Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 370: Ben Greenfield- Biohacking Fitness Icon & NY Times Best Selling Author

Episode Date: September 23, 2016

This episode was made possible by the awesome guys at Kimera Koffee! In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin interview New York Times Bestseller author ("Beyond Training"...Available on Amazon.com) Ben Greenfield. Ben is a world-renowned fitness guru, biohacker and super-dad based in Spokane, Washington. In this episode the boys speak to Ben about biohacking, nose dildos and the origin story of the man who specializes in becoming superhuman! You can find more about Ben at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and on his podcast Ben Greenfield Fitness. Be sure to subscribe to his show! Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you with a new video on our new YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint AND the Sexy Athlete Mod (The RGB Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get your Kimera Koffee, Mind Pump's first official sponsor, at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts!

Hey listeners, hey new listeners. Some of you might be popping over after listening to us. Hey guys, welcome. For the first time on Ben Greenfield Show, and you heard us talk about things like trigger sessions and how to work on frequency to stimulate muscle growth and how we have some programs that are probably pretty counter to what you may have read

in muscle building magazines and what the common, quote unquote, common knowledge is on building muscle. If you want to check out some of our programs, I mean, how we incorporate some of those techniques and more, go to mindpumpmedia.com. That's where you'll find all of our maps programs. If you're wondering where to start, we consider maps and a ballock to be the foundational program where most people should get started. So again, check them out mindp media.com. Do yourself a favor

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind There's only one place to go Might up might up with your hosts Salta Stefano Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews Hey, listen, you're about to hear us talk about our interview, I should say, the great Ben Greenfield. This guy's a leader in the fitness industry. We went to his house in Spokane, Washington. Yeah.

The guy, I had a compound, but had a bunch of interesting things that he had all set up. Well, he's probably one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. He's definitely in a very good way. He's a weird guy. He's a little eccentric. He pays definitely in a very good way. He's a weird guy. He's a little eccentric.

He pays attention to the very minute detailed things. Dude, he's a real, what do they call it, biohacker? Yeah. I mean, his house is built around the stuff that he talks about, the way he eats, the way he fed us. You know, he had, on the outside his home, right? He had his compound, and he had organic vegetables He had his compound and he had organic vegetables

and fruits growing and he had goats and chickens. I didn't know what to think at first to be honest, but like seeing him actually like do all these things and the authenticity that was there, like it helped me to reassure me that this is the real deal. Dude, the guy is legit, he knows his stuff. Again, very, very smart guy. Also a great person.

When you see, you know, the way I judge people a lot of times, if I see them around their family or around their kids, he's a cool guy, man. Great dad. When we hung out the second night there, we wouldn't go watch the fights and he was with his boys. Yeah. He could tell you nice to see that. Yeah, he could tell he's a great guy. But anyway, the guy's podcast is amazing. You guys should check him out. Ben Greenfield, great information. Definitely if you'd like to expand your mind and your knowledge behind.

You can do a little more of the nerdy stuff. Oh, right. I mean, obviously that's why he really gets into it. It's cool. That's why I love it. His podcast is called Ben Greenfield Fitness. You can find his website, BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

He's a New York Times bestseller, beyond training is one of his books that he wrote. He's got other books as well. But anyway, without further ado, here is Mind Pump interviewing the great Ben Greenfield. The one and only Ben. My sphincter is positioned properly. We're starting with that.

That's how we like to do every show. Yes, sphincter is set. So I gotta say sphincter jack. So I have a question to ask you Ben. So we drove up last night, right? We drive up and it's dark and you've got us bailing Hey, out the back of your truck.

Was that done on purpose to test our manliness or was that an accident? You guys were late for dinner and I had hated bail. Okay. And after it started working. I'm like, this dude's, this dude's actually, I was what time it is.

Yeah. So I did break a nail by the way, doing a farm life. Yeah, so good times. He broken a nail. Yeah, you guys, you got to shut up in the nick of time though. I think we had four hay bells left. And it was perfect, just enough for the each of us to do an interesting how you made the goats very happy.

It's okay. I want to describe how you look to a lot of our listeners who may not be familiar. A lot of our listeners know who you are, but you're very lean muscular muscular, you've got kind of a wiery build, but you can tell that you've got that real strength. That's how he flirts with our guests. That's, no, I mean, this legit listen, what did I tell you guys when we left last night?

I said that. His glutes looked great when he got up. That's what I said to get us to see him walk away. What kind of training does that? Just how is he married? We see wearing a ring. What kind of training does that? Just how is he married? We see wearing a ring. Yeah. What kind of training does that, Ben?

What does your training look like? Give us a quick, easy. So I don't even know the name for it, right? Like the hybrid or whatever. But if you glance outside my window, most of my go-to workouts take place out there. So because that's a lot of climbing apparatus. Yeah. Yeah, so we've got the hay bells, of course, and there's some manual labor involved. There's a big pile of sandbags at the bottom of the driveway.

Yeah. So a lot of sandbag carries up and down the driveway. You probably saw a few tires into maces out in the driveway. So tire flips and mace slams. There's a 30 foot rig out there. So there's a lot of hanging work done, both me and my kids do a lot of chimpanzee style, swinging, throw, roll, roll, roll.

Oh, that's cool, you got them doing it too. Oh yeah, well, what you saw, there was like, it's a 30-foot rig that I ordered a bunch of holds from three balls climbing, which is basically like a rock climbing website that you can order, not just ropes that you can hang from, but you know, like the little balls and num chucks. Very American Ninja S.

Right, and the hands, yeah, exactly. But like Ninja S with with running in between. And so there's a log weave out there, just see the log weave. It's like this giant pyramid that goes up into the sky. And what you do, the idea on a log weave is you go over one log and then under the next log, over one under, if you try and just, let's you just want to do one workout, you go out on that

log wave and you need to wear long sleeves, right? Like, you're hugging the logs. If you're going to log in the logs and I've, I've literally torn open all the scan on my armpits and on the inside of my legs, the first few times I did it, because I didn't realize I had to go out there with with, you know, basically like compression tights and a long sleeve shirt on, but you just log We for like 20 minutes and that that's one of the most amazing body workouts you've ever done It's like I don't know. It's like rolling kind of in jets because you're just basically gripping and then rolling under and then maneuvering your body

over and then rolling and holding on under and So so there's that I've got the the long bar wire crawl out there. So we're literally crawling on the stomach. But in a planking position, usually, like rather than just like crawling in a bar crawl position, crawling in a planking position. At the next, the bar bar crawl, there's a bunch of center blocks, just like literally about bottom from Home Depot and attach chains to those. You can grab one, two, three, four center blocks as many as you want to drag. I like this because it's all concentric, so you don't get very sore afterwards. I have a hill out there that the chains are and the center blocks are on, and you just

drag the center blocks up the hill. What I do to get the grip going is I'll grab the chains and then just farmer walk, carry the center blocks back down the hill. And then I've got a three 30 foot vertical ropes from the trees that just do vertical ropes. I saw those. And then a horizontal rope, which is like upside down style, it's just like a rope except you're climbing horizontally rather than vertically.

Those are some of the main things. And so you warm up with that sound stuff. Sounds like you're ready for the than vertically. Um, those are, those are some of the main things. And so you warm up with that sound stuff. Sounds like you're ready for the zombie apocalypse to me. Yeah, so, so I'll do that one to two times a week and you just run in between each one. And now, now I'm setting up a 3D animal target. It's like turkeys, bears, you know, chipmunks, whatever else I want to, I want to shoot at.

Nothing endangered or cute. No, no cast for the lion. No sea manatees. You just did a competition, but I'll carry the bow in between each and then stop and shoot after I've done each obstacle. And then I've also got spear throws out there. So the garage has a whole bucket full of spears and there's a bunch of hay bales and you could throw spears of the hay bales. So it kind of turns into like a first person style shooter game, which is a ton of sounds like a video game. So, so you know, was this and was this to drink? Because you just finished a competition. Adam just Sounds like a video game also. So, now, was this to train,

because you just finished a competition, Adam just mentioned, you did a hunting competition. It sounds like a endurance slash, you know, it's like awesome. It's like awesome, of course, racing with weapons. Yeah, what's it called? What's it called? It's called Train to Hunt.

And the way that it works is you show up and on the night of, on the night when you first show up, it's just all way finding in GPS. So they give you a bunch of coordinates, and you just have to find your way through the wilderness with your, because I wanna make sure that you can actually hold your own

when it comes to finding your way through unknown territory, because that's what a hunter has to do. And you can use it everywhere. You can use it in GPS. You can use old school style, like topographical map and compass or whatever. And then once you finish that, whether you finish at midnight or 2 a.m. or whatever,

you just have to turn in your little sheet with the proper coordinates and where they were by 6 a.m. the next day. But at 7 a.m. they start the 3D shoot, which is where you've got 20 different stations and you go from station to station. It's kind of like golfing, except a lot more fun. And people, but you're just shooting.

So there's not a lot of, it's very low level physical cardio, right? Mostly you're walking and then you're stopping and you're not just shooting, but you're shooting and hunting style scenario. So it might be, okay, you have to sprint up this steep slope when the clock starts and from the time that you start,

you have to get up to this top of the slope in 30 seconds, identify the target, decide the actual range that the target is in, and then shoot it. And if you hit it in the vitals, then you are given X number of points. If you do a body shot, then you're given, you actually lose points if you do a body shot because technically that's a wounded animal. And if you miss, it's also a penalty. And then later on that day, once all the smoke is cleared and you kind of know the score from the 3D shoot, you do what's called the meat pack where you'll have about 100 pounds, which is actually, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a lot of weight to have 100 pounds

at a backpack. Of course. And it'll be a two to four mile, like, un-gelating rolling course for time. All right, so as fast as you can get your weight from point A to point B, and that's just a timed course that takes anywhere from, usually it's about 15 to 30 minutes and you're redlined the whole time.

Like, normally if you were to pack an elk out of the mountains, over four miles, you might take literally like two to three hours through that. And this, you're trying to do it in like, you know, under an hour. Just getting away from the bears. Just bogey. Yeah. And then finally, the next day you show up and they have a whole obstacle course set up, right?

Like sandbags and, you know, crawls and like what else do they have? Like a lot of things you'll see in CrossFit sometimes, like box jumps and get ups, and it's always sandbags, but in between each is shooting. So your heart rates jack, you gotta get it down, you know, activate the parasympathetic nervous system, take a shot and then move on.

And basically, at the end of all the competitions, once everything is done, the person with the highest score from all those cumulative competitions is crowned the winner. the highest score from all those cumulative competitions is crown the winner. Excellent. You got second place. No, at that one, at Nationals, I was fifth.

I won Utah, I won Idaho, and I won Montana, took second place in Wyoming, and they got fifth at Nationals. Wow. Excellent. Where are the areas that you need to improve on? What are the areas that you felt like they're doing? There's a shooting. Just the accuracy.

I'm pretty fit. And for my body weight, strong enough to throw the weight around pack the meat. But I've been bow hunting for about a year and a half. And it's just 10,000 hours, right? Right, so yeah, you're probably competing to get someone who's been doing this as he was 10, right? Well, I would assume because of all the activity, it's probably

more than just learning how to aim. It's learning how to calm down, right? Like calm everything down so you could shoot and that with accuracy. Yeah. And that's why I like it. It's it. You know, from a sporting standpoint, it's very ancestral, right? You have your low level cardio, right? Where you're kind of like, you know, okay, stalking you something, stalking the 3D shoe, you're out there for four or five hours, but it's not low level cardio like Iron Man Trap on his low level cardio.

It's not chronic repetitive motion at like a, you know, a glycogen depleting heart rate that is relatively stressful for 10 hours. It's like, I'm literally just walking around the woods for five hours. And then they have a meat pack, which is relatively glycolytic, but still a little bit more muscular and endurance-based. meat pack, which is relatively glycolytic, but still a little bit more muscular and dorant-based. And then they have the obstacle course, which is all just like either phosphogenic or glycolytic or extremely explosive.

And then of course they have the mental component, right, like the wayfinding and the map finding. And I like it because it incorporates a lot of those concepts that would be considered almost like the mark, cis and-Griut, like Move Lift Sprint, and it's done in a very practical way because it's all designed ultimately when you step back and look at it to be able to enable people to better put meat on the table. Actually, how was your diet for this kind of thing? Because this is a three-day-long competition, and from what I gather, you typically eat

a pretty low carbohydrate diet. Do you change that when you're doing competitions like this? No, I mean, I'll bear in mind. If I know I've got something extremely glycolidically demanding, I need to go to battle the next day. I'll make sure that I'm not going in. Fully, let's say like ketogenic that week, just because I think that, even if you look at some of the research that's been done on ketogenic diets being appropriate for explosive sports, in many cases, we're only looking at like 30 seconds to two minute efforts, which you can usually satisfy some of that from creatine

phosphogen and ATP stores, and then you can satisfy some of it from mobilizing the little bit of liver, muscle glycogen that you are are gonna have on board if you're fully ketogenic. But to be able to move 100 pounds over the course of an hour as quickly as possible at near maximum heart rate, you technically need a little bit of glycogen on board. So my diet doesn't change that much. I'm still just eating real food,

but I do ensure that I'm working in a few sweet potatoes and yams and some fruit. And I mean, honestly, most of those competitions you're out in the middle of nowhere, you're not near a grocery store. So I'm literally just operating with whatever, like an example, a big gallon-sized ziplock bag that's got almonds, macadamia nuts, some coconut flakes, some cacao nibs, and whatever. And I throw that into an old paper cup with a plastic spoon and dump some water on top. And if I can hunt down a banana, great. I'll throw that in there too. And that's like a typical meal. Just goop in a cup.

Among many things that you've been labeled as far as, you know, athlete, bodybuilder, you know, fitness guy, guru, top trainer, author. I mean, there's so many things that you've done. Model. Yeah. Hand model. I've heard you talk about biohacking. Could you explain what that term means and what does it mean to you and what exactly is it, you know? Oh, well, I mean, like biohacking is a pretty catch all term

right, because you have guys like, what's his name? I want to say it's Kevin, not Wilkie. Wilkie, there's, anyways, there's this guy and he has literally like implanted chips in his body that allow him to interact with like the door. The door in his house. Yeah, transhumanist and even interact with his wife to be able to potentially be able to read each other's minds.

There's other guys who haven't planted magnetic chips in their fingers to be able to interact with magnetic devices such as screens for example There are guys who are doing You know new school echo location meaning that if you look at like like Batman as I don't know if you guys have heard of this guy He's in London and he's a blind guy I was a guy that clicks with his tongue figured out how to Eco-locate by using clicks and whistles and he can like ride his freaking bike through the city

and be able to navigate just using echolocation. But then there are also guys who are putting amplifiers, batteries, and equipment embedded in their ears to be able to allow them to echolocate using like these advanced hardware-based biohacking methods with the concept that the things that you place on your body are the hardware and the term that they give for the human body is called the wet wear, right? So you're just like this, this pile of sack and goo that you attach electrodes and whatever else to to allow you to interact with your environment.

So it's more meaningful. So I mean, you could find the guy like, for example, who got night vision implanted in his eyes and his pupils are just like one big, black pupil, but he can see it night now because he has changed the rods and cones to allow for them to receive as much light as possible, including the lower amounts of light that you can see. Holy shit.

Night. And in my opinion, that's pure hacking of the human biological system. Right. And then you could delve into the category of biohacking that's a little bit more of the pop culture definition of biofying, which is in whatever, like blending butter with your coffee.

I'm a biohacker now, or, okay. Well, I mean, even some of this stuff, you know, that's hanging around my office right now, I'm not using myself as wet wear as much as I'm attaching hardware temporarily to my body. Like behind me is, for example, two things I've got, like my EEG training equipment here, which is just basic neurofeedback.

So I can attach these electrodes to specific locations on my scalp and on my ears. And then I can pull open a computer program that allows me to fly a spaceship. And if my brain goes too much into fast stressful beta brainwaves or I lose focus or I have increased distractability while I'm flying that spaceship. Or even while it's kind of cool, I can I can drag like a a hulu back screen over the neurofeedback software and I can watch MasterChef, right? And every time that my brain goes out of alpha brainwave zone, or every time that my beta to alpha brainwave activity becomes unfavorable in terms of my ability to focus, what happens is, is MasterChef starts to fade, and like Gordon Ramsay's voice starts to go away. And then the software sends a message to my brain because it's a two-way feedback and

it says, okay, you need to do something right now because you're not able to watch MasterChef anymore if you stay in this brainwave state. And then the brain subconsciously, without me doing anything, I can be checking email on my phone at the same time that I'm doing this. But my brain will get pulled back into subconsciously that alpha brainwave zone. So that's an example of what I would consider to be. I mean technically I'm hacking my biology, right? Because normally if I were to want to do that, I could meditate

for one or two hours for several months in a way to measure or right. But it's really weird. I'm actually reading a book about this called the organized mind about the glucose utilization requirements of the brain and the nutrient requirements of the brain and how doing something like multitasking or excessive task switching and things like that can drain brain resources pretty effectively. But it's really weird, like after I do just a half hour

of that neurofeedback, I'm hungry. Like it's amazing how much fuel the brain can actually be. The brain is one of the greatest, I mean, it uses more energy than almost anything else on a comparative basis. It's pretty incredible. So doing stuff like that, because usually what I'll do is I'll just take rid of it

and then I can focus a lot better. But when you do stuff like that, have you noticed your ability to improve your ability to focus and get in the zone easier now without it? Yeah, so two comments on that. That particular protocol, I've only been doing for a month. And so I can't say that I've gotten as much feedback as I want to yet from it, but going into it,

I worked with an institute called Peak Brain LA, and they did a full mind mapping in my brain. They used a quantified electroencephalogram, or QEG, to identify areas where there was too much wave activity of one brain type like a beta brain wave and not enough alpha brain wave and apparently whether you've been concussed or had a TBI or had even things like too much multitasking which we know now can actually rewire the brain, increase distractability, decrease the ability to focus, et cetera.

You get this whole mind map of your brain. So the idea here is three months from now, I'll go back in and see how it's actually changed blood flow from the brain because let's face it. It's possible that there's a little bit of a placebo effect, right? Let's say we don't attach the electrodes to the brain and we just have you watch a spaceship

on a screen for a half hour every day. There's some amount of focus required just just to do that. So um, well, so my question would be, uh, you, because you said ideal brain wave patterns or whatever, what's the baseline? Like how do they know? And what's ideal? Yes. This is better.

And this is where I asked them that question and the answer is probably what you would expect. Having done QEGs of thousands and thousands of people. And so they're looking at, oh, these people are focused and successful. Right. Exactly. Including people who meditate a lot, including Zen masters and monks, and I realized this whole concept of 40 years of Zen, like achieve what a monk would take 40 years to do with just a few hours of biofeedback. It's not quite that simple. I mean, like there is actually a guy down in LA who looks at every single session I do, adjust the session for the next day, and then changes what I'm supposed to do based off of what my brain is doing that day. I mean, it's a little bit more intensive than just staring at a screen and achieving the ultimate,

you know, Himalayan mountain top meditation experience. But I can completely see how something like this is the next big, well, this is quantified self, right? Well, I would say like that in opposition to like biohacking, it's not a lot more like quantified. It's like quantified self, but the difference is that the computer is actually sending electrical feedback to my brain. It's not just my brain sending information to the computer, the computer can quantify it.

So the computer is actually working on my brain. So it is a little bit different in that sense. And another example I was saying, there's stuff back behind me, like this back there, my little nose dildo, right? Like it's the intranation. Oh wait, that's for your nose. I'm sorry, I used it earlier. Is that how their marketing is? I don't know. It's, it's, it's like a 110-nm wave length of LED that's been used clinically in Alzheimer's patients to increase blood flow to the brain and to shut down inflammation in neural tissue, but you stick that thing up your nose for 25 minutes every morning,

which I do every morning. It's like a cup of coffee for your brain. It's very similar to you guys probably heard of like, you can feel it. You can feel it. Yes, you can feel it. And that's what I like. When I take fish oil, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's improving my omega-3 to omega-6 status and assisting with, you know,

my joint health, et cetera, you know, and cell membrane integrity, but I don't freaking like just feel it when I take fish oil. Whereas some of these other things, I mean, you can feel right away, like being really hungry and feeling more focused after you do the EEG training or feeling, literally a more clear head and more clear thought patterns

after you shine a laser up into your nose. So, you think that this is like the next wave for, let's say, a high performance athlete. It's like really like honing in on the skills for us staying in that alpha wave and really finding that focus and that clarity. Oh, yeah, sure. It's not head space, but there's another company that's just emerging. I was emailing them a few weeks ago to find out a little bit more about their device, but

it's a device that you can place on your head prior to performance, to actually increase off a brainwave activity. But it works differently than like the muse or like the headspace meditation app or something like that. I forget what it's Noro something, but yeah, these type of devices that athletes can place on their heads to decrease distractability and increase production of alpha brain waves prior to competition. Yeah, I certainly think we're going to see more that we saw the Golden State Warriors using a lot of TDCS.

This year, prior to competition, they were doing trans cranial magnetic stimulation of the brain, which I actually have reservations about the health effects of that. That's about sales, just going to say. It's technically like an RF frequency, meaning that it's very similar to the type of power that you get. Yeah, you can buy them online. There's instructions all nine from making them Radio lab had a really interesting podcast where they talked about how snipers are using them to increase their ability to be able to enter the zone and focus and be able to kill more effectively

using something like TDCS. But it is a pretty strong magnetic stimulation of the brain. These are actual magnets that you're using on your brain to change alpha brain reactivated. Those EEGs I was just pointing out to earlier, that's a very, very weak stimulation. Or for example, when I was sleeping last night,

so hyped up after you guys left, that's where we had dinner. So excited. Having chicken with the mind pump guys, it was crazy. Crazy effects on everybody. So I crazy party, but what I did was I put a pulse electromagnetic field therapy on my brachial plexus. So what that means is that your brachial plexus will feed up into your brain. And depending on what type of signal you place on the plexus, it will actually affect the type of brain waves you produce. So in this case, this thing is wired

to produce the same brain waves that are associated with delta wave produce. So in this case, this thing is wired to produce the same brain waves that are associated with delta wave activity, right? So it loals you more quickly, a decrease of sleep latency, the amount of time that takes for you to fall asleep and causes you to get into your deep sleep, your delta brain wave production more quickly, but it's an extremely weak signal. It's approximately the signal. So like, you guys, if you guys started like grounding or everything before, like walking barefoot on the ground. Yeah, because I haven't seen you in shoes at all. Camping or whatever.

Yeah, I don't worry. And a lot of my shoes, I have carbon plugs in them to allow me to get the negative ions and that grounding effect from the earth a little bit more easily. But the idea is that the earth emits a very therapeutic magnetic frequency that's good for the human body.

And it also produces a lot of negative ions, a very therapeutic magnetic frequency that's good for the human body. And it also produces a lot of negative ions, which if you look at the electrochemical gradient on your cell membrane, it operates ideally at about negative 70 millivolts. And if you're constantly exposed to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and appliances, et cetera, those are producing a lot of positive ions, which have the opposite effect and can inhibit some of your cellular metabolism. So the idea is that when you're doing grounding and earthing, and there's a very interesting documentary about this, it's like grounding, I think the name of the movie is grounding.

I see I'm actually pretty familiar with this, and there's some studies that they've done on this. The part that I question on the studies are, are they able to separate the kinesthetic tactile effects of walking barefoot versus walking barefoot on grass or on earth, which is what grounding recommends. Because if you take people, most people who wear shoes all the time, since they were able to walk, who have very weak feet, underdeveloped feet, very poor sensation on the bottom of their feet, or at least their brain isn't used to it. And you have them walk around barefoot all the time. You should get some increased

proprioceptive adaptation, you should get... Strength, right. The neural adaptation, which is going to affect neural activity. Exactly, so have they been able to separate the concept of grounding to just being barefoot? Yeah, I have no clue. Okay.

And they go into some of the health changes that happen in people in that documentary. But what I do know is when I do this, this pulse to electromagnetic field frequency, and I track deep sleep. So every night I track the amount, the percentage of time that I spend in deep sleep, I use a ring to do that. And it brings my deep sleep up to about 15 to 20 percent. Whereas when I'm not using it, I'm at about 5 to 10%. So for me, as in N equals 1,

it definitely affects the amount of time that I spend in deep sleep. Interesting. Which actually has a simple case, because you dream less, right? Like if you're in deep sleep, you technically aren't engaged in as much REM sleep. And so if your goal is to, whatever,

I don't know, have lucid dreaming or something like that, it might not be the way to go for use. You know what else does that? Or memory consolidation. Marijuana reduces the amount of dreaming that you do and puts you in that deeper sleep. Is that a good or bad thing? It's interesting.

It's kind of a question. Exactly. I think it kind of depends. And a lot of times when I look at a lot of these advanced, or what some people may say fringe, things you could do to improve performance, I always like to look back and say, how does that apply, like, for example, why would shining a laser inside your nose elicit favorable responses? And how did we evolve to read that signal? because the inside of the human nose never gets light,

you know what I mean, unless you're hanging upside down and you got really big nose. You know, so why or how? Like what's picking that up and how is that working? Are you familiar with, do you know any of, you know? Well, I mean, even the inside of your ear has photo receptors. There's another device called the human charger

out there that folks will use for jet lag and it's actually a bright amounts of light shown into the human ear. They look like ear buds. And it's actually a bright amounts of light shown into the human ear. They look like ear buds. And it's like a blue light blocks for your ears that you would use to shift your circadian rhythm forward. If you've been traveling, say, back east or shift it backwards if you traveled from west to east.

And yeah, it's unlikely that in an ancestral setting, I mean, I can't think of a situation in which our ancestors would have been like laying with their ears pointed towards the sun, kind of, or like with their, you know, holding their nostrils up open, so more sunshine to get inside. I mean, honey, come listen to the fire real quick.

And I think that returns to what we talked about with biohacking, right? I mean, neither would our ancestors have necessarily used encapsulation technology to take a supplement simply because the only technology that they had available was perhaps mortar and pestle or the ability to do like an alcohol or water extraction or an oil extraction of a supplement. And because technology has advanced to the point where we're now able to encapsulate said compound, like let's say, you know, whatever, St.

John's word, whatever, which is growing outside right now where we're at, we could go out and all of us could pinch a little bit of that St. John's word, but we get some oil on our fingers and, you know, my kids call it the happy flower. And technically, when you taste that, it does have an effect on serotonin and dopamine levels and kind of cis with depression. It's why it's one of the things that they'll recommend. It's one of the things that they'll recommend. That's one of the few herbs with clinical studies proving it. Right, exactly. And our ancestors probably would have taken the flour and maybe done some mortar and pestle on the, I don't

profess to be an expert in how our ancestors used St. John's work. But the idea in my opinion, my response to your question is that even if we can't necessarily find an ancestral example of it, it doesn't mean that we haven't figured out better ways of living through science that allow us to achieve those adaptations. Why we would have photo receptors are yours? That's the question, yeah, it's interesting. Why we would have, you know, the,

well technically it's a photo receptor in your nose. It's actually interacting with the cytochrome oxidase. I believe it is the actual name of the structure in the mitochondria in your nose, it's actually interacting with the cytochrome oxidase. I believe it is the actual name of the the structure in the mitochondria in your neural tissue that the laser light is interacting with. Why were able to access that through the nose? I don't know. Maybe the membrane is maybe maybe the way cocaine goes to the nose. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So why that exists? Whether it a very important, you know, whether it is intelligent design predicting at some point

we would figure out a way to activate that via a nasal dildo or whether it's just that maybe we do, you know, maybe UVA and UVB and even like, you know, we talked about infrared sauna on my podcast and we know that we get some near and far infrared from the sun. Maybe some of that is making its way through the very thin septums and small nasal bones and we're actually getting some of that more outside and we're just getting more of it when we just stick it straight up our nose. Right. Right. Right. So, of all these techniques that you're using of all this quote-unquote hacking, what would be the one thing you could say

that had the biggest impact for you personally, where you said, wow, this is something that I am gonna probably do on a regular basis all the time. Gut response is cold. And for a long time, I was pretty uncomfortable with the cold and what I tell people now is you can use the cold as almost like a litmus test of the resilience of your nervous system.

What I mean by that is excellent statement and it's very true. I got to admit, yeah, because I mean, even if you look at the fiercest of athletes and I've had this happen to mean competitions before, they'll drop out of a competition as soon as the cold water immersion component comes in. Or you've got a swim across a cold lake or go under the water and they're breathing and breathing and freaking out because the face doesn't want to go under the water because their mammalian dive reflex hasn't been trained. Their vagus nerve is actually not toned enough to the extent to where they can even handle avoiding that sharp intake of breath that you that you tend to have as a gut response when cold water hits your face or when you jump into a cold bath or a cold shower.

And the strength of the parasympathetic nervous system is one of the prime factors in terms of your ability to be able to handle stress, your ability to be able to not go into fight and flight mode quite as readily in response to stress, training your vagus nerve and especially training it through the cold and being able to, and this is up to my kids since they were two, being able to approach a body of cold water, take a deep breath, center, stabilize the nervous system, and then either turn on that cold water handle or jump into the cold lake or even walk outside into the snow and just have that kind of like, I don't give a fuck type of attitude, is in my opinion a great test of the nervous systems

resilience and it's also a great way to train the nervous system. And so the fact that I rarely, if ever, touch the hot water tap on any shower ever and I always take a cold shower, I think is one of my biggest advantages because I, I found it. Well, it'll make you tougher is actually like, there like something to that. It makes you tougher and it increases your

heart rate variability because I test my heart rate variability every day and there are certain things that cause it to become consistently high. And I post my score online and a lot of times people say, why is your parasympathetic nervous system activation score so high? And I think it's, you know, I do gratitude journal and I do deep breathing and, you know, I try to maintain good relationships and love in my life and all the things that we know help out with vagal nerve tone and the parasympathetic nervous system,

but cold and the ability to be able to constantly activate that mammalian dive reflex and stay resilient to cold. If I could choose one thing, it'd be cold showers and cold water version. Well, two things. First one thing, it'd be cold showers and cold water in the region. Well, two things. First of all, if you're very fatigued, you will notice that you're cold. Typically, heavy fatigued, you're gonna find yourself

either less resilient to cold or in a room that may be not that cold, you find yourself cold. Number two, we've talked a little bit about adrenal fatigue and past episodes. And one of the symptoms of adrenal fatigue or even metabolic damage is feeling cold all the time. And so that is an excellent point. And I never connected the dots there,

but it makes perfect sense. Myself, I have personally been incorporating very, very freezing cold showers every single morning. I barely ever use hot anymore. And it's now been about, I don't know, since we've been going to the club over there and Silver Creek's about a month or two. And I feel invigorated, I feel energetic,

and I find that my tolerance now for the cold water is dramatically better. Like I used to hate cold water, and I can turn it on and a couple short breaths, and it's okay. Well, I would, I would, you should just jump in the cold pool outside, for real. You know, I totally won't.

But. Actually, there's a faucet right next. Right. There's a faucet right next to my cold pool. And what I do is I go jump in the cold pool and then I rinse off under that faucet. And just because the skin microbiome and everything, I only use soap like once every three days or so.

Anyhow, so it's just cold, cold soak and then take the step in under the faucet. So air dry. So we're not gonna skip over that. You don't want to use soap. That's interesting. Tell me about that. Why wouldn't you use soap every?

Yeah. No, he doesn't. Well, I haven't. I hugged him earlier, so it's fine. Yeah, I tend to use the skin's important. Yeah, exactly. You eat crap, you'll smell like crap. If not, you know, I mean,

well, it depends on the sweat glands that are activated, right? There's different sweat glands and the sweat glands that are activated by nervousness and sex and anything kind of sympathetic nervous system based those smell, right? But if it's just like normal, keep you cool, type of sweat and mild perspiration, that's not supposed to stink unless you're feeding a lot of bad bacteria on your skin. So the idea though is your skin, just like your gut has a microbiome and your cheek has a microbiome and your poop has a microbiome, your skin has a microbiome that interacts with your environment, that assists with the health of your immune system, that even assists

with things like wound healing and the ability to be able to limit, you know, like acne and exema and stuff like that. And constantly, rinsing the bacteria off your skin could be detrimental to that. And that's why there's even companies like AO biome, for example, popping up now that actually sell bacteria that you can spray on your skin. Although in fact, you could just go roll around

in your yard. And for each typical. No, they sell it. They were like the PaleoFX conference ironically, that bacteria that you can spray. How do we bottle this and sell it to people? Exactly. But the idea is that I'll just do a mild water rinse and then once every few days, or if I've got something on my skin, let's world guys say, if I've had sex and I got a bunch

of fluids and stuff on me, situations like that, I'll shower world guys say, like, if I've had sex and I got a bunch of fluids and stuff on me, situations like that, I'll shower off. That's the only time I don't shower. Yeah, yeah. Unless I want to smell like a vagina the rest of the day. I'll wash. But yeah, I'm not a huge fan of soap. And of course, you know, when I do use it,

I don't use the stuff that's got the fowlites and the parabens in it. Yeah. You know, I mean do use it, I don't use the stuff that's got the phallates and the parabens and, you know, the antibacterial and the phallic things that they've killed cute animals testing. I want to switch gears because I feel like, you know, just talking about vaginas makes you know, that's a good one. That's actually fair. I actually turn on a light bulb.

I want to go deeper into that topic actually. Uh, you're always boom. So, uh, no, this is why because if you're not already, make sure you do subscribe to Ben's podcast. It's he's brilliant and tons of great information, great guy. I feel like you can get a lot of what we're talking about on his podcast.

You get a lot of what we talked about earlier on our podcast. There's tons of interviews that I've watched of you on YouTube. I want to get into stuff that I've watched for you on YouTube. I want to get into stuff that I haven't came across with you. I haven't seen a lot, I don't know much about your childhood, I don't know much about what made Ben get into this. I mean, you are, you're very unique as far as somebody

who has taken it to this level. I've not met another individual, and I would like about what you've done is that you really have, you've covered all your bases on and then prioritize the things that are important. It's not like you're, it's not like we got up to your house and we got served with all this process shit food, but then you're doing some bio hack up your nostril because then I would just, I wouldn't take you seriously. I'd be like, come on, bro. I don't know, dude, we did have chocolate last night. It's good chocolate. That was 100% raw.

Organ, that was a lot of raw. It was fruition. That's like my new menu. It's like, I want to say it's like 15 bucks a bar, but it's like the best stuff on the face of the world. Yeah, that wine was good too. It was a raw chocolate. I saw, I was, you know, I love to look at somebody's library.

You got a great library, and I did notice that you had some psychology books. So I'm interested in your self-awareness and, you know, do you know what, what made you like this or what would you attribute that to if you were to go back? Yeah. I think it's because I was homeschooled K through 12. I, and, and when I was homeschooled, my, my parents blessed their hearts, probably didn't homeschool me the best way that they could have, meaning that they bought

books and they shoved them underneath my door and I would would read them, and then I would take the test. And so I grew up, like literally, I grew up, literally learning how to educate myself, and I still, to this day, I do not have anyone I would consider to be like a hardcore mentor of mine. I'm still a really, really shitty team player. I operate better as a lone wolf, like going on, figuring out things for myself, trial and error. The first deer that I dressed out in the field that I shot was with me and a YouTube video on my camera, right? Rather than like there with my, with there with my big hunting mentor. Right. So, so I think a big part of it is just my education growing up. I do not educate my kids that way, right? So,

so my approach with my kid, you may have noticed they're not here right now or podcasting at my house. We don't fear here the pitter-patter of little steps upstairs, it's because they're school. But I am of the mindset that from an educational standpoint, what you should do is allow your children to learn how to become good team players, good factory workers, outsource the stuff that you aren't good at teaching, or that you don't like, I don't wanna learn how to teach calculus or relearn calculus, or microbiology or anything like that.

I'd rather outsource that to a teacher. And then when my kids walk in the door today at 350, that's when, we'll be taking them to the fights tonight. And that's when I'll be taking them outside and we'll probably do, we do a lot of like wild foraging plant walks where we'll go out and find nettle and then do animal tracking and stuff like that out in the property. It's when I'll teach them, you know, this room right next to us that they take pictures of it and they write descriptions of the communicate and they they rent it out in Airbnb and

that's one of their jobs and they teach them how to sell their toys on Craigslist. But the idea is my opinion from an education standpoint is you get a little bit of the best of both worlds both outsourcing to a group based education format and then a little bit of of homeschooling slash unschooling on the side. In my case, I was completely homeschooled K through 12. I got lucky because I think I'm hardwired to be a little bit of an independent learner in the first place, but I truly believe that everything that I do now is very much influenced by the fact that I love to go out on these journeys of self-discovery, figure out what works and what doesn't, and I'm a voracious reader. Like I read five to ten books a week and always have literally since I was like eight years old.

So I'm just on this constant quest for knowledge because I love to learn. Like part of it is not because I feel like I have to do that as part of my job because I think there are a lot of people don't, you know, read that much and don't soak up that much knowledge. But I just, dude, I fucking love to learn

and then I love to take what I learn and teach it to people and try it on my body. I tell people that a lot of times that their greatest strength is usually their greatest weakness too. So do you find like the way you treat biohacking and figuring out things like nutritionally and sleep and everything we've talked about earlier? Do you treat the same thing with like personal growth? I see you have Tony Robbins in there and so that, do you do certain exercises like that or you challenge yourself out of your comfort zone and so that do you do certain exercises like that?

Or you challenge yourself out of your comfort zone, you've already said it that I'd rather be independent, I'd rather do this. So do you put yourself out of those situations because of that, or do you find yourself always going back into your comfort zone? Yeah, I get myself out of my comfort zone. And I like tomorrow, on tomorrow's podcast,

if you're to listen into my podcast tomorrow, the entire hour is me being hypnotized. And at the beginning of that hypnosis, it's horrible radio, by the way. It's not the best podcast. Don't listen to that one first. I'm like a dog. Just get that one.

Yeah, I put on a ballerina dress and dance. And no, but the idea is that during that episode or leading into that episode, I was asking what it is I want to change about my life, things I want in that particular case. It was that I tend to be a slave to habit and routine sometimes and freak out when I get thrown out of my routine, whatever, when I don't hit my 10 to 10 30 p.m. bedtime or whatever. I get annoyed.

Or another thing I mentioned that I wanted to change about myself was that I don't. And again, this returns to the homeschooling thing. I don't do that great of a job making friends. I have lots of acquaintances, but not that many close friends because I have a hard time letting people get that close to me, just because I like to be independent and I'd rather be off reading a book than socializing with somebody. And, you know, so, yeah, I'm constantly trying to find things

that are deficits or weaknesses in my life and improve upon them. I don't necessarily have a system for doing that, but yeah, I mean, when you look out on that bookshelf that I have out there, it's a vaudeville, right? And it's very deft. You guys know this, being in the podcast industry, in many cases, three books will show up on my doorstep one day.

And back here are all the ones that I still need to work on and read, things I'm studying to interview people in the podcast, etc. So I try and keep those in the office. So if I look at them, it annoys me because I know I still need to go through them in greater detail. But, yeah, I don't even know if that answers your question, dude. No, no, it does. These are the things I feel like nobody asks you.

I feel like everybody knows you're this biohacking genius. And to me, I always like to see what makes people tick. Like, you're also extremely successful. You don't flaunt it. You're not somebody who rubs it in your face. And so I'd be curious to, you know, I actually have some Benjamin's right here. I'm not a wavender.

No, I'm not a brain man. Not at all your style. You have a beautiful home, beautiful property, and you're not flamboyant about it. Do you know why you're like that? Do you know what made you like that? Were you different when you first found success? Or can you talk to me a little about that?

Was it a long road? Yeah, it does kind of still return to the homeschooling thing that don't give a fuck mentality. Meaning like I drive a, you saw my pickup truck, or like it's a crappy old beta pickup truck I've had it for 10 years. Never been that infatuated with the car that I drive or to the sugar end of my wife, the clothes that I wear.

You guys are lucky that I actually am not in my boxers right now and I put a shirt on for this podcast. It's more unlucky, man. But yeah, I've never been, this one, materialistic. I'm just, I'm not really into it. I mean, like my perspective on life is that your money is best spent on experiences and memories.

And I completely agree with you. You know, none of the nicest cars on the face that planet are gonna replace that. I don't know, having a Lamborghini might be a nice experience. So how did you start in fitness of all things? Obviously, I mean, you have a passion for learning, but you apply a lot of it towards physical performance and exercise and fitness.

Yeah, well growing up, you know, as president of the chess club, I played violin for 13 years. I wrote a fantasy fiction novel by the time I was 12 years old and it was winning magazine contests on writing and and was pretty much a you know quintessential nerd popular with the ladies online world work. I got laid a lot You know really, I mean the simple answer is I got the tennis I played college tennis. I really got bit by the tennis bug in high school and started running up the hills behind my house and went and bought a pair

of 10 pound dumbbells from Gart Sports. And all of it was based around how can I serve faster, how can I move better on the court? How can I figure out the mental game of tennis, the physical game of tennis. And that's what led me into getting interested in everything, everything else. I mean, you know, we were talking bodybuilding earlier, one of the guys that, that, when I was in high school, I started playing tennis with he was a bodybuilder, right? So I started asking him about, you know,

how, how'd you put on muscle? How'd you decrease body fat? How do you do it? You know, he was a massage therapist too. So he started talking anatomy and deep tissue work. And it's, and then, you know, it's all just like, since then, the past 20 years have just been a blur of just learning

and has literally been 20 years. I was 13, 14 years old now, I'm 34, and it's just all been from that point never leaving the industry ever. I've just been a voracious student of the human body and brain since I was a young teenager. It's interesting because there's so many different facets to the industry.

You're on the side of longevity, wellness, advanced information. We come from the more commercial bodybuilding supplement type of world, which is very different as well. But in terms of when it comes to applying your knowledge to fitness, you can tell that this is something you have a massive passion for. In terms of when it comes to applying your knowledge to fitness, you can tell that this is something you have a massive passion for. Something we learned that was interesting yesterday, you've been podcasting now for nine years.

I didn't even know podcasts really existed up until a couple of years ago. What was it like? He called us noobs. I believe. Yeah, rookies. Yeah, yeah. What was it like podcasting? Yeah, it must be so different yeah. What was it like podcasting?

Yeah, it must be so different now from when you first started. Not really. I just log in with a crappy microphone, both on iTunes and probably, I mean, honestly, I say that in just, but no, not a lot has changed. I still, when you guys see my setup here, I mean, the only thing that's really changed is rather than having a cardboard box lined with dense foam from Joanne's fabrics, I got a boom mic now. Really?

Yeah. Not much has changed. I probably need to up my game, my podcasting game at some point, but no, not a lot has changed. I still just like plug in the mic and just record. Is it content-shared? Content machines. Content machines. But no, I wish I had like a fancy sexy answer to your question, but not a lot has changed other than there are a lot more podcasts out there. And the I used to podcast about basic fitness and basic nutrition and basic strength conditioning concepts.

And as I've explored those concepts and in my opinion, kicks those horses to death, it's just gotten more woo as I delve into things like, you know, structured water and quantum physics and heart rate variability and heart brain interactions and the electrical potential of the human body and all these things that I think kind of fly under the radar but that are still important.

So if anything, I'm just getting weirder. All right. Basically. Oh, wait, that makes you cool important. So if anything, I'm just getting weirder. All right. That makes you cool or not. I book, well, it's been a pleasure. I hope we get to do this again. I mean, it's it's beautiful out here. It's a good excuse for us to come visit. Hopefully, get you down in our studio sometime. But it's been awesome. Make sure you guys check Ben's podcast out his website, Ben Greenfield Fitness.com. Check that out.

I love you, man. This was great. Vince podcast out his website Ben Greenfield fitness.com checked that out. Love you, man. This was great. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for coming all the way up to Spokecompton. It's a weird place. It's beautiful up here, man. All right. Thanks, guys. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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