The Hidden Health Epidemic Nobody Is Talking About (& 6 Ways To Protect Yourself From It)

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From seal fit, Kokoro, Spartan, Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, gut hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast, everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

Well, well, well. We are close to the new year, so I thought for today's show I would really take a deep dive into probably one of the most important things that you can do this new year to enhance your health, both your physical health and your mental health, and even your spiritual health. And now I'll let you wait with bated breath to hear exactly what it is that I'm going to cover on today's show. Now, before I do, a couple of quick housekeeping items. They're not housekeeping items. They're how I support this podcast. They're how you support this podcast. Every single episode of the Ben Greenville Fitness show is brought to you by my company, Kion. What do we do At Kion? We find ancestral nutrients like rock lotus extract and bitter melon extract and turmeric. And we combine these with modern molecules, things like cetyl myristoliate and glucosamine chondroitin. We have one of the most pure, not one of the. We tested against 46 other coffees. These the most pure antioxidant rich coffee that exists. We have a clean energy bar that is basically comprised of all the superfoods that I personally sprinkle on top of my smoothie in the morning. I had those created into a nutrient dense real food energy bar with a delicious chocolate coconut flavor, pretty much the bee's knees. Everything you need is over at Kion. K I O N. That's how you spell the name of my company, Kion. You go to getkion.com ton of savings over there. We've always got amazing specials going on. Wonderful article, inspirational videos from yours truly. Everything's there. Getkion.com getK-I-O-N.com this podcast is also brought to you by Onnit. And one of the cool things that ONNIT has Now is the Onnit6 kettlebell transformation program. Now when it comes to something that I want to swing around to blast fat and build muscle, I could swing around babies or rocks or tree branches and logs or maybe some of those roosters my wife doesn't like anymore and keeps asking me to get rid of because she just wants the egg laying chickens. Anyways, I don't do that. I swing kettlebells because kettlebells are pretty much the best way to get fit fast if you want cardio and strength simultaneously. And my good friends at ONNIT have put together probably one of the best kettlebell courses that exist when it comes to you not needing to learn a bunch of complex moves, but just boom. Get in, get out. Zero decision making fatigue and it fits. Freaking works. All the workouts are designed to help you lose weight and build muscle and move better and feel better. You can get it onnit.com 6 actually I I got one better for you. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com onnit that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com O N N I T that will get you 10 off of anything including their on it 6 program. Everything. Their functional foods, their fitness gear, everything. I like to say it like that. Anyways, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com on it.

Hey, I hope you're ready to get all sentimental. Not mental, sentimental. Two totally different things. This is another of my notorious solo sodes in which I talk to you and try not to bore you. Droning on. I actually do want to talk about something kind of important today, and it's not about some of the stuff I've done solo sodes on in the past like diet or coffee. Eating and coffee are both really great things, but I actually want to get, maybe even slightly woo and talk about a hidden health epidemic that I think not a lot of people are aware of, but that we need to be paying a lot more attention to. And I'm going to tell you how you can kind of make sure for yourself that this bad thing is not going to happen to you. I'm going to put show notes for you for everything I talk about, every recommendation I make, every book I mention, everything over in the show notes for today's show. You can get that@BenGreenfieldFitness.com friends that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Franz which actually gives you a clue about what I'm going to talk about today because perhaps it's genetics or perhaps it's because I was homeschooled K through 12 in rural North Idaho. But I'm an introvert through and through. I'm the guy at busy conferences who ducks away to my hotel room to escape and go recharge my batteries and be entirely by myself. I thrive on long walks, not with people, but by myself, multi hour hikes by myself, long bike rides by myself. I get exhausted at networking events and cocktail parties and I often slip away early to go to sleep or to curl up with Harry Potter or to not not the person Harry Potter, the book Harry Potter. Just need to clarify there or to meditate and to breathe and even have family events. Like a lot of times you'll find me in the corner, like reading a book that I found on a bookshelf. Even at other people's houses. Sometimes I'm just like sitting on their couch reading one of their books or I'm at home strumming on my guitar or my ukulele. And even when I was a kid, my parents had to coax me, persuade me, and even threaten me with punishment to get me to rip my nose out of my book and be gracious enough to ever so briefly emerge from my bedroom to quick hello to any guests that we had at the house, after which I would subsequently rush back to my room and curl up once again with my book. And I'd often read until 3 or 4am and consume several books each day and night. When I was a kid, like the library was my favorite place to be, still is actually one of my favorite places to be. And a multitude of personality tests that I've taken, including tests in the book Quiet Revolution that is related to the book Introvert by Susan Cain and the Myers Briggs Analysis. They've backed this up. I'm totally introverted. I'm a big fat eye. But at the same time I'm completely happy being a loner. But I now go out of my way to ensure that as uncomfortable or unnatural as that initially was, for me to spend plenty of time carving out a couple hours each night for a family dinner and nighttime family rituals. When I say a couple hours, I don't mean we're like eating a salad for two hours long, chewing like cows on our cud. But I mean, by the time we make dinner and hang out and have dinner and get up to bed and play some music and say a prayer and tuck the kids, it's like two hours. And you know, I've also made more time in my life for connecting with old friends and new friends, attending networking events, scheduling time for things like book signings and meet and greets at conferences that I go to, or traveling to conferences, period. Or for actively engaging in my local church or community or charity events. Even. Even though a big part of me doesn't want to do that. I've had to kind of transform myself, even if I'm acting to a certain extent to do this, into a bit of a social butterfly. So why have I done that? Why have I kind of turned away from my desire to be an arrogant, hard to approach, uncommunicative asshole? Well, it turns out there's this link between love and family, social connectedness and relationships, and a longer lifespan. And in this solo sode, I'm going to supply you with a host of practical tips to include in your own life to live longer and have better health because owning an amazing body or having a sharp mind or having six pack abs, because I know everybody listens to my podcast has a six pack. That all can be for naught if loneliness and sadness and inflammation, high blood pressure and accelerated aging are all occurring due to a lack of friendships and social relationships and community and charity and love. So I'm going to teach you how to incorporate all of these and into your life. We should tackle the elephant in the room first. Think about this. Imagine, if you will, as the song goes, Imagine a condition. Imagine a condition. Here's what I want you to imagine. There's a condition that makes a person irritable, depressed, self centered, increases the risk of dying by over 25%, dying early at least. And then imagine that in industrialized country over 30% of people are afflicted with this condition. And your income doesn't protect you, your education doesn't protect you, your sex doesn't protect you, your ethnicity doesn't protect you. And worse yet, it's considered to be contagious. It damages your heart muscles, it causes premature death, and it can affect any ordinary person walking down the street. This condition exists and you might already have it. It's called Drumroll please Loneliness and it's also known as social isolation. It's stigmatized, it's trivialized, a lot of times it's flat out ignored, but it is fast emerging as a worldwide public health problem, oddly enough going hand in hand with so called social media. And worse yet, zero physicians are trained in medical school about how to deal with this problem. Now often we tend to associate loneliness with being homeless or depressed or severely introverted like yours truly, or having really poor social skills or social anxiety. But none of that is true. Both human and animal longitudinal studies have shown that the deleterious effects of loneliness are not attributable to some fringe subset of isolated individuals, but instead affect individual, anyone, anywhere. And in addition to the serious emotional toll that you'd expect loneliness to pile up on top of you, research has shown that the physical manifestations are also pretty grim. Studies have linked loneliness to cancer, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, immune system issues, pain, fatigue, depression, excessive reactivity to stress, rampant elevated cortisol levels and high blood pressure. And that makes the effects of loneliness on par with smoking cigarettes in terms of mortality risk. Unlike other chronic diseases that tend to wreak havoc more often in older people, it's actually young adults who are at the highest risk of this issue. And when you think about it, there's kind of a bit of an ancestral context to this whole loneliness problem. I mean, when you look at human history from an evolutionary standpoint, you can see that extended isolation would potentially mean death because your tribe wasn't physically around to nurture you or to protect you. And so we've developed these social constructs to keep ourselves bound together in bands and commun and tribes and extended families and social connections that actually turn out to be comprised of about 150 people, which is very interesting. Let's actually rabbit hole for a second and talk about that. It's called Dunbar's number, that 150. And that's from 1992. This British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar was watching primates like monkeys and apes and they would live in these tight knit social groups, or what he called grooming cliques that seem to be dependent on the actual size of, of the neocortex area of these primates brains. In other words, higher brain volume was associated with a greater ability to be able to socialize with a high number of companions. And the primate species with the biggest brains, they tend to have the largest social groups. And Dunbar figured the same principle should apply to humans. And he was able to accurately predict the average group size for humans. Like the perfect group size for humans. It wasn't 5,000 Facebook friends, in case you're wondering. It turns out that the maximum mean group size that he calculated is about 150 for the total number of companions with whom we can effectively socialize. And he also came up with other numbers like intimate circle of 12 companions, 12 and as few as five very close friends. So this number is accurately reflected all over the place. Like Roman legions usually had 150 to 160 men. Neolithic farming villages tended to have about 150 members. Even in animals, it's observed, like in farm animals, Increasing group size past optimal levels can increase stress and damaging behavior like feather pecking and hens and tail biting in pigs. And underlying theory is that once the number begins to significantly exceed 150, it becomes too costly and you lose personal intimacy, and there's too much social grooming effort required to maintain the size of the group. And from an anthropological standpoint, this makes sense because too few members of a group would make survival and activities like hunting or farming less feasible. I mean, just try to track down a woolly mammoth all by yourself with your little spear and your loincloth out there on your own. But, you know, then you get a large, uncoordinated group of greater than 150 people, and that means more weak links and less tribe connectivity, and a brain that can become overpowered in an attempt to remember all the faces and the names and the skills and the roles and the stories and the history of every single member of the group. So in the modern era of social media and ever expanding social networks, our brains have suddenly gotten stretched really thin at a faster pace than what I think we can socially evolve and adapt to. So social media has, of course, facilitated more effective collaboration, and it seems easier to have more friends. We have Facebook and Twitter and Instagram to help us cultivate and maintain these relationships. But these enormous friend networks, they lack deep connections that we form via face to face flesh and blood interactions. And they can almost create, like, this distracting mental labor of trying to juggle the lives of 5,000 friends on a feed or hundreds of, like, you know, Instagram followers. Hundreds. It's a lot without deep connections. So our brains are just not socially wired to keep up with this communicative onslaught of a huge village. It's way bigger than Dunbar's number. And as a result of this distraction, the relationships that we do have can become more shallow and less meaningful. And like, I wonder how our digital relationships would change if social media were engineered to allow for no more than, say, 150 online friends and 12 close acquaintances and no more than five intimate relationships. As a matter of fact, if I had 150 followers on Instagram, I probably initially would feel kind of bad about myself because you're supposed to have, like, thousands and thousands, but then you'd probably find that you develop closer connections and better relationships. Certainly seems to me like it would make social life and the development of meaningful connections a lot easier. But anyways, away from Dunbar's number and back to this growing incidence of the loneliness epidemic because it's kind of ironic, isn't it? I mean, we live in this hyper connected society and yet one of the biggest uphill battles we face in terms of our long term health is disconnectedness and social isolation. So it's far less common than it used to be to know your neighbors by face and name, to engage in face to face meetups and conversations and connected communities that aren't separated by any electronic barrier. And to be a child raised by an entire tribal community that surrounds you rather than say like a parent or two and the schoolmates that you see for a little bit of time each day. And then like Netflix and a smartphone and we walk around with tiny computers in our pockets that can instantly connect us with like minded peers and people from all over the globe. So you would think we'd be more connected to people than we ever have in history, but it's not really the case. When you're on Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat and Instagram and some fringe new platform that's all the rage in Japan or wherever, you're not actually experiencing relationships the way that you're programmed to and the way that you're hardwired to from an ancestral standpoint. You're not looking into people's eyes, you're not touching them, you're not feeling them. You're not even experiencing like the invisible chemical signals. I'll tell you more about those in a little bit. That we create and we ooze from our pores when we're around other humans. We're even missing out on the elect electromagnetic signals that the heart can send out and the brain can send out. I know that sounds woo, but it's a thing. Go look at the the Heart Math Institute and the research they've done on this. So as a matter of fact, there's a direct relationship between smartphone prevalence and loneliness. So one study, this was in 2015, they showed a correlation between smartphone usage and loneliness in college students. And then in 2017, there was another study that found a significant correlation between smartphone addiction and anxiety, loneliness and depression. And the link between technology and loneliness is even more obvious when you look at teenagers. So there's this one article I read in the Atlantic that I'll link to in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com friends and it shows how as smartphone usage has kind of become ubiquitous, there's this rapid and disturbing change in teenage behavior. And this began around 2012 when 50% of Americans owned Smartphones. I actually got my first iPhone, I think in 2013. And so the group born between 1995 and 2012, they call them the Igen generation, they experienced a significant increase in the use of smartphones and social media. You probably don't fall into that category if you, like me, can't actually remember a time when you never even had a smartphone or you really even cared about any form of social media at all. Like I still remember when I was a kid and you have like the phone at home, the landline, 208-746-0874. I still have my number memorized right from back in the day. But that's changed a lot in the Igen group. So teenagers now who spend three or more hours on their phone have a 35% higher chance of a suicide and a 27% higher risk of depression. And the article even says, quote, it's not an exaggeration to describe Igen as being on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades. And much of this deterioration can be traced to their frickin phones. Now, every single one of the social media outlets that you use every day, they make an implicit claim about the structure and organization of human interaction. Because instead of direct interaction with others, we're interacting through something metal, something electronic, something impersonal. So the question we should be asking ourselves is can we actually form meaningful personal relationships through an impersonal medium comprised of zeros and ones? I think, I'm not an engineer, but I think it's zeros and ones. And it turns out that other people have asked the same question and answered it. Like, there's this author named Sherry Turkle, she has an awesome book, it's called Reclaiming Conversations. And she's been studying children's development in a technological culture since the 70s. And she explains how children use technology, specifically computer programming, as a form of self expression. Like there's a 13 year old in her book and he says when you program a computer, you put a little piece in your mind, the computer, computer's mind, and you come to see yourself differently. And you could say that in a way that that's like a personal form of self exploration, but it lacks a relationship and also lacks a prefix, meaning when a significant amount of your time is focused on an impersonal social media, you miss out on the interpersonal relationships that you can really only get by talking to someone face to face. So virtual space is this place for self exploration and dealing with real people who have a knack for being unpredictable, not Computer programming that becomes difficult after spending time in a predictable simulation. Do you get what I'm saying? Like take email, for example. In the workplace, email is used deliberately to avoid social interaction, and it results in a significant amount of depersonalization. Like, I'm personally guilty myself of talking to people more like robots and less like humans when I interact with them virtually. Right? It's very difficult to, like, wander into somebody's cubicle and like, slap a piece of paper on their desk and say, hey, I need this by Friday, and just like, walk out. You know, you got to do a compliment sandwich. Hey, your, your hair looks nice today, Jeff. I really like what you're doing with your hair these days. Hey, I'm. I need this, this, this giant stack of papers I'm about to slap on your desk by Friday. Tell your wife hi. Tell your wife hi. See you later, Jeff. You don't do that with email usually. At least I don't. So what's worse is you don't get much interpersonal interaction and your emotional intelligence, they've actually studied this, your ability to be able to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of other people, that starts to suffer. So people who spend a lot of time on the Internet, they're lonelier. They have more deviant values. Like, they're actually more willing to break social norms because they look at people more like robots and zeros and ones. They lack the robust emotional and social skills that are characteristic of a high emotional intelligence. And I mean, here's the news flash. When it comes to social isolation and loneliness, you can't fix it by getting more friends on Facebook or extending your Snapchat streak, or having the pop up on your computer to reach out via email to some influencer on your digital Rolodex. It isn't about developing the independent lone wolf that I, plus my smartphone, can survive on my own. Thank you very much. You know, I personally maintained that attitude for a long time before I came, pretty recently, like in the past couple of years, face to face with my own growing loneliness and social isolation. Like, I go to conferences and speak on stage in front of thousands of people, and then I go back to my hotel room. I'd just be lonely, right? You have to go out of your way to build physical flesh and blood relationships and a robust community of people who will come to your rescue when your basement floods or who will show up on your doorstep when you're moving into a new house, and people who will cry at your funeral. And that's right, cry at your funeral. That's actually, that comes from the writings, one of my favorite authors, John Ortberg. So he has a book that's called I'd like youe More if youf Were More Like Me. It's a really good handbook for developing deep and meaningful and intimate relationships. I'll link to that, too. Go to BenGreenfoldFitness.com friends and he says, who will not be crying at your funeral? Who will not be crying at your funeral? Your critics. People who write to you to ask for favors but you never hear from otherwise. People whose approval you're constantly trying to gain. Rich people who you think might give you something if you got to know them better. Successful people who you think might make you successful if you hang out with them more often. People who kind of make you feel important when you're hanging around them. People who are cooler than you. Or famous people who haven't met. Or beautiful women whose pictures are on the Internet but who don't actually know you're even alive. And all the little people in the jury box of your mind whose opinion of you matter so much, but who aren't thinking about you at all because they're wondering what other people think about them. Right? Those are not the people that you should be forming lasting, long relationships with. Who's likely to cry at your funeral? I'll tell you. It's. You know, he talks about this in his book, your children and their families. Your wife, your brother, your sister, your good friends, your parents. If for some reason you should die before your parents, people you've genuinely and personally helped, the people with whom you have true intimacy. So the question you should ask yourself is, am I giving the best of my time in my life to the people who cry at my funeral? Now, it's interesting because a lot of people who kind of like.

You know, who make that cry at my funeral list, those aren't a lot of the same people you're interacting with every day on social media and email. Right. They're rather those people in your life with which you tend to build true, meaningful relationships that keep you from dropping into the dark hole of loneliness. Like, I don't email my wife a lot, or my brother or my sister or even, like, my good friends. I don't message them on Facebook as much as I see them in person. And remember, this is coming from me. I've got the 5,000 Facebook friends and I have, I don't know how many Twitter followers I have, like maybe 60,000 or something. I've got like 100, I don't know, 15,000 Instagram fans and like 8 billion Snapchat messages every day. But I still have to deal with loneliness like every single day. So you can grab Ortberg's book and read it. That I would like you more if you're more like me book. It's a good book. But if you want to cut through all the hustle and the hurry in the business and the I'm too busy to hang out with real flesh and blood people and instead develop more meaningful intimacy and relationship in your life, there are things that you can do and I want to tell you how you can defy this social isolation and tap into really one of the most powerful emotions that exists that I think allows you to give the big old middle finger to loneliness. All right, so you've probably heard of the book Blue Zones written by Dan Buettner, where he identifies these five areas where people live the longest. Statistically speaking, it's Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, Nicoya, Costa Rica, Ikaria, Greece, and the Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California. And he has this explanation based on empirical data and firsthand observations why these people live longer, healthier lives. You probably heard me talk about this before on past podcasts like less smoking, a plant rich diet, low level physical activity all day long, consumption of legumes, CrossFit. No, I'm just kidding. Family engagement and social interaction. And in the book he illustrates how important love is as the unifying factor between family, relationship, social engagement, community, and even points out the fact that research shows strong social relationships predict a few 50% increased chance of a long healthy life. So what is love exactly? Well, love technically encompasses a wide variety of emotional and mental states. It's very deep interpersonal affection seen in the love between say like a husband and a wife or a mother and a child to the simplest pleasure you might experience when you take a delicious bite of cheesecake, raw vegan cheesecake or paleo carnivore cheesecake, depending on your desire. And the range of definitions of the word love mean that the love of mother differs from the love of spouse differs from the love of food. So most commonly though, love refers to a strong feeling of attraction and attachment. So Greek philosophers had four different kinds of love. They had familial love, they had friendly love, they had romantic love, and they had divine love. And those all had different Greek names that I'm not even going to try to butcher. I know that that romantic love is Eros, divine love. I think that one is agape they've got like brotherly love or friendly love. It's philia. I don't remember what family familial love is, but. But anyways, there's love. It's this all encompassing virtue that incorporates kindness and compassion, affection and an unselfish, loyal and benevolent feeling of goodwill towards other people. And this means that having love in your life is not just about the number of your relationships or the strength of your relationships or how many people love you, but it's the attitude with which you engage in those relationships that predicts a longer and healthier life. So many people think they need to find someone to love them. But research shows that the greatest benefit for health, longevity and well being comes not from receiving affection, but from giving it to others. So, you know, maybe the additional question that John Ortberg should ask in his book was whose funerals will you cry out? Like, how many people do you have in your life whose funerals you're gonna cry at? Like, that's even more important than who's gonna cry at your funeral. And as a matter of fact, I tell my boys that if they desire true happiness in life, the very greatest thing they can accomplish towards that end is to identify their unique purpose in life, then use that purpose to love God and to love other people. Like to go out of their way to love other people. That's even why we do a gratitude practice each morning. It's clinically, clinically, scientifically, I guess, proven to increase your empathy towards others as you go throughout your day. And that's love. So if meaningful love for others and social relationships increases your lifespan, then the opposite must also be true. And it turns out when you look at data from four different longitudinal studies of the US population, there's one really recent study that assessed the association of social relationships like social integration and support, support and social strain with measured markers, biomarkers for physical health like C reactive protein, inflammatory marker, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, waist circumference, body mass index within the life stages of adolescents, young, middle and late adulthood. These folks were freaking thorough. And they discovered that a higher degree of social integration was associated with lower risk of physiological dysregulation in a dose response manner in both early and late life. So at the same time, lack of social connections was associated with vastly elevated health risks. Social isolation increased the risk of inflammation by the same magnitude as a sedentary lifestyle, especially for adolescents. And the effects of social isolation on hypertension exceeded that of clinical risk factors like diabetes in older people. And that's probably because some of the same genes that are impacted by social connection also code for things like immune function and inflammation. I mean, it's fascinating how intertwined this stuff is. So when people have a low social connection and they have higher levels of inflammation, people who live a what's called a eudaimonic lifestyle, that's a lifestyle that's rich in compassion and altruism and conscientiousness and gratitude and love and a sense of purpose, They've been tested, and they have lower levels of inflammation. So maybe all that turmeric and fish oil that you're taking for inflammation should be accompanied by prioritizing relationships and love in your life. Well, hello. I want to interrupt today's show to tell you how you can turn your wrist into a conversation piece. That's right. You can make your wrist look like gangbusters. Totally gangsta. I don't know what gangster is. I just like to say that because it makes it sound like you're gonna be really cool. There's this company called mvmt. They make sunglasses, and they make a bunch of kind of like accessories for your body for both men and women. Things like jewel watches, straps, you name it. But their watches, holy cow, they're good looking. They have, like, the black tan. They have astro blue. They have one called the hustle. You need to go and check out these watches because not only do they look like amazing conversation pieces for your wrist, if you hang out with weird people who like to talk about watches because they're bored and have nothing better to talk about, but if you want seriously a true classic timepiece on your wrist, you want to look good. You want your entire fashion wardrobe to just flow. MVMT has the best stuff. Their watches start at 95 bucks. You're looking at $400 for the same quality from a traditional brand. But MVMT watches, who has sold over 1.5 million watches now in over 160 countries. Holy cow. They're making bank. I'm in the wrong business. It was started by college dropouts. They crowdfunded the whole thing, and now they cut out the middleman. They go straight to you. So they give you these watches that would normally cost you an arm and a leg for next to nothing. And you get another 15% off of everything that they do, including their wonderful gift boxes, their new styles, everything@mvmt.com Ben that's mvmt.com Ben. And if you want something else that's very cool that you can wear on your wrist that will quantify your body. It tracks your sleep. It tracks your strain, your stress, your sleep, your recovery. But it uses extremely accurate accelerometers, extremely accurate technology right on your wrist to track all of this. And then it gives you this handy dashboard that lets you instantly know, right off the cuff of looking at your app that you are recovered and how hard you should train and how well you're doing with stress, how well you're doing with stuff. Sleep. It gives you sleep cycles, everything. And it's all on this wristband. It's called the Whoop. And what Whoop is doing is they're giving you a $30 discount. So you get to join Whoop for 150 bucks for the first six months. That includes your wristband. And it's very, very simple. You just go to join.whoop.com and use the code BEN. Now, WHOOP is spelled W H O O P. So it's join.

And then you use code Ben. That gets you all the discounts on this super cutting edge self quantification device for you nerds out there.

And the whole altruism piece is really important too. Like, there's one study done by Stephanie Brown at the Stony Brook University Medical Center. She compared the mortality rate of people who were stressed in life but did not engage in efforts to help other people who are also stressed. And she compared that to the mortality rate of people who are stressed in life but made an effort to engage in altruistic activities and to help others. Now, the people in the study who engage in helping others and supporting others ended up with a significantly lower risk of mortality. And that wasn't the case for people who are simply recipients of care and support. The key seemed to be actually going out of your way to help others, no matter what your own lot in life was, no matter how stressed out that you were. And then they did another follow up meta analyses that supported those findings. They demonstrated that among a wide range of people, philanthropy and volunteering predicts a longer life period. And they also found that volunteerism lengthened lifespan only when it was performed for purely selfish reasons. In other words, when you wish to help other people, you'll reap the benefits from that. So it turns out you can't deceive your own body about your true intentions for helping others. Let me put that in other terms. I didn't explain that very well. It means that while it's important that you're aware that loving others and having lots of love in your life is a really potent way to enhance your wellness and Longevity. You shouldn't be going out of your way to experience love so you could, like, decrease your CRP or your cytokines or extend the length of your telomeres. You should go out of your way to experience love because you actually genuinely care for your fellow man and fellow woman, even if you don't have that right now. As you make a point to love others, that will grow in you. You'll build that because you relish the idea of hanging out with your family, because being with other human beings makes you happy, not because you want to live a long time. And if you're anything like me, that takes time and patience and learning to bring yourself to the point where you can shove out of the back of your mind the idea that you're attending a family reunion because you care about family and not because you heard it could be good for your physiology on the Ben Greenfield podcast. Right? The more you love others, the more it seems to create a positive cycle, though, in which you love others just because that's what you do. Do not because that's what you should do, if that makes sense. So it takes some time. So I just want to emphasize, like, don't. Don't try to fill your brain with the idea that you're just going to love other people to be healthy. Or you can love other people because you freaking want to love other people. That's who you are. That's who you become. That's who you want to manifest. And it's tough to love others if you're not actually around others, right? Like, I would know. I used to be at the guy at conferences who would stand in the back of, like, the lunchroom with a blank stare on my face, probably because I was homeschooled. I didn't really know how to do lunchrooms. And I was just, like, paralyzed by the prospect of approaching a table of gabbing attendees to ask for a seat. I was like the student who sat by myself in the corner of the university cafeteria with my nose buried in a newspaper because I read the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and USA Today every day in college. I was the guy who, upon first settling into my airplane seat, would don my noise blocking headphones and avoid all eye contact with anyone who seemed to threaten me with an impending conversation. And then I read this book by author Keith Ferrazzi. It's called Never Eat Alone. And he has this circle of context that numbers in the thousands, and I don't know, that seems to rub against the concept of Dunbar's Number that's what he claims. He's cultivated that circle for years and he's built it based on what he says in the book is an incredibly important aspect of any relationship. Generosity. So his approach to never eating alone integrates networking, behavior, intuition, emotion, reciprocity and trust. So ultimately I had some of his book and I would go read it. I'll link to that one in the show notes too. But I'd sum it up by saying that encourage you to find people, sit down at a table with them and smother them with love by being truly and genuinely interested in them, not striving to get anything out of getting to know them, not waiting for the moment to rip the business card out of your back pocket and hand it to them, but offering as much helpful advice as you can give them based on your specific areas of knowledge and expertise. And I would even take his approach one step further and say that like, you should make your goal to enchant and entertain these people and like, be that person who they want to be with, whether it's a job interview or, or a lunch or a dinner. Like you want to be that entertaining, be person that people want to hang out with. Like, it just trust me, it makes life better when it comes to building relationships. So when I walk into a group of people, whether it's a cocktail party or a bar or a conference lunch, that's my modus operandi, right? I want to be able to help other people. I want to say something that's going to make somebody's life better or maybe just make them laugh or entertain them, throw food at them, anything. I don't throw food at them. You get, you get what I'm saying? Like you need to be that person who's out there looking out for other people, not yourself. Now, it shouldn't be ignored that his approach actually capitalizes on the connectivity provided by social media and the Internet. In this book, never eat alone like he describes at LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook. They're all powerful tools when used correctly and in the right dose. And he says that today's kids, you know, their social media driven upbringing will make them savants in some areas of relationship building and idiots in others. And so that means social media outlets shouldn't be your primary sources of interaction, but should be the places where you sync up with the global hive and the points from which you maintain your connections, friendships, relationships. You find meetups, you find like flesh and blood, physical interactions, dinner parties, social events, other inherently human activities. Rather than say, like, remember AOL chat rooms. I don't know if anybody remembers AOL chat rooms. Like, that's the complete opposite, right? You'd. You'd go to an AL chat room to find other people in your community to hang out with, not to hang out with them in the chat room. So, and. And that's important because of this whole flesh and blood relationship piece. I told you I'd get into this. So actually, before I start to fill you in on more practical tips to actually enhance your life with longevity and love, let's get into, like, the chemistry of this. Like, pacinian corpuscles. Have you ever heard of those? So if you're the average person, that's probably not in your vernacular, but everybody has them. Whenever anybody touches you, there's pressure pushing on your skin. At the point of the physical contact, right underneath the skin are pressure receptors called pacinian corpuscles that detect. Let me spell that for you. P A C I N I A N Pacinian corpuscle, C O R, P U S C L, E S. And they detect that pressure. They send a signal to your brain. Now, you might know about the vagus nerve that snakes through your whole body, but it turns out that the signal from these corpuscles travel directly to your vagus nerve. The vagus nerve wanders through the whole body, including major organs like the heart, where it acts to down regulate stress response, slow the heart rate, decreased blood pressure. There's actually fascinating studies that show when they show when subjects are asked to perform something stressful like public speaking or taking a math test, that if they've been holding hands or being hugged, they have a lower blood pressure and a lower heart rate compared to folks who have no physical touch interaction prior to the test. So you need to make sure your teacher hugs you before you take a test or hold your hand for a little while. In addition to stimulating the vagus nerve, that same physical touch gives you a decrease of correct cortisol and an increase of oxytocin. Oxytocin is this neuropeptide hormone, also called the trust hormone and also the love hormone, and it promotes feeling of devotion, trust, and bonding. This is why you're not supposed to have sex before you go buy a used car, because the sex gives you an oxytocin release and you're more likely to trust the used car salesman. But most of the time, oxytocin is good. So when stimulated by oxytocin receptors in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, those trigger the release of serotonin and that results in signals being propagated to a variety of different reward system areas in your central nervous system and an overall positive feeling. So antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil and Zoloft, those belong to a class of drugs called SSRIs, serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. And those can increase available amounts of serotonin in brain regions. But it turns out that the physical interaction, like hugging and touching, can naturally accomplish something very similar to an antidepressant. And the researchers who conducted some of the most groundbreaking studies on oxytocin's ability to be able to trigger these serotonin pathways also suggest that oxytocin's role in one on one bonding probably evolved from an existing broader affinity for group living. So as hunter gatherers, early humans likely traveled in small bands and lived in groups and relied upon this reward mechanism to keep them from engaging in excess or dangerous social isolation and loneliness that so many of us living in the modern cyberspace age face. So we're like short circuiting our biology if we aren't actually touching or maintaining physical contact with other human beings, meaning, like having real sex, not virtual reality sex. And another study backs this up. In the 70s, biologists discovered that prairie voles, which mate for life, have a brain packed full of oxytocin receptors. And when those receptors get blocked, the prairie voles quit being monogamous. So species that are not monogamous, like mountain voles and field mice, they don't even have oxytocin receptors. And much to the chagrin of, say, I don't know, who's the guy who wrote Sex at Dawn? Or anybody who's kind of like into serial relationships or polygamous relationships, you should know that humans, we are chock full of oxygen, oxytocin receptors, like, we actually kind of do have, like a built in neurochemical monogamy trigger. It's very interesting. And the researchers in this study, they theorize that the common group behaviors that all mammals engage in, like cooperism and altruism and socializing, those are all reinforced in part by the happy feeling that results from the serotonin release that oxytocin can cause. So there's this other study where they took a special breed of mice that had oxytocin receptors, and they put them in a special house with two rooms separated by a door the little mice could walk through at any time of day. And prior to being placed in this house, the mice spent 24 hours in one room with their litter mates, followed by 24 hours in the other room all by themselves. And on the third day, the researchers put the two rooms together to make the house and to give the mice the freedom to go back and forth through the door. And then they log the amount of time that the mice spent in each room. So since these mice had oxytocin receptors, the mice preferred to spend time in space with the companionship of other mice. Then they took out the oxytocin receptors, and they blocked them. And the mice really didn't give a crap. They would just spend time by themselves in their own little room. Isn't that interesting? So the surge of oxytocin released from physical touch makes your brain light up in a way very similar to a rewarding stimuli, like biting into a bar of dark chocolate. It makes you feel more trusting and connected, and it gives you this cascade of electrical impulses that slow your heart and lower your blood pressure and make you feel less stressed and more soothed, all from that simple touch that you can't get via Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Very similarly, there's pheromones. You've probably heard of these. They sell them as, like, you know, attraction chemicals to young dating people who are frequenting clubs and want to attract others to them magically. But they do work. They're chemicals that are produced by your body that generate significant attractive responses from the opposite sex, at least most of the time is attractiveness responses. They're released into the environment by sweat, usually, or urine or glands in the skin. And they work as a kind of communication signal between humans of the opposite sex. So androstenol, that's a pheromone that's produced by men in fresh sweat. Women love that smell. They love it, guys. Androstenone is a pheromone that is produced by or androthere's known Android. That's a pheromone that's produced by males. But you only find that one active in old sweat that's been oxidized, and women find that odor extremely unpleasant. So, like, if you're gonna go, say, out with women, maybe don't shower after you work out, but if you do that strategy, like, go out right after you work out, I'm totally spitballing here. I don't know if this is. This is a known, proven strategy, but I'm just saying. And females produce a pheromone called copulins, which is at the most fertile stage of the reproductive cyc cycle when Secretion of copulins is at its strongest and the smell of this can sexually arouse men and increase the sexual attractiveness of the woman who is producing it. And the complexity of this is very interesting. Like when a female is ovulating, they find the smell of androstenone actually attractive, in part because they themselves are producing more of this copulins. But under normal circumstances, like I mentioned, they're repulsed by the smell of androstenone. And that's why the pill, like thethe contraceptive pill, can make it so that women. I've talked about this on a podcast in detail before, but basically it makes it so women can get attracted to the smell of a mate and then once they're off the pill, they no longer find the smell of that mate attractive and they can actually find it repulsive. But then, you know, that sucks because you're married to that person now and all of a sudden you find their smell repulsive because you're effing with your hormones, which with the contraceptive pill. It's very interesting. In the same way that social media doesn't allow for release of oxytocin, dating websites and text messages don't allow for the detection of pheromones that occur in physical face to face scenarios. So that person who matched up with you perfectly on Cupid, you might actually truly be physically detested by the smell of their pheromones subconsciously and not even know it. Boom. So oxytocin and pheromones are just two examples of these built in biological mechanisms. There's a lot more. But you know, in an era that's overtaken by a large part of human interaction taking place digitally, we're missing out on the important biology of being in the same room with our fellow humans, touching others and looking at others in the eye and hugging them and smelling them and smelling their armpits and engaging in communication the way that we're actually biologically hardwired to. So.

Don'T get me wrong, you don't need to be an extroverted social butterfly who spends every evening of each weekday hopping from a baseball game to a charity event, to a plant foraging meetup, to a bridge club, to a dinner party to reap these benefits. A number of studies have shown that your own internal subjective sense of connection, compassion or love suffice to protect your health, happiness and well being. So that means that rather than dropping everything to go attend every cocktail party and meet up and golf game you're invited to, it's okay to Just like have a few close friends that you confide in, or a daily gratitude practice in which you identify like I do. One person you can pray for or help or serve that day, or a weekly hobby or an event in which you're around just a few select people who you love and who love you. So I'm not going to end here. I actually have a few practical tips up my sleeve that have really enhanced my own ability to be able to surround myself with more love and help me to build a social engagement and a sense of community.

Alright, so let's start here. Number one, give you six ways. Six ways to enhance your life and your longevity. Even though you're not supposed to think about that too much with love. So number one is volunteer. And volunteering is a win win for everybody. Because people who receive your help become grateful. And you fill your own life with empathy and sympathy and love and you make the world a better place. So think about this, number one, you can care for your parents. We live in this culture in which our parents and the elderly, they're often relegated to nursing home and hospice. But in an ideal community, you'd sacrifice your time, space and money to bring your parent in your own home, the same as they did for you when you were a baby. And even if they're not living with you, but then instead live close to you. You can drop by for coffee on a Saturday morning, can mow their yard. You can accompany them on a shopping trip. We shove our old people away when they get old or quote useless, unquote or sick. It's the worst thing you can do. And I think we need to care for and honor our parents. That's one way you can volunteer. Another way you can help a local school. Educators are overworked and stressed, while the children at many institutions need role models and people who care about their lives and behavior. You can volunteer to read stories to elementary school students. You can monitor outdoor activities. You can chaperone field trips. You can even work with a local church or other charitable organization to ensure that poor children are able to get food on the weekends when they're not at school. Like there's a. There's a program in our community that we do at our church called Bite to Go that does this. And every week a volunteer from my church drops off boxes of food at the school. You can visit a nursing home to sing or visit my kids and I love to do this. In many nursing homes, they're turned into just like dumping grounds for older people whose families are gone. Or unavailable or neglecting them. And many of the residents, they're desperate for conversation and connections with, with outside individuals. You can pick up the phone, you can call a local nursing home and you can ask them if you can come by and play guitar or piano, if you can sing, if you can help cook or take folks on walks or just visit, you know, and my twin boys and I, we often go to nursing home. We'll just play guitar like seasonally, like around Christmas we'll play some Christmas songs or you know, around. I'm blanking on on another holiday, what's on Easter, you know, for example, but or sometimes I'll just go and like play some country music for these folks because they love old country music songs like Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash and some Willie Nelson and so you can go play for them. And hospitals also have many volunteer opportunities that include sitting with patients or working with children or food service or pushing wheelchairs. You can even do what's called meals on wheel where you deliver meals to people in your local community. I grew up during the that my parents did that with me almost every single weekend. You can coach a sport and a lot of kids don't get the opportunity to participate in sports because there aren't enough coaches or assistants. Even if you're not a pro for the sport you've chosen to help in, you can volunteer to coach for your own kids team or any local youth sports team. So I've done this for like Valley Boys and Girls Club basketball and some local sports camps at my university and even my twin boys sports teams. You can tutor. So from children to adults, there's robust opportunities in many communities to tutor students to teach literacy, cooking, sewing or home repairs, or instruct English as a second language or help with classes on computers and other skills. Especially in the senior community, surprisingly, there's a need for tutors. You can deliver meals. Like I mentioned, I grew up in a family that delivered meals on wheels to the homeless and the unemployed and the elderly and the poor. Each week it was my favorite thing to do was go up and ring the doorbell and you'd put your door to the ear and listen for the creaking sounds and a little yapping dog and the person opened the door and you gave them their little meal with the foil on it. A lot of communities have programs like this and some even allow you to help with the meal prep. You can become a docent. It's a docent might not be in your language. It's a trained guide. You lead people through facilities like museums and art galleries and presidential libraries and aquariums and zoos and universities. And a lot of times, these institutions will train you for free. You can serve in your own neighborhood, right? In our modern era of digital connections, it's all too common for neighbors not to know one another, since you can easily join a Facebook group that has avatars with far more similar interests than the person who lives next door to you. But you can do neighborhood barbecues, beautification projects, neighborhood dinners, helping your neighbor mow or shovel snow. I think everybody should know the name of their neighbor and the face of their neighbor. Like, we recently visited every single house in our neighborhood, and we live out in the stick, so this took like an hour and a half of walking around. We gave everybody a bottle of wine and a note with our cell phone number on it and a picture of our whole family and our names and told them if they ever needed anything like moving something heavy or God forbid, like digging a fire line, you know, whatever, that we would be there at their beck and call. And I think that's important to do. You can actually put a picture over on my Instagram channel of, like, what the card looks like and what it looked like when we went around in the community. I filled up my backpack with like, tons of pounds of wine and cards and just set out did it. So I'll link to that. Go to bengreegelfitness.com friends I'll link to that post if I can find it. You can throw dinner parties. That's number two. So, one, you can volunteer. Two, you could throw dinner parties. Like my friend Jason Gaynort, who wrote this really good book called Mastermind Dinners. He built his entire career. He puts on one of the best events I ever go to each year called Mastermind Talks. But he also connects people in networks during the year via hosting what he calls Mastermind Dinners. And there's Keith Farazi's book, like I mentioned earlier, called Never Eat Alone, that highlights the importance of convening people over food. But Jason has, like, perfected and systematized the process. He organizes dinners in major cities across the U.S. and Canada. Usually just does, like, six to eight people for the intimate sweet spot to really get people to know one another. And then he. He really encourages people to look for uncommon commonalities that make it more likely that everybody's going to resonate with one another. And the book goes into far more detail. Again, it's called Mastermind Dinners, and I highly recommend you give it a read. But ultimately, a huge Amount of community building power lies in the simple act of throwing a dinner at your house or in the local community, like at a restaurant about once a month. And that really helps you reconnect with old ties and connect people who should know each other and connect the with people who you've meant to connect with for a long time. People love to do that over dinner. Just do me a favor, leave the cell phone in your bag. There's actually like a rule at some of these dinners where the first person to check their phone pays the pays the check. I love that idea. I mean, unless your kids are home and you want to make sure the babysitter's not texting you or whatever. Yeah, you get it. Number three would be to find meetups. So meetups.com is a great website. Ironically enough, go to the Internet to find people, but you could find flesh and blood people coming together for hiking, tennis, business, networking, Plant foraging. The best known site like I mentioned is meetup.com that's free. There's also it costs money if you want to form a group yourself, but other than that it's free Reddit.com that you can find meetups on Reddit. And then there are apps like Scout or Excuses to Meet or Hey or Vena or with. I'll link to all these in the show notes. I'm currently a member of the A Plant Foraging Meetup. So if we all die of mushroom poisoning, we're going to all die together. And a Singer songwriter meetup. So if you go to a meetup just one time, you're going to connect with at least one similarly interested person. Probably number four would be church. Like churches are places where a lot of people gather every single week and you can develop some pretty deep personal meaningful relationship with like minded individuals who also believe in things like peace and love and joy and positive emotions and and purpose and belief in a higher power. That's another part of Dan Buettner's Blue Zones. And I'll admit, like the modern church, it has a scarred and kind of sordid past of extreme judgmentalism and abuse. But if you can find a local neighborhood place of worship.

You'Re very likely to find a great deal of love and care in that scenario, and less likely to find a dogmatic and socially intolerable scenario. And even though I'm a Christian, as an introvert, I personally struggle with attending church church. Like I'd rather be wandering through the forest on an awe inspiring hike while listening to a sermon on my MP3 player or just like speaking with God. But I also know I can't just navigate through life as a spiritual lone wolf without the encouragement and collective worship and volunteer opportunities in church community. You know, there's even a word for this in Greek. It's called koinonia, and that means communion, joint participation, this state of uplifting fellowship and unity. And what happens when all these people come together and worship together and all their heart and brain signals are aligned. There's even a growing body of evidence that demonstrates physical and psychological benefits of singing not by yourself, but in a group with a whole bunch of people. So, I mean, if you're not going to go to church, you could join a local choir. There's a lot of ways to scratch that itch, but church is another one. Number five would be to renew forsaken family relationships. And there was this study, it was more like a research project at the University of Cambridge. It was called Standalone. And they found that family estrangements arise from.

You know, illness and divorce and inheritance arguments and partner choices and addiction. They found these are incredibly common, and they tend to last a long time, like five to seven years. That's a large chunk of time, too. You know, as the Bible verse says, allow the sun to go down in your anger. Especially when you look at all the research that shows it, like bitterness and. And anger and hatred, like that builds up in your bones and in traditional Chinese medicine, is even associated with cancer. So, you know, I've certainly had my own fair share of family conflicts. You know, I've. I've struggled with, you know, bitterness against my parents for separating and, you know, judgment against siblings for relationship choices that they've made or for not being more responsible with their lives or their work or their families. And, you know, I'm still digging through, mending these relationships and trying to heal a lot of these family rifts in my life because I've seen a lot of the evidence. This stuff actually builds up in your body and can manifest as chronic disease. There's an Australian documentary called Look Me in the Eye, and that explores what happens when real families actually reconnect with one another and restore broken relationships. And it's really inspiring how much people's health improves and their life improves when they do this. So you can reach out to that family member, you know, and try to choose a holiday time. Like right now we're on the holidays. Perfect time to reach out. Because people don't think it's weird, right, doing it on December 27th versus, say, June 1st. Right. Like over the holidays people are very sentimental. And if you can, if you can travel to resolve things face to face or pick up the phone versus like any Modicon or a message, like a smiley face, bumpy fist, bumpy fist, eggplant, I love you. Don't do that, like actually go and make the painful step of getting in the same room with the person or at least picking the phone, calling them. And one of the methods of reconnection they use in that documentary Looked Me in the Eye was direct eye contact. They had neuroscience that showed that direct eye contact significantly helps people to communicate in difficult circumstances. So that's yet another reason to be present personally when you're resolving conflicts. Communicate clearly. Like when you do it, acknowledge the issues, acknowledge your faults, lay all the cards out on the table and really be very open about yourself and any narcissistic or.

I guess like and be narcissistic tendencies that you have. There's a really good book by this I'm reading right now called Robert by Robert Greene. Robert Green is the author. It's called the Laws of Human Nature. Amazing book when it comes to being able to communicate with people effectively. I'll link to that one in the show notes too. BenGreenfieldFitness.com friends and understand it's going to take significant time and effort and sacrifice and well, love to rebuild trust and respect. But it's another big one. Like it's baggage you just carry without even knowing about. Sometimes those, you know, relationship issues with your mom, your dad, your sister, brother, uncle, aunt, your grandma, your grandpa, etc. Next one, number six is just reclaim real conversation. So there's this really interesting interview with Louis CK right, very controversial guy about children communicating via the Internet and smartphones. This was on the late night TV with Conan o'. Brien. And what Louis CK said was.

It went like this. He said, and they don't look at people when they talk to them and they don't build the empathy. Kids are mean because they're trying it out. They look at a kid and they go, you're fat. And then they see the kid's face scrunch up and they go, oh, that doesn't feel good to make a person do that. But they got to start with doing the mean thing. But when they write you're fat, then they just go, hmm, that was fun. I like that. And he makes a good point. Like digital conversations are less empathetic, most likely due in large part to that loss of eye contact. I talk about and many other important physical elements of Human interaction. It's easier to hide your true emotions behind the invisibility of an Internet interaction. To be a troll, right? To feel less guilty or less hesitant about trolling or make making offensive remarks or engaging in fake and inauthentic conversation. You know, in her book Reclaiming Conversation that I mentioned earlier, Sherry Turkle refers to the opposite of this, like real, authentic, personal conversation. And in that book she notes that it's all too common for the dinner table to fall silent as children compete with phones for their parents attention. For you not to say a peep to the person sitting next to you on the airplane because both of you are sucked into the screen. And for two phones to be slightly slapped on the center of the table in between spouses or lovers on a date, which has been shown to detract from conversation even if you're not on the phone. I mean, I've personally developed the skill to be able to text message one person while I'm talking to another person, looking into their eyes. Like, I'm very, very good at being disconnected and halfway connected all at once. I'm not justifying that it's a bad thing, but it's so easy to do. And Turkel in her book points out that the case for conversation begins with conversations with solitude and self reflection. Like, we see loneliness as a problem that technology should solve. And afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves. And our capacity for empathy and relationships suffers when we do that with technology versus being with real people. To scratch that itch versus, you know, like laying in bed on Facebook. So, you know, and that interview with Louis CK Goes on, he says, just that knowledge, that's all for nothing. And that you're alone, you know, it's down there. And sometimes when things clear away, you're not watching it, you're in your car and you start going, oh no, here comes that I'm alone. Feeling like it starts to visit on you. And you know, life is tremendously sad just by being it. And you're driving and then you go, ah, ah, ah. And that's why we text and drive. And he looks around, he says, and he says pretty much 100% of people are driving around texting and they're killing people. They're murdering other people with their cars because they're just like, I want to be connected. I want to be connected. I want to scratch that itch for loneliness. But you can't do it with technology. Shown that biologically over and over again doesn't Work doesn't fix loneliness. Right. It just makes the highway a very dangerous place to be because it can't replace real flesh and blood. Face to face interaction can. Read that book Reclaiming conversation to see what I mean. And there are, There are things that you can do. Like, there's a. There's. There's a lot of ways that you can get away from your phone. Like, you know, turn all push notifications off. I absolutely do that. You know, every single notification is off. The phone is in silent mode. If I'm at dinner, it's an airplane mode or do not disturb mode. You can actually set it up so the only person that can contact you or call you is like the babysitter and a very important person when you're actually in a situation like, say, dinner with your wife or your husband or a loved one. And you can even install addiction breaking apps like app Detox, which lets you set the limit of time you spend inside individual apps. Or Flipped, which blocks access to certain apps for set period of time or onward, which allows you to track how often you use your phone and individual apps. Or a forest, which gamifies the process of easing you away from distractions. And in that app, you plant a seed, and it eventually grows into a tree as long as you don't navigate away from the app. But as soon as you ditch the app to check Facebook or surf Safari, your tree dies. So I know that sounds gimmickly, but it's a very effective way to, kind of a meditative way to avoid the temptations that are rife with your phone. We play table topics right at dinner. Our family plays table topics. Where you sit at the table and there's this deck of cards in the table, and you just grab a card and it's cards. Like, if you could have any superhero sitting here at dinner with us, who would you choose and why? Or what was the scariest decision you made in the past year? Or if your house was on fire and you could put three objects in a backpack before you rushed out, what would you choose and why? And yes, my wife said the dining room table. She did. I'm serious. She was gonna put the dining room table in a backpack somehow, but you get the idea. It can seem silly that you need your conversation topics chosen for you to engage in real conversation, but my family and I have spent many valuable hours at dinner laughing and learning more about one another with this approach. And often the questions rabbit hole into deeper conversations. You can share gratitude journals. Right? We gratitude journal every single single Morning. I. I have this gratitude journal I wrote, I created it, I designed it, I sell it. It's@christiangratitude.com we all fill it out in the morning, but at night, we'll often bring our gratitude journals to the dinner table and discuss what we wrote, what we were grateful for. And when a family of four or group of two or a group of people embark upon a conversation about what they're grateful for, what they discovered that morning as they were doing their gratefulness journal, and who they helped or prayed for or served that day, it again, like table topics, can lead to deep and meaningful conversation that can often last for the entire dinner. No cell phones required. And then, like, you can also. This sounds gimmicky again, but you can just focus on the food. Like, allow me to paint out the painfully obvious fact that when you're at a meal, you're eating, you're often filling your face with wonderful and interesting molecules that are highly conducive to conversation. When I go to an expensive steakhouse and I'm spending like 200 bucks on a meal, I don't want to sit there and like, talk with somebody about freaking their social media strategy at dinner. I want to talk about that meal's taste and texture and presentation, the culinary expertise put into the food. Like, sip the wine, flavor, taste the salt, try a new set of spices, discuss what your brain experience is. Like, so many people go out to dinner and just like and expensive dinners and like, it's kind of about the food. Like, there's a chef back there putting amazing work into it. It's okay to treat that like art when it comes out. And to spend the entire dinner just talking about the food and what you're experiencing with the food. That's not weird. I guess it is weird and abnormal nowadays, but it shouldn't be. You know what I'm saying? So those are a few of my tips for you. Those are a few of my tips for you to introduce more love in your life. You can volunteer. You can throw dinner parties, you can find meetups, you can go to church, you can renew forsaken family relationships. And you can use a lot of those little tips I just gave you to reclaim real conversation. Now I'll put all this stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com friends, I'll lay it all out in, like, an article with links to books and everything. So, I mean, ultimately, like I said, owning an amazing body and a sharp mind can be all for naught. If loneliness and sadness and Inflammation and high blood pressure and accelerated aging are all occurring due to a lack of friendships and social relationships and community and charity and love in your life. But I hope that now, now that you're at the end of this solo sode, you're equipped to include these important components in your routine. And also, dude, read, Read. Never eat Alone. Read Reclaiming conversation. Read Mastermind Dinners. Read. I'd like you more if you're more like me. Read the Power of Introverts, right? Take you. I mean, even if you're a slower, you could read all five of those books in a year, like one year of your life. And it's going to make your life better, I guarantee. And I'll even leave you with a challenge. Like this week, try this. Take a loved one on a date, your husband or your wife, your spouse, your kids, or an adventure or a walk or just like a quick meal or a chat, but leave your phone behind, like not off in your pocket, but figure out a way that you could just like leave it forsaken in your car like Everybody did like 20 years ago. We just didn't have a phone we could drag around. And just note to yourself, it's scary, right? It's scary, it's scary and it's horrible and it's addicting and you're freaking out because what if somebody's trying to contact you? And what's going to happen when you turn your phone off after or back on after a two hour dinner? And oh, you have all the emails and all the text messages and 18 different Facebook messages to respond to. I don't care how popular you are, I don't care if you're freaking Gary Vaynerchuk or some social media maven. Like you can turn off your phone even if you're an Instagram butt girl for like two hours to go to dinner, right? To be with somebody that you love, to prioritize love, life, family and relationships in your life. This stuff is important. You can be part of stopping the cycle of the growing epidemic of loneliness starts with people like you and me just learning this stuff and making an effort to be more like real people, to be more like real people like our ancestors would have been Dunbar's number, right? Doesn't need to be a lot of people, just a few real flesh and blood interactions in your life. That's what you need to prioritize. So that's my message for you this holiday season as we get into the new year, some things for you to think about. Thank you for listening and if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Friends, I'd love to hear your comments, feedback, your thoughts and and yeah, until next time and hopefully these solo sodes where I just drone on are okay with you. But until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield. Have an amazing week.

Want more? Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com where you can subscribe to my information packed and entertaining newsletter and click the link up on the right hand side of that webpage that says Ben Recommends, where you'll see a full list of everything I've ever recommended to enhance your body and your brain. Finally, to get your hands on all of the unique supplement formulations that I personally develop, you can visit the website of my company kion@getkion.com that's getkion.com.

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