The Best Of Biohacking On A Budget: How To Massively Upgrade Your Health Without Breaking The Bank

Hey, I'm Ben Greenfield. Welcome to a very special episode that I'm calling Best of Biohacking on a Budget. First of all, let's get the logistics over with first. All the show notes for everything you're about to hear, you can find in the same place where you always go to find the show notes that we really pride ourselves upon producing at Ben Greenfield Life. They're thorough, they're handy, they're stuff you can bookmark, save, print, you name it. Show notes are here. BenGreenfieldLife.com forward slash biohacking budget. BenGreenfieldLife.com biohackingbudget so why best of biohacking on a Budget? Well, frankly, we are constantly bombarded with all the supplements and the technology and the $20,000 red light this and the $50,000 oxygenation that and the $50,000 coffee enema suppository. You name it. But fact is, over years of interviewing some of the smartest minds on the planet about how we can, in a very ancestral and primal manner, upgrade the human blueprint, I actually have come across a lot of really great tips from biologists like Gary breca, authors like Dr. James DiNicolantonio, people who are experts in hacking exercise with minimum effective dose, like Kusha Karvandi, and many others. And I put together for this episode the best of the best for you. So that being said, you get to sit back or preferably walk back, work out back, do anything active back, or just drive and listen to today's show, Best of Biohacking on a Budget. Again, all the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com Biohacking budget, fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? Well, let's do this.

First up is my friend Gary Breca, amazing biologist, and we talk about the superhuman protocol that declumps your cells, hyper oxygenates your body, restores cellular wellness, and a whole lot more. And while his superhuman protocol costs money, I don't think that's any secret. There are ways that you can hack it, and I talk about that in this episode.

Top 5 Health Tips to do every.

Day for people on a budget. Oh, that's a pretty good one. Yeah. All right, top five health tips for people to do every day on a budget. I would say, number one, eat organ meats. They're not as expensive as you think. As a matter of fact, a lot of people sell them cheap because they want to get rid of them get cold every day. Cold showers are not expensive last time I checked. Get hot every day. You don't have to have a sauna. You can literally layer and go outside or go in the gym. But open up the portals of sweat. Number four would be 10,000 steps a day. However you want to do it. Take your calls while you're outside, take the stairs, walk, whatever. But 10,000 steps a day. And then the last one I think would be. And then this is more relationship based. But we know relationships are so related to longevity. Make one people or one person every day feel really good. Go out of your way to make somebody feel really, really seen and heard at least once a day.

Wow, those are good ideas. I would add breath work and first light to that. They don't add a penny to your budget. And breath work is free. First light is free. Walking on the surface of the earth is free. In fact, walking is probably the most underrated form of exercise on the planet. Just walking. I mean you want to lose weight, just walk for 35 or 45 minutes in a fasted state in the mornings. Low heart rate cardio breath work. There's lots of great breath work available out there on on the Internet. Wim Hof favorite that he has an 8 minute breath work routine. 3 rounds, 30 breaths breath hold in between with an exacerbated deep breath in. That alone will change your life. And if you can do it at first light, I promise you it will become your drug of choice.

All right, next up, the Big Vitamin D mistake. How I Read a Book a Day Cold Therapy versus Cryotherapy versus Cold Thermogenesis and Much more is the original title of the episode that you're going to learn from in this snippet about low budgets helping teens, adolescents and young adults on their diet and their lifestyle.

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

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

Advise the program that you're putting together.

So basically what I'm saying is the best budget friendly way to do this would be move all the teens to Okinawa and have them live in Japan for years upon years till they die at the ripe old age of 120 in the rice fields. No, I'm talking about this idea of the blue zones, right? These areas where we see higher than normal levels of people who live a long time, like Sardinia, Italy and Ikaria, Greece and Okinawa, Japan and Nicoya, Costa Rica and Loma Linda, California where the Seventh Day Adventists live and play. And I was wondering what that was. Yes, alcohol free. Alcohol and meat free. Again, not that I endorse that, but there's a time and a place. And so when we look at these blue zones, there are definitely some, some lessons that we can learn from them that I think could very easily be worked into a curriculum. So what do we see? We see a real appreciation for whole, real foods usually gathered from a garden or the wilderness. Right? So you'd want some component to be built around growing and finding and eating and foraging whole foods. Like whether that be a community garden, whether that be a foraging trip or a series of foraging trips, but basically learning how to eat from nature and grow in nature. So that would be number one, and that's something I do with my own children quite a bit. And it's not expensive. It's in fact less expensive than the grocery store. Number two, speaking of the grocery store, because we do live in a modern era, it would be teaching these teens how to properly read a nutrition label. So because again, we see in the blue zones a pretty strict avoidance of processed and packaged foods. I don't expect that a teenager living in, let's say America or a modern westernized country is not going to sometimes have, let's say trail mix or beef jerky or some kind of packaged soup or some kind of packaged beverage or some kind of processed food, but teaching them how to read the food label, right? Like is this sweetened with stevia or acesulfamine potassium or sucralose or you know, is the sugar content, the total carbohydrate content in this derived from like fiber or derived from processed sugar, or is the high amount of saturated fat in this from like a fully hydrogenated lab derived fat? Or is it from like a coconut oil? Right, so reading nutrition labels would be number two, but beyond the RDA percentages, going much deeper. Yep, exactly. Again, very easy, low budget teaching mechanism. We know that according to the Blue Zones book, emulating the environment and the habits of these world's longest living people by having a home or environment that simulates nature as much as possible, teaching them about maybe having wifi off on the phones or the computer when you're not using it, and ensuring that the air in the home is clean. If you're going to go rent an apartment, maybe check in to the history of that apartment to look at how much mold or fungi it might have, or replace the light bulbs in your study room or in your dorm room with a more biologically appropriate light bulb. And so these things I don't think a lot of teens are taught these days, but that are important, like care for your personal environment, air, light, water, electricity, things like that.

Nice.

Next would be fasting. Right? We see some elements of intermittent fasting. Periods of time where people might not eat meat, or might not eat dairy, or may just eat fish and eggs as their primary proteins, or may have 12 to 16 hour intermittent fasts or weekly 24 hour fasts or whatever. But a fasting module where folks are learning about the importance of fasting, that would be another thing that I wish I'd learned when I was a teen. Right. Like the periods of time to give the body and the gu break. Yeah, we were told the opposite when we were teens. We were told, don't skip breakfast and don't miss meals. Eat your meal. Yeah. Next would be to learn how to exercise as play and as habit, rather than thinking of exercise as your PE class or the gym.

Punishment.

The thing that you do when you're.

Bad or as punishment. Exactly. So what I mean by that is things like fitness walks and nature walks and obstacle courses outside and learning how to use standing workstations and walking as much as possible. And when they're navigating through the airport or through the mall, taking the stairs instead of the elevator or the escalator, and basically engaging in low level physical activity all day long. That doesn't mean they got to hunt and garden and forage all day long, but it does mean teaching how to move. Right. Like during our podcast, I'm actually alternating between sitting in a stool and standing, like about every five or 10 minutes, shifting into a different position, something as simple as that. Like I didn't even know that when I was a, when I was in college, I'd just sit for like six hours just like studying and just not get up. And then I'd get up and I'd feel horrible and tried to go to the gym and I'd get injured because my hip flexors were all short, you know, so. So understanding that movement should be an integral part of the lifestyle, not just something relegated to the gym and teaching them how to do that and then just a few other things. We see a low amount of stress in the blue zones and a high amount of social connectedness. When it comes to stress. One of the main things I would emphasize is a course on breath work. Teach box. Breathing. Teach. 4, 7, 8. Breathing. Teach these different forms of breath work that can enhance the body's ability to be able to withstand stress. And honestly, if there's one course I wish I'd had in college, I would have loved to have had a couple of semesters just on breath work and breathing patterns because it's freaking free again. You can do breath work in the car. I was on a six hour bus ride when I was in Panama and I was like in the back doing fire breathing and deep nasal breathing and hypoxic because I had nothing else to do. I didn't have Internet or anything, so I was just working on my. Didn't have the Internet, no Internet. Yeah. Breath. And then.

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

Or cook something or even trap or shoot or forge something. Basically just learning how to connect in a deeper way with nature. Those are some of the things that I would love to see in a curriculum. As a matter of fact, I would take that curriculum myself. So that's what I would recommend, Kyle, and it's a great question. Hopefully that helps you out. All right, next up, you want to learn how to budget your biohacking gear for less than 100 bucks. You're going to learn all that and a little bit more from this snippet of my talk at the health optimization summit.

So let's say you had sort of 100 bucks.

What would be your go to sort.

Of hack things to purchase for sort of? Yeah, less than 100 bucks.

Basically cigarettes and a fifth good vodka.

So 100 bucks. Oh, my gosh, that's. It's tricky. I would say, Gosh, $100.

And what would the goal be like.

Fitness or longevity or something that's going to improve your life? For 100 bucks, I would say I would spend all the money on stuff that would make your walks better, because I think walking is one of the best things for life. So get some little hand weights, get the relaxator device, maybe get some blood flow restriction bands.

That right there is going to add up to maybe 60, 65 bucks. So. So I just saved you $35 that you can use somewhere else on a nice ribeye steak or something. I spoke with Dr. James DiNicolantoni about dirt cheap performance enhancing hacks. You've never heard of the best bottled water, cold thermogenesis, pre and post exercise tips, and a whole lot more. And today you're gonna learn about a dirt cheap performance enhancing tip, namely making a salt and glycine drink. Tune in. I got in trouble once when I was working with the athletic team trainer as the water boy for the University of Idaho football team. It was like my freshman year. And Gatorade has. I think it was Gatorade. It was Gatorade or Powerade or one of these companies. They had the super concentrated powder that's meant to be mixed into. In this case, I think I had enough to fill 10 coolers it was a lot. And I read the label wrong and I mixed it all in one cooler. So we had this incredibly high osmolality solution that was ready to go out to these football players. And of course, everybody flipped and they're like, no, no, this is going to be horrible. It's going to suck a bunch of water into their intestines. It's going to give them gastric distress. This high salt solution is nowhere near the actual concentration that's been studied by, say, the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. I forget. It was 7, 8%, something like that, as the ideal saltiness of a solution to enhance performance, particularly in heat. So how do you actually make a high salt solution that doesn't result in a lot of the gut issues that I guess seem to be feared in at least the football team that I was working with.

Right. So, in fact, really, you don't see a problem with, let's say, a reduction in sodium and water absorption and an increase in diarrhea until you actually start going above the saltiness of blood. So, in fact, consuming the saltiness of blood is 3200 milligrams of sodium per liter.

Okay.

And that's actually 0.8% salt. So actually, normal saline, which is 0.9%, is actually slightly hypertonic. It's actually 154 milli equivalents of sodium normal saline. So it's kind of funny how they use the term normal saline, but it's actually slightly hypertonic. When you go to the hospital and you get, like, an IV of saline, it's actually slightly saltier than your blood. And in fact, that's actually typically what most studies use to enhance performance, is actually that concentration, which is 3,500 milligrams of sodium per liter. So once you start going above that, around 3200-3500 milligrams of sodium per liter, you do see a significant increase in diarrhea. So essentially, if you go from 3200 milligrams of sodium per liter to 4200 milligrams, you go from 1 out of 8 people having diarrhea, which is not bad, to 6 out of 8 people having diarrhea. Okay. But there's a much better boost in plasma volume when you actually hit 4300 milligrams of sodium per liter versus 3200. So how do you balance the better blood volume, boosting benefits of a 1.07% saline solution, which, again, is 4,300 milligrams of sodium per liter with a significantly increased risk of diarrhea. And one way to do this is actually adding the amino acid glycine to the solution. And we know this because glycine has been added to salt solutions for decades in individuals with severe diarrhea, either from rotavirus or cholera. You basically put in glycine at a ratio of 2 to 3 to 1 on sodium, and that has been shown to dramatically reduce the total volume of diarrhea, the frequency of diarrhea, and the actual total volume of fluid needed to hydrate the individual. So when you add glycine to a very high Salt solution, like 4300 milligrams of sodium per liter, you are probably getting the best blood volume boosting solution and significantly reducing the risk of diarrhea.

Okay, so you add glycine to this high salt solution. But walk me through what it would look like if I've got GL and I've got salt. And I would love for you to clarify, if we're just talking about table salt or any salt here, what would I do? Let's say somebody's listening in or I'm going to go to the gym after this, and I just want to try exactly what you've recommended and see what kind of boost it gives me to a workout that I might already be familiar with. So if people are listening right now, I'd say, yeah, go do something that you're already familiar with to kind of see how it compares. Walk me through what I'm going to do in the kitchen. How am I actually going to make a drink that has this amount of performance enhancement capability with just salt and glycine?

So essentially, one teaspoon of salt is 2,300 milligrams of sodium. So if you want 4,300 milligrams of sodium, just under two teaspoons of salt in a liter of fluid.

Two teaspoons of salt in one liter?

Yeah, just under two teaspoons of salt.

Okay.

Yep, in one liter of fluid.

And by the way, just to clarify real quick, a liter is going to be kind of like a big water bottle that's like what, about 32 ounces or so?

Yeah, it's 33 point. I forget.

Maybe 0.8. I like to go with approximation. So around two teaspoons in around one of the bigger water bottles or like, you know, 32, 33 ounces or so, and you just stir that. Does the temperature of the water matter?

Well, we can get into that, but yes, if you want to enhance Performance drinking a colder solution, particularly a cold or salt solution. You can actually go sub zero on a salt solution and it won't freeze because salt in the salinity lowers the freezing point. So you can actually consume like sub zero liquid if you have high enough salt concentration and that will actually dramatically cool the body down. You don't have to go that cold though. The studies show that even like low end refrigeration temperature, 39,40 degrees Fahrenheit of a salt solution, that's, let's say a full liter will absolutely drop core body temperature by about half a degree in about 30 minutes. And so that is going to increase the time it would take you to hit a critical core temperature which can cease performance. So there's a dual benefit of consuming the salt solution cold.

Okay, got it.

And I'm taking notes here. I'm literally going to go work out this afternoon and try out what you're talking about. Oh, and by the way, for folks listening in, I'm going to put all the show notes@bengreenfieldlife.com winbook that's the name of James new book BenGreenfieldLife.com winbook okay, so I've got around two teaspoons. I've got 32, 33 ounces or so. I've got the water, preferably cold, if I can cool it beforehand or after. And then tell me about the glycine component.

So technically the studies show that glycine can absorb sodium on a 3 to 1 molar ratio. You don't have to have every single molecule of glycine pulling every single molecule of sodium into the body because passive absorption occurs very well with sodium. So this is active transport or facilitated transport with glycine. So technically, if you wanted to, if you had 4 grams of sodium, if you wanted to have all the glycine drive all the sodium, you would use a 3 to 1 ratio, basically 12 grams of glycine. But I don't think that's not necessary. So I would just probably do with 4 grams of sodium just under 2 teaspoons. I would say anywhere from like, I would say 6 grams of glycine would be more than enough to help facilitate some of that extra salt from causing.

Diarrhea, possibly a total rabbit hole. But wasn't you who told me that to mitigate some of the oxidizing or inflammatory effects of vegetable oil, that if you consume either around 5 to 6 grams of glycine or I think it was also 5 to 6 grams of spirulina that both of those could mitigate some of that damage.

Yes, that's correct. So glycine helps to. It's really like the rate limiting amino acid for the formation of glutathione when cysteine is available, which typically cysteine is available very well. So it'll help boost glutathione levels, which is our master antioxidant, which can help with the oxidative stress from the omega 6 seed oils.

Okay, got it.

Yeah. Spirulina as well does something similar to inhibit the oxidative stress from.

Ever since you told me that, whenever I'll go out to a restaurant and have a bunch of food and I don't know what the dressings or the sauces have in them, or I've had a big bolus of salad from the Whole Foods Hot salad bar, had canola oil in my system, I always fall back on that spirulina or glycine trick. I've been doing that ever since. I think it was four years ago that I read that by you or you mentioned it on a podcast. So the glycine, do you just get any old glycine powder? Does the brand matter or just glycine? Glycine, yeah.

I mean, you can use, if you want, a more easily dissolvable one. Bulk supplements has one that's more crystalline, that seems to dissolve a bit better than some of the powders. But essentially, if you get a good, strong enough blender, it should blend fairly well. It doesn't have to fully dissolve, but the one from bulk supplements seems to dissolve a little bit better than some of the other ones.

Okay. Yeah, those are the big white bags, I think, that tend to be slamming deals you can get on Amazon, right?

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Now, bone broth, James, is salty and it has glycine in it. What would be the advantage of maybe just drinking bone broth? Is it nowhere near the saltiness of a solution like this?

Right. I mean, what you could do is you could actually use bone broth as your fluid instead of water, per se.

And get some of the glycine and get some of the salt from there. But you'd have to test what the saltiness of that, because then you wouldn't. Because you wouldn't want to overshoot or undershoot. So it's kind of like how salty is the bone broth that you've created? Because then you just have to adjust how much salt you put in there.

Right.

The key to all of this, though, is really you have to start at least 90 minutes before exercise if you want the, if you want to be performing at the optimal blood volume boosting potential of the solution. So you want to start at least 90 minutes before exercise consuming the solution.

And do you need to consume it all at that 90 minute mark or can you just kind of sip on it leading up to your workout?

Yeah, you do not want to consume it all right at the 90 minute mark. That's another key. So the key is actually the rate that you consume these solutions is very important because the gastrointestinal system has a maximum capacity of how much sodium and water it can absorb at a given time. So if you overflood the system, then that will also lead to diarrhea. So essentially, for a full liter of fluid, it's probably best to start about 105 minutes prior to performance. And then you would probably want to slowly consume that solution. And when I say slowly, you want to try to figure out a good rate that is equal for this entire period, but slowly over probably 45 minutes. And you want to try to consume an equal amount of fluid over that 45 minutes. So you're not sort of oversaturating the absorptive capacity of the gastrointestinal. So just figure out, if you want to do 30 minutes, figure out how much fluid and how often you would have to consume that full liter in 30 minutes. Or if you wanted to be extra careful and do 45 minutes, just figure out, do some calculations. Let's say, you know, you divide 45 by six, how many, you know, mls you would have to consume, you know, over six different times over that 45 minutes to slowly consume it at an equal rate.

Yeah, that's like the old school trick back in college. We would dare each other to drink a gallon of milk without throwing up. And you just had to drink it in 60 minutes. And the trick was to actually Split it into 60 small individual portions and do one tiny individual portion each minute. If you wanted to beat your roommate at the gallon of milk challenge without puking. So that's a random cocktail party trick for any of you who want to drink a gallon of milk in public. But the other thing regarding the aspect of gradually consuming a solution like this leading up to your workout is that it reminds me a little bit of the use of bicarbonate. Sodium bicarbonate is a fantastic buffering agent, and I think you've talked about it before, but that's another one where, and you might have to remind me of the volume you can actually get a Pretty significant performance enhancing aid for pretty dirt cheap. But you also have to be kind of careful with the way that you approach sodium bicarb. So do you still stand by the recommendation to. To use sodium bicarb, particularly leading up to something that might be a very glycolytic type of exercise or something that would induce a lot of lactic acidosis?

So there's no question that there's very good data that sodium bicarbonate about two hours before performance improves performance. The problem is the acute doses are so high that a lot of times it can cause more gastrointestinal issues than that outweigh any type of performance benefit and recovery benefit that you would get. So I'm more of a fan of actually slowly building up your bicarbonate stores over weeks by simply either drinking bicarbonate waters. And it has to be fairly high in bicarbonate, like at least typically around 1000 milligrams per liter, or 1800 milligrams per liter would be even better in consuming 2 liters of that fluid per day, rather than just acutely dosing yourself with 30 grams of sodium bicarbonate, because that can lead to gastrointestinal distress. So there have been studies looking at just drinking bicarbonate waters in basically physical contact sports, particularly mixed martial art athletes, consuming basically high bicarbonate waters at around 2 liters per day, 2 to 3 liters per day. You do that over the course of four weeks, and it dramatically improved power output, recovery and endurance. And that's because when you go anaerobic, a lot of people blame it on lactic acid and the lactate buildup, but it's actually not. It's the hydrogen ion buildup, and lactate just follows that.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Sometimes I throw around terms like that, but it's because that's what people are familiar with. If I say hydrogen ion buildup, people don't get it, but people understand lactic acid. But you're right, it's the hydrogen ions that accumulate as a result of the lactic acid, not the lactic acid itself that's problematic. This idea, though, of chronic intake of bicarbonate rich mineral waters is actually really cool. I mean, I drink Pellegrino a lot of the time as my sparkling water of choice, mostly because that's what they sell at Costco when my wife picks it up. But I think you had a couple examples of bicarbonate rich mineral waters that you think would be better than that if someone was going to use this chronic loading approach. Which ones do you like?

Yeah, Gerold Steiner is pretty good, but it's very carbonated. So if you don't want a bloat, I suggest just basically blending it in a blender for a couple seconds to fizz it out. Although it won't taste as nice because the carbonation basically blocks a lot the minerally taste of that water. There's another water called Magnesia. It's difficult to get in the United States though, but that also has high bicarbonate. Or you could literally just create your own bicarbonate waters by actually just putting sodium bicarb in water.

All right, next up, we all know glycemic variability is something you really gotta be concerned about how much your blood glucose goes up and down during the day. But you don't necessarily have to buy one of those blood glucose monitors you attach to your body 24 7. They're very helpful, but we're talking about biohacking on a budget, so tune in for a dirt cheap way for lowering your blood glucose.

Two recent studies related to reducing your blood glucose. So the first one, I've had a.

Lot of eyebrows raised at me when.

I say what I've said in the past, and that is that I don't take metformin because even though it has some really good life extension properties, the trade off in terms of disruption of the gut microbiome, decreasing the ability to produce new mitochondria and decreasing the ability to get muscle protein synthesis post exercise dictates that I think the cons outweigh the pros. Unless you have full on diabetes, in which case, you know, metformin could be a good idea. But I've always said, you know, I prefer two things instead. Bitter melon or dihydroberberine. I think bitter melon or dihydroberine are two of the best, most fantastic alternatives to.

The metformin. And so this recent study actually studied bitter melon because me personally, I've tested my blood sugar scores and my blood glucose responds just as favorably to bitter melon as it does to metformin. The only thing that shoves my blood sugar lower than bitter melon, which is the stuff that we use in kion lean, is an intense cold bath or cold shower. So anytime I have carbs, you know, carrot cake, sourdough bread, sweet potatoes, yams, glass of wine, you name it, I pop two kion lean and my blood.

Sugar is right as rain.

This recent study showed that bitter gourd extract, AKA bitter melon extract, the effects on lowering Blood glucose was significant. In this case, they looked at hemoglobin, a 1C 3 month snapshot of blood sugar levels and found that there was a significant hypoglycemic effect. As a matter of fact, the reason they did this study was they were trying to figure out what you would do in people who failed to respond to anti diabetic medications. When anti diabetic drugs are ineffective, what do you do? But anyway, so this bitter melon extract actually works. And this latest study backed up what I've been saying for a long time. The hypoglycemic effect of bitter melon is so strong that I actually don't recommend you use it before workout because your glucose might get too low. But with carbs, it's great. Now let's say you can't afford it and you want something a little bit more inexpensive. You know, since we're talking about cheap blood sugar hacks today, the other one that works really well, and this was another recent study, they looked at glycemic restrictions response, they look at appetite society or appetite satiety. They looked at gastric secretions and they looked at gastric emptying after people ate bread, right? Bread being a food that notoriously would increase blood sugar levels. And in this case what they did was they gave people lemon juice with water as a control and with tea as a control. Lemon juice led to a 1 1/2 fold increase of the volume of gastric contents 30 minutes after the meal, meaning the gastric emptying was 1 1/2 times faster. It elicited a 35% lower blood glucose concentration and an increase in society, meaning the appetite perception and the gastric volume correlated and corresponded to better appetite satiation in response to the lemon juice along with an increase in gastric secretions, indicating that it helped people to digest food better. So if you're up the creek without a paddle, you don't have all these fancy supplements, you don't have bitter melon extract, you don't have your digestive enzymes, you don't have your bitters. All you need is lemon or lemon juice. Fascinating. And you can add a little bit to a morning glass of water like I do. You can, like, you know, if I'm at a restaurant, you know, I don't want to have a cocktail, I just order a glass of bitters on the rocks, a little squeeze of lemon, like don't underestimate the power of some of these cheap hacks like lemon juice or nicotinamide powder or L glutamine powder. Or some of these things that a lot of people don't talk about so much because they don't make a lot of people a lot of money. But the lemon juice absolutely works. I think the kion lean is probably a little bit better. I think the 1, 2 combo of both for carbohydrate control could be great. But it's nice to see how some of these simple things actually work. And in the last few months, all.

These research studies I'm talking about, these are brand new research studies.

It's just been proven to work. So lemon juice to the rescue.

That one's really Cohen.

Lemon juice to the rescue.

I really like that. For me, it's interesting. There's a couple things that I want to try here. The first would be I like the combination of take some kion lean, then drink lemon juice, like during your meal, pre meal, whatever way works best, and then afterwards just get in a walk. I feel like those, that three combo. And if you're, hey, listen, you don't want to, you know, spend the money on the kion lean, sorry, Ben and kion, then, yeah, just the lemon juice and then a walk afterwards like that seems like a really inexpensive, if not free, ish way of managing blood glucose. So I think it's a cool combo.

BFR training. That's right. Blood flow restriction from way back in the days where I was a poor bodybuilder was one of the secrets to build muscle without lifting heavy loads and with a low risk of injury. And today you're going to learn about that and vestibular enhancement on a budget. Now, you told me also that you have some kind of a biohack to increase strength within like 60 seconds. Can you tell me what that biohack is? Yeah.

You know, one of my favorite biohacks is, you know, working that vestibular system. So we talked about before doing an exercise for the eyes that gives input to the brain. And we also talked before about how I did that exercise with the elastic band with you that works the body. And that third component is that vestibular system, your inner ear. By doing an exercise for that, you're actually kind of getting the double benefit of getting information through the eyes and the inner ear, enhancing your brain's map. And the way I look at it is that if you can enhance the brain's awareness and enhance the brain's map and increase the clarity of that map, you can enhance strength output. So one exercise I might do is something called vestibulo ocular reflex vor, where you Basically, again, you're sitting upright in your chair, or you could be standing, you hold your arm at arm's length with your finger extended so you can see your finger clearly. And what you do now is instead of moving the hand, the hand actually stays still, but your head moves. And what you can start with is just moving your head simply left to right and up and down. So you keep your eyes fixed on your finger while your head is in motion. You know, your head's moving left to right, up and down. And you do maybe five reps each, you know, left to right five times, up and down five times. And what you're doing is you're kind of recalibrating your brain in terms of visual integration and vestibular integration. And this is essential because when it comes. Again, when it comes to strength, our brain primary forms of input, our vision system and our inner ear vestibular system are the fastest information sources. So there's so much more preferred than the body. So nowadays we sit so much, we're sitting in our cars, we're sitting at home, we're sitting at work, we're staring at a computer screen all day. So our eyes and our inner ear don't really get that great a stimulus. Even when we go to the gym, what are we doing? We're on a treadmill, running straight. We're sitting on a machine on the chest press. Not getting any good head motion. There's no integration during our exercise or activity of the eyes, the inner ear and the body. So they're kind of in a way out of sync. And so this type of exercise could be a cool, quick hack that you can use especially before any type of, you know, high intensity or heavy lift. This will just enhance that.

Okay, and just real quick again, the quick walkthrough, how exactly do you do it?

Yeah, so again you, you sit upright, or you could do it standing. I always say to start first time you do this, do it seated. And you put your arm at arm's length. You put the. I would just use your thumb. Have the thumb straight up and look at the tip of your thumb and keep your eyes fixed on the tip of the thumb as you move your head left to right. The key here is to not let your head turn too far. So some people will turn their head so far to the left that both eyes can't see the thumb clearly. And you want to make sure not to turn too far so that you want to make sure your eyes can see your finger clearly the whole time. And you're Just turning again. You're turning your head left and right. You do that about 5 to 10 reps, and then you do the same thing going up and down.

Okay, got it. Interesting. Can you send or do you have access to, like, a video that shows, for example, how one would use this or how one would use.

These Brock strings that you mentioned? If I wanted to put some visuals over in the show notes?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I can send you a quick demo video on recapping some of these exercises.

Hey, it turns out you can trick your body into gathering more oxygen and increasing your VO2 max with cheap methods of altitude training. That's what we're going to dive into on this snippet.

Hey, Ben, this is Mark. My question is about training to climb Denali. I signed up for a trip there in about seven months, and I have good amount of climbing experience, but nothing quite like this. This is definitely the next step. So a few questions. One is what you'd recommend for training, strategies, you know, strength versus endurance. Certain exercises you would definitely include to train for this. Also, how you would prepare the body for the cold that we'd see up on the mountain. Also what you'd recommend for dealing with the high altitude. Any strategies for training? I live in New England, so we have some mountains, but nothing high altitude. So how to prepare the body for altitude and then even on the mountain. Any strategies or supplements you'd recommend to deal with high altitude and then finally nutrition for a trip like this? It's about two to three weeks of climbing, and in the past on trips like this, I've definitely lost a lot of weight. So any ideas or strategies for that as well? Thanks so much. Love the podcast. Take care.

You ever been to Denali, Rachel? I haven't been. Have you been to Denali? Like I mentioned, I've got a watch on called the Denali. Yeah, yeah. No, that's. Isn't that where Mount McKinley is? I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's in Alaska. It is, yeah. And I thought Mount McKinley was in Alaska. I think. I don't know. It's. Yeah, it's in Alaska. Mount McKinley Denali, Alaska. You're at. It is 20,000ft high. So, yeah, there's some definite things that you can do if you're going to climb. He's got a lot of questions here. There's a lot. So let's kind of take these on one at a time. First of all, training strategies.

And recommendations for dealing with high altitude. Like in terms of strategies, supplements, et Cetera. That's the biggest piece of this question. So let's respond to that. First, I want to give you, let's say, my top five ways to train for altitude that don't necessarily involve moving to the Himalayas or sleeping in an altitude tent. Okay? Right. So let's say you're just like the average person, and you need to get ready for altitude. One would be a static apnea tables. Free divers use these a lot to increase their tolerance to low amounts of O2 or high amounts of CO2. And what that means is you've taken a free diving course, right, Rachel?

I have, yes.

Yeah. So. So a carbon dioxide, or what's called a CO2 static apnea table basically has you. You hold your breath for a certain amount of time. Like, let's say two minutes with decreasing intervals of recovery between each hold. You can do these while you're freaking watching Game of Thrones or driving. Well, don't do it while you're driving your car. Maybe while somebody's driving your car or you're on an airplane.

But you can.

You hold your breath for two minutes, and then you recover for two. Then you hold your breath for two minutes, you recover for. For a minute and a half. Then you hold your breath for two minutes, you recover for a minute, then you hold your breath for two minutes, and you recover 30 seconds. And there are apps. If you go to the itunes app store or any other app store, you can find apps that literally just like, ding every time you're supposed to hold your breath and then every time you're supposed to recover and breathe. And an O2 table, whereas a CO2 table increases your tolerance to build up of CO2, an O2 table is. It's kind of the opposite, where you'll hold your breath for two minutes and then recover for two minutes, then hold your breath for two and a half minutes, then recover for two minutes, then hold your breath for three minutes and recover for two minutes. And so it's kind of the opposite. The breath hold time gets increasingly longer rather than the rest intervals getting increasingly shorter. But you can easily go through a couple of static apnea tables a few times a week while you're doing other activities. So that's a really cool, way, easy way to. Yeah. There's this book called the Oxygen Advantage, in which. And I'm interviewing this guy and releasing a podcast with him soon, where they talk about how Bear Grylls, when he was training for. He did a big climb somewhere. I think it was Everest. He did a ton of because he didn't have access to altitude, he would do breath restricted swim training, which is very similar to these static apnea tables where you go for a long swim and you hold your breath and only breathe every six strokes, for example. But these type of things can actually help significantly with your ability to be able to tolerate high amounts of CO2 and also your ability to be able to produce blood cell precursors, specifically erythropoietin or epo. So that's one thing that I would do. The next one would be sauna. And there's been some really interesting studies that have found that training in the heat increases plasma volume, so blood plasma volume, and this erythropoietin, very similar to the apnea tables, but that can also elicit physiological adaptations that allow you to replicate much of what you would get if you were going to do altitude acclimation. So there's this odd crossover between exercising in a hot environment, like pulling an exercise bike or a treadmill into a sauna, or even just exercising really hard, and then going and doing some yoga or stretching for a while in the sauna afterwards. But it turns out that even the studies that they've done where they've taken groups of folks and they've had them do altitude training, and then they've had another group of folks do sauna training and brought them both to altitude, it appears that the sauna training is just as efficacious as altitude training, with the caveat that the effects don't stick with you as long as they stick with you when you're doing altitude training. But still very, very cool. Way to be able to train for altitude even if you don't have access to altitude.

Right?

Exactly, yeah. And static apnea tables. Yep. So we've got the sauna, we've got static apnea tables. The next one that I would look into as a strategy would be echinacea. So I actually interviewed this fella named Craig Dinkle, and I'll link to my podcast interview with him. But in that podcast, he goes into the use of echinacea to improve oxygen transport capacity and also to stimulate erythropoiesis production and also the activity levels of T cells, which causes you to produce your own growth factors, also responsible for increasing EPO production. And so they've shown massive increases in oxygen availability and a huge boost in erythropoietin. Very similar to if you were blood doping with the use of echinacea. And this guy actually makes, you know, based on this, you know, full disclosure, he. He sells a supplement that has like, echinacea and a bunch of other things that assist with specifically altitude performance. He's a climber. So it's got like desiccated liver fat or desiccated liver powder and chlorella and beetroot and all these things have been shown to help with altitude. But then also echinacea, which kind of flies under the radar.

Yeah.

And. And we talk in that interview about the mechanism of action via which erythropoietin can be stimulated with the consumption of echinacea. But it's really interesting. You can use echinacea as a way to increase your blood cell counts and increase erythropoietin production. And that's a relatively inexpensive little supplement hack that you can use. I would love to see these all done. And then I would love for Marco to come back and tell us if it worked. Uh huh. Yeah, exactly. Because all these little things do add up quite a bit. And granted there are other compounds in addition to erythropoietin that work really well that you'll see, like a lot of Sherpas who guide people up Mount Everest using like rhodiola and cordyceps, although cordyceps is actually in that supplement that I just mentioned, that biotropic supplement. And I'll link to the interview that I did with those guys in the show. Notes. But. But yeah, echinacea, if you're just gonna choose one, appears to be one of the most potent and one of the lesser known for performance at altitude. A couple of other things that I would do. So I've given you three so far. Right. The sauna, the static apnea tables, and echinacea. Another one would be. And a lot of people laugh at this, but it actually does work. So this particular device will increase the amount of CO2 that's right in front of your mouth when you breathe.

Breathe.

Right. So you increase your tolerance to carbon dioxide and what's called metabolic acidosis. But it also puts a relatively large strain on your intercostal muscles around your ribs, your serratus muscles and your diaphragm and your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. It's a form of resisted breath training. Okay. Whereas a static apnea table would be a form of restricted breath training. This would be a form of resisted breath training. Does not decrease the partial pressure of oxygen in the air that you are breathing, but it does have a really potent effect on improving your ability to be able to withstand lower amounts of oxygen availability or specifically higher amounts of CO2. And they've shown in clinical studies that this can increase aerobic capacity, improve lung function, and even increase what are called some of the hematological variables, meaning some of the same blood variables such as hematocrit or hemoglobin that are involved in altitude training. What is this? This is the training mask. Just the basic training mask that a lot of people laugh at because the crossfitters and their knee high compression socks go running down the streets with their barbells over their shoulders wearing their training masks. But this thing actually does work, especially if you don't have access to, you know, $4,000 hypoxic training device. But it's, it's literally just restricting breath flow. You can wear it when you're driving in your car or doing a workout or you know, doing yoga or whatever. And it's just kind of a relatively cheap way to train for altitude. So I'm going to throw that in there. I mean, I know a lot of people laugh at it, but I personally use a training mask a few times a week just because it's, it's cheap and easy. Right? Just strap it on, do what you were going to do anyways. So the one exception is that you want to be careful that you're not doing extremely complex, heavy, loaded exercises in it because sometimes you get so blue in the face wearing it that your form suffers. So just kind of be careful when you decide to use it. But that's another one that's not too bad. And then the last one that I would recommend for training for climbing or anything like that would be something I already mentioned, that freaking incline treadmill. I mean it works. I mean if you really wanted to, you could make your own hypoxic air generator. I interviewed a guy about how to do that. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's actually not that expensive. If you can get your hands on one of these.

It'S like a, it's like a hypoxic generator machine that you can purchase from typically a lot of local like health outlets, like stores that sell health equipment. Usually they're located close to hospitals. They're called oxygen concentrators. Or you could look for an oxygen concentrator repair shop in your area and you can actually create your own hypoxic air generator using one of these. And you can do what's called intermittent hypoxic training where you'll go like 5 minutes of walking on the treadmill with the hypoxic air generator on, then five minutes with it off and do that, you know, three times through for a 30 minute session. I have one in my garage and they're honestly, they're not that expensive to build. And I'll put the full link. I don't have time to go into it in a lot of detail right now, but I'll put the link in the show notes. But it's really interesting. You can actually build your own altitude training device. You could keep next to an incline treadmill like this. And it doesn't cost as much as you'd think if you follow the instructions I have. What kind of cost? What's the box? By the, by the time that you've put everything into it, we're talking about like 600 to 800 bucks with usually about you know, probably 5 to 10 hours of your time driving around buying everything and building it. So.

Yes.

But compared to like thousands and thousands, I mean, just to rent one would cost you that much per month. Yeah, yeah. So, so there's, there's some ideas for you. And then finally a few other things I'm going to throw out there for you.

First of all, I did a podcast with the folks from Obstacle Order in which we talked about a whole bunch of these altitude hacks for like an hour. So if you want to listen to that, that's an obstacle training podcast. I'll put a link to that in the show notes called the Obstacle Order Podcast. Another couple of recommendations I would give you just to quickly cover some of your other questions. How to prepare your body for the cold. That's not rocket science, cold. I mean, I still do cold showers. Morning, evening, every day, as cold as you can get. I mean that doesn't, doesn't get much more complex than that. Or you can use like one of these cool fat burner type of vests or, or, or gut devices. But honestly, just cold showers, that's, that's one of the biggies. And that and just getting out in the cold. When I prepared for the 38 degrees below zero Agoji race in Vermont, I would actually, and I was preparing for, in the winter, I would just go on shiver walks right where you got your shorts. It's a really sexy look. Your shorts, some mittens, some shoes and something to cover your head. So you cover up all the vital parts, leave everything else exposed and you go for a walk. And my neighbor at one point, when my boys and I went up to her house up the hill a ways to offer to help her with yard work or anything else she needed done. She's just this single widow who lives up there. As we were talking with her, she asked me if. If I had seen any suspicious activity in the area. And I said, what do you mean? She said, well, I think there's. He might be a druggie or a crazy person or something. But at about 6am in the morning, in the dead of winter, the past few nights, this person's run by my house without wearing anything except their underwear. And then they disappear into the forest, and they kind of seem to be, like, headed down into the forest, like, kind of down in the direction of your house. So I just wanted to. I just wanted to warn you about this person that seems to be running around our neighborhood. Did you tell her it was you? No, I just nodded. I nodded, I said. And I kind of switched my course up from that point. Quit cutting across her yard. But I mean, those. They do work, those Shiver walks. They're really good for. For burning fat too. Really good for entertaining your neighbors as well. It's a whimsical hoff technique.

Okay.

And then finally, as far as nutrition goes, I'll link to you to two podcasts in which one podcast I did on what to do during a long Boy Scout trip, and another podcast I did on what to do for about two weeks of training in Mongolia. And I cover all these different foods that I think are really, really good for long periods of exercise or trips where you got to have a lot of caloric density without a lot of weight. And I go specifically into things like pemmican as one, macadamia nuts as another really good one, amino acid capsules, and also spirulina and chlorella capsules as another really good option. And then like a really dense meal replacement powder. We're talking about something like whether there's one that I like called Super Greens, there's another one called Super Berry. I talk about all these in both of those podcasts. But, I mean, if I had to choose. If I could choose just one food, Rachel, and you were just shove me out the door and say, walk. To walk, whatever. Coeur d'. Alene, right? Like 30 miles from here, I walked to Coeur d'. Alene. You know what I would grab? What? Macadamia nuts, because of their extremely high caloric and saturated fat density with a relatively low load when it comes to overall weight. And probably my second choice would be Pemmican, which is like a rendered fat. It's like an old Native American recipe pemmican. So those would be my top two, but there's plenty of others and I'll link to some previous podcasts that I've done on those in the Show Notes for you so you can go to town on those Mark. And those will be at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 363 hey, thanks for listening in again. All the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com BiohackingBudget and if you like this episode or episodes like this, leave me feedback. I love to hear your comments. Comments do you like summaries? Executive summaries borrowed from a variety of very popular podcasts I've recorded? Do you like my Q&As? Do you want more AMAs? Do you want any other Alphabet letter soup that I'm forgetting to name? Anyways, go. Leave me feedback. I read your feedback. I read your comments. I read your reviews. I value all of that.

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