386: The Best Biohacks For Longevity & Libido, The Magic Of Sprinting, Fighting Psychology & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. The best biohacks for longevity and the best biohacks for libido. The magic of sprinting and high intensity interval training and how to do it the right way, the psychology of fighting, 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.

Power.

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 Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Hey, Brock. We were kind of having a fun discussion before we even started recording about our, our first jobs and how much, how much we enjoyed working for our parents.

Yeah, I think it started when I was suggesting that you could put your, your boys to work for you to get all the, all the prep done for the podcast.

Yes. We were talking about how, how laborious it is to put together all these show notes.

Oh man, you have to click a link and then click another link and then open a page.

Drop, drag.

But when I was a kid, man, I used to spend hours photocopying stuff for my dad at his office on the weekends. And I loved it.

You photocopied too?

Yep, me too.

I remember I'd smell like carbon. I had to photocopy so much.

I'm sure the acetone in the air that we breathed as children is responsible for all our ills now.

Oh, don't even get me started on how many unhealthy things I did when I was a kid. But the photocopying that I did was because my dad had an ambulance service, a non emergency medical ambulance transportation service. So not only did I work for him doing medical billing, so I would spend two to three hours, I used to get up at 4am and this is how I learned how to type. This was how I learned, like the medical industry. My dad used to drag me around all these medical conferences and health conferences and paramedic conferences, but I used to do all of our medical billing, which was probably illegal in the state of Idaho, but there was a little 12 year old boy anyway, sitting there at the computer doing all the medical billing.

It was the 80s, filling out all.

The reports and learning about Mrs. Smith who got dragged to the hospital because she had some kind of a pain in her left rib and Mr. Smith, who had a colonic explosion. And I would just learn all these interesting things about medicine.

Colonic explosion. Oh, dear.

Yeah. And the other thing that used to happen is. And perhaps this is why I'm so open to the idea of IVs and needles and injections. The EMTs there used to chase me around and use me as their guinea pig for injections and IV practices.

Were your arms and legs as vascular then as they are now?

Oh, I was such a vascular child. I was like a tiny, tiny little. Have you. Have you seen the MTOR knockout? I think he's a little German boy.

Oh, yeah, he's a little Russian boy, isn't he?

I don't know. Russian, German. Yeah, same thing.

Little muscle kid.

They're all brute power lifters over there. So anyways. Not that I'm stereotyping anyways. Yeah, they. They. They have these mtor knockout kids. I was like an mtor knockout kid, except without the muscles. Just the veins.

Just the veins. Scrawny with.

News flashes.

Well, Brock, it's actually been a while since we've done a Q and A.

Yeah, I actually forgot how. Forgot who you are.

I forgot. Yeah.

Everything.

Yeah. For. For those who are listening. And this is. This is actually fun because we. On the Q A episodes, we go through the latest in fitness and nutrition and wellness and biohacking and longevity research, and then we answer listener questions. And so if you're new to the show and you actually want to call in a question, Brock, how do they do that?

They go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ask Ben or ask a podcast question. Now there's a whole bunch of links all over the place. Just click on the ask a question link.

An incredibly long URL. Can't they just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and click on something sidebar thing and you leave a. You leave it.

There's a sidebar thing. There's a link in the. In the top nav. It's all over.

Yeah, you can.

You can find it if you're looking.

So all the news flashes that we're about to talk about, you can get them over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386 Now, I'm a fan of morning fasted exercise. And there was this study in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness. Now, I don't actually do morning fasted high intensity training unless I am traveling. Say I'm at a conference. And I know my tiny little window of time that I'M getting an exercise session in is right then in the morning. And if that's the case, then I'll do whatever burpees in the hotel room or go down to the gym and do some sprints and do some weight training. But I typically tend to do easy fasted workouts like, you know, walking in the sunshine and that type of thing.

However, regardless, walking in the sunshine is a workout. Come on.

It's tough. I wear a backpack and a training mask and drag a giant infrared light behind me.

Sorry, I was being facetious because it's just one of those things that people are always like just dismiss walking.

I know. And walking is so good. Walking is when I get a lot of my thinking done. I walk with a post it note and a sharpie in my pocket. I leave my phone at home because I don't want to be tempted by it. And all I do is just practice breathwork and think and that's how I walk. And then if something comes across my mind that I want to get off my mind, I write it on the post it note and then take care of it when I get home. That's how I walk. Yeah. Anyways though, this study actually looked at sprinting like hard exercise sessions. And specifically they were doing 30 seconds of all out cycling followed by four minutes of active recovery. Which by the way, based on the studies on mitochondrial density, that's one of the best ways to build mitochondrial density is very short hard sprints followed by very long recovery periods. So we're looking in this case at an 8 to 1 work to rest ratio, 30 seconds all out cycling followed by 4 minutes of active recovery. They were doing this in a fasted.

State each morning to build mitochondrial chondrial density. You don't need to do it in fasted state. It's really just that timing protocol just.

So happens to be that they use kind of like the classic mitochondrial training protocol in this study. And what they found was that even though those fasted folks, compared to the folks who did this, fed and also got a carbohydrate drink after the folks who fasted actually.

On the post training follow up exercise session in which they were supposed to exercise to complete exhaustion and then they also tested their power production and their mechanical work, their power production, the total amount of work that they were able to produce in terms of like their strength went down, but their actual endurance exploded. And we actually there, there's some other studies that have shown this how when you train low, in a low carbohydrate state or in this case, in a fasted state, for some reason, even though it doesn't seem to have much crossover for increasing your power or your strength or your all out capacity in terms of endurance, the time to exhaustion test in the folks who fasted versus the folks who had done all those training sessions in a fed state was over three minutes longer, which is a pretty long period of time. Should we just pause for like three minutes to kind of give people an idea?

Yeah. Give you a sense of how painful three minutes is.

Just imagine. So it was at 85%. So imagine if you raced your friend and you said, I'm going to race you up to whatever the coffee shop down the road. And you get to the coffee shop and think about that three full minutes before they arrive because you did your morning high intensity interval training in a fasted state versus you could drink a.

Cappuccino and finish a panel chocolate in that time for sure.

Yeah. Or I just got back from Sardinia and I, I got big time into blanket. What, what do you call it when you pour a shot of espresso over gelato? Oh, affogato.

Affogato, yeah.

Affogato. Yes. I got hooked on affogato.

You say it like it's in Japanese.

I'm actually going to speak in Japan in September.

Anyways, by the way, affogato. I get this question a lot. Does that take you out of ketosis? Does that take you out of a acid state? Yes. You're eating ice cream with sugar and cream in it. Yes.

Good lord.

People anyways though, so even though this might not be relevant to people who are trying to just go after power or strength, if you are a triathlete or a marathoner or maybe a Spartan athlete, you're doing anything that would require improved time to exhaustion at an exercise rate that isn't all out, but it's closer to like that, 80 to 90% intensity. Do some of these harder intervals in a fasted state because that's incredibly significant in terms of the time to exhaustion, so. Sure is. Yes, exactly. Now the reason that I don't, by the way, do high intensity interval training in the morning much is because your body temperature peaks and your reaction time peaks and your grip strength peaks and your post workout protein synthesis peaks and all this stuff peaks. Even your deep sleep is enhanced by a hard exercise session that finishes about three hours prior to bedtime, but that's done in the later afternoon or the early evening. So I for those reasons have tended in the past to just do My, my harder exercise sessions in the evening. Unless like I mentioned, you know, the, the day is just going to be too packed to do that. But based on this study, I might, I might start throwing in a, you know, couple of interval training sessions in the morning in a fasted state just cause I'm still competing in endurance sports.

I do a lot of mine first thing in the morning, but I don't. Even though I know all that stuff that you just listed about all the benefits of doing in the afternoon, I just plain won't get it done if I don't do it first thing in the morning. I'm just a morning workout guy and the chances of me actually getting a decent workout in drops exponentially after like 10:00am so.

Yeah, well, you just need to.

I guess I'm getting lucky in this.

In this case, you need to shut up the inner bitch and just do your afternoon workout. That's what it comes down to for me because by the end of the day I don't want to work out. I've got decision making fatigue, I'm tired. I've been on my feet at my standing desk all day. I want to finish up the day and you know, just lounge. But once I start my workout and I get about two minutes in, I'm good to go. So yeah, just do it Brock. Come on, swallow the pill. Anyways though, I think I'm doing all right. Here's another one for those of you who don't want the swallow pill of sprinting, but you, you want to do this high intensity interval training that we talked about. Like maybe you're injured, you don't like to run, you can't run, whatever. There was this recent study that looked into an alternative to running and found that this particular hiit workout works just as well as sprinting for maximizing your cardiovascular endurance and also increasing your overall fitness. You know, they looked at a whole host of metabolic parameters in this study, including body composition and body fat. So they were looking at performance related outcomes and body fat. And what they did was they created this exercise routine that you could easily do in like a freaking hotel room. Right? Again, let's say you don't have the skill set to sprint. So they used classic Tabata sets in this protocol which have been shown to be one of the best ways to improve not mitochondrial density, but muscular endurance. Right. Your ability to be able to tolerate huge amounts of lactic acid. And that protocol is eight efforts of 20 seconds hard, 10 seconds easy. So it's essentially like, like a four minute interval and they did three of these sessions per week. Now one group was doing these on the treadmill, right? 20 seconds of sprinting, 10 seconds of easy recovery. Like walking or stepping off the treadmill and just standing there while the treadmill continues to go. Yeah, exactly. And then the other group did a combination of burpees, mountain climbers, squats and thrusts, and jumping jacks at a, at a maximum effort. So they were cycling through these five different exercises versus the group that was just sprinting.

Wait, it was squat thrusts with the 3K3.

Yeah, sorry, squat and thrust. So so basically you do 20 seconds of burpees, 10 seconds of recovery, 20 seconds of mountain climbers, 10 seconds of recovery,20 seconds of squats with the thrust to overhead, 10 seconds of recovery, and then 20 seconds of jumping jacks and 10 seconds of recovery and you would go through two cycles of that versus the group that just did the sprinting. All right, so either way, both group is exercising for eight minutes. And what they found was that the group that did this, this body weight style training, granted, they also included these thrusters with the overhead dumbbells, which you could do in a hotel room. I frickin used backpacks, luggage, the coffee table in the hotel room, all sorts of things for overhead presses or just travel with an elastic band, which is great for these squat to overhead presses, these thrusters, so to speak. They found that the performance related outcome and the body composition between the two groups was pretty similar. The only thing that they did find was that the treadmill exercise resulted in better running performance, which comes as no surprise at all. Better running economy and better running performance. But ultimately, when it comes to just like losing weight and improving overall fitness, this whole body high intensity interval training, you know the title of the study was whole body high intensity interval training induces similar cardio respiratory adaptations compared with traditional high intensity interval training. And that was on the treadmill. They also threw in a group that just did moderate intensity continuous training, like, just like eight minutes of running on the treadmill or four minutes of running on the treadmill rather than doing the high intensity interval training. And ultimately it turns out that if you've got limited space, sprinting is not the only thing that you can do.

Yeah, yeah, I love this kind of stuff. Anything that shifts the paradigm, like the cultural paradigm away from having to go for a run, like when somebody says they want to do some, some high intensity or even just cardio, the first thing everybody always defaults to is going for a run. No, there's so many more ways to do it.

Yeah, exactly.

So I love this kind of stuff.

I don't want to tell you the number of times where I've had a sore knee or a sore hip or a beat up back, running really wasn't an option. But knowing I can just step into the gym and do, let's say kettlebell swings, right? Non impact to get the heart rate up. But there was a similar study done on kettlebell swings a couple years ago, same thing. You do a high intensity interval training session with kettlebell swings and it simulates the same cardiorespiratory and body composition changes as doing a sprint. So there you have it.

And you don't even have to go to a gym again. You can use a backpack or something like that.

I've got one more for you though. On high intensity interval training. So this is the way that I train. Yeah, this is the way I train when I travel. So a lot of times I mentioned decision making fatigue at the end of the day. Right. And sometimes that can make that hard workout at the end of the day tough. Same thing when you travel, right? You step off the plane, you check into the hotel and dude, the last thing you want to do is go destroy yourself in the gym. It's just hard to.

Yeah, you want to go down to the bar and get the little bowl of nuts and order a beer.

Yeah, maybe if you're Canadian, I guess. Like for me, I want to like go for an easy swim or a walk in the sunshine and then go get my beer or that and my nuts anyways, though. So what this recent study looked at was high intensity interval training combined with resistance training, what we call concurrent training. This is where you would go to the gym and you would do a weight training session that involves going back and forth between cardio, like high intensity cardio and weight training, which is exactly what I do when I travel. Meaning I've got this hotel gym workout and I'm actually traveling tomorrow. I'm heading down to Tucson, Arizona.

To be at the Mind Body Green Revitalize conference where my job is to be the morning sunrise hike leader. It's a tough gig, but somebody's got to do it. Anyways, though, I will go to the gym there. And the way that I do this, the way I set it up in the gym, and this study backs up that this is an incredibly effective way to train for muscular strength, for maintaining or building lean muscle mass, and also kind of having your cake and eating it too, because you get all the cardiovascular training adaptations.

Did you say Cake?

Yes, cake. That's all you're going to hear during this entire study is cake.

I get to have cake?

Yes. Where does the cake come in? The high intensity interval training mixed with muscular strength training that I do looks like this. Go to the gym and you choose an exercise.

For pushing and for pulling upper body, for pushing and for pulling lower body and for the core. So, for example, I would choose chest press. I would choose a pull up or a pull down. I would do a squat, I would do a deadlift, and I would do, let's say, like a low back extension. Right. For the core. And after each of those different exercises, I would do two minutes of cardio as hard as I can. Right. And then I go back and I do it again. Sometimes I'll amrap as many rounds of that as possible as I can do for 30 to 60 minutes. So I'm going back and forth from strength to cardio to strength to cardio, and I can just kind of shut my brain off almost. You know, I'll still pay some attention to biomechanics and proper form, but it just allows me to kind of jam and get a workout in and maintain my metabolic fitness and still be able to build endurance and strength at the same time. So again, it's just five different whole body exercises, each one separated by about two minutes of high intensity interval training. And this recent study shows that you can. It was actually a meta analysis of a whole bunch of different studies. And essentially I love those. Yeah, the takeaway and what they say in here is that data suggests that concurrent high intensity interval training and resistance training doesn't negatively impact hypertrophy or upper body strength. They did find a slight negative effect on lower body strength. And I think the reason for that is that most of the time when you're doing cardio in between, and in this case, they actually looked at cycling and running. Right. They were doing the cardio with their legs. So it's no surprise that maybe they sacrificed a little bit of lower body strength. And if you didn't want to sacrifice lower body strength, you could do your cardio as like something more upper body intensive, like maybe a versaclimber or a rowing machine or an upper body ergometer. And some of those still use your legs, but maybe a little bit less than running or cycling. And for me, I just kind of play musical machines. And I know that those of you who are like legit strength conditioning coaches are scoffing at this, but it just works. It works when you travel to go Back and forth from strength to cardio. So there you have it, and science backs it up.

Says science, says science.

There you go, a couple other interesting things. And again, I'll link to all these@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386 if you want to take a deeper dive. But the first one is probably one of the best articles on the psychology of UFC and boxing and fighting that I've ever read. And there's a lot on there. They go into nine fights, fascinating fightings involving boxing and other combat sports. And even if you're not into combat sports and UFC and fighting, I think some of them are pretty interesting. For example, you see a lot of these folks not only in the ufc, but in football, soccer, basketball, you know, the NBA Finals are on right now. LeBron James, of course, is sporting a huge amount of facial hair. And we see a lot of these fighters growing thick beards as what they claim is a way to appear more intimidating and more masculine. But they actually did a study on 395 different UFC fighters, and they found that those with beards were just as vulnerable to being knocked out. So not only does the beard not offer any protection, but it turns out that there's really not much of an advantage to having a beard to fight, aside from the fact that you look like Conor McGregor. So.

Yeah, interesting. Except that my beard grows in like ringlets, like in like little. What's that, what's that little red haired girl's name?

The, the actress girl, like from way back in the day. Oh, no, it's. No, it's gonna be on the tip of my tongue. Shirley Temple. Shirley, yeah, surely Temple.

My beard looks like Shirley Temple's head, so I actually get knocked out a lot faster generally.

I like that my beard usually looks like pubic hair when I try to grow a beard, so I just don't.

Yeah, so nobody wants to touch you.

Right, Exactly. Other than people who like to, to stroke pubic hair. So anyways, we digress. Though another thing that they found was that southpaws do indeed have an advantage. And this is something a lot of people are aware of, whether it's tennis and boxing, especially left handed people always kind of throw a loop to right handed people who are used to fighting right handed people because the majority of the population is right handed. And this is called the fighting hypothesis. And this is that even if you go to prisons, you'll find a disproportionately large number of left handed people or southpaws. And the reason for that Is that that southpaws and left handed people have traditionally been better at fighting. They would have been better warriors. They would have been a little bit more hardwired to be violent and aggressive because they tend to win when placed in an environment where they have to be a warrior or a fighter. And this analysis of 2500 different boxers records from 1924 all the way up to 2012 found that Southpaw's hands down, pun intended, have a better win to lose ratio. And we've seen the same thing in tennis as well. Ultimately, it's very interesting. If you are left handed, not only do you have more violent tendencies, but you're also more likely to win. Just stay out of prison. I've got one left handed boy and one right handed boy. And so they play a lot of tennis as a doubles team and it's perfect because they can cover the entire court. So there you have it. And that's what I'm going to retire on is my boys winning Wimbledon.

That's pretty much you're, you're right handed.

I'm right handed, yeah. I'm right handed.

I'm a lefty. I'm a southpaw.

My dad is ambidextrous. Yeah, yeah.

I think most of us lefties are a little bit ambidextrous. I can actually play tennis with both hands. I can use the most with both hands.

It's interesting.

One of those things I think because the world is sort of right handed and I'm left handed. It makes you have to be both a little bit.

Yeah. I've tried to teach myself how to be left handed by brushing my teeth with my left hand. It hasn't worked yet. Yeah, it's actually pretty awkward.

Yeah, keep it up.

Yeah, I'm a little bit spastic with the teeth brushing on the left side. Just saying that's not a long as.

You don't like jam it into your nose or something, you're okay.

Yeah. So the last one that I thought was really good, really good takeaway was they did brainwave studies of boxers and also fencers. Fencers. And they found that they responded to go and stop commands better. They had better what they call preparatory brain activity. They had four faster response times. And they also did a study on young and old martial artists and anyone who did judo or karate. They were faster and they showed less age related cognitive decline. Now of course there is the flip side in that you risk getting hit in the head and hit in the face and so you put your brain in a Potentially disadvantageous position as well. However, do you know what my, my happy medium is for this?

I don't know. I can't even guess.

I play tennis and I play ping pong. Now, some of the smartest, fastest athletes in the world, if you ever look at table tennis videos on YouTube, are table tennis players. But in addition to that, I consider tennis to be very much like boxing because I've boxed as well. And I get the same kind of cognitive load when I play tennis, especially at a fast pace, as I do when I spar or I box. And the idea is that you're essentially boxing over a net without getting hit in the face. That's. That's what I claim tennis to be.

I can see that for the ping pong because it's in close proximity and you have to react so much quicker. But tennis, I mean, sure, if the ball is going like really fast, which it often does with higher caliber players, you've still got some distance to, to judge what you're going to do next. So, yeah, I guess the combination of the two would really be.

It depends. Now, remember I was a collegiate tennis player, so I played a. I played at a pretty high level. Like the level where when the person is serving to you, you're watching the person. Like in baseball pitching, professional baseball pitching, you're not even watching the ball, you're watching the person because the ball is going to get there too fast for you to track it. So I'm talking about playing at a pretty high level. But when I play fast, competitive tennis, same thing. Like your brain is working overtime. Plus, rather than getting hit in the face and bleeding out the nose, you get to wear all white and eat strawberries and cream afterwards at the club. So there's that.

Did you ever fence? Have you ever fenced?

You know, my uncle was the fencing instructor at University of Idaho, so yes, he used to. He used to dress me up in fencing gear and try and teach me how to fence.

I love fencing. I haven't done it in like 20 years, but I used to do a lot of it in college. Really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's another place where being ambidextrous comes in really handy. Yeah, I could do that whole Princess bride thing where I throw the, the foil into the other hand.

It's like the.

I'm not left handed.

It's like the old Looney Tunes show with Daffy Duck. Remember that one? Parry, thrust. Parry, thrust, thrust. Perry, Perry, Perry, Perry. Thrust. Oh.

Ha ha.

Guard, turn, parry, dodge, steal.

Okay, so I've Got one more study because we are gonna talk about sex and libido and buttholes and all sorts of good stuff on today's episode where What? So this is eventually gonna turn into an earmuffs episode potentially for the children. Unless you are okay with your children being cool with enemas and libido, which let them listen. They're gonna learn this stuff anyways. They might as well learn it from me and Brock anyways, though, I'm pretty sure this latest study means you should have sex to fight obesity because it's a study on oxytocin.

Oxytocin and hugging hormone.

Yes, the hugging hormone. The hormone that gets released when you have sex or when you touch other people. What they found in this study was that the administration of oxytocin could potentially be what they call a therapeutic peptide for obesity and for diabetes due to the improvement in insulin resistance and the improvement in glucose tolerance. So I'm pretty sure that the takeaway is you need to have sex to decrease your risk for obesity. There you have it.

What other conclusion can you come to?

Well, there are actual ways that you can increase your oxytocin naturally. Do you want to know some of them?

Naturally. Not injecting it.

Having sex and orgasm obviously causes a big burst in oxytocin. That's probably one of the biggest ones. And they found this to especially be the case in multi orgasmic women, which I thought most women were, but I'm.

Just saying, only when they're with you, I guess.

So. Nipple stimulation, cuddling and touching, and even falling in love. Falling in love. Vagus stimulation. Vagus nerve stimulation. So this would be like cold showers, Chanting, singing, meditation, et cetera, music. Eating can increase oxytocin, which may fly in the face of this whole high oxytocin. Probably if you're trying to get oxytocin into your system to lose weight, eating would not be the best of the choices that I'm presenting to you. Warm showers increase oxytocin. That's why you feel so good when you take like a nice warm shower in the morning. By the way, I learned that that badass big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, the last time I was hanging out with him, he told me that that's his morning routine is he does a really long warm shower every morning, which sounds fantastic. I do that about once a week. I used to not take a warm shower ever and pride myself upon never turning the water to warm and always taking a cold shower. And now I treat myself with a warm shower once a week. It's amazing.

You decadent fool, you.

I know. I'm so you really know how to burn. Massage increases oxytocin, which is great. That's a wonderful way to increase oxytocin. A few other things, melatonin. So getting good sleep can make you more sensitive to oxytocin. And then here's a good one. Mdma, mdma, the drug ecstasy can increase oxytocin. So in other words, if we want to continue down this road of flawless logic, the best way to combat obesity and diabetes and improve glucose tolerance and insulin resistance would be to rave with ecstasy and then follow that up with a little bit of sex, some soothing music, a massage, and perhaps a little bit of dark chocolate. So there you have it. That's going to be the next big weight loss book.

Special Announcements.

Well, welcome to the special announcements. This is the part of the show where we talk about all the crazy things going on. Like I mentioned, I'll be in Arizona this weekend at the revitalized Taksan leading the nature the nature hike where I get to bend down and show people little pieces of nature. This little leaf and this piece of soil, this plant, this mushroom.

Anyways, do you do that thing where you like taste the soil and say, ooh, this animal was here just 30 minutes ago.

This tree looks like an aspen. This is an aspen tree. You know why? Just because it is. It's an aspen. It's a funny YouTube channel, by the way. You know that the nature guy on YouTube. I will also be at the Boise Spartan Sprint for those of you who are in Boise June 23rd. I'll be there with my boys racing the Boise Spartan Sprint. And then the family and I will be over in Estonia in Tallinn, Estonia for two weeks at Mindvalley University, which is a university style education model where they bring a whole bunch of families together. Probably too late for you at the time you're listening to this podcast to get in. But if you happen to live in Estonia, come say hi. And then on July 19th is the Ancestral Health Symposium in Bozeman, Montana. Ahs more on that later in today's episode because I think I want to mention something about AHS when we're talking about biohacking and longevity. So more about that later. But you can go check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com calendar to learn about any of these amazing events that you can become a part of over there@BenGreenfieldFitness.com calendar this podcast.

I'm trying to figure out if I can make it to Toronto for. For the biohacking conference. We've ever had a biohacking conference in Canada. So how can I miss.

Oh yeah, so that's what, that one's in October, right?

Yeah, yeah. And I have to be in Chicago.

Exactly. You're gonna learn how to copious amounts of MCT oil on your poutine. So there you have it. Come, come to the biohacking conference.

Isn't that just called gravy?

Yeah, basically. So this podcast is brought to you by what I speaking of, of teaching myself how to be left handed brush my teeth with every day I coconut oil pull in the mornings, but then I brush my teeth in the evenings. And what I use every time I brush my teeth is this fantastic cacao mint MCT oil toothpaste. It is essentially the cleanest toothpaste that exists. It's corn free. I didn't know toothpaste could have corn in it, but apparently some does. It doesn't have fluoride, no gmo, no soy, no gluten. They don't actually put bread in the toothpaste. So it's, it's paleo friendly and it tastes absolutely mind blowingly amazing. It's like brushing your teeth with cake. That's the best way I can describe it. Cacao mint cake.

We're just, we're really on a cake.

We are. It's got stevia, it's got an essential oil blend of peppermint and cacao, a little bit of beeswax and then charcoal. And this is just one of the many fascinating items that you can pick up over on the website of our friends at onnit. O n n I t. You can save 10% off of MCT oil toothpaste or any else. If I can talk anything else at this you can save 10% off of their wonderful MCT oil toothpaste or anything else, including Captain America chilled barbell plates and chimp kettlebells. You just go to BenGreenWitness.com on it. That'll save you 10%. This podcast is also brought to you by something you can wear while you're brushing your teeth if you want to look absolutely amazing. Actually, have you seen this stuff, Brock? It's. It's this new company called V or a. V or a.

No. I saw that in our notes and I was. What the heck is.

I hope I'm pronouncing it properly that they sent me a bunch of clothing like shirts and shorts. My wife absolutely digs this stuff. She says it looks amazing. On me. But of course she's biased. And the, the clothing is. It's almost.

It's almost like it molds around your body with this really soft design that just flows every time you move. So I've got about four pairs of their shorts, four pairs of their shirts. What I've been doing every time I travel is I've been staying really minimalist and just throwing all my Vuori travel clothing in my bag, along with a couple of Keon shirts. And that's pretty much like if you see me wearing clothing while I'm traveling, which I do sometimes, I'm typically wearing viori. So the way that they produce it is it's made primarily for men. It's primarily made to have a great deal of comfort while also giving you performance because it kind of moves along with your body. And it's the closest thing I could come to wearing silk kimono, like pajamas without actually wearing pajamas. It's actual athletic gear, but it's super duper comfortable. I play tennis in it, I run in it, I travel in it. And they're offering all of our listeners a 25 discount. That's very simple. You go to their websites vuoriclothing.com so Vuori, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right, is Vuori V U O R I V U O R I. So you go to V U o r I clothing.com v u r I clothing.com and you enter the code BEN25. That automatically gets you 25 off of anything on their website. And they're primarily known for their athletic gear for men. So check it out. This podcast is also brought to you by. By Cereal. Did you know that I actually have cereal now, Brock? At my house, I eat cereal.

Like big bowls of Captain Crunch cereal.

Yeah, that style. Yeah. No, it's. It's actual cereal. It's the first time in my life I've been able to. To find a cereal that tastes good and is guilt free. And it's made by Thrive Market and it's basically three ingredients. Organic coconut meat, organic coconut water, and organic palm starch. And I can just pour a little bit of coconut milk or almond milk or hemp milk or anything else over this. I'll put like a handful of almonds or walnuts or macadamia nuts in there. And I can eat cereal. Isn't that amazing? Well, I'm watching cartoons on Saturday morning. I can eat my coconut cereal.

That is the quintessential cereal moment, isn't it?

It is. It really is. And then you drink the milk, but first you add more cereal to the milk so it gets extra syrupy and then you drink the milk. So it's called Thrive Coconut Flakes Cereal. And what Thrive is offering any of our listeners is a big old discount. So the way that this works is you get 60 bucks of free organic groceries from Thrive, you get free shipping and you get a 30 day trial on your Thrive membership. So it's almost like a membership to an online Whole Foods. So their prices are already up to 50% off. And then they give you an extra 60 bucks in free groceries and free shipping. You need to make sure that you absolutely grab a box of their Thrive cereal while they're at it. And speaking of boxes, pretty much everything you get from them, their packaging, their boxes, their inserts, they're all made from recycled paper and they're recyclable. You could probably just eat the cereal box, I would imagine for added fiber, 100% zero waste. So that's Thrive Market. And the way that you can take advantage of this offer is very simple. Just go to BenGreenfulFitness.com thrive BenGreenfulFitness.com Thrones 60 bucks, free organic groceries, free shipping automatically. And did I mention cereal? One last thing that I wanted to check in on was this big detox retreat that I'm leading in Switzerland. This, not this year, next year, June through July. Next year I'm doing a two week detox retreat where I'm taking a whole bunch of people over to Switzerland and we're doing everything that you can't get in America or that it's harder to hunt down and find in America. And we're going to be out in the Swiss Alps, hiking in the Italian Swiss Alps and hanging out at one of the most cutting edge clinics of biological medicine in the world where they do nutrient IV infusions and dark field live blood analysis, liver hyperthermia, colonic hydrotherapy, full body massages. They have a whole bunch of different physicians on staff there. I'm going, my wife is going, I believe if I can get her to agree to do colon hydrotherapy in exchange for hikes in the Swiss Alps. And it's going to be absolutely amazing. And the, the, did you say liver hypothermia? Liver hyperthermia far different than liver hypothermia. Brock, it's, it's a weird.

You're heating your liver.

You're heating your liver. So if you want to come microwave your liver and the Swiss Alps with me, I will put a link over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386 so go to the show Notes. All of the information and details to the Swiss retreat will be linked to from there. But if you want to push the reboot button on your body and go to the Swiss Alps simultaneously, this is a must do for you. So go and check it out.

Listener Q and A.

Hi guys. My name is Ian and I'm wondering where would be a good place to start when I wish to start purchasing some devices for biohacking and longevity. I only have a few thousand dollars kicking around right now that I want to invest into some of these devices. So if you could point me in the direction of the best place to start, I would really appreciate it. Also, keep up the good work. The products from your store, the podcast, all of it is pretty awesome. I'm really looking forward to getting some of your coffee. Thank you.

I love this question. I figured you would happen to happen to have a few biohacks. Unfortunately, Ian only has a few thousand dollars kicking around. I know that's he spent on biohacks.

When I was listening to his question, I was waiting for the penny to drop where he says, like, I only have 50 bucks and I'd be like, but few thousand. So we can work with that.

We could work with that if you got a few thousand dollars kicking around. So what I'm going to do. It's kind of funny because I mentioned how I'm going to be speaking at the Ancestral Health Symposium in Bozeman in July, and one of the things I'm talking about is this whole concept of biohacking versus, like, less expensive alternatives to some of these expensive biohacks.

I have some ideas for Ian that are kind of similar to some of the things I want to talk about in that presentation, but that are different. Meaning, like in the presentation I'll be talking about how you could, for example, use a cryotherapy chamber, or then I'll give a bunch of alternative methods to that, like cold showers, et cetera. What I'm going to do for Ian is I'm going to present you with some really expensive biohacks for Ian and everybody else listening in, specifically for longevity. And then also biohacks that would be less expensive than that, but still considered to be a biohack, if that makes sense. Does that make sense?

Okay, I'm with you.

All right, cool. So the first one would be. And some of these are conducive to not just longevity, but also fitness. So electrical muscle stimulation. Electrical muscle stimulation. Is something that has a lot of good research behind it for improving power, improving strength, recruiting new muscles that you might otherwise not have recruited, and even maintaining fitness when you are injured or when you're unable to train the way that you would normally train. The Cadillac of electrostim units that sits in the office in my office right here behind me, and I use this about once per week. It's called a newbie. A newbie. N E U B I E. And that stands for neurobioelectric stimulator. Now, it is based on a.

How does that stand for that? That doesn't make any sense.

Neuro Nu Bio Electric stimulator and ei. That's what they decided to call it. I was not responsible for their marketing.

This is not your fault.

Yes, this is not my fault.

Okay.

Anyways, it provides a DC current and it matches the signals that the nervous system already sends on its own. Now, just about any other electrical stimulation device out there uses ac, so an alternated current is cheaper and easier to engineer. But a DC current can literally simulate hundreds of pounds of, let's say a squat or a deadlift or anything else. I mean, you use this thing and I'll admit you get a little sore after you use it. Like my delayed onset muscle soreness lasts like four or five days after I do a full body workout with this thing. But in my opinion, as far as a biohack for EMS electrical muscle stimulation, nothing comes close. By the way, Ian, I'll include as many links and discount codes and all that jazz as I can over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386 if you want want to hunt down some of this stuff, Because I can usually get insider discounts on just about anything. But that one's called the newbie. So that's an electrical muscle stimulation device that really moves the dial for strength and training. It takes a lot of grit. You got to breathe your way through it. I'll put it on my abs for 10 minutes and feel like I did a thousand crunches the next day. It's pretty amazing. But an alternative to that would be either the Compex, which is a little bit less expensive, or the Mark Pro. Now, the Compex is an electrical muscle stimulation device that you can also use for strength and power and endurance. And then the Mark Pro uses what's called a square waveform to actually grab muscle fibers in a more therapeutic manner. And this would be something that you'd have on hand, say, for recovery, right? So you'd use it on areas of soreness or use it on an injury. I'll slap the electrodes sometimes and cover them in ice. And also a little bit of an anti inflammatory cream like magnesium or cbd. This is a technique I learned from a, a guy, a physician who worked with Tour de France cyclists to get them to heal up faster after their brutal day long stages.

And so are those guys allowed to use cbd?

Well, well, I don't know if they use CBD per se, but like any anti inflammatory. Right. Like a topical magnesium or, or an arnica or something like that. Right. And then you put the electrodes on top of that, then you cover that with ice. So ultimately get the, get the newbie or as an alternative, the Compex or the Mark Pro. Now the next one would be vibration. In my living room I have this vibration platform called a power plate. A power plate. And you can use it for isometric sets. You can use it in the same way that you would use like a rebounder or a mini trampoline to get lymph fluid moving in the morning. You can use it to prime muscle groups, not just limp fluid. Yeah, actually it's great for inducing a bowel movement as well. I mean, have a cup of coffee and go stand on a vibration platform for 10 minutes and you'll be ready to go slip into the restroom and, and not have to poo. The rest of everything comes out while I just falls out. Exactly. Just like a, just like a baby. No, no pushing required at all. Because I'm pretty sure that's how that happens.

That's how babies are.

Fall out, swoosh barefoot in the kitchen and just kind of drops out of you. But anyways, power plate, they make this vibration platform that is like the Cadillac of vibration platforms. That's the one that I have. It just sets my living room. My kids use it too. They love it. They do little squats and push ups on it or just laugh. You can even lay on it and give yourself a massage for any muscle group that you put on it. So pretty versatile. I like that. An alternative would of course be far less expensive and that would be just to get a mini trampoline, like one of these rebounder mini trampolines where you still get a lot of the limp fluid. You could still use it for like a morning bowel movement. You could still use it to warm up for a workout in a similar way as you'd use a vibration platform. But that would be another one. Be the vibration platform. The next would be some kind of way that you can induce hypoxia. Now, I have this device called a live O2. A live O2 and what that does, yeah, it's behind me. My bicycle is set up next to it. And it draws all the air out of the room, concentrates the oxygen, and then with the flip of a switch while you're exercising, or even just while you're passively sitting by it reading or whatever, you can flip from hyperoxia to. To hypoxia. And a single 15 to 30 minute training session on this thing simulates about 24 hours spent in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, which is extremely expensive. We're talking about like $40,000 plus for one of those. Now, this live O2 unit is still somewhat expensive. It's several thousand dollars. But an alternative to that would be to induce hyperoxia followed by hypoxia. So you get that same vasodilation, vasoconstriction effect, one of these training mas. And so what I'll do now, after having experienced the live O2, I never thought about doing this until I'd done the flip of a switch on for high oxygen and the flip of a switch off for low oxygen. With the live O2, if I don't have access to it, say I'm traveling, I'll have one of these training masks. And you can do, for example, 30 seconds of hard sprinting on a bike with the mask on. And then you pull the mask off your face a little bit and you do a 30 second recovery while you get more oxygen. Then you pull the mask back on, you do your sprint, pull it off, do the recovery, and you can simulate kind of a similar effect of that high oxygen, low oxygen type of environment. You know, the training mask is maybe I think 70 to 80 bucks. But that would be like the, like the alternative. I don't want to say the poor man's alternative because you don't see a lot of poor homeless people walking around with training masks on. But usually they got better things to do. But ultimately, long line at the soup kitchen, folks wearing training masks is not.

Something they'd look bad.

Would be pretty cool.

Look like Batman villains.

Exactly. Anyways, though, the Live O2 and the Alternative to that would be the training mask. Now the next would be a cold pool. And you know, I have one of these. I bought a pool from Aqua Fitness, and it's, it's like an endless pool, right? I can swim against it. I keep the water very cold, so I can use it for fitness. Water running, swimming, Whatever. Obviously it's a little bit expensive to get a 19 foot, you know, above ground endless pool. Now I will put a link to an article that I released a few weeks ago in which my friend Luke Story wrote about how just purchases an inexpensive freezer and then fills that with a little bit of food grade hydrogen peroxide and keeps it plugged in, puts ice in it and essentially just has like a freezer that he uses as one of these cold tubs. And if you go to some of these websites that sell done for you, cold tubs, I think coldtubs.com is one. And I'll link to the article where I have a whole host of different cold tub options. It's Maybe I think 300, $400 to get your hands on a freezer large enough for a human body to fit into, preferably a live human body. And you fill it up with ice and water. And I've got the full instructions written out that I'll link to in the show notes if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386 but I believe he just went to Sears and bought this thing. And so that's another alternative that would just be a few hundred bucks to do something like that versus the full on, you know, endless pool setup.

So our, our friend Brad, Brad Kearns also has one. Yes, he's got that same setup in his backyard and he just loves it. Swears.

Exactly. So more than one way to, to skin the cold pool cat, so to speak.

Yeah, you can't really swim in it, but you can soak in really nicely.

Exactly. So the next one would be this, this concept of using photobiomodulation. Photobiomodulation, which is just my fancy way of saying shining light on.

Basically the idea is that these lights, for example, many of you have heard me talk about this company Joovv, in which you purchase this light that causes formation of new capillaries and elevated production of collagen, the production of ATP. When you use it on your gonads, you can get increased testosterone production. And what these lights do is they produce near infrared and far infrared light in a specific safe wavelength that induces a lot of these, these scientifically proven benefits. We even see enhanced muscle recovery in some studies, speeding up wound healing, helping with infertility in men. Because when you shine it on your testes, you get increased activity of the Leydig cells in the testes and increased sperm production. So there's a lot of benefits to having these lights. And I have two in my office, one in front of me and one behind me. And I'll often take off my shirt and shine it on my upper body. Sometimes I will pull down my pants and I'll have it shining on my gonads. I don't know why I'm using that word versus just my junk. Yeah, exactly. But the idea is that it's simulating a lot of the same wavelengths of light that we could get from sun. And so the other thing that you can get is this thing called a violite. And that's based on the concept, not a full body photobiomodulation like these joov lights, but it's head photobiomodulation. They make one that's called an alpha, which is what I own. And it creates a 40 hertz or, I'm sorry, the alpha creates a 10 hertz pulse. And it brings you into this alpha brainwave zone. And what that does is it activates the default mode network to make you a little bit more logical, more analytical, allows you to process information more quickly. As a complete aside, you know, microdosing with psilocybin or LSD or any of these type of compounds, or even going on a trip dose of psilocybin or LSD or DMT that completely deactivates the default mode network and you get enhanced left, right brain hemisphere activity, better creativity, disillusion of your ego, etc. This kind of does the opposite, right. It actually enhances your default mode network so you're more logical, more analytical. Your ego explodes when you wear this thing. Plus it looks like a giant space helmet and has a little probe that goes in your nose anyways though. So they sell one that's designed for 40 hertz, which is the one that's been shown to clear protein deposits in the brain. So this would be like the model you'd use if you were concerned about your risk for Alzheimer's or dementia or that were something that was prevalent in your family history. The alpha is the one that I use and I'll use that for focus. I'll use it to increase nitric oxide production. It actually works on what's called the cytochrome P450 pathway in mitochondria in your brain. And so you get increased neural cell activity. And those are two forms of photobiomodulation, the violite and also the joov light. But of course there's also the idea that you can simply use sunlight and, you know, save yourself a whole bunch of money on juved and violite. And just build a giant fence around your yard and sunbathe nude and hope your neighbor doesn't have a drone or very high storied window, but no hope they do. Yeah, they do. Hey neighbor. Anyways though, the, the idea is that sunlight can produce a lot of these same effects, especially if you expose a lot of skin to sunlight. I'm totally not kidding. You actually can. And we see studies that go back as far as the 1940s showing that men who expose their genitalia to sunlight do see increased testosterone production. So getting out in the sun can be obviously a free or relatively cheap alternative to the use of photobiomodulation. But it's not as targeted, it's not a direct near and far infrared exposure, it's not as close to your skin, et cetera. So you don't see all the benefits. But you do see many of the benefits by simply getting out in the sun. If you can do that regularly, you could save some money on these near infra infrared devices and spend your multi thousand dollar pile of cash that you have socked away for biohacks on something else.

Okay, so next is the concept of infrared saunas, which for example, I did that just this morning. So I spend about 30 to 40 minutes in the infrared sauna anywhere from three to four times per week. I use it quite a bit. It's what I do for detoxification, for increased red blood cell production. We see an increased in heat shock protein, which improves your resilience to stress, specifically cellular stress. There's a lot of benefits to these infrared saunas, but they can be expensive. Right? If you get one of these full, you know, like I have the one called the Clearlight Sanctuary, which is big enough for four people or for one person, do yoga and lift dumbbells and do elastic band exercise. Like this morning I actually had these Katsu, these blood flow restriction devices on my arms and my legs and I was doing a push up and squat workout in the sauna. So I was doing like heat training and blood flow restriction training at the same time, which sounds like a funny video that our friend JP Sears might produce about stupid things that make them look silly. But we're already far, far down that road. So the alternative would be, and I have a whole video on this that I'll link to in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386 and it is the idea that you get a biomat, which is about 1/5 to 1/6 of the price of Clearlight sauna. So it's like a mat that produces infrared and heat. And you can actually just get these Mylar blankets, like the space age silvery blankets, and you can wrap those around your body, get into the Biomat, and you can work up an amazing sweat, like a whole detoxification sweat. Granted, you're just kind of laying there staring off into spaceboard or maybe reading a book or listening to this podcast. But ultimately the Biomat with a sauna suit or a bunch of these Mylar blankets can give you a less expensive version of like a full body sauna. And so that'd be another way that you could go when it comes to.

The sauna and also smaller, because one of the biggest problems with those infrared saunas is I don't have room in my house. I'd have to give up the kitchen.

You've got a very, very small, small footprint. Okay. I've got a few others for you that are, that are pretty interesting. One would be, I sleep on this device called a chilipad. Now, a chilipad is basically circulating cool water or hot water, depending what I choose, underneath the mattress or under the COVID sheet while I'm sleeping. I forget what the COVID sheet is. It's the one that's a pain in the ass that I could never get on, that you drag from one corner of the bed to the other and it falls off and you start over again. You know, when you're trying to make your bed, you know this sheet.

Yeah, the fitted sheets.

So annoying. Yeah. Anyways, though, so it goes underneath the fitted sheet and my wife can set her temperature, which she never does. She doesn't really care, so she doesn't even ever use it. But on my side, I've got that remote going every night. I set it at 55 degrees. I sleep like a baby, baby in this cold, cold environment, which has been shown, by the way, in research to improve the percentage of deep sleep that you get. Now, let's say you are traveling, or let's say you can't afford one of these chilly pads underneath your mattress. Well, they also make cool mist humidifiers. Cool mist humidifiers. I learned this trick from Tim Ferriss, who would travel with it to allow him to breathe humidified air, to rehumidify the sinuses and stuff after travel, and to get keep the area right around his bed in the hotel room a little bit more cool. And I bought one of these and it does indeed achieve that. Like, I'll be traveling to Tallinn, Estonia, with a little cool mist humidifier in my Bag, because we're staying in a little Airbnb over there that doesn't have ac and it's the middle of the summer. I'm not going to bring my chilipad. So this cool mist humidifier, just fill it with a little water, you set it next to the bed, and it kind of generates a little bit of cold air around your body while you're asleep. And so that would be kind of like a less expensive, less bulky alternative to something like a chili pen pad.

So you could also just use a chili dog.

Yes, you can. You can. Which are quite preferably if the sausage is filled with Cheez Whiz, that's the best version. That used to be my favorite way to do a chili dog was I'd make a chili dog with the bun and the chili and the beans and everything. But then for your sausage, you use the one that's filled with Cheez Whiz, like the cheddar fill.

You do know how to party.

Dude, I know all the party tricks. Trust me. I. I grew up on these things. Okay. The next one would be pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, or what is known as pemf. Now, this has been studied for everything from reducing cellular inflammation to improving healing of bone fractures and stress fractures to decreasing symptoms of TBI and concussion. Healing the healing neural tissue more quickly, enhancing sleep. When placed in, like, more of a delta wave mode, it gives you a lot of the benefits of like, grounding or earthing, but it's almost like a more targeted delivery of that. And what I own is this, this giant unit. Not to overuse this phrase, but it's like the Cadillac of PEMF units. You know, it's. It's got coils. Yeah, Tesla, it's got coils, it's got pads, it's got rings, it's got a giant table. When I have a massage once a week, I'll literally lay on this and the massage therapist will work on me while I'm blasting my body with pemf. It is probably one of of the most potent healing tools I own, because any injury, you can simply blast with that thing and it almost melts away. It's. It's pretty crazy. And you can also just lay on it, you know, before you go to bed. You can use it. You can take a supplement and then place the, like the head pad next to your head, and you can feel like a nootropic or a brain enhancing supplement hitting you more quickly. Just. It's got all sorts of extremely cool benefits, but it's expensive. You know, we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars to own one of these pulse centers units. Although you can rent them, you can go to facilities that allow you to try them out.

Out.

I'll, I'll put a link in the show notes to their website where you can just go hunt one down in your area, just go lay on it and try it out for free. Just like visiting the mattress store.

It's really, it's surprising too. Like I've used some of the small ones like the earth pulse and things like that, and you don't feel it like there's nothing. You just sort of just cross.

Sometimes doing something. Sometimes you feel a slight, those pulse center ones. Yeah, I mean this is, this is like.

Yeah, you actually.

Your whole body, if you turn it up, your whole body like pulses with it. It's quite.

Yeah. I had one of their trainers, Emilio, to my house a few weeks ago to train me on it. And I mean you, you can, you can activate the thyroid gland and the gonads. You can use it the same way as you use like that gains wave sexual performance enhancement. You can, you can use it for that. You can use it to enhance stem cell production if you place the pads on the, on the long bones of the femurs where you produce a lot of the marrow. All sorts of benefits from it, but again, expensive.

I used it to erase my iPhone.

Yes, you could use any metal object or digital device that you place near it gets its battery drained extremely quickly. So you got to be careful with that anyways, though, there is a device that's relatively versatile that I travel with that can produce a 3 hertz, a 10 hertz, 100 hertz or a thousand hertz signal. So it could be used for sleep, for focus, for injuries, et cetera. Not quite as potent or as powerful, but I've especially found for this device when I place it in 3Hz mode and kind of put it on the back of my head near my occipital bone. And Dr. Mercola taught me this trick. It really helps you go to sleep or fall back asleep when you wake up. And again can be used on injuries as well. And this one's called the Flexpulse. I did an interview with the guy who designed it, Dr. William Pollock, several months ago, but it's called the Flex Pulse.

That was a good one.

It's very similar to like the Earth pulse, which I've also talked about, but it's almost more portable, smaller, a little bit more user friendly. And that would be like an alternative, more of a budget alternative to something like this pulse centers device. So that would be another one and then just probably I'll go over two more. One would be molecular hydrogens. Now, drinking hydrogen rich water has been shown to reduce oxidative stress to improve what's called redox homeostasis, which increases your levels of glutathione and superoxide dismutase and a lot of these endogenous antioxidants without by the way, blunting the hormetic response to exercise. Which means that unlike many other antioxidants that you could take, like vitamin C or vitamin E that would shut down the normal satellite cell response to exercise, this doesn't do it. So you can shut down inflammation post exercise and fight oxidation without necessarily blunting the hormetic response to exercise. With the use of this molecular hydrogen, a ton of research, especially out of Japan on this stuff, it can have an anti inflammatory effect, anti allergy effect. My wife drinks a glass if she has a headache and it goes away. It has anti apoptotic protective effects, meaning that it can basically simulate in many cases or enhance the effects of fasting and cellular autophagy. I did a very thorough podcast about molecular hydrogen with the guy who is honestly, he's unbiased, he doesn't sell the stuff, but he does a lot of research on it, specifically in Japan. Tyler laberon so I later actually got a unit made by this company called trusi TRUSI T R U S I I and it is a molecular hydrogen water generating unit that now sits in my living room that myself or my kids or my wife can go get a glass from anytime during the day. Just generates this icy cold molecular hydrogen rich water. The only thing about is you need to drink the glass of water right after you pour it because the hydrogen gases will tend to diffuse off the top the surface of the water after you pour it. But it's an amazing form of water, very similar, like structured water for example. And the alternative to that would be this same company, trusy, they make tablets that you can simply drop into a glass of water. And so if you wanted to see how you feel on molecular hydrogen or you wanted a more budget alternative to one of these, you know, one of these molecular hydrogen rich water generators is, is pretty expensive. I think it's around 6 to $7,000. You could just use these tablets. I do consulting for the Miami Heat for example, and I've got them all using what we've added to their training facilities. Molecular rich Hydrogen water generators in their training room. But then they travel with these TRUSY tablets, for example, to assist them with their performance with the recovery, et cetera. So it's a very, very cool form of water. Not a lot of people are talking about it right now. It's kind of like fashion, right? It hits Japan first and then it comes to us. At least that's what I've heard.

Yeah, it's been in Japan for a while.

Yeah.

So we're really slow in North America on the.

Slow on the uptake, baby. But anyways, it's good stuff. By the way, I'm going to speak in Japan in September. I briefly mentioned that earlier. Oh, where? Tokyo. And once I've got the exact location nailed down and everything, I'll let you guys know. But I will be in Japan in September. So there you have it. And then the last one that I was going to mention was this idea of repairing DNA and enhancing your own production of reactive oxygen. Oxygen species for healing. So some reactive oxygen species produce signals that can be damaging to the cell. Some produce more healthy signals that would be used for repair and recovery. And there's this device called the nanov. The nanov. And I have one right here on my right side next to my desk. And it allows you to breathe air that has been infused with this same frequency that reactive oxygen species, the good reactive oxygen species in your body would contain. And the idea is that it would repair cell damage and it would repair DNA damage. And I'll put a link in the show notes to a podcast that I did with these folks on the Nano V technology. But if you wanted something that would still be like air that you breathe that is good for you, that would still induce a little bit of a longevity effect. One of my favorite tricks is just do an essential oil air diffuser and put a little bit of rosemary in there, like rosemary essential oil, which is fantastic for cognition, but rosemary itself, Rosamurinic acid can have a pretty good effect on DNA repair, on sirtuin production, on stem cell production. There's a lot of interesting studies on rosamurinic acid. There's even that island.

In Italy. No, it's not an island, it's a town. It's a little village that has a specific form of rosemary that's like 10 times more powerful than any other form of rosemary. And they attribute a great deal of these folks longevity to the fact that they consume a lot of this rosemary in their beverages and in their teas and on their meats, et cetera. So it's rosamarinic acid, but you can get rosemary essential oil, and you can just diffuse it and still have something that you're breathing while you're working during the day that's assisting your body and making it better. So those would be some of the biggies. Some of the biggies as far as biohacks you could have hanging around the house. Now, I realize it's a lot of stuff. I'll try and be as thorough as possible and put links to both the main biohacks as well as some of the less expensive alternatives in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386 but I believe we have sufficiently emptied Ian's wallet with our reply to this question. Brock.

I would say so.

Ben, my question is about all the experimenting you've done on your penis. I am. I've not been sexually active for maybe six years or so. I'm getting married here in a few months and interested in possibly doing one of those experiments you've done to have better sexual performance. So I know all three of those are costly. Thought maybe you had a suggestion as far as which one gives you the best bang for your buck. No pun intended. So.

Yeah, I guess which one maybe not only worked because it sounds like all of them work, but maybe which one lasts the longest or which one you thought was the best. And like you, I don't. I don't think I have any problems, but heightened performance is always a good thing, so would love your input. Thanks so much.

Now, Joshua, before we proceed, please, please use caution. You don't want to get married to this new girl and have her walk in on you doing your penis weightlifting with your penis magnet and your penis light and maybe your little penis sound wave generator. You want to be careful. You want to kind of ease her into the idea that she's just married a man who is obsessed with biohacking his penis. So I would ease yourself into this.

Don't want to say, just don't send the wrong message.

Yeah, I've been married for 14 years myself, and it wasn't until about 12 years in that I began biohacking my penis. You know, I had to wait about a dozen years for. For my wife to feel, well, openly biohacking? No, I. I just didn't really do any biohacking at all. You know what I did use, though, was, was for a while, I used that private gym. They sponsored the podcast for a little while. And so the private gym really was this little magnet that you attach to your dick and then you do weightlifting with it. You get an erection. And it's similar to the old school wet towel technique where you do weightlifting with an erection with an increasingly larger wet towel, starting with just a dry small washcloth or a napkin and then eventually progressing to a giant bath towel soaked in water duvet. It's very similar to our friend who's been on this podcast before, who does vaginal weightlifting like kettlebells and coconuts. What's her name, do you recall? It's. Forget I forget her name. She's got like the vagina. Vagina, vagina. However you say it. The vagina training salon. I don't look it up while I'm talking to Joshua. Yeah, so just, just do a Google search for woman who lifts kettlebells with her vagina.

It is Kim.

Yes, Kim. And then delete your history after you do that on your browser anyways though. So the, the idea, Joshua, is that I was. I would give you a few different levels. A few different levels for biohacking your dick that I found to be pretty effective. One I've already talked about. This would be level one. It's gonna set you back a few hundred bucks. But it would be the use of photobiomodulation because I've done a lot of stuff. You could go read the January 2018 edition of Men's Health magazine, which I'll link to in the show notes. You could go snag that off of Amazon because I talk about, about, you know, this three month journey that they sent me on for. For biohacking one's one's genitalia and found out a whole bunch of stuff. But grab that magazine. It's one Marky Mark on the COVID I didn't make the COVID unfortunately. Just this short little dude. Short little dick made the COVID appropriately enough. So anyways, though I digress and I hope Marky Mark isn't listening. Wait, what the. The juice. Joovv. The Joovv. Photobiomodulation light. Okay, so that would be the first way. And of course you could do nude sunbathing. But I've found that for size, for vascularity, for testosterone production, for sperm production, to really move the dial, that would be one. Level two. And I also got some really, really good results with this. This would be this company Gainswave. They've got like 80 different clinics spread around the US you walk in there, they smear numbing cream, or you smear numbing cream all over your crotch and then they blast you with these High intensity acoustic sound waves for about 20 minutes. And the idea is that for about the next month you get really good erections and really good sexual performance and very long orgasms. And it's something that you would repeat like every one to two months. In theory, you know, I've done it maybe five times in my life, so I don't do it every one to two months. But you could totally do it, you know, as frequently as you wanted to. And guys with erectile dysfunction or Peyronie disease or something like that, they'll do it more frequently. But ultimately that would be kind of like level two. Now level three would be something that I've found to move the dial for me more than anything else. Like, like for me. Since I've done this, not only is it morning wood every single morning without fail, it increased the length of my orgasm from I would say about, you know, eight to 10 seconds, right, to almost a minute. Literally I just go and go and go. It's a minute. Amazing. And that would be the sexual optimization treatment that I did down at the Doceri clinic in Park City, Utah in which they actually used stem cells and they mixed those with exosomes and then they did platelet rich plasma injection. So I got injected on the right and the left side of my penis in the area called the corpus cavernosum and then up by the head of the penis. So three different injections with PRP exosomes and stem cells. And this compared to anything else that I've done, not only does it last for months or months or theoretically forever, based on the stem cell theory of aging, that as you age you lose stem cells and so you're essentially replacing your body's available.

Sources of stem cells. But in terms of the host of benefits I've gotten out of it, it's pretty staggering. And I was under sedation when I got this one, but it's either sedation or numbing cream when you get it. I even have a video, a safe for work video because things are blurred out etc of the entire sexual and cosmetic enhancement surgery that I underwent because they, they injected, I was Dr. Amy Killian in Park City. They injected my, my face, my hairline, my, my penis. And then they also of course did with stem cells, the entire musculoskeletal frame. I have a big podcast interview that I did with them that I'll release soon in which I go into, into deep detail about what they did. But ultimately that, that exosomes plus the PRP injection that, that would be like level three. That, that was the. The biggest, best thing that I've ever done to enhance sexual performance. So that's the one that I would say.

And that one's. That's pretty expensive. Although I guess you did the.

So the full meal deal. Yeah, the full meal deal is like $30,000 to do the, the full body stem cell makeover to do just the, the sexual and cosmetic enhancement I think is closer to maybe like somewhere between 4 and 8K. Okay. So, yeah, so if Ian is still listening and has any money left. There you go. Ian, we just drained the last little bit of your change. Now, of course, there are things that I think would move the dial. A lot of these guys are looking for these biohacks, but there's little things that are missing. Like some of the little things I notice are missing over and over again in guys I do consults with who, you know, we look at their micronutrient analysis or their blood work, or we look at their supplementation protocol, or we even look at their sexual practices and their sexual knowledge. There are a few things that I would definitely recommend that you also look into. So for example, zinc. Zinc is a very common deficiency in men. And a deficiency of zinc can drastically affect libido and sexual performance. Now, for a while, I would recommend just zinc extract or a zinc capsule or something like that, or a good multivitamin with zinc. And frequent consumption of shellfish is really good for zinc. But recently I was on that Joe Rogan podcast and we brought up black ant extract. And a lot of people have been asking me about this black ant extract, which is really good pre workout, pre sex, pre endurance. But it also has 10 times more zinc than oysters, which makes it a very, very good source for men who want to increase zinc to increase their sexual performance. So that would be one. Another one would be vitamin D. You always want to take it along with vitamin K so that it's bioavailable and doesn't increase your risk for, for arterial calcification. But vitamin D along with vitamin K is another one that works very well and tends to be deficient in a lot of men who have sexual issues or who want to enhance their libido. Creatine is another. Creatine has a host of benefits for staving off muscle loss as you age. It's a no nootropic. I simply take 5 grams per day. Your actual absorption of creatine at any given point is only one and a half to two grams. So you have to split that into about two to three kind of daily doses of creatine. I used to take all five grams at once. And then I learned actually from that guy I mentioned earlier, Tyler LeBaron, the guy who runs the Molecular Hydrogen foundation, about the fact that you actually have to split your dosages up with creatine. And so I like Thorne, for example, they have a really good bioavailable form of creatine called creapure, but about 5 grams of creatine per day. Nitric oxide. A lot of guys, based on their lifestyle are deficient in nitric oxide, right? Not enough sunlight, not enough good water, surrounded by wi fi and Bluetooth, which affects nitric oxide production. A whole bunch of issues. And one of the best ways to increase your nitric oxide production is just getting out and getting frequent sunlight exposure. These infrared devices that I've kind of. I've kicked that horse to death on this podcast already. But like the joovv, the violite that I talked about, all that can work too, too. But some kind of sunlight exposure frequently, regularly for guys, that's another really important one and the last thing I'd mention. And by the way, over in the show notes, I'll link to all the different articles that I've written on hacking or increasing your testosterone production. The last one would be probably one of the better books I've read on libido and that would be the book the Multiorgasmic Man. The Multiorgasmic Man. And it has instructions for stimulating your prostate through your perineum, for lengthening the penis, for controlling the mind body energy during sex, for reverse orgasms. Probably in terms of like a good handbook for sex. You know, I'll definitely give that one to my boys when they're at an appropriate age for it to teach them a little bit more about, you know, about controlling their rate of arousal and becoming pretty intimately aware with their anatomy. It would be the multi orgasmic Man 1's written by Montauk Chia. It's one of the better books on sex that I've read, especially from men. So, you know, cover some of those basics like zinc and vitamin D and creatine and nitric oxide and, you know, a healthy relationship with your sexual self before you go spend a bunch of money on, you know, having somebody inject stem cells into your dick. But ultimately those are some of the things that have worked pretty well for me.

Now I want to remind Joshua that it's not just about him and his parts too. Like if you want to be really good in the sack, so to speak. You've got to focus on your partner, right? Just having like a whole bunch of testosterone and bunch of like, I don't know, huge erection and all that kind of stuff is fun for us, but if you really want to please your, your married one, you gotta, gotta concentrate on them. So finding some, some books, some resources on that, and one of the things I stumbled across in my adventures was a thing called orgasmic meditation or om. And there's a company called One Taste that does this, does this. You can go in by yourself, but you can also do it in couples, which I would encourage you to, to do if you're about to get married where you can actually like learn stroking techniques and, and just the, the meditation aspects and the, the togetherness aspects of, of orgasm and, and that kind of stuff. I think, I think that would go along.

Yeah, I've heard of One Taste before. They're really good. I mean, and, and ultimately teach your wife how to lift coconuts and kettlebells with her vagina. And that way she'll be able to keep up with you. You'll be.

And then you can both join the sexual Olympics.

Hey, Ben, this is Thomas calling from the boonies of Louisiana. I was just wondering, as biohackers, why aren't we taking advantage of the higher absorption rate of suppositories? I'd much rather stick something up my butt than swallow dozens of pills every day. Day. Maybe that's just me. Plus there's the DIY factor. Thanks. You know, he might be asking this question because I've talked before about what I call grass for your ass. Have you heard? You heard about that?

No.

Yeah. Yeah, they actually there's this company called Forea that sells medicated weed tampons for women. And I heard about this and I thought, well, if you can absorb, absorb cannabis through your vagina, you could probably absorb it through your butthole too. And so I bought these.

There are heroin suppositories. So people get super high off those.

Absolutely. So I bought this 10 milligram THC capsules. And when you eat cannabis, the digestive enzymes will transform the THC into what's called 11 THC hydroxy, which is a pretty potent psychedelic metabolite. And.

When you eat an edible, only about 4 to 12% of the THC gets into your bloodstream. When you smoke, it's a little bit higher than that, about 10 to 35%. But they've actually done studies on THC via rectal ingestion and they Found it to be very close to what you'd get when you, say, smoke a joint. But what I've found via personal experimentation is that the high stays relatively localized to your crotch, meaning that pre sex or anytime you would like to, to direct the high to your crotch regions. THC delivered via any of these coconut oil capsules that can be used in a very similar way as a suppository tend to be pretty efficacious. So if there's anything that you learned from this podcast is to shove weed up your ass. However, joking aside, suppositories. Yeah, suppositories can be a pretty effective delivery and less uncomfortable than you'd think if you haven't used them before. So rectal suppositories, those would of course go in your rectum. They tend to have like this bullet shaped tip where you could use a capsule. For example, like a THC capsule is mixed in coconut oil, and they'll use those to treat everything from allergies to anxiety to asthma. And there's a lot of drugs that you would not believe come as suppositories. For example, Valium, the benzodiazepine that I don't necessarily recommend because although it calms brain activity and brings you into a state of sleep, you don't actually enter deep sleep. However, that medication is available as a highly efficacious rectal suppository, Muse, which is used for erectile dysfunction. You've heard of Viagra, you've heard of Cialis, some of these other treatments that we just talked about, but Muse is basically a suppository that is not a rectal suppository. Do you know where you insert the applicator from? Museum.

Your nose?

Your. No, your. Your. Your urethra. Urethra.

Oh, that.

You actually put it in your pee hole. It has a little button at the top to release a pellet and you get an erection about five to 10 minutes. It's called Muse.

I was thinking of the wrong protrusion on the body.

Yeah, Muse. Ask your doctor. Ask your doctor, folks. You know, for. For example, that might be one for Joshua to ask his doctor about a urethral suppository, which just sounds incredibly uncomfortable. I have yet to actually do any form of drug delivery through my. My urethra. Should anyone be wondering, there's another one called Phenergen that's found in cold or allergy medications. They sell that as a rectal suppository. Oxymorphone or morphine. Taken orally, morphine can upset the stomach. And so a lot of times doctors will give it to patients as a rectal suppository. And then of course, antibiotics like erythromycin or erythromycin, they'll give that as a suppository as well. So there's a lot of drugs that are already delivered, delivered as suppositories due to the fact that the rectum can be an incredibly blood vessel rich and very efficacious way to get absorption of a whole host of different nutrients and vitamins and minerals. There's a company called Dr. Vitamin Solutions. I think it's drvitaminsolutions.com they actually sell a whole host of suppositories. They sell glutathione, they sell DMSA chelation, they sell multivitamins. A ton of stuff that you can order as a vitamin suppository. And if you don't like to swallow pills but for some reason are far more comfortable just sticking them up your butt, that might be a website for you to go surf. Now, probably the suppository that I actually own and use quite a bit because I'm into coffee enemas for glutathione production and bile production and enhanced peristalsis in the GI tract and the dump of antioxidants that it gives you, pun intended, because you do have a pretty big dump after, would be glytamins. Glytamins, G, L, Y, T, A M, I, N, S glytamins. And this is like a coffee enema in a suppository form. So if you want to continue that health practice, if it's something that you do, you can use these glytamins when you're, for example, traveling. And you just stick them up your butt when you wake up in the morning or, or after you've had a bowel movement, is even better because then you can just keep it in and it'll continue to work its magic much of the day. It's called a glytamine, so I'll link to that one in the show notes. But ultimately, Thomas, to answer your question, you ask as biohackers, why aren't we taking advantage of the higher absorption rate of suppositories? Well, I am.

We are.

I don't know why others aren't. Maybe they're just clinched and constipated and they need to. They need to open themselves up to the wonderful world of rectal suppositories, vaginal suppositories, and of course, our favorite urethral suppositories. Now, that might seem like.

A lot to swallow, or I suppose in this case, a lot to put up your.

Butt, not to swallow.

But if you're a health coach or you're a personal trainer or you're a nutritionist, or you're a doctor or chiropractic physician or anyone else who kind of fits that bill of a health professional, I've got a lot more for you to swallow when it comes to feeding through the fire hose of information that I put out, because we just launched. We just launched Kion University, Kion U, it's called. And what we've done is we've taken over two decades of the information that I've put out on this podcast, the information I've written about in this book, and we have developed it into a curriculum, into an actual certification that you can get the KIONU certification in which you go through monthly webinars with me. You have tests, you have a whole curriculum that is made available to you. We begin to send you clients your way through kion. You get the certification that you can display on your website. We just launched that coaching program. And although this podcast is getting a little long in the tooth, and speak of the devil, Brock and I, right after we record this podcast, are off to do a webinar for all of.

The people who are, in 11 minutes.

Kind of looking at the grad becoming part of the graduating class. The first graduating class of Keonu. Just go to getkeon.com coach that's getk I-O-N.com coach and what you'll find there is an application where you can apply if you're. This is only for people who are currently fitness professionals and hold some kind of a certification or people who are an MD or an ND or a Cairo or a physical therapist. You need to have a, you know, a somewhat existing base foundation of knowledge to get in in. But if you feel like it's for you and you want to apply and you want to become recognized as one of the top fitness and wellness experts on the face of the planet, then check out Keonu over at Keonu or I'm sorry, getkeon.com coach and that all being said, first, everything that we talk about is going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386 and second, shall we give something away? Bro Rock?

Yes, let's do it. But quickly, because we gotta go.

All right, so if you leave this podcast a review and you hear your review read on the show. Then we will send you a handy dandy Ben Greenfield fitness gear pack with a wonderful tech T shirt that makes you look amazing, makes your muscles pop. You don't even need to work out when you wear this T shirt. A BPA free water bottle that's completely guilt free when you drink your $7,000 molecular rich hydrogenated water water. And finally, a beanie. Or as Brock would call it, a toque. And if we read your review on the show, all you need to do is email gearngreenfieldfitness.com that's gearngreenfieldfitness.Com with your T shirt size and we'll send your gear right off to you. And today's review is read by methinkorange. He gives us five stars. He titles his review. Yes. Yep, minds will be blown. Brock, you want to take this one away?

Yes. And since you're incapable of speeding up, I'm going to go as fast as I can. I used to hate podcasts. Then I realized I needed to find the right one. Ben has made his layout cohesive, even with some of the added shenanigans. This podcast is very informative and never boring. I enjoy Ben's thoughts and opinions and also those of the ragtag group of people that he interviews and picks their brains. Even though a lot of the topics and information are above my thought process, process, and pay grade, they still give me something to aim for. Not to mention they tickle my brain. Keep it. Keep in rockin'. You wanted to say keep it rockin'. Thumbs up, devil's horns. Devil's horn. Devil.

A lot of emojis. Well, we. We appreciate the review. Me think Orange and I, even though.

I read it emotionlessly.

You did? You read that like a. Like a robot? Yeah, exactly. You really made leaving reviews exciting for people, Brock. Thank you for doing that.

But if you want your review read by me in a very boring voice, submit now.

I'm gonna retitle this episode the Brain Tickler. That would be a good title for a podcast episode, the Brain Tickling Podcast. So, yeah, check it out. Or actually, in this case, for this particular episode, we should probably call it the Penis Tickling Episode.

Probably.

Yeah. So thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to the Penis Tickling Podcast. And all the shownotes will be over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386. Plenty there because of all these biohacks we talked about. Like I mentioned, Brock and I are off to teach a Kionu webinar in just a few minutes. So we're gonna have to rumble, but thanks for listening in. Leave your comments, your thoughts, your feedback over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 386 and have an amazing week.

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