Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #7 Biohacking, kids, and lifestyle with Ben Greenfieeld

Episode Date: November 13, 2017

Kyle visits with Ben Greenfield Author of "Beyond Training" to discuss biohacking, raising children and some of the best practices for incorporating technology to make a better self.      Bengreenfieldfitness.com   Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast      Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on Twitter and on Instagram              Get 10% off at Onnit by going to Onnit.com/Podcast                     Onnit Twitter         Onnit Instagram

Welcome to the Onnit Podcast. This week's guest is my man, Ben Greenfield. This podcast was recorded a short while back, earlier this year, up at his house in Spokane, Washington. Ben has been an incredible teacher of mine. I've followed him on his podcast, The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. He has an excellent blog on bengreenfieldfitness.com and a wealth of knowledge. A lot of guys that get into biohacking like Ben, they're just not like Ben. You know, a lot of guys get into biohacking like Ben, they're just not like Ben. You know, a lot of guys get into biohacking and retooling themselves, usually coming from a place of not being in good health. And Ben is quite the opposite.

You know, he's a highly intelligent guy. He finished high school at 15 or 16, jumped into college right away, finished very quickly at that, and has a wealth of knowledge, a very scientific mind, but he's also an incredible athlete. He's completed, I think, 10 or more Ironmen. He's a sponsored Spartan race runner and just an incredible guy. So when this dude talks about biohacking and what he's into, I listen very carefully. He's turned me on to a lot of gadgets and gizmos out there, juvelite and altitude training and just a number of other really cool things that really help the body improve. Some of those aren't cheap, but if you're in need of really taking your game to the next level, he's

the right guy to follow. Ben is really one of the best guys that I've interviewed in terms of athletic standpoint and performance. Hope you guys enjoy the podcast. Well, let's jump. It's kind of hard to figure out a place to start with you because first, let me just say thank you. Thank you for having me up here. We're at the Greenfield Ranch, as I called it. I am.

We're already having a lot of fun, baby. We're having an absolute great day. You showed us the property. We went down and hit the rope swing into the river. Oh, Frisbee golf. I got stuck halfway out, hit the wall there swimming across. And yeah, Frisbee golf was phenomenal with your two boys. Your fitness show is something that I really got into along with Rogan and Ferris. But I learned, I mean, honestly, that's where I got into ketosis.

That's where I got into a lot of the different biohacks and things of that nature that would help me. You literally got into ketosis while listening to my show because it was that long. You just couldn't strip yourself away to eat something. It just ate through all the carbs in my body. Blood sugar plummeted to the point where I started producing ketones. It's been known to deplete glycogen levels. Yeah.

I just needed like that, what is the Dexcom so i could watch that plummet the dexcom g5 it's a continuous 24-7 blood glucose monitor and the g5 speaking of of i don't want to sound like a broken record but reducing the amount of electromagnetic frequencies that you expose yourself to 24-7. I had a discussion with the great Dr. Mercola about this, and the Dexcom G5 is the one that you can implant in your body without risking long-term high amounts of dirty electricity in your body. I was going to ask that. So does it run like a low pulse for Bluetooth? It's a lower frequency.

It doesn't sound like a constant Bluetooth signal. Like a Fitbit or a Jawbone, every three seconds or so, those are transmitting a class one Bluetooth signal searching for a device. Right? This ring that you have on and that I have on, you know, the self-quantification ring, it's a more expensive, you know, it's like twice the cost

of a Fitbit or a Jawbone, but it has an internal built-in computer, which means that you can disable the Bluetooth, you can place it into airplane mode, and you can still collect important information like body temperature and respiration and heart rate variability from your body without that constant exposure to Bluetooth radiation. The reasoning behind that is because that can affect the actual electrochemical gradient of the cell membrane, that constant exposure to a signal. And you want that.

Well, it depends. If you're in a state of repair and recovery, you're generally looking for about 40 to 50 millivolt potential across that membrane, across your cell membrane. If you're in a state of normal homeostasis, it's about 20 to 30 millivolts. There's a very, very good book about this. I don't know if you've read it, Kyle. It's called Healing is Voltage. And it's one of the better books on not just the basis behind the human body being a giant battery, but also specifically some of the things that we can do to optimize that battery,

which is exactly what we're surrounded by right now, right? This is why I live where I live. We're out in the forest. We're surrounded by all these polyphenols and flavanols pouring from the plants that are around us. Even in our alcoholic drinks right now, we're drinking this mild hormetic stressor, right, like wild mint, which is chock full of things that in high quantities would actually poison us. But in low quantities, it's giving our body a little bit of a fight to have to combat some of the mild stressors that are in something like wild mint that we've just harvested. You know, in your

bedroom here off to our left, it's, you know, that bedroom has a negative ion generator in it. So as you're sleeping, you're breathing in ions, the same as if you're walking along the beach or in the forest along with a HEPA air filter to clean the air but there's no bluetooth there's no wi-fi the entire home is is is built with no wi-fi however there's metal shielded cat6 ethernet cable built throughout each room so if you want to connect to the ethernet I probably should have told you this, at any point while you're here, you need either an adapter for your computer or an Ethernet plug in your computer, and there's an Ethernet cable beside your bed

that will allow you to plug in, but otherwise you can't get on the Internet here. And there's all sorts of things. Let's simply take into account that the human body is a battery. Even that water that we drank earlier, right? I actually make this water every week. I take a bunch of these Himalayan salt rocks, and I place them in a glass mason jar. And this is based off of research done by Gerald Pollack up at University of Washington.

When water actually is exposed to infrared radiation, such as you would get from sunlight or, you know, within your body, you know, when you get exposed to an infrared sauna, we'll be in an infrared sauna later on tonight, and assuming that we're adequately hydrated, you know, the same as this water that we just drank when we were out playing frisbee golf, what happens is the infrared rays will hit the water in that glass mason jar or the water circulating through your body, and it actually charges that water. It creates a positive ion structure towards the interior of the water and negative towards the outside, so the water actually moves through your body and through your cell membranes far more readily. So there's all sorts of cool things that happen. Once you start to think of your body as a giant electrical being,'s like the light bulb goes off and you're like okay well this this this will f me up and

and this will this will do me good so um how do we get on oh headphones that's right so so we're back to the sponsor for the show we're wearing healthy sponsor so let's let's dive into that a little bit more then let's get into um let's get into some of the things that that stress us like this meant right so obviously wim hof has been a guy that's it's kind of pioneered cold or not pioneered it but brought it back into the mainstream at least in my mind um uh you about infrared sauna therapy, things like that. I was joking with you earlier about doing the poor man's heat shock protein, where I go out in Vegas in my sauna suit in the middle of the day and do some nose breathing walks for about 30 minutes. And usually I try to time that after weight training. So I'll do my power lifting. I'll get that going. And I'm hoping that that's going to help generate more EPO and do some of

these blood marker things that that have been mentioned by Dr. Rhonda Patrick and people like yourself what are some of the ways that are like cheat codes for people to add more stress in the body I guess let me back that up more hormesis yeah how do we how can we trickle in things to help us adapt to help us burn fat to help us burn fat, to help us feel better that doesn't necessarily require you driving to a gym for an hour. I had to take a brief pause there to take a photograph of us because we're out here on the beautiful patio podcasting outdoors. Birds are chirping.

There's no one here to actually record this. I mean, look at this view around us, dude, on the prairie here, looking out over the grass. It's like a freaking painting. It's like a mural. If those of you who are listening in were here, you'd see why we're pausing. It's nature, baby. It's amazing. It goes for miles. Goes for long ways. Hormetic stressors that anyone can take advantage of without necessarily needing to go to the gym. Well, obviously, one of the biggest ones is cold. And, you know, I'm a huge fan.

And, again, I don't want to keep this super simple because, you know, many people know that cold showers or cold exposure or cold bathing, you know, it's good for you. It's good for your immune system. It's good for nitric oxide. It's good for, you know, decreasing inflammatory cytokines, for converting adipose tissue that is white storage tissue into metabolically active brown fat. But there are

ways that we can enhance that and actually cause something like the hormetic process of cold to become more advantageous. Caffeine, for example, is, and specifically the epigallocatechins, the ECGC from something like green tea extract prior to cold exposure can actually enhance the hormetic effects of cold by mobilizing more fatty acids and by causing fat cells to become lysed to a greater extent. It works very similarly in the heat as well, something like a high-dose green tea extract. Bitter melon extract is another example, you know, something like a high-dose green tea extract. Bitter melon extract is another example, something you'll see consumed in many of the blue zones around the world. But, you know, for example, tonight before dinner,

I will take a couple of capsules of a bitter melon extract to reduce my postprandial blood glucose. But that's something that you can also consume prior to cold exposure or prior to heat to enhance specifically the ability of fat cells to be able to lyse or to reduce the amount of blood glucose in the bloodstream so that you're actually tapping into fatty acids more readily. So these compounds won't necessarily make you feel colder or hotter. They'll actually help you with... Yeah. Yeah. Now, there are some things that will make you feel the heat more. If you're going to use heat, which is another hormetic stressor,

and before I purchased an infrared sauna and before I really started to use things like those giant heat lamps next to my desk that I use, for example, the Juve lights, I would just drive around when I'd be preparing for Ironman Hawaii, for example. I would just drive around with my heat be, you know, preparing for Ironman Hawaii, for example, I would just drive around with my heat on in the car in the middle of the summer. You know, it was already 90 degrees. I'd put the heat on, jack that up and drive around. And there are things that you can do to enhance the effects of heat and make your body even more warm. Um, any niacin precursor is very, very good for this. So you can, you can purchase, you can just basically purchase niacin as a supplement. The problem is that that's metabolized by the liver and it can cause kind of an unpleasant flushing effect. Uh, there's a company called Thorn that makes a form

of niacin that is, it's a little less difficult on the liver and it doesn't cause the same uncomfortable flushing, but it can still enhance the effects of heat. That one is called Niassafe. I believe it's like a, like a inositol hexaniacinate, something like that is the name of the actual molecule, but it's, it's made by Thorne. It's called Niassafe. And that would be an example of something you would take prior to heat exposure to enhance the hormetic effects of heat. At the same time, there are things you don't want to do if you're using cold or if you're using heat heat or if you're trying to get even the hormetic effects of exercise, for example. And that would be antioxidants, right? Like high-dose antioxidants, synthetic vitamin C or synthetic vitamin E, or even, you know, many of these superfoods that are marketed

as very high-ORAC foods, right? Like a lot of them are multi-level marketing companies you know some goji berry from the deep woods of south america that's being sold for like four times the cost um those are good for you right like antioxidants are great for you in terms of of enhancing your body's ability to be able to fight free radicals or to scavenge free radicals or oxidants. But you actually want your body to develop its own endogenous response to a hormetic stressor like cold or heat, rather than needing to rely upon some type of supplement to allow for it to do that. And so if you're going to use a wild plant extract, or if you're going to use goji berry or moringa or, you know, blueberry extract or any of these other very potent antioxidants, you would ideally separate them from your hormetic stressor session,

meaning you would wait several hours after you've done cold or after you've done heat or after you've done a hard exercise session to put antioxidants into the system. And one of the things you should also consider is that based on DNA testing, some people do have higher levels of endogenous antioxidant production than others. A perfect example of that would be if you were to do a 23andMe analysis, like a salivary genetic analysis, which is nowadays, you know, pennies on the dollar, right? It's like, what, 100 bucks to do a 20-30 me test? Yeah. What you'll find is that when you do that salivary analysis, you can look at things like your endogenous levels of superoxide dismutase or glutathione, two extremely powerful antioxidants that some people make in very high amounts, and some people make in very low amounts. Now, even though I still separate it from my actual exercise sessions or I separate it from when I'm doing like a long cold soak

or, you know, we're going to go in the sauna later on tonight, I won't do it when I'm doing anything hormetic like that, I do take high levels of glutathione because I've done that DNA test and I'm very low in terms of the amount of glutathione that I'm done that DNA test and I'm very low in terms of the amount of glutathione that I'm able to actually produce endogenously. So that's one that I go out of my way to take. And there are some people that need to take less than I need to take. So there's some biochemical individuality here as well. And for me personally, I actually have a physician who prescribes me injectable glutathione. And twice a week, right up the right butt cheek,

I actually inject a hefty dose of glutathione to keep my levels topped off just for a better living through science because my body doesn't make as much as I would need if I wanted to. One of my goals, as we've talked about before, is to really embark upon a pretty intensive anti-aging quest and do as much as I can that is safe and legal and healthy to allow my body to be able to combat the effects of aging. You know, something like, like antioxidant in the form of glutathione is something that I'll do, but to return to that

hormetic effect thing, I separate it from that hormetic stressor. Timing might be something like before bed or something like that, because you know know you're not going to have a really late workout. Would the same apply to something like sulforaphane? My wife and I take that from Thorne and Dr. Rhonda Patrick's spoken many times about it. Sulforaphane is a fantastic it's almost

like an antioxidant for your gut. It's a glutathione precursor. It's an incredible stack for something like a probiotic or a digestive enzyme complex. You know, I don't think I've ever said this before in anyone's podcast, but I'm currently developing a very comprehensive gut complex. I've been studying for the past year the things that most people are deficient in when it comes to gut health. We see things not only like common things like lactobacillus,

acidophilus, but lesser known probiotics or good bacteria like Saccharomyces boulardii. We see sulforaphane. We see betaine HCL and bile extracts as being things that are deficient, especially in people who are living a hard charging lifestyle who are perhaps either eating a large amount of calories or eating a normal amount of calories but more quickly in a stressed out state. And, you know, we even see leaky gut issues that can be addressed with strategies such as colostrum and glutamine and things that help to seal up the lining of the gut. But ultimately, what I'm developing is a complete gut compound. And one of the things I'm putting into it is sulforaphane

because of the very, very good antioxidant effect that that can have on the gut and also because it helps with the growth of probiotics. It almost acts as a prebiotic to a certain extent. I like that a lot. Let's dive into, we're going to switch gears here. I want to talk about kids. You've got twin boys. They're nine years old.

Yeah. River and Taryn. That's right. We read, my wife and I read, I believe it's 10 Ways to Raise Superhumans. Oh, yeah. My tiny little e-book. I forget. It's called How to Grow Tiny Superhumans or something like that.

It was awesome. How to Meet Their Boogers was one of them. There's a lot of things like that so my wife grosses me out because she'll she'll pick bear's nose and then uh she'll show me this giant hanger off her index finger and feed it to him and of course he'll eat it because he's two years old but um now if she was really advanced she'd be doing what a lot of parents are doing now especially parents who have had their children via c-section which which sometimes happens right sometimes the baby just well just, well, that's what happened to my wife, right? She would have died if she would have been one of those women in the wild, wild west giving birth

because we tried a home birth, and she labored for over 10 hours. You know, we had the tub, like this tub right here with the little fishies on the bottom. Is that the one right there? No, that's not what my wife gave birth in. That's the one right there. No bloodstains on that or dents from her screams and sharp elbows. It's a family heirloom now. Yeah.

No, that's just the dog's bathing pool, I guess you would call it, to cool off in the summer. But, yeah, we tried the whole home birth thing. With twins? You've seen my wife. She's petite. She had two boys inside of her, and we had to go cut them out. We had to drive to the hospital and do a C-section. And as a lot of people know, when a child doesn't travel down through the birth canal where they would normally breathe in mom's fecal matter and all that good flora from her vaginal canal, they can, up until the age of seven years old, have gut bacteria that are deficient compared to children that are born vaginally.

And so one strategy that a lot of women will use now who are kind of plugged into the whole like the natural childbirth or they have like a good functional medicine doc or a good midwife or a doula who's well-versed in these matters, they actually do like a vaginal swab each week. And then the child gets like a pill or a capsule or a formula that actually is straight from mom's vagina. So what your wife should be doing in addition to picking your kid's nose and feeding them the burger is just doing a little vaginal Q-tip and let them suck off the Q-tip. Just wiping her in the car. Give him a dirty Sanchez with a Kleenex. A little dirty chances for the boy.

I love it. Yeah, we'll keep that going. Anytime he's sick, I'm going to ask him for a little vaginal swab. Yeah, it's a fascinating theory, though, and you could Google this. Anybody listening in, the hygiene hypothesis, right? Kids who grow up on farms, the kids who grow up around dirt, animals, poop, and other kids. Better if they have pets, right? It's good to have dogs.

Stronger immune systems, less asthma, less ADHD, less autism. Let the dogs lick your kid's mouth. It's totally fine. Yep. It doesn't matter what the dog's into. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. yep doesn't matter what the dog's into yeah yeah absolutely and you know when it when it comes to for example that book it's a lot of things that that our ancestors would have done right like it like a child's even the even the cavity in their chest where their lungs reside not to mention their their hip angle

whether it's retroverted or introverted, their knee angle, their tibia angle, all of that is influenced by their feet as they grow up, right? So my children, you saw them out here chasing us around with the guns through the forest. They're barefoot, right? Nerf guns for the listeners. They're not chasing us around with M16s. We take our kids on two to three mile walks and hikes and runs when they were three or four years old, just completely barefoot. And that's important. The barefoot, the hygiene hypothesis. There's a variety of other things that are good

for kids that I talk about in that book. But one specifically that comes to mind, and this is one big one that I'm really into, is basically this study that was done at University of Essex over in the UK where they had kids do a bleep test. Have you done the bleep test before? So the bleep test is this horrible test where you'll have the group of kids start at a cone, and then usually it's a preset CD that'll give off a loud bleep. And then the kids will run to the next series of cones. It's like 30 yards away.

Then the bleep will sound again. And the CD is programmed for these bleeps to occur in increasingly shorter individuals. It's common in like military training courses as well where it's bleep, bleep, bleep, and it's increasingly shorter intervals. So you have less and less recovery time between each bleep and it's kind of like last man standing right when like whoever's still going when that final bleep is sounding and they're just like running with almost you know one or two seconds recovery in between these sprints they're kind of like the the fittest person on the bleep test and your score on the bleep test is it's a standardized score anyways though what they found in this study was that once you factored in everything from obesity to diets to income to all these different

factors with the kids the number one variable that most highly predicted a kid's score in a bleep test was how fit and physically active that child perceived their parents to be. Meaning that if your kid works out with you, and if you figure out a way, and this is always my creative, I figure out a way to squeeze my kids into my workout, or when I'm working out, I'll call my kids and I'll tell them, I just want you to sit there, watch what I'm doing, because after I finish this workout, you guys are going to do this same thing. I'm going to write out the workout for you.

So here's how I'm doing my Turkish get-ups. And here's how I'm doing my swings. And here's how I'm doing my goblet squats. And here's how I'm doing my hex deadlifts. And then the kids will do their workout. That or I'll do the workout like I'll do a swim workout where I'll carry the kids back and forth across the pool on my back. And then my shoulder routine for that workout will be throwing them in the pool. But as inconvenient as it is to work out with your kids, rather than trying to get your gym routine in early in the morning before your kids are up

or late at night after they've gone to bed, one of the best things you can do for your kids' fitness is to work out with them or to let them see you working out or to train them in some way every day to get that impression that, hey, dad and mom are actually into physical fitness. They go out of their way to do this. And it's, it's a huge predictor of their own fitness. I'm really happy you brought that up because something that kind of blew me away with, with my wife and our son, it's, uh, his name is Baron. He's two years old. He'll, we have Olympic rings and just watching me because we work out and we have a garage set up,

a small box from rogue. And,, and my wife does yoga at home. He'll do hanging L-sits on the Olympic rings now. And it's not because I told him to. It's because he sees me doing it. Right. And he wants to do it, and he enjoys it. And then he'll swing on the rings, and he's going around with his – lifting his legs up, and you can see his little abs going.

And you'll find if you tell them to do it they're more resistant to it than if you let them see you enjoying it right so we were just shooting my bow and if i have my kids because i'm trying to get them ready for hunting season this year i want them my goal is is by the time thanksgiving rolls around they're going to be the guys who get the turkey this year and if i tell them to go out and shoot their bow, they're not as excited about it as much as they're excited about seeing me out there smiling and pumping my fist every time I get a bullseye. So all I do is I head out with my bow and I say, hey guys, dad's coming out to shoot. Can somebody keep their eye on the target for me? Can somebody hold my spotting scope and give me yardage? And so I just let them see me enjoying it rather than

saying yeah take 10 shots a day and and getting them on some rigorous exercise protocol or shooting protocol simply letting them see you have a passion for what you're doing you'll notice that they accept that and they and they launch into it more than if you like if you were to say to your son all right our goal for the next month is to get you really good at the L-Ring, just like the Chinese kids in the Olympics. Yeah, they're going to get good at it, but they might regret it. Or they'll quit when they're 17 because they're tired of it. Yeah, exactly.

So, I mean, it's the same with tennis. My kids have been playing since they were two. They're left and right-handed. I can tell they're going to be – they could be good like the Bryan brothers, right, the top doubles tennis team in the world. They're twin left- and right--handed boys just like my boys are but i i talked to the brian brothers dad when my kids were born because i i played collegiate tennis that was my sport i'm into tennis i understand tennis i would love for them to you know go go to stanford right and get it get

a get a if there's if the stanford tennis coach is listening in, by the way, FYI, um, however, at the same time, all I do is I'll bring them to the tennis court and they can play in the playground when mom and I play for all I care. All they want, all I want for them is for them to see me having a good time playing tennis, right? Rather than having this rigorous go to tennis camp for three or four hours a day type of deal for any of you listening to have kids, like just do what you do, but don't hide it from your kids. Like go out of your way to time things during the day so that your kids can have a, can, can be able to see you having a hell of a good time doing what you love to do that you deep inside your heart would love for them to do. Don't force it on them and said, let them see what you're doing and let them see you enjoy it. And never, ever, ever be a hypocrite. Never have your kid like go for a barefoot hike,

unless you're going to take off your fricking shoes and go barefoot along with them. Right? So everything that you read, everything you do, kids pick up on that very quickly, right? Like I, I tried to help my kids out with, with their teeth health, right? So now they do. So their teeth protocol is they use a mineral powder toothpaste that mom makes, and they do coconut oil pulling every morning, and they take a fermented cod liver oil, which isn't the tastiest thing on the planet, but that's what they do. Well, I do those things because there's no way that my kids are going to

coconut oil pull for five minutes every morning or in the evening unless dad's doing it i mean at least as far as i'm sticking with it otherwise i feel like a hypocrite you know telling them the coconut oil pole and whatever i just go to bed and brush my teeth yeah you're just the boss at that point right it's not inclusive exactly yep so i had this idea uh before i got up here and you know knowing that you were homeschooled K through 12, you had benefits and, you know, there were pros and cons to that, right? You graduated at 15 in college by 16. Yeah.

Am I following this correctly? You know a lot about me, dude. My wife was homeschooled and then she went to high school. And then she got a scholarship to NAU for cross country running. Right. And she didn't have any of the social issues that most homeschool kids do because she got into high school early and because she always played sports as a young kid. And I can't remember. I think it was Thomas Gowan.

Dr. Thomas Cowan. Cowan, that's right. Dr. Thomas Cowan's vegetable powders, which, by the way, I'll take some of those out for dinner tonight. They're some of the most amazing vegetable powders in the world. Yeah, so we absolutely loved the Nourishing Traditions book of baby and child care with him and Dr. Sally Fowler, or Sally Fowler. Sure, yeah. And phenomenal book.

But I have this idea when I got here that it was kind of like, have you seen the movie Captain Fantastic? I have. Everybody told me I watch one to two movies a year. I rarely watch any movies. So, so this TV in here in the, in the great room that you see my children, I use that each night for Qigong videos.

So we, and we, we could do it tonight if you wanted to. So we were, I'm in, I was doing it right before the podcast. Our middle and our lower Dante ons, for example, but we don't watch many movies. watch many movies we'll occasionally like tune into hulu

and what's master chef or shark tank right those are the two shows that the greenfield house watches is the master chef of the shark tank however um if i'm going to choose a movie to watch you know if i'm on an international flight i'm going to go over to finland to speak or whatever i'll finally freaking watch a movie you know i'll usually i'll, my protocol on a plane is I'll get high and I'll watch a movie. And I'll choose like that one movie that everybody's been telling me that I need to watch. And so I'll take an edible before I get on the plane flight and just sit down and get a big smile on my face. Because I feel lazy when I watch movies. So I have to get myself to the point where like through better through better living through medicine where I don't really care.

And I'm just going to sit down and watch the movie and forget about work. And so I, I watched captain fantastic. And, um, neck that, that guy, uh,

uh, Viggo Mortensen, he lives like an hour from here up in, uh, North Idaho. And yeah, it was, it was an interesting film.

He has kids doing burpees in the forest and, and, uh, and homeschooling anding and actually doing a lot of things my kids do you know they don't really know how to use the phone they don't know how to use the kindle they read a hell of a lot of books and i'm kind of proud of that i think the the advantages outweigh the disadvantages of them being a little bit technology stupid yeah they obviously the kids in the movie and and and I saw your, as we were driving

from, uh, the, uh, the, the Frisbee golf course to the river, both your boys were reading books in the car on the way there. Yeah. That is phenomenal. That is, that's part of what the greenfields do is we, we read, no mom doesn't read mom. It's kind of fun. Mom and I like yin and yang. She's dyslexic. She's one of the reasons we don't homeschool anymore because she is not a teacher, right? She's very good at everything you see around us, right? Ranching and gardening and arts and crafts. And her whole workout is just like pushing a wheelbarrow around here and hauling heavy rocks.

And she's a rancher girl. Doesn't have the heart of a teacher. Now, I love to teach, but I'm traveling like two weeks out of every month. I'm on the road speaking and building my business and slaying dragons and doing what dad does. And so it would be unfair for us to homeschool because it would be like two weeks out of every month where the kids just wouldn't get good schooling. Yeah, it's an issue of timing, right? Yeah. However, I read three to five books every single week minimum.

My bedroom upstairs is just stacked with books. My office, I mean, you see my bookshelf in here. I've read every freaking book in there multiple times. Same thing in my office. And it's the same thing, right? Like if I'm reading books all the time, my kids are going to get that gift. And my kids know there's very few things that I will purchase for them without them having it. So they have a business on Airbnb. They rent out a room on Airbnb, and that's how they make some of their money. They also know

how to sell things on Craigslist. Once they're done with their toys, they know how to list them and sell them on Craigslist. And so those are a couple of their businesses. But they know that they never, ever, ever need to spend their own money on a book. If they want any book, assuming it's not Captain Underpants or Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which are kind of like brain-melting books. I get it. They can get those books for their own money, but I will buy them any book they ever want, ever. And that's just, we place an extremely high value on books in this house. Yeah. I think that's, that's absolutely important. And I also feel like one of the differences between what you're given in school and you were talking about this with Dr. Cowan is how, but ultimately you guys had to go from homeschooling

to a private school, right? And because of the timing issues, because of dad being gone often. And I feel like as we approach that age with my son, that's kind of a similar situation we're in. And it can't be all on mom to be mom, to do all the things that mom has to do and to be the teacher and do all these things as well. But how do you strike balance between what they learn in school and actually wanting to give them useful information that will matter in life? So my philosophy is as follows. When they are in school, that is their chance to do everything that I really didn't learn growing up, how to play well with others, how to be part of a team, not just to lead a team, which I'm really good at. I'm poor at following the leader, right? Like, and that comes in handy sometimes,

right? Like learning how to think outside the box and break the rules and think in a cutting edge way that redefines things. That's good. But you also want to learn how to work well with others, how to cooperate well with others, how to be content when you're not necessarily the person who's in charge of leading the team, right? And so my kids are learning how to cooperate with others, how to play as a team, how to basically do well with their peers when they're at school. They're also learning things that I probably would never really learn myself. They know how to speak multiple languages their their school has like a chinese study program uh spanish they're learning how to program lego

robots they've got this enormous 120 acre campus where they're learning how to shoot bows and you know and there's sports that that i might not have otherwise have exposed them to like you know canoeing and stand-up paddleboarding out on the river. And it's a very cool kind of progressive private school. And I'm all about outsourcing the things that you are not good at to people who are experts at them. Now, Grant, you could get a tutor and you could get people to do this for you. But I like that idea that they can learn how to be good little team players and factory workers and cooperate well with their peers while they're at school in a safe environment where they're not hanging out with a lot of,

you know, I guess losers, you know, to a certain extent. You want to choose your school wisely so that the children who you're hanging out with are children who are going to bring them to the next level. In my case, when I evaluated this school, the thing that really sold me was every single kid was kind of dressed like a geek, like all their parents, like Microsoft programmers. Yeah. Who do you surround yourself with? Exactly. They're like, not the kids who judge others based on their appearance, but their kids who really value academia and, and almost like, like being your own individual to a certain extent. And then when my kids get home from school, I teach them survivalism, leadership, entrepreneurship, all these things that they might

not be getting at school. And so I think you can have the best of both worlds. But what your mentality has to be is that when your kids walk in the door from school, that's when your job as a parent begins, right? You cannot simply send your kids off to school, and then keep your fingers crossed that they're going to learn everything they need to know. Instead, when my kids get home from school, we're doing everything from gratitude practice to entrepreneurship to leadership to survivalism. And I try to fill in the gaps with the things that I've identified they're not necessarily getting at school. And then I do all the little geeky things too. You know, I've got like blue light blockers and I've got, you know, got the whole family sunglasses i know that you know their school doesn't have a hard wired ethernet like like our home has there's wi-fi signals so now my kids have their little

emf blocking pendants that they go to school with you know so there's little things that you have to do but ultimately i think you can have both and i think by having both you can kind of have the best of both worlds and you create more space I think some of the reason, well probably the main reason other than it being a cultural norm that kids want to or parents want to enroll their kids in school is that

they don't have to deal with them all day long and people may not necessarily want to admit that but you spend enough time around 24-7. I mean, everyone needs space. You need family time. You need time away from your wife. You need just dad and mom time. And then you need dad, mom, and children time. Right. I completely agree. And I had to get over the guilt complex of the issue with travel and I travel a lot and I've realized over the years that there is a certain truth to that idea that familiarity breeds contempt and

that fondness or that uh distance makes the heart grow fonder there is and I know this sounds sexist but I think that it's okay for men and I suppose that you know I suppose that in our modern world, we could say women as well, depending on who you are and how you're wired and what it is that you're trying to accomplish. It's okay to give yourself permission to go out and slay the dragons. And then like we're at right now, this is the castle that I come home to. So you've seen me, Kyle, out on the road. You've seen me at Paleo FX and these other events where I'm just out doing my thing.

I'm traveling. I'm in a very urban environment. I'm at restaurants. I'm partying. I'm clubbing. I'm doing all that. But then when I come home, I don't freaking leave this place. You're lucky that I'm even wearing clothing right now.

So I'm just naked or in my underwear at home in the forest. People ask me what the good restaurants and where the good places are in Spokane. I don't even know. I know where the rope swing is down at the river where we went i know where the park's at where the trees are at you could show them where to find stinging nettle and yeah but i just freaking hang out at home when i'm home so so i'm all about like being home it's kind of like play hard work hard right when i'm at home i'm freaking at home 100 present 100 mindful and when i'm traveling that's when i put pedal to the metal and i make shit happen and um that's that's the way that i live my life and you know it's very similar to the child raising thing right it's like when your kids go to school they're getting what

they need when they get home you know my goal is i work like an animal until like 4 p.m when they walk in the door from school i know boom that's the time when you know i'm doing my workout and they're watching me do the workout. And I have these little checklists I make for them. And we do the sit spots and we do meditation and we do bow shooting and we do Qigong and we do all these things together. But yeah, man, it's, it's, I think it's okay to have both. Yeah. That's phenomenal. We can end there, brother. I don't know how long we've been going. According to my, my records on our little, our little home outdoor podcasting unit, that was about, that was about 40 minutes or so of, uh, of podcasting. And, um, yeah, I mean, if, if I could, uh, I know you had been wanting to potentially talk about anything

kind of new or, or cutting edge or coming down the pipeline. And I would say, you know, if I could bring up what we were talking about at Frisbee Golf or when we were down playing Frisbee Golf, just to complete aside with something on my mind right now because I've been doing it all week is I've been playing around with this concept of exposing your body to high amounts of molecular hydrogen. And I know that sounds odd and random,

but I really think that's one of the next big things that's coming down the pipeline as far as an antioxidant that, and this comes full circle to what we were talking about, it's a selective antioxidant that doesn't shut down the hormetic response to exercise and heat and cold and some of these other things that we talked about. Now, I interviewed a guy for my podcast today. I haven't released it yet. Darren Olean down in Malibu. Superfood hunter.

Yeah. He is actually trying to develop a machine that will hydrogenate your water for you. There's another company whose water I've been trialing all week that it's not for sale yet for consumers, but they're essentially like hydrogenating their water then sending it out to the consumer. And you actually get some hydrogenation when you add a whole bunch of minerals to water and put it out in the sunshine like we've been doing.

But this idea of, for those of you listening in, mark my words. If you just, you know, whatever, set yourself up on a weekly Google search alert for molecular hydrogen or specifically for molecular hydrogen water drinking, right? Like a search term like that because I think it's going to be big. How does that differ from something like food grade hydrogen peroxide? Right. A little bit different in that H2O2 is a very very powerful antioxidant but it's not selective from what i understand it it it won't like select between like good bacteria bad bacteria that type of thing

whereas hydrogen is just the hydrogen it's not the h2o2 format being like i think it'd be h2 don't quote me on that because it's been a long time since i've taken chemistry in in college but it's a slightly different molecular configuration that allows for it to be a selective antioxidant. And if you were to, like, probably the top researcher in this, the guy whose videos I've been watching lately. And again, when I get interviewed on a podcast like yours, Kyle, sometimes like what I happen to mention is what's like top of mind for me at the moment. But this guy's name is Tyler LeBaron, L-E-B-A-r-o-n it's like a deadlifts like 400 pounds he's like a super fast sprint i mean which isn't a ton but he's a really fast sprinter really good endurance he's like he's got strength power endurance so he kind of practices what he preaches too super smart guy under 30 um go look

at some of his videos he's got some really interesting stuff and then again like i've got no financial ties to hydrogen i don't think he does, but I think it's going to be kind of like a cool, cool new supplement coming down the pipeline. So something to think about. Another one to think about is something I'll give you a shot of here in a second before we have dinner, Kyle, because we're going to have like a bunch of slow fermented sourdough bread and sweet potato fries and whatever else my wife is cooking up there. But there's a stuff that just per chance you get exposed to glyphosate. It's extremely good at protecting your gut against the effects of glyphosate which can you know more or less poke holes in your stomach it's in everything it's called lignite and there's a

supplement called restore made by a triple board certified physician who i had on my show named dr zach bush who uh dr joseph marcola introduced me to and he makes this stuff called restore it's a lignite extract that you take a shot of. And again, my kids take very few supplements. They do that cod liver oil I mentioned, but they do a shot of this before every meal if they want to. I give them the choice to, and they do, and they love it. But it protects the body against glyphosate, and that one's called Restore. It's like a liquid shot.

I have no financial ties to them either, but there's a couple of interesting things I've been playing around with lately. That would be a huge product, especially for people who eat out a lot anytime you travel. I mean, it's one thing to say, like— That's the only kind of crappy part about it is it's liquid, so you can't travel with that. Like, when I hit the road for two weeks, I can only take four ounces of it with me, right? Unless I check a bag, so. Well, I guess you could keep, what, two ounces in the fanny pack and then you'd have to check the rest. I don't have a fanny

pack, dude. You've got to hook me up. You've got to get your game up. I want a Kyle Kingsbury fanny pack in exchange for doing this podcast. Let's work. Maybe we can have your boys work on the entrepreneurship part of creating a nice fanny pack line. Put that up there on, what's that

site? Not Udemy. No, what's the site where you, Etsy. Etsy. Yeah, my wife's always on that. All right, bro. What do you think? Want to go eat? I think that's perfect.

Let's eat, brother. Let's do a clinky clink from the Moscow Mules. Boom. Clink of the Moscow. Thank you. Thanks, pal. Thank you guys for tuning in to the On It Podcast with my man, Ben Greenfield.

If you guys enjoyed it as much as I did, please leave us a five-star review. That helps other people catch word that the Onnit Podcast has changed, and hopefully you like me as the new host, Kyle Kingsbury. But go ahead and give my man Ben Greenfield some love as well. Go over to his podcast, the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show, his website, bengreenfieldfitness.com. You can look through the archives. He's written about how to boost testosterone, how to recover from workouts, the best ways to get into ketosis,

when to use ketosis, when it's appropriate to do carbohydrate backloading. Again, I've learned so much from this dude. We really couldn't tackle it all in an hour. I'll be circling back to him many times throughout the year to try to get him on. If you really want to dive deep, just go to Amazon, pick up a copy of his book, Beyond Training. It is absolutely phenomenal and covers everything under the sun from biohacking, technology, you name it. This guy dives deep into it. Thanks for listening. All right, guys, I want to tell you about our brand new Spider-Man battle ropes. We continue this partnership with Marvel. These are badass. They're just an incredible tool. If you've never been introduced to battle ropes, we have a wealth of knowledge and illustration videos on thehonoredacademy.com to show you how to use

these things, but they're fairly simple. There's a number of moves you can learn to do with the battle ropes that are incredible for building aerobic capacity. If you want to go hard and do interval training, you can build anaerobic capacity, lactate threshold, all the stuff that you're going to need when you're in a fight or when you're just wanting to shed pounds extra quick, high intensity intervals is the way to go. And battle ropes are low impact. They're an incredible resource. I think everyone should have a set at their house and there's no reason you shouldn't have these awesome Spider-Man battle ropes. You can check them out at Onnit.com.