lot of fun And I was always in the sun and. But eventually that wore out because along with the fun in the sun came drugs and drinking and carousing and getting into mischief as a teenager. And When I was 17 years old, my brother was killed in a gang fight. And he was 16. I was 17.

Greg.

Yeah, Greg. And that. That sobered me up. That made me realize, okay, there's more to life. You know, there's consequences to our behavior. And so I made a decision. I was going to change my life. I was going to straighten out.

Well, before. Before all of that. I mean, you growing up in Miami and just having access to that kind of highfalutin, wealthy lifestyle. Your dad, Bill.

Yeah, he was.

He was quite the successful entrepreneur himself, wasn't he?

Yeah, he was. He was a very good salesman. He was friends with Zig Ziglar, who was, of course, in the same business he was in originally cookware.

Zig Ziglar.

Yeah. Yeah. And then Zig went from selling cookware to becoming a, you know, world renowned motivational speaker. And your uncle Bernie was even. Was responsible for actually bringing him into the world arena as a motivational speaker. So, yeah, there's. In spite of my troublesome teenage years, my father was a tremendous influence on my life, teaching me positive mental thinking just to always look for the best in everything. To always think the best, hope the best, believe the best, and to give 100% at everything you do.

I remember that whenever we go down to Miami and visit his office, it was like walking into a motivational speaking museum with posters on the wall. Not just Zig Ziglar books, but. And I had. Oh, yeah, I had no clue at the time. Most of that stuff for me just went way over my head. I wasn't really interested in it. I wasn't a Tony Robbins guy. I didn't know who Zig Ziglar was, aside from. He had a funny name. He was one of papa's friends. But I. I can imagine you walk into my office now, and it's actually somewhat similar. I've got posters decking the wall with my favorite quotes from all these different motivational speakers. And my sons have access to this vast library now of all these people. Joe Dispenza and Bruce Lipton and Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar and everybody. But I can imagine what it was like growing up in a house like that.

Yeah. Yeah. My dad was a hard worker. We never saw him during the week, but every Sunday we were out on the boat, fishing, skiing, diving. So I really had quality Time with him. And it was. It's. I'm really glad that he took the time to take us along, you know, rather than hanging out with. With his buddies or whatever and being out there, he'd take his kids along. So. Yeah, it was. It was a good investment.

Well, when you were, you know, an adolescence and a teenager. So I always wondered this. I never really asked you, but, you know, obviously I'm kind of wired up to be immersed in physical culture. Yeah. And I've been that way. I mean, you saw me ever since I was a kid. I just love. Even though I was kind of a nerd and, you know, played a lot of chess and played the violin and lay in bed and read for hours and hours. I also, when I wasn't doing that, was playing every sport known to man and running all over the hills. And I'm just curious. I've always wanted to ask you this. Like, you know, I know your brother Greg was a. Was a stellar, like a professional level athlete, but he would have been. Yeah. Yeah, he would have been. Yeah. How about you?

You know, I can remember in elementary school jogging, and I. I didn't have any energy. I couldn't do it. I thought, what's wrong with me? I don't. And, you know, it's probably my diet. You know, maybe vaccinations, probably chiefly diet. I don't know, maybe. Maybe genetics from my biological parents, who I never knew. But I didn't really get athletic or competitive until junior high school. And then it was all fun. I had absolutely no interest in sports. You know, my brother and I were both in sports. He was always the top, top stellar athlete and everything he did from the time he was just a little boy. And I was just out there because mom and dad wanted me there. And I was just kind of, you know, I just wasn't into it.

Well, you got fit at some point. And I know when you moved to Idaho and we could talk about this, you. You wound up delving into a career that involved a great deal of fitness requirements. But I remember when I, Even when I was still. My first two years of racing, triathlon, we'd race in the pool and you'd still beat me. You know, granted, you grew up in water, living in water, but, you know, my memories of you when you were at least hanging with me during my adolescent years, playing tennis and swimming and coming out playing soccer with me and my friends, it seemed like you could. You could hold your own.

Yeah. Yeah. The older, you know, especially at the fire department, I mean, When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a fireman, but I thought, I can't do it. I just don't have what it takes. And so I kind of shelved it. But when I did become a fireman and I performed pretty well, you know, that started life style of working out and lifting weights and running, you know, which I. But that was. I did it because I had to, not because I really loved doing it, although I did, you know, grow into loving tennis and volleyball and, you know, and sports like that. But I wasn't passionate.

You weren't a jock?

Yeah, I wasn't a jock. I knew that if I didn't work out, I didn't want to injure myself on a job, you know, in a fire. I didn't want to, you know, run out of breath, you know, pulling somebody out of a fire or whatever. So I knew I had to work out. I knew I had to be fit. So I, you know, so I stayed that way the entire time I was, you know, farming.

Yeah, well, backpedaling a little bit. So you said you were 17 when really the world came crashing down in terms of you realizing that something had to change?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I tried for three years to change, and I did. You know, I mean, I put. Got my act together. I was never into school, but I got into oceanography and I absolutely loved it. And I became an honors student.

And was that before you were 17?

No, this was. I was in college at 17.

Okay.

But my. During those three years, I kind of found my way into. Into the things that interested me, but I was still getting into trouble, and it was really frustrating. So at the three year mark, about 20 years old, I finally decided I got to get out of Florida.

So you're three years into oceanography?

Yeah, three years, yeah, general studies and then oceanography. And I went to a couple of different ocean tech programs. One to Chancen beach, one in Miami. And yeah, so I was learning how to be an underwater diver, underwater worker, doing biological sampling, just anything and everything to do with the ocean.

And do you think that's genetic and ask that, dad, because, like, I tell people this, the one thing about living out here in the forest in Spokane, Washington, is I crave water. Like, the happiest I am is when I am immersed in water, when I'm free diving, when I'm spearfishing, when I'm doing open water swimming, when I'm in a triathlon. Like, there's something about me that's magnetically drawn to water.

Yeah, it probably Is so. Because, you know, you've got others. You know, why aren't you a mountain climber? You know, why aren't you, you know.

And no interest in cliffs. Yeah, mountains do not attract me in the ocean does.

Yeah, yeah, same for me. It's just always been in the water. Just in general has always been an attraction.

Yeah, there's a whole book about that. I interviewed the author of it. It's called Blue Water Deep. I'll find it and put in the show notes for people listening. It's about the human craving for water and what water does to your heart rate variability to your nervous system, to your, to your spleen. You know a lot of the same properties as meditation or yoga. But I do think some people are even more hardwired to be attracted to certain elements of nature. And you know, I'm, I'm a hopeless romantic. So for me, you know, I think, oh, there, there were, there were all the people spread across the planet back in the day, and there were the forest people and the water people and the mountain people and the cave people. And somewhere back there, I think we were the water people.

Yeah, yeah.

So what happened when you were 23?

Well, at 20, that's when I decided I had to get out of Florida. I opened up an atlas. We didn't have computers back then. I started reading about different areas of the country and read about Idaho and the phrase that stood out was God's country. And I was godless. I didn't, you know, have any religion. And I thought, God's country. Wow, that sounds interesting. I mean, it's kind of naive and.

But, you know, so called Idaho, specifically called God's country.

Yeah, they called it God. And I thought, wow, that's, that's okay. That, and they, you know, talked about the mountains and the lakes. I thought, that's where I'm going. That's it. So I sold every, I sold all my stuff. You know, my, I had a, I had a Hobie Cat and a surfboard and.

So you didn't know anybody in Idaho?

No, I didn't know anybody. It was just an adventure. And I got on a bus. But before I got on that bus, like a month before that, I actually found God. It's like I met God. And for me it was the biggest, most momentous event of my entire life.

What do you mean you found God?

Well, I found Jesus Christ, the son of God, who represents God, you know, who God sent to reveal himself to us.

Was this like fasting, meditation, plant medicine, or was it Just happening.

I was at the point I was looking for anything and everything I could to get me out of this lifestyle I was in. And I did. I went through every. Actually, I went to. There happened to be a convention about that same time. I'd already decided to come to Idaho, but I went to this convention, and there was a New Age convention. They had every religion on the face of the earth there. And I went from one booth to the next to the next. And I was kind of an intuitive guy. I'd always been intuitive. And as I talked to each one of these representatives for each one of these booths, I thought, this isn't it. This isn't the way. This isn't what I'm looking for. All I knew, I was looking for God. I thought I was looking for a connection. I think it's just in us, because we're made. God created us. And he created us to commune with Him. He created us to know him and to experience his love and to experience the earth, which is a manifestation of his love. So I just didn't, you know, so that. That yearning was in me. But I thought, where is he? Who is he? You know, how does. How am I supposed to get to him? And so that's not uncommon.

Yeah, I've talked to a lot of people. I know a lot of people are listening. There's like that gnawing in your soul that you. That you fill up with whatever.

Yeah.

CrossFit or alcohol or food or sex or drugs or anything else, and the hole is never filled because human beings are meant to have a deeper spiritual connection to that. And, you know, even recently, for me there, that I felt like a big gnawing hole in my relationship with my kids, with my wife. And only recently did I. Did I identify that it was because even though our family was very emotionally connected, we're all physically connected. Jess and I are very sexually connected. There was not a deep spiritual connection. Like, we weren't eye gazing. We weren't looking into each other's souls. We weren't considering that not only did we have this Holy Spirit inside us, but we were also spiritual beings walking throughout the Greenfield house all day long, yet we were treating each other as purely physical beings. And once I started to look into my wife's soul and gaze into her eyes, and, you know, river and Taryn and I, we eye gaze now before bed at night. We just. I realize it's been like probably 10 years before I've. I've looked deeply into the eyes of my own sons for Longer than like two minutes. Right. Which is. Which is just nuts when you think about it. And the same with my wife. Like, even, you know, you know, I know we're rabbit holing, but just, just little things that, that are way bigger than what you think. Like, you know, we're sitting in bed now for five minutes and just eye gazing and seeing each other's soul and seeing each other's spirit. And that fills that hole somehow, you know, and it's because that's God. Right? That God is, is our spiritual connection. And. Yeah. So I understand when you say that you were looking for something to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'd already experienced, you know, I'd read the book of Ecclesiastes, which is the, you know, story of the richest man on the face of the earth, the most powerful man, the most wise man. Solomon. Yeah, he had everything, you know, there was nothing he never had. He had it all. And at the end he says, all that matters is to know God, to love God, to keep his commandments, all.

That matters is love.

Yeah, to love God, to keep his commandments and to know Him. And I read that, and that was probably the single most impactful book I read up until that time in my life. And that got me on the right track. But then it's a matter of realizing how God is a holy God and he won't accept us in a condition where we are holding on to sin, you know, or ways that aren't healthy. And for me, you know, there were relationships that I had that weren't honorable to God. And I had to let go of those relationships before God would accept me. You know, I had to repent. Just what Jesus said when he came. What's the first thing Jesus said? He said, repentance for the kingdom of God is at hand. And so it's, you know, God is a holy God. He wants holiness from us. And if we're not willing to do that, then we can't come into his presence.

So you just cut all ties and got on the bus to Idaho?

Yeah, so I got on the bus to Idaho, and when I got to Idaho, by the grace of God, I met all these Christian kids, you know, my age. And so that kept me out of trouble because I didn't know anything from the time I was 11 years old.

What did you do when you got to Idaho?

Well, once I got to Idaho, yeah, I got a job. And I met this volunteer fireman who was at the fire department, another Christian guy, and he invited me.

That was in Moscow, right?

Yeah. And he asked if I wanted to become a volunteer fireman. I thought, whoa, wow, that's cool. Sure. So I moved into the fire department there. It's a volunteer department. They had 12 rumors, student rumors that live there. And every single one of them was a Christian, which was, for me, it was like, great. You know, I just. I had no chance to get back into trouble again because I was just surrounded by all these, you know, guys that.

Way different scene.

Yeah, way different scene than anything I'd ever known in my life. So it was, you know, so for me, it was just great. Just what I needed because I didn't have the discipline or the wherewithal to, you know, to really say no to.

A lot of stuff.

Stuff. So. So that, that helped me. And from there, you know, did you.

Do anything else besides. Besides, like, did you have random jobs or.

Well, yeah, well, I got involved with the. I got involved with the discipleship program. So I started to get filled up with. With, you know, with spiritual information. And that was a nine month program. And then, you know, I got a side job doing pizza. Making pizzas and washing dishes. But same time as I'm working the fire department, responding to fires and that car accident, I'm thinking to myself, this is a lot of fun. And to be able to get paid to do this, that would be a dream job. And within a year and a half, an opening came up at the Lewiston Fire Department, which is only 35 minutes south of Moscow.

20 if you're me and my brother Isaac, teenagers. And you'd send us to take math classes up there. We would literally leave the house late and drive like 98 miles an hour to Moscow.

And you never got it taken?

No, never. One of us would sit side seat and spot for cops, and the other one would drive. We burned rubber on that road many a time. So you moved to Lewiston? Yeah, which is where I was born.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, we did a roundabout. We went from. I got married and when I was in Moscow, met your mom. We got married, went to Florida and ended up coming back to Lewiston when I found out about the job. And so that started a career in fire and EMS services and lasted 18 years.

So you met mom in Moscow.

Right.

And then you all moved back to Florida, back to like, your parents or whatever?

Yeah, well, we got married and I decided honeymoon was going to be driving back to Florida so that Pat could meet mom and dad. And so that's what we did. And at the time, you know, still I wasn't sure. What I wanted to be. And I was thinking, you know, maybe I'll just continue with the underground undersea diving because, you know, I mean, I wanted to do something adventuresome. But then I started to consider the concert. You know, it's one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, you know, undersea welding and working. And I thought, I don't think so. You know, if I'm going to be married and have kids, that's not where I want to be. So, you know, the other option was firefighting. So that's when I started to, you know, look for jobs. And this one opened up here in Idaho again. So it was just another rewind, you know, another exciting adventure. Coming back to Idaho.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you at that point, married to mom, working as a firefighter in Lucent, Idaho? Yes. Okay. And you? When I was born, you know, I have my older brother Isaac, he's three years older than me. And then I was born and for the majority of my childhood, that's what I remember. You were working as a firefighter?

Yeah.

Now what was that like for you physically? Like in terms of going from, you know, liking adventure but not being super physically active to need to go through the rigors of firefighting. And how'd you do? And the reason I asked that, honestly, dad, is just out of pure selfishness because I, you know, I look at my, my arms and my legs and my hand and like I'm you. Like, I have the same. Maybe.

Yeah, I know we run the same way.

Yeah. I've got a little bit of mom's side with the huge, broad, bony shoulders. But I'm, I'm primarily you and I'm just curious how you fared physically as a firefighter.

I did, I did fine, you know, preparing for the job. I started, you know, running and doing. I wasn't working out. I mean, I was working out with bar, you know, doing pull ups and push ups and sit ups and running, you know, because I didn't, I wasn't at the time. I mean, I, I don't think I'd ever been in a gym. You know, this was back in the 70s. And. Yeah. So I was, I surprised myself because I came in, you know, there were 250 applicants, 250, you know, people taking the test. And, you know, they weeded out the first. Weeded out for the written test and I came out number one. Then they weeded out for the, for the physical strength, balance or strength, agility and endurance. And I came in number one on all those and for me, it's like, whoa, wow, I can't believe I just did this, but I did. And then there was the interview and I passed that with flying colors and I got the job.

You know, I've had my genes tested and I have the majority of like my, basically my muscle fiber composition genes from your side, and they dictate like this combination of power and endurance. It's a power endurance profile is what it is. It's about 16 different genetic SNPs that look at everything from mitochondrial density to fast twitch, slow twitch, muscle fiber composition, blood flow, antioxidant capacity, and basically it's kind of like the Batman gene. Meaning, like you're good at a whole range of physical tasks like power and speed. You're never going to be, or you would have to work very, very hard to be professional at any of them. Right. But able to perform, which is probably why I've bounced around from bodybuilding to triathlon to, you know, tennis and obstacle course racing and all this stuff. But you probably have a similar genetic profile in that you, you were able to perform across a wide variety of tasks and firefighting.

Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. So you were at the Lewiston Fire Department and obviously at some point you weren't. From what I recollect, you moved on from that to start your own medical oriented company.

Yeah, you know, I'm also wired. There's three words I think of efficiency, effectiveness and economy. And you know, I was working for government operation and I didn't see any of that there. It was really frustrating for me. I thought, is this really where I want to spend the rest of my life just being kind of held back or not being able to really do everything I want to do. And you know, and I realized the guys I was working with, you know, they, it was all about, I mean, it was a great job, you know, 20 years. You could retire like in the middle in the military.

Yeah.

You know, and you didn't have to work hard. It was a nice job, cush job.

And you were also, were you, were you an EMT or a paramedic?

Yeah, I was an EMT at that time. We didn't have paramedics back then. They came on later, at least in our town. I don't know what it was like in big cities, I can't remember. But so I thought, you know, this isn't how I want to spend the rest of my life. I want to do something more than just exist in this job and, you know, make a paycheck and go home and you know, look forward to retirement. So. And I had that entrepreneurial blood in me from probably just, you know, the motivate, the inspiration of my father. Yeah. And I thought, you know, I can, I can do this job, I can do this service better. I can, I can improve on it. So I started my own business from ground, you know, with nothing. I used, actually what did I. I used my retirement, my IRA to buy my first ambulance out of a junkyard. I remember that ambulance. Yeah. And I fixed and I, it's like I restored it to pristine condition and you know, I had to get license from the state, had to get certifications for all my EMTs. And so we did it and went from zero, you know, and I thought, okay, I can't quit my fireman job until this is supporting us. And I started in, I think it was September. By January I was making more money than I was at the fire department.

And this was just basically a fleet of ambulances that just started. One built up from the ground from just one. They got a junkyard. You hired a bunch of EMTs and you were basically transporting patients from like hospice to hospital to nursing home, like non emergency medical transport.

Right. So I went from zero to 95% of business within I don't know, four years. And then I started putting my sights on emergency services because we had the experience behind us, we had all the certifications and I thought my guys are, you know, this is what they're trained to do.

Yeah.

So why not? Well, that, that was idealistic in the sense that I was up against a formidable foe with the firefighters union. When they saw that I'd taken 95% of the transfers and now I was going after EMS and they knew I could outmaneuver them. We were just more agile. It was a private company, we could figure out how to do it. So that's when the crap hit the fan and man, it became all out war.

I remember that because like we'd go to Albertsons to rent a movie or buy some milk or whatever and we'd like see firefighters who you used to work with at the Lewis and fire department. They'd give us just like the stink eye. And it was almost like there was this rivalry going on in town between the, you know, between Gary and his non emergency ambulances that he's taking emergency. And then the local government run fire department.

Yeah. And then I started, I took over a volunteer fire department that had gone to defunct and started offering fire protection to the county which didn't have any. And the City didn't want to provide it, so I thought, well, if they're not going to do it, I'm going to do it. So that's. We started, you know, so I had a private fire department, a private ambulance service, and I was the administrator of the fire service. And yeah, things are going well, but then the city decided, well, we want to get into the county. So it's like they saw what I was doing and it motivated them to really kick into high gear and start, you know, going after all this business. So, I mean, it was good for. Competition's good. Right? It created, you know, a higher standard of care and higher standard of performance and service for the, for the city and for the county. But then there was another factor. Dealing with Medicare. Most of my, most of our funding, you know, we were, it was a great income generator, you know, but most of our money came from Medicaid and Medicare and dealing with the government. I, I, again, it was, it was something. I couldn't do anything about that.

Trust me, I know, dad, because do you remember how, like, I saved up for, for spending money on anything? I would get up at like 4am you trained me how, how to do all the insurance billing.

Yeah.

So for three years, I was like, what? It was like 13 years old.

Yeah, you were young.

That's how I learned to, like, type a million miles an hour. It's how I learned to just, like, navigate my way through computers because, you know, eventually you guys hired me like, a guy who taught me computer programming. This isn't a story about me, but, you know, I was going to be a video game designer and I had a internship with a Microsoft programmer. But, like, my first experience with computers was I was doing all the Medicare, all the Medicaid coding. And that was also. All of that was my first experience with health. Because I don't know if you remember this, but you used to take me to all these health conferences and I'd see dudes impaled on forklifts and, you know, guys with their arms shoved through meat grinders and, you know, every emergency situation known to man. Yeah, I'd follow on the ambulance. I remember, like, the EMTs, we come to visit you at the station across the river in Clarkson, Washington, and I'd have, like, EMTs chasing me around to stick me with an IV to practice their IV. Like, I, I was deep into a lot of this stuff, and I think that that partially shaped my own interest and in health and medicine later on in life. When I said I didn't want to be a computer programmer, you know, and I kind of shifted into fitness. But then in my immersion in fitness, I kind of renewed that interest in medicine and health. But that was all while you were doing the firefighting and the non emergency ambulance stuff. Like I got exposed to a lot of that at an early age. Even. Remember when we. You'd take us to the nursing homes and we do BP measurements on like long lines of nursing home residents. You know, they're eating their mashed potatoes and peas and gravy and then they come out and me and my brother Isaac and you, we do their blood pressure measurements. Yeah, yeah, I tagged along to all that stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Huh.

So eventually though, you. The competition from the. Basically like the, the well funded local government firefighter, firefighting institutions and, and medical institutions force you to move on from firefighting and ambulance.

Yeah, I just, I lost interest. It's like I'd been there, done that, I accomplished my goal and I thought, you know, it just wasn't fun anymore. It was the challenge. It just all of the regulations kind of took the wind out of my sails. And so yeah, I decided to get out. And during that time I also started. So then I thought, well, I'm going to. I'd started dispatching service that, you know, for the ambulance service, but also just for an answering service, dispatch service for.

The community for people who don't know what that is. Was it dispatching service?

Yeah, well, it's. Well back then we didn't have cell phones. We had pagers. You know, all the doctors would wear pagers and you know, service people would wear pagers so that if they got a call after hours, you know, they could get the call would come into a central phone center and then that dispatcher would dispatch out a message to the doctor or the service.

Your kids would wear pagers. Remember that?

Yeah.

All of us, we look like little druggies. Like everybody thought we were like the little homeschooled, like drug dealers. When it really, it was just so our parents could keep tabs on us and tell us to pick up milk or oatmeal on the way home.

Yeah. So we took advantage of it, you know, and actually we started. It was a computerized. It was one of the first computerized networking systems, at least in Idaho. And so then I thought, well, to build up my business, I've got to go out and market and find customers. But rather than do that, I thought I'm going to buy the competition. And so I was ready to buy the competition. He said, well, I Want to see what you got? You know, who am I selling my customers to? And when he came over and looked at our operation and he said, you know, I don't want to sell. I want to buy you out. I thought, okay. So I sold it and then went on to other things. Things.

So what was next?

Well, during the interim, there was a short stint building aluminum welded jet boats. And that, you know, that wasn't my choice. That was a good friend who I was trying to help out. And I ended up, you know, going, I remember that.

Phantom jet boats. I was the janitor in warehouse. Yeah, me and Isaac, you guys are.

Always involved in the family businesses, you know. Yeah. So. Yeah, but that, I. That just wasn't my passion. And so I lasted six months and got out of that and from there. Then eventually I got into coffee. I thought, you know, I want to do something that's not going to have any interaction with government, you know, minimal amount of regulations, where I can just grow a business and have customers that enjoy, you know.

And I never quite asked you about or understood that transition because I remember, I think it was our friends, the Tucker's in Lewston, they had like a coffee shop, Blackbird Java.

That was after.

Was that after?

Yeah, that was after.

Why? Why coffee? Like, where. What was the. Because I don't remember you being super into coffee.

No, no. Up until that point, you know, your mom and I'd always talked about having a coffee shop just for something fun. And that was the path to the coffee shop, to the coffee house. Just learning. I thought, that's simple. I can bring the roaster, put it into my shop that I built on the property and just start roasting. And I found I loved it. Absolutely love. You know, it was like, I found I really enjoyed food and beverage and that, you know, that aspect of being a chef kind of came out in creating the, you know, perfect coffee roast.

It was weird for me because, like, I mean, as a kid, I would wake up, I would open the window, and all I could smell was green coffee beans roasting. You built this huge, like, shed out in our driveway. But, like, really nice shed. Almost like an actual coffee shop.

Yeah, yeah.

With this green and gold high end deluxe Dietrich coffee roaster that I think you got in Sandpoint. And, like, these giant trucks would show up in our driveway, like, way out in the sticks and the hills in Idaho and drop off these bags from South America and Guatemala and Colombia and Costa Rica and Tanzania. And I would go out there and you'd just have stacks and Stacks of books about the chemistry of roasting and how we'll probably talk about this, how water affects the espresso machine and the coffee and barista and I remember you and my little brother Zach started traveling around all these coffee conventions and barista competitions where you flip the espresso handles and syrup bottles. But it was kind of weird. You didn't seem to have at that point a normal job.

Yeah, no, it wasn't. It was more just learning on the job for me. Most of what I've done from that point on anyways, even with the ambulance, was just self motivation, figuring it out, you know, going, going to wherever I needed to go to learn whatever I needed to learn and then just doing it and. Yeah, so that's basically how I got into coffee.

That was Greenfield Coffee.

Yeah, Greenfield Coffee, yeah.

Were you. Because I know you, you, you did a great deal of going to coffee conventions and being taught the chemistry of coffee. Yes, Coffee roasting and coffee making and espresso. And I was at Paul Check's house a couple of weeks ago and he was walking me through all the science of making the perfect espresso shot. You know, he said, he told me, he's like, said something like, you know, most people don't know this, but it's the, gee, he said, you know, the 24 to 28 seconds. And he showed me everything. I'm like, yeah, I know. Yeah, I know. I know because I knew all that stuff when I was like 13, you know, basically making myself basically not oblivious. But I was resistant to the effects of caffeine probably by the time I was 14 because I just drank espresso all day long.

Yeah, I probably had you out there testing it.

You did, yeah. But the thing I was going to ask you was just a broader big picture question because I've also wondered this about myself. I'm a voracious learner. Like, you've seen my library in the house and I'll just get stuck on a topic and just buy every book on the planet and you know, follow every Twitter account that exists for that topic and just go deep. And I remember you having a lot of books. Like I remember you having that big roll up desk in your library and the big bookshelf and all the books, you know, kind of like the one.

That collapsed because I had so many books on it.

Yeah, the one that collapsed because you had so many books on it. I learned a lesson. My bookshelves are solid inside. River and Taron are going to be okay. But were you always A reader. Were you always a learner?

Not in school, for sure, but I didn't fit in. But, yeah. I mean, when I got into a topic, I went in whole hog, whether that was the Christian faith. I mean, I became a pastor, you know, and I studied.

That's right. Yeah.

I was, you know, I was a pastor for 10 years.

Remember, you were, like, doing that on the side while we were. Yeah, while you were firefighting.

Yeah. It's like I saw that as, you know, I got to. I got to make money as a firefighter, but I could read, so. Yeah, As a matter of fact, the guys would be watching TV and I'd be reading books, so I was constantly reading.

Would you be, like, there in the fire station planning what you were going to say in a Sunday sermon?

Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah. And then I'd take. Then I'd get a fireman to come in for me so I could go, you know, to church on Sunday and teach.

So you go preach and then just go back to the fire station.

Yeah. So, yeah. And all. All my downtime we spent reading for that. And then when I got into coffee was the same thing. When I got into nutrition and water, it was the same thing. So. Yeah, when I. Yeah. So we're similar.

Yeah. So, Greenfield Coffee, how many years were you roasting and selling coffee beans to. From what I remember, you're selling the local coffee shops. I think you started to do a little bit online because I. I remember you hired me to create the website at one point.

Yeah.

At the end, your little coding, son.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was mostly just, you know, area restaurants and espresso places and, you know, and then my. Of course, our own places, you know, he had drive through, and I started with the espresso stand at the airport and then did a drive through and then, you know, and that was all planned so that I. Because I didn't know anything about running a food and beverage business.

That's right. I forgot you had a coffee shop at the airport.

Yeah, yeah.

That was. Another one of my first jobs was working. I didn't work the airport coffee shop. I worked all your coffee stands up in Moscow. Because by that point, I was going to college in Moscow, and actually, it was even before that I was taking classes, like, because I was homeschooled, and you had me taking some classes from tutors in Moscow, but I'd go up there early and work at your coffee shop in Moscow. So how long was it that you just ran strictly coffee?

From 97 until 2007. So, yeah, 10 years.

Was that your initial exposure to really, the whole nutrition, chemistry, water, food world?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But not. I was still on the standard American diet with not, you know, not cognizant of organic. As a matter of fact, I would have customers come in and ask for organic coffees, and I would just look at them like, why does that matter? What's. What's, you know, that's. Yeah, yeah. So I had no concept of the relationship between nutrition and pesticides and all this stuff. It was still just completely off the radar for me, actually, until 2005. And that's when there was probably the most significant events in my life regarding. It was the most significant event regarding nutrition and becoming aware that, wow, there's, you know, there's something to food that we had. We used to have kids over all the time, Right. For dinner on Sundays.

I remember that.

Yeah. The college kids and the.

Not just on Sundays. Yeah, well, actually, every day, being a hairstylist and having people come over for haircuts all day long between the fact that we were like the family to hang out with in the local homeschooling community. So, like, every kid was at our house playing in our pool and on our tennis court and just playing on our acreage all day long. And then you guys would throw these massive house parties every single Sunday. So we'd have like 20 college students over every Sunday. Like, I, you know, I tell people I'm introverted. I grew up in a house that was basically a zoo seven days a week.

Yeah. So one of the girls we had over shared with us at the table that her mom was cured of cancer from a raw food diet. And I was astounded. I thought, what in the world? How can that be? And that was what set me on my quest to then just dive whole hog into understanding nutrition and natural health. And eventually water.

And that was weird for me because our diet growing up was largely comprised of. We did a lot of fast food. I remember you'd take me on my. On my Burger King dates and my. Remember the McDonald's Big Breakfast? You'd take me to the McDonald's Big Breakfast and I'd have the hash browns. Remember the platter with the hash browns, the orange juice. And then we did. After all of our baseball games, you'd always take us to Dairy Queen for the blizzards.

Oh, yeah, Blizzards.

And then, of course, Burger King and the Whoppers. That was one of our favorites. But yeah, we. We hit every. Every fast food restaurant. 21st street in Lewiston, like, that was our life.

That's right.

And then mom, of course, would bring us and any of our friends in the suburban down to McDonald's on 29 cent cheeseburger, 29 cent hamburger, 39 cent cheeseburger day, and literally bring back bags and bags and bags of grease soaked paper from McDonald's and stock the fridge. We did. I remember all this because, like, right now, like, we're in discussions at K Key on right now, but, okay, how can we create healthy versions of comfort foods? And I'm like, one of the biggest idea men there, because there were so many. There were so many that we subsisted on the take and bake pizzas from Papa Murphy's. We did the tons of cereal. Tons of cereal. I remember I would do that. Big bags of cereal, three or four peanut butter cap and crunch bowls a morning. Yeah. So it was standard American diet. So for me, it was full on freaky weird. When I saw my dad start doing things like making crackers. And I remember you'd, like, come over to the house and you'd have, like, ferments, this stuff that just. I. I had no clue what it even was like, like sprouts and ferments. And, you know, I. I was at the time by that point. This is 2005, right?

Yeah, 2005. 2006.

Okay. So this was a year or two into my marriage with Jessa.

Yeah, yeah.

And Jessa, although she came from a ranching farming background, you know, she grew up dirt poor making food from scratch. So even though we weren't doing a lot of fast food and junk food, we were doing a lot of kind of like American farmer scratch food. Right. So we were doing just basically flour biscuits and, you know, whatever meat was on sale that we could make some kind of a dish out of and some fish and whatever produce we could afford. And we grew a lot of our produce, but we weren't organic, we weren't raw, we weren't fermented. The only reason we started doing any of that was Jessa used to have horrible acne and eczema. And she came home from the University of Idaho library one day with this book called the Dietary Cure for Acne by Loren Cordain, who is like the godfather of the Paleo diet. And that was my first introduction and her first introduction into how food can heal the body. But it was around that same time when I'm starting to, you know, I think Rob Wolf had just launched his podcast. And so I started. I was starting to listen to Rob Wolf. A little bit. I had just started my podcast at the same time, which had nothing to do with nutrition. It was just all about fitness. And then you were getting into raw food. And I just remember it being really weird because even though I was starting to get into food a little bit and how it can heal the body, that, like, you were. You were full on, like, you know, like one of the folks walking around Arowana, Louisiana, like, just on a totally different level than just, like, eat healthy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like the $30 jars of fermented coconut yogurt with unicorn tears sprinkled, bottled under a full moon. So you. You got into raw food, and what happened after that?

Well, from there, went to general nutrition, you know, researching every kind of raw food, every kind of medical, you know. Yeah, just essential oils, you know, every kind of medical treatment that was natural oregano.

You got me into oregano. You turned me on to oregano, which I. Eventually, you know, I took that over. You know, Keon still sells oregano now. You were my first. I think you also wrote, like, I don't remember why. I think it was a deal where you didn't want your name published or something like that at the time. But you have a guest article on my website from way back in, like, 2007 about oregano. You know, I think you called yourself, like, your middle name Alan or something like that, but yeah, and you actually. So the same time Jessa was exposing me to this whole ancestral nutrition side of things, you were exposing me to, largely what I think a lot of people would consider to be, like, the woo side of things, like frequencies, crystals, essential oils, water. You know, a lot of this other stuff that I'd never heard of before.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you weren't doing this as a business, though?

No, although I was selling eventually. I had a friend who I was learning that I had met who had an oregano oil business, and he was leaving the country. So just for fun, I took it because it was just a small business, you know, I mean, it was easy to. And so that got me into essential oils big time. And I started going to, you know, some conferences and doing research and learning everything I could about essential oils. And. Yeah, and eventually I sold that business and got into water.

How'd you get into water? Like, what. What was it that got you interested?

Well, first was a book by Victor Schauberger, and then a number of books by Vic. You know about Victor Schauberger?

Yeah, he's the Austrian. It's like a naturalist.

Naturalist Visionary. Yeah, yeah. Self educated. Didn't go to, didn't go to college, but he came from generations and generations.

I'm writing a note to myself right now because I'll put a link to, to some of his stuff in the show. Notes. He's got some very interesting work.

Yeah, very interesting. And so then somebody invited me to this Kangen water demonstration. And I had no idea what a Kangen machine was. I didn't know what ionization was. And I went to the, and I went to the presentation and you know, I was still 247 into studying nutrition, natural alternatives and nature. And so I watched them, you know, put on this presentation was pretty impressive. But I looked at the machine, I thought, well, they're using electricity and they're claiming that they're making water. You know, they're making water the best it can be. And I thought, you can't, we can't outdo nature. There's got to be a way to do this without, without, you know, a gadget, without a machine that brings water back to its natural state.

So versus like, like a water alkalizer. Yeah, or a Kangen or any of these type of machines.

Yeah, it's like, you know, I mean every machine out there, what they do, they do what the body does, but they're doing it before it gets to the body. Really. That's, you know, an H2 generator. That's what I mean. The body breaks down the H2O and separates out the oxygen and creates chlorine and creates ozone and, or the new.

Deuterium depleted water idea through beta oxidation. Like your body, if you're, if you're limiting starches and sugars and processed carbohydrates, your body actually generates its own deuterium depleted water. And if you're also avoiding deuterium isotopes which come from plants that have been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, you know, that combined with carbohydrate mitigation kind of saves you from having to. Well, I shouldn't say it saves you. What it does is it allows your body to limit the amount of this heavy, heavy isotope that displaces hydrogen. So you're getting deuterium depleted water in your body. But what I found is that in many people, because you can test now your deuterium levels and they're so high, many people actually have to drink this so called light water, this deuterium depleted water that's now coming out of Austria and Germany and Russia and now being imported into the US But I believe that in the same way that if you eliminate things like dairy and grains from your diet temporarily, your gut heals, then you can reintroduce those type of foods. I think if you're depleted in deuterium, you can limit deuterium and even drink deuteronomy. Deuterium depleted water for some time, but it might not be something you have to do your entire life.

Yeah, yeah. It's just, you know, our diet is so imbalanced now because of all the contaminants that. Yeah, yeah. So it's really a challenge to keep it in balance just, you know, by natural processes.

Yeah. So you were looking at these water filters. You're getting interested in water. And what'd you do from there?

Well, from there I was introduced when I went to, I traveled to Korea and met with actually he was a professor of, I think molecular biology who was into water. And he got into water because his daughter had a disease that was incurable. And he figured out how to use energy, EMF from minerals to get into the water and use that to cure her or at least to help her so she could.

You know, when you say emf, that's a, that's a, that's a flag, you know, red flag for many people.

Yeah, well that's, you know, it's, it's, well it's kind of like the emf, you know, spectrum. When you look at a spectrum on the mf, what do you see? You don't see anything natural in there. It's all man made stuff, I mean from radio waves to alpha gamma. It's all man made. Where all of that came from nature, we're just corrupting it.

We're just non native emf. But a lot of people don't realize native emf, grounding earthing sunlight, even like machines that generate pulsed electromagnetic fields, certain frequencies. And there are companies like Essential Oil Wizardry that expose their actual bottles to frequency generators that are generating native EMF that bombard oil. Because oil can carry that signature. Water can carry a signature if it's exposed to those frequencies as well. So when you say emf, you're referring to native emf.

Natural. Yeah. Native or natural emf? Yeah.

So that's what this guy was doing. He was basically exposing water to natural emf.

Right. Using minerals. And so my quest was to figure out how to create a device that was non sacrificial in nature, that would like a free energy device that would impart into water beneficial energies in a way that didn't require any kind of adjunct Equipment or plugging into the wall.

Without requiring electricity.

Yeah. Without requiring man made electricity. Because, of course, electricity.

Yeah, true. Okay. So basically we're talking about figuring out how to modify water to cause it to vibrate or oscillate the water atoms to vibrate or oscillate at frequency similar to what you'd find in nature. Without the use of electricity.

Right. Using natural means. Because the problem with water today is that it's bypassing all the natural parts of the cycle that structure that water, that energize that water, that bring it into a natural state where it's free of contaminants energetically and physically. But it's got a rich array of. Of not only physical minerals, but also energetics, you know, energetic or native emf.

Right, right. Which forms the exclusion zone in water, which I've talked with Dr. Thomas Cowan about, and I've talked with Dr. Gerald Pollack about. I want you to feel the pressure to delve into the science. Dr. Robert Slovak about it. About how you can create an electrical charge within water, Very similar to a plant. Allows water to pass through a vessel with less obstruction, which allows it to create, in the aqueous matrix surrounding a cell, A higher electrical charge. And that also allows it to basically get exposed to things like sunlight, protons within the body, etc. And interact with those because of the actual charge that the water contains versus a lower charged water that would be comprised primarily of H2O bonds zones versus H3O and a large number of these exclusion zones that guys like Dr. Gerald Pollack have studied in his lab at the University of Washington.

Yeah, so. Well, for instance, you know, when you work out, what is it that buffs you up?

That buffs you up?

Yeah. What is it that gives you the structure, you know, the mass and even the strength, you know.

Muscle fibers movement.

Well, yeah, but what's acting on. What's acting on the muscle fibers? The water molecules that surround it.

Right.

So what's happening to those water molecules when you're working out? It's movement, Right? Correct. Movement has an impact on the changes in molecular angulation of the water molecules. And then you combined nutrients with that, which is energy. And what is it the water absorbs those energies? It doesn't absorb. Absorb so much. The physical component is there to carry the energy, the information. And that's what your water cells absorb, what your water molecules absorb. And that's what buffs you up.

And that also serves as almost like a charge capacitor in terms of taking not just Movement. Right. Physical oscillations that can produce. Essentially when you look at water, it's a crystalline structure.

Right, Right.

So you're talking about piezoelectricity from the movement. You're talking about light and proton based movement from infrared light or sunlight if you're being exposed to that while you're moving. And then you could also say the actual minerals within the body would affect that as well.

Yeah, but it's also, I mean there's, there's a common, it's a mix of energetics and physical actions. Energetic actions which can create a physical, but also physical actions that can draw in or absorb or attract an energetic benefit. For instance, water physically, in nature, it's always going back and forth like this. It's like an oscillation, you know, it's a left, right, move.

Right. For people listening, he's moving his hand like a fish. It's almost like an underground stream, for example, with the water tumbling over the rocks.

Yeah. Or even if you look on the earth of any streams, they're going to be just extreme left, right turns. It's just, just like squiggly. And that's what water does naturally because that's what creates the structure. When you increase the angular structure of the molecule bonding, you're expanding the water's ability to absorb energy. Because it's all about, that's what it's all about. It's about the water bringing in information or energy and storing it and then taking it into a plant, animal or person or into the environment to release that energy.

Right. And that's what so many people. And I want to get back to what you did, you know, when you decided to figure out a way to create that charge within water without the use of electricity. But that's what so many people still shockingly fail to wrap their heads around when they're low on energy or have poor metabolic or mitochondrial function is just this whole idea of, you know, as Robert Becker in his book the Body Electric refers to it, the body being a human battery.

Right.

If you want to be healthy, then eating vegetables and exercising is nowhere near as important as sunlight, minerals, water, grounding, earthing and exposure to. And this is one that I get thrown on the bus for a lot. But it's true exposure to the property frequencies of energy and that includes positive emotions and relationships and being with other people like those, that is the key to health. It is not moving in nutrition, which is how I spent the first two decades of my existence in the fitness sector thinking that everybody, everything could be solved with proper diet and proper movement. But unless you have the electrical part of things figured out in terms of the actual electrical and frequency structure of the human body as a battery, you're going to fight an uphill battle your entire life. So I'm going to get off my soapbox and go back. Go back to the minerals. So you're trying to figure out how you can create this filter.

Yeah, well, and actually, it's not even. It was how to create water that could absorb as much energy as possible for, you know, to benefit. Primarily, you know, our focus was on plants and animals and because it's a lot easier to work with plants and animals than with people, you know, from. On multiple levels. So, yeah, so we just started with. I mean, one of the most simple experiments I did was in just with the kitchen sink, where I took water just out of the tap and filled up a cup that had soil in it. And I had like five cups of soil. And I just. One had tap water. One had structured the water that had been vortexed, one had water that had been vortexed with specific energies. Which means that all I did was wrap the vortex unit with minerals on the outside. Never touched the water. Then I had one where it went through the minerals and the vortex, and I put them out in cups outside and just watched to see what happened. Every single one of those cups had a different dynamic within the source. I mean, everything from growing some kind of chalky substance to one being extremely wet, another one being dry. Every one of them had a different response, which told me that there was something. It was not only the vortexing that was having an impact, but it was these invisible energies that never even touched the water that was like light being absorbed into the water.

You have pictures. There's an ebook on your website that I actually was looking through it prior to our interview because I wanted to see what kind of resources were on your website for people. And you have a picture of these jars, the water clarity.

Well, that's another one. Well, that's another one I did where I just took tap water and then I took water that was structured with the mineral component. And just to see how would it react with rice in a jar. So those jars had rice. Each jar had rice and water. And one was structured water, one wasn't. And just one what would happen. And the structured water stayed crystal clear with the rice in it. And the other jar was, you know, was very murky.

Yeah, it's very, very cloudy. Yeah, it looks like dirty water.

Yeah. But I spent Years doing so many just simple experiments, you know. You know, apart from just even working with plants and animals. But, you know, I mean, I've been working with plants and animals and doing these experiments for almost a decade now. And you know, it's like, I know.

It'S one day you came back because I was still trying to figure out what you were doing. Because even when you were into this, I hadn't read the body electric. I didn't understand frequencies or energy or the impact on the body at all. So for me at this time, what you were doing was really weird. Yeah, but I remember you came back, wasn't it India or some other country you went to where you were actually feeding livestock, or not feeding, but allowing livestock to drink structured water?

Well, we did a lot of work in India, because India, there's lots of farmers, you know, the farms are small and it was easy to work there. So, yeah, we worked, for instance, there was a calf on one of the farms we were working at, and the calf was just drinking water out of the well. And the calf was very antisocial, very skittish, didn't want to be around people, and they started to give it structured water and its whole personality changed. It all of a sudden became very social, very at peace. And I saw the same thing happen with chickens where we did a side by side, two barns. One got the borewell water, one got the treated, the structured water. And the chicken farmer didn't know that chickens could have a, you know, could have a temperament that was peaceful. He always saw chickens that were extremely agitated and had a mottled look to them, not a healthy look. And when he could compare it to the chickens that had the structured water, it's like he couldn't believe the difference in that these chickens were very peaceful, they looked great, they gained more weight, they ate less food, they were healthier.

And the water was not filtered differently. It was just structured because there's a difference. Right, so you could still. Could you still have water that is structured but contains chlorine, fluoride, pesticides, birth control pills, all the things that we find in our normal water supp.

Sure, but there's an energetic filtration going on when you expose these energies. Their energies are designed to do three things. Clean, feed and protect. When I say energies, I mean electromagnetic frequencies that emanate from any natural substance and they all fulfill that role. For instance, like with chlorine, I always wondered, when we used a structured water unit in a pool, the odor would dissipate from the Chlorine that was very strong. The red eyes would dissipate. You know, the people that were allergic to chlorine that got red skin wouldn't get red anymore. And I always wondered, what's going on? What are we doing in that chlorine? Because the chlorine was still there. You'd measure. And you know, what I think was happening was just changing. It was literally breaking down in that industrial created chlorine to a elemental, to a more pure state of chlorine that wasn't toxic, you know.

Right. Then the gas would dissipate. The gas would dissipate more readily off the surface of the water, if that were the case.

Yeah. So I know we were, you know, and I think there's a number of things. For instance, even with. I took sewage water from a lake in Bangalore, in the middle of Bangalore, there's 25 million people.

It was a pleasant experiment.

Yeah, well, and you know, it was fed by the water treatment plants that supposedly treated the water. And it was treated, but it still had fecal matter in it. And it, it stunk. It was pretty bad. I took that water, I took two gallons, put it into a plastic bucket and dropped one of my simple handheld structuring devices in it with a harmonizer and put a little aquarium pump in it that was hooked up to push it through the handheld device, put a cover on it and let it run to see what would happen. Well, we had E. Coli and Coliform in it. And after a week, the coliform was gone. After two weeks, all the E. Coli was gone. And the water that had been scummy and green was now crystal clear. There was no filter in that. It was just vortexing exposure to native emf.

Right. And when you say there's no filter, what you mean is that normally there are filters. In a typical water filter, there will be filters with tiny micropores, like a reverse osmosis or a charcoal, like a carbon block filter. The water would pass through. Through that the toxins or chemicals or whatever you're filtering out would get absorbed.

Right.

Or adsorbed, I think the term would be absorbed. And adorable. And then the water is then clean. But the electrical charge of the water has not changed. As a matter of fact, the electrical charge is gone after that.

Yeah, well, especially any water that goes through a filter, it's already dead.

Whereas in this case, if I understand properly, you're simply feeding the water through a vortices, through minerals.

Well, no, it was actually. No, it never touched the minerals. It was glass, just glass.

Like glass beads?

Yeah. A triangular configuration of glass beads was vortexing the water, doing a perfect left, a toroidal spin, left, right, spin, at the same time going through this device. So it's just vortexing.

So we're only changing the electrical charge of the water.

Well, that. We're changing the molecular structure, but we're also. We're pulling in ether, which is, you know, charged with all the. With elements, you know, that are in the air. And then I had my harmonizer cartridge in there, which was sealed, but it had all the elements of the periodic table, and it. Plus a number of other minerals that I need.

Now, the harmonizer cartridge, that's what I have in my hot tub in my pool, and there's one in my refrigerator as well and in my travel bag. But what's the harmonizer cartridge?

Okay, well, that emits the light, that emits the native emf, or the information, whatever you want to call it, the energy. And what happened in that water? That broke down organic matter that I could visually see in the water, broke it down to an elemental state. After two weeks, I drank that water.

Yeah, but the harmonizer, it's not light. Isn't it? Is it minerals that's in there?

It's minerals, but they're emitting. See, the science. This is the science.

Okay, so you're talking about photons.

No, not photon. Photons are not. There's no such thing as a photon.

Explain this to me, okay?

Science has not got it right, okay? The way the ingredients. When you take it back to the most simple. And I'm a very simple guy, take it back to the most simple, to the beginning. It was water in the beginning, okay? And I take this from. From the book of Genesis, but also from. From philosophers and scientists to. Through the ages who will confirm this. So it's confirmed by being proven, you know, generation after generation. We're just not told about it. But in the beginning, there was water. Okay, what is that in the Greek? It's hydrogen. What is hydrogen? It's hydro water in the beginning, Hydrogen. That's right. Okay, so it was water in the beginning, and it was dark, void. And so. Okay, so there was no energy. There's nothing. There was lifeless, no animation, nothing. It was just hydrogen, a sea of hydrogen. And out of. And then from the. That was there. And then. And then the story is that God created light. He created energy. So those are the two components, separate components, that create everything, you know, our reality, our heaven and earth, that is made up of hydrogen gas, which, when you take for instance, you take the hydrogen. If you look on the periodic table, you could deduct it, that hydrogen molecule. You take two hydrogen molecules, you make the next element. You take four, you make the next. All of the elements on the periodic table are comprised of hydrogen atoms. And when you change the configuration, it's like with carbon, diamonds and graphite. Same element, carbon. Nothing else, just carbon. So the chemical structure is the same. What changes? So that one is one of the softest materials on earth, and the other one is the hardest, but it's the same thing, carbon. It's just the molecular configuration. It's the same carbon. It's just. They change the angulation, the structure of it, and that changes the dynamics of it, its density of its. You know, of its. Of all of its attributes. And that's what happens. It's like, how can you have carbon dioxide in the air, but you can have carbon. That's a. You can have carbon as a gas or carbon as a solid, you know, and the same thing with water. We can have water not only as a solid, you know, gas and liquid, but it also becomes every single element on the periodic table.

Solid, gas, liquid. And actually in the human body is primarily a gel.

Yeah, but it goes even beyond that, far beyond that. You know, that's. That's mainstream science. What isn't accepted is that the hydrogen atom is that. That's the building block for all matter. That is separate from energy. Energy is light, and that is what. What animates what. What brings action. And, you know, our energy, that's what energizes us. So it's the interaction of energy with hydrogen.

So going back to the harmonizer, then how would the harmonizer work based on that explanation?

Okay, well, it. What happens. The. The components that are inside that unit are emitting electromagnetic frequency, which, which.

What is inside the unit?

It's just minerals, okay? It's just elements, Minerals and elements.

So minerals in the same way that if you stand barefoot on the ground, you're getting extra exposed to the electromagnetic frequencies emitted by the giant rock that we live on. You've got all these tiny, tiny, tiny, small rocks in the harmonizer along with water, and that's emitting a frequency that is whatever. The food in the refrigerator that you're placing the harmonizer in, the desktop that you put the harmonizer on, the pool water that you put the harmonizer in. That's how it would be working. So you're basically, what you're essentially doing in very simple simplistic terms is you have like A native EMF stick.

Yes. And we're. And when that EMF interacts with the water, whatever's in that water, the MF does, you know, it's doing three things. It's cleaning, feeding, and protecting. So those are the three functions. And each element and each mineral has a different, you know, has a different niche. But that's generally. It's like you got two ingredients. Light, energy, matter elements. You know, those, those are the two ingredients. And then from there, when those start to interact, you get feeding, cleaning, and protecting. And if you want to even break that down to one word, what you get is love, which is what a mother. What's. What's a mother's love? What's a Feeding, cleaning, protecting. That's mother's love, Right. Okay. That's God's love for us. So it's like a chain event. God gives us this love, this physical love through creation. He created this, our environment so that we are surrounded by all of these energies that come from him as a gift to love us. They clean us, they feed us, and they protect us. And they're doing it all the time throughout every single cell in our body.

That's interesting. Sometimes I think of my role as a father and a husband is protect, provide, procreate. But I like that idea. Feed, clean, and protect. And protect.

That's mother. Why do we call nature mothers and mother Nature? Yeah, that's because that's what nature is doing for us. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it is the yin. Interesting. The yin of water. So this harmonizer is just one of the things that you, you have. But I get a lot of questions because most of my clients, when I have them filtering their home, they're using this whole house structured filter. Those that just want to filter everything, but that, that is different. So they get that from your website, but it's basically. That's a combination of carbon block and structuring, right?

Yeah. And you know, the whole reason why I got into filtering physical filtration products like zeolite and carbon, the different, you know, catalytic bone char activated, you know, the basic filters, not the stuff that gets into the, you know, iron and manganese and stuff like that. It gets too involved. The whole reason for me getting into physical filtration using cartridges so was as a vehicle, like a Trojan horse by which I could enter into a person's home and begin to introduce them to structured water. That's. That's my whole purpose for it. Because structured water is, is. It's like it's. Without it, we cannot bring Water back to its, back to its life enhancing.

State where it's the most natural state that we find water in on the planet.

But we can't find it anywhere because if it comes now with dams, it's like if you put it, you can.

Find it, but you gotta like be in a mountain.

Oh, it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's. I mean, for the masses, it's not attainable. You know, it's like when they put a dam, you know, you got dams on every single river in the world now. It's like when you, when you put a dam on a river, it's like putting an occlusion on a vein on an artery going to your arm and you say, oh, okay, this is going to help. Well, how's it going to help? Your arm is going to start to tingle. It's going to not get the nutrients it needs. It's going to start to atrophy. And that's what we've done to the Earth because the rivers and streams are the lifeblood. It's the blood system for the Earth.

Well, it's also the flow, the velocity of the flow.

Well, it's flowing, but when we stop that flow or slow that flow or straighten that flow out, where an engineer comes in and says, why do you have, with all this wiggly stuff you're going two miles, put a straight line and you make it a mile. And we've just solved a problem. Well, no, we haven't. We've created more problems because that's not working with nature.

Yeah, that makes sense. And the idea behind the structuring is the water would. Simply because I have well water and a lot of people like, why the hell do you have filters? You know? And not only does the well water have some manganese and some runoff from fields up above us, but when it passes through my manganese filter and I also have a bacterial iron based filter, that water is no longer structured, especially after it sits in the cisterns and goes to the pipes and everything. So the very final stage my water passes through is a structured water filtration unit.

Right.

And from what I understand, your main whole house water filter now that you have on your site is basically a combination of the water passing through carbon block, which gets rid of a lot of these toxins and chemicals. But then after it passes through carbon block, then it passes through structured water.

Yeah, but actually with a lot of these filters I can, we can structure before or after, depending on what the filtration media is.

Right.

And it's gonna, you know it's gonna go both way. I mean it can work either way.

But that, that one is called. Is that your, your hydro Z? Is that the whole house water solution?

No, the whole. It's right now, it's the quad flow unit.

Okay. The quad flow unit is the one that has the carbon block that.

Well, that's. I've got two, I've got one quad flow that has filter physical filtration and one that doesn't. Yeah. So I mean I've got multiple options.

You've got a few different SKUs on your site. I actually just pulled up your site to look at it. So each of those, if somebody just wants to figure out which one they need based on their water, do they just like contact you on your website and they're able to see which one? And by the way, if you're listening in, don't stop listening right now. This isn't the end of the podcast. I'm just asking this. This is not the part where I tell you to just go buy something. We've still got more coming up here. But I'm just asking this question. So, so how do people know? Because it looks like you've got three, four, you got an under sink, but then you have a whole house. How do people know which of these whole house solutions they need? The multi round versus the hydro Z versus the quad flow.

Yeah, well the, the multi round is for city water only. It's not going to deal with well water. And you know, the hydro Z is good for well water, but it's not the ultimate. You know, with well water you can have a lot of issues and it's like having a doctor and having a specialist. I've only chosen to deal with the basic issues because they really need to have a local water treatment specialist if they've got well water with issues. Because there could be all kinds of factors and typically the local water treatment guy, even though he's not in the structuring, knows nothing about it. They typically are very well acquainted with the dynamics and the problems with their, you know, with these well water. With well water that.

Well water a lot of times need a customized solution. That's, that's what I had. I had a guy customize the filtration for my water and then I had him talk to you and then we structured it after it.

By the way, do you remember when you had put your system in, I came out and treated your aquifer, your, you know, I poured 10 gallons of spring water mixed with my structured water down your Shaft. And we took that. And then I came back, I think two months later and measured. You had nine parts per million iron before we treated. And afterwards we had three parts.

Just by treating the actual well structure.

What we were doing, we were dropping. By changing the viscosity of that one, we were literally precipitated out iron. It dropped out of the.

And then you have the portable one where you could just travel with it. And you would pour water from any source, like let's say a bottle of Pellegrino or whatever you happen to have has been bottled and been sitting and is no longer charged. You'd pour it through there. It comes out the other end due to your glass. And then that's also structured.

Right. And I'm redesigning that handheld now. I'm not selling it right now. I'm doing a complete redesign on it.

You ever have anybody mess around with putting wine or coffee?

Oh, sure, yeah, I've played around with all that. What's it do? Well, some people like it better once it goes through. It definitely changes it. And I've had it where, you know, I'm not a connoisseur, but I, you know, I've had like, some come out spicier, some come out with less. With less bitterness. It typically will smooth out coffee and. Or wine. It'll. It'll. It'll take out. It'll take out some of that bitterness.

Well, it absolutely changes because I recently did an Instagram story. I was down in San Diego and I stayed at this retreat that had this gold structured water vortices unit in each room. And that's essentially the same thing, but you pour it in there and it changes. Just you take one glass of water, you pour it through the vortices, have another glass of water on the other end, you drink the water. And anybody who is doubtful right now, as you're listening to this, you will know, right. Right off the bat, if you take a sip of the regular water, then take a sip of the structured water, it's a night and day difference. And it makes a difference. Like you noted in Livestock, for example. But, you know, like Robert Slovak and I talked about, you can shower and bathe in structured water. It makes better coffee, you know, which is. I was talking with Paul. Check about that. You know, when you pull a shot of espresso, if the water has been structured, it's, it's. It tastes better. There's so, so many benefits of this stuff, and I don't want to turn this into one giant sales spiel. But what I will do is I'll link to my dad's website in the show notes. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gary Greenfield. And you can go check out all the options for, like, the harmonizer, which is the one that produces the native emf, the portable structured water filter, the whole health solutions. And from the folks I've talked to, you're right, you're pretty good at answering questions that people just don't know what kind of setup they want. Right now, I want to dive back into the big picture here because you have this idea. When it comes to a lot of this stuff, energy frequencies, water, love, God, this idea of the people of the Wood, the parable of the people of the Wood. What's the parable of the people of the Wood?

Oh, years ago, I don't know. It must have been, I don't know, 2015, 2013. I don't remember when exactly, but I thought, well, you know, I should put an article in our local paper about my business because I'd never done it, you know, and they always do. They'll do a story on new businesses. And so they did the interview. And a week went by. Nothing. Another week went by. So finally I called him and said, what's, you know, you guys going to run the story and the interview? The journalist said, no, the editor pulled it. He doesn't want it. And I said, why? He says it's. It's. He doesn't, you know, he thinks you're. You're misleading people. And I said, well, what about the research? What about, you know, the evidence? And he said he doesn't want to hear it. So. So I wrote that parable just as a picture of what I saw as a problem in the world.

Oh, you wrote this parable?

Yeah. Yeah, I wrote the parable. What's the parable? Yeah. Well, it's about the people. It was about the people of the valley and the people of the coastal cities who were of the world. They were into money, fame, power, pleasure, all the things of the world. They were into technologies that were based on false principles, principles that were going to destroy them. And the people of the Wood, they were connected with their ancestors. They were into tradition. They were into nature. They were into being one with nature, one with God, living a more simple life based on true truth, based on tradition. And that's how I saw it. I saw the world we live in today. It's all based on a false reality. What we're teaching our children from first grade to Graduate school are principles that are false. They're principles that are destroying us as, you know, as a human, as a humankind. You know, you look at all the large corporations that are controlling, you know, the agriculture, it's all chemicals, you know, and we're, we're, you know, and the farmers, they're all dependent on chemicals now. It's like you can't get away from it. It's, they're, they're based on principles that are killing us. Same thing with medicine. Same thing with, you know, history is revision. You know, there's just, it just runs the whole ammon. And so that's why what I'm doing, you know, with water is not, it's hard for people to grasp it because they've just, it's, they've just been brain polluted to not accept truth.

So the people of the coastal cities, the people of the villages, the people of technology, they've eventually destroyed themselves.

Yeah, and that's what's gonna happen due.

To this lack of love, this malnutrition, this energy that was simply all twisted. Whereas the people of the wood thrived, grew on love, became nourished and lived happily ever after.

Yeah, simple.

That's a long way to come from a 17 year old Tito toddler in Miami, Florida.

Yeah, sure is. Well.

You know, I don't know if, if I've ever fully expressed to you how grateful I am to you for molding me into who I am today. Every, Every step along the way was meant to be. There are mistakes that happen to everyone, but there are no regrets. Everything was meant to be. I think that, that many of us, especially in this generation, we tend to think back and blame our parents. We say they could have done something bad, different or we blame trauma, we blame poor relationships, we blame poor parenting, we blame choices that we wish our parents would have made. But I see so much more clearly the older I get. That every step from doing the medical billing in your office to working at the ambulance station, to, you know, every Saturday having to wake up at the butt crack of dawn to go deliver meals on wheels to elderly people with you in your car, to, you know, going to health conferences and you know, playing my violin at nursing homes, like all of that, despite at the time, you know, in many cases being things I didn't want to do helped for me and took me on this weird zigzag path to where I am today. And again, I never really realized it as much as I do now, but seeing your love for books and learning and exploring and curiosity and knowledge and seeing your. Not only your unconditional love for your family, but also your willingness to defy social norms, to stick it to the man, so to speak, and not care what other people think, but to seek out. The truth. I don't think I've ever expressed to you how grateful I am for you being my father and for you making me what I am today.

Thank you.

Thank you, dad.

Bless you.

And thank you for being on my podcast.

Yeah. Awesome. I love you so much. And I'm, you know, I. I did the best I could with you, and I'm very proud of what you've become. Very proud.

I love you too, dad. Hoping just a few people learned a few things on today's show.

Yeah. So, okay.

Thanks for coming on.

You bet. All right, thanks for having me, folks.

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