Biohacking Creativity, How Much Coffee You Should Drink, And Ben's Spiritual Awakening

If you're looking for something that is a little bit friendlier to the pocketbook. Because supplements are expensive.

Sure.

The old school writer's friend of cup of coffee and cigarette.

Yep.

You replicate that with cup of coffee. What you do, and this is a relatively inexpensive supplement, is you get the supplement called L Theanine. Okay, yeah, I've heard of powder you can find anywhere. About 100 milligrams paired with a cup of coffee causes the coffee to have a longer, slow bleed into the system. And L. Theanine shifts you into alpha brainwave mode to enhance creativity. And it's just a cheap hack for a cup of coffee. And yes, even though you wouldn't necessarily want to smoke a cigarette back to the temple, you can use sources of nicotine that wouldn't really have many of the artificial sweeteners or anything in them at all. I think the best one for that is they make nicotine toothpicks. So you can literally have a nicotine toothpick, like a cigarette sticking out of your mouth, cup of coffee with a little L Theanine in it. And that's like a dirt cheap hack a lot of people don't know about. They'll get you through hours upon hours of writing.

Foreign.

Welcome back to Conversations podcast with Pastor Lyle. Today I am joined by my new friend, Mr. Ben Greenfield. How you doing, bro?

I'm pretty good. Especially considering this is like the first church I think I've ever been to that has a fancy toto toilet with the bidet.

Yes.

Literally, like in the. In the sanctuary, whatever you want to call it over there. Yep, that's. You guys have stepped it up.

What'd you think about that?

I don't know if I'm allowed to say this on your podcast, but there's even like, all the way down to organic tampons. Like you guys have it really figured.

That's exactly right. Yeah, we're trying to, you know, biohack the church, bro.

Yeah, yeah.

That's probably a phrase you never heard before, biohacking your church.

No, I haven't heard that.

A lot of.

A lot of Christians are unhealthy, starting with the warm water bidet Seems like a good way to go for me.

Let's go, man. Let's go. Well, for some of you guys, you may not know Ben. You've never been exposed, perhaps to his work, to his books. I have an amazing book of his right here, which is massive. You could knock somebody out with this, bro.

You could.

Boundless.

Yeah, it was meant to be a Workout tool.

The first book of yours I ever read was beyond training and I had the Kindle version. Was it this big? Physically?

No, it was smaller than that. I kind of wanted people to buy two so they could do their bicep curls with the boundless book. But no, that one is big. That one took me three years to write and just like pull together all the information. I'm actually working on an update to it now, but I was telling you before we started recording, I just wrote the equivalent of that for parenting, for family and parenting and education and legacy and discipline. And it's called Boundless parenting. And it's, it's that big. But in my opinion, more meaningful than a book that teaches you how to like, live a long time and have six pack abs. This book is about legacy and generational wealth and educating your children and defying the status quo and creating young human beings who are resilient and free thinking and creative. And as a, as a dad and a husband who's grown to appreciate faith and family even more than fitness now.

Yes.

Like, it's, it's. I'm like, pinch me now. I'm dreaming now. The book's actually like being shipped out and people are getting it and posting pictures of it.

So are you getting some good feedback of people doing what's in the book and seeing immediate fruit with their children?

Oh, yeah. I've had multiple parents write in. Several of them have children who are now in prison. A few others have kids who are addicted to sugar. No, I'm just kidding. I've gotten very little feedback so far about the, about the book from. Because people, I mean, as we're sitting here talking like people are literally just now like posting on Instagram and stuff. But, but the pre reads I've gotten from people have been like, yes, there is no book that exists like this. I basically crowdsource 33 different sets of parents, from pastors to educators to, to like epidemiologists to all these folks, to get the best of the best wisdom and knowledge from many people as I could. Come on and then put it all together in like this cookbook for parenting. Wow. Yeah.

I think the first parenting book that of yours that I read was also a Kindle version, a digital version, teeny.

Tiny book I wrote.

Yes.

When, when my, my sons were like six. And so of course I had the whole parenting game figured out. Figured out, all figured out. Because you know, the picture on the front is one of my sons like swinging his kettlebell, his first kettlebell in the backyard. And it's all about, like, how your kids should be barefoot and why you should let them, like, lick the floor and get kissed by the dog. And how to work out with your kids and how to arrange the house so they don't get exposed to like, dirty electricity and lighting for their optimized circadian. Basically, like how to biohack a superhuman kid. Wow. Which is kind of like, I gotta.

Go back and read.

For the first probably eight years of my kid's life, I was pretty gung ho. Like, these are gonna be little, like, you know, 4am Burpees and kettlebells, ice baths at 7, liver at 8 for breakfast type of kids. And I backed way off on it.

Okay.

I mean, we're pretty easy. I mean, we still do. And this is, for me, one, one of the best parts of my week. Multiple times per week. That's like this father son bonding experience that I think is wonderful for adults and for children is we do breath work, heat, cold breath or cake. So we, we have a sauna and we get in the sauna. I jack it up at like 5:30. We usually have our family dinner at like 7. Okay. And so about 5:30, I'll walk out of my office in the basement, turn up the temp of the sauna, and then I call my sons down at six and we all climb in the sauna. And it's already at like 160 degrees. And it's an infrared sauna.

Okay.

Infrared sauna makes light that heats up your tissues way more deeply and effectively than like a traditional dry sauna.

Right, Right.

Steam sauna. I think infrared sauna, even though they consider it to be like a bastardization of sauna culture, if you'd ask somebody from Finland.

Right.

Saunas are really big. And where all the research has been done on dry saunas, there's a lot happening in terms of, like, the photons of light exciting your mitochondria and causing this deep release of toxins and metals that occurs when you're in infrared.

Okay.

So we get in the infrared and we dive into about 20 to 40 minutes of breath work. And it's a lot of kind of like Wim Hof style stuff. This is not like, sit and breathe and dwell on your positive affirmations.

Right, Right.

Very intense. I mean, to the point where right now we're training for a free diving trip. So we're doing a lot of exhale hold, inhale holds. So we do 20 to 40 minutes. So my sons are learning how to. How to turn up or Turn down the dial on their nervous system, control their physiology, control their stress. Focus through something hard where you're not moving in like a seated lotus position. And then once we finish and we're drenched in sweat and our heart rates are through the roof and our brains are just completely flooded with oxygen, we've blown off a bunch of CO2 and everybody's veins are dilated from all the nitric oxide going through their systems. These are, these are my twin 14 year old sons. Then we march out this time of year through the Snow, barefoot, like 50 yards out to this little wooden shelter I have out in the forest back behind our house where we've got this giant cold. It's one of those old, like fitness swimming pools with like the endless current that you swim against.

Yes.

But I turned it into an icy, amazing plunge. So we get in the plunge and we do the ice and then we go in, get ready to have dinner.

Okay.

And it is amazing for any human being to incorporate heat and cold and breath work. And so of all the things that are in that tiny superhumans book, the one thing that really stuck was we do heat, cold and breath work. Incredible. It's. You feel so good, it's almost addicting.

Should we be doing this with our children? My son is 8.

There's like Scandinavian and Russian populations and you know, even Native American lore of people literally from the time their kids are nearly newborn, throwing them in icy cold rivers and lakes and oceans and getting that mammalian dive reflex that occurs when you take that sharp breath in when you're first born, re triggering that over and over again through a child's early years of life. As we wait for the social workers to knock on the door of the church here, of course, yeah, drag us away.

They're irate at this point.

For all the hypothermic children, basically, it's great for a kid's immune system, it's great for a kid's nervous system and stress tolerance. It helps to convert their white adipose tissue into this metabolically active brown fat that keeps them warm and keeps their metabolisms elevated. I think it's fine for your kids to get started with cold as early as possible. I mean, you know, with my kids, when we take a shower, I'd put the water on cold. When I go swimming, they'd be on my back, you know, in the pool.

Yes.

You know, they've just always grown up with this notion that cold is not something to be feared, that you can go outside during their homeschool. But you know, Go outside during the school day and be like, have your shirt off and be barefoot and be walking around the snow and that's perfectly fine. And actually good for you.

That's amazing.

I think that humans who embrace cold and who even like live through winters versus all of you weaklings here in Tennessee who freak out when ice develops in the windshield.

The whole city right now, by the way.

No one's doing 45 degree rain anyways though. So I think that winter and cold definitely has this resilience effect on the human body. That's probably why you see like the seals getting cold and hypothermic in the water. And it's why you see, you know, the Russians doing their cold baths. Yes. And it's. There's definitely something to it.

That's amazing, man. I know for me, anytime I've done cold like a ice bath, and I used to do it a lot more often than I do today, the effects of it, I mean, it's just huge. If you've never done it before, you have to do it.

It's hard not to feel good when you get out of the ice bath or die. The cold shower. And yeah, it sucks during. And there are certain things you can do to alleviate some of the suckedness. Like, you know, breath work beforehand.

Right.

That's how Wim Hof got popular was he was fully in letting go. Fully in letting go. And you do that for. For three to four rounds, you know, with each fully in letting go being like 30 to 40 breaths. And with each, you're taking a deep inhale hold and then exhale all the air out. And you hold the exhale and each exhale gets longer and longer. And when you do that, you get this flood of nitric oxide and warmth and blood through your body that allows you to hold your breath longer, which you shouldn't be doing in cold water. You don't want to shallow water blackout.

Right.

But it also causes your body to be able to handle the stress a little bit better. So a lot of people will do like breath work and then get into the cold. That can make it easier. There are things that can accelerate your ability to be able to burn fat when you're really cold. Like green tea, for example, berberine, a common supplement you can get at a health food store. That'll be caffeine can even accelerate it. Sure. That's another one. Getting the head wet early on in the process. A lot of people keep their head dry.

Yeah.

But if you can get your head wet, get all the way under there, it activates that mammalian dive reflex I was talking about.

Yep.

Triggering the main nerve that snakes through your body called the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is responsible for turning up or turning down your nervous system. So when you get your head wet, when you first get in, what that does is it allows your vagus nerve to help you to calm yourself down a little bit better.

Okay.

And then there's like the. What would be called like a dorsal.

Stressed out, crouched over, rolled up in a fetal position. Almost like drawing. Let's say you're in the bath, drawing your knees up to your chest and putting your head down.

Right.

That triggers the body stress response. That's like. Okay. That's like the turtle mode, right?

Yeah.

Versus lay back. Put your head back luxuriously against the back of the tub or wherever else you're doing a cold soak and open up your body. Or if you're in the shower, open up your hands and your thumbs and turn your shoulders back. That pose sends a message to the body. It's almost more like a power pose. Yeah. Oh, hey, I'm in control. Things are just fine here.

Fine.

This is good for me.

Yeah, I love this.

Exactly. And then finally there's like the people on Tick Tock or Instagram or whatever posting videos of them doing 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 15 minutes on these long ice soaks. That's. That intimidates a lot of people.

So do you need to do that?

No. You get benefits after, like, 10 seconds in terms of dopamine response and the. The adrenaline and epinephrine response. For me, most of the time, it's two to a maximum of five minutes that I'll stay in the cold. You know, my. I'm skinny and I don't like being that cold anyways.

Right.

But you don't have to, like, do these super long, epic, you know, cold baths where, you know, you have your whole playlist pulled up and you know, your family knows you're going to be in there an hour. Hogging the bathroom in the ice. No. These can be, like, very brutal. Quick cold shower after workout, or do a breathwork session for 20 minutes in the sauna and then go jump in the cold for a couple of minutes, then get out. Like, these brief bouts of cold are just fine.

I love that. Yeah, I love that. So if somebody doesn't have an ice plunge, for instance, because I would love to have one. And every time I get on Instagram or I go to websites to look, even these plastic barrels, they're trying to sell for like 799 overpriced California. Yeah. What is happening with that? Do you just use your regular cold water in your shower? Because that doesn't seem cold enough for me.

What. What research. Research has shown is that 55 degrees or colder gives you an effect.

Okay.

It depends where you live, how cold the water will get. But they actually make you. Could I forget the brand, but you can look it up. It's. It's like.

Probably the Google term would be like cold thermogenesis shower or something like that. They make shower heads that will cool the water as it comes out of the shower.

O.

Like a little chiller system on the shower head. And I think that's like 70, 80 bucks that would allow you to take a super cold shower.

Okay.

The other hack is you can just go to the. The feed store and get a cattle trough for a fraction of the cost of these big tubs.

That's what I have.

Yeah. And you just fill that with water and drop by the gas station, grab some ice every now and again and keep it cold.

You get one for 100 bucks, by the way.

Yeah. Tractor supply. Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't have to be that cold. If you put ice in and it's like the fall or the winter, it's going to stay below 55 easily.

Yeah.

And then there's these nice biohack systems like the Marazco and the cold plunge and the cold tub, and a lot of these have actual chiller systems and ozone cleaning systems and all these fancy bells and whistles. And. Yeah. In the middle of the summer, it's 100 degrees out. Knowing there's something out in your backyard that's going to stay at like 33 degrees no matter what is nice, but it is expensive. The other thing you want to remember is if you have like one of those cattle troughs that you fill up with water and ice, it can get dirty. And the trick for that, if you don't want constantly change out the water is every time you do it, just put a couple of tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide in. Okay. And it's easier on your body than chlorine. Easily cleans the water. If you have some funky friend who's getting in there too, or, you know, you. I don't know, you're just concerned from a hygienic standpoint that hydrogen peroxide is good.

That'll do it.

Yeah.

Okay. So the reason why I got into ice baths, to be honest, was probably from watching you watching Joe Rogan. Watching other people who talk about it all the time for the mental benefits of it.

Yeah.

So as a pastor, for me, I'm constantly trying to figure out how to biohack my creativity.

Right.

I think that's how I found you. Because back in, let's see, when my wife and I first got married, 2013, 2014, I started watching CrossFit videos on YouTube because I was trying to figure out how do I increase my creativity quotient. I'm always writing, I'm always preparing sermons.

Chipping pull ups and cleaning jerks.

It didn't work as well as I expected, Ben.

Yeah.

But I think that's how I found you. So I'm wondering, aside from ice baths, is it really possible to hijack our creativity?

Yes.

Okay, how do you do that? Is there sort of some simple ways, small to big? Is there a spectrum?

Yeah. The, the, the so called limitless drug.

Yes. Pastors, we need this.

Yes, that. The Bradley Cooper of, of Christ's kingdom.

Yeah.

Okay.

So hashtag goals.

Yeah. I mean you could put this into a few different categories when it comes to creativity.

Okay.

You can shift the brain into certain brainwave states, particularly like an alpha brainwave state that would enhance creativity using external variables.

Okay.

Namely temperature regulation. Another one would be light and sound. Those would probably be the top three.

Okay.

Temperature regulation, we already discussed like that. Like if, if you are listening and can implement that cold shower, cold bath, regularly scheduled cold thermogenesis into your routine, you're automatically going to be able to shift your nervous system more into that alpha brainwaves.

Before or after I go to.

Right, you would do it before. Ideally this would be like at the beginning of the day if you, you can do like sauna, cold breath work at the beginning of the day. You're hitting three different variables that are all going to not only decrease stress, but enhance creativity. And also I'm going to create a.

Sermon prep protocol right now with increased longevity.

Yeah. So sauna cold breathwork in the morning. Doesn't be a long session, but it could. And if you don't have a sauna, it's okay to sit on your living room floor, do a 20 minute breath work session and then get in the cold. My one complaint, just slight rabbit hole here with a lot of these breathwork apps is they're very new agey. Woo woo. Secular.

Yeah, whatever. You know, it's. It's either empty headed meditation and in scripture we're called to meditate upon God's word.

Yes.

And not just to empty our heads. And allow, you know, whatever other entity might be in the room to take us over. Which can happen sometimes with meditation.

Yeah.

There's actually a great new book that just came out about this called the enlightenment Trap.

No way.

Dying and getting possessed during meditation. A big part of that is they're not meditating on scripture, on God's Word. No. It's written by Scott Carney. So.

So it's, it's written by a non Christian.

Yeah, it's just about the dark side of new age and enlightenment and meditate, meditation. It's a good book.

Not to get distracted.

It just came out. I don't even, I don't even know if I might have gotten an advanced copy. But it's, it's very, very interesting. People who are kind of getting messed up from. And of course we know that can happen with things like ayahuasca and psilocybin and this whole plant medicine surge. But it can even occur, you know, with, with meditation as well. Now back to the issue with a lot of these breathwork apps that are all just like positive self affirmation. Empty your head, you know, embrace the source or whatever right there. There's really not a whole lot that goes on during the breathwork session that's uplifting from a spiritual sense. And my logic is if you're going to be sitting there for 20 minutes in addition to your breath, you might as well be focusing on something else. And my trick for this initially once I taught myself several different breathwork tactics. Like slow count, in for four, hold for two, out for eight. Or in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. The box breathing. Yeah, Box breathing. Or like the Wim Hof style tactics was just to play Soaking worship or some non lyrical uplifting.

Yes.

You know.

Almost. Almost like, like Christian music without lyrics kind of legacy.

Natural inhabitation album. Yeah.

Anybody who's listening to soaking music. What's it called?

It's. We did a soaking album.

Oh.

Each track is one hour long. So if you want to pray for an hour, then you can play one track. It's got four tracks, four hours.

Yeah.

For the album.

Yeah. And I do. And just so you know, like I'll go back to my hotel room after this. I'm working on a cookbook right now.

Yeah.

And I've got a dinner tonight at 6:30. I'll probably get back to my hotel at 1:30 so I can embrace like the brain fog in the afternoon. And in my hotel room, the bed's five feet away. Do I crawl in there and take a little nap.

Yep.

I will get back to my hotel room, I'll sit on the floor of my hotel room, I'll do 20 minutes of breath work, I'll take a cold shower and then I'll jump into the cookbooks. And you're ready, go. What I'll be doing this afternoon. Yeah, right. But the. You can either do music that's more uplifting or let's say you don't know what to do for breath work. You don't know when to breathe in, when to breathe out. You know when to do the hold. Etc. My logic starting a couple months ago was why isn't there a Christian breath work app? Right. That, that's more like there's. There's some, that. There's some of like the orthodox breath is prayer. Like the Jesus prayer. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Breathe in. What do they say? Smell the flowers, blow out the candles. Right. So that's how you would do like breath is prayer. You smell the flowers, blow out the candle. So it's in through the nose, through slightly pursed lips. And there's a variety of different breath prayers. There's even a whole book called Breath is Prayer, which I think is fantastic. That's got about 25 different sections of scripture that can be used for breathless prayer. But the one, the earliest one practiced by the early desert fathers and mothers was breathe in, oh Jesus, son of God, Breathe out, have mercy on my soul. Wow. Right. And that's a very, very simple breath work routine where it's literally just for 10 minutes. Breathe in, oh Jesus, son of God, Breathe out, have mercy on my soul.

Wow.

But what I thought was, well, gosh, there's so much more that you could do with breath work just because it does shift you into almost like this receptive spiritual state. Yeah. You don't have to use breath work and biohacks to get close to God.

Sure.

But it is kind of cool that you can tweak your brainwaves in a way that opens you up spiritually, especially for. For conversations with God or to listen to his. His voice in the silence. You know, I can hear God's voice in the still, small silence. Yes. I can hear God's voice in the still, small silence 90 seconds into an exhale hold during breathwork. Even better. Which. Which sounds kind of gimmicky, but it just is, you know, God. God gave us breath and there are certain ways that we can use our breath to enhance our ability to. To be spiritual.

Absolutely. So I do it before I get on stage. On Sunday.

Yeah.

So, like I'm standing backstage, I'm preparing to go up to preach and I'm trying and tell me if I'm doing something wrong. I'm doing like the.

Yeah. Oh, no, that, that's, that's perfect. That's that Wim Hof style breath work that not only gives you confidence and swagger. Senior preacher. Swagger, swaggering pastor. But also the, the rush of oxygen to the brain that can help with, with your focus and the blowing off of the CO2, which can help you to manage anxiety. So, yes, there's, there's, there's something to that. If you are super wired up, you'd want to do inhales and long exhales if you're nervous. Nervous and you know, but normally, yeah, breathing yourself up, especially if you're confident, familiar with your congregation, you want to be a little bit more excited than, you know, so nervous about all these people you're going to go out and preach to. And I don't know if preachers use the same tactic as a lot of public speakers. Imagining everyone in the congregation naked.

I've never met one guessing, yeah, I'm guessing that's not something that's, that's done. Although that was a tip I was given. What's one of the two craziest tips I've been given for public speaking? And then I'll get back to the breath work was imagine everybody out there is naked so that you think that they're just as nervous as you might be. And then I met this other guy who puts food in his, in his, his undershorts before he goes out on stage.

No way.

And he's a very well known great speaker who I heard give a talk about how to give an effective speech. And he'll just be like, yeah, you know, I'll drop a few raisins down there or a little bit of leftovers from lunch. And he said, it's hard to feel uptight and nervous when you know you have food in your underwear.

No way.

Totally not joking. I never tried it. But this guy swears by a little bit of food in your underwear.

So just dump a casserole.

Granola bar. Casserole. Wow. Yeah, A little green beans.

Dude, I've never heard of that.

Yeah, yeah, neither had I until I hear that. So anyways, what I decided to do a couple months ago was start to record breathwork apps or breathwork sessions. That would be, for example, you know, the fruits of the Holy Spirit from Galatians. And that's the opening verse.

And then amazing.

Three minutes of box breathing where you're dwelling upon that verse that's repeated a couple of times. And I've already had these in a bunch of audio sessions I'm going to release in an app soon. Amazing. And then move into your intense breath work for like two minutes. And on the inhale, you imagine breathing up all the fruits of the Holy Spirit. On the exhale, you exhale, hold, and it's all choreographed to music and everything.

Amazing.

And just listen and pray.

Come on.

And then you do another round. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Full inhale. Breathe in the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Full exhale, pray.

Incredible.

So you do like three rounds of that and then finish with another three minutes of box breathing and then a final Lord's Prayer. And my idea, I mean, obviously the Bible's a big book, right?

Yes.

I already have like 30 different breathwork sessions mapped out on a Google Doc on my computer that, that I just need more time in the day to be able to record. But that's my goal is for. For Christians to be able to not have to own some kind of like a new agey Woo woo app, to be able to do breath work and furthermore to come closer to their creator and be able to enter into prayer in a deeper state.

Yes.

Through breath work.

This is incredible, bro. You're revolutionary for this.

I think it'll be key for doing this. Yeah, I. I've seen a need for it for a long time and I think and, and some of the sessions will just be super short. Some of the sessions will be like box breathing. Ten minutes of. Well, like Jesus, son of God, have mercy on my soul, pray done.

Right.

And then others will be a lot more epic enough uplifting. And yeah, first one I did is like 35 minutes long.

I can't wait to try this out.

Yeah. And so back to your question about creativity. Yeah, he called. And breath work. Okay, now I've kicked those horses to death. I think about as much as I can would be where to start. But then you've also, like I mentioned, got light and sound, light and sound. So the body can respond to photons of light. I mentioned when I was talking about the sauna, how light is able to do things like excite the mitochondria, the powerhouses of your cell. It's able to, when you see natural sunlight first thing in the morning, to be able to stimulate that cortisol awakening response that helps you to feel awake and alert. An illustrative example of that would be when I travel. To help me sleep, I use high doses of melatonin. Okay. And I'll say if I could show you my sleep scores, you know, here in Nashville, I'm sleeping eight and a half hours a night. Perfect sleep scores. And a lot of that's due to the melatonin that I take before I go to bed at night. Large amount. How much works?

When you say large amount, what do you mean? You talk about over 5 milligrams.

I use a 300 milligram melatonin suppository.

300 milligrams.

I get it from my friend in Sarasota, Florida. He's a doctor, Dr. John Laurence. Wow. Company called Mitozen. And normally that amount of melatonin would not be absorbed well orally and would result in a large peak followed by a drop that wakes you up. This, by using the rectal delivery mechanisms, gives you a slow release of melatonin all night long. You wake up and the problem is you're groggy because the melatonin is still in your system. Sure. So I walk over to my hotel room window, I pull open the curtains, the sunlight comes in, hits my eyes. Then five minutes, I'm fine. As a matter of fact, if you take melatonin in the middle of the day, it won't make you sleepy if you're out in the light because the light shuts down that melatonin response. So, anyways, the. The reason I'm telling you this is that some form of light can be very stimulating for creativity and productivity. The two best kinds are red light delivered either intranasally or. Or intracranially, and the same type of bright blue greenish spectrum from sunlight.

Okay.

Now, you could get all of that by just going out in the sunlight every morning before you start into your creative work.

Got it.

You could also, as an alternative to if you got to be indoors, or in addition to that, get two different kind of like biohacking type of devices.

Okay.

One is called a V light. It's an infrared, almost like a helmet that you put on that blast your entire skull with infrared light. I do this 20 minutes in the morning, and it's like a cup of coffee for my brain. And there's a little probe attached to it that goes up your nose. They originally developed this for Alzheimer's and dementia.

Okay.

But it works fantastically for overall brain health.

So you've got a helmet on.

It's kind of like not a full on helmet, but it's a bunch of a Bunch of lights that just get.

Doing the breath work at the same time.

No, this is just first 20 minutes of writing for the day. That's what's on my head.

All right.

It's just like. And. And if you close your eyes, you can kind of sort of feel like this little buzzing hurt sensation.

Okay.

But you barely notice that it's on. Besides the fact that all of a sudden, just everything starts to go clear. Wow. That's. That's the first way that you could use light in addition to just natural sunlight. The second way is that the brain shifts into this gamma brainwave signal, hyper creative, hyper focused mode at about a 40Hz signal.

Okay.

And there's another company that makes a light very similar to the light boxes that they sell for seasonal effective disorder, such as you would put on your desk during the gray and dreary times.

I'm aware of those. Some of my friends, they suffer with seasonal depression.

Yeah.

So they'll put it.

That works fantastically.

So you could do that while you're writing a sermon, for instance.

Yeah. But there's one company called. I think it's. It's ev.

Ev.

Yeah. I have one of these. I've had it for a couple of years now. It works really well. You press one button on it, and it's like those seasonal effective disorder boxes. But it specifically creates the hurt signal designed for creativity focus.

Okay.

And so that is on my office desk. And usually what I do my first 20 minutes of writing for the day, I pull on the infrared light. I push that button. So basically I'm getting this 40 Hz signal of bright light from my desk and then the infrared light over my head.

Wow.

A lot of people don't realize how effective light is at shifting your brainwave state. The other one would be sound.

Okay.

Like I mentioned. So. So we've got breath work, heat, cold light, and then sound. You. You've probably heard of these apps that will produce like binaural beats to help, you know, based on the hypothesis that if you blast the left ear with 405Hz and the right ear with 395Hz, the delta on those is 10Hz. So you'd shift yourself in like a 10Hz alpha brainwave zone.

Interesting. I've done this on YouTube. So, like, I'll put the headphones on during the sermon prep y.

And most of these are designed.

Okay.

To be done with headphones.

Okay.

That's a mistake a lot of people don't make is unless you have, like, I guess Surround sound speakers. We have a perfectly placed speaker on the left side of the desk and one on the right side.

Got it.

Headphones are best. And so some of these tracks, or binaural beats are designed specifically to enhance creativity and focus and put you in kind of like that 10 hertz, all the way up to 40 hertz brainwave zone that would allow you to have enhanced creativity.

Okay.

I think the best one out there, I don't think it's even that expensive, is called Brain fm.

Brain fm.

Brain FM is designed and it's got like, creativity, it's got focus, it's got like meditation, it's got sleep, like four different settings on it. That one works really well for anybody who likes to listen to external sounds to enhance creativity or focus. And if you. If you have headphones in particularly. Yep, that works really well.

Okay.

We didn't really scratch the surface of the whole, like, nootropic, smart drug supplements type of category.

I'm really fascinated by this, and I'll. I'll tell you why. So, like, long before we met, and I was mentioning this to you earlier, before we started going live like aniracetam, like, which most people wouldn't have a clue what that is, but when nootropics kind of came on the scene and became more popular, at least from my perspective, stuff like that, pretty.

I was pretty effective. Nootropic. Yeah.

Should I get it? But here's the thing, Ben, and tell me what you think. It's like there was a certain level, I don't know if I should say conviction or because it was like personal conviction or it was holy spirit conviction. I was like, Like, I don't know. Is this right? Is this using drugs? So I just never tried it.

Right.

Like, what. What do you think about that in that sense?

Big, big can of worms that you just opened up. So first of all, there's a few different directions that I could go with this. I want to make sure that I do have a chance to tell you from a dietary and a supplement standpoint what would actually be effective and safe to enhance creativity. Or you've whatever, flown to Tokyo and you got to give a sermon and you got there at 2am and the sermon's at 8. And what do I do? So.

Let'S. Let's address the ethical piece first.

Okay.

Is there any evidence in scripture that shifting one's state of focus or creativity is a sin? Or is abusing the temple? Or is pulling others into sin causing your brother or your sister to stumble? I can't say that I'm aware of anything in scripture that forbids that. Especially provided that there's no long term physiological damage that occurs because you're not drunk. The type of drug use actually. Well, the Bible specifically separates.

Yeah, go ahead.

I think I know where you're sobriety from. Drug use for a specific reason for, for most of human history all the way up to present times, if you actually do the digging, drugs were used for the purpose of divining with the spirit world.

Right.

And this, this is the definition of pharmakia. Right? Using drugs to divine with the spirit world. Yes. So when I step back and a lot of people hear pharmaculia and they're like pharmaceutical companies, evil conspiracy theory, you know, Pfizer is whatever, goat horns and devils in the basement. But that's not the case. They're a drug company trying to help people and making some dumb profit driven mistakes along the way. But I don't consider that to be like the forbidden pharmacia that's in the bible. So the reason that divination through the use of drugs, this so called pharmacia in the Bible is forbidden is because it is incredibly effective. If you've actually used ayahuasca or psilocybin or anything like this in, in a set and setting that's not a rave or a club or you know, some party scene.

Right.

But with the intention to actually do things like ask Big G God or Little G God for answers or perhaps see what kind of entities happen to be in the room with you at the time or be able to dialogue with someone from a distance who also happens to be on that same drug. Or if you're in the Amazon. I just, just interviewed a shaman in the Amazon about this. Go listen to go to battle with another shaman under the influence of something like ayahuasca.

Crazy.

It's totally crazy.

That's crazy.

We don't live in a logical, rational, materialistic, scientifically proven world. We live, we live in a world created by a spirit, by a God, by a deity. And there is magic and there are miracles and there is an entire Frank Peretti novel esque spiritual world that exists all around us.

This present darkness. Is that what it's called?

Present darkness? That's right, darkness. You know, two, two examples or any of the modern work on, you know, the Nephilim or you know, unseen realms.

Are you into that? Michael Heiser's books?

I'm, I wouldn't say I'm like into it, but I, I do Find the whole idea fascinating. I was creatures podcast at the music studio last night about. You realize like this stuff was given to us by the gods. Like, like knowledge of music, knowledge of metallurgy, knowledge of instrumentation design, knowledge of makeup application, like if you read in the Bible. Exactly. Like this stuff was handed to us by the spirit world. We didn't come up with this on our own. So it is fascinating.

But we're going deep now.

Yeah, we're getting away from creativity a little bit, but back. Back to aniracetam. Yeah. So the Bible separates drug use and pharmacia from the use of alcohol because while a red nosed alcoholic who is violating the laws of sobriety and temperance that were prudently laid down in particularly the Old Testament to allow for better societal stability in the same way that monogamy allows for better societal stability. Well, I think that is sound advice, but I don't see that the town drunk is having an issue with like demon possession or speaking to gods and other entities. And I actually think that that pharmacia, especially the modern infatuation with it and the fact that it's been placed upon a pedestal as like the path to spiritual enlightenment, is a very, very dangerous world indeed. However, I would separate both of those, whether, whether we're talking about alcoholism and lack of sobriety and whether we're talking about pharmakia from the use of compounds or substances that enhances one's physiology or ability to focus. Because.

I realize that this is a little bit of a slippery slope fallacy. Sure, there are foods that can shift your brainwave state to enhance creativity. Drugs aside. This is kind of interesting because there's this whole idea in nutrition science of the doctrine of signatures. Certain things that look like other things in nature can be good for certain goals. Like for example, in this case, a walnut looks like a tiny brain.

Like a brain.

Yeah. Well, a walnut is chock full of choline that actually can assist with brain performance. Interesting. Eggs. You crack them open in a pan, they look like eyes. Turns out some of the components and nutrients in eggs are good for eyesight. A sweet potato is kind of short of shaped like a pancreas. And it turns out that a sweet potato is actually pretty good for blood glucose management and insulin production. You know, the list could go on and on all the way down to this fascinating plant called strafanthem, which actually looks like a heart with a bunch of little tendrils and veins coming out of it. And it's called the insulin of the heart and is Used by a bunch of functional medicine docs as something that allows someone to recover from a heart attack by regrowing the vessels in the heart.

Should we take that preventatively?

I'm not knowledgeable enough on it to know if it would work preventively. I know for people who have had cardiovascular attacks, it's something I interviewed Dr. Thomas Cowan, author of a book called Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, if you want to dig into that. Sure. So anyways, you know, God gave us all sorts of things on this planet that can be used to enhance our ability to be able to focus and engage in creativity, including, you know, in ancient times, using mortar and pestle and oil extracts and alcohol extracts, etc, the ability to be able to concentrate the components of these plants or even synthetically create molecules that are like them to enhance creativity or focus. Okay, so, you know, coffee would be an example. Green tea would be an example. Nicotine from the tobacco plant would be an example. Like, like all of these things when used moderately and responsibly and not in a way that would harm your temple.

Right.

I'm totally fine with like, like chewing.

A piece of nicotine gum. I've heard, I haven't tried. It can, can help you with creativity.

It can help you with creativity, it can help you with focus. And then if you want to get into the nitty gritty of all that, you could also say, well, for me to be fully present for my family and my congregation, I need to make sure that, that my, my gut and my, my poops and, and bloating and constipation, all that is, is in order as well.

Yes.

And so then you just have to make a wise and prudent decision because most nicotine delivery products are chock full of artificial sweeteners and fermentable compounds and things that would affect the gut. So you got it. So, you know, you got to dig in and act wise. There are some companies, like Lucy, for example, that make nicotine gum that has less of the artificial sweeteners in it. You can even import from the Amazon, like, like the, the snortable nicotine compound hopping. You just spray it up your nose and get a similar effect. Okay, so, so yeah, there are, there are workarounds with a lot of this stuff. But to cut straight to the chase, the problem is that you have to know what you're doing because you can drain the brain. Aniracetam you brought up, for example, speeds up the brain like a gas pedal and allows you to just go, go, go for a few hours. Problem is it also depletes that nutrient that I mentioned is found in walnuts, Choline. And so you're driving the car a million miles an hour, you run out of gas in the tank, you crash and you feel crappy. So you would have to pair aniracetam with choline. Right. To be able to actually operate. And so because of that, rather than cowboying your way around random pharmaceutical websites and ordering something because you heard it could enhance creativity, I'm a bigger fan of done for you formulations that are very, very similar to just like over the counter supplements or things you can buy on Amazon that go beyond just like the fringe, like underground biohacking industry stuff that you buy in the dark corners of the Internet.

Yeah.

So I think some of the better formulated mixes or blends out there and I've got, even though I'm sure that several of these companies have advertised on my podcast in the past, et cetera, I've got no financial affiliation with by mentioning any of these. One would be on. It makes one called Alpha Brain.

Yes, I've heard of this.

That one is well formulated. One that I particularly like that I use a lot is called Qualia. Qualia is made by a company called Neurohacker Collective.

Okay.

And they make a product called Mind.

Okay.

I like the caffeine free mind mostly because I also like to have a cup of coffee in the morning and I don't like to over caffeinate myself.

Yeah.

So that would be another good done for you. Blend. And then if I could name one more, there's a company and this, this one I'm probably most impressed with. A company called Nootopia and O O T O P A.

Okay.

You go to their website, you fill out a questionnaire. Am I easily distracted? Do I struggle with sleep? Do I sleep too much? Do I feel demotivated? Do I feel excessively motivated? It's basically a questionnaire that allows them to determine what you, your specific neurotransmitter imbalances would be. They then custom design a box. It's not inexpensive. I think it's about $400 or so for a month supply. Frankly, most of the people I know, including myself, who will get something like that will take closer to two to three months to go through it because it's not like I'm popping smart drugs every day. But you know, on those more cogn demanding days.

Yes.

And so Nootopia, Qualia Mind or Alpha Brain would be three examples of supplements that would allow you to get the creativity without risking the idea that you might be depleting something or robbing Peter to pay Paul. And then if you're looking for something that is a little bit friendlier to the pocketbook, because supplements are expensive.

Sure.

The old school writer's friend of cup of coffee and cigarette. Yep, you replicate that with cup of coffee. But what you do, and this is a relatively inexpensive supplement, is you get the supplement called L Theanine.

Okay, yeah, I've heard of this powder.

You can find anywhere about 100 milligrams paired with a cup of coffee, causes the coffee to have a longer slow bleed into the system. And L. Theanine shifts you into alpha brainwave mode to enhance creativity. Wow. As just a cheap hack for a cup of coffee. And yes, even though you wouldn't necessarily want to smoke a cigarette back to the temple, you can use sources of nicotine that wouldn't really have many of the artificial sweeteners or anything in them at all. I think the best one for that is they make nicotine toothpicks. So you can literally have a nicotine toothpick like a cigarette sticking out of your mouth, cup of coffee with a little L Theanine in it. And that's like a dirt cheap hack a lot of people don't know about. They'll get you through hours upon hours of writing. Maybe not as fun and sexy and colorful as some of these pills and stuff.

Right.

And then the last thing that I would throw in there. Last two things I would throw in there. First of all, from a dietary standpoint, the more you can consume slow burning logs versus fast burning kindling as your fuel, the better. Carbohydrates, starches, processed foods, soft foods, drinkable foods, et cetera, Those would all be fast burning kindling with a steep rise in energy followed by a sharp drop that would best be paired before, during or after a workout if you're going to use that stuff at any time.

Okay, okay.

A state of ketosis accomplished with strategies such as fasting, carbohydrate restriction, higher intake of healthy Mediterranean style fats, putting a little bit of coconut oil or MCT oil in your coffee, or even these newer drinkable ketones that shift you into that state very readily.

Interesting.

Can give you a good long, slow bleed of energy that keeps you going all day long. So looking into ketosis, and particularly not the style of what would be called dirty ketosis, where people are doing like sticks of butter and, you know, coconut oil. Energy bars.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pooping out giant logs of grease, but basically more ketosis like Mediterranean, like high healthy fats, fish oil, fatty cut of salmon, maybe a little bit of blue zones. Yeah. Almost like a. Almost like a low carb blue zone style diet.

Okay, got it.

That's a healthier approach to ketosis.

And if you want some MCT that.

You gave me this morning. Yeah, yeah, like MCT oil mct. That'll get converted. Yeah, that's great stuff. I forgot about that. Yeah, you can put that in a little bit of coffee. So ketosis and particularly a like a vegetable, plant rich form of ketosis.

Okay.

Is a good hack for the dietary component of focus and creativity. And then finally, every once in a while, you need the big guns. You need the, oh, I am in book writing phase and I'm on deadline three weeks. I'm going to be sleeping four hours a night and taking care of the kids and making sure I take my wife on a Friday night date and preaching and delivering a sermon. This is a phase where I need the big guns. Or like I mentioned earlier, I'm flying to Tokyo. I get at 2am, I deliver a sermon or a speech at 8am and freaking lthenia. My coffee is not going to do the trick. I guarantee there's one. And I would consider this to be a smart drug you'd only want to use in moderation to ensure that you don't have. You don't build up tolerance to. It is called Modafinil.

Okay.

Was the inspiration for the movie Limitless.

This. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Developed for people with narcolepsy and then like Olympians started using it.

Label anti narcoleptic drug. Also goes by the name Provigil.

Okay. I've never tried this.

Yeah, yeah. And so usually a pill of that comes as about 200 milligrams.

Okay.

One pill would give you hyper productivity for about 24 hours.

Got it.

Half a pill, about 12 hours.

Okay.

What you need to realize though is that the mechanism of action is that it floods the cell receptors with dopamine and serotonin. So everything feels rewarding, particularly work checklists and tasks. Okay. And you'll just go. And some people find that it makes them irritable and impersonable. Meaning like with your family you might be like, get out of the way, Dad's got to work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so that can be an issue. The other issue is that anything that floods the cell receptors long term with dopamine probably seen these new books like Dopamine Nation or people shutting down the dopamines on their phones by switching them to grayscale. The reason for that is that anytime the cells get flooded with dopamine, it builds up more receptors for dopamine on the cell surface and you need more and more dopamine to feel good. So if you were to start to take Modafil and be like, I feel great, I'm going to take this every day. And then you run out or you decide not to take it for a week, you feel kind of flat because nothing feels good. Sex doesn't feel as good. Rib eye steak isn't as good. Taking your kids to the beach doesn't feel as good because you don't have all that dopamine in your system. Yeah. So that would, even though I'm mentioning that as a good strategy.

Yeah, yeah.

This would be like big guns. I'm using this for this one day or this one, you know, one week.

Hard stint, 12 hour stretch or three day stretch. It's like, that's max. That's it, it's over.

Yeah. So in summary, you have your natural mechanisms for creativity, light, sound, cold breath work. You have your nutrients, you know, things like choline, fatty acids, ketones, local hydrate diet. You have your done for you formulations like Qualia Mind or On an Alpha Brain or the Newtopia company with the cheap hack being the theanine, caffeine, nicotine, and then amazing big guns, something like Modafinil and that would, that, that would give you a pretty good toolbox.

Okay. This is incredible, man.

Yeah.

I have two more questions for you because I know we're just about out of time. One is more health related as it pertains to pastors, and the other one's just personal.

Okay.

On the, on the, on the health front, a lot of my friends that are pastors, you know, we don't always take the best care of ourselves. Pastors don't. I think that's kind of a, a lot of people anticipate that. They see that a lot of pastors are overweight, they're unhealthy.

Too much marshmallow salad at the church potluck.

Yeah, unfortunately. And we're very sedentary. I mean, we sit around. The only time you see us active is like pulpit times and you run.

Like a half marathon on stage. Last time I was at Legacy.

Yeah, Well, I mean, I try to get after it. You know, I want to break the mold a little bit. And you're helping, helping me to do that. Thank you. By the way.

I go, I go to a reformed Baptist church where nobody's wandering too far away from the. The podium.

That's right. Because they're standing right there.

Right.

Which.

In a suit and tie.

Are we allowed to talk about that church?

Yeah.

Okay. I, I love that church, by the way. Pastor Douglas Wilson, Christchurch Monster, Idaho.

That's the church I grew up in.

You literally grew up there.

Yeah.

Which, by the way, I'm so afraid that one day he's going to like, intercept a teaching of mine and then just, just like roasting. Like, this guy's way off, you know?

No, Doug's super cool, but I love his books. Hyper intellectual. He's.

He's a hero to me. You're a health hero to me. He's a theological hero to me. So, like, one of the things that I hear from a lot of pastors, and this is actually what a doctor told me, you have extreme adrenal fatigue. This is constant among my pastor friends. That's what they tell us all. Oh, adrenal fatigue.

Adrenal fatigue technically isn't even a medical term.

So. Yeah, I don't even know why they say that or what that even means, but usually they're like, well, how much coffee do you have? You have way too much coffee because that's what pastors drink constantly.

Yeah.

And you're emotionally depleted and exasperated and you need some help. And so this doesn't have to be long, but like, is there some kind of quick dirty tip of like, if you are concerned for your adrenal glands, how can we be more kind to ourselves in that sense? If that even makes sense. Ben?

Three things. First, adrenal fatigue is often over diagnosed. And in order to truly know whether someone's adrenal glands are functioning the wrong way, you have to get a test that shows you not only what kind of hormones you're producing, cortisol, testosterone, a lot of the things that the adrenal glands would help you to produce or be directly responsible for producing. But you also have to look at how quickly are those metabolites being broken down? Are the building blocks for those metabolites necessary or available in the human body? The only test I'm aware of that's a decent test to truly diagnose something like adrenal fatigue is called a Dutch panel. It's a dried urine panel. It collects 24 hours of urine and gives you everything you need to know. And a lot of times I will run that test on someone who has been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue. And it turns out that, for example, they're producing as much Cortisol as they'd ever need. Right. Which is the definition of adrenal fatigue. Like, you're not producing any cortisol. But, for example, that cortisol is getting broken down extremely quickly.

Right.

So. So. So there's some upstream issue happening, and a lot of times that might be everything from inadequate calorie intake to sometimes it can be excessive caffeination. So basically, it requires a lot of digging. So if you were diagnosed with adrenal fatigue, know that a lot of times it might not be that. It can be everything from hypothyroidism to carbohydrate depletion to neurotransmitter imbalances. So whenever somebody says that, I'm like, adrenal fatigue from what?

Right.

And. And there could be, like, 10 different reasons. I have an article on my website somewhere about, like, the 10 different reasons for adrenal fatigue. Okay. So it's. I'll find more than just adrenal fatigue.

The second thing is that.

There are certain things that can accelerate or amplify the amount of stress that's on the adrenal glands, these little glands that sit on top of your kidneys. And it is true that over caffeination, excessive use of supplements, excess exposure to artificial light in the evening, inadequate stuff, sleep, poor stress management, poor relationships, et cetera. Those can all accelerate the rate at which the adrenal glands become exhausted. We talked about some things earlier. Heat, cold breath, work. I would throw exercise into this category.

So pastors should play pickleball.

Pastors should play pickleball.

That's a big thing amongst pastors now.

Icy cold, wearing as little clothing as possible, put food in your underwear. Yeah. Doing breathwork prior and. And getting in a sauna afterwards. Anyways, though, the idea of figuring out things that give you energy other than stimulants, which might seem kind of paradoxical based on the discussion that we just had, but knowing when it's true, fatigue and you really need a cup of coffee versus I already had a cup of coffee two hours ago. All that caffeine is still in my system. I need to take a cold shower, do three minutes of WIM HOF breath work, and that's gonna be way friendlier to my adrenal glands than all these drugs and compounds, et cetera. So that's number two. Number three is there are certain things that the adrenal gland needs to keep its gas tank topped off. The main two would be minerals and vitamin C. Okay. Minerals and vitamin C. A third one I would throw into the category of something that can assist with adrenal gland balance are so called adaptogens.

Okay.

Okay, so let me tell you how this would look. Adrenal or minerals of vitamin C would be like, wake up in the morning, giant mason glass full of water with a teaspoon of sea salt and the squeeze of a lemon.

Got it.

Or there's a company called Jigsaw Health. They make something called adrenal cocktail. I'm lazy with the lemons and the salt, so I literally just put a powder, like a scoop of the adrenal cocktail in my morning glass of water.

Got it.

Okay. That's in addition to salting my food throughout the day, Eating a diet that's got fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C. The more stressed out you are, the more minerals you need, the more vitamin C you need. So that's really good for the adrenals. And then.

The other one, the adaptogens, those would be probably the two best that I'm aware of that seem to work for a wide variety of people are reishi mushroom extract. And another one you've probably heard of, ashwagandha. So these can be used during times of the day when you feel like. Like you have a lot of stress, when you're too dry, when you're too driven, maybe you had too much coffee, whatever.

Okay.

The. The definition of adaptogen is it will turn up the dials when the dials are too far down, and it'll turn down the dials when the dials are too far up.

Help.

Different people will respond in different ways. But anybody who has adrenal issues or is hard driven. So for me, for example, I do like to take an afternoon siesta sometimes after lunch. Yes, often. Not because I need it, but because I know by the time we start our family dinner at 7:30, I'd be kind of tired if I just don't step out for like 20 or 30 minutes, meditate or, you know, crawl in the corner of the office and, you know, crawl on my desk and sleep. Like, I'll. I'll just sleep anywhere.

This is like nsdr. Is that what they call it?

Nsdr? That's one way to do it. Yeah. Yoga. Yoga Nidra, that's called. And that's very simple to do. Full body scan starting from the toes up to the head or the head down to the toes. That'll simulate a full sleep cycle. And you can download free yoga ninja tracks on Amity on YouTube and that can actually be very effective for simulating a full Sleep cycle in anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes. I'll do yoga nidra on the airplane, sometimes noise blocking headphones. And it works fantastically. And that's sometimes what I'll do when I step away in the afternoon after lunch. But I always take a couple of packets of. I say packets because I use a company called four Sigmatic and they make reishi mushroom extract. I'll take a couple of packets of those and then that kind of like turns off my brain and settles me down, but doesn't leave me as groggy as if I'd ever taken a bunch of, I don't know, like, you know, sleep product or CBD or something like that. And so then I can get up and be ready to rumble again. So any hard charging high achiever identifying some kind of adaptogen that you can use, usually like in the late afternoon to early evening, can also help out with adrenal stress. Okay, so in summary, if you really think you have adrenal fatigue, get a Dutch urine test to actually see if you truly have adrenal fatigue.

Okay.

If you want to make sure you take good care of your adrenals, start off the day with a whole bunch of minerals and vitamin C and continue to get minerals and vitamin C going in throughout the day. When you feel tempted to take a stimulant, double check yourself and ask if you should instead just like, eat the frog, do the hard thing, get in the corner, sit down, do three minutes of breath work, or slip away and take a cold shower or do some jumping jacks or burpees or something other than a stimulant that will drain your adrenal glands more quickly than natural energy from movement or cold. And then finally.

The, the, the use of adaptogens when you do feel like you're excessively stressed can be useful. So those are a few things to consider for.

That's super helpful. I guess I'm gonna sneak this one in. How much coffee is two coffee too much coffee?

Well, it depends on your genetics.

Okay.

You probably heard some people like slow metabolizers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, pastors just drink coffee all day, bro.

Yeah, and you can obviously build a tolerance to it.

Okay.

My, I, I always switch to decaf for one week out of every month to check myself because I love the flavor coffee. I like the glorious morning bowel movement that it gives you.

That's the best.

But I do want to make sure I'm not, of course, getting attached to anything. So I switched to decap for a week out of every month, which kind of resets all the caffeine. I love that for, for like a slow caffeine metabolizer, it's not much. It's like 200, 300 milligrams of coffee. It's like a couple cups of coffee is too much for that person.

Wow.

It's just like in your system all the time. You don't sleep well because you take so long to break it down. Fast caffeine metabolizer. I mean, I've seen data on up to five cups a day as allowing you to get like the anti diabetic cardiovascular enhancing health effects of coffee without it being deleterious.

Okay.

I'm a fan. Like a 2ish cup a day guy. Like a big morning cup and a big like afternoon cup. I think that's pretty good. I'm a fast caffeine metabolizer. I know I can have a cup of coffee at three. I still sleep. Okay.

Same.

I think two cups of coffee is a decent thing to shoot for.

Got it.

Especially if you're taking all the drugs. We talked about that nicotine toothpick hanging out your mouth.

We're going to have pastors, man, Typing sermons, nicotine preaching.

Yeah. Hitting their French press. Okay.

Speaking. Coffee. Got my last drop.

Yeah. Do you want some more, bro?

I'm good.

Okay. This is my last question. So I, since I have been listening to your podcast, reading your books, following you on YouTube, you know, I subscribe to you on everything. I've noticed just the uptick in you talking about your faith. And I'm wondering how has your audience responded to that? Have you had people meet that with some level of, you know, resistance? Are they upset with you for talking about your faith? Now you're, you know, I remember, I think the first time I DM'd you. Yeah, you talked, you were, you had posted your bi. You were doing a one year Bible.

Yeah.

I was like, dude, I thought Ben was a Christian. He just presents so much information in a way that I thought he would know Jesus.

Yeah.

So what's that been like for you?

Yeah, I mean, I was born.

Into a Christian home, grew up worshiping, going to Sunday school, love the Lord and yes, memorized scripture and was a, by all definitions a pretty good kid. A pretty good, good little straight lace Christian kid. I was homeschooled.

Okay.

I graduated high school when I was 15, started college when I was 16. I think it was a little bit immature spiritually and succumbed to a lot of temptations in college. And so from the Age of about, gosh, like 16 until I got married when I was 21. I kind of went off the deep end with alcohol, women, things like that. And then after I got married, really didn't have that great of a walk with the Lord for a good 10 years. Okay. And it. It was rough. Like, my wife and I would fight a lot, and I was traveling over the world and. And wasn't a present father and wasn't a great husband. And it took nearly breaking up with my wife.

Wow.

That caused me to see the light because I love my family so much and I love my wife so much. And I there.

I have such a vision of legacy for my sons and have such a deep desire for them to grow up to be godly young men. And, you know, I was just. Just almost like a loser of a husband. And so I. I wound up when I realized I was about to lose my family, my wife was about to divorce me. I wasn't a present father. I didn't have any of the spiritual disciplines like meditation, prayer, reading, scripture or devotions woven into my life. I went to church once a month, maybe my wife went to church every week. And I would sometimes go and sometimes not.

Wow.

I really became convicted at about. About, like, 31, 32 years old. That not only. Well, what I realized initially was I needed to start putting my spiritual armor on and that for me to be the father and the husband who I knew that I should be and that God has called me to be. Yes, I needed to begin to spend a lot more time on my spiritual health. I didn't have any idea that that would eventually.

Become a process of me beginning to talk about those same things to my audience. Yeah, the emptiness and fitness and in biohacking and in health and nutrition. And yes, physical training is of some benefit, but it's a complete attachment and addiction for a large portion of my audience. For example, this whole biohacking health world. I began to talk about my own journey on my own platform, on my podcast, on my blog. I began to publish books like Fit Soul or Endure.

Yes.

Or the Spiritual Discipline Journal. That's what I started doing with my family. In the morning, we'd meditate. In the evening, we'd meditate and do devotions together and scripture study together. We still do that in the morning and even evening every single day. It's our coming together as a family. And I just began to share what I was doing with my audience. And frankly, it was very well received.

That's awesome.

There are so many Christians in The fitness world who hide their light under a bushel because it's just not cool to be like, trainer who talks about God, but maybe who also has like a nice body.

You know, because it's too earthly or fleshly or worldly. But there are a ton of trainers who started to talk with their clients about their Christianity. A bunch of people came out of the woodwork who, because they'd seen me, you know, the guy who was supposed to be like the cool, worldly Instagram dude or whatever, begin to talk about my faith. They were inspired to share their own faith.

Amazing.

I'm now putting out two videos a week of, you know, spiritual lessons or inspirational videos. I, I saw a few comments on one this morning and yeah, I get flack. Like a couple comments I saw this morning. One, one because my, my post today was about how God will sometimes refine us with fire and trial and tribulation. And the best response when we're going through those type of trials is to, as Job said, thank the Lord, thank him for his blessings, thank you for whatever he's working in your life, and respond to tribulation with gratitude. And I saw two comments. Comments like, you worship a God who punishes you because he loves you. That's a pretty effed up God, in my opinion. And then another person wrote, she. You mean she. When you're talking about God, you mean she, right? And so you get little comments like that. But frankly, I, I really haven't experienced much of, of a blowback. I don't know, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I'm being too flavorless. I don't know. No, no, but, but no, it's, it's been very, very rewarding to be able to feel as though the platform that God gave me in the fitness and the health and the biohacking world, very earthly, worldly, fleshly world, is now the same platform that he's given me. The ability to be able to turn around and speak to and tell people that, yes, caring for your temple is good. Yes, as a pastor, optimizing your brain, your creativity and focus is going to allow you to reach more people and do more, accomplish more and write more, produce more. But at the end of the day, all of this stuff is for naught unless we care for our spirit, for our soul, unless we actually are focused on the eternal things that will happen far beyond this life. And unless ultimately, at the end of the day, we're loving our God and loving our neighbor as ourself. And, you know, and it's just been so incredibly rewarding and so fulfilling. And I know that one of the reasons God gave me this platform is to now turn around and operate almost like, behind enemy lines.

Yeah.

Speaking to people who. I'm not going to run into a church or Sunday school or prayer room or whatever. Like, these are people who are living in the gyms and, you know, triathlon start lines, you know, and. And folks who. Who need to hear this message. I think so.

That's right.

Yeah.

Well, bro, thank you for doing it. Thank you for your courage, your bravery, speaking out, speaking up, sharing the Bible. I know. It's inspired me. Like I said, you're one of my heroes. And so for me now, knowing that we share faith together and we can talk about Jesus and the Bible is. It just only makes me all the more happy. And I hope that I get the opportunity to introduce you to some of my friends who might follow me and listen to this podcast.

It's a real joy. Absolutely love that. I mean, like, and. And one of the things that. That I'm trying to do now is I. I think the way I phrase it to you once in a text message was, you know, you. You guys go out and. And be Moses, and I just want to be able to hold up your staff and give you the endurance and, you know, whatever else you need that's. That's up inside my head to be able to help that happen.

And it's beautiful, man.

The more I can do that, the more I feel like, like, thank you, bro. That's my calling.

Thank you. And. And I want to say, reciprocating. I'm here for you, man. I want to pray for you as you step out into those dark places and say, ben, we got your back. We're praying for you. We'll prophesy to you. We'll cover you. We'll be a blessing to you. And just so you know, man, like, let's.

Let's do it. My next big biohacking talk is in Sedona. Let's go with all the vortices and the that's right cards and all the. The crazy purple magic shamans or whatever you want to call them. So I'm in those situations every month, so I just got to remember to start texting y'. All.

And I'm on your prayer team.

You know, we'll.

We'll put together a whole prayer team for you, man. We got your back, bro. Thanks for coming on my podcast. It's just brand new, so I appreciate you spending some time with me, bro.

Sweet. I appreciate you, man. Thanks.

Thank you, bro.