Ben Greenfield offers three biohacking tips for immunity: swap intense exercise for restorative work like yoga and cold immersion; try intermittent fasting with a 10-16 hour eating window and skip seed oils and processed carbs; load up on vitamin C from food or supplements, especially cruciferous vegetables and berries.
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With the trying times that we are in that involve this pesky little coronavirus. I wanted to shoot this quick video for you to give you three things that you can do to improve your overall wellness, your sanity, and even your immunity as you navigate this changing universe. Now, I'm not a doctor, I don't want you to take any of this as medical advice, but these are just a few things that I think are prudent to do so. Number one is many of us love to exercise. We love to beat ourselves up. But I would recommend that, especially if you're concerned about your immune system or inflammation or possible exposure, that you shift to easier restorative training versus high intensity interval training workouts or heavier weight training. All of these things produce a state of inflammation, which is great if you're trying to get incredible shape, but just during this time it might be useful to avoid things that contribute to the inflammatory state that may mildly suppress your immune system and instead focus on deeply restorative activities. Some of my favorites are yoga and breathwork in a sauna, meditation, long walks in the sunshine, swimming, hiking, brief bouts of breath work combined with cold immersion which can actually improve the strength of your immune system and even for weight training or maintenance of muscle, even building muscle rather than very high intensity workouts, doing things like super slow training or even using blood flow restriction bands to do body weight training and build or maintain muscle without producing as much inflammation. So consider making some slight alterations to your training program and as research has shown is also useful if you're in a sleep deprived state. Instead of doing workouts as one big long bout, try to do little mini workouts throughout the day, which is exactly what I've been doing. I'm throwing in little 20 to 30 minute sunshine walks before lunch. I'm starting off the day with yoga and the sauna and a quick cold plunge. I'm finishing the day with breath work and a little bit more sauna and then throwing in some lightweight training or body weight training in the afternoon. Over on my Instagram page this week@instagram.com BenGreenfieldFitness I'm actually revealing my entire weekly routine that I'm using during this time. So that's Number one is just be careful with the hard workouts and make some alterations to your training program. Number two is to actually consider including more of these so called compressed feeding windows or intermittent fasting periods which can help to clean up cellular junk within your body via a process called cellular autophagy, but may also help with the immune system Just like exercise, overdoing, fasting or calorie restriction can actually deleteriously impact the immune system. But brief bouts of fasting, meaning about 12 to 16 hours for you fellas out there and around 10 to 12 hours for you ladies, be really beneficial. So two to three square meals a day, and then when you quit eating at night, try to wait, ladies, about 10 to 12 hours before eating again. And guys, about 12 to 16 hours. And avoid lots of snacking in between meals. Two things to ruthlessly eliminate as you choose those meals to really maintain yourself in a state of low inflammation would be to be incredibly cognizant of of any exposure to vegetable oils. Okay, because these seed oils can creep in, they're highly inflammatory, they're not going to help your immune system at all. And then what would be called acellular carbohydrates, which are carbohydrates that have been processed. So a cellular carbohydrate would be like sweet potato, yam, millet, amaranth, quinoa, etc. Whereas an acellular carbohydrate would be processed sugar, something like a white rice, a very heavily packaged food that has gone through a lot of processing or milling or removal of some of the nutrients from the actual carbohydrates. So choose whole food carbohydrates and avoid vegetable oils like the plague. And combine that with intermittent fasting windows that don't involve a lot of snacking in between meals. I was actually reading a research study today that shows that the ketone bodies that are formed when you're not snacking, when you're not constantly face stuffing can actually be helpful in suppressing an inflammatory response and assisting the immune system. So that's number two. And then number three. Even though the research goes back and forth and there's some controversy around the helpfulness of something called ascorbic acid or vitamin C on helping the immune system, it's not going to hurt you if you take a vitamin C supplement or a large dose of ascorbic acid. It might cause some bowel difficulties, but it appears that vitamin C has some pretty good antiviral activity. Now, even if you're not using a high dose vitamin C supplement, I would actually prioritize within your diet when you are eating some very vitamin C rich foods. Like, I'm a huge fan of organic cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, or broccoli sprouts for this dark leafy greens like kale and spinach. Within reason, they're high in things like oxalates, et cetera, but smaller doses of those type of things, kiwis are amazing. They can also help you to sleep and improve melatonin. And another research study I was just going through this afternoon shows that the combination of melatonin and and vitamin C is amazing as far as specifically increasing your resistance to this COVID 19 so kiwis have vitamin C in them in really good amounts and also help you to produce melatonin. So you could have for example, a couple of kiwis for dessert after dinner and that'd be an amazing little thing to throw into the mix. A few of the things to consider would be sweet potatoes, blueberries, pomegranates, tomatoes, and if you can get your hands on some really vitamin packed versions of animal meats, particularly organ meats like liver for example. Not only is that giving you some immune boosting A and D and E and some K, but also a little bit of vitamin C and some minerals as well. So to summarize, make sure that you make some adaptations to your training to make it more deeply restorative. Make sure that you incorporate intermittent fasting windows and avoid snacking, especially on sugars and vegetable oils. And then finally prioritize intake of vitamin C rich foods. So I hope this has been helpful. We're all in this together and I also am of course available@bengreenfieldfitness.com to help you. My book Boundless is chock full, especially chapter 15 of tons more Immune Boosting Tips. You can check that out@boundlessbook.com and again, I'm releasing tons of tips, workout ideas, et cetera over@instagram.com BenGreenfieldFitness thanks for watching and I hope this has been helpful.
