A Potent Pre-Sauna Stack, How To Cleanse Your Blood Before Bed, 700%+ Endurance Increases, The...

Hey, what's up?

It's Ben Greenfield. At the time that you're listening this, I'm sitting down in Sacramento. I am preparing to race the Tough Mudder X as my first big race of the season. It is a quest to find the fittest person on the face of the planet. It's 10 different CrossFit workouts and 10 different obstacle course racing obstacles. I'm gonna be going head to head with with a bunch of badass athletes, guys like Hunter McIntyre and Benny Gifford and, you know, these crazy guys who crush it. But I can crush it too. One of the things I've been using in terms of a supplement leading up to this event, you're gonna hear about in today's show. So sit tight, stay tuned. This podcast is brought to you speaking of working out by Daily Burn. And what Daily Burn does is they make these amazing fitness videos that you can tap into anytime, any place.

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Everything that I do in my formulas are generally about vasodilation or blood deficit development or trying to find a way to support blood development, get more blood flow and more oxygen to where you need it, which, as I always say, is, you know, it's your muscles in your brain where you need it most. I don't think there's a panacea for that. I think you just have to get tough mentally and get to a point where you can handle the pressure and succeed. But part of what's in the AFA formula is phenylethylamine, which, again, pea, which has a strong documented mood enhancing, mood elevation component to it.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. And today's podcast episode might be setting a record, or at least one of the records that exists for the most frequently appearing podcast guest ever. I've had Dr. Mercola on a few times. I've had Dr. Mark Serkis has been on a few times, Dr. David Minkoff has been on a few times, and there's a few others out there who have been repeat guests of the show. But this gentleman is a very interesting guy. He's a serious mountain climber and a former collegiate and Olympic trials qualifying competitive swimmer. And I've interviewed him about, about his, about his sordid past of racing and athletic performance. And I'll link to all of that in the show notes for today's show, which you can listen to if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic podcast that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com BiTropic podcast Now why such a long podcast? URL Because Craig also later in life took a deep dive into supplement formulation and supplement design and researching and including in his supplement formulations these crazy ingredients like grass fed liver anhydrates and cordycepsynesis and these fringe algae compounds, a whole bunch of things for buffering lactic acid in the body, for detoxifying the blood, for increasing ATP production. We're gonna talk about a lot of those things today. But he's blended a lot of these compounds together and now produces these supplements that are specifically kick butt supplements for anybody who needs better blood or better oxygen delivery. He's got all those over at his website, which is Biotropic Lab. So you just go to go go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic podcast and in my first podcast with with my guest today, Craig Dinkel, that's D I N K E L I interviewed Craig about how he used to shatter world swim records on 25 piece fried chicken buckets. And we talked about climbing mountains while eating defatted vegan grass fed Argentinian liver anhydrate. And that was, that was an entertaining show. So I'll link to that one in the show notes. And then the second time Craig, we talked about how to legally dope your blood without actually taking illegal drugs. And that one we talked about your blood building formulation.

And by the way, if you can tell, I'm slightly congested this morning and it's because I came down with the flu two days ago and one of the things I did three times a day while I had the flu. I know you didn't design your supplements for immune support, but your version of your blood builder with the echinacea in it, which we'll talk about later on, the one with the echinacea is. Which one again?

That's the chlorella formula.

Yeah, yeah, the biotropic chlorella. I was just like popping those like candy three times a day. I wasn't even counting. I was just dumping a handful into my hands and just chewing them up because I know the benefits of echinacea for the immune system. But. So we'll talk about some of the lesser known benefits of echinacea and why those are in there instead. So I wasn't trying to climb a mountain. I was just trying to cure myself of the flu. And I actually feel really, really damn good this morning, aside from being a little congested. And then you were on the podcast a third time where we delved into this method that you came up with to buffer lactic acid. And in that we talk about this stuff called Oxia.

And I want to visit that a little bit today as well, because I thought it was really fascinating, some of the interplay between malate or malic acid and citrulline, like this stack that a lot of people don't know about for buffering the burn from lactic acid without getting the, say, the diarrhea from sodium bicarbonate consumption. And now you're back for a fourth time. For a fourth time. We got to figure out something to talk about.

We'll sort it out. We'll figure it out through here. But it's always good to be with you. And all the records in the pool are gone now, but it's good to be setting records outside of the po. I'm happy to be with you again and glad to be setting records here with you.

Yes. Podcast appearance records. I see what you did there.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, so biotropic labs, obviously, you guys have. You've come a long way since our first interview. I think you just had the one supplement, the AFA supplement, and now you have these other three. And the reason that I had the echinacea one up in my pantry, I've got all three up in my pantry. The afa, the chlorella, and the Oxia, I've got them up there loaded, rocked, and ready for race season this year. Because as, as you know, when I was talking to you about this, Craig, a big portion of these spartan race series that I'm doing, they take place at altitude. They take place in the mountains. I'm kind of going a little bit more like short course sprint efforts this year in not only those, but also these train to hunt competitions, which also take place, you know, up in the mountains at altitude. And.

You know, I need something to build my blood, right? If I was a freaking Sherpa climbing Mount Everest, I'd probably just grab a handful of rhodiola or, I don't know, a bunch of cordyceps fungi, cordyceps underneath the rock there and chew it up. But I'm engaging in Better living through science using these bottles that are now up here from your company, Biotropic. So I want to delve into these and if you're game, kind of put on our propeller hats and take a dive into the ingredients.

Yeah, let's go. I mean, you're the man here. I never, you know, it's interesting. I learn more about the science of this stuff from you than I do from my own research. And it takes years to be as good as you are at the science and the mechanisms behind all this stuff. I've always thought of myself as a guy who found really good stuff that worked. Some of the stuff I stumbled into, some of the stuff I knew about, but you pushed me to be better at what it is I do by pressing me to really understand the science behind it better and the mechanisms of actions behind it better. And so, yeah, I'm ready to dive in here. I'll probably have to jump on your back a little bit, but let's go where we need to go. And I'm thrilled you're using it for the Spartan race stuff. And by the way, I really relate to the short course sprint stuff that you're doing because of course, that's my background and that was sort of what this stuff was all built around in the first place. So I'm glad.

You mean short course sprint in swimming.

Yeah, yeah. For me, short course sprint and swimming and even. Even the ragnar running stuff that I do on occasion is sort of short course ish, if you will. I don't run any more than maybe 6, 7 miles at a time. And that's sort of a. Sort of a managed sprint in a way.

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah.

You. You were a really competitive swimmer, A highly competitive swimmer. You. You were. Well, you're ncaa, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, competed at a high level NC2A for all of my college years. And during those days, I picked up about, I think, 21 all Americans and in high school too. So I just put them all together and say 23 all Americans during that time and about. I've lost track, honestly, but 2 or 3 or 4 NC2A records at the time also. But everybody, you know, everybody who's competing at that level, everybody, at least when I was competing, was aiming at something bigger. And so these were sort of byproducts along the way trying to get to the Olympic team. So all. All of the stuff that I put together here really wasn't designed to help me achieve a higher level of NC2A performance, but rather to get on the Olympic team when I was competing. So that's sort of what, you know, what drove the origin of all. The genesis of all of this stuff was trying to get on the Olympic team.

So what was like the first kind of handful of things that you looked at back when you were a swimmer trying to get on the Olympic team? Because, I mean, you look at a lot of college athletes these days, it's still whey protein, creatine, maybe some kind of a nitric oxide pre workout. And lots of Red Bull.

Yeah, lots of Red Bull.

So when did you actually start to kind of more seriously look at the whole realm of supplements similar to these?

Well, it's a great question. I really started in high school with stuff as crazy and as flat as sodium. Just adding more sodium to my diet, which wasn't the greatest thing in the world to do, but didn't know anything then. But it wasn't until like.

Sea salt.

Yeah, salt. Just pure, unadulterated sea salt.

How come that's not healthy?

Well, all by itself. Let me rephrase that. Maybe not healthy isn't the right approach here, but it's not enough. In other words, when you mention creatine and protein and Red Bull, I don't think that's enough. So I think you have to have a more robust formula. Unless you have a perfectly good diet, which I think most athletes don't have. But I think you need something more robust than just sea salts going into your diet, which is how these things came together.

I'd agree with that. I mean, if you're, if you're trying to achieve, let's put it this way, most athletes, or even like people wanting to go whatever, you know, run 10 miles through the forest at altitude or like what you're doing Spartan races or. Yeah, you are attempting to achieve an unnatural end. Almost. Almost like, you know, going to. Going to battle like an ancient warrior might have. But you're doing it whatever, you know, twice a month or you're doing a CrossFit wad five times a week or whatever. A lot of times, yeah, you need more than thin kale salad and a ribeye. And I mean, if you want to take things to the next level, that's just the way it is. So based on that, one of the first things, I guess the first supplement that you have is this stuff that's built around afa. Blue green, afa. And I've talked about algae before on the show. I don't know if you first discovered that because you were swimming in algaefied Water and swallowed some accidentally or what? I'm curious how you kind of discovered that and first started using it. And then. I know this is kind of a tough question because it's a two parter, but it's Affanizomenon flosaquai. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Blue, green, afa, basically. How'd you first discover that and start using it? And where's it actually coming from? Because I know that, you know, a lot of, a lot of algae is. It's a, it's questionable in terms of its source.

Right, right. Well, this is not questionable. And it's clean and it's pure and it's non toxic. Some of the stuff out there is. This is not. But to, to get to the root of it all. I was training for a second Olympic trials, a second Olympic train team after having qualified for trials, actually. And I think I probably mentioned this in one of the earlier podcasts, but just to redo it a bit, here I was introduced to a doctor in Malibu, California who is very gifted at both, of course, chiropractic and nutrition. Like you, nutritional expert. He had a really strong feel for this sort of thing and he understood me. He already knew who I was and he wanted to participate in helping me make the team. And at that time I'd said, well, sure, have at it. But on the nutritional side, the eating side, I'm pretty okay, but nothing's ever really worked. Worked for me supplementally because I had, as I'd mentioned earlier, the supplement train for me started in high school. It went all the way through the early parts of college and then I, and I wasn't having success. I was at that time taking maybe 33, 35 pills a day for everything you could think of under the sun.

That was nothing compared to today's anti aging enthusiasts who are taking 170.

You're pretty raw and innocent. Yeah, I guess so. But you gotta step up your game.

I have to step up my game dramatically here. But I would do that all at one time. You know, I wouldn't do it throughout the day, which would probably have been a better thing for me to do. I didn't space it out at all. I do it all at one time. And then I'd have to lay down for five minutes and get through some sort of shaking and nausea before I, you know, it settled in and I was ready to go.

But not to mention like the, the competition for absorption and that. A lot of people do that, like they take the lazy way out and they're like, I have all these supplements, I'm just taking them all at once. But yeah, you have to stack them properly. You have to take your fat soluble vitamins and your fish oils with a meal and a lot of times things like gut compounds like probiotics or colostrum on an empty stomach or enzymes on an empty stomach. And yeah, there's a science to it for sure. If you don't want to waste your money or like you mentioned, have to lay down watching the ceiling spin after you 30 pills.

That's exactly right. That's what I would do. So none of that really worked for me and so I laid off it altogether until I, you know, started working with this gentleman. And he, like you had a real knack for what to do. He knew what he was doing, he was educated on the subject matter and he started experimenting with different compounds and mixing them and matching them and putting them together. And with, with some ideas from me too. Sort of a collaborative effort here. But we stumbled into. We didn't have the Internet at that time, so I say we stumbled into it. He probably knew exactly what he was doing, but I always thought of it as stumbling into stuff that worked. Afa, beetro were not unknown of at the time. Cordyceps wasn't unknown of either. But that at that time wasn't part of it. That came later.

And eukinasia as an immune support you were mentioning, you take it as an immune support. But it's also, as you know, and we'll talk about later, a great blood builder too. But for me, when he put all this stuff together and I started experimenting with it, I had a dramatic change in how I could handle training. My oxygen uptake was better and my time to fatigue was lower. And again, speaking for myself, it was nothing short of a miracle for myself. And I had a great response to it and it helped me dramatically in terms of upping my level of training, getting more yards in, or not even necessarily more yards in, but higher quality yards and meters. Swimmers work in terms of yards and meters. And so it made a dramatic difference in terms of my training at that time. Once again, I was in. It's difficult to describe what a swim workout looks like for a sprinter, but there are these things called broken swims. I'm sure you're familiar with it. They do broken runs also.

I'm talking to a former water polo player.

There we go.

So you know. Exactly. Yeah, we would do broken sets, broken swims. We would do actually the Worst workout. I don't want to derail your story, so I'll make it super quick. The worst workout. I'll let you get back to the story. This is actually a good workout for anybody to know about you. You. You egg beater kick at the edge of the pool. Right. So you're just, you're just egg beater kicking. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's like the frog kick when you're doing breaststroke, except it's one leg at a time.

Right.

Beat the right leg, left leg, right leg, left leg. It's a, it's a. You know how water polo players stay elevated in the pool. Anyways, so you're at the edge of the pool doing the egg beater kick and arms in the air.

Arms in the air.

Of course, yeah. Arms in the air for shoulders above the water. I mean, it's hard. That was the strongest my legs ever were. And I actually, I was playing water polo while I was bodybuilding. And that's one of the ways I got my quads developed was I was playing water polo and teaching spin classes and, you know, I was doing some heavy squats and deads and stuff. But a big part of it was, you know, and I had shredded legs. My legs were so strong. I was playing water polo. And a big part of this exercise, because it was Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, we'd kind of use this as a finisher. Your partner's on the edge of the pool and standing up above you and they're holding a 20 to 30 pound med ball. So your hands are out of the water, your egg beating and they drop the med ball onto you and you gotta, you gotta throw it up almost like a wall ball or a thruster in CrossFit, except you're in the water and so you're egg beating and they just drop this ball on you over and over and over again. And you gotta get to 50 reps. And I mean, if you sink and you gotta like come up to the edge and you're gasping for breath, doesn't matter. Get back away from the wall. Another rep, and sometimes it'd take you like, you know, seven minutes to do 50 reps. Sucked. But at the same time. Long answer to your question. Yeah, I'm familiar with you with the brutality of some of these swim workouts.

Yeah, well, listen, you just described exactly what it's like to be a water polo player in training and the very first polo game. I don't think I mentioned this in the earlier podcast, but the Very first polo game I ever played on a high school level. I'd already set records as an athlete. As a swimmer, I was already pretty good in the water. I could do what I needed to do as a swimmer. But I looked at my coach, I'm not lying here, it's no exaggeration how tough that sport is. I looked at my coach after about 30 seconds swimming and said, I think I need to come out. This is a whole different. This is not the same thing. I'm swimming with my head up and my neck isn't that strong. And it's a whole different. It's the same muscle groups, but trained in an entirely different way to get through a polo game. And so I looked at him and I said, I think I need to come out. I'm serious about this. And he laughed and said, no, you're fine, keep swimming. And I think I Swam for maybe 15 or 20 more seconds in the game and I just turned left and swam right to the edge of the pool and pulled myself out so hard. Hard sport, yeah.

Makes a very ugly swimmer, I can tell you that.

Yeah.

Well, as far as the egg beater kick goes, there's a guy whose name you probably don't know. His name is Terry Schroeder and he was a four. He was sort of the Michael Phelps of water polo. Four time Olympian, head coach up at Pepperdine. You know, you know the name.

Didn't he have like a mustache?

Yeah, at the time he did. He studied. He's a great guy. He's a good friend of mine. We competed together for a long, long time. He obviously got a lot further than I did. An exceptional athlete, but I got a lot of. To manage a polo game from him. But the reality is I ended up having to quit it all together and leave it to guys like you so I could focus on swimming.

All right, so, so I, I derailed your story. Back, Back to supplements, back to broke.

Yeah, so back to broken swim. So the whole, the whole point I was getting at here was that during these broken swims, I was on world record pace for the first time in my life. That had never happened to me before in any, under any of my other coaches, a couple of whom, two of whom were very well known Olympic coaches and great coaches. But I didn't have the benefit of these supplements at that time. And I believe for me that these were the only changes at that time that made the difference here. And so naturally I was a believer. I thought that we'd fallen into the right formulas and since then, I've enhanced them a little bit, but that was the first one. And then the chlorella came about also along at the same time because we did know at the time that it was a good binder of heavy metals and toxins in the bloodstream. And as you've heard me say in other podcasts, I've always been a believer. If you can have cleaner content going to your muscles, that alone is worth doing so that you're getting cleaner blood and oxygen and flow where you need it when you need it most during training and of course during competition. So that's how the first two came about. It's all through the sort of creative creation of a collaborative effort with this doctor and me.

And the first two were the AFA and the Beetroot.

AFA and Beetroot were a combination, so they were a stack. I think of them as the AFA formula and the chlorella stack formula.

Okay. So the afa, basically the idea behind including that because a lot of people will use like algae for whatever detoxification or, you know, I've written about before how they can act as like a stem cell precursor, how they're a good source, they're like a good vegan source of fatty acids and a relatively complete form of amino acids, but specifically the conversion of nitrates to nitric oxide. So vasodilation delivery of more oxygen rich BL is something that I'd never really thought of it much before until I started looking into some of the research that you told me about and then sent over to me about chlorophyll and this pyrrole ring in chlorophyll.

Yeah, the blood developer.

Yeah, it's like the same as hemoglobin. And this is a study I brought up before about how I think it was. Sayer G first wrote about this on the Green Med Info website. Fascinating study. I'll find it and put it in the show notes for you guys over@bengreenfieldfitness.com Ben BioTropic podcast.

Individuals who consumed high amounts of chlorophyll combined with sunlight exposure actually produced ATP in the absence of actual calories. Meaning that.

It'S such an interesting compound in the human body that can produce ATP. But then it also is pretty much identical to the ring that you would find in hemoglobin. And so it's essentially acting as an oxygen delivery mechanism and an ATP generator. Even in the absence of actual, actual food stuff, it's almost, you can think of it almost like turning your body into metabolizing something the same way that a plant would. It's, it's super interesting stuff. What I wanted to ask you though, before I forget because I brought this up is the source. Because you, you the stuff. If I look at your label, it says blue, green, afa. Tell me about the source and kind of, kind of where you're getting this stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Well, everything that I get is from the purest available sources that I know of. You mentioned the hormone free grass fed Argentinian desiccated liver. So there isn't anything cleaner that I know of. So I try to get the cleanest stuff available. This comes from Klamath Lakes in Oregon, which is very pristine waters. It comes from about 30ft down.

Very clean, very good. And people can check that out and read about it themselves. But the main reason I want to be clear on this is why this particular algae is because of the three that I'm profound, there are more than these three. But spirulina, chlorella and AFA all do great things. And some of the things they do cross over, they're similar. For example, AFA is also thought to bind with heavy metals and toxins. But it's not the reason I have it. That's why I have chlorella in the chlorella formula for that purpose, because that is known for its ability to do that. But the AFA has three things in it or several things in it that really, really stand out. Its ability to help create stem cell growth or release.

The PEA in it, which is very strong. It has a nootropic effect, which I think is really important. A lot of athletes, even at the highest levels, again we've talked about this in the past, but at the highest level, have difficulty under pressure and focusing and concentrating. And.

World class athletes have this problem. And some of them, even at that level, don't compete or complete.

Their events the way they'd hoped that they would because they crumble under pressure. I don't think there's a panacea for that. I think you just have to get tough mentally and get to a point where you can handle the pressure and succeed. But part of what's in the AFA formula is phenylethylamine, which again, pea, which has a strong documented mood enhancing, mood elevation component to it and focus factor. So it has that nootropic effect. And I think for people who have concentration problems competing, AFA has a nootropic effect. Yes, it does, yeah. Very well known for that. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. You check it out. Phenylethylamine is what it is. And it's short. The short pronunciation for that is just P, E, A ph.

Ethylamine. Yeah.

Very, very strong.

That's like a psychedelic.

In high doses. I didn't realize. Very high doses. I didn't realize that that was in there. Very interesting.

It's very, very stuff. It helps. So here's. So this is critical to me. I did not have this problem. I enjoyed competing. I couldn't wait to get in the water. I had no focus issues, no clarity problems at all. I was sort of like a very linear animal at that time, so these weren't issues for me. But what I did have an issue with was how I felt during training or how I felt in the middle of a season. When you're doing, you know, 15,000 yards a day, 10,000 yards a day as a sprinter and heavy weight training in between, it's hard to stay uplifted and feeling good. And so this component helps you feel better while you're taking it. And I believe strongly that can also help athletes that have difficulty focusing or managing under pressure feel good too. So it's also known, by the way, as a feel good. I'll call it drug in quotes. It's not a drug per se, but it's also known as that. So that's one of the reasons I really like it. And you mentioned ATP conversion capabilities. So ATP stem cell and this nootropic effect are the primary reasons why I like this. It does so many other things. It helps with oxidative stress, it helps with oxygen transport.

Yeah, yeah, we've talked about, talked about algae a lot. I mean, it's definitely beneficial. I just, I hadn't really thought of it as an. As an altitude supplement though, or almost like an athletic performance supplement. More of like one of those recovery detox type of things. But yeah, once you dive into the research, it's. It's pretty fascinating when just like a little bit of algae will do for you. Now, the beetroot, most people have their heads wrapped around beetroot as being this thing that's like, you know, it's the color of blood, it's good for your blood, it vasodilates tissue. So that's kind of interesting. But one of the things that I also noticed on the research on your website was oxygenation of damaged cells or like an antioxidant type of effect. That's something that I wasn't really too familiar with. Are you able to speak to that at all? Like this idea of beetroot acting as an antioxidant or helping to repair cellular damage.

Again, another great question and important to know more about and why you push me to be better at what I than I do right now, but I only understand it's a great.

Oxidative stress support, but I don't exactly understand the mechanisms by which it achieves that.

Okay, got it. Interesting. I'll look into that and maybe post some of the research that I found on your website over in the show notes for people to check out. But I thought it was really interesting. Almost like the recovery support. It's kind of the opposite of algae, right? I always thought of algae as more of like, recovery and not necessarily performance, and beetroot is more performance, but it turns out they kind of, they kind of play dual roles in that respect.

I think they complement each other really, really well because I do think of the beetroot, as you mentioned, as a vasodilator and a good one. And I think of the pea as complementing that by way primarily of recovery and by feeling better about what you're doing when you're doing it. Training, competing, lifting you up, getting that natural, getting that natural lift. And that's something I say all the time to people who want to know. The primary difference between the chlorella and the AFA is I say, you know, think of more recovery and think of the nootropic effect and the lift, the natural lift you get from it that makes you feel better. Whereas the chlorella I think of as a. As a blood detoxer and a cleaner, along with all of the supportive ingredients in there that are all about blood development also.

Right, right.

And all generally with beetroot, encourage folks to load for about two weeks. It's kind of like caffeine, right? A lot of the studies on caffeine, they deload the participants for about 14 days and then they have them, meaning they don't use caffeine supplements at all. And then they'll take them on their race day or their big event day or the day for which they want improved performance and a true ergogenic aid from caffeine. And then your eyeballs are popping out your head. And beetroot's kind of similar, but in the opposite way. You actually load with beetroot. Colostrum is another one. I'll do with that. So a couple weeks before a race or a big event, you start to build the blood and, and build up a lot of the nitric oxide precursors that beetroot gives you by loading each day with beetroot. Whether it's a workout day or non workout day or a taper week where you're going easy or whatever, you, you literally just supplement every single day with beetroot. You know, in the case of, of like your, your biotropic afa, I know the dosage on there says one tablet, but I take three. So I would take three for two weeks because I'm an overachiever leading into the competition and load with beat. That way it works a lot better than just taking a boatload on the day you want to perform well when it comes to loading. And like I mentioned, I'll do the same thing with colostrum, right? To decrease gut permeability in the heat or gut discomfort in the heat. Colostrum has some interesting research behind it. So you can just load with that for a couple of weeks before you have some kind of an intense competition in hot weather. And it really helps to protect the stomach. So.

It'S an interesting compound when it comes to that.

You are an overachiever, man. I haven't the faintest idea how you do everything that you do as well as you do it, as good as you do it, as clear as you do it and find the time to compete for practically nine months in these spartan races. You're insane.

Well, I don't watch tv. I've got a few close friends and a lot of acquaintances, but not a lot of folks. I'll just randomly, at the drop of a hat, go out to eat with or like I, I'm kind of a fuddy duddy, right? Like I don't leave the house much and I, I don't go to gyms to work out because that adds an extra like 30 minutes with driving and going or meeting people or whatever. And.

There, there's another, another kind of key.

Push notifications. Of course those are almost always off. People get pissed because they'll leave me these important messages and I don't see them till like 3pm in the afternoon.

And if I could, if I could name one other biggie for people before we get into liver, which I want to talk about here in a second. If I could name one other, it would be that.

You know, I just don't go out on the town much, right? Like I don't go to restaurants or bars or cocktail parties. I'm just like, you know, I kind of live life by this rule that I know I don't do a lot of productive things after about 9:30. So after 9:30. It's pretty much just like sex, reading books, sleep, snuggling up with the kids, you know, whatever. But it's, you know, and then I'm just out like a light. So, yeah, I live like a monk, basically, but I'm a happy monk. I'm a happy monk.

So, yeah, but you're also, you're a brilliant. You're a freaking brilliant businessman. And I know this is off track here, but a subset of what you do is so deeply entrepreneurial that you ought to be teaching that also to people about how to manage, because I think you do it better than some of the pros out there, how you manage and organize time and the amazing productivity that you have. Okay, look, we'll move on. Go ahead.

Okay. By the way, I do teach that over at the. If you go to getkeown.com, i've got a whole coaching program over there. Thank you for throwing me a softball, Craig.

Oh, no. Hey, look, it's true and it's obvious, so it has to be said.

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Argentinian grass fed liver anhydrate. Liver anhydrate, Right. Which you actually call on your website, you call it vegan fed, which is horrible for me because all I can envision are Argentinian cows chasing and eating vegans. But I think I get what you mean. Argentinian grass fed liver anhydrate. No offense to the vegans out there. I don't want you to get eaten by cattle. That would be a horrible, horrible, scary death. Okay, so this grass fed liver anhydrate, I think a lot of people recognize liver as being one of those things that is great for the hormones. You know, it's nature's signature. In many cases, you eat liver and it actually assists you with, you know, a lot of the things you would imagine that organ to assist you with, you know, hormones, detoxification, et cetera. But why is it that you include this liver anhydrate so intensively into. I mean, you've got it in your AFA supplement, but I believe you also have it in your chlorella supplement too. Right?

Well, the reason that it's in there is because that was part of the early formula. And I didn't have the benefit at that time of the Argentinian fed. I had only the, at that time, a different, let's just say a different formula. And I don't think it was as clean and as good. It was great, but I don't think it was as clean, as good as the stuff that you can get today. Because the world has changed so much in terms of cleaner, cleaner dairy. And I really, really believe in it because as far as I know, maybe only oysters are the highest or the best bioavailable form of the B suite of vitamins than liveranhydrate. And some people have allergies to seafood. And so that's out. Yeah, so that's out. I couldn't use that. So I stuck with what I knew and I found a better version of it. As you mentioned, Argentinian, grass fed, no hormones, very, very clean, the cleanest you can get. And I like. It's just so damn good for you. It's just so loaded with all the right stuff for athletes. It's loaded with B12 being all the, well, the entire B suite. But one of the key things about it is that B9 and B12 combine to make, to assist in the making of red blood cells. And everything that I do in my formulas are generally about vasodilation or blood development or trying to find a way to support blood development, get more blood flow and more oxygen to where you need it, which as I always say, is, you know, it's your muscles and your brain where you need it most when you're training so that you can get better athletic outcomes, better training and all that stuff. But that's why the Argentinian liver is in there, because it's the best, it's the cleanest, and you gotta have that B suite of vitamins for the energy production and red blood cell support.

Okay, got it. So.

Oh, and one other thing.

Go ahead.

One other thing. It also, along with the afa, completes.

An electrolyte circuit, if you will, so that you get the complete electrolyte suite in there also, but primarily for the bees.

Oh really? Liver is a complete source of electrolytes.

It takes AFA to complete it. But the combination of.

I see. So combining AFA with. So basically, if you in your diet include. I know this sounds gross, but I do it. Algae and liver, you're getting a very good complement of electrolytes.

Correct.

Interesting. The other thing I noticed when you on your website have a research section on desiccated liver, there's a lot in there about the polypeptide protein, like substances that have messenger activity aimed at target tissues.

You know, for example, glandular support for supporting the human liver, like I mentioned, something very similar to Nature's signature. But then you also, in that research section on the liver.

You show one supplement or one study where they supplemented the diets of animals with desiccated liver and they increased their endurance by over 700%.

Yeah, that's.

I don't remember if this was the one on swimming mice or what kind of endurance they were doing, but shocking, the amount of endurance increase from the conception of this desiccated liver extract.

It's true. It was a guy named Urshah who did this study some time ago. It's well documented and well supported, and you're right, it is a shocking percentage increase. But that study's out there and it's real. And not suggesting that people can have the same results that the mice can have. But as you know, as an elite athlete, and certainly we both understand that any incremental improvement, I mean, look at the Olympics. We just finished watching all of these events. Some of them won by tenths and hundredths and thousandths of a second. And that's how these things are won. So again, I don't think anyone's going to see, just to be perfectly plain here, a 750% improvement in their performance, but any improvement that can be attributed to something like this is going to be the difference between winning and not winning, if winning is what you're all about, or just performing better or performing easier. A lot of people I talk to today aren't trying to achieve what Ben Greenfield is trying to achieve at Spartan, or what I used to try to achieve as an athlete, but they're more, as the term goes, process oriented. But in that process, you want to feel good, you want to feel better, and you want to, you still want to perform and you still want to feel great when you're training. And many of these people that are process oriented are all about having personal bests and personal records. So it matters whether you're competing at the highest level or the weekend athlete level.

Yeah. Or if you just want to get rid of the flu fast and overdose with stuff. So, so, or, or if you just don't like the taste of liver. I actually, I don't know if you meant for it to be this way, but they're, they're tableted, so I know that they, you know, they're, they're not one of those, like, meant to bypass dissolution in the stomach acid type of supplements or, you know, like at times, targeted release supplement. So I actually chew your tablets like candy.

I like the way so many people do.

Yeah.

So many people say what you just said and then they follow it up with what you also just said, which is, I like the way they taste. They find, yeah, they find them unoffensive and they're easy to chew. And I do recommend that for a lot of people.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so, so this afa, we covered most of the stuff that's in the beetroot and the chlorella. Or the, or the, the, not the chlorella in that one. It's the, it's the afa, right, the, the Blue Green Algae. So you have in the, in the, in your AFA supplement. It's basically Blue green algae, beetroot, the liver and cordyceps. What else? Oh yeah, cordyceps. I actually want to ask you a couple of questions about that. And then those are an echinacea, right?

Yes, correct.

Now I want to, I want to ask you about echinacea and then cordyceps. So when it comes to echinacea, we've, we've already hinted at the fact that it's, it is more than just support for the immune system. But can you delve into like, how, how you found echinacea to actually be some kind of like an athletic performance enhancer, not just an immune support?

Well, you know, I can have my madman moments too. And you know, again, sprinters, which is what I was, I was a sprinter. And we're always looking at ways to get more, more oxygen, any way to breathe more, except for in the 50, the 50 meter sprint, as you know, is just one breath and you go down the end of the pool and that's that. But in all these other events, you have to learn how to get more oxygen to your blood when you're training. And so I have these moments where I'll go crazy and do a lot of research and try to find things that are out of the box and unusual that someone else hasn't thought of before to achieve these things, this higher blood oxygenation. And so it turns out, and I didn't know this, believe me, I thought of echinacea always purely as an immune support. And we've been taking it for a long, long time for that reason. But it turns out that it has blood building properties. It's well known for this and well documented. In fact, I have a great study in my hands, or not literally in my hands, but. And I'll send it to you so you can read about it. Very, very good study that talks about it, that discusses it, and it's a very well known blood builder among those people who know, among this select crowd, and I like to think of it as you used the term earlier, you know, legal blood doping, or induced erythrocythemia, which is, you know, blood doping. And it has the ability to, from what I understand, and this is going to be in your wheelhouse, it activates.

Macrophage. Is that how you pronounce that activity?

Yeah. Macrophages, an immune system component.

Yeah, yeah. And stimulates the.

Prostaglandin.

Yeah, I know what you're getting at. It's that echinacea can stimulate macrophage activity. And the idea behind that, for those of you who have no clue what macrophages do, is it basically causes you to produce more prostaglandin. And prostaglandin is a protein that then stimulates the production of what scientists would use the highly technical term to describe as baby red blood cells, or actually serum erythropoietin, or epoxy, which is the one that you might be familiar with as being something that, like, a Tour de France cyclist might dope with. Not that I would accuse any Tour de Front cyclists ever of doping, but epo is. It's a hormone that gets secreted from your kidneys, and it stimulates your stem cells to develop into red blood cells from bone marrow. And so what you're saying is that echinacea stimulates the macrophage activity, that increases the prostaglandins, that then increases the erythropoietin production in the bone marrow.

Yeah, and it's an easy thing to miss in your research because no one's ever thought of it that way. And as I said earlier, a lot of the success I've had personally and with the doctor I mentioned earlier was stumbling into it, and this was a stumble into find for me. And when I did stumble into it, I started using it. And again, I have a sensitive body. I know it works and I know it doesn't work. And I don't have a suggestive mind either. So, in other words, when I put something together and I try it out on myself, it has to work on me. Me to believe it's going to work on everybody. And that's how I. That's again mentioned in one of my other podcasts with you. I think of myself as my own clinical study. So I put these things together, I try them out, and if they. And if they work on me, then I put them out there because I think they'll work on other people, too. But I've had, you know, for Me speaking for myself again, I've had tremendous results with them and a lot of people have too because I have nothing but great support coming back from the audience of users.

Well, you know what's actually to me even more interesting than echinacea that I was looking into recently was it increases the expression of heat shock protein. We're probably all familiar with this idea that a lot of the rage around saunaing these days is you want to increase your heat shock protein so that you're able to better handle environmental stressors like heat or inflammation or oxidative stress or going to race or train in a very hot area or building blood or being able to tolerate any kind of. It's even shown to been to be able like help with, with cold tolerance. So what I think is cool is that you can take echinacea and then sauna. And although they have yet to my knowledge to do a study on the tolerance to heat in a sauna or the ability to stay in a sauna longer to build even more blood with echinacea in your bloodstream, I'm actually starting to use it now this echinacea from your, your AFA to actually use as, as like a pre sauna aid.

It's a cool stack to actually do echinacea and then go in the sauna because you're going to boost your red blood cell production even more because you're expressing even more heat shock protein. So it's kind of a cool hack.

Very interesting. I know that. Very, very interesting. And it gives me an excuse to get into the Sonomore now.

There you go. Boom. Okay, so that's everything in the af, basically the biotropic AFA which is like kind of like component one of this formulation that you've designed. So we got our afa, grass fed liver anhydrate, cows chasing vegans, eating them up, echinacea, beetroot and then cordyceps. Again like I mentioned, we've talked about that a lot before on the show as being something that assists with.

With altitude performance. And when it comes to cordyceps, when did you start actually putting that into your compounds?

So that is a new addition to me. When I discovered cordyceps it simply made sense again along the oxygen delivery line. It is a really, really robust herb. It's an amazing herb and it does so many more things. In fact, a lot of what's in these ingredients have doubling effects, which I think is a good thing. But the primary reason that I went with cordyceps and like cordyceps, again, documentation. And I mentioned this again, one of our get togethers, but it's worth repeating because it's. The primary reason I have it is that the polysaccharide strings in there have. One of them in particular has oxygen strings in it which are released in the body and absorbed at a cellular level. And again, the whole idea, if you can get more oxygen into the bloodstream and delivered where it needs it most, you're going to perform better and feel better when you're doing it. So it's all about the oxyge oxygen delivery and time to fatigue with the cordyceps is why it's in there.

Yeah. From what I understand, when it comes to cordyceps and specifically how it's used in the process of aerobic respiration, basically it increases hepatic blood flow. And when you increase hepatic blood flow, you elevate your liver ATP levels and you get increased blood flow which allows oxygen to enter cells. So there's a big increase in oxygen delivery, specifically in the liver, but then you get increased oxygen to a lot of other organs as a result of the increased blood flow.

Right.

I know that one of the other things when it comes to cordyceps is there's this link between liver ATP levels and basically a decrease in the amount of ATP that you need to actually produce via other mechanisms. So there's almost like this energy sparing type of mechanism and it's caused by that induction of ATP synthesis in the liver. So basically a decrease in ATP consumption because of a depressed sodium pump function is what happens. You get this high energy state in the liver and you essentially just need to produce less ATP in general because you're inducing the body to produce more in one of the primary organs. So for a long time I didn't really understand what was going on and people would say, oh, it's like adrenal activation of lung function tissue. Which to me as a physiologist didn't really make sense. But just this basic idea of increased hepatic blood flow and hepatic ATP production, it kind of makes sense now why cordyceps work so well, especially when the body is under stress and in need of extra ATP because of say like low oxygen availability or aerobic fatigue. So yeah, it's a fascinating compound. I mean, you have reams of research on it on your website and I'll certainly link to that. Again, if you guys are listening in, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic podcast and I'll have a link to that in there. Now I know we spent a lot of time talking about afa, but the cool thing is in your other one, your chlorella supplement, a lot of the ingredients are kind of similar. Like you have the grass fed liver anhydrate in there and the echinacea and the cordyceps and the beetroot. But I believe the only differentiating characteristic between that and the one we just talked about is you use chlorella instead of afa, right?

That's correct. And that's the main reason for that is because, well, they do different things and some people just don't have the need for the, what I call the lift that you get from afa. They've got a natural lift. They're like you, they're upbeat, they're positive, they're always on the go. They just don't need that additional focus that I think that the AFA product really gives along with all the other great benefits. But they're much more interested in pure, I was going to say purification detoxification of the blood. And so I built this formula around that, but still maintaining the basic theme of blood oxygen support with the additional ingredients. So yeah, I love the idea of detoxifying the blood. And that's why the chlorella.

When you say detoxifying the blood, what exactly do you mean when you say that?

Yeah, maybe again, not the right word. When I say detoxifying the blood. What I mean is that chlorella is well documented to bind with and remove via the liver.

As a binder?

Yes, as a binder. Heavy metals, toxins and junk in the bloodstream, thus producing a cleaner blood. So that's what I mean when I say that word. Maybe there's a better word.

No, I mean. Well, I mean, yeah, binding, chelation, it actually has. The main component in chlorella is that acts as a chelator, is called a phytokelatin or phytokelatin, depending on how you want to pronounce it and what area of the world you're from. But basically chlorella doesn't bind to minerals like calcium or magnesium or zinc. So it doesn't remove a bunch of the good things that you, you need. But basically it sequesters heavy metals and it transports them through the body and then excretes them. And that's because of these chloroplasts in their cell walls which have things like sulfur and potassium and calcium and phosphorus in them. And that's what allows them to actually bind to these metals and literally just remove them from the bloodstream. And there's some evidence and certainly plenty of research on your website about the ability of chlorella to bind to things that go above and beyond just metals, such as other water based contaminants, other toxins that we might find from modern post industrial pollution. Lead, for example, which we know can suppress stem cells in the bone marrow and that would lead to a lower ability to be able to build red blood cells. Chlorella can assist with lead chelation. There's a lot of interesting research on chlorella and one of the things I was actually, you know, I've talked about chlorella a lot before on the show, but I did a podcast. By the time this podcast is released, Craig, I think that podcast will have come out, or it might have already, but it was about this idea of like sleeping using pulsed electromagnetic field therapy and how when you sleep and you're in that grounded or earth state, there, there is a little bit better, like cellular cleanup effect or you know, more, more of what's called glymphatic drainage, which is how the neural system actually cleans itself up to a certain extent while you're asleep. But the problem is that if you don't have, if you like, if you're doing like some kind of high intensity grounding or earthing and you aren't going to sleep with some kind of a binder in your system and you happen to have toxins or metals or things like that, all you're doing is just laying there, letting them circulate. And so the idea is you're going to use grounding or earth your PMF in the same way that you would use like echinacea before you get in the sauna, you would take something like chlorella before you go to bed while you're doing that pmf, earthing, grounding, any treatment like that, because it actually sequesters and binds and allows you to remove via your, your stool a lot of these heavy metals and toxins that would otherwise just be circulating through your bloodstream as a response to this, you know, whole earthing, grounding, PMF thing that a lot of people are doing. So I think that's just fascinating that you can, that you actually want like a blood cleanup type of thing in your body before you go to bed.

Yeah, it just makes sense, doesn't it?

If you're, if you're one of those people that biohacks your sleep, who does that? Who of our listeners does Anything?

Only Ben Greenfield.

Yeah, and everyone listening to lonely person. Everybody else just listens in and laughs at me. Okay, so biotropic chlorella, you can stack this though with afa, right? Because. So that's what I've been doing. But there's some redundancy between both supplements. So I'm just asking you honestly, as a founder, I don't know if I've ever even asked you this question. Am I just wasting money supplements by taking both at the same time?

No, not at all. Not only can you, I also do. And in some cases I'll even stack all three of them because there are different ways to achieve, in some cases the same thing. And the complementary effect, like we talked about, the electrolyte circuit in the AFA product, they complement each other. So for someone seeking the lift and the blood support from afa, but also want the blood cleaning effect, there's no reason at all you can't take both at the same time and double up. People do it all the time. And as I say, I have a lot of people that do all three that will take the AFA to get the lift in the morning. They'll boost it with the Oxia product, which I know we're coming up on, and end the day with chlorella. And the reason, by the way, okay.

So you do it like that, which would make sense because then you have the chlorella in your system before you go to bed.

Exactly. Not only that, but.

Some of my audience has told me that they get that lift late in the day if they take AFA late in the day and it's affected their sleep. So I always say do the AFA in the morning and do the chlorella in the afternoon. Now, we have two reasons to do it for the sleep cleaning and also just to make sure you do sleep right.

Yeah, makes sense. I like it. Okay, so like you mentioned, then we take a, you know, flip a complete 180, I guess, you know, this next one still has the cordyceps in it. There's this newer one that you made for blood oxygenation and vasodilation. But then you get into, well, one thing you would find in watermelons, another thing you would find in apples. And rather than just shipping watermelons and apples to people's homes, you've actually developed this supplement that is, aside from the cordyceps, primarily a combination of citrulline and malic acid. And I want to dive into each of those. So tell me about citrulline and why you included it in this. In this third supplement. So we talked about the AFA and the Chlorella supplements that you have. But then this new one, Oxia O X C I A Citrulline is one of the primary ingredients. Why citrulline?

Well, citrulline because it uptakes better than arginine. You know, it converts to arginine in the body. But it's been arginine being like the.

Darling supplement right now in the fitness industry for acting almost like nitric oxide.

For the whole body.

Correct? Correct.

Or viase for the whole body.

Yes, Right, right. That's true. But for those of us in the know, so to speak, L. Citrulline does a better job of it. It's well documented. Do a better job. And the reason I combine it with the other two ingredients is malic acid or malate. Either one malic or malate help it transport. They bind and it transports better through the body. And malate is also known to help fight fatigue. So you not only get the vasodilation effect or the vasodilation effect, but you get a time to fatigue effect from the malate and better transport. And then of course, the cordyceps, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, in this case, what I put together is what I call a brute force or pure force vasodilation system with the oxygen transport of cordyceps. So that's why those three ingredients. And it's just a clean less. When I say less robust, I don't mean not as good as the other formulas. It's really just designed for people who want to just get that blast of vasodilation with oxygen delivery and transport in the cleanest, fastest, and best and purest way that I know how to serve it up.

Okay. So I want to back up and take a deeper dive into the science on this stuff. That was a good overview. But specifically with citrulline.

And its superiority over arginine, basically citrulline gets more easily absorbed than arginine, but then it gets converted into arginine in the body is what you're saying.

That's correct. That's right.

Okay. Now arginine would be what would be involved in, like I mentioned earlier, the vasodilation of the blood vessels. So you get greater blood flow to cells. But the idea with this particular formula is you're trying to remove lactic acid and ammonia more readily and. Go ahead.

Yeah. Just. Just want to point out that a lot of people would say, well, why not just take the arginine and that's again because you get a bigger and better and better upt to uptake from the L citrulline conversion than you do from direct arginine. So I just want to make that point.

Okay, all right.

L citrulline is the way to go.

Okay. So when it comes to actual studies on L citrulline, like, like bodies in the streets, there's been, there's been some studies on, I believe, both anaerobic and aerobic exercise. The one that I found on aerobic exercise or anaerobic exercise was they increased force output by 23%.

Right.

With about 3 grams per kilogram of citrulline. And then for the aerobic one, it was like a treadmill study and a huge reduction in time to exhaustion. And that was with citrulline use. I think they were at about 3 grams or so of citrulline. But then they also showed an increased restoration of muscle protein synthesis and muscular function, even in a fasted state, again, which is interesting. So there's almost like an anti catabolic effect while fasting. And from what I understand, that's because it increases your blood availability of specific amino acids. So a lot of times folks who are fasting will be concerned about catabolism and I, a lot of times will recommend essential amino acids for that. But it sounds like citrulline would even increase that availability even more.

It does, and it does a much better job of it than anything that I'm aware of. And I also want to point out too, you've mentioned the study section of the site too, that anywhere where I'm not exactly completely complete on the science and mechanisms behind this stuff, it's all available on the studies link on my website. So this stuff is all backed up and supported.

Yeah, there's also a little bit of an activation of the MTOR pathway with citrulline and that's a signaling pathway that regulates the synthesis of skeletal muscle protein. If you google or look up, I believe it's whatever, myostatin knockout mice or something like that, you can see what happens when that pathway gets too out of control. Or myostatin knockout bowls or strange looking flexing German children, all sorts of interesting examples of the MTOR pathway getting too out of control. But you get a slight upregulation in the MTOR pathway with citrulline supplementation, a little bit of activation of mtor. So not that this supplement is designed to be a muscle building supplement, but it is interesting the host of things that citrulline can do. And that's the one that's higher in watermelon, right? Yeah, yeah. That was a popular backstage supplement when I was bodybuilding was watermelon to actually bring a bunch of blood flow to the surface of the skin. That and dark chocolate and red wine.

It was. It works. It all works. I was really surprised to find out that the cleanest and best source of that stuff came from apples and watermelon. I thought it was synthetic, but that is the best stuff. And as I mentioned one of our earlier podcasts, there's a particular time to get that watermelon and apple so that you get the best L citrulline conversion or no conversion, that is.

What do you mean, best time?

Yeah, I can't give away too many secrets, but let's just say there's L citrulline and there's L citrulline, and we have L citrulline.

Oh, wait, you mean the form.

Yes. Correct. Yes.

Okay.

Okay, sorry, I thought you were saying, like, the timing of it. So basically it has to be the specific form, L Citrulline.

Yeah. Yes. Well, let's leave it at that.

Okay. All right, Mr. Mystery. You gotta hold some of your cards close to your chest, I guess, when you're in the supplement.

It's a powerful formula. It's a really good formula. But again, I suggested a lot of people take it who feel and believe they have a really, really clean diet and don't necessarily need all of the additional support mineral, vitamin support that the other supplements give. And they just want to chase after clean oxygenation and vasodilation.

Okay, so then you've got malate, which is the component you would find in apples that you've combined with the citrulline.

Why?

Yeah, delivery. When the two are combined, it delivers better. They bind well, and it helps move the L citrulline through the body cleaner than without it, and faster and better and better absorption with it.

Okay, so the technical term for that would be the citrulline malate. That's when you combine L citrulline with malic acid.

Yes. And the other reason is because mallet has, again, well documented support for helping fight fatigue.

Okay, you mean as a lactic acid buffer?

Yes, correct, as a buffer.

Okay, interesting. Now, I know malic acid is also. It plays a pretty critical role in the production of ATP because it's part of the mitochondrial chain where nadh get oxidized in the electron transport chain to produce ATP. The malate, aspartate shuttle is part of that. It actually increases the efficiency when you take el malate of this malate aspartate shuttle. And so you get a bunch more ATP availability in the mitochondria. So it's this combination of lactic acid buffering and then ATP availability. It's also another fascinating one in terms of its ability to buffer the exercise induced increase in things like acidosis and lactic acid and ammonia. Again without the explosive diarrhea effect of baking soda, which is what people would have traditionally done.

Yeah, and thanks for bringing up the ATP piece because it's not a minor side note to be talking about. As we all know that ATP foundation is critical to. Critical to energy and support. So ATP is a big theme throughout all of my products.

Yeah, yeah. ATP and then like nitric oxide or vasodilation, which also. I think I mentioned this on another podcast we did. It makes these things great for pre sex too. Actually. They're really great for that. It's almost like popping a bunch of Viagra. If you stack Oxia with either chlorella, the chlorella one or the, the AFA one. So you can, you can toss out your male sexual enhancement products as well, or your female blood flow products.

That's true. I never bring this up. I let them come up naturally because, well, I'm trying to solve.

Be careful your website doesn't get banned.

Well, but it's funny, I always say I'm trying to solve athletic performance problems and then that term performance always gets me into trouble. But you're right, there's a long, long history going back to Roman times with beetroot and sexual performance. And even cordyceps is. Cordyceps has a performance, you know, sexual performance capability. I'll let that lay there. But you know, these things are true in all of the supplements that I produce. But those are all just side benefits. There weren't the prime. They weren't even on my mind when I was creating these things and putting them together. They weren't. We're just trying to find a way to get more oxygen, more blood flow, better blood, cleaner blood, all that stuff to, you know, to affect athletic performance. And lo and behold, you know, Ben brings up all these great side benefits like lowering blood pressure and sexual performance. And I have actually had people, and I've never promoted that, and I've had people write to me and say, gee, you know, I'm noticing this and I'm noticing that. Does it do this and that also meaning what we just talked about and the Answer is yes, but I never promote it for that reason. I'm not trying to solve that problem. But apparently it does solve that problem for some people.

Yeah, it's amazing for that. And the other interesting thing, not to kick the malate horse to death, but they also did this study. It's a horrible study, but they looked at crushed muscles in rats and they showed these muscles to regenerate what are called their myotubes, which are part of the actual muscle fibers themselves far more readily when they were treated with this polymer of malic acid. So there's almost like this double whammy effect when it comes to recovery as well. So it's, it's super duper interesting. It's, it's a, it's a very intriguing stack. This malic acid citrulline stack that. Then, you know, like I mentioned, you've got cordyceps in that one as well. And so you would, you would say something you could do would be like, how, how'd you put it? You said AFA in the morning and then like oxy, a pre workout and the chlorella one before bed.

That's what I recommend. Everybody's chemistry is different and so I recommend that people experiment and find out what works for them. But yes, that's, that's the order in which I recommend people do it. AFA in the morning, oxia and then chlorella in the afternoon.

Okay. Okay, got it. So I know that all three of these are over on your site and I'm going to link to everything along with the podcasts if folks go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic podcast I'm working pretty, pretty closely, pretty hand in hand, so to speak. If I can find my words with Craig this race season for all. Like I mentioned, the, the Spartan mountain races I'm doing and these train to hunt competitions and just the, the bigger hunts and adventures I'm going on in general. I am going to be popping these things every single day during the entire race season. And I'm, I'm proud to announce that relationship between Biotropic Labs and I as an athlete because I love these ingredients and what they do and they're a perfect addition to my pre race pantry. And in terms of the discounts and things that we've talked about in the past, Craig, do all those still stand? I think we had code, Ben, that people could use to get a discount over on the site, for example.

Yeah, absolutely. By all means, we can do that. Or if you want to make It Spartan. You could do it Spartan just because you're doing it Spartan races or. But whatever works for you.

Well, I'll tell you what folks, I realize this is totally opening the kimono. You guys can hear Craig and I setting up a discount code for you live. We could keep Code Ben active because that's the code that we gave people before and the fat 20% discount over on Craig's website. And I'll link to all that in the show notes here. We could also just set up Code Spartan too if you want to.

No, we'll just do Ben. Everyone knows Ben and that's what we've been.

People try that all sorts of websites. Anyway, there's like I tried Ben 10 here and Ben 20 there and Greenfield 10 here. And like I'll sometimes get emails from companies are like, why? Why is this appealing@retailmenot.com and I'm like, because somebody, somebody posted on Reddit after listening to the podcast. So that's the way the Internet works anyways though. Okay, so Code Ben gets people 20% discount. And also if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic podcast, I will link to all of the other pretty entertaining and very informative podcasts that Craig and I have done in the past. And then also if you have questions for Craig or me about any of the things that we talked about or some of the research that Craig mentioned, anything that you heard during this show, simply leave a comment or a question right there in the show notes and either Craig or myself will jump in and reply. I would highly recommend if you're doing any form of like racing heavy training. I am not a doctor, do not misconstrue this as medical advice. But perhaps you have things like low red blood cell count or low iron or low ferritin and you're trying to find some natural way to address that. This could be something that you might want to look into. That is not a prescription. That is simply me just saying giving you an example of another situation which it could be used and of course for the immune system, especially the, the AFA one with the echinacea in it is fantastic. So which I guess the chlorella has the A. Has the echinacea in it too. So anyways, try all three bottles. Grab them. Discount Code Ben over there gets you a 20 discount. Oh, and, and I know that if people want to get all three bottles, we had a discount code for that too. And that was pretty simple. It's Ben 30 and that gives I think we have it set up as 30% if you get all three bottles. That's a pretty slamming deal as well. If you want to just try everything at once. It's code Ben. 30 gets you 30% on all three bottles and you can, you can stack them in the way that Craig and I were just talking about. So.

Craig, fascinating as usual, dude.

Hey, it's always fascinating talking to you. Always, always learning something. And thanks for pushing me and making me up my game. Next time we talk, it'll be better than this, but thank you. It's always great. I love chatting with you, with you. You're a lot of fun. And you, you always carry me.

Dude, I, I can't wait to be. Be using this stuff all race season. I'm stoked.

I can't either. I can't either. I know you'll, you'll have great performances and I'll be watching. You're going to be up in Whitefish, Montana. I might shoot up there and watch you run that one.

Yeah, you should, dude. You should. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a battle for me right now. We're debating between me racing in the mountains in the spartan race there or doing the train to hunt in the mountains there. Either one will be equally, equally brutal. But I'll be announcing soon which one I'll be, I'll be doing. But either way, yes, I'll be in the backwoods of Montana somewhere and in May racing hard.

So I don't know how you do it, but you'll do it.

Yeah. All right, folks. Well, well, it all, it all comes down to not watching Family Guy at night. That's what it comes down to. Quit doing that. I miss it, but I don't do it anymore.

Great discipline.

All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Craig Dinkel. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic podcast. That's B I O T R O P I C podcast. Biotropic podcast. All the discount codes, links, the studies, everything are over there. Have an amazing week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sa.

Sam.