Barbell Shrugged - Blood, biomarker, genetic testing... and poop w/ Ben Greenfield - 277

Episode Date: September 13, 2017

Ben Greenfield was voted as America’s top personal trainer in 2008. He's competed as one of the top ranked amateur triathletes in the world, completing over 120 races and 12 Ironman triathlons. A relentless self-experimenter and biohacker, Ben became a professional obstacle course racer, completing the coveted Spartan Delta, training with the Navy SEALs, competing across the globe in open water swims, mountain runs and adventure races, winning multiple USA bowhunting competitions, and appearing on the planet's toughest reality TV shows. Ben was named as one of the world’s top 100 most influential people in health and fitness.   Check him out at: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe  Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Barbell Shrugged helps people get better. Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. Find Barbell Shrugged here: Website: http://www.BarbellShrugged.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast Twitter: http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged Instagram: http://instagram.com/barbellshruggedpodcast

I mean, let's face it, part of my shtick, part of my gig, I run a freaking blog and a podcast in which I try out cool new things and tell people about them, right? And so part of it is like, I'm not trying out like photobiomodulation and, you know, and sleep cakes and electro stim and, you know, and shining the light on my balls or TDCS. I'm about to go speak on stage about, like, 10 different ways you can biohack your brain, right? I don't think everybody needs to be walking around doing that every day. But part of what I do, like, I'm almost like a glorified product tester for a lot of this stuff. And so that's part of it, too, is, like, that's what I do.

And because I freelance write about this stuff, and it's my job to test it and let people know how it works and stuff, like, for me, that's part of it, too, is it's my job to test it and let people know how it works and stuff like for me that that's part of it too is there a job Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Blitzer with Doug Larson and Andy Galpin, and we're here at Paleo FX in Austin, Texas. And we've roped in Ben Greenfield for yet another show. You know how you wrote me in? You put a poop kit on the

table. No, you've got like four poop kits over by your lunch over there. I've got one here. You eat and then you poop in that and then you mail it off. A smart gut. What can you determine from this? Have you guys done this before? No, the dude just handed it to me. Detects beneficial and pathogenic

microorganisms. Interesting. Genomic sequencing. You know what? Most of these genomic sequencing companies, they're only sequencing a very, very small part of the actual genome of the stool. So there's some guy who's... I actually had lunch with him or dinner with him a couple weeks ago in Atlanta.

He's harvesting space rocks from the moon, and he's this billionaire who's developed, like, this new way to sequence the microbiome. And so he's launched this company called Viome, V-I-O-M-E. And, like, I sent him my poop sample to them last week. Really interesting dude. I was thinking it was Zion, and I was like, I met him at a conference,

and I was trying to look it up, and I couldn't find Zion. Anyway, it's Viome. It's Viome. Yeah, it's Viome. It's Viome. Yeah, it's Viome. And he apparently, like, lives next to Bill Gates, and so he must know something about poop. I mean, if you collect space rocks and you live next to Bill Gates in Seattle, how could you not know about how to buy own poop?

Yeah. I'm pretty sure he has some scientists on his team, too. So, basically, I wouldn't waste your precious poop, because poop is a precious commodity on one of these but you can get the whole thing done apparently now well i don't know maybe this does the whole thing i don't know i don't know yeah but they would would they be given out for free if it was really like the like the highest tech stuff it's like outdated technology that they're now giving out samples of i'm pretty sure that's have you done anything where where you've had someone map any aspects of your microbiome?

Oh, yeah. Well, I've done this test, and you get your firmicide-bacteroid ratio, which apparently you can draw some conclusions about your propensity to obesity and overweight or things like that. But I didn't get a lot out of it. I saw my ratios, and it showed that they were good because I eat a lot of fiber, and I forget which ratio it is, firmicide to bacterioid or the opposite. You're a scientist. Do you know this?

I don't know. Yeah, but apparently one ratio is more associated with obesity and overweight and chronic disease, and one isn't. And that was most of what I got out of it. What I find is, like I've done genetic testing and other things, is somebody who's been training for a long time, been attention to their body all this kind of stuff a lot of these tests are just a lot of times you look at it and you go yeah that makes sense it's not telling you anything new because you've already figured you already know yourself well yeah but a lot of

people they don't really know anything about themselves and something like this can get sure that process and you know i like a genetic test like i'm a huge fan of uh you know like like the 23 me for example like you take that data and you export it to like strategy or if you go to like 23andu.com there's a there's a dizzying number of websites that you can you know gather like your your methylation status from or anything else but like you know um dna fit is one company right that's where we uh we use yeah and and it'll tell you like oh here's your here's your fast switch slow switch muscle fiber capacity and it'll tell you, like, oh, here's your fast switch, slow switch muscle fiber capacity,

and here's whether you respond better to power training versus endurance training. And, you know, I got that test. And I know that I get faster at, like, running long distances when I do short hill sprints, right? And then it said I was a big power responder. So it's something, like you mentioned, you know, that I've already discovered about myself. You know, then it said I was lactose intolerant. But it's something, like you mentioned, that I've already discovered about myself.

Then it said I was lactose intolerant. Oh, when I was 18, I wouldn't have been pushing out explosive diarrhea all over the back wall of the bathroom if I would have known I was lactose intolerant. I had to figure that out through trial and error. But then the DNA test tells me that, and it's like, well, thank you. It verifies. DNA test tells me that, and it's like, well, thank you. Well, what's interesting is, you know, people, they are, like, experiencing explosive diarrhea and have digestive issues, or they think that they've had digestive issues their whole life, so having a little discomfort after eating is a normal thing for them.

And I find a lot of people, they end up having this moment where they go, oh, I'm lactose intolerant, they move that. It's like, oh, diarrhea is not normal. Right, right, exactly. But a lot of people, they end up having this moment where they go, oh, I'm lactose intolerant. They move that. It's like, oh, diarrhea is not normal. Right, right. But a lot of people live with that. Exactly. My asshole is not supposed to pucker and quiver after I have a bowel movement. It's supposed to feel like glorious sunshine and rainbows.

Yeah, I mean, like, I agree that when we live in this era of better living through science where we can sequence the genome and we can you know do blood and biomarker testing and you know and you know the other ones i like are like urine testing for your for your 24-hour hormonal evaluation um you know what else like breath testing for for SIBO like there's there's all sorts of ways that you can cut to the chase faster right rather than doing like the whole elimination diet or trial and error so yeah i yeah, I completely agree. I like this stuff. Is there any one of those that you like as a starting point, someone that's never done any self-experimentation, which with all these options, it's kind of overwhelming?

Well, what I tell people is gold standard. If you just wanted to know everything that's going on inside your body and not spend money on the really fringe, like the spectra cell analyses and the organic amino acids, some of these things that are like $1,200 tests that give you a shit ton of data, but it's almost like, well, I'm deficient in the amino acid methionine, but maybe we need to start with, I shouldn't be eating

as many Big Macs. I like the company Wellness FX has their baseline panel. They call it the baseline panel because that's what it is. It's just a basic, you know, your TSH and your T3 and your T4. It's like $70 or something, right? Oh, no, it's like $600.

Oh, that one. Yeah, it's still like that. Because they have a really cheap one. I could be wrong. I think they have different tiers. Yeah, they have different tiers. And so I like their baseline test for blood. It's a good one.

And I like it because it also comes with a really easy-to-interpret dashboard for people. And then the poop test, I like the doctor's data, three-day stool test, where you're literally pooping. It's not your biome like this. It's like parasites, yeast, fungus. It'll freaking tell you, like, what herbs, specific critters living in your gut are going to be responsive to versus which herbs would be a waste of your time, like garlic or oregano or berberine or whatever it gives you your bacterial balance and then it shows you inflammatory markers like lactoferrin and stuff like that in your gut so i like that one most of my life i never heard anything about parasites the only time i heard about parasites was somebody

you know went to africa and they drank some water and they came back. Until what came out your nose one day? That's right. Tapeworm. Well, a lot of people have parasites, but most of them aren't beneficial. Yeah. But, okay, that's cool. That's something to note. But I'm hearing more about parasites more than ever. I run into people who have gut issues and they're like, oh, I have a parasite. I have parasites.

Yeah. But they're not talking about what the parasite is. They're just saying parasites. I have parasites. It's a problem. Yeah. This particular test actually identifies the type of parasite and what kind of herbs you should take. Because I used to race in Thailand and Asia in triathlon.

And inevitably, if there was a freshwater swim, I'd come back with some kind of critter in my gut. So I do this test and literally like follow whatever protocol was recommended usually it's like berberine or uva ursi or oil of oregano or garlic or you know one of these other natural antibiotics you know grapeseed extract that kind of stuff so um but people that haven't even left the united states have parasites oh yeah yeah i mean and many of us like we have beneficial organisms you know there's this idea of uh what's called? Helminthic therapy where you can get rid of certain gut issues by actually using like worms, like, Oh, sure. Sure. Helmets. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, some, some parasites are beneficial. Um, just like many bacteria, of course are beneficial. Um, so there's a poop test, the blood tests, um, that 24 hour urine, like you hear a lot of people talk about adrenal stress and disease

and, you know, tests for adrenal fatigue, which I think is kind of overhyped anyways, this concept of adrenal fatigue. It's like fibromyalgia, right? It's a pain all term. It's extremely overhyped. The better one than the salivary test now is a urine test, a 24-hour urine test. It's a dried urine test. You pee on a strip five times during the day during a 24 hour cycle. And it gives you fricking like testosterone and testosterone breakdown byproducts or, or like cortisol, right? Like maybe your cortisol is really high, but it's not because you're making a ton of cortisol. It's because the cortisol isn't getting broken down quickly in the bloodstream or you have really low levels of cortisol.

And it's not because you've got adrenal fatigue. It's because you're actually breaking down cortisol very quickly into its metabolites. like these are things that a hormonal test or like a salivary hormonal test can't give you but that a urine test can so i like that one um and then the very last one in addition to blood and stool and urine is that dna test right just like a basic like 23 me or whatever where you can just run with that data and you know go as far as you want in terms of of you know figuring out your your coffee oxidizing rate and your freaking like you know risk factor for prostate cancer type 2 diabetes or whether your dad was from africa or china which i always wondered until i got that test done where's he from uh australia actually okay yeah i was so far off the mark.

I wake up every morning, I'm like, am I black or Chinese? Am I black or Chinese? I need to take a test, figure this out. Yeah, we went over to the UK and hung out with Andrew Steele and went to DNA Fit and checked their facility like a year or two ago and got all of our tests done on each of us individually. And I also got my wife and my one-year-old at the time as well. So, like, knowing that my kid is or is not lactose intolerant. Is actually yours?

Oh, yeah. We didn't test that piece. Oh. I'm still very curious about that. But whoever's kid it is is not lactose intolerant, which is really nice to know from day one. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Is he, like, a really, like, lean, good-looking kid with a full head of hair and awesome body odor and everything? Yeah. You can't be mine. Yeah. He's not yours. Yeah. Definitely.

He's not mine. Man, you have two kids as well, right? I do. Yeah. River and Taryn. Yeah. My twin boys. Yeah.

Water and earth, baby. That's cool. Yeah. They're good guys. I've got like the Greek Hellenic symbols for water and earth. is like kind of like a little birthmark tattoo right there on my hip just to remind me that i have children um yeah yeah my wife has stretch marks and a bigger vagina and i have the uh the greek symbols for water and earth um no i'm just kidding her vagina is okay uh although apparently there is a there is a procedure for that.

Anyways, though, so, yeah, River and Taryn are my boys. And I'm actually two chapters out from finishing my first fiction book called The Forest. And they're my inspiration for it. They're two young protagonists who have power over water and power over earth. And they cross into this other dimension, into another world through a portal, inspired by this little, like, dark shed in the far, far back of the forest that we live in. And they enter into this other world, and they battle and defeat.

They're called the Hordes, this clan of Hordes that they defeat by connecting with these princesses who have power over air and over fire. And, dude, every morning I wake up and I just write fiction for about 20 minutes. It's like the spark of creativity for all the other stuff, when you go on to write about whatever, enemas and DNA tests and all that jazz. Interesting.

Does that not leave you excited to wake up every morning? Oh, yeah. And what I want to do, I have to write the forest world because we live out in the forest, and it's easier for me to wander around there and get inspired by the forest, the mushrooms and the bark and the trees and the tamaracks and the pine and the polyphenols and the smell of the spruce. That's a good way to get inspired, to write a book that takes place in the forest. But then after that, I want to do desert world, right,

and take the family to South America or Brazil or even freaking Sedona for a few months and get inspired by that and then write the desert and then do the sea world. My kids want me to do the space world and have them go to the moon and stuff. I heard they're building a resort on the moon. 2019? I don't know. So we've got two years to get ready. They're going to have microbiome testing when they do because there's that one cat.

Same guy. Yeah, same guy. He's like, welcome to the moon. I own it. Come get your poop tested. So you've been a self-experimenter for a long time. What are some things you've been doing in the last year that you found to be really helpful? You know, have you guys used a photo biomodulation before like uh basically you you bombard your mitochondria

you know through through your skin with specific wavelengths of light and what you do is you activate in response to that light something called cytochrome c oxidase which is part of the electron transport chain so you amplify mitochondrial activity. Or, you know, in the case of like, for example, a company called Violite makes a device that will generate about a 10 hertz alpha wave frequency. It's like a light, and it's like a little probe that you put in your nose and this cap that you wear on top of your head, and it's full-on photobiomodulation. And when you elevate mitochondrial activity, you also produce nitric oxide.

So you get this release of, like, full-body Viagra, so you feel good and your blood vessels open up, and it also makes you, it feels like a cup of coffee for your brain. They have another one now called a gamma. That's a 40 hertz frequency that they've actually shown to be beneficial for reversing issues with Alzheimer's and dementia. And it's, you know, NPR did a big story on this like this this gamma wavelength and how it assists with with issues with alzheimer's and dementia this company uses it's a concept called photo biomodulation light therapy

to achieve biological effects by modulating frequencies so there's like a company called violite makes this one again with like the probe that you put up your nose and the cap that you wear on your head and then um there's another another guy uh you guys probably know this cat uh jack cruz dr jack cruz partnered up with another guy who's pretty smart named ruben salinas and they developed like a wrist worn device called a quantlet and this also has photobiomodulation that basically your blood gets exposed to as it passes down your arm and your finger back up to your heart. So that's like a wrist-worn photobiomodulation.

There's even like the – I was talking with a guy about this on a podcast yesterday, this light, so 600 to 700 nanometers of light when you expose the latex cells in your testes to that wavelength of light, it actually amplifies mitochondrial activity in the lytic cells. So you get increased testosterone and increased sperm production. So there's lots of... Putting light on my nuts. Putting light on your nuts.

There's this thing called a juve light. I actually have it in my office. It leans up against my standing desk. It's like this long panel of light like this, right? And I'll sit in my office when I'm working on emails. I'll pull my pants down for about 5 to 20 minutes, and you flip this thing on and it just blasts your crotch with this 600, 700 nanometer

wavelength of light. You can do it for your head, your nose, you can do it on your wrist, you can do the light. There's a law of diminishing returns. Anytime you do this, you increase the production of reactive oxygen species because that's what happens. It's a byproduct of increased metabolism. That's why too much

exercise or too much eating or anything else, it's one of the reasons that it's not good for you so it's not some you can you can have too much of a good thing in terms of like blasting your balls with light or sticking the the photobiomodulation i think most people's balls have not seen enough light though probably yeah i mean there was even a study like back in the 40s where they looked at like uva and uv radiation and even found that that was helpful for male performance. Any concerns that's going to enhance any mitochondria leaking? I don't know. I would imagine with enough exposure to it and enough elevation of metabolism in the mitochondria,

you'd probably see some cellular membrane damage. And that would primarily be from the reactive oxygen species. Right. Which, of course, you can scavenge those with other practices like you know antioxidant intake and stuff like that but yeah or even like you know uh you know things like cold showers cold baths but but yeah photobiomodulation is is one it's um i i own all those devices that i just talked about and that's been a been kind of an interesting one to experiment with and i feel good when i use it so say what what's the what's the been the difference that you've noticed that it's made in my life during the day especially if i'm low on sleep and i use that that head one in the morning yeah before sex the the light for

for everything from just like increased size to increase blood flow like rather than using pills or something like that it works really well for that the um the wrist one works really well for jet lag because it's poor we can put in a bag like the headset one works really well for jet lag and it's portable you put in a bag like the headset one it's really expensive and i like i'm nervous about traveling with it and put in a bag but the wrist one you just like put in one you put it on your wrist and you flip it on when you jet lag seems to help a lot yeah yeah you run a lot of spartan races or obstacle course races in general you're professional yeah i'm a professional bar bar crawler yeah basically yeah i throw spears really well when did that become a professional really good talent last pay off someday last several years yeah well i was like a skinny

iron man triathlete well i was a bodybuilder before that yeah and then i got an iron man and i like did my first spartan race i thought i was gonna crush it right because i'm just like this i was really good iron man like a really good endurance athlete. And I remember I got to the rope climb, and I didn't even know how to climb a rope. Damn, you had rich frowning. Yeah, so I'm there at the rope climb for like 10 minutes, and then I finally can't get up anymore. My grip's shot, and I got to do the 30 burpees,

and then I move on. I can barely make it over the wall, and I couldn't get my body low enough to climb over the barbed wire. And I realized, like, dude, I'm actually, like, I'm not that fit anymore. I've been doing this triathlon thing for so long that I've lost the ability to be able to move in a functional way. So I kind of got a fire lit under me to do well at these Spartan races because I realized, like, this is a cool way to functionally train, to kind of scratch that primal itch to go out and, you know, get dirty and muddy and compete and everything.

But it's different than triathlon, right? It's not a bunch of rich guys in spandex it's more like you know it's just like this kind of like grittier almost like a like a military crowd you know type of feel when you go to these races so kind of just like a refreshing twist the new chapter in life and yeah i've been doing that for a couple of years i haven't built like this obstacle course in my backyard where we've got, like, ropes hanging from the trees and, you know, like the big log weave. And I just got one of these military manuals, right, that shows the blueprint of obstacles.

And then me and this guy hired to help me, who's really much better at planting concrete in the ground than I am, we built all these obstacles up all over the house for those, like, horizontal rope climbs and vertical rope climbs and balance beams and hay bales to throw spears at and monkey bars and all this stuff up all over the house for those, like, horizontal rope climbs and vertical rope climbs and balance beams and hay bales to throw spears at and monkey bars and all this stuff. Is that your house? Yeah.

This is what it takes to go pro. No, I just think it's fun. I think it's fun. Like, I don't really go to the gym, right? I can go outside, and I've got that stuff, and, you know, I've got a little, you know, some kettlebells and stuff downstairs. But for the most part, I mean, you just run around the forest and carry heavy shit and climb some ropes, and it's a fun way to train, and you get, you know some kettlebells and stuff downstairs but for the most part I mean you just run around the forest and carry heavy shit and climb some ropes and it's a fun way to train and

you get you know all those those nature benefits you just described like every seven-year-old boy's dream well my kids probably love that my boys absolutely dig it like mom and I'll go out there on a Saturday and we'll be like hey we're gonna go hit the obstacle course for an hour and they'll come run around with us and yeah I mean it's it's a it's amazing kind of a cool place to have but yeah um right now I'm racing for the Spartan Pro Team and just doing Spartan races. We're going to be at the World Championships. Ooh.

That's a hard race. I did that one last year twice. I did the Ultra Beast at World Championships. And you do the whole course, then you do it again, and there's, like, a blizzard coming in. And so when you do it twice, it's a marathon of obstacle course racing. And I was at, like, 23 miles, and this pickup truck is, like, coming down the mountain,

and they've got, like, people piled in the back of the pickup truck, and this racer is, like, walking back down the mountain. They're, like, they're going to shut down the course. Like, there's a blizzard rolling in. And there were so many people that year that got, like, pulled off the course. They didn't get their medal. Like, it was a big controversy. And, you know, 22, 23 23 miles i just started busting ass i went deeper to the

pancake because i'm like i'm not gonna like go 22 miles and then get pulled off the course because there's a blizzard so so i finished it everything but the last four miles were painful because i was boogie and i was like i do not want to get pulled off this course so uh uh yeah so better time because of that though yeah I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gone that fast if I wasn't motivated to to finish yeah but that race you want to be ready for the altitude right so you want to get an elevation training mask um or yeah did you guys see the thing downstairs, the hypoxic air generator? Yeah, let's get into this, please. That's actually pretty cool.

Okay, yeah, so training for elevation. Yeah. How does that work in your mind? All right, so here's how it works in my mind. I can't go to the mountains. I live at, like, 3,000 feet. The closest mountain to me is, like, 5,000 feet. You don't really get much of an altitude training effect until you're above 6,000 feet. Right? So I can't go to the mountains. I live at like 3,000 feet. The closest mountain to me is like 5,000 feet. You don't really get much of an altitude training effect

until you're above 6,000 feet. So I can't go to the mountains and train. I'm not some single guy like some of these pro racers who are going to move to Mammoth or whatever and go train there for three months before the race. So there are some things you can do. They've shown that sauna exposure, especially post-workout, 30 minutes-ish of hot sauna exposure,

can actually increase erythropoietin levels, like EPO. Very similar to altitude training. That's one trick you can use. So train, hop in the sauna. Train, hop in the sauna. Get hot. Like you get a good increase in your cardiac output, your blood flow, and your red blood

cell precursors when you do that. You need to be pretty hot when you go in and stay in for a little while. What's a little while? 30 minutes? I stay in 30 minutes little while. What's a little while? 30 minutes? I stay in 30 minutes. Okay. Like until you're uncomfortable. I'm planning to put a sauna in my house soon.

I'm figuring out all the benefits. For people that don't know EPOs and how that works, why is that a benefit? It's a red blood cell precursor. It's like what your, I believe your bone marrow, it's out of the bone marrow of the liver, releases it to allow you to create more red blood cells. And red blood cells carry oxygen. Red blood cells carry oxygen to muscle, yes.

You can, there are different supplements that seem to have a pretty good effect. Echinacea, there's some really interesting studies on echinacea and its ability to boost EPO similarly. Cordyceps is another one that I like for that, like Cordyceps mushroom extract. You know, there's some of these things you see like Sherpa's using, right? Like Rhodiola is another one. Yep. Another common supplement for elevation. And there's one other.

Oh, the beet root extract. Like anything that vasodilates. Or Viagra. Right. Or Carmagra if you want to save some money. Just get a little sildenafil in the system. Hope a hot girl doesn't want Viagra will write or Carmagra if you want to save some money just get a little sildenafil in the system Hope a hot girl do you do Viagra regularly or? I don't know if you need to load with it or not

But I mean it's it's banned and by water and you don't do it cuz it's not you're not okay, but Reminds me this day. I'm tested after the race you're screwed They'll be like this cat had Viagra and we reminds me of this day. If you get pee tested after the race, you're screwed. They'll be like, this cat had Viagra, and we're going to strip his metal. I don't know what he was thinking. If you got busted Viagra, that'd be the best. It'd be worth it. It'd be the most fun race ever. The whole race, I didn't get a medal because I was popping my pills.

I'm chafed in all kinds of weird spots. There's certain things that, like, if I were to get busted for substance use, that's one of those that, like, I would be, like, I'd be okay with. I'm like, yeah, I was using Viagra. Yeah, exactly. They're not kicking you out of the Hall of Fame for that. No, no.

Everyone's just going to get a nice little chuckle. That's right. And then from a practices standpoint, I mean, you know, I was halfway joking about, like, some of these breathwork things. I mean, I see, like, you're wearing the XPT hat. That's Brian McKenzie's these breathwork things. I mean, I see that you're wearing the XPT hat. That's Brian McKenzie's performance breathwork stuff. Yeah, I'm an advisor for the company. Like a lot of that performance breathwork,

a lot of the ability to strengthen inspiratory and expiratory muscles and diaphragm. I mean, when you look at cardiovascular fatigue at altitude, there is a bigger strain on just the actual muscles, right? Not just your oxygen carrying capacity, but the muscles themselves. They get tired more quickly. And so when you look at things like power breathing, fire breathing, yes, things like the power lung and the elevation training mask and these things that don't simulate altitude but do train the muscles

or do increase your tolerance to carbon dioxide and that dead space in front of your mouth, things like that can actually help. Not as much as climbing a mountain, but when you combine those with sauna and some of these other things to help boost red blood cells, you start to be able to kind of like hack your way into a decent amount of ability to be resilient at altitude. That's a really important point. People often misinterpret the elevation training in those contexts. So whatever your device is, they're not trying to simulate the oxygen concentration that you're getting in your blood or oxygen saturation with the mask.

What they're trying to do is work on the breathing mechanics. But the sauna and stuff can do those other oxygen exchange issues. So when you combine them together, then you get the physiology with the mechanics. And that's the true beauty in those things. They're not as poor as their marketing strategy with the mask, initially was at least. That's not the point of it. I don't think they even call it elevation masking more. No, they just change it.

It's a good, for people who don't know, it's a good benefit-driven marketing issue. But what ends up happening is a coach who knows what's going on sees that and says this is bullshit. But then they also miss the mechanics issue. Yeah, we showed very clearly with our first study like five years ago and 20% improvements or more in VO2 max with one session of breathing drills. So like that alone with people that have no idea what they're doing. Not with a mask.

No, we used Boss Rutten's O2 trainer. But it's the same thing. It's just basically. I keep like a power lung in the glove box of my car. I don't drive that much. When I drive, I'll just pull that thing out, and I keep that. And Captains of Crush hand grip trainer. So when I'm driving, I can turn my lungs and I turn my grip.

Yeah, yeah. I have a power lung in the direction specifically say, you should be careful when you're using this thing. I'm careful. When you're driving down the road, down the interstate. How do you know I don't have a Tesla? How do you know that? I don't have one up in Washington State, my own little self-driving car.

It just drives all by itself. I have a beat-up pickup truck. You could probably go with the steering wheel. It's like the axles are so bad, it just, like, weaves off the road. So, no, I am careful. I do drive with my knees. Kids, drive with your knees. Don't get completely off the steering wheel.

Yeah, those are some of the things. And then probably the last thing that comes to mind to wrap up that discussion, pun intended, would be cellophane runs. The way these work is you just, like, wrap your head in cellophane and you go for a run. You want to be ready for altitude. It's just, like, it works perfectly. Seriously.

You get a brand that you're on line of cellophane and just sell it for 10x the cost. You're only going to get one sale per person. I'm going to call it the Reebok Cellophane Nano 7.0 mask. Yes. That's a good idea. A second ago you mentioned various types of mushrooms, and I feel like mushrooms as a category as far as a health supplement are getting more and more and more popular. Is that something you've experimented with a lot, and what are the benefits there?

Well, I like reishi mushroom as a relaxing mushroom so much that i got these reishi spores that company that's downstairs the four sigmatic company yeah they advertise on my podcast so they send me mushrooms and they sent me this like they send these bags like like you got reishi and they got reishi spores which are like reishi on steroids and reishi is super relaxing like like like it just helps me like take naps and you know before i go to bed like and i just dump the packets in my mouth and just just go because i don't like to drink a lot before i go to bed because i have to wake up and pee so i just you know dump that in my mouth and uh what i did was i um i got one of those magical butter machines you guys seen these before no make your own edibles so i i used to do to make a lot of just THC tinctures.

It was basically just like ever clear and decarboxylated weed. And then it's potent. And you put it in a little dropper bottle. I got a funny story about a THC tincture. My little brother dropped just one drop in my mom's wine one night. And my mom didn't know. She had the best night of her life now see i'll use i'll use i'll use like green coach or blue dream or like like something something kind of blue dream the classic like a heavy indica and then um you know just for like like a nighttime tincture or whatever but what i did was i got

this magical butter machine like well i know that reishi works really well for relaxation i do know if i use like a good relaxing indica strain that it's it's pretty good for relaxation and i start thinking like well what else i mean i got this this it's like a commercial countertop immersion blender you know what else can i use this for so i got distracted art devaney the godfather of freaking fitness just walked out here. That cat's cool. So anyways, I thought, well, I like a red strain of kratom, which is really, it's like an opioid-like painkiller that induces a euphoria effect. And I use it.

I like it. Sometimes I'll take some before I take a nap. Sometimes I'll use, like, the white strain instead of a cup of coffee in the morning. Like, it's a cool, it's related to the coffee fruit plant, and it's very euphoria-inducing. I've heard kratom shouldn't be used every day. Is that something you agree with, or what's your take on it? I don't think it's processed that heavily by the liver.

I've never had any issues with feeling, like, any withdrawal effects when I take it versus don't take it. So, yeah, I don't know of any dangers of Kratom. So like Kava, it acts similarly, but Kava has some pretty significant impact on the liver. Really? But Kratom, I'm pretty sure, and again, we may want to look that up just before everybody rushes out and starts mainlining Kratom.

I've been using a little bit of Kratom. I've enjoyed it. Yeah, I like it. Ultra-enhanced Kratom, by the way, if you get that, it's much more concentrated and far less. So I got this ultra-enhanced kratom, by the way, if you get that, it's much more concentrated. You need far less. So I got this ultra-enhanced kratom, red-strain Borneo, and then the Blue Dream decarboxylated weed, these reishi spores, like a whole packet of the reishi spores from Four Sigmatic,

and then CBD, which you can make a lot more bioavailable when you mix it with turmeric and black pepper. And so I added just a ton of turmeric, a lot of black pepper. I broke open 40 CBD capsules, because I only had the capsules when I was making this, so I just broke them all open. My kids actually helped me break them open, but I didn't tell my kids what we were making.

I just told them that I wanted to make some chocolate. So I added all that, and then I add copaiba oil, which is an essential oil that has a terpenoid effect, meaning like it enhances the effects of any terpenes. And a lot of the bioactive molecules in weed, for example, are terpene based. And so I added some of this copaiba oil along with the black pepper and the turmeric to make this stuff just like super duper absorbable. And then ghee, coconut oil, some alkali-free dark cacao powder, stevia, and sea salt.

And then basically I let it immerse on the counter for eight hours, just blending and blending and blending. And my wife came home with the kids. They're at Bible study when this thing was kind of finishing up. And the whole house just smells like a freaking dispensary. But like a big, wonderful Willy Wonka chocolate dispensary. Oh, yeah. And so then I pour these things into molds and let them sit in the freezer for a couple hours so they get nice and hard. And I ate one that night.

I called it my sleep cake. Because I quantify all my sleep. The best nights of sleep I've ever had. I made like 30 of them. So I just started having these, you know, unstressful nights. By my calculations, about like 12, 13 milligrams of THC, about 5 to 6 of CBD, and then God knows how much reishi and kratom and copaiba oil and all these other things. Yeah, I've been doing reishi and chaga tinctures before, but it's been nice.

Yeah, so reishi definitely for sleep. I'm a fan of that, but I'm a bigger fan of it when you make my special sleep cake recipe with it. And by the way, you just buy a magical butter machine on Amazon. Get your hands on everything I just talked about. You're going to have the best sleep ever. Chaga, really, really good for immunity. I'm a huge fan of chaga as well. Let's dig into more mushrooms.

Let's take a break first, though. Okay. All right, so we were on the topic of mushrooms. Oh, yeah. Yeah, chaga for immunity. What else? I mean, I like to harvest. We do a lot of, like, wild plant harvest.

We harvest nettle and mint and organ grape and plantain and all sorts of things up at our house. But morels, when you can come across those, those are just, like, buttery, buttery goodness. So not really medicinal as much as just like tasty, tasty flavor. There are some other blends that Four Sigmatic sends out, you know, like Turkey Tail and some of these other ones that are kind of interesting. But honestly, like Reishi and Chaga would be my two favorites. You have the Cordyceps that I already mentioned.

I like that. Oh, Lion's Mane would be another one, just as like a nootropic. That's actually what I had this morning was Lion's Mane mixed into bone broth, right, instead of coffee. It's nice just because there's so much of that stuff rolling around. Do that before bed. Lion's Mane before bed? For dreams. Are you lucid dreaming?

Yeah. Really? I'll have to try that. Yeah. Because I've used that lucid dream tea before. And you know what else works? Is that Gaiusa? It's that same stuff that's downstairs. It's just like a little paper bag of lucid dreaming

tea. It's a blend of a whole bunch of stuff. Oh, so there's a specific tea called Gaiusa from the Amazon. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's probably the primary ingredient in this stuff. And then, yeah, for lucid dreaming, by the way, there's this little device called a Delta Sleeper. It's a pulsed electromagnetic field device that you're supposed to put on your collarbone to enhance your deep sleep. But if you put it on your third eye chakra, like before you go to bed, and then you can just like use a sleep mask to kind of pull it around there and hold it on, you have these crazy lucid dreams.

And this thing was originally developed to be worn on the head, so it helps with your sleep. It's not dangerous or anything. It's very similar to the 7 to 8 hertz frequency that the earth puts out. So it would be like if you were sleeping, I guess, face down on the head so helps with your sleep it's not dangerous or anything it's very it's very similar like the seven to eight hertz frequency that the earth puts out right so it'd be like if you're sleeping i guess face down on the earth but basically this this thing induces some crazy dreams i sleep with lapidolite on my face yeah yeah you sleep with what lapidolite do you sleep with blue light blocking glasses on no what's a lapidolite it's a stone oh yeah yeah cool same thing yeah Cool. Same thing. Yeah. Okay. I don't know.

I can never tell if you're bullshit. Kind of. I try a bunch of stuff that has no, it's all like anecdotal information. Someone's like, lapidolite's good for this. I'm like, sure, it's under my pillow now. That's kind of my approach. It can't hurt, right? It's not going to kill me or shrink my dick.

I'll try it at least once. Actually, that's a question that I have for you. Lapidolite. Lapidolite. All right. What were you saying? I'll just jump in. Yeah, go for it.

We're not going to miss that lapidolite discussion. I was just going to say there's a lot of things that I know I try that doesn't have any reason. There's no scientific reason it works or no research to suggest that, but it also isn't going to hurt. Right. It works for you. Maybe.

It could, yeah. You can find out if it works for you. So it's actually pretty similar to my question anyways is with all these different options now, and whether that be technology or food or extract, how the hell do you and you probably it's even worse because you probably have companies constantly wanting to send you stuff to try how do you go about deciding or like random random like paper envelopes with white powder in them right

like a handwritten address and like a business card that looks like it came off of somebody's printer it's like i made this adaptogenic extract you have to try. Yeah, right. You're like, I don't think I'm going to try this. I think somebody's trying to kill me. So how do you go about deciding when you're going to live a, we'll just call it natural, or like I'm going to not use any of these, whatever term you want to call them, hacks or not, or which ones do you decide, which ones do you balance? Oh, yeah.

If not, you're hacked out all day, right? Yeah. You're like, what the hell is life anymore? I have a name for that. It's called my wife. She goes to bed and just like you know no sleep mask and no like photo biomodulation and no supplements and no workout she just freaking like gardens all day and takes care of the goats and chickens and then she goes to bed she closes her eyes and goes to sleep wakes up and interesting

like yeah i know no like we're like ian and yang she doesn't give a shit about any of this stuff perfect yeah so anyways though so so for me there's two things that come to mind. Number one is I do quantify. Like every morning I take my heart rate variability to see how something I've used has affected my nervous system. And sometimes I'll do 24-7 heart rate variability monitoring to see how something I'm doing all day is affecting my nervous system. Like if I start some new supplementation protocol or I'm doing a new type of workout, I'll wear a heart rate variability monitor during that. I do all those tests that we talked about.

I do those about every quarter, right, aside from the genetic test. It doesn't change that much. So I'm constantly kind of taking a look at how my body is changing until CRISPR technology. Quarterly genetic testing. Yeah, CRISPR is coming. Then we've got to test all the time.

You can get your epigenetics tested. Yeah, what are the Chinese doing to my DNA? Oh, shit. Which apparently they're, like, making people, like, knocking out the HIV markers and all sorts of crazy stuff. Oh, they've got so much stuff, too, that, like. Yeah, that. I wear this ring all the time, which tracks my sleep

and my sleep latency. I've been curious about that because I've been seeing different, like, watches and stuff. Temperature, HRV. I've heard that ring is actually. It's more accurate when it's on your wrist. At least for sleep, it's more accurate. Or, I'm sorry, on your finger. For sleep, it's more accurate.

Plus, it's like, I don't want something on both wrists, and I don't want a watch. Like, most of the watches are constantly transmitting like a you sleep in a ring signal so i sleep with a watch but there's no wi-fi or bluetooth on on my watch i can put the ring in airplane mode which you can't do with a lot of these devices so i disable any radiation or anything because i just don't like that idea of just constantly being like totally hooked up to stuff so between between those things like heart rate variability measurement and the ring and this blood and biomarker testing i can kind of keep my finger on the pulse of how certain things are affecting me. And then, so that's part one, is I quantify.

Right. And then part two is, I mean, let's face it, like part of my shtick, part of my gig. Like I run a freaking blog and a podcast in which I try out cool new things and tell people about them. Right. And so part of it is like, I'm not trying out like photo biomodulation and, you know, and sleep cakes and electro stim and, you know, and shining the light on my balls or TDCS.

I'm about to go speak on stage about like 10 different ways you could biohack your brain. Right. I don't think everybody needs to be walking around doing that every day, but part of what i do is like i'm almost like a glorified product tester for a lot of this stuff and so that that's part of it too is like that's what i do and because i freelance right about this stuff and it's my job to test it and let people know how it works and stuff like for me that that's

part of it too is there a job any way that if somebody at home is listening that you would have an idea of helping them identify whether there's someone like you who maybe their life would be enhanced with some of these supplements or some of these tricks, or if they're more like your wife where it seems like she's thriving successfully without eating it. Yeah, it's too broad of a question because you can't paint with that broad of a brush. Like I could say, okay, well, you've done genetic testing. You have increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. You've got high facet blood glucose and high hemoglobin A1C, which is going to put you at further risk for, you know, that type of type 3 diabetes.

You might be somebody who would benefit from, let's say, a ketogenic diet and photobiomodulation in that gamma frequency and like a Dexcom G5 blood glucose monitor for a month so we can we can and so so you take a person and you test them you look at what their risk category is and then you say okay well these are the biohacks or the supplements or the things that you should do rather than just saying do it all like buy everything on the on the bulletproof website and the low blue lights website and the wellness fx get all the tests and just just do everything it's like i think i think it's better to just like get a little bit of quantification done and then figure out some of those little things that are going to be the

biggest winners like the 80 20s yeah start with one thing yeah and then move on and if you want to i mean i have some people that like you know like these rich ceos will come hire me and they're just like i just want to do everything like i'll buy everything you're talking about to buy i'll buy everything i'll do the tests and so i walk them through that and to do everything. I'll buy everything. You tell me what to buy. I'll buy everything. I'll do all the tests. And so I walk them through that. And they do everything. And they do like I do. And they wake up.

They do their HRV. They go downstairs. They do the photobiomodulation. They put the five different things in their coffee. And then the standing workstation with the ball light. And just everything all day. And it's fun. But then there's times when I just go hunt for a week, right?

Out in the high mountains of Colorado. I got nothing, right? It's just me and my body and whatever I want to forage or a few beef jerky bars and a bow, right? So it's kind of like the opposite of the hedonistic calendar, right? So you find some balance there. Yeah, exactly. So it's like as long as you're able to realize that this, like, necessary to be happy or to live a fulfilling life.

But it is better living through science in many cases. Like, I do feel better and sleep better when I'm at home than when I'm camping out in the wilderness. Like, a lot of people say I feel great after I camp. I'm like, I actually, usually, like, I wake up multiple times during the night. And then the birds are crying at 4 a.m. And you get up and you're really tired by noon because you've been out hiking around it's like you know there there are some things that actually feel pretty good about like hacking your life when it comes to sleep and rest and relaxation and stuff like that but i think you just have to balance that with you know whatever spartan

racing and hunting and you know the stuff that kind of gets you on the elements so right yeah what was the name of your talk that you just mentioned a second ago uh The talk I'm going to give? Yeah. It's called Advanced Brain Biohacking. So from that talk, do you have any two or three quick points that you think are particularly interesting that you'd want to share? A, cover the bases. So before you jump into anything that I talk about in the talk I'm going to give, you need to make sure that you've addressed things like a leaky blood-brain barrier by shutting down inflammation and sleep and de-stressing. You need to address your neurotransmitters with adequate magnesium and amino acid intake and choline precursors and DHA.

You need to address neuroplasticity just by learning new things and challenging your brain and doing brain aerobics and doing these things that actually make smoke come out of your ears before you're starting some of these other things. And then the last piece would just be addressing your HPA axis, like taking care of cortisol and all that jazz, like covering your bases. And then you jump into some of the stuff that's kind of fun, right? Like stimulating the motor cortex

with TDCS before a workout or using that photobiomodulation that I talked about. Or transcranial direct stimulation yeah like a like stimulation of the neurons in the motor cortex to make a workout feel easier or to acquire a skill more quickly or you use something like um what would be another example um you you would uh for example use like like pulse electromagnetic field therapy for enhancing sleep or enhancing alpha brainwave production for focus or neurofeedback, right, where you attach electrodes to your head

and you fly a spaceship with your mind. And, yeah, you should learn basic meditation before that, but this is a way to shortcut your way to gain some of the advantages of that even faster, to train your subconscious even faster. So I get into a lot of these things that are considered like like technology like more advanced technologies to get more out of your brain once you've got the basics taken care of that's what i'm going to be talking yeah it's common i run into people a lot of times that are they're doing all these hacks but they haven't done the basics yet why don't you freaking like learning how to play a flute before you know and use that

as a way to increase neuroplasticity before you just like whatever, take psilocybin and use a Muse headband or something like that. It's like effort, right? It's like that electro-stem thing we were talking about. They got the electro-stem downstairs, and it simulates the 600-pound squat and stuff, but I think it's still just like lift-heavy shit sometimes. Agreed. You got to find a balance.

Mentioning Alzheimer's and neuroplasticityity and you just call it type 3 diabetes which i keep hearing more and more and more people saying that that term but just learning new things i was watching the ted talk the other day there's basically saying that just if you keep yourself learning new things even if you are predisposed to to having alzheimer's in the future just the fact that you're still out learning new things on a day-to-day basis can actually ward off and push back that, that disease. Yeah. Recent study in Alzheimer's shows that it's really a multimodal approach. Like that helps, um, some of that, some of that light stuff and frequency stuff that I talked about helps, uh, ketogenic diet helps, uh, DHA intake helps, um, even like love and family and relationships oddly enough seem to help so uh

yeah it's like it's like if if you have increased risk for dementia and alzheimer's or if i did right i'd still be i'd still be learning new things but you know you can't learn new things and then like be eating twinkies and expect to still not get some like neurofibrillary tangles or some kind of like you know oxidation of neural tissue or something going on so yeah it's like it's like a little bit of everything is what seems to be the best treatment when you look at a lot of these studies or they're kind of like what do you call it not not a case study but you know study like 11 or 12 people yeah yeah um it's not you don't have a term for it yeah yeah a very very small n equals one right or a very small n for the study itself.

They're still showing some pretty good data. It's effectively a pilot study. With a multimodal approach to Alzheimer's and dementia, you can see some pretty cool effects when you mix all these things together. Yeah, it's probably also a major fallacy that those things are single-caused. So therefore, if it's not single-caused, it's not going to be single-treated. So the reason it developed in you and you and me and me is probably before different things, and so we're going to have to address that in four

different ways those smaller initial studies allow us to do that and target some things that may not work across the broad spectrum but we're going to have to give people the option and as opposed to giving them one simple treatment because that clearly doesn't work very effectively anyways except smart drugs we don't know that those are just – they work for anything. Absolutely. Constipation, Alzheimer's, anything. Have you put qualia up your ass yet? No.

Dude, step one. What happens? Do that. Step one first. Do your dick get smarter? For sure. Big time. My brain's at it anyway, so.

Just try it. I've done THC enemas, but not a quality enema. How was the THC? They're great publicity for the company. The THC is great. It's like a high for your crotch. It's really good. You do it like 40 minutes before sex, like one of those little coconut oil THC capsules.

I actually heard somebody say this before. Yeah. 40 milligrams. 40? Oh, hell no. No, I'll just use like the 10 milligram. 10. You could try it.

You just break it up in some water and send it up or what? No, you just get the capsule and just shove it up there. You don't break it up at all. Because the lining, the cellulose lining of the capsule will break open in your butt. So just take some coconut oil. Highly acidic environment of your butt. Toss it up there. Yeah.

All right. Shove it up there. Because it's just like coconut oil and THC extract. That's what most of those are made out of. I guess you should look for blue food coloring or something before you put it up there. I mean, because it's just like coconut oil and THC extract. That's what most of those are made out of. I guess you should look for, like, blue food coloring or something before you put it up your ass. At least before I put anything in my ass, I look for the food coloring just to make sure. I don't want to get food coloring cancer in my colon. Pretty sure there's some studies somewhere.

I think this is where we should end it. You've got to go make a presentation. I do. Finish your presentation slides. Finish my presentation, take a nap for 10 minutes, and then get on stage and crush it. After I take a shower in the bathroom, because I literally just let a workout this morning, and I've been running around the expo,

and I don't like to go on stage without, I don't know. I figure Tony Robbins probably takes a shower before he gets up there and crushes it. I think that's his secret. You should do whatever he does. I do a bathroom shower. I'm pretty sure whatever he does, I should do. Yeah, definitely.

Where can people find more about you? BenGreenfieldFitness.com. You have the world's oldest podcast, right? I have the world's oldest podcast. Yeah, it's decrepit and old. It's sarcopenia setting in. But yeah, for the next year and a half, I will have my podcast. Then we'll go bye-bye.

Really? Yeah, we'll go bye-bye. All the episodes will be out there. You've done enough. Much cooler than that coming down the pipeline. Excellent. Cool. Looking forward to it.

Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Cool. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, guys.