377: The Big Vitamin D Mistake, How Ben Reads A Book A Day, Cold Therapy vs. Cryotherapy vs....

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, the Big Vitamin D Mistake, How I Read a book a day. Cold Therapy versus Cold Thermogenesis versus Cryotherapy. How to Deal with Self Healing, Overwhelm, what to do about Liver Issues, Fit Teens on a budget, and much more.

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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Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Green Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

I'm trying to settle my body down right now, Brock, by diffusing a woo woo essential oil into my office because I just finished swinging around the kettlebell.

Which Woo woo oil are you diffusing?

It's called Brace yourself. You ready for this? Okay. My kids love this one, by the way. It's called Three Wise Men. Yeah.

Oh, let me guess. Does it have.

Go ahead and guess.

Does it have frankincense, myrrh, and. Oh, crap. What's the other thing?

Gold. Gold. Well, here's the deal with the whole, like, wise men thing. Apparently back in the day when they would have been bringing essential oils to baby Jesus.

I believe it's pronounced Jeebus, actually. G bus.

Baby G bus. They didn't have essential oil extraction technology, so they were actually. They were resins that they brought like that. You would then, I guess, heat up and simmer down or something like that. They weren't actual oils, believe it or not. They didn't have the little glass bottles, Little dropper bottles. Yeah. What do they call them? Mirror on glass bottles. Yeah. Impervious to sunlight. But, yeah, I was swinging around the kettlebell. I'm getting ready for that RKC certification. Yeah, that one. Yeah.

I'm excited to see how you do. I mean, you're working really hard on it, so hopefully you don't fail it.

Snatches, cleans, presses like a. Like a bottoms up press, lots of goblet squats. I pretty much have rarely been touching any barbells, any dumbbells much at all, aside from kettlebell and body weight stuff lately. Nice.

Yeah, actually, I just finished doing some kettlebell stuff too, as part of my circuit. I have a couple of living room circuits that I get to on days when I'm just totally slammed and can't actually get outside or do anything.

Living room, sir. Is that like you jump on the couch, then you go over and sit cross legged in front of the tv? Yeah.

Turn the TV on.

Meander over to the coffee table.

Yeah. Meander over to the, to the little bar and make myself a cocktail and.

Yeah.

Yeah, pretty much.

Okay, uh, before we jump into the news flashes, hardest kettlebell exercise for you right now.

Turkish getups.

Challenging thing. Turkish getups, Absolutely.

I can and I should qualify. One side is not bad. My other side is abysmal.

That's actually my favorite way to get ready for a workout is Turkish getups. If you do like 10, 10 Turkish getups per side, you can pretty much open up just about every muscle in your body, including your hips especially. And yeah, it's a good warm up. It's a lot better than for me.

I was more opening up my, my screaming muscles.

Yeah, exactly. It's a lot better than the, the elliptical trainer, though. The elliptical trainer used to be, of course, when I was a personal trainer, the most epic warmup workout tool ever. But I think that's been replaced by Turkish getups now that I'm older and wiser, so.

All right, there you go.

There you go.

News flashes.

All right. I get this question a lot about how I remember what I read and how I read a book a day.

Yeah.

And so I thought I would, I would kick off today's news flashes by filling folks in on, on a little bit of that. On opening the kimono, so to speak. I just love that analogy.

Yeah, you really do.

Because I imagine like some creepy old dude walking down a dirty alley with his kimono open. That's me.

Or not completely open, but just sort of like peeking. It just sort of flapping it a little too much.

Barely. Just barely. Just showing off some, some chest hairs. So there was this great new article that came out. I follow this blog called the Farnham Street Blog. It's actually a really good one. And they published an article on it. How to remember what you read. How to remember what you read. And not only does this particular website really get into how to read quickly, like skimming the index, skimming the contents, skimming the preface or the preface, as I would imagine you say up there in Canada.

Preface, actually.

Yes, exactly. And then they go into some other recommendations, like matching the book that you're reading to your setting or situation. Like if you're traveling or if you're on holiday, let's say you're going To Hawaii. Then you would read the book Hawaii. Or you would read a book by Machiavelli if you were going to Italy. Or, you know, Jack Kerouac or John Moore if you're going, you know, to be reading in the middle America with lots of pot. Yeah, exactly. So set the setting.

Another thing that they recommend is to make notes as you read, which I indeed do. I read with a pen or I read with my. My finger on the highlighter when I'm reading with Kindle. So I'm constantly. I'm never just reading without an intention to find something meaningful in what I'm reading. Like. Like without an intention of mindfulness. Now, they recommend in this article to stay focused, which is kind of a dub. But they get into like turning push notifications off things like that. Which I also do when I'm reading.

Yeah, everybody should do that. Not even when they're just reading.

Yeah, unless I am, which I tend to do a lot. Snapchatting, some of the things that I'm reading. Like, I do that on Snapchat. Folks follow me on Snapchat. You know, that's. That's one of the best ways to kind of like look over my shoulder and see what I'm reading. And this book goes into or this article goes into quite a bit. I mean, it's a long one. It's like a 4,000 plus Word article, but it's really, really fantastic. I can't remember anything it said, but it's called how to Remember what yout Read. A couple other tips I would give people, though, for me personally, for my own reading, I have a rule that I follow when I read, and that is that I cannot turn the page backward ever. Because I used to find when I read, I would kind of like zone out for a little while and then I'd be like, oh, crap. I don't even remember what I was like looking at the past, you know, six pages. So now that I have that rule that I can never turn the page backwards, just my personal rule, I don't. And so I read more quickly and I read with a greater amount of, again, mindfulness. Same as I do when I'm holding a pen, knowing that I'm looking for things to underline. I also always have a paper book or two up by the bedroom, a paper book or two in the bathroom, a paper book or two on the coffee table or the kitchen table. So in any given situation. And I've actually heard the same is true of. And we have similar bank accounts. Warren Buffet. It's probably why our bank accounts are so similar. Warren Buffett apparently just like spends most of his day with his nose in a book. And I am a little bit similar in that I pretty much have constantly a book around to be able to read. So anyways, a book a day. And my wife makes fun of me because honestly, I will like it can be the. Maybe we've gone out on a date, her and I, we've had two martinis, we've had hot, crazy, wild sex. It's whatever, you know, 11:30pm And I'll roll over to finish reading some book on science or personal development that I haven't quite finished yet at the end of that night and she'll just like smirk because I tend to just basically follow that rule to the T that I have to get my book a day in. And that's a great little article that you can read that we'll link to in the show notes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com much maybe/377. Yeah, I'm a little OCD, but I. But you know what? I've read a lot of books. I've read a lot of books, as a matter of fact. Over what, 300 a year? Gives me over 3,000 over the past decade or so. So it's a lot of paper.

You killed a lot of trees.

Yeah, killed. I killed a lot of trees. Speaking of killing a lot of trees. No, this doesn't have anything to do with killing trees. That's a horrible segue.

Okay, well, we'll pretend it was good.

The big vitamin D mistake.

There's vitamin T in trees, Is there? I don't think so.

Vitamin D in trees. Someone let us know anyways, though, the big vitamin D mistake. Did you hear about this?

I did, I did. Actually, I upped my IUs because of this article.

Yeah. So the Institute of Medicine has been recommending for quite some time that 600 international units of vitamins D daily should be the appropriate dose. And of course, if we look at vitamin D levels, we've found that in most countries. As a matter of fact, one of the biggest studies up there in your neck of the woods, the Canadian household study, most studies find that people have extremely low levels of vitamin D compared to what would be recommended, which would be above approximately 40, what would be termed nanomoles per liter. Right. You should be in kind of like a 40 to 80 ish range. More is not better. Less seems to be not that great for steroids, for hormones, for influenza and cold production or Cold protection. And it turns out that there was a regrettable statistical error by the Institute of Medicine when they came to that conclusion that folks need around 600 international units of vitamin D per day. And I'll link to this study in the show notes, but it turns out that once you actually look at.

All of the errors in that largest meta analysis ever conducted on vitamin D from which they drew those recommendations, turns out by correcting for the statistical error, it's not 600, it's 8,000. Oops, 8,000 international units of vitamin D a day. Which, honestly, if you don't want to get arterial calcification from excessive vitamin D intake, causing calcium to accumulate in your arteries, you're gonna need to not just supplement with vitamin D if you happen to live in an area where you don't get access to a lot of sun. But you need to go out of your way to get sun when you can get it and to eat foods rich in vitamin D. Because if you are just relying upon sun to get 8,000 international units of vitamin D a day, you may not get all of that. And I think that, you know, if you look at things from like an ancestral standpoint, yeah, we're supposed to get a little bit from the sun. But then, of course, there are things like, you know, cold water, fish, fantastic source, you know, like sardines and salmon and mackerel. Raw milk has a decent amount. Liver, of course, we know as an organ meat, a lot of these awful meats. They have good amounts of vitamin D. Caviar, egg, mushrooms. That would be close to the sun.

That's super cool. You can actually increase the vitamin D concentration in a mushroom if you place it in the sun with its little, little furry part pointing up.

Mm.

Yeah, there's a little hack for you.

That's great. I like to go out in the sun with my little furry part poking up. So there you have it anyways, though. So 8. So it just turns out if you're taking vitamin D, don't just take a vitamin D supplement all its own. Make sure you're getting some from nature. Make sure you're getting vitamin K2 along with your vitamin D as you would find it in all of the foods that I just mentioned. And if you want to take a deeper dive into this oh moment that apparently they found from the Institute of Medicine study, we'll put a link to it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com377 how about this one? Does alcohol make you live longer? What do you think, Brock?

Okay, I'm gonna go out on a limb here. Only if you're consuming it in great happy social situations. If you're drinking it alone in your mom's basement, no, but the other way. Yes. How about that?

A lot of confounding variables there. A lot of confounding variables. Yeah.

I didn't make it easy to test that.

People who live in their mom's basement may be happier. Though it does mean you have a good relationship with your mother, which I think could confer longevity.

Is that what it means?

Possibly. Anyways, though, I found a pretty good article I read and I tweeted this one and it asked that question, does moderate drinking really boost longevity? And we've all been led to believe, and even I have been up until New Year. I'm not drinking alcohol right now, by the way.

Me neither, actually. For the month of January, yeah.

I drink a glass of wine a day or have a Moscow Mule or put a little vodka into my wife's kombucha.

Without her knowing.

Yeah, exactly. Without her knowing. I can't tell you the last time that I had more than two drinks in a setting or the last time that I was drunk. And I think a big part of that is because once I adopted this habit of kind of like a drink a day, it's kind of like working out, right? Like if you skip a whole bunch of days of working out, it's very tempting to just go do like some brutal four hour workout that completely destroys you. And at least that's the way I'm wired.

Yeah, me too.

And on the flip side, if you skip any alcohol intake, let's say for every single weekday, it's a lot more tempting on the weekends to say, hey, I'm going to go out and get slosh. I'm going to have four or five drinks at the steakhouse or at the club. And what I find is that when I have a drink a day, I basically am far less likely to engage in excessive alcohol intake on any given day of the week. So, you know, it's one of those hormetic things, right? Like small amounts of sunlight, small amounts of cold, small amounts of heat, small amounts of exercise, small amounts of alcohol probably have a hormetic effect. But this article actually gets into it and looks at several studies following large samples of people in which they did find that moderate alcohol consumption correlated with a reduced risk of dying. With the theory being related to alcohol's suppressive effect on mtor, which is called mammalian target of rapamycin. We've talked about it on the show before, but, you know, it basically would be something that when inhibited, when mtor is inhibited, would theoretically extend human life. However, there was a meta analysis done last year where they found zero effect of moderate alcohol consumption. Moderate being like a, you know, decent fishbowl sized glass of wine a day, which most. I read a very interesting statistic like the size of wine glasses has increased like four or five fold since the 1800s. So our consumption has gone up dramatically just from the size of the serving vessel. But it turns out that in this big meta analysis where they combine dozens of studies, they actually controlled for two things that a lot of these other studies didn't control for. They controlled for people who abstained from alcohol, abstainers, because they kind of.

Well, I'll talk in a second about why they ruled out those abstainers then. Socioeconomic class. So they controlled for abstainers and socioeconomic class. Now if you think about this makes sense because abstainers would often kind of like quit drinking because they have poor health from all those previous years that they had of drinking to excess. And so that would skew the mortality data because former alcoholics who are drinking zero drinks a day may still be unhealthy due to the fact that they were alcoholics for so long. So they ruled out those people, those darn people. And then they also ruled out, basically they controlled for socioeconomic class, meaning that rich people are more likely to drink moderately because they figure like they can, they can afford to drink moderately. They can also afford better medical care, better food, better supplements.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's the bigger factor.

Yeah. So they thought it was logical to control for. For that. But once they control for those factors, there was zero longevity benefit, sorry folks. From moderate alcohol consumption. And in fact, the article goes on just to show all these different studies that show a significant increase in intestinal permeability or leaky gut, especially in people who have active intestinal issues like IBD or IBS when consuming alcohol. So it turns out that I think you make a good point, Brock, that, that they didn't control for set and setting of drinking. Right. Like, are you drinking like healthy?

Yeah, the whole blue zone thing.

Exactly. Which, which we'll actually get into hopefully later on in this show. But they, they did indeed control for abstainers and socioeconomic class. And they did point out this gut issue, which leads me to not necessarily say that I'm going to quit drinking, but it makes me feel a little bit more Comfortable about taking periods of time, not drinking. And again should give you pause anytime you hear about anything that makes you live longer and whether or not that's actually been controlled for some of the things they controlled for in these studies. Now I'll put a link to that in the show notes. I hate to to burst the bubbles out there and no, I'm personally not going to quit my daily moderate drinking habit because of this. But I am going to be cognizant, especially when I'm in situations where my gut might be beat up, let's say hard exercise session in the hot weather. Right. Like perfect example of something that increases intestinal permeability while dumping alcohol on top of that situation by having a, you know, whatever big cold one after your long run in the heat may actually not be the best thing for your long term.

And that's the best time to have one too. That's. That's a bummer.

I know. That's a bummer. I got one more for you. Maybe two more for you.

Okay, bring them on.

Something not to consume with your alcohol. So this was a study just came out. It's called Brace Yourself. Dietary linoleic acid and its oxidized metabolites exacerbate liver injury caused by ethanol via induction of hepatic pro inflammatory response.

That's quite a title.

Long story short is that when linoleic acid, I'll tell you, some sources of that are consumed along with alcohol. It appears to be bad news. Bearish for the liver. Something we'll be getting into in today's show, Liver Health. And so that may lead you to ask what foods are high in linoleic acid or these linoleic compounds.

One of my favorites to have when I'm drinking is in this list.

What's that?

The pumpkin seeds.

Oh, I was gonna say tofu.

Yeah, no, I used to go out of my way.

Like I actually. Well, I always imagine you with a big brick of tofu and a martini.

Well, when I'm not doing that, I've got big handful of pumpkin seeds because of the zinc and you know the saying like zinc, zinc, when you're going to drink or something like that?

Yeah.

It's like zinc is protective from alcohol, but linoleic acid now ruins that.

Oysters might be a better friend for you in that scenario. But really the bigger culprits are vegetable oils that have been oxidized or heated or pressurized, like canola oil or soybean oil, for example, which unfortunately you're going to find a Lot of restaurants, I feel like we're, we're telling people everything that's wrong with their life. In this, in this series of News.

Flash, the point of this podcast, I.

Mean, really just, just be cognizant. Like lots of seed oils, lots of nut oils, lots of vegetable oils consumed in correlation with alcohol appears to be really not great for your, for your hepatic health, for your liver health. So, you know, and this study kind of backs that up. So just be careful, you know, if you're, if you're going to have alcohol. You know, I even asked now at restaurants, like, you know, because I like to order the brussels sprouts. You know, they'll do like Brussels sprouts with bacon. Have you ever had those Brussels sprouts, bacon? A lot of times they'll throw like seeds or nuts, you know, pine nuts, stuff like that in there. That's like a, a classic at a restaurant. Well, I asked now, and most of them, even healthy restaurants fry up the brussels sprouts in canola oil. So I'll ask if they could, for example, use a butter or use like an extra virgin olive oil. And usually they oblige, or at least they say they oblige. They probably go back there and just dump extra canola oil in it and spit and maybe throw a pubic hair in there and bring it out. But I like to think that it's not got vegetable oil in it. So, anyway, so, so one other for you. As I've alluded to on the podcast before, speaking of the three wise men essential oils, I use rosemary quite a bit. I diffuse rosemary essential oil in my office because it's really great for cognition. And I smear it on steaks because it's really, really good for limiting the carcinogenic compounds that build up when you grill a big old steak.

And it's delicious.

But I came across a study that showed a new use, new use for rosemary. Here's a cool one. As I've talked about before on the podcast, glycemic variability is a big issue when it comes to your longevity and your risk for disease. That means, like, controlling how much your blood sugar fluctuates throughout the day. That's why I use things like apple cider vinegar shots before dinner or Ceylon cinnamon with breakfast, or this thing called bitter melon extract made by my company, Kion. We make a supplement called Lean that's got bitter melon extract in it, which also lowers your postprandial blood glucose. Well, it turns out that rosmarinic acid which you find in rosemary extract and in rosemary and in rosemary essential oils and in just plain old rosemary herbal. It increases what's called skeletal muscle cell glucose uptake and activates what's called amp K. And if you hear about this research on like, you know, mice where they're, they've got like a new selective androgen receptor modulator called exercise in a pill which upregulates this amp K pathway or if you look at, you know, lifting weights prior to a big meal so you upregulate the activity of the skeletal muscle glucose transporters. Well, it turns out that rosemary acts very similarly. And so cooking with rosemary is once again not just for reducing the carcinogenicity of meats that you might consume with the rosemary, but also for the overall blood sugar controlling effect. And even including it in supplements or including it in teas or we talked at one point about putting it in coffee, something we see some of the blue zones doing. Turns out that there's yet another, another advantage chalked up to rosemary. But you know what the best part about this, brock about the best part about this study. What it was done at Brock University.

Of course it was my, my namesake.

Yes. You have no excuse now not to, not to basically have rosemary coming out your pores 24 7.

I'm just, I'm curious, like how much do you actually. What's an efficacious dose? Because just smearing a little bit on your steak that doesn't give you a whole heck of a lot of rosemary. Like a lot of this stuff, like the Ceylon cinnamon, you actually have to have like 2 teaspoons of it.

2 teaspoons, which is a decent amount in this study. 5 micrograms per milliliter I believe was the amount you use. And I honestly have no freaking clue how that translates to a sprig of rosemary. I really don't. Yeah. So I would. As a matter of fact, if you are listening in and you're a chemist and you would like to take a dive into this study and fill us and all the listeners in on the actual dosage that would be necessary to simulate what the folks got in this study, feel free to let us know. We do know there was a dose response effect, meaning the more you got, the more it assisted with glucose uptake. But you know the exact amount? I don't know. Would you need to eat like a Christmas tree size bushful of rosemary? Possibly. Anyways, let us know, jump into the show notes@bengreefitness.com 377 if you're a chemist, and you can help us. So there you go.

Special announcements.

All right, so, Brock, do you know Kevin Rose, who's been on this show before?

Yes, I know Kevin.

Oh, he's come out with a. I think he had a fasting app before. Well, now he's got a meditation app. If you want to meditate while you're fasting, or, well, you're not fasting while you're eating a rosemary and steak. It's a totally free meditation app. I've got it now. It's called Oak. And he actually used data from 10,000 different beta testers, almost like artificial intelligence, to make sure that everything was optimized. Like, the cadence and the speed and the wording and the tone. And it's really cool. Like, even all the background sounds he recorded in nature. So there's no, like, synthesized or fake sounds, like, for the rain or the stream, I'm assuming for the cave water. He or one of his cronies actually crawled into a cave to record the cave water. Of course, as there's cave water, it's got guided breathing. It's got, like, interval chimes, it's got background music. And he's even adding support for things like the Apple watch and the Oura ring and other ways that you could track, like, you know, what's your heart rate do when you meditate? What's your heart rate variability do when you meditate? So it's called the Oak app. O A k. And the URL to go to to get it is BenGreenfieldFitness.com Oak BenGreenfieldFitness.com oak so it's called Oak. And it's actually a lot of these meditation apps are kind of cheesy and involve typically Enya playing in the background while a woman's faint voice walks you through. Mildly annoying meditation protocol. This one's actually pretty good. So it's called Oak. And also this podcast is brought to you by eharmony. You ever used eharmony, Brock?

The Internet was not invented back when I hooked up with my partner.

You didn't use, like the eharmony paper. Did they have that, the quarterly where.

You put a little note on the bulletin board at Safeway?

Yeah. Well, eharmony is not like. It's not like some of these other dating websites, meaning that they're focused on helping you to find lasting, meaningful relationships that you can just about hooking up. It's not a shallow hookup site. It instead is created for people who want to be married for Decades and decades and have boatloads of children.

Boatloads maybe.

I don't know. I guess there's not a rule that you have to have tons of children if you're in a lasting and meaningful relationship.

Yeah, I didn't see that in the user agreement on E Harbor.

But they've got kind of like the Oak app, right? They've got science, they've got data, they've got research, they send you the right matches and it's super duper easy to use. Eharmony. Eharmony. And there's no like lazy text messages or dead end conversations or random matches that don't turn into dates. Personally my wife would probably not be a fan of me beta testing it, but we did set up one of our staff with an account and they certainly like it quite a bit.

You're going to say one of your kids?

Yeah, my child is sicko. A nine year old little girl and they have an amazing, lasting, meaningful relationship. Anyways by the way though I did meet my wife in second grade Sunday school, so there's that. There was something to be said and we've been married for almost 15 years now. I'm just saying it happens. So there's something to be said for knowing your partner. When your children. Children use E Harmony. Here's how you can sign up for a three month subscription and get a free month. Free month. When you do, you enter code green at checkout. Enter code green at checkout and you get a three month subscription along with a free month over at eharmony. And the URL is just eharmony.com or just Google eharmony but the code is green. Also, once you've hooked up into that long lasting meaningful relationship, you may want to take advantage of another one of today's sponsors, Gainswave, which allows both men and women to achieve optimal sexual performance. They've got this non drug treatment protocol that I myself meander down to Florida to get done on my own crotch every few months. But it gives you these amazing erections and like orgasm intensity goes through the roof for a good 30 days after you get this done. Like it makes, it's, it makes sex which is, you know, honestly it's good anyways but it makes it really, really good. And they do it too for like people who have erectile dysfunction and erectile issues. But you know, long story short is it breaks up plaque and old blood vessels and it makes them more elastic and it stimulates the growth of new blood vessels.

It's kind of like a jackhammer on your crotch, isn't it?

Yes. And I can attest to the fact that it actually works. And. And you get numbing cream. I actually had some leftover numbing cream. I got. I got stung by a scorpion when I was in Panama a few weeks ago.

Of course you did.

And I had some leftover numbing cream from Gainswave. So when I got home, I was putting my. My dick numbing cream on my knee and it worked. So there's that too. If nothing else, you at least have something you can use to numb things. I told my wife that some guys will smear numbing cream onto their penis to make them last longer during sex, and she thought that was just ridiculous. But it is true. Some guys have. What's it called? Premature ejaculation. I think Urban Dictionary has about 8 billion other phrases for that at least.

Yeah.

Yeah. Anyways, though. So, yeah, numbing cream.

So, you know, I haven't been down to Gainswave yet, but I've been basically like, you were asking about the kettlebell workouts earlier. I've just been whacking myself in the crotch with the kettlebell occasionally. And I think I'm getting the same benefits. Really? Yeah.

That's science.

Breaking up all that calcification in there.

That's science.

Kids, just nut yourself with a kettlebell.

You're good. Yeah. Save 150 bucks off. Text the word greenfield to 3131. 31. So you text greenfield to 3001. 31. 31. You get 150 bucks off of gainswave.

Or come to my house and I'll do it for free.

That's right. That's right. And then finally there's Harry's, the new Harry's shave club. So Harry. Harry's, Harry's actually makes really good razors. Really good razors. Like you pass one pass down your face or your leg or wherever else you happen to be shaving. And it literally just like cleans things up right away. They don't have vibrating handles. They don't have heating blades. They don't have 15 lubricating strips. But what they do have are extremely, extremely high end blades. These things were made in like a German engineered factory and they just freaking work. There's over 3 million guys now that have switched to Harry's. And even my wife steals my Harry's razor to shave her legs. But I personally, I personally dig it because I can shave fast. Like, I'm all about time management. I can do like one pass of my face. Boom. Done. Because their Blades work so well and you get their entire trial shave set for free when you sign up at Harry's.com Ben H-A-R-R-Y-S.com Ben the only cost for you is shipping, so you get the entire trial shave set for free. Say that 10 times fast. Trial shave set. Trial trial shave set.

Trial shave set.

Harry's.com Shut up, Brock. Harry's.com Ben and that's a 13 value for free. You get the weighted ergonomic razor handle, five precision engineered blades with one lubricating strip, not 15, and a trimmer blade. Their lathering shave gel. The Travel Blade Cover Harry's.com/Ben, check it out. And I'm gonna make this up right now. But tell me if you think they'll go for this.

Okay.

Harry's a better way to shave you like that.

Well, you're no Don Draper.

Okay, I tried. Hey, you want to tell people something too? I do.

You remember our good friend Monica Reinagle, the nutrition diva. Yeah, the nutrition diva over at Quick and Dirty Tips. Now Ben was the get fit guy over at Quick and Dirty Tips for a long time, and he handed me the reins to the kingdom. The keys to the kingdom. Something to the kingdom back in July. And so I've been working on Quick and Dirty Tips along with Monica Reinagel, and the two of us have actually joined our forces together in a program called Weightless. And it's for astronauts. Exactly. It's all about being suspended in space. No, it's actually all about. It's a lifestyle change program that will teach you how to weigh less. And this is, this is quite different from what you'd normally hear about on.

So it's called. Sorry to interrupt. It's called Weigh less or Weight less.

Weight less.

Okay. Yeah.

But it teaches you how to weigh less.

Okay.

And I'll give you the. This is our sort of cheesy little pitch from the, from the sales website. It's a structured lifestyle change program that combines nutrition science, behavior modification, performance, professional guidance, and community support in an evidence based approach led by research from the National Institutes of Health. And at this point, we've helped 150 people lose a significant amount of weight. And all these people were people who came to us because they had failed at sticking to diets and had fallen into that old yo yo diet programs or problem where they're just losing 10 pounds and then gaining 20 and so on. So. Waitlist. Yeah, waitlist. So you can go to Waitlist me to find out more about it. And since you're listening to this podcast, you can get 60 bucks off if you use the code BEN60.

BEN60 at waitlist. Me.

Yeah. B E N 6, 0.

All right, cool. You could sell that URL to NASA once you finish it. Oh, the whole weightless thing. Gravity free. Weightless. Yeah. I'm sure they'll spring for that. All right, cool. Waitlist.com or waitlist.com me. Yeah. Code Ben 60.

Yep.

Cool. I like it.

Find out more.

All right, one last thing for you folks listening in. I will be down at Cal Jam at the end of January speaking at this TED Talk style format with a bunch of chiropractic and health education along with a rock and roll show. Not only will I be speaking, but you may or may not see me on stage with a guitar singing into a microphone as well. So, yeah, it's called California Jam. Cal Jam. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to get a ticket and attend, especially if you're in the Cairo industry. It's a fun little event put on by Billy Demoss, my friend who believes in chemtrails and that the government is trying to kill us. And I don't know about flat earth, but he's an interesting guy. He's right on the first two things this whole event. Yes. I recently did a podcast with him naked. So very interesting guy. Look him up.

Wait, what?

No, we actually did. I had my shirt off during the whole podcast. So did he. So if you watch the podcast, you'll understand why. It was one of those deals where we were, we were talking about bodies, nipples, stuff like that.

Bodies.

So, yeah. All right, well, let's jump into this week's Listener Q A.

Listener Q A.

Hey, Ben, this is Ashley in Ottawa. My question is about cold therapy. I've done a little bit of cold water immersion therapy. I attended an XBT event in Montauk and hung out with those guys and jumped in an ice bath. And I'm convinced of those benefits and I enjoy it. However, it's not always practical or easy to do in my condo. But I do happen to live in a very, very city in the winter months and I do have access to a balcony. And so my question is, do I get some at least or most of the same benefits if I go, say, hang out on my balcony in minus 20 degrees Celsius with some, some slippers on and not much else and go out there and hang out in the cold for a bit, or am I just going to get cold. So that's my question. Thanks.

What do you think, Brock? Do you think standing outside in the cold is as beneficial as a cold bath? Or maybe one of these fancy Han Solo cryotherapy chambers?

You mean the ones that encase you in carbonite and deliver you to a bounty hunter?

Uh huh.

Oh, all right. Well, yeah, I think those are pretty, pretty efficacious. Except for that whole blindness thing.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the blindness. Getting woken up by Princess Leia wouldn't be a bad gig though. However, they actually have studied this. For example, this study showed that whole body cryotherapy actually had a negative effect on muscle function, on perceptions of soreness, and on a bunch of different blood parameters that they measured on inflammation and on muscle damage compared to cold water immersion. Right. Like just our typical cold bath or cold shower. Which totally contradicts this idea that whole body cryotherapy is like this new space agey superior recovery strategy. I know there are some people who listen in who own these cryotherapy fitness facilities which are getting super sexy these days. I'm not saying cryotherapy doesn't work ever. And couldn't be an efficacious fat loss strategy and wouldn't maybe be a cool way to wake up in the middle of the afternoon when you're tired. But if you've run a marathon, it turns out that a cold bath or a cold shower. I mean, let me put it this way. The cryotherapy was no more effective than a placebo in this study of zero cold whatsoever.

But much more expensive.

Yeah, but there's more. They also looked at the effectiveness of whole body cryotherapy compared to cold water immersion in another study. And, and.

What they found in that study was that this very stereotypical, you know, two to four minutes exposure to very cold air in a controlled room. Despite its growing popularity that the alleged benefits of whole body cryotherapy were largely based on anecdotal evidence. And there were no randomized clinically controlled studies found anywhere regarding its efficacy for anything from markers of inflammation to markers of muscle damage to anything. And then they did another study like just a few months ago where they looked at recovery from exercise induced muscle damage. They had these dudes really beat up their hamstrings doing hamstring, what's called eccentric exercise, which is a lengthening exercise. And they did five sets of 15 reps, they toasted the hamstrings and then they compared cold water immersion versus whole body cryotherapy and they found that Cold water immersion beat the pants off of whole body cryotherapy when it came to accelerating recovery and soreness, removal of soreness.

I think we should explain the difference between the two just for those people who aren't totally super familiar with.

Yeah, cold, cold water immersion is just getting. It's usually just what it sounds like, actual immersion. Right. Like a cold bath, jumping in a cold lake, jumping in a cold river. Some people will say like the cold shower kind of sort of counts. The reason I don't think it's quite as good is because you don't get the hydrostatic part pressure of water against the skin that you do when you immerse yourself. And that limits what is called lymph fluid backflow that can occur. I've written an article about this over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you go there and you do a search for does icing work? I kind of get into this idea that anything that produces pressure against the skin combined with cold is a really good one, two combo. And actually in that article I even endorse the idea of wearing compression garments right when you're doing an ice bath or cold soak if you want to get the most benefit out of it from a pure recovery standpoint. Now, one thing that I should point out, elephant in the room here, is that all of these studies looked at recovery parameters. They did not look at fat loss parameters. They didn't even look at some of these like immune system parameters that we see that folks like Wim Hof have proven from cold exposure, like increased ability to be able to fight off E. Coli and improved production of T killer cells, you know, in a lot of these things that, that have a remarkable effect on immune system function. And whereas Wim Hof has done most of his stuff like outside, you know, Mount Kilimanjaro, snow, cold weather, you could say that a cryotherapy chamber is kind of approximating that. So I'm not saying they're useless for everything, but for pure recovery, probably not the better choice when it comes to that versus cold water immersion.

Yeah, cryotherapy being the thing where you stand in a tube and it drops the temperature down to like minus 200 degrees and you only stay in for three minutes maximum.

Right now, at the same time, as long as you are shivering, anything you're doing that is inducing shivering is going to cause that activation of brown adipose tissue, which is going to be very metabolically active and advantageous form of fat. And when we convert energy storing white fat into energy storing brown fat. There is a very beneficial effect of that from a health and from an anti inflammatory and from a fat loss standpoint. And the reason for that is that when you shiver, whether you're in the cold or in a cold bath or in your cryotherapy chamber, that stimulates this hormone, irisin. And irisin, it's relatively new hormone, it was discovered in, in 2012 over at Harvard. And it promotes the browning of fat to release energy. And it also improves glucose tolerance in the body, which can prevent diabetes and reduce those fluctuations in blood glucose I was talking about earlier. You actually release it during exercise as well. But in the case of cold exposure or standing on your porch and your bare feet shivering, you don't even have to move, you're just shivering. Your body's kind of automatically doing it. And it also interestingly has been shown in research that irisin lengthens your telomeres. And so there's a very distinct anti aging effect that is derived by shivering in the range of 10 to 15 minutes. So it doesn't take that much. And this could be like a 20 minute walk outside when it's cold, which I've been doing a lot of here in the Spokane winter. It could be like doing yoga in a cold room. It could be using one of these fancy chili pad devices, or sleeping in a room that's cold, keeping your house cold. And even if you live in a hot climate, having a practice of cryotherapy or cold soaks or surfing or water sports or going out into the sea, anything like that can have an effect. But ultimately, the response to Ashley's question about the benefits of real cold therapy by just going on the balcony in 20 degrees Celsius, negative 20 degrees Celsius.

She said in slippers.

What is that? Negative 20 degrees Celsius. Trying to remember.

The Fahrenheit and Celsius line up at minus around minus 40.

Okay, so that's about negative 4 degrees. That's cold, that's cold. I know I would be shivering. And if you're shivering, and especially if you can shiver for at least 10 minutes, which is what's shown in literature to be effective, that would be useful. There's also a couple of other resources that I'll put over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com377 the first would be that I wrote a big article for a website called T Nation about cold thermogenesis. And it's a really long article that would be quite, quite time consuming for me to get into here. But I get into the difference between moderate intensity cold thermogenesis and hardcore intensity cold thermogenesis. And what forms of cold therapy have been shown to work and what haven't, and how long to do each. So if you really want to take a deep dive into the cold, go read that article, preferably while you're inside of a meat freezer or in a cold bath. And then also they make this device. A lot of my clients use this device, and I've got a couple up in my freezer right now. They're called Cool Fat Burner and Cool Gut Buster wearables. And you put them on your body when you're at work or when you're just like sitting around the house or whatever, and they make you shiver within about 20 minutes and you'll keep shivering, sometimes for up to an hour. You can burn massive amounts of calorie. The dude that invented those did like a, a lab study that was showing like a 300% plus improvement in resting metabolic rate. And so those are over@coolfatburner.com I don't have a discount code or anything, but coolfatburner.com you can get one of those if you're listening. In the wintertime, it's probably completely useless for you, or at least foolhardy for you to spend money on one when you could just go outside. But if you want one for the summer, and you can wear both at the same time, the gut one and the fat burner one. It is one of the few, a few things it's been shown to spot reduce fat. I mean, there's this myth that you can't spot reduce fat, but you can. And one of the ways to do it is to. There's actually two things I've found that can do it in literature. One is these electrical muscle stimulation devices that you place over an area in which you want to increase body temperature and burn more fat. And the other one would be a localized cold induction via the use of some of these, like, cooling devices. So if you have like, let's say a fat wrist, then you could just do cold therapy on your wrist stimulation. So. So there you have it. Hopefully that helps out Ashley, and I'll put a link to a lot of these resources over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com377 Again, my name is Beau.

First of all, thanks for the awesome podcast. Always learning something. I had a question about my lab results. So over the past three years I've had my blood work checked quarterly and My GGT has been consistently elevated, sits around 110, 111. The only other abnormal lab result is a slightly elevated hdl. Nothing that I'm concerned about. But besides glutathione supplementation, what are some good supplement ideas related to gdt? But more importantly, what is the best strategy to lower GDT besides completely eliminating alcohol upping overall antioxidants? More growing concern on my end about this with all of the research coming out that GTT is a marker for more things than just liver disease as far as cancer and various pathophysiology. Thanks for everything Ben. Look forward to hearing this answer.

Now you actually found out that you had some liver issues when you were visiting the human garage, didn't you?

That have been replicated in follow up tests. Yes. And that actually I will admit that partially influenced my decision to kind of pretty drastically cut back on just about anything processed by the liver. So I've, I mean we're talking alcohol of course, like I mentioned.

Also anything that would get a pass by the liver. Meaning anything like a Tylenol? No, like a popular, I don't do a lot of Tylenol but, but any of these popular like smart drugs out there, you know, that I'm occasionally offered when I'm in events like a, you know, believe it or not, at these like longevity anti aging health events, you get things like, like metformin and modafinil, you know, kind of going around like candy, you know, to open the kimono again. And you know, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of avoiding any of that type of thing that gets a first pass by the liver as well as, you know, I, I used to, I live in Washington state and you know, once a week or so I'd have an edible. Right. I've even quit doing many of those again because even, even those, those cannabis derivatives are processed by the liver. I was also vaporizing tobacco for a little while, like a good organic tobacco, but I've even been pretty careful with that. And so.

The reason for that is that's of course a pretty important organ responsible for detoxification. And I actually have a podcast coming out pretty soon about detoxification, the importance of the liver related to that. But probably the biggest, biggest thing that I've personally been prioritizing for the liver, the reason I just had whey protein in my smoothie this morning and it was doing intranasal glutathione and I'm doing like a glutathione injection. Is this idea that Glutathione is probably one of the better molecules to prioritize increasing in your body if you've got liver issues. Now, the gamma glutamyl transpeptidase test, this GGT test that BO is talking about being consistently elevated. That test measures the amount of the enzyme GGT in the blood. And GGT plays a really significant role in helping the liver metabolize drugs and other toxins. Not to say that an elevation of GGT would just reflect liver issues, because you'll find it in the gallbladder or the spleen, the pancreas, the kidneys. But you'll typically see it high when your liver is damaged. Now, one thing I should put out there as a caveat is if your liver enzymes are elevated on a blood test and you've exercised hard the day before the blood test, the elevated enzymes may be due to the difficult exercise. The same could be said for inflammatory problems more than the ggt. So make sure that you get a test where you've had kind of like an easy day the day before, and you haven't run a marathon in the past 48 hours or anything like that. But in terms of GGT, one of the first things they've shown in literature is that regular coffee intake, regular amount of caffeine, actually does have a little bit of a liver detoxification effect in terms of stepping up your own endogenous production of glutathione and your production of bile in the liver. Even, don't laugh, a coffee enema has been shown to do the same thing. So if you don't like to drink coffee, you can always put it up your butt or roll into Starbucks and have them put their daily Americano into your stainless steel enema bucket and roll that way if you want to. But should coffee not be your thing for enhancing your glutathione production? There are some other things that you can do. And glutathione is just a very simple molecule. It's just three protein building blocks, cysteine and glutamine and glycine. So glutathione is going to be one of the main molecules that your liver relies upon for both what's called phase one as well as phase two detoxification. And some of the ways that you can increase glutathione, one would be just whey protein. Really, whey protein has everything your body needs to make its own glutathione. And there's some really good literature out there showing that whey protein can significantly increase Glutathione, especially when you consider that many glutathione supplements are not absorbed very well and cysteine tends to be a limiting factor in glutathione production. Whey protein is a great way to get more glutathione into your life. Another one would be any of these sulfur rich vegetables like garlic or onions or parsley or cruciferous vegetables, even to a lesser extent, avocados and squash and tomatoes. But cooking actually reduces the glutathione content by up to 60%. So A, you'd want to do raw and B, those would not want to be your primary source for glutathione if you have like some thyroid issues where you want to be kind of careful with excessive goitrogens that you get from things like raw kale and raw cruciferous vegetables. Or if you tend to have like bloating, like fodmap sensitivity is a common one where people will get like bloating in response to a lot of raw vegetable intake. So don't use that as a strategy if that's you, and actually that is me, I don't do well with lots of raw vegetables. Raw broccoli, raw cabbage, raw kale, I've found. So I don't use that as a primary strategy. But it is one, you know, if you're fine with raw vegetables, that's another really good one.

I love raw vegetables.

Vegetables, yeah. They've also found that both raw milk as well as raw eggs, interestingly enough, can promote glutathione production, as can a high intake of organ meats. And so, you know, you actually could do the whole, like, you know, liver once a week, raw eggs every now and again, and getting access to some good fresh raw milk. You know, that whole kind, it's very, very much like a Weston A. Price kind of diet. You know, you could go to a website like realmilk.com or purchase Sally Fallon's book Nourishing Traditions to kind of learn about some of these more ancestral foods that increase glutathione production. Another one would be turmeric. Curcumin specifically can be very helpful in enhancing glutathione metabolism. So cooking with turmeric using some of these supplements that have curcumin in them, like a good bioavailable form of curcumin, even like that multivitamin, I take the thorn multivitamin, that has a really good absorbable form of curcumin in it. That would be another way to increase your level of Glutathione. Now, of course, not to overuse this phrase on today's podcast, there's that elephant in the room. You know, glutathione supplementation, right? Why not just take a supplement? Well, there's a little bit of debate out there about whether glutathione can indeed be broken down and oxidized before it's actually absorbed and how much glutathione that you take in a supplement actually gets absorbed. And it turns out that when you're just taking the average glutathione capsule, there really isn't much absorption. But you can, because glutathione and what's called liposomal glutathione, has the advantage of being packaged into liposomes, which are small droplets that are enclosed by membranes very similar to your own cell membranes. Those membranes can shield the glutathione from digestion, allow them to actually get absorbed and taken up by the cells as entire droplets. And they have found that liposomal glutathione can be up to 100 times more effective at delivering glutathione to some forms of tissue, especially brain cells. They found some really good data on glutathione for anti inflammation in neural tissue, especially when it comes to this liposomal form of glutathione. And so if you were going to get glutathione, liposomal could be a good way to go. Although my friend Chris Masterjohn, who's kind of into the math behind this, looked into the cost, and it's kind of like krill oil, right? Krill oil is a superior way to get DHA into your system, but it's also like 10 times more expensive than fish oil and gives you something like three times as much dha. So technically you could just take more of the fish oil and save yourself some money. So if it's just about the money, basically, Chris Masterjohn, and he's got some podcasts out about this, he says, just take more of the regular glutathione if you want to save money. Well, I like to not put quite as big a load on my gut with all the things they stuff into supplements these days, from maltodextrin to magnesium stearate to everything else. I personally like to go with whatever the most bioabsorbable form of the supplement is that I can take in most cases. You know, some fish oils don't have a lot of fillers in them, so I still do a fish oil versus acryl oil, but for glutathione not only am I a fan of liposomal glutathione versus regular glutathione or versus say, like N. Acetylcysteine is another common one they sell to boost glutathione levels. But I'd rather just get it into my system in as active a form as possible. So you could buy like a liposomal glutathione off a website like Amazon. I also, you know, right now I am doing an injectable glutathione and the folks actually that, those folks I mentioned earlier, the people at Gainswave, they send that to me.

So it's like a right bag or. Yeah, no, it's a butt cheek. Intramuscular injection once a week. I just, I put, yeah, I put a pretty hefty amount just mainline into my system once a week. By the way, I've done DNA testing that has shown that I personally have very, very low levels of endogenous production of this antioxidant called superoxide dismutase. And that's why I really prioritize glutathione because I just genetically produce less. And then I also do intranasal glutathione, so I actually snort the stuff as well.

I did not know that was possible. I knew about the injectable and the iv.

Yeah, I've only been doing it for a couple of weeks. But you can get intranasal glutathione and there's some good, good PubMed studies on the effectiveness of intranasal glutathione.

The nose is actually really good for delivery of a lot of good stuff. You know, you'll see like people now are doing like oxytocin and testosterone and all sorts of things intranasally. But intranasal glutathione, you can get something.

Do you say oxycontin?

Oxytocin? I don't know about oxycontin. Yeah, you could try it, but that's another one to look into. And then not to get too long in the tooth with this reply, but, you know, glutathione would be your biggie. But then I'd also look into a couple other things. Number one would be black seed oil. That one kind of flies under the radar. But it turns out that black seed oil has some really interesting studies on it in terms of its ability to be able to inhibit liver oxidative stress markers. I did a whole YouTube video on black seed oil back in the day and I'll link to that one in the show. Notes you could learn more about black seed oil. And then finally, you know, shameless kind of plug, I guess, or I at least have to say that, that I personally profit from this supplement. But there's one called Cleanse that I actually have over at Greenfield Fitness Systems, and that's like a. Just a. If you just want to go, I'd still do glutathione. But if you just want to get everything else, milk thistle extract, hyssop leaf, ginger root, yucca root, rosemary leaf, turmeric root, pretty much everything in the kitchen sink. That's why I put this. I'm a big fan of supplements that are like shotgun formulas to just kind of give you as much as you need in one fell swoop. So this stuff's called Nature Cleanse. And I'm also doing that. I'm taking six of those in the evening with a big glass of water, and I'm actually putting oregano in that as well. So, you know, I know that sounds like a lot of stuff, but I mean, most of the people I know.

Or study up on or. No, personally, Dave Asprey and Peter Diamandis and a lot of these folks who are really kind of pursuing longevity and pursuing longevity on the very cutting edge of things, many of them are popping 100 to 150 capsules and pills and oils a day. And I'll be honest, it's a little bit complex, but you feel like a million bucks. So, anyways, those are a few of my suggestions for.

The liver. And then, yeah, wash it all down with a couple martinis and you'll be good to go.

No, no, don't listen to them.

Hi, Ben, My name is Kathy and I am overwhelmed and trying to figure out where to start and just anxious about after realizing how many things are out of whack in my environment and my daily life. I was diagnosed with Lyme and getting over it, but I just feel anxious about all I have to do and trying to reframe the way I look at instead of being ill looking at. Well, but it seems like there's always something else I have to do. So mindset and overwhelm.

Thanks.

Yeah, after that long answer that you just gave to the previous question, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. I'm with Kathy.

Well, it's so easy to get overwhelmed, right? We've got like frickin, like, you know, forums and Dr. Google and your friend and that Facebook thread that you started about, you know, anybody else have suggestions for this post, particular condition? And then the three podcasts that you listen to where each one says a different thing. And the books. Yeah, it can be when Gwyneth Paltrow.

Comes out of nowhere with something else crazy.

Right, right. And I've even had this issue in the past, you know, like, I could, you know, in the past year, I've dealt with, like, a psoas injury. I've dealt with, would you say a sore ass injury? Sore ass. So ass injury. A gut. Gut infection.

I. I had a hurt toe. I had a scorpion sting. And, you know, and for me, you know, let's use like, the scorpion sting, which was a recent one. Right. I'm like, oh, do I do the. The fig leaf or the comfrey or the plantain poultice, or do I do all three? And then what should I use? The topical transdermal magnesium or the cannabidiol mixed with turmeric lotion or the topical glutathione rub? Yeah. And, you know, then should I do. Should I do my vibration therapy on it? Will that cause damage? Or should I do electrical muscle stimulation? I better Google this. And, oh, wait, here's a bodybuilding.com forum thread where it goes into how this may inhibit the growth of my biceps. If I do the electrical muscle stimulation on the scorpion sting on my knee and you just get deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole. Yeah, it can definitely cause overwhelm. So a couple of tips that I have. First of all, if you're just not trying to defeat a disease or condition, but you're just trying to get as healthy as possible, you can tend towards OCD self obsession in the same way as you might if you were trying to get rid of a condition or manage a condition. And in that case, I would advise that you go listen to a podcast that I recorded called how to Quit Obsessing About Health Eating and Dodging the Silver Bullet of Orthorexia and Body Dysmorphic disorder. As a former bodybuilder, I've had to fight that uphill battle myself where I, to be honest with you, I really don't even look in the mirror. I mean, I know I do a lot of these shameless shirtless photos and videos on the Internet. That's kind of what I'm known for. But I don't want to give people the impression that I, like I did back in the bodybuilding days or even when I was a teenage boy, wake up and flex in the mirror in the morning, and I actually kind of avoid much of that. The main reason I do the shirtless stuff in my photos and videos is twofold. Number one, they freaking convert really high. I listen to statistics and people watch my stuff more when I'm wearing fewer clothes. People like stuff that probably could be because I take care of my body. And when one takes care of their body. I don't want to say this to be narcissistic, but sometimes it can be more pleasant to look at a body that's trim or six pack abs or whatever. And I'm aware of that. That Right, So. But at the same time, I really spend very little time looking in the mirror at all. A lot of times I. The first time I'll see myself shirtless in a really long time is when I'm watching my own video that someone shot of me shirtless. Right. So anyways though. But that. But yeah, I mean, I remember back in the day, I'd like wake up and I'd kind of be looking in the mirror, turning sideways, turning this way, turn that. Oh wait, my right lats looks a little bit bigger than my left lat. I better work on that. And I had that issue when I was a bodybuilder for sure. So anyways, listen to that podcast. But then when it comes to going after an actual disease or condition, some of my biggest tips for you would be, first of all, understand this concept. This is gonna sound kind of nerdy of catastrophe theory. And I was recently reading about this in a fantastic book that I read on the diagnosis and treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome, where it gets into this idea that you reach a certain point.

When you're using proven small solutions to go after an issue, at which point you begin to see exponential effects. This catastrophe theory, where all of a sudden, boom, things work and you see a big fix happen. And the reason that I think that's important is because it may be indeed multimodal or multifactorial. There probably are going to be multiple things. We look at Lyme and we see everything from taking care of the mitochondria, to using different botanicals that are antibacterial or antiviral, to love life and relationships and laughter, to a whole host of things that seem to be pretty efficacious for Lyme. Understand that sometimes it is necessary, based on this concept of catastrophe theory, to potentially follow a few small shifts in behavior that when added together, can cause an exponential change in circumstances. So don't think that doing just one thing, you know, one dogmatic approach is necessarily the best way to overcome overwhelm. Sometimes it does take a multimodal approach. And by the way, I'll put a link to that book if anybody out there has Lyme or chronic fatigue syndrome. This new book by Dr. Sarah Myhill. It's fantastic. I just finished it and have a lot of pages folded over and we'll definitely have her on the podcast.

Nice.

But I would say a few of the things that I personally do. Number one, is I usually, for any given condition or any given thing that I'm going after, whether it be that I want to do 100 kettlebell snatches in five minutes or I want to fix a tight psoas, I start up an Evernote document that is devoted to that specific goal. And then I will take all of the different pieces of advice that I've given or things that I've found in books that I've read. I put them all in that Evernote document, and then I sit down and I'll spend quite a bit of time, sometimes up to an hour, systematizing that into a plan where I wake up in the morning and, okay, this is what I do on this day. This is what I do on this day. This is what I do on this day. Like right now, for the psoas issue I'm dealing with, it's very straightforward, right? Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I wake up and do 15 minutes of deep tissue work on my psoas using a series of exercises and moves and deep tissue modalities that I have found via books like Kelly Sturett's Becoming a Supple Leopard or the Mobility Wob website, et cetera. And then Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, I do the core foundation exercises to decompress my spine and elongate the psoas even more. And that's it. It's simple. I've written it down. It's systematized. I wake up in the morning. It's not like, oh, which of the hundred things that I found am I going to do? I go with kind of like the 80, 20, the stuff that seems to feel the best and give me the most bang for my buck.

And do you put a time limit on it? For if I'm not improving after six weeks of doing this, then I'm allowed to go and research more.

I don't have a set time limit, but I always have that at the back of my mind. Is this working or is this not working? Is this actually moving the dialogue? And sometimes I experiment with things before I create that plan so that I know when I create the plan what the most effective modalities are that I need to go, that I need to put in that plan. So I'll use Evernote reminder to systematize I always rely on research. That means two things. Number one, I use a lot of PubMed and that would mean do a search of the condition that you're trying to manage and then use the Boolean search term and in Google and then PubMed or Google. You know, I don't even know if Google Scholar exists anymore. I just use PubMed. But but basically that will narrow down the results that you're looking for to actual clinically meaningful results. That's not to say that you don't rely on forums. Sometimes tying a dead chicken around your neck and smelling rosemary works, but most of the time it doesn't. Whereas studies most of the time do so rely on research. And just as you just alluded to Brock, the two places to really avoid would be I'm not saying there isn't sometimes a gem that turns up there, but forums and comments on a blog post or comments on a podcast. Usually those are deep dark rabbit holes from whence you nary emerge again the same person. So be very careful.

Emerge victorious.

Yeah. And then the final thing that I tend to do a lot of when I have assimilated some amount of information that I need to dig. This sounds dumb, but I put away my mp3 player and my phone and I put black Sharpie and some post it notes in my pocket and I'll go walk for anywhere from 30 minutes up to two hours. And while I'm walking I have so many thoughts. Not just about that condition or that thing I'm trying to figure out, but also just things in general. And I'll come back with four post it notes full of notes from my Sharpie that I'll then act on. And I found walking to be like I walk almost every day now for a little while, but it's not with the phone or with the MP3 player. It's just like my thoughts and a post it note and a Sharpie.

There are tons of stories about how some of the greatest thinkers of history would go and have their best ideas while they were walking.

Yeah, and potentially that might be due to the BDNF release that occurs when you walk or you know, something. But ultimately those are my suggestions for you. Listen to that podcast, follow my notes on that book Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which I'll put over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com377 and then write down a plan, systematize that plan. Make sure the elements of that plan are primarily comprised of research proven methods, avoid forums, avoid comments, and then take long walks when you just need to assimilate stuff and simplify things in your mind.

Nice.

There you have it.

Yeah.

And occasionally sleep on things. That also helps too. I have one of those little pens with the light on it that I sleep with. And so I mean I don't sleep with it. I'm not like spooning my pen, but it's right by my bedside and I can take it out and switch on the pen and write stuff without having to write on my phone. Because when you pull out your phone it just that really effs up your melatonin production and can can pull you into Facebook at 3am, which is never a good idea.

Hi Ben. Listened to your podcast for a few years. I love it. Applied a lot of your content to my own life. Recently as a PE teacher, I've been asking how to take my classes deeper. So here's my question. If you and a partner had 40 minutes a day for 30 weeks to improve the nutrition and exercise habits of 350 low socioeconomic teens, let's say 11 to 18 years old, what would your curriculum look like? What units would you teach? Would you even teach in units? How would you break down each day? How would your curriculum change if your budget was 500 to $1,000 or less? Thanks for your work to make healthier humans. Sincerely, Coach Dallard, Houston, Texas.

All right, Kyle, this podcast is getting a little long in the tooth, but I will, I'll give you my biggest tips right here, right now.

You know, long in the tooth actually means this getting old.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Oh crap. Now I feel like an idiot.

Well, it is getting old because the passenger time.

10 years old. Okay. So anyways, what I would do if these were my teenagers is I would pay attention to data that has investigated the things that move the dial the most when it comes to longevity and anti aging in humans. Because longevity and anti aging are so heavily correlated with just overall health, overall fertility, overall happiness that I think it's just, it's a very good way to again like kind of like systematize and.

And advise the program that you're putting together.

So basically what I'm saying is the best budget friendly way to do this would be move all the teens to Okinawa and have them live in Japan for years upon years till they die at the ripe old age of 120 in the rice fields. No, I'm talking about this idea of the blue zones, right? These areas where we see higher than normal Levels of people who live a long time like Sardinia, Italy and Ikaria, Greece and Okinawa, Japan and Nicoya, Costa Rica and Loma Linda, California, where the Seventh Day Adventists live and play.

Ah, I was wondering what that was.

Yes, Alcohol free. Alcohol and meat free. Again, not that I endorse that, but there's a time and a place. And so when we look at these blue zones, there are definitely some lessons that we can learn from them that I think could very easily be worked into a curriculum. So what do we see? We see a real appreciation for whole, real foods, usually gathered from a garden or the wilderness. Right. So you'd want some component to be built around growing and finding and eating and foraging whole foods. Like whether that be a community garden, whether that be a foraging trip or a series of foraging trips, but basically learning how to eat from nature and grow in nature. So that would be number one. And that's something I do with my own children quite a bit. And it's not expensive. It's in fact less expensive than the grocery store. Number two, speaking of the grocery store, because we do live in a modern era, it would be teaching these teens how to properly read a nutrition label. Because again, we see in the blue zones a pretty strict avoidance of processed and packaged foods. I don't expect that a teenager living in, let's say America or a modern westernized country is not going to sometimes have, let's say trail mix or beef jerky or some kind of packaged soup or some kind of packaged beverage or some kind of processed food, but teaching them how to read the food label. Right. Like is this sweetened with stevia or acesulfamine potassium or sucralose or, you know, is the sugar content the. The total carbohydrate content in this derived from like fiber or derived from processed sugar? Or is the high amount of saturated fat in this from like a fully hydrogenated lab derived fat or is it from like a coconut oil? Right. So reading nutrition labels would be number.

Two, but beyond the RDA percentages.

Right, Going much deeper. Yep, exactly. Again, very easy, low budget teaching mechanism. I'm not going to recommend a bunch of spendy biohacks. You know, no infrared light on your. For these teens. Next would be the importance of environment. Right. We know that.

I think you can go to jail for just saying that.

We know that according to the blue zones book, emulating the environment and the habits of these world's longest living people by having a home that or environment that simulates nature as much as possible, teaching them about Maybe having WI fi off on the phones or the computer when you're not using it and ensuring that the air in the home is clean. If you're going to go rent an apartment, maybe check in to the history of that apartment to look at how much mold or fungi it might have, or replace the light bulbs in your study room or in your dorm room with a more biologically appropriate light bulb. And so these things I don't think a lot of teens are taught these days, but that are important, like care for your personal environment, air, light, water, electricity, things like that.

Nice.

Next would be fasting, right? We see some elements of intermittent fasting periods of time where people might not eat meat, or might not eat dairy, or may just eat fish and eggs as their primary proteins, or may have 12 to 16 hour intermittent fasts or weekly 24 hour fasts, whatever. But a fasting module, right, where folks are learning about the importance of fasting, that would be another thing that I wish I'd learned when I was a teen. Right. Like the periods of time to give the body and the gut a break.

Yeah. We were told the opposite when we were teens. We were told, don't skip breakfast and.

Don'T miss meals, eat your meal. Yeah. Next would be to learn how to exercise as play and as habit, rather than thinking of exercise as your PE class or the gym.

Punishment, the thing that you do when.

You'Re bad or as punishment. Exactly. So what I mean by that is things like fitness walks and nature walks and obstacle courses outside and learning how to use standing workstations and walking as much as possible. And when they're navigating through the airport or through the mall, taking the stairs instead of the elevator or the escalator, and basically engaging in low level physical activity all day long. That doesn't mean they got to hunt and garden and forage all day long, but it does mean teaching how to move. Right. Like during our podcast, I'm actually alternating between sitting in a stool and standing. Like about every five or ten minutes I'm shifting into a different position. Something as simple as that. I didn't even know that when I was a. When I was in college, I'd just sit for like six hours, just like studying and just not get up. And then I'd get up and I'd feel horrible and tried to go to the gym and I'd get injured because my hip flexors were all short. So understanding that movement should be an integral part of the lifestyle, not just something relegated to the gym and teaching them how to do that and then just a few other things. We see a low amount of stress in the blue zones and a high amount of social connectedness when it comes to stress. One of the main things I would emphasize is a course on breathwork. Teach box breathing. Teach 4, 7, 8 breathing. Teach these different forms of breath work that can enhance the body's ability to be able to withstand stress. And honestly, if there's one course I wish I'd had in college, I would have loved to have had a couple of semesters just on breathwork and breathing patterns. Because it's fricking free again. You can do breath work in the car. Car. I was on a six hour bus ride when I was in Panama and I was like in the back doing fire breathing and deep nasal breathing and hypoxic because I had nothing else to do. I didn't have Internet or anything, so I was just working on my.

Didn't have the Internet.

No Internet. Yeah. Breath. And then.

Family, love, relationships. Teaching the importance of that. Teaching the importance of forgiveness, of maintaining connections with your mother, with your father, with your siblings. Again, not something I discovered until later in life that I wish I had known about earlier on in life. And this concept, just like not going to bed when we're angry with someone and instead calling them up and mending any differences, understanding the potential harmful effect when it comes to presence of chronic disease, if you have things like anger or hate or bitterness kind of bound up inside you that you haven't taken care of, but basically understanding the importance not only of that, but also of love and laughter and being in social settings and group dinners and relationships. And for me, as an introvert, that's something I realize the importance of again later in life, but it's super integral. And then finally, nature immersion, which goes hand in hand with this whole idea of plant foraging, this whole idea of constant movement and being outside, just basically some kind of module where whatever, it's camping or maybe it's fishing or maybe it's long hikes, but basically a lot of time spent getting very, very comfortable in the cold, in the heat, in nature. Potentially in situations where some of your daily comforts are taken away from you and you're just learning how to be very, very comfortable just being you, a human on planet Earth, in nature, fending for yourself and learning how to do things like say, start a fire or.

Cook something, or even trap or shoot or forge something. Basically just learning how to connect in a deeper way.

With nature that goes above and beyond just raping the landscape by eating huge amounts of wheat bread and pasta and supporting commercial agriculture. So on that high note, delightful. Those are some of the things that I would love to see next curriculum. As a matter of fact, I would take that curriculum myself. So, so that's, that's what I would recommend, Kyle. And so it's a great question. Hopefully that, that helps you out.

Can I throw one in?

No, not if it's going to be your, your, your weightless ME tip.

No, it's not. It's actually called cognitive distortions. It's a thing from cognitive behavior therapy where you learn how to identify sort of those self fulfilling thoughts that you have. Or you tell yourself that you're not worthy or you're destined to be overweight or you're. Whatever that happens to be. Or I'm an anxious person or I'm depressed and, and reframing those thoughts into a much more positive thing, like not just lying to yourself, but actually reframing those thoughts. I think if I knew that when I was a teenager, if I knew how to do that, I would have saved myself so much misery.

Cognitive distortion.

Yeah. From cbt. You can look that up.

Boom. I love it. Well, that being said, let's give something away. What do you think?

All right.

Yes. This is the time on the show where we give away a Ben Greenfield fitness sweet gift pack sent straight to your house, chock full of a Ben Greenfield fitness beanie, a BPA free water bottle and a sweet tech T shirt that you can go exercise and flex in. And if you leave a review in itunes and you hear your review read on this show. So all you need to do is email us with your shirt size. And the email is just gearedreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's geareenfieldfitnessystems.com and we'll get a gift back out to you. So that being said, We've got a five star review left by Matt85Web Brock. You want to take this one away?

I do. It goes like this. This podcast is superb overall. I listen to a lot of top performers including Tim Ferriss. That guy?

Really?

Joe Rogan? Come on. These are my interjections, by the way. Kevin Rose and others I can usually decipher pretty quickly whether someone is very smart in their field or using a bunch of BS pseudoscience. Ben Greenfield and team are legit. I heard a stat mentioned which shows his discipline and long term focus and that is that Ben mentioned he has read a book a day for about 10 years. That's impressive to me or it just.

Means I'm a total social outcast slash introvert who spends way too much time at home with my nose in a book.

Means he has a lot of time on his hands.

Could mean that too. But anyways, either way, great Matt. So we'll get that gear pack out to you. Just email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com for the rest of you. All of the goodies from this episode, from the research that you heard in the news flashes, to my recommendations on cold therapy, to some of the liver things that you can do, how to deal with self healing, overwhelm tips, and even my Fit Teens on a Budget recommendations you can find over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com377Brock yes, go hit that kettlebell baby.

Not my nuts though.

Yes.

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