Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 867: Ben Greenfield on Anti-Aging, Minimizing Jet Lag, Starting a Supplement Company & MUCH MORE!

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. I always have a good time when Ben comes in the studio. Benny! That's right. He's family now. We get much love from this. One of my favorite interviews that we've done with him. You can just tell that we're on a different level. He's like our crazy cousin. Right. And one of the things that I've r with him, you know, you can just tell that they're, we're on a different level.

Starting point is 00:00:25 You like our crazy cousin. Right. And one of the things that I, I razzed him about the very first time that we did a podcast with him when we were all just getting to know each other was this fool was dropping sponsors like every single sentence that he talked like the micr machine guy. Yeah, but he does it. He does it very smooth. In fact, I don't know how many people really picked up on it

Starting point is 00:00:45 And I remember calling him out on it and so I joked with the boys. I'm like we're gonna get him back one of these days We're we're gonna throw all of our sponsors in in one of his interviews and see how you conversation right Well, my favorite part was yeah By the way this episode's awesome Ben talks about on jevory great episode talks about I mean We get really deep in the weeds with science, so you science nerds are gonna love it and then we have fun talking about business and all that stuff.

Starting point is 00:01:10 But there's one part where I think Adam, you were mentioning. Ned, hello, Ned. Yeah, you were mentioning Ned who is our hemp extract, the company that we work with, that's got the CBD hemp extract that comes with the complete, all of the cannabinoids and all their benefits.

Starting point is 00:01:26 So Adam is talking about that and then Ben's like, oh yeah, just like the company I worked with, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, oh, this guy also I'm an investor. He hijacked me. He did. He did. He hijacked my sponsor plug. And then I talked about.

Starting point is 00:01:38 He now sponsored your sponsor. He now sponsored your sponsor. I talked about, I think I talked about Lyons, man, I think in this episode because we're talking about brain health. Right. And I talked about four-sigmatic. think in this episode, because we're talking about brain health, and I talked about four-sigmatic, and I forgot that he's also sponsored by four-sigmatic, so he went off on his own Tandico Chamber. About them, so we talked about that, we talked about.

Starting point is 00:01:55 He just recently picked up, also I noticed that he was rocking his Vyory pants. That's right. So, like really, you're on the Vyory game too? Yeah, dude. He's got their clothes, then we talked about Red Light. He're on the fury game too. Yeah, dude man. He's got their clothes Then we talked about red light on the up and up. We talked about red light therapy. Of course we're sponsored by Juve And then we mentioned his bars which that wasn't even trying to mention a sponsor that was No, last year at all. We got go go go go go we go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go the most stop gobbling everything up. I got so here we go

Starting point is 00:02:26 Here's a list of the sponsors that we talked about in this episode There's hello Ned they make full spectrum hep extracts you get 15% off with every purchase with your first purchase Excuse me if you go to hello Ned H.E. L.O. N.E.D.com forward slash mine pump then of course we mentioned four sigmatic They're the makers of the lion mane, but they also make cordo steps. They have chaga. These are mushrooms for health and performance.

Starting point is 00:02:49 If you go to foursigmatic.com forward slash mine pump and enter the code mine pump, you get 15% off. Again, we mentioned red light therapy. That's jove. If you go to jovejovvv.com forward slash mine pump, if you buy something that's $500 or more, you'll get hooked up with free shipping and a free maps prime program. That's a value of like $100, I think.

Starting point is 00:03:11 Then the Viori clothing that Adam mentioned, if you go to Viori clothing that's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com for a stash mine pump, you'll get 25% off your total purchase. And then finally, Bens company, his supplement company, he makes these bars slash mind pump, you'll get 25% off your total purchase. And then finally, Premo, Ben's company, his supplement company, he makes these bars that are fucking amazing and very good, very natural. If you go to get Keon,

Starting point is 00:03:35 that's coffee's legit too. His coffee's good too. If you go to get Keon, g-e-t-k-i-o-n, dot com forward slash mind pump and use the code mine pump. He hooks mine pump 10, excuse me. He hooks you up with 10% off.

Starting point is 00:03:49 Ben, we need a bigger discount. But you still get a discount, it's really good. And of course, Ben Greenfield, great friend of ours. You can find him on Instagram at Ben Greenfield Fitness, his podcast, if you don't know about it by now, why have you been hiding under a rock? It's the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, and that's it, man, one of our favorite people,

Starting point is 00:04:08 great episode. We hope you enjoy it. Here we go. I'm all about better living through science, but once you get to the point where you're isolating an unnaturally high level of an extra, it's just like essential oils. Man, a lot of those can be bad for you.

Starting point is 00:04:22 If you're consuming the equivalent of like 20 turmeric roots from a few drops of turmeric essential oil, which is essentially what that is, I mean that's a lot of turmeric. That's what we do, right? We find a little bit of science that supports something- You cost a lot of-

Starting point is 00:04:40 You know, or that it positive benefits and then we abuse the fuck out of it. Well it's hard to overdose on an individual compound when you take it in its natural form. Very easy to do when you extract it. Like, try to eat too much food to have too much vitamin A in your system. Exactly. Good luck, white, or bark. Yeah, even in the world of neutropics, like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, right?

Starting point is 00:05:05 And St. John's War is a perfect example, very good natural antidepressant. And River and Ternan, I actually harvest it a bunch of St. John's War. And we concentrate today. You find it naturally growing? It's a beautiful little yellow flower with a little bit of oil in the bud.

Starting point is 00:05:21 And you can harvest it. It's very easy to pick, very easy to identify. You just put it in vodka for four weeks and then you strain it. We did like a mortar and pestle beforehand with the flour and the bud and a little bit of the leaf. You put it into the vodka and then you strain that and that goes into a little dropper bottle that works as an SSRI. But I mean, you would have to eat enough St. John's Whart fiber and all the natural plant defense mechanisms and all the little things in there.

Starting point is 00:05:53 It would actually give you a tummy ache if you were to eat a whole bunch of that. You get sick from eating too much plant material before you write. So there's like a natural built in stop mechanism that a lot of this kind of fascinating stuff. I find that fascinating. When you think of, even things as like sugar, I mean, could you imagine someone trying to,

Starting point is 00:06:09 you're like, so we can get a little bee on sugar cane? You're too much sugar cane to get on sugar cane. Right, yeah. Like, one soda is like eight feet of sugar cane. It's like my jaw's tired. And you get through like a tiny little chunk of sugar cane, which is the equivalent of like half a teaspoon.

Starting point is 00:06:24 Or sugar. Or you find honey, which is pretty concentrated form, but you have to get through like a tiny little chunk of sugar cane, which is the equivalent of like half a teaspoon. Or sugar. Or you find honey, which is pretty concentrated form, but you have to get through bees. Yeah. It is a tree. Yeah. It's messy, sticky. It's a little bit different.

Starting point is 00:06:36 We came out of eye-work. I always find that. I like dose corn syrup. Don't you guys find that crazy facet, any though, that how it's all been put on the earth as it is, and then now as we've manipulated and changed, now we have all this disease and stuff like that. Well, the two beliefs are, you have the creationism. Yeah, you have the creationist belief, which is, you know, God put them on earth that way.

Starting point is 00:06:54 Then you have the evolutionary belief, which is we evolved, co-evolved with all these compounds and plants and stuff, and so it just works better that way, because that's how we co-evolved evolve or both, right? But when you, it's an art and a science though because a lot of these things that we're talking about, like say isolating process, sugar from sugar cane or some other sweetener, and then concentrating that,

Starting point is 00:07:18 we know that that produces insulin insensitivity and oxidation with the high blood glucose and the bloodstream and all these side effects. But there are other compounds that you concentrate and we get a great deal of benefit. It's like the St. John's Wort thing. I'd love to have a really good SSRI dopamine

Starting point is 00:07:37 and serotonin precursor I could have around, but I'm not gonna keep a bunch of bushels of St. John's Wort in my pantry. So, some is good and some isn't. There's the ways that we use to concentrate things were different though. If you were, you would make a tincture or, and it's just not the same as when you go in a laboratory, extract it and it's just on a whole nother level. I mean, they can, they can reach concentrations with, in laboratories that would be virtually impossible with old methods of

Starting point is 00:08:07 extreme. If you guys ever done synthetic 5MEO DMT, you can go to the Sonoran desert and hunt down a toad and catch it and isolate everything or lick the toad or however you're going to get that extract or you can order for pennies on the dollar from website like Lissurgy, you know, 5MEO DMT that's synthetically created, that's incredibly concentrated, and that's essentially the same molecule. Is that the, that's a powerful psychedelic, right? It is. Wow.

Starting point is 00:08:39 Now, in that form, when it's synthetic and that concentrated, there's a toxicity issues, right? People can die from, and it lasts a really long time. Really? Yeah, there's a lot of DMT derivatives, and if you were to inhale DMT, typically there's a responsible way to do it, and I'm not, I'm not a shaman, believe it or not.

Starting point is 00:08:58 Yeah, but from what I understand, and what I've experienced the way to do is you take ayahuasca, and then leading into the DMT, you've already kind of primed the pumps in terms of the MAOA inhibitors that the ayahuasca is giving you, and then when you take an inhalation of DMT, when you take a hit of DMT, it hits you really quickly and you're in your happy place for 10 to 15 minutes and then trips over. And you're still kind of journeying for a little while afterwards. But like something like 5MEO DMT

Starting point is 00:09:30 that hits you and stays with you for God knows how long depending on how much you took and how pure it was. It's funny, I was just on online the other day and there was this video of this kid who was smoking synthetic THC, the synthetic cannabinoids. They actually sell these and they call them like spice or something like that. And this kid was, he took like two hits.

Starting point is 00:09:52 He did a gravity bomb, which I haven't seen in years. Have you seen, you've seen those, right? And he took like two big hits off of that thing and he lost his mind. Like it was a scary thing to watch, poor guy, really, really freaking out, and probably didn't end up very well. And there's been deaths associated with these synthetic cannabinoids. You try doing that with cannabis in its natural form.

Starting point is 00:10:13 You can't kill yourself. You could try, I know people have. Try to smoke too much. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, and I take CBD now. CBD is just one of my favorite molecules. And I'm not that in the THC, like I use THC, maybe two or three times a week, right?

Starting point is 00:10:30 But CBD, I mean, I also sometimes take a good 50 to 60 milligrams before bed and sleep like, that's actually my sleep combo is I take 50. We gotta introduce you to Ned then, we just actually hooked up for a sponsorship with them. Yeah. Really, really like that company. Yeah, they do full spectrum,

Starting point is 00:10:45 hemp extracts, but you know, because you're seeing that a lot now in the market, right? CBD's become the new thing. Soren Thorne has a new hemp extract, and I actually have to be careful, because I talk about CBD, and you guys know how it works in the podcasting industry.

Starting point is 00:10:57 You talk about something, and everybody comes out of the woodwork. Right. But you know, full disclosure, I do some advising with Thorne, and help them with their supplement development. And so I have basically financial ties to Thorn as one of their affiliates and their advisors.

Starting point is 00:11:11 Same thing with this other company called BioCBD out of California. I help them with their formulas. I'm an investor in their company. You know, so here's the thing with the market now with CBD. I just read a report with these independent researchers who went and tested a lot of these hemp extracts and what they found was many of them

Starting point is 00:11:29 had very little cannabinoids at all. And what they'll say in the bottle is like pure hemp extract. Some of the companies will have some. And that's why we like Ned was because they actually will list the concentrations of the different cannabinoids. And you want what you do, you do want a total plant extract, although CBD is the one that we know now

Starting point is 00:11:50 provides all these benefits. It actually works better when there's other cannabinoids present. And they're finding now some of these other cannabinoids are very fascinating, like CBC, canada cromium, I think is the name, has been shown to grow new brain cells. It's actually been shown in animals, yeah, in animals.

Starting point is 00:12:07 Very, very fascinating stuff. That is so similar to like a psilocybin or a lion's mane or any of these other neurogenesis based compounds. You know, I don't know if they work in the same way because I know that those are all triptomine based molecules. But they did some studies with some cats, and that's what they found. So there's no human studies.

Starting point is 00:12:27 Really sparse. Smart cats. Yeah. Where? No, it's really fascinating stuff. The thing about CBD that really fascinates me is, because we've only identified two cannabinoid receptors, right?

Starting point is 00:12:40 The CB1 and CB2. Right. One is much more prevalent in your peripherally, and the. One is much more prevalent in your, you know, peripherally, and the other one is much more prevalent in your brain. Yes. CBD doesn't attach to either one. Right. It doesn't attach to either one of them. Allosteric modulator of those two different receptors. That's the theory, right?

Starting point is 00:12:55 And I guess it helps you use your own endocannabinoids better. And this is why I like that. Here's, here's something a lot of people aren't talking about because cannabis is so popular now. You use a lot of cannabis or cannabinoids, or THC in particular, that really locked down and hammer onto the CB1 and CB2 receptor. Like anything, if you use a lot of it, those receptors down regulate,

Starting point is 00:13:17 and because your body creates its own endocannabinoids, you could be getting your body to produce less of its own cannabinoids and being in a start to create kind of this cycle where you're now your body produces less, you have lower receptors, now you have to use more THC to get the same effect or even just to keep yourself normal. CBT doesn't do that. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that actually me upregulate the two,

Starting point is 00:13:46 cannabinoid receptors. So it's really really fascinating, but I do wanna, you know, I'm very careful because now what we're seeing in our space, especially in the muscle building space, this fucking CBD protein, CBD pre-workout, they're destined to be on.

Starting point is 00:14:00 I've gotten, I actually have back home, I got a bunch of packets, I forget what company sent to me. It was like CBD, it's got some caffeine, it's like a pick me up. I've always found my own personal response to CBD to be that it settles me down. I don't like to take it before I work out

Starting point is 00:14:15 because it decreases stress to the point where I just, I'm a little bit too easy going. Do you have, no, this is also why a lot of ultra runners and trow runners will use CBD because you just, you put on your deep house, you go, I'm a little bit too easy going. Do you have, no, this is also why a lot of ultra runners and trowel runners will use CBD because you just, you put on your deep house, they want a chill run, yeah. Are you, how sensitive are,

Starting point is 00:14:31 because I see you whenever we hang out, which I love hanging out with you by the way, every time we hang out, I'll see you drinking, you know, coffee or caffeine, you seem to have a pretty high tolerance for stimulants. Yeah, would you say you do? Well, I grew up on frickin espresso. Okay, my dad was a gourmet coffee roaster You seem to have a pretty high tolerance for stimulants. Yeah, would you say you do? Well, I grew up on fricking espresso. Okay.

Starting point is 00:14:45 My dad was a gourmet coffee roaster, and we're paired espresso machines. My parents were not too clued in to nutrition, to biochemistry, or to healthy eating in general, meaning that, for example, I would consume the equivalent of almost a gallon of what, you know, the big plastic gallon jugs that you get from the grocery store of 2% milk, just crappy, you know, commercial cow's milk. And every night I would go to bed with a stomach ache and my parents thought I just had a really bad case of the stomach flu all the time. And then they would give me antibiotics. And I get, and medications. And I go to the doctor and, you know, it turns out later on, I found that I have

Starting point is 00:15:27 a pretty severe lactose intolerance. Right, you should think. I love you, mom, dad, but you'd think something. We need to go back to that. Yeah, and same thing with coffee, right? Like I would easily do like six, seven shots of espresso and I was 12 years old. Holy shit.

Starting point is 00:15:40 Throwing this stuff down. Now granted, and actually related to the BDNF thing, I wanna come back to that because there's kind of an interesting genetic factor here, but I am a very fast coffee oxidizer, genetic lens in and out of my sense. I'm slow, I'm a very slow caffeine analyzer. New means to put it in though.

Starting point is 00:15:57 Yeah, that's good, that's true. I process it slowly, so for me caffeine can be edgy, and so when I combine it with CBD, best combination of all time. I get the elevation from the caffeine, I don't get the edginess. And CBD or cannabinoids also change how the liver actually metabolizes caffeine.

Starting point is 00:16:16 And I'm not quite sure. I read an article, I don't remember exactly what the article said, but it said that there may be some benefit to combining it to for some people. I think I'm one of those people. It's one of the best combinations of L. L. Thiening. You put 100 to 200 milligrams of L. Thiening to.

Starting point is 00:16:30 That's true. Tolltze and a straggalus are two compounds that four sigmatic is blending with their instant coffee blend now. Love that company. And same thing, you drink that coffee and you get just this this kind of kind of stabilized non-gittery Energy from the coffee, but it lasts longer. So yeah, theanine a stragglist Tulsi. I have not tried CBD and caffeine I love it. You could also do grapefruit seed extract. What's that compound in there? Nane? It's in IAG something like that

Starting point is 00:17:02 Anyway, it's grapefruit seed extract. We'll actually slow down the rate at which you get rid of caffeine. So for someone like you, if you want it to last longer or stronger, you can take great food seed extract. That's a dangerous thing about great, that's what people tell you don't take. Great fruit juice with medication.

Starting point is 00:17:16 Yes, it'll get the blood concentration too high. Right, you've increased the whole half life, I think. Yeah, exactly. Pretty interesting. Pretty important. Medication's can do damage if you take them with great food. You were talking about coffee. I see your key on.

Starting point is 00:17:27 I know I'm just going to pull that out. Coffee right here in front of me. So I'm in a pool. So I'm in a basement. Now, put that next to the THC. Yeah. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that.

Starting point is 00:17:37 Let's talk about your supplement company for a second. Not because I'm trying to plug anything, but I'm very curious how well it's doing. What is the process of starting a supplement company and getting that going? Because I've always been curious about that. I've always been curious about, oh, maybe I want to put something together and sell something.

Starting point is 00:17:54 But it feels like such a monster. Well, is it a monster? Was it just a big massive endeavor to get going with that? I want to reply to that question, but I want to close one loop, if I may. Do it. And that's that part about BD that question, but I want to close one loop, if I may. Do it. And that's that part about BDNF, because I mentioned genetics testing, and I recently found this out that 23 and me doesn't actually test for all the SNPs, and actually tests for a

Starting point is 00:18:15 pretty small amount of them. And so I got tested up in Canada, and I tested both of my twin 10 year old boys too. And we got all of our data back, and it turns out that all three of us guys produce very low levels of endogenous BDNF. We possess a gene that makes us lower, and that miracle grow for the brain. Interesting. And so now my kids are drinking Lions main tea

Starting point is 00:18:39 before school. They're doing the infrared sauna three times a week because sauna is another way to increase BDNF. They're not fasting because I don't think fasting is all that great for highly missed. Starvation kids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The way for the social workers to show up. But you know, I'm doing a lot more attention to fasting and some amounts of calorie restricting. What are some of the side effects or potential negatives

Starting point is 00:19:05 of having low levels of endogenous BDNF? Is that increased risk of dementia? Later in life, yeah, increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's earlier in life, just not having your cognitive performance as high as you would want. I mean, we found all sorts of... Wait, man, you're not as smart as you could be, get the fuck out of here.

Starting point is 00:19:20 Well, that'd be great. Oh no, oh shit. Long-term, it could come back come back and I found out a few other interesting things too. Like we, none of us boys possess the gene that allows you to produce vitamin D in response to sunlight. Oh shit. I get a ton of sun. You know, even when I was an Ironman triathlete, I'd be out on the sun for like eight hours a day and now I take my shirt off and I go outside and you know, I'm in my backyard naked a lot of the time. I get a lot of sun and I love it.

Starting point is 00:19:49 And obviously I'm getting all the circadian rhythm benefits and the near and far infrared benefits. But it turns out that there's a reason that despite me doing that, my vitamin D levels want to test are always like 30 to 50 max. Right. And you'd expect my levels to be like at least about 50.

Starting point is 00:20:04 Yeah, 60, 70. And so now same thing, my kids are supplementing And you'd expect my levels to be like at least about 50, maybe close to 70 or 80. And so now same thing, my kids are supplementing with vitamin D, I'm taking a vitamin D, vitamin K blend. And so this thing about genetics, it's just like a fascination of mine of late because I've got this 50 page report that I'm going through that's highlighting all these things. I didn't even know about my body.

Starting point is 00:20:24 And also my kids. It's kind of fun to be able to see how I can help my kids to live a better life, to be smarter or to detox better or to have higher levels of vitamin D for their bones or their teeth. Now, do you ever think to yourself, because sometimes I wonder, right? So let's say you will use the example of the BDNF, right? You naturally have low endogenous levels of BDNF, but what if there's this genetic variance

Starting point is 00:20:50 that goes along with it that we don't know to test for, where your body is adapted or at least, it knows how to use the low levels optimally, and increasing it beyond that may be detrimental. You know what I'm saying? What if there's something like that? Because it starts to get brain cells coming on my ears. Yes, you know?

Starting point is 00:21:08 Too smart. I see what I'm saying. You're saying? Yeah, yeah, I wonder. What if it would be a steep cliff, you get brilliant and then it just dives off. Would you rather that or would you rather be like the average IQ for your entire life?

Starting point is 00:21:19 Oh man. What would be worse, being brilliant and then a steep fall off or like an average IQ your whole life? That's actually my concern too. And I realize I'm really ignoring your question. I'll get to it in a second. Now we'll get to it back here. When we were talking about the upregulation of CB1

Starting point is 00:21:35 or CB2 receptors or desensitization in response to heavy THC use, the same thing scares me when it comes to what seems to be the darling of the fitness or the health industry right now, and that's specifically like either synthetic smart drugs or psychedelics. Yeah. Right, same thing. You get this huge flooding of the synaptic cleft with dopamine and serotonin,

Starting point is 00:21:58 and depending on the supplement, a lot of these ampequines like Roodle and the people are using Norepinephrine, and you see an increasing need for a lot of these neurotransmitters, increased sensitivity, a need for increasingly higher dosages. And I got on the psychedelics bandwagon for a while. Like I was doing like the every three days, dose with psilocybin and doing like the weekly microdose of LSD, And I'm a lot less, I guess, infatuated with those compounds now, just based on my hunch that it can create some pretty significant, specifically like adolpamine insensitivity.

Starting point is 00:22:37 Right. If you have an insensitivity adolpamine, and you're not feeling good when you have sex or when you eat a chocolate bar or anything else that you might just need more and more of to feel good. That's kind of a serious issue. Yeah, I think we have a tendency, people, humans in general have a tendency to find something powerful and fascinating and then abuse the shit out of it. That's what we do. And I think that's what's happening right now with a lot of issues. Don't you think that's how we also naturally evolved and we need that though?

Starting point is 00:23:02 Don't you think it's necessary for swing the pendulum swing the pen we need. We need survival mechanism. We got a mechanism where it's very great. That is the tribe is starving and oh, hey, there's honey in the tree. Let's eat as much as we can. We can, Richard's, we can fucking show down our head. Oh, it tastes good. Yeah, because who knows, we might see honey again. And now we live where you can go by giant mason jars full of honey

Starting point is 00:23:20 at Whole Foods and eat as much as you want. And all of a sudden there's kind of this ancestral backfiring mechanism. Yeah, I think that's our... So back to Keegan. Back to Keegan. What was that light getting it started? And then I want to know how sourced it and all that kind of stuff. How into detail.

Starting point is 00:23:37 You're decision making with it. And how well is it doing now? Because you've had it now for... You went live with it how long ago? Wasn't that long ago, right? Oh, almost a year. I think it's coming up on almost a year. We launched with several flagship products, right?

Starting point is 00:23:54 So we had a colostrum for the gut, a rag-no for the immune system, something called Flex, which is this joint support compound that's just got everything in it that you'd need for you know, tart cherry and ginger and tumeric and you know one of those shotgun formulas for the joints, skin serum and frankly a lot of compounds that I had already either private labeled or worked with other companies to create for me and was selling under Greenfield fitness systems.

Starting point is 00:24:27 A few years ago, I made the decision that rather than having my name tied to a company and having a company rely upon me as the face and name, despite me still being one of the prime kind of faces and names for Keon, I didn't necessarily want to be burdened with the idea of my entire company being dependent upon me, being dependent upon a key man, that whole, I can get hit by a bus type of thing. That's some serious foresight, because it takes a little bit of,

Starting point is 00:24:55 you have to have a pretty healthy, comfortable ego, because the opposite tends to happen. People want to be face-of-everything. Right, I don't have a deep desire, at least when we talk about the supplements, industry to be like the Tony Robbins or the Tim Ferriss or somebody who knows you based on your name, versus knows you based on your product and your brand.

Starting point is 00:25:15 As an author, my dream is to continue to be known for my nonfiction books and my goal by the time I'm 50 is to have a best-selling five-part fiction fantasy fiction series. And for those type of things, I absolutely want people to know my name. I wanted to see, you know, new book came out by Ben Greenfield, you know, go go buy this book, but with Keon, I couldn't care less if people know whether or not I'm the CEO or the founder or, you know, my role right now there is I am behind the scenes developing formulations.

Starting point is 00:25:48 And that's what I love to do. So what we have are formulators who we work with who go out and find the raw ingredients. The best ingredients are the ingredients that we want to put into a compound. And then those are produced. They're manufactured in a CGMP, or private labeling, or white labeling certain supplements from companies, or even having them modify those before they send them to us, or we're partnering with companies like Thorn, because I have a lot of athletes that follow me, and I want something that is either NSF certified or TGE certified or is super

Starting point is 00:26:22 duper clean. That's very expensive for me to do. Let's say the colostrum I get from a small goat farm in Western Washington, it's wonderful, grass-fed, grass-finished organic goats, and the product is amazing, but that's a very spendy process for me to NSF certify that. So I'd rather have some options for that. Just open their drug tests and all that. Right, so we've partnered with Thor. If you buy a product from Thorne and you look at the label,

Starting point is 00:26:45 then any of the products I've partnered with them on, and a lot of people don't realize that you see a key on logo on all the Thorne supplements. And that's because I've chosen to partner with them for some of the things I want to have NSF or TG certified. So how long of a process was it getting your own brand together and then finally being able to launch it? That take a while?

Starting point is 00:27:04 Yeah, well, you can ask you, it was about two and a half years. Oh wow, okay. Start, I mean, in terms of me making that decision and then developing the logo, I mean, internally, we follow a certain, like a book called Traction

Starting point is 00:27:20 that where we have, where we use their document, they also have a wonderful book called Rocket Fuel. Eosystems. Eosystems, we follow their entire formula for a few reasons. First, my operations manager is he would be considered the like the executor in the whole like rocket fuel type of relationship, whereas I'm the visionary, right?

Starting point is 00:27:43 Like I say, I want this to happen, or hey, you know, these are the last eight books I read on mitochondria, and this is currently what we're in the middle of, right? I want to create a full formula that's got PQQ, Dribose, Coensile Q10, magnesium, full vitamin B complex. If we can afford it, and if it makes sense in the supplement, if the price point is right, can we put nicotinamide riboside in there? And I go through everything that I want in the ultimate supplement. And many times I'm scratching my own itch. I'm like, I want this supplement so I can take it in the morning. There's got to be at least a thousand other people who would use something like this. And then he goes to our team and

Starting point is 00:28:20 you know, works with the formulators, works with the manufacturers, works with our team who runs the warehousing facility in Salt Lake, and then we've got a whole marketing team now. We have a social media team, we have a customer support team. That's a monster. Yeah. And the line-sharver team is based out of Boulder. Right, so we have a brick-and-mortar offices in Boulder, and then we do a ton of our work on, excuse me, Slack.

Starting point is 00:28:44 Is the two main apps that I used to run the team is slack and voxer. Just because voxer allows you to do very high bandwidth audio communication and play it at two to four times speeds, the same way, so I coach nine people who I just help out with their health, their sleep, their heart rate variability, their diet, their training. So I still do some personal training online

Starting point is 00:29:04 and for these people, these voxer. Right, so anytime anytime my clients talk to me, it's on voxers. What's the, what's your, I guess your most popular product? And is it, is it something that's got a pretty good response now? Or you're right now the bar. I mean, and that was the reason we eat the shit. I don't last long in here. Yeah. Yeah. I keep them. So I quit buying cacao nibs. I keep the bar in the freezer. And my favorite thing is a frozen keon bar. All eat that as dessert after lunch. I like to sprinkle it on top of halotop ice cream

Starting point is 00:29:36 for like a dessert in the evening. Like you sprinkle on some cinnamon roll or some chocolate peanut butter cup or oatmeal cookie flavored halotop. And it's just, it's bomb. So yeah, what I wanted to do was make a real food bar that wasn't ketogenic and that wasn't like some greasy, oily thing that you pull out of a wrapper,

Starting point is 00:29:57 but that instead just tasted like real food, almost like a healthy trail mix in a bar form. Speaking of ketogenic, I have a question for you because another big trend that we're seeing in fitness and we called this a while ago is exogenous ketones and everything, everything's got ketones. And we were talking to Rob Wolf a while ago and he brought, he posed some pretty interesting questions

Starting point is 00:30:18 and he said, you know, we don't really know what the effects on the body are long term when you have the presence of ketones with full glycogen stores, because that doesn't really happen. It does. Nature unless you're diabetic. Oh, no. Maybe at that level.

Starting point is 00:30:34 Or maybe at that level. Our ancestors ate organ meats. Liver. Liver has extremely high endogenous levels of beta-hydroxameterate. If you can see organ meats, a lot of times, you have, you know, or... Now, is it the same liver with meat? And so is that as high as like when you would supplement with like seven grams of beta hydro,

Starting point is 00:30:51 is that the same? Is it what it would be to say? I know what the levels would be. But, you know, you take another scenario, you're in a fasted state, you're hunting, your endogenous ketone levels are high, you know, your ancient man who's looking at your ketone piece draft, and your pen ketones, and your breath ketone levels are high. You're an ancient man who's looking at your ketone piece draft, your pen ketones, your breath ketone

Starting point is 00:31:08 modded out there just to make sure you're at one millibull or above, because otherwise, you're not going to be able to go out on your hunt. And then you come across a kill, you know, an animal, and you're going to eat a bunch of protein, you're going to stop and get the honey out of the tree, right, and eat a bunch of honey. And automatically by shoving all those nutrients in your body,

Starting point is 00:31:26 you're putting glucose on top of relatively high amounts of endogenous ketones. And I don't see that it flies in the face of an antisocial mechanism. And furthermore, when you look at something especially like a ketone ester and to a lesser extent, the ketone salt, there's some really cool things that those things do to like the NFKAPA B pathway in terms of mitigating inflammation. They act on the mitochondrial membrane

Starting point is 00:31:54 to enhance the function of the electron transition. Are you coming out with a ketone supplement, man, is that what you're doing? No. No. It's coming out. It's coming out. So one of the products that I was interested in developing, and if you guys want more of

Starting point is 00:32:08 kind of like the opening of Communo on Kion, this is related to that, because I'm not going to develop this, I don't think, was I wanted to do kind of like a ketone supplement that was a complete ketone meal, but that also included amino acids, your full vitamin complex, ketone salts, and some type of flavoring, a little bit of protein, and a little bit of MCT oil. So just basically be a powder that would be everything that you'd need, like a full meal with all your vitamins and nutrients and everything in a keto form. But what I've decided to do with Keon is to quit going after all these long tail concepts and to instead provide people with what they need to almost like satisfy this whole Maslow's hierarchy

Starting point is 00:32:53 of needs or the things that I know are really big pain points for people. What would those be? Sleep, hormone balance, longevity, your joints. Right, we've got five or six different needs that we are creating flagship formulas for, you know, like that longevity formula I began to describe, which, you know, longevity is almost synonymous

Starting point is 00:33:14 with mitochondrial somewhere. Right, right, and so that's where I'm staring Keon now is towards formulas that allow someone to say open their cupboard and you've got six different supplements. And that's it. You're not going to the four corners of the planet to fill in the gaps with this and that.

Starting point is 00:33:29 And a gut is another one that we're working on. Now, is this because of the market response and market research and finding that? Okay, if I make the super specific insane supplement, you know, I'm really limiting myself to a very, very small limit. Exactly, you have to create. You were thinking too much about yourself. Yeah, exactly. You have to create a high number of skews, right, and

Starting point is 00:33:52 have like a hundred skews that you're selling a pretty decent amount of, or you need to have a huge following in that one tiny specific sector that you're starting to target, like say, a ketone meal. So I instead want to have, like my dream would be, you go to Keon and there's, there's only like seven or eight skis. That's it. Like there's not this huge shopping bag full of supplements. We've learned that lesson with our podcast where sometimes we get really deep in the weeds because that's what we want to talk about and because we've been doing this for so long.

Starting point is 00:34:20 And then we'll do an episode that's like how to work your hamstrings in the best way possible and just people download it. And share it like, crazy. Like number one, we forget about that. Totally. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, elephant in the room, we were talking about a book just before this, right?

Starting point is 00:34:34 And it was like, you know, we weren't making fun of it, but we were kind of sort of laughing. Critique, yeah. Yeah, critique. Oh, you know, don't snack too much to elevate your metabolism because that's a myth. Or it turns out that saturated fats might not be bad for you. And you know, we're kind of laughing.

Starting point is 00:34:51 I was so basic. It's all on me. But honestly, that's what a lot of people want to hear. Or need to hear. Yeah, or need to hear. I've been exposed to that. If you're goal, now on the flip side though, ironically, I'm writing a book right now, and it's on these really cutting edge concepts in terms of longevity and biohacking and

Starting point is 00:35:14 energy medicine. All these things that would be considered pretty far out, far fetch, biohacking, stuff that's going to be a big, excuse me, 500 page, eight and a half by 11 hardcover style Costco book with a $60 price point. I mean, it's not something that the masses are gonna buy. So what you talked about in your magazine article that you just recently did with the,

Starting point is 00:35:38 was that outdoor magazine or something like that? Out outside, outside and big diff, I don't know if there is a problem. Well, maybe there is. Probably just offended them. Yeah. What did I talk about in that? I don't remember, I was asking you.

Starting point is 00:35:52 Yeah. I just remember you're pretty face on the cover. So, that was a fun photo shoot. It took me to this loft in, we're in an LA in your Culver City, and they had like you walk into this loft, and they literally have a whole room besides your studio for people listening.

Starting point is 00:36:09 This is a big studio. You know how many it was, it was like 500 square feet. Probably a little bit more than 600 or so I'd say. Yeah, and it's just like stacked with like all these, these hangers with clothing, like literally $6,000 worth of clothing in this room, and then you walk into another room, there's camera equipment, another room, and they've got camera equipment set up there.

Starting point is 00:36:30 I mean, they just plan this photo shoot out to the tee, and they've got you, you know, wardrobe and hair cutting and different lotions on your face. So then, I mean, they go to dinner. Dude, you used steel hard, you see them? Yeah, I do. I'm sure I can't. That's your handsomeness.

Starting point is 00:36:45 And then they finished up with almost an hour of shooting in the cold tank. Like the front cover photo of Outside Magazine is me with my face and ice. Why was laying in an ice tub? And they would take a bunch of photos. I'd get up, I'd drive myself off. They're like, okay, round two,

Starting point is 00:36:59 we'd do some different photos, different angle. You know, they got a quit shooting and go through all the photos to see if they've got the shadows and the angle and the clarity that they want to throw you back in the ice tub. And it was quite the process. Oh, yeah, shoot. And it was real ice.

Starting point is 00:37:13 It was like torture. It was a real ass ice tub. You see, you have fake ice? Yeah. Well, I mean, did you fake weights for, you know? And then they put dry ice in it, too, so that you get like the smoke kind of coming out. Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:37:25 Yeah, it's clever. That's nice. I don't want to leave the key on top, because I actually, how much of the backside will you share? I mean, you've already alluded to using EOS, but what about like, will you share with us kind of like, how much it takes to even start something that big,

Starting point is 00:37:40 like how much capital did you need and partnerships and runway time to actually turn it into where it's green. Like, and is it green yet? And I just took on 100K from a friend of mine. I invest in a lot of different health and fitness companies. Like I mentioned that CBD company, I've invested in some bone broth companies.

Starting point is 00:38:00 I've, my portfolio is kind of growing in terms of fitness and nutrition and supplement companies. I have an LLC that I co-run with another guy who's like my investment partner. He's got more cash than I do. A lot of times, in some of these investments, he'll bring cash to the table and I'll bring more of my influence or an affiliate status to the table. That's a great deal. And usually I'll put in for an investment like 10 to 20k. And so we partner up, we invest in a company, and then I do my best to ensure that that company really does a good job. I do advising for the company to make sure that the CEO is getting their questions answered

Starting point is 00:38:44 or I'm able to help them fill in holes in the market, stuff like that. But this guy who I run this with, he wanted to invest in Keon and he's also in the board of Keon. I've got five people on the board of Keon who are, they're smart and savvy in the business world. They've built big companies. They're savvy at raising money, those type of things.

Starting point is 00:39:04 So, 100,000 is how much I've taken on But that was just in the past few months and that was primarily for the bar Like wait the bar was just so popular We had to get more bars and stock and and just didn't have the amount of cash flow necessary to buy enough We're on gradients and product to make that happen. So that's all that we've taken on everything else. I personally financed I mean I literally financed. I mean I I literally financed everything myself

Starting point is 00:39:29 And are you are you in the green are you still working back to be even for how much you've invested in it? We are we're in the green Wow, let's them here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we are from from what my CFO told me About and this this was when we were about nine months in Yeah, we are from what my CFO told me about, and this was when we were about nine months in, we were at the same growth curve of what he sees in companies that have been around for three years.

Starting point is 00:39:55 So I think a big part of that was, I just kind of had a platform. It's not like we were a traditional startup. I had a bit, you know, I have a hundred thousand people on my email list. Right. We have a lot of podcast downloads. And so going into the launch of Kion, we had pretty good traction to start with. And then frankly, you know, and this is what I tell a lot of people in the fitness industry who are just getting started, you know, fledgling

Starting point is 00:40:19 personal trainers or people who want to start a supplements company or people who want to be like a nutritionist or an author, whatever relationship capital is huge. Oh my gosh, that's everything. That's all business, that's all business knowledge. That's every time. Going out, you know, like the book Never Eat Alone by Keith Farazi, right?

Starting point is 00:40:36 Going out to conferences, boots on the ground, you know, flesh and blood interaction, talking to people in the back hallways, I have a glass of wine at the bar. And really, almost just like working the industry in terms of relationships and in terms of rolodexes and probably half my rolodex is, hey, which bar are we gonna go to after this?

Starting point is 00:40:59 Let's meet up, oh, hey, what's your number? And you put the number in the phone, but then maybe a month later, you're actually doing business, you're not drinking, and I don't want to sound like a lush. You guys know me. That's kind of how we met, though. We met the first time, I think we hung out. We had an hour of Moscow Mule.

Starting point is 00:41:15 Exactly, but it's a relationship. Capital lot of people think it's like cold call emails, and virtual masterminds. Or asking people for favors right away. You've got to build that relationship first. Exactly, you wanna go out and throw down a good workout with somebody at the gym or go out to the bar after a conference.

Starting point is 00:41:31 Or just like skip a bunch of talks when you're out at some of the hand-drags and hanging out in the hallway. Yeah, and so that's a big part of Keyon too, is I literally have a spreadsheet that's essentially like a virtual rolodex with the names of over 300 influencers, most of whom you'd probably be familiar with their names in the fitness industry, but it's their number. They're addressed to receive free product.

Starting point is 00:41:55 They're their phone number. So if my COO emails me and tells me, hey, you should text so and so and let them know if they want to send out a quick tweet about this bar launch. So that kind of relationship capital is huge. It's how you grow exponentially. Was that part hard for you? Was that easy for you? That part of the business.

Starting point is 00:42:15 Just knowing you, I think you're a personable individual, but knowing how you grew up and we've hung out so many times, you know, you do a lot of things like that. I'm socially awkward. Well, he's like, he it all nice about it right there? This fuckin' say it, bro, I've already admitted it. Well, I don't think you are, but then again, I may be. So who knows, but was that a hard part for you? Was that something you had to develop?

Starting point is 00:42:35 Or was that easy? It is not hard for me to talk to people. It's harder for me to ask for favors. So I like, I don't like to feel like I owe people something. And frankly, you do. I mean, if I call it a favor for somebody, then I know that down the road, I'm gonna be the way, the industry terms,

Starting point is 00:42:51 like mailing out for them, or returning the favor by featuring something, they send me in a tweet or an Instagram. Like there's some of that that goes around now. Now granted, for people listening in, who think that this is all just folks buying each other off and bribing, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about is products that are amazing that you like and you getting the word

Starting point is 00:43:16 out to people about high quality, you know, ethical products, but using other people's channels to do so because your friends with those other people because you've made smart business moves to develop relationships. Well, here's a bottom line. If you're Ben Greenfield, people are probably throwing ideas at you all the time, every day, all the time. And at that point, when you're getting that much stuff

Starting point is 00:43:35 thrown at you, just don't listen. You don't listen to anybody. So making relationships becomes important because someone gets to know you, they like you, and then they'll listen, okay, well, let me hear what you have to say. At that point now, you still have to have a good idea, you still have to have a good product, the person still has to believe in what you're doing for them to, you know, want to connect and promote your thing, but that relationship is what opens

Starting point is 00:43:56 the door. And if you don't open the door, then especially with influencers, good luck. They're not going to listen to you. Which by the way, I'm going to put you majorly on the spot because, yes, Brianna told me to remember to ask this and we're talking about Keon for the event we want to be able to have cups of coffee being brewed the entire time. A hard hard event in Tahoe. Yes. Yes. So if you could be the coffee that is supplied to all the all the podcasters that will be

Starting point is 00:44:17 podcasting I would love that. Yes absolutely. Okay I would love that too. Okay. And of course the way I run my business is I then say, I don't know, here's my partner soon. You know, I ruthlessly guard my time. And I do the same thing, right?

Starting point is 00:44:34 I respect that. You guys do a good job at this too. For example, when we wanted to schedule this podcast that we're recording right now, I texted you guys and told you I was gonna be in San Jose, etc. So you wanna sit down and do an episode. But I think I got maybe like one text back from you guys and after texting all three of you

Starting point is 00:44:55 and it was something like, yeah, Katrina will be in touch or something like that. And then I pretty much don't hear anything for, but then I do the same thing on my end, right? So I have an assistant, I'm an executive assistant named Penny on my end, and she just sends me the Excel spreadsheet two days before I fly out and I look at, I was like, oh, okay, I have a podcast with mine pump on Friday at 2.30,

Starting point is 00:45:17 and honestly, some people think that that would be stressful to kind of like be in the dark about what's going on behind the scenes with your own schedule, but oh my gosh, like even having something as simple as a virtual assistant in the Philippines, which was the first, I put a Craigslist on the menu. Oh, that's really. The Nilla Philippines Craigslist ad,

Starting point is 00:45:39 back when I was trying to write and create my first ever triathlon product, right? I needed this Excel spreadsheet created for all. How old are you? This would have been 10 years ago, so I was 27. I wanted a list of all the different triathlon clubs and triathlon coaches in the USA, along with the email addresses and phone numbers, so that I could email them and offer them affiliate percentages of any sales that they generated from the triathlon training product that I created.

Starting point is 00:46:15 But I knew that would be incredibly laborious for me, and I'm trying to write out these workouts and training plans and periodize everything. I'm trying to do what I do best, and what I do best is not research people's contact information. And then, you know, like one by one, insert the first name and send out the email to them. And all that. So I hired this. Your time's better spend in their places.

Starting point is 00:46:35 I hired this Galfon Philippines to do it. And, you know, and since then, over the past 10 years, I have released, washed and repeated based on Gary Keller's book. You can get for free on Amazon, you know, one thing. You know, you wanna crush it at your one thing. And if there's any one thing that you also wanna crush it at, that you're not good at, you find an amazing person, you hire them, you add them to your team,

Starting point is 00:46:55 and you have them crush it, they're one thing, and you rinse, wash, and repeat that. I mean, that's how I've built my entire company. To your point of the relationships, I mean, we have somebody, I saw this opportunity in the podcast space when we first really started taking on sponsors because we're just now starting to see

Starting point is 00:47:11 this flux of companies that are coming into the podcast space and starting, like big companies dropping money now on podcasts and they really don't understand how it works, no one has any really good systems back and forth. So we actually have a position. This is what Rachel does for our company. And that's all she does is manage these relationships.

Starting point is 00:47:30 And we're making it so much easier for the sponsors. And on top of that, she's, she's coached by us or by me to touch these, all these sponsorships on a regular basis to let them know what's going on with their company and making sure that anything that they need or if they are rolling out something new with their business that we're being informed so that we can communicate and I just didn't see a lot of people doing that and because of that we're like one of the highest performing podcasts for every one of our sponsors because we go that extra mile and so that really pays off that that that that understanding

Starting point is 00:48:04 how important that relationship is in all aspects of the business. Amazing. What you need to do next though is get like, ask cheek implants and start your own separate Instagram account where it's pretty much you with the featured sponsored product in a bikini by the edge of the pool. That's just, I guess if you're a guy, you can do it just to meet the implants. People don't realize how much those Instagram girls make, like just feature a product. I just think you need the implant, cat, implant. People don't realize how much those Instagram girls make.

Starting point is 00:48:25 Like just feature a product. I mean, I think they're doing like five to 10, can we pay one of them one time? Oh yeah, you know what though? They have to have so many to make that much money. You don't have that big of an amount of money. And it's not a sustainable business model. I tell people this all the time,

Starting point is 00:48:37 like if you're chasing likes and followers in hopes that you're going to build a business and you're chasing that so hard, you don't even really have a great product or you're not to build a business and you're chasing that so hard, you don't even really have a great product or you're not providing them a lot of value to someone's life. Even if you do cash out because you get to 2 million and you start flipping T-shirts or 20% commission on supplements. And then the question becomes, what are you gonna be proud of? Ryan Holiday, author of Ego is the enemy enemy has this other book he followed it up with and I'm embarrassed

Starting point is 00:49:08 I'll be close away. Yeah, no not obstacle is the way another book about writing a really good book Like writing your classic writing your masterpiece writing something you'd be proud of I forget it Maybe it must be his newest one that is newest one. It's a Ryan holiday. Maybe it's a Ryan holiday article But I could have sworn it's an actual because I was only familiar with obstacles way and he goes the end well Well, we'll find out Steven Pressfield has has some very similar ideas You know in his books like the the War of Art you know about creating a masterpiece something you're gonna be really proud of You know for me this is my 100% focus on this book I'm working on right now.

Starting point is 00:49:45 I've turned down publishers, I've turned down agents, people who want to get this thing to big New York publishing houses, because I know that the kind of huge life-changing last book you'll ever need for health kind of book that I want to write is something that, you know, like I mentioned earlier, it's not going to be like that popular book that's going to be potentially something you see in airport bookstores, like I mentioned earlier, it's not gonna be like that popular book that's gonna be potentially something you see in airport bookstores, but I want to create something not only with Keon, but also with my books that I can stand by

Starting point is 00:50:14 and be very proud of. And if you build your entire business around some Instagram account where you're featuring products and getting paid 5K for whatever, A, it's difficult to be proud of that as a life changing business and B, what are you going to do when you're, you know, 70 years old and wrinkled? I don't think it's an empty. Well, I also don't think it's going to last very long.

Starting point is 00:50:36 I don't think it's going to be, I think it's popular right now because it's so fresh and so new and it works. Oh, perennial seller. Yeah, sorry Adam. No, no, no, good. I wanted to know what it works. Oh, perennial seller. Perennial seller. Yeah, sorry Adam. No, no, no, I'm good. I wanted to know what it was. Yes, perennial seller.

Starting point is 00:50:48 Yeah, but yeah, 2017. Oh, it's a newer one. There's also a big, there's also a massive, massive risk in terms of your own sanity when you so strongly identify with your appearance and how you look and how sexy you are. Because at some point, that's going to change. At some point, you're going to age, like you said, and I know you make the joke what

Starting point is 00:51:06 are you going to do in your 70. Here's all the evidence you need. Look at all these celebrities who are reaching their 40s, 50s, and 60s, the amount of plastic surgery in the Botox and the drug abuse and things that start to happen, because you identify so strongly with your appearance and people love you for it, but then it goes away and then what? Who are you and what are you? It is a very scary place to be. The fastest triathlete on the face of the planet is going to have joint degradation.

Starting point is 00:51:32 Some point, swimsuit illustrated cover model is going to, according to pop culture standards, probably look like shit when she's 85, at least with a close off. And even the CEO, who's ultra successful, which is kind of a different form of almost like a potentially shallow thing that you could put too much trust in. Eventually, that money is going to be gone and they're going to be laying on their deathbed, or that money isn't going to be as important. And so I think even deeper than this, even deeper than building a business is just you yourself, right, building you rather than just focusing on the body,

Starting point is 00:52:11 or just focusing on biohacking the brain, actually focusing on your... Now, in defensive people, in defensive people though, that haven't reached the level of success that you're at right now, much of them are in a different state right now where they're, it's survival still, to make a level of income just you're at right now. Much of them are in a different state right now where they're, it's survival still to make a level of income just to get by in this world and to make it and to be able to eat and do whatever they need to do.

Starting point is 00:52:32 Like, you know, when you see very few people on their deathbed, saying, I wish I'd made more money. Of course, I agree. They never wish I had more time with family. I wish I had slowed down to smell the roses. I wish I agree. I was the one talking about my business. I never wish I had more time with family. I wish I had slowed down to smell the roses. I wish I had. You know, you hear people talking about like meditation and visualization, all these things

Starting point is 00:52:53 that we never remember to do until we slow down. And those are the things that you were grit not doing later on in life. And those are all the spiritual practices, right? What are the spiritual practices? Fasting, gratitude, meditation, belief in a higher power, some kind of devotional reading or something that betters your soul or your spirit. The website, the art of manliness, which is a great website. They have a shout out to Brett McKay who runs that website.

Starting point is 00:53:22 They have a really good series on the spiritual disciplines. And it's- And many of them revolve around some form of abstaining or abstinence in something. Yes, so whether you- That's the very stoic. That's right, either you abstain from food or from sex or from electronics or from something,

Starting point is 00:53:38 you find that there's a lot of growth because whatever you have trouble abstaining from is probably something you're using to distract yourself with. And so there's a lot that comes from that. And then we look at the actual effect that that does have biologically. We know that we don't have to kick this horse to death, but fasting has a profound impact on mitochondrial health

Starting point is 00:53:59 and on longevity and on that BDNF that we were talking about earlier. We know that meditation decreases plasma and salivary cortisol and also can increase BDNF. A gratitude practice lowers blood pressure and reduces hospital visits. It's amazing how much of this stuff has biological crossover for people who actually are still mostly interested in their body and their health and maybe aren't even that interested in their spirits. It's funny.

Starting point is 00:54:29 It's still an impact. I was talking to somebody who I know who's in the fitness space, very much into fitness, understands, abstaining from certain foods to maintain their health and fitness and all that stuff, but then they also have this opposite belief that, or what seems to be, in my view, opposite where, oh, you know, I'm here to enjoy things, so I'm just going to sleep with as many people as I can, and I'm going to do all these different things. And it was funny to me that they didn't see that they were opposing. So I told them, I said, I think you might find more meaning if you abstain from so much

Starting point is 00:55:02 of that. And he's like, no, we're supposed to be here to enjoy things and we're just, we're monkeys, we're pleasure monkeys, also whatever. And I said, listen, I said, it's no different. I said, it's no different than why you abstain from processed food. You do that because you notice it's better for your health.

Starting point is 00:55:16 And you obviously get more benefit, worth more than the immediate pleasure of eating the hyper-pelible food. Delayed gratification. That's, we talked about this a little bit on our last episode. We did. The whole Chris Ryan sex at dawn thing. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:30 And I mean, it is fucking hard to do that. I walked through the lobby of Rosewood Sand Hill last night. You know, Thursday night, a bunch of rich stockbrokers hanging out in there. Beautiful women everywhere, right? And I'm walking through after dinner at 8.30. And, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm dressed to nine. And you're gorgeous. I've got my, I can see it right now.

Starting point is 00:55:52 I've got my clothes. They're going on, my hair is slick back. I'm not wearing my blue light blocking glasses. It is, it's good. Maybe you're feeling stressed. I mean, I could have walked out within about 10 minutes with one or two beautiful women on my arms. And when I'm in that situation,

Starting point is 00:56:06 I'm walking through that lobby, it is fucking hard for me. And I have to remind myself that what I have decided, the option that I have chosen is to build an amazing family, to raise two young boys who are gonna grow up to make this world a better place,

Starting point is 00:56:20 to have a legacy that I create, that I know could get really fucked up. If I'm sleeping around and if I've got, you know, whatever, you know, jealousy and and my wife is all of a sudden embittered and feels belittled and betrayed. Like, there's a ton that you throw out the window for that temporary pleasure and, you know, it feels good. Don't get me wrong. I mean, that kind of shit is a lot of fun.

Starting point is 00:56:46 But, you know, I, to bring this down to even more, just like more specific times for people, I have a book on my bedstand and it's amazing. And it's one of the most incredible ways for me to continually remind myself about the importance and the magic of love and legacy and fidelity. And it's this book that is, it's thick,

Starting point is 00:57:12 it's like 500 pages long, it's all the love letters between Winston Churchill and his wife. Oh wow. They wrote themselves letters almost every day and Winston traveled a ton. And his wife was really busy too. And they didn't see each other a lot and they were on the road a lot You know like the kind of like the modern traveling salesman kind of things up to use a politician in order and a you know in a warrior and

Starting point is 00:57:33 He would write these beautiful love letters to his wife and she would write letters back and And you see pictures of them holding hands you power couple change the world, you know amazing legacy Amazing family and children that they created but they were true to each other. Right? And for me to just be at home and sometimes I'll thumb through that book before I head off on a trip where I know I'm going to have beautiful women throwing at me and I'm going to be in that situation where all of a sudden that that temporary gratification seems super, super interesting and really fun compared to leaving legacy and love.

Starting point is 00:58:10 Right, and I think a lot of people, you know, they think the only consequences that occur from, and we're focusing on, you know, sleeping around, but this is for anything. This is for anything in life that you, you know, becomes excessive. We think that we, you know, some people may think, oh, the consequences are, my wife is going to find out and I'm going to get divorced therefore I'm not going to do this.

Starting point is 00:58:31 That's not the only consequence. Even if you didn't have those kinds of consequences, there is a lot of growth that comes from understanding how to abstain from, you know, indulging in all these types of senses. It's what makes us human. It's why we're not animals. And we talk about the gift of consciousness. Well, part of the gift of consciousness is knowing to not do those things, or at least knowing

Starting point is 00:58:57 that there's benefit to not doing those things. And like fasting, I'll use the word spiritual for lack of a better term. There's a lot of return from that kind of stuff. And it doesn't make it easy. Like fasting, I'll use the word spiritual for lack of a better term. There's a lot of return from that kind of stuff. It doesn't make it easy. In fact, the fact that it's hard is one of the reasons why you get so much out of it.

Starting point is 00:59:12 Because if it was easy, then it probably wouldn't get much out of it. Which we have. I mean, sorry, one quick thing. It turns to what our friend, Aubrey Marcus, who disagreed with about 99% of what I just said, says about food though. It's temporary mouth pleasure.

Starting point is 00:59:26 You're getting temporary mouth pleasure, but the long term is a whole bunch of ATP available to the mitochondria, so you get free radical leakage, increased longevity and oxidation, all these things that come along with punishing the pint of Ben and Jerry's, not halotop. Sorry, interrupt, did you? No, no, I already forgot my thought, because now you got me thinking about

Starting point is 00:59:47 how Aubrey would disagree with half of what we're saying. Yeah, I agree. Well, I think I have something I want to ask you that was more related to. I know that a lot of your morals probably come back from the Bible, right? I believe that it sounds like a lot of what you talk about. And I'm really curious with someone

Starting point is 01:00:04 of your level of intelligence, when you learn something new about science, do you tend to go backtrack it into the Bible or do you read something in the Bible and then try and look for scientific stuff to support some of the lessons in it? Mmm, that's tricky. I'll give you an example.

Starting point is 01:00:25 And it might not be a great example, but I'm gonna give it. You see one of the very first things created in the Bible was light, right? Like light is a big one. Light is super important. It was like one of the, it wasn't trees that were made first.

Starting point is 01:00:38 It wasn't like dirt that was made first. It wasn't even a human being that was made first. It was light, right, and then we turn around and we look at the human body and we've always thought that the primary way with which cells communicate is neurotransmitters or hormones or the propagation of neurotransmitter across the myelin sheaths.

Starting point is 01:00:57 And it turns out that the primary way with which cells communicate is biophotonic signaling. Right, we are literally light machines. That's how our cells actually communicate. It's also one of my favorite body. Yeah, our body responds profoundly. As you guys know, you guys have talked to the folks at Juve, you know, infrared light and near infrared light and far infrared light

Starting point is 01:01:16 and the effect that that has on the aqueous matrix around the cells, the effect that that has on the body, which is basically one big human battery. Well, when I see that type of signaling, and I look on the body, which is basically one big human battery. Well, when I see that type of signaling, and I look at the Bible, and I see like one of the first things made was light, it just basically makes me think, well, on the totem pole of what I should really prioritize from a health standpoint, I should probably be thinking really damn hard about the light in my home and the light in my office and the light that I surround myself with that I'm traveling, and you know, whether or not I'm going to put those blue light blocking glasses on

Starting point is 01:01:48 you know and I've replaced all the lighting in my home with clear and condescent and red and condescent and you know created the perfect lighting scenario there and get out in the sunlight every day. I don't I realize that doesn't directly answer your question but in many cases I'll find something interesting and then almost like wonder in the Bible where that's backed up. Then there's the nutrition piece too. Well, there's a reason I'm not paleo. You look at the Bible, there's like honey and milk and bread and all these things that are either vilified in our modern dogmatic, you know, calorie restriction, no fructose,

Starting point is 01:02:22 you know, type of environment, you know, things that are kicked out of the bus, but you know, calorie restriction, no fructose, you know, type of, type of environment, you know, things that are kicked out of the bus, but, but, you know, we see these type of things in the Bible, right? Like, when you're, when you're rich and you're wealthy and you're crushing it in life and you're spiritually sound in the Bible, you're surrounded by honey, bread, and milk, and dancing virgins, you know, but it's very interesting how I think to a certain extent and then coming full circle to the where we started with cannabis and and and plants in St. John's War, it was the very first job that humans had in the Bible. They're gardeners, right?

Starting point is 01:03:01 That's right. Very very first man, Adam, he was called to garden the earth until the earth and take all those plants and all those trees and it says everything was good. Right? Like weed is not bad and St. John's War is not bad and psilocybin mushrooms are not bad. All of these things were created for our enjoyment

Starting point is 01:03:20 and for us to actually learn how to garden and how to potentially make extracts of and textures of. And so, yeah, I think there's a lot that we can learn from that. But here's my thing. Adam's trying to open it. And then we came carbon to open. He's trying to open the Moxies Mint's THC. Bro, are you kidding me?

Starting point is 01:03:36 It's probably fastened. It's worth it once you get in. And here's a few things about those THC Mint, you're trying to open. Not only is a worth it, because they put like, zincobalobin. Can you help me get scissors or something over there? Gen sang and all sorts of little herbs in with the THC,

Starting point is 01:03:51 but because they're packaged so much like that, you can't smell them if you're traveling with them. Yeah, well, it's in like a super vacuum sealed bag that's knocked out by dogs for the heart. What are they, five milligrams? And also, my kids are gonna open that tin and think it's all toyed. That's right.

Starting point is 01:04:06 Toss three in there. That's the big one. That's good, sir. My take on the whole science and the Bible or spirituality is that there's objective scientific truth, and I think there's spiritual truth. And I think there are just two different tools, and you try to put them together. I think all those tools help explain life and help us move in a direction that's better.

Starting point is 01:04:28 Before we had science, that's where that was science. Religion was science before science, right? I think it was spirituality. I think science is its own thing. It does a very good job of what it's supposed to do, but here's a great example. I'll give you a great example. When people say we should just only have science

Starting point is 01:04:44 and have no, don't worry about objective, like a moral code or don't have spirituality. You can't do that because science itself eliminates that. Science is only cause and effect. There is no, is this right, is this wrong? So you need both of them. If scientists ruled the world and it was just a bunch of atheists,

Starting point is 01:05:03 who didn't have any moral belief or anything based on anything that they learn, they would do a lot of tests and do a lot of shit just because they could because that's what science tells you to do. There wouldn't be a- There was no need for morals. Yeah, there wouldn't be like, hey, I'm gonna clone a bunch of humans.

Starting point is 01:05:17 There wouldn't be someone saying, but should we? You know what I mean? I don't know if we should, we would just do it. We have some kind of built-in inherent morality that I think that sometimes science denies, but I do think that all of us kind of know what's good and what's bad. Like, despite science potentially arguing

Starting point is 01:05:34 that we're all just here to survive on a giant rock floating through space to either fuck or survive or see who can live the longest time, I think that there's a little bit of a built-in inherent morality that lends some amount of stability to culture. And I actually first came across this.

Starting point is 01:05:53 I think it's the teachings of Aristotle in which he goes into like a built-in inherent morality. One of these old philosophers, dudes, I don't remember. I went to a classical Christian college for my first two years at University of Idaho. I was duly enrolled in a college called New St. Andrews, wonderful institution down in Moscow, Idaho for a liberal arts education. I got kicked out for breaking the code of conduct multiple times. It pretty much everything that I could do to break the good.

Starting point is 01:06:24 I mean, were you intentionally trying to get kicked out? I was just, I was, you know, what? I was a home school kid K through 12 and once I got cut loosening the college, I had committed every sin I could commit, you know, and oh, really? Yeah. So you were a little rebel. I went off the deep end in college for a while and tell me what I met my wife. A little bit of shelter. I am at my wife and B decided I want to be a doctor. Those are the two things that straighten me out. But for those first couple of years, I did go to this college and I learned a lot. One of the things that you read are a bunch of these.

Starting point is 01:06:52 What are we talking about? Upside down, cake stands, and run around naked. What are you doing? We're talking about getting drunk frequently, sleeping around a lot. I didn't use a lot of drugs aside from alcohol. Yeah, so so that wasn't an issue for me. Frankly, I got I got into drugs And those got me out of alcohol so normal college kid stuff Just not in a Bible college normal college kid stuff

Starting point is 01:07:18 But the stuff that would very quickly get you kicked out of a Bible college where as my mom said who also went to a Bible college You can't have holes in the knees of your swimsuit, ladies. So, you know, nothing gets that college. I think it's wonderful. And frankly, I think, you know, if you want to be a lawyer or an author, I think liberal arts education is great. But I didn't do well at that school because I was not living a very upright life at the time. But one of the things that I learned at that school was that human beings do have and philosophers and teachers have kind of built this into a lot of religious systems for a long period of time. We have this inherent built in morality.

Starting point is 01:07:57 So Ben, tell me, when you're hanging out with Aubrey and you guys couldn't have more polar opposite ideas when we were talking about before. Do you just bite your tongue or do you guys go back and have like a debate about it? Probably just appreciate each other for whatever. Honestly, Aubrey and I never talked about open relationships.

Starting point is 01:08:14 Oh, really? I've hung out with him and, several times, sorry Whitney. How long have you been with Whitney? You know a lot, we've gotten hunting for a week together. How wide you were together, been down in Texas multiple times. Yeah, and we've got another hunting trip coming up with a group of us, again down in Hawaii,

Starting point is 01:08:33 and we hang out a lot, but it's never something we've really even talked about. I mean, maybe part of it is it's pretty obvious with me as a father and extroverted as a devoted husband that it's just kind of not really something that is on the table for me. But we've never really had a discussion about it. It's probably like a mutual respect. No, kind of a boring answer, but we've never had. No, no, I just can't really say I don't want it.

Starting point is 01:08:59 I just actually figured that it would come out. I imagine that because you have done multiple trips, I thought for sure you'd be put in opportunities like that and maybe have it have a discussion. You never know. Like I thought for sure you guys have at least discussed it. Parties we weren't invited to, you know, those kinds of things. If we're not invited to a party. That's just crazy parties, yeah. So it's all. So you when you did Texas that you'd be in the area, it's because you have clients that you travel to and work with.

Starting point is 01:09:27 And these are, I guess, executives like, you know, people who really want to work with Ben Greenfield. What kinds of things do people hire you for? Because I can assume, and you don't have to say anything on air, but I'm assuming you don't cost with a personal trainer or charge, you probably a very, very high fee, especially because you're flying from, you know, Washington to, you know, San Jose to work with someone or wherever. What are the, what are they hiring for you for?

Starting point is 01:09:52 Yeah, you just do as quads for an hour? I know that's not usually like learn how to make scrambled eggs. That's a big one because you need to protein for breakfast. Do a lot of bench pressing, work on the chesticles. Sometimes a bench pressing form. And then how to sit in a sauna properly. A proper sauna cold center. Bad liar, that's on a posture.

Starting point is 01:10:11 No typically there are especially among wealthy, high achieving, hard charging executives, some pretty serious built-in issues with specifically sleep, how to exercise and keep yourself in shape for things like golf or tennis without actually stripping away time for your business or in some cases your family or other hobbies. Alcohol mitigate, like how do I, you know, how do I go out to all these, you know, dinners and meetings and mitigate the damaging effects that alcohol might have. A lot of times folks just want to pick my brain about what I do in those type of scenarios. Blood and bio work or biomarker interpretation is a big one.

Starting point is 01:10:56 A lot of these folks are willing to or have already paid the money for a complete blood panel, gut panel, some type of urinary hormone analysis, salivary genetic analysis, telemere evaluation, and they've already either started down the self-quantification road or are very interested in it, and they want somebody other than their kind of like ho-home, western medical trained physician,

Starting point is 01:11:21 who's gonna tell them, you know, cholesterol's high, get on statin' to actually go through their blood work and their biomarkers with them. And not only help them interpret those, but help them set up a customized diet and a supplement plan. So what I do for all these clients is I sit down

Starting point is 01:11:35 every week to every two weeks, typically on a Saturday, and I write out every workout they're gonna be doing. They upload their travel, they upload where they're flying, and when I program out everything they're supposed to be doing from an exercise standpoint. They pay me a monthly fee to do that. They all have an Instagram account, that's a private Instagram account that they share with me where they take photographs of everything that they eat. And same thing.

Starting point is 01:11:56 On the weekends, I go through all their food, I leave comments, I adjust anything that needs to be adjusted, I have a meal plan that I deliver to them. That's not a very strict meal plan. It's basically like, okay, so basically- Let's try and use it- Made to optimize their- They need your blood, your body, like your your breakfast options,

Starting point is 01:12:13 your lunch options, your dinner options for home, for travel. A lot of them have chefs, a lot of them have nutritionists. So these are the type of things that they share with their chef or their nutritionist so that they can be eating according to their genetics, their blood, their biomarkers, et etc. And then most of them either wear something like the aura ring

Starting point is 01:12:30 or use some other self-quantification device, some of them use an apple watch. Most of the time, I go through air, light, water, electricity, if I'm visiting their home. We do a full walk through their home environment. And by the time we've done that, most of them aren't using these Wi-Fi-enabled self-quantification devices like the Apple Watch, but some of them still have some of these older devices. But either way, whatever they're using to collect sleep and heart rate variability, I also analyze that each week and track how they're sleep and the heart rate variability is corresponding to nutrition, to supplements, which I also set up customized and then exercise. So I'm essentially acting as the CEO of their health

Starting point is 01:13:07 and I'm either coaching people like that or I'm doing one-on-one all-al-al-card consultations where it's just, I'm not gonna have you as my month-to-month coach been, but you're gonna work with me for, you know, 60 minutes or 90 minutes, I'm gonna fly you in, you'll have lunch with you and just pick your brain for an hour. Well, I'm gonna fall that up too

Starting point is 01:13:24 because you also do consulting with like professional teams and was it the NBA heat that you went in and kind of went through their facility and set them up? Right, yeah, so what we did with the Miami Heat, for example, was we began to inspect some of those variables I just alluded to. Like, what's the air lighting?

Starting point is 01:13:40 We know the indoor gym pollution. There was actually a study that just came out that showed the amount of cognitive impairment that occurs from air pollution. How much would it say, do you remember? It's significant. I don't know the percentage. But it's significant.

Starting point is 01:13:53 And so we've got these HEPA air filters, these molecule air filters set up in different corners of the gym. Same thing with light, right? Like we're going with a more biologically friendly light. Frankly, incandescent lighting and these old school clear incandescent bulbs are not an option for a facility like that, but there's a company called O'Walla that does more of like a biologically friendly LED, very similar to lighting science. And even though LED creates a lot of flicker,

Starting point is 01:14:20 which can be disruptive to the retina and can deleteriously affect circadian rhythm. If the lighting is pretty high off the ground, like your guys at studios are pretty high ceiling, we're not talking about like a bedside lamp that's right in your face. LED is not as big of an issue. It's kind of like a Wi-Fi router, right? Like the damage that it causes is exponentially decreased

Starting point is 01:14:40 based on your distance from the router. So the worst place on the planet to have your router is in your bedroom. For a team like that, we don't want Wi-Fi routers in the gym. Same thing with the water. We get rid of the water fountain where they're getting whatever fluoride and chlorine that the Miami municipal water has in it. Instead, what they're doing at their facility is hydrogen-rich water, which is a pretty potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant water. You can go to the molecular hydrogen foundation and look at some of the research on that. And then electricity, you know, customization of nutrition and diet based on blood work

Starting point is 01:15:16 and biomarkers. So a lot of the things that go above what, there are a lot of strength conditioning coaches out there who are miles ahead of me as far as their knowledge of Fast-sane and see what's happening in modern high-speed video You know I used to I used to run a physiology lab in a biomechanics lab where we'd surround triathlete running on a treadmill Or riding their bike with high-speed video cameras and do a gate analysis or a bike fit But now I mean you freaking step into a pod and you do a squad and then you do an overhead bread and rather than a trainer putting you through an FMS, like the actual machine is doing it.

Starting point is 01:15:50 Oh wow. I mean, some of this technology is like, that's awesome. There's stuff at facilities like this, I was unaware that even existed. But what I'm doing is going in and looking at all those little variables that are going to affect the players. You're like an interpreter now, though.

Starting point is 01:16:03 Long-term career, health career, et cetera, and attempting to make those tiny micro adjustments that take a team from good to great or take a player's career from 10 years to 12 years. How did that relationship happen? That's a good question. I know Aubrey was connected to the heat at one point. Was it, I don't remember.

Starting point is 01:16:23 I think their coach listens to my podcast. That was a lot. Someone listens to your podcast, and then they try to get a hold of you. Sure. And sometimes I'll get texts. I don't even know how somebody got my number. And there's some texts I've gotten. I'm like, getting me this as a joke.

Starting point is 01:16:39 And a lot of times they've discovered your podcast, and they're getting a hold of you and asking you something. Do you find that these executives support ticket on your website? Do you find that these executives and stuff you work with hire you because they want to perform better to outcompete their competition or are they hiring you because they're having

Starting point is 01:16:58 health problems and issues. Is it a phone call like, oh, it's because they can't get an erection, they can't sleep. And they feel like crap after these multiple wine fueled dinners. And they they travel to Tokyo or to Miami to do business. And they feel like shit during all their meetings during the day because they're jet lagged and they don't know what to do to manage jet lag. And they fly home and they feel like shit when they're with their family because again,

Starting point is 01:17:24 their jet lag coming back to the West Coast, all those pain points. Like, frankly, I mean as simple as it sounds, I just want to feel good. You know? Let's talk about some of the stuff that you're really well known for, which is figuring out how to mitigate the negative effects of things that may happen when you're, let's say, traveling, for example. What's a great strategy to mitigate jet lag? If I'm a business person, I travel and I want to reduce

Starting point is 01:17:50 the amount of time my body takes to get used to a new time zone or whatever, what are some strategies that I can do? The circadian rhythm, our natural 24 hour biological clock responds to three primary circadian cues, light, movement, and food. So those are the three lowest hanging fruits when it comes to keeping your body on a regular clock when you travel. So what does this mean? It means that you get exposed to the natural light in wherever the place is that you've traveled to on that clock as quickly as possible. Okay. Meaning...

Starting point is 01:18:23 So if the sun's up being being the light, meaning that. When you step off that plane, if it's night, you've got your, not your blue light blocking glasses, but you're really, like your red amber glasses, like from raw or from true dark, or from one of these companies, that does a really good blue light blocking glass. You walk into your hotel room and you pull out

Starting point is 01:18:40 like these LED light blocking stickers and you put them over the TV and the router and anything else that's blinking light Christmas lights in the hotel room. And then as soon as it's light where you happen to be, you get yourself into as much sunlight as possible. And if you can't step outside of your hotel room and get out in the morning sunshine

Starting point is 01:18:57 or go for a quick walk to make your morning calls, whatever, you know, when you're on the West Coast, back to the East Coast, whatever the scenario is, you get as much sunlight as possible, and if you can't get outside because you wake up at 7 a.m. and you go straight to that 7-3rd or 8 a.m. meaning, you've got the human charger, you know, in your ears and you've got something like the re-timer glasses on your eyes and you're using the light as much as possible to re-regulate your circadian rhythm and you're doing the same thing when you come back home.

Starting point is 01:19:23 Light's one, food is another. The more you eat on an airplane, the more out of whack your circadian rhythm is gonna be. She's fast. Well, on the airplane, we talk about ketone esters, really pro-ananti-inflammatory. The NF-cap of B pathway is one of the inflammatory pathways that tends to be most affected by flight,

Starting point is 01:19:41 by being off and away from the planet Earth and all the oxidation, solar radiation, et cetera. Two of the best ways to affect that type of inflammation are ketosis and or ketone esters, meaning that it's best to faster eat minimally when you travel and then sulfur rich antioxidants. So having a lot of your first meal when you get to where you're going,

Starting point is 01:20:03 when you are gonna eat, which I'll get to in a second, is cruciferous vegetables, or broccoli, cauliflower. If you don't have seabull or something like that, you can handle garlic, onions. You know, a lot of these sulfurous vegetables, or sulfur-based antioxidants, and ketone esters act similarly. So that would be the next thing is,

Starting point is 01:20:19 you want to be sure you're not stuffing face on the airplane. And what I do is typically I'll have some LG, like some of these little spiraling in our Clarella tablets. This would be for a longer flight, right? Not for like a two hour gig, but like overseas. Sure. Something that's a relatively slow release fuel, like macadamia nuts, a liquid or a powder-based ketone

Starting point is 01:20:39 ester, like you know, one of the keto prime meal packets or one of the human little bottles of ketone esters, something that's gonna keep ketones elevated, and then a lot of gum, a lot of stevia, a lot of these little effervescent electrolyte tablets, things I can put into water to kind of keep my appetite satiated. So, fasting when you travel,

Starting point is 01:20:59 and then when you get to where you're going, whatever time you get there, you wait until that place is first regular meal time to eat. Because it tells your body it's time to get up when you try to arrive. My flight lands in Tokyo at 10 a.m. I might be just ready to chew my arm off from having eaten very little on that nine hour flight Seattle to Tokyo, but I'm still gonna wait until about 12.30 to eat in Tokyo. So I get on that regular meal time. Oh, so you wait until forever? For breakfast lunch and dinner. Yeah, you wait for breakfast the same thing. If you land at 2 a meal time. Oh, so you wait until forever is? For breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Starting point is 01:21:25 Yeah, you wait for breakfast, the same thing. If you land at 2 a.m., like, and you get into your hotel room and your starving over that minibar and there's a dark chocolate enough, you go to, you know, you take your CBD and I take a lot of melatonin when I travel as well because that's a really good way to reset the circadian rhythm.

Starting point is 01:21:41 It is also an anti-inflammatory, a really good anti-inflammatory. You go to bed and then you don't fast, you don't skip breakfast. You have a lot of people on this intermittent fasting bandwagon when they travel, like it screws up your circadian rhythm to skip breakfast. So one of the things I'll do is I'll actually go out

Starting point is 01:21:57 of my way to eat a nice big good breakfast, especially when I travel internationally to realign that circadian rhythm. And then the last one is movement, right? So regularly timed movement, whether you're getting home or whether you've traveled to a certain location, is important.

Starting point is 01:22:13 So what I mean by that, if you exercise in the morning at 7 AM at home, get up at 7 AM and work out when you've gotten to where you're going. If you were coming after noon, yeah, at that time, where you happen to be, you want to use movement to begin to get your circadian rhythm into the same alignment that it was back home.

Starting point is 01:22:31 There are other things too that help, hot cold thermogenesis, doing the sauna and the cold pool. That's what I've heard you say before. I was waiting for you to say that because you've told me before, a lot of times you'll look for an infrared sauna as soon as you get into a place.

Starting point is 01:22:43 Not even just an infrared sauna. What I'll do is I'll look for, there's an infrared sauna as soon as you get into a place. Not even just an infrared sauna. What I'll do is I'll look for, there's two things I look for when I get into a hotel. I look for the nearest, well, three things, well, I look for the nearest gym and it's a big bonus if it's got a sauna in a pool, because water and heat are two things that really help a lot with jet lag. You know, they help with the blood flow, they help with the mitochondria, which are drastically affected again by the elevation and the solar radiation, and then the cold

Starting point is 01:23:08 is very helpful too, shutting down inflammation. If the other thing I look for is a park, right? Any patch of green, or whatever hotel I've traveled to because the park allows you to get out, get the sunshine, it allows you to typically get into your bare feet, which is a lot of times you can't do in the concrete, and that allows you to get the grounding and the earthing effect that can decrease jet leg. And if you know of a park near your hotel, if your hotel has a crappy gym, you'll all of a sudden, because I always travel with a resistance band and a suspension trainer, I have a place where I can go to train.

Starting point is 01:23:37 I can make my own outdoor gym. And then the last thing, if the gym doesn't have a sauna or the pool, I'll search for a local spa or local sauna, like Bonya 5 in Seattle or Air Spa in New York City, or one of these places that has some really good heat cold, so I can put on my underwater MP3 player and go and chill in the sauna and then go to the cool pool and go back and forth for a while. Have you ever put this together

Starting point is 01:24:03 and like what you just said to us in an easy to read blog or article or guide or something? The reason why I ask is because so many people travel for work so much and they don't realize how much jet lag negatively affects their performance and of course the long term, their performance at work and their pocketbook and all that stuff and their health, like something like that

Starting point is 01:24:24 because I know I have family in Italy, so we traveled Italy. It would always take me like three or four days to adjust and it's fucking horrible. I couldn't imagine going somewhere and then like, you got a meeting tomorrow and you got to perform or try to fucking do an iron and a trough. Right. That was our I tapped into a lot of this stuff. The other way around the Thursday is like, oh shit, I got a race on, for 10 hours on Saturday, like deep in the pain cave,

Starting point is 01:24:49 what can I do to feel good within two days, you know, when I'm in Thailand or Japan, doing an Iron Man. So to answer your question, there's a few resources. A, I have a small section of my book Beyond Training that has a Jet lag and sleep management section Okay, and it be on my website. I have an article

Starting point is 01:25:11 I wrote that's even more updated than that about six months ago called the last resource you'll ever need to get better sleep Excellenages that's just on my website Number three or seed did I start off with a website number three or C did I start off with a day and I ate it when that happens the THC might be kicked it in okay so a B3 is that I have a document so a lot of my clients that I work with I just have shared Google Docs and anytime I come across something interesting to add to that doc I just add it so they have like my jet lag tips cheat sheet

Starting point is 01:25:44 and they'll just delve into that. And then, you know, Speaker of the devil Aubrey's book, Own the Day, there's a lot in that on jet lag management too. And Aubrey and I talked a lot when he was writing that book about and what to include in those sections.

Starting point is 01:25:57 So that's a good guy as well. Cool. Talking about cool stuff, I know when you and I were texting each other a little bit before you came here, I asked you what you wanted to talk about and you said right now you're getting you're really really into Anti-aging and longevity And Halo top ice cream. Yeah, Halo top ice cream. Hey, are you rocking the Vioris? These pants all right. Well these pants are Viori. Yes. How do you like them? I love they great

Starting point is 01:26:22 We love them, man. I have a lot of V the Ori now. They're actually one of my podcast sponsors. No way shit Honestly, even if they weren't a sponsor, I'd wear their clothing because it it feels good And it's like Lulu lemon for dudes. Yes. I don't know if the Ori likes me to say that But it's like Lulu lemon for dudes. I think they and then I'm wearing my special trampoline jumpy socks Because I take my kids the special trampoline jumpy socks because I take my kids, the big trampoline park just got built by our house. Then why are you wearing them here?

Starting point is 01:26:50 You big door special socks. Sometimes you never know when you're going to encounter a trampoline, but they're actually really comfortable socks. And then I'm wearing Paul Chex underwear. Where is he? Literally his underwear? Where the pre-wounder. Where's that house? Where's that house? He had these bamboo underwear. Like these are a little the pre-wounder is on the floor.

Starting point is 01:27:05 He had these bamboo underwear. I think they were small in the back. He had big athletic ass and I got a train, a train, an hips, and a tiny butt. He gave me his check's underwear. Paul check is underwear. Yeah, he gave me a special Bam Bamboo underwear. I love them. They're super comfortable somewhere.

Starting point is 01:27:22 Paul check's underwear. Not like new underwear. His actual like used underwear. Yeah. And, and this shirt, this German guy gave me who's developing a clothing company to block EMF. He gave me pants that block EMF and a shirt. So what I'll do after we podcast

Starting point is 01:27:38 before I get on the flight back home. You'll give me Paul Chex underwear? No. Oh my God. Oh my God. I'll pull my German EMF blocking pants. This is what I travel with. They even have a clip at the bottom? No. Oh my God. Oh, damn it. Oh my, my German EMF blocking pan. This is what I travel with. They even have a clip at the bottom

Starting point is 01:27:47 that you can attach to your Uber cars like anything metal in the car, or even in the airplane when you land, to ground or earth right when you land without even to get outside barefoot. Oh my God. The shirt blocks EMF, the pants block EMF. I have EMF blocking underwear,

Starting point is 01:28:01 but I probably won't, I'll just keep Paul Chex lucky underwear on for the flight, because it's not a super long phone. Do you understand how important it is for us to keep you alive till 150 years at least? You know that, right? Yeah. I'm gonna look like an idiot.

Starting point is 01:28:13 Yes, I do. Yeah. I have a bit refill dies. One of my two. Maybe two. Jerry and Dorf goes, butts me, you know, what I'm, what I'm, what I'm, the only human left is the same.

Starting point is 01:28:23 Bro, we've got probably keep you alive. Spend $30,000 a month on his longevity, I killed by his goat. Yeah. Yeah, longevity, the talk about longevity. Is there anything new or interesting or fascinating that you're just learning now about, you know, extending lifespan?

Starting point is 01:28:42 Hmm. I would say that we do know about all the overlap between all the blue zones that I think a lot of people are aware of right now. Right, it's no smoking, high amount of wild plant intake, which act as a hermetic stress or to the body, a high legum intake, not I think because there's anything magical about beans and legumes, but they're eating a low glycemic index carbohydrate. Right, the magical fruit.

Starting point is 01:29:08 Rather than processed starch and sugar, a large amount of outdoor physical activity, low level outdoor physical activity, not exercising, but just moving, or gardening, hunting, gathering, whatever. And then a lot of time spent with family social relationships, you know, family dinners, that type of stuff. So we know a lot of these tried and true things. As far as some of the more interesting things I haven't talked about yet, you know, such as ketone esters and fasting, there are calorie restriction mimetics that are very interesting. That's interesting.

Starting point is 01:29:46 That trigger the same type of pathways that, so the way that it works is. Like where's Veritrol? If you, yeah, where's Veritrol is one, Rhodiola is another. Astragalist may possibly act, there's this company making this thing called TA65, which may act as a calorie restriction of a medic,

Starting point is 01:30:06 but it may also be acting as just like a mitochondrial support compass. So they stimulate like cell program death and cellotophagy or? No, the way that it works is very, so when you look at cold thermogenesis, very simple example, we know that cold thermogenesis up-regulates

Starting point is 01:30:24 something called uncoupling proteins. So, uncoupling proteins would be what you'd find a higher amount of in brown adipose tissue. When you get exposed to cold, you get a conversion of white fat into metabolically active brown fat, which, rather than taking calories and Oxygen to produce ATP instead produces heat Now, why is that important? Well because when we look at the electron transport chain in the mitochondria We know that once you have a certain amount of ATP and ATP is no longer being depleted What happens is there's almost like a backup in the electron transport chain and free radicals begin to leak out of the membrane

Starting point is 01:31:09 as electrons build up in the chain because they no longer need to be used for conversion into ATP because ATP stores are full. Now that doesn't mean free radicals are bad because free radicals serve as signaling molecules to tell all of the mitochondria within the cell whether or not they need to down-regulate or up-regulate how much ATP or how much energy

Starting point is 01:31:32 they're producing. So it's a very good way for your body to be able to keep track of its metabolic rate. Interesting. But what happens is if you've got too much ATP around, too many free radicals build up, too many spill out into the body, and this is why fasting has such a profound effect for, to a certain extent, because you deplete ATP, and by depleting ATP, you have the ability of the electrons

Starting point is 01:31:55 to move through the transport chain without getting backed up and having free radical spillage back into the inner cellular membrane. And does this mean that then, do we get an interpreter in here? Does this mean that supplementing with creatine and just dramatically increasing ATP stores and keeping them high all the time could potentially have a negative effect

Starting point is 01:32:18 from that to much of that could. Now, at the same time, we know that ATP, it's a healthy cellular energy compound, and furthermore, the more ATP that you can get without a large amount of calories and a large amount of digestive distress and some of the oxidation that occurs from breakdown of proteins and carbs and fats is good.

Starting point is 01:32:37 This is why some of the best nutrients for longevity from an ATP standpoint are creatine and D ribose because D ribose is a very low glycemic index sugar that rapidly restores ATP availability in mitochondria without excessively producing ATP. But as far as on the other end, kind of draining ATP levels are at least causing calories to produce less ATP and to instead produce something like, say, heat. We know that brown fat does

Starting point is 01:33:06 a very good job at that because there's a higher amount of these uncoupling proteins that essentially uncouple the little transporter that causes ATP to be produced by a cell and instead simply cause heat to be produced by a cell. And so some of these things actually increase UCP and they act as calorie restriction mimetics. That's what a calorie restriction mimetic is, is it's basically... Right now there's someone's going to sell them as fat burners, but keep going. Exactly. So we're talking about things like a straggler, like rodeola.

Starting point is 01:33:37 One interesting thing is sea urchins. Sea urchins actually have a very high amount of the molecules that increase your availability of the or the up regulation of these UCPs. And there's some people out there like Dr. Jack Cruz who kind of gets painted with a, you know, in a poor light sometimes because he's a little bit controversial and relatively dogmatic. But he believes that most humans grew up or humans originated on coastal areas, where we had a high availability of shellfish, DHA, sunlight, and really mineral rich water.

Starting point is 01:34:11 And so by getting a lot of these things in our diet, we're actually enhancing our health from a very ancestral standpoint. And you could say that these sea urchins might fall into that category of supporting mitochondria and the uncoupling protein. It just goes to show in highlight just how complex the body is in the sense that on the one hand, you want to increase ATP.

Starting point is 01:34:30 You want to have a lot of ATP studies shows, you know, build more muscle, burns more body fats, got cognitive boosting effects, seems to be some antioxidant effects, at least for the heart. Doctors are now prescribing or at least telling people are recommending to take care of you when they have things like anxiety and depression. But on the other hand, it's very important to also encourage a process that depletes ATP, things like exercise, you know, these fasting mimetics,

Starting point is 01:34:56 and then of course the ultimate, which is fasting. Now here's something that's fascinating. I want to ask your question on this. We had a Stan Effordingen in our show the other day. He's a world strongest bodybuilder. Really, really cool guy. 50 years old now, but at one point, he had one of the highest.

Starting point is 01:35:11 He's got one of the highest three lift totals. He's also a power lifter. He's got a deadlift squat. Like 800 pounds. Very, very strong. So, and you know, we were talking about fasting, and he's like, no, you know, I'll never fast. I was wanting to feed my body and feed my athletes.

Starting point is 01:35:30 And I told him, my own, my personal experience with fasting, which I thought was fascinating. Now, I didn't go into fasting for any kind of performance enhancing benefit. I employ 48 or 72 hour fast, you know, every other month now or so, for things like gut health, longevity, reduction, inflammation, I get a spiritual effect from it in the sense

Starting point is 01:35:48 that it clears my mind, helps remove me from food, and all these other benefits. And then I say something real quick. Oh, yeah, for people listening, especially my audience, this is just right now, Sal is not like a skinny ass fasted, like cold and mancy, dude, like, he's built. Yeah, you're still fasting 48, 72 hours in maintaining months.

Starting point is 01:36:04 Yeah, and in fact, I was doing a 48 to 72 hour fast once a month and I did that for about seven months. And here's the side effect that I got. And I did it for gut health. I did it for all those other things that I mentioned, the spiritual effect, the detaching from food, the low inflammation, longevity, all that stuff.

Starting point is 01:36:19 The benefit I noticed, which was fascinating, was about two or three days after I started to refeed. So I, you know, 72 hour fast, then I start to slowly reintroduce food. About two or three days later, some of the best workouts I'd ever had, incredible pumps. And I built more muscle during this entire process. Now, part of me thought, okay, maybe it's because my gut health

Starting point is 01:36:40 got so much better, I'm able to assimilate more food. Well, I've since retested this. And by the way, I had a similar effect years ago. Years ago, I started employing once a week vegan day, but really what it turned into was a once a week 600 calories. Like a meatless one day, yeah. But it really was like 600 calories. So it was kind of like this low calorie day.

Starting point is 01:37:00 Now, you've noticed the day after when I eat meat, I get like this rebound effect. And bodybuilders have seen this, I've talked about this for a long time. One of the most anabolic periods that the lever experience is post-show after hardcore dieting. So after these long fast, I refeed two or three days later, I'm building more muscle and I'm wondering if it's,

Starting point is 01:37:19 you know, resensitizing me to protein. It's increasing the way I used glycogen and it's giving me some of this effect that we're talking about where I'm depleting ATP and then I'm giving myself more ATP. Have you ever noticed anything like that from fasting or when you start refining? Well, it's interesting because the human body in general seems to respond very well in terms of whatever ATP depletion and then ATP restoration or caloric depletion and caloric restoration to this idea of cycling right We know this is the basis of of periodization and that stair stepping effect to get better fitness

Starting point is 01:37:50 You build then you recover then you build then you recover We now know that there are cancer researchers doing what's what's called press pulse cycling of I believe it's glutamine that they're the high glutamine and low Glutamine high glutamine low glutamine This is during cancer treatment. Yeah, yeah, it's called I think I think that the term glutamine and low glutamine, high glutamine, low glutamine. This is during cancer treatment? Yeah, it's called the colon. I think the term for it, and I don't know a lot about it. Because I know glutamine can feed cancer. What's called, yeah, exactly, which is why I think it's glutamine,

Starting point is 01:38:15 but it's called press pulse cycling. Interesting. I think Thomas Seafreet is the guy to look up to, who's looking into a lot of this research on this type of dieting for cancer patients. We see guys like Dr. Dan Pampa, who I interviewed on my podcast, doing feast famine cycling, right?

Starting point is 01:38:31 Five days low calories, calorie restriction, one day fast, one day ad libidum, calorie refeeds, as many calories as you want. We look at the Bible. God built, and he worked his ass off for six days and then on the seventh day, he rested, right? So we see, there we go Adam, I just thought you did.

Starting point is 01:38:52 So yeah, the idea is it seems the body responds very well to, I mean, the frickin' high intensity interval training, right? Same thing. They just 30 seconds hard, four minutes easy. There was a study that came out within the last five years where they compared, because the old way of approaching dieting, at least from a fat loss standpoint,

Starting point is 01:39:13 in our space and the fitness personal training space was, let's figure out how many calories you're burning, and let's put you at a deficit, and then that's your new calorie intake, and we'll do your macros, whatever, but that's your new calorie intake every single day. So if your body's burning 2000 calories a day, I'll put you at 1500 calories a day

Starting point is 01:39:28 and then this is what you're gonna eat every single day. And that was the old way of approaching it. Now, through my experience working with clients and doing myself, I always noticed that people got better results from staggering that. So I would still average out to, at the end of the week, a 3,500 calorie deficit, which is what 500 calories a day adds up to, but it wasn't 500 calorie deficit every single day. Some days it was a thousand, some days it was no deficit, some days it was a surplus, and so on, and I saw better results.

Starting point is 01:39:55 Part of me thought, you know, I wonder if it's a psychological effect from that because some days you feel like you're eating more or less or Well, they did a study and they actually Controlled for that and they compared two groups of people that ate the same calories, both in a deficit, one group, same deficit every single day, the other group, kind of staggered it, and the group that staggered it got better, more fat loss, preserved more muscle, got better results.

Starting point is 01:40:17 And here's the best part, mitigated the metabolic adaptation that happens from restricted calorie diets, which is one of the biggest problems that you'll run into, especially for people who compete in bodybuilding and stuff like that, or even people who just diet real hard, when you drop your calories, your metabolism adapts downward and becomes very efficient, which we all know is extremely frustrating. You lose 20 pounds, and then you're fucked.

Starting point is 01:40:41 Your metabolism slowed down. Now you're doing all this cardio, you're eating low calories, and it's like you eat anything over that, and you gain all the way back real quick. Staggering it seems to mitigate that metabolic adaptation. Now do you still, when you're fasting like that, for that 48 to 72 hour cycle,

Starting point is 01:40:58 what do your workouts look like? No, and actually, what do I feel like? No, so what I do during that period is I'll walk or I'll hike, I'll stretch, I'll do mobility work. If I do do resistance training, it's very low intensity, full range of motion. I'm not trying to stress the body anymore.

Starting point is 01:41:15 I'm not trying to increase my performance. I'm not trying to get stronger or more body fat. Really, I was treating it like a spiritual experience, if you will. But when I would come back, I'd get stronger and felt so much better. I feel like a spiritual experience, if you will. So different mental space. But when I would come back, I'd get stronger. I felt so much better. Pussy. Really?

Starting point is 01:41:29 Oh, crush it. He's the hat. I still worked it. I still worked it. Well, taking time off from exercise, I think it's important too. But anyhow, it's funny because now I get a text from Stan and he's like, I did my first 24 hour fast. So I actually was able to convince him to give that a shot.

Starting point is 01:41:43 And I think it's because I told him there may be some muscle-boving benefit from it. When I am at home, I try to do a Saturday to a Sunday night dinner fast. I do 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast every day, aside from the days where I'm traveling internationally or across many time zones where I'll eat breakfast at whatever the time zone is where I happen to be at,

Starting point is 01:42:04 and sometimes that means it's not 12, 16 hour fast. But I do that 24 hour Saturday dinner to Sunday dinner fast. I've got two other things regarding longevity. Yes. One would be, and I don't know if you guys have talked about this much on the show before, but these NAD or NR precursors, they're becoming more and more popular.

Starting point is 01:42:24 Companies like True Niantion and Elysium Basis, Thorn has one called NISL, and it's called NAR, Nicotinamide Ribus. Oh, there you go. And it's a precursor to NAD, and we know when it comes to longevity, amount of Condrial Health, inflammation. Seems to be a very strong role for that. NADH ratios are incredibly important.

Starting point is 01:42:48 And so now you can buy supplements that have some really good research behind them. Last week, article came out. I think it was in New York Times about the pill that cost less than a cup of coffee that can make you live to 150 years old. I read that. Well, 10 years ago was Rivera-Trawl.

Starting point is 01:43:04 Now it's nicotinamide riboside. And the way that you can also, and there are companies now who are selling patches, a nasal sprays, injections and IVs are very common in a lot of these anti-aging clinics now. Yeah, so I actually, once every two weeks, I have a company in Texas that sends me NAD in a syringe. I'm not allowed to do IV,

Starting point is 01:43:32 so I'm still competing in a water sanctioned sport. Oh, so you can't do any of these. I can't put more than 30 ml into my body. Oh, interesting. So I can't do a drip IV, but I can do a push IV. So I do a push IV of NAD, and a super uncomfortable injection, like your gut burns and your body feels like it's on fire You finish and you feel freaking unstoppable. It's it's a really different

Starting point is 01:43:54 Yes, and in tracking my telomere length It drastically reduced telomere length when I began using not just NR in between my NAD injections Right, so I do NAD injections once every two weeks. I do NR every day to keep my NAD levels up. I drink a, there's a tea, Dr. McColle introduced me to this tea, it's called Poudiarchobark tea. That's also an NAD precursor. So I have a batch of that tea in the fridge,

Starting point is 01:44:18 and I'll just drink that as one of my beverages throughout the day. I like that, because I like that, because it's in natural form, and here's why, because, and I'm always always careful because, for example, 15, 20, 30 years ago, it was all this research showing antioxidants or great for you, the fight for your radicals,

Starting point is 01:44:34 you need lots of antioxidants. Then they did studies where they gave people high fucking doses of antioxidants that you wouldn't necessarily find. And nature and when it happened was increased risk of cancer and other problems because it's the hottest.

Starting point is 01:44:46 And now you know why, what are some of the primary signaling molecules in your body? Free radicals. Free radicals. So you eliminate those and they can't tell the mitochondria, whether energy is high or energy is low, we take all those away and all of a sudden the mitochondria don't know which way is up and which way is down. Good cancer, right?

Starting point is 01:45:09 Wow. So they go into these states of unobtrused energy production. Wow. Yeah. So the NR precursors and NR, NAD, there's injection clinics popping up all over the place and there's some really good research behind this. I go to a lot of these anti-aging conferences now, NR and NAD and STEM cells are probably two of the biggest things that anti-aging docs and folks in a lot of these conferences are talking about. But, you know, STEM cells, I think that's a horse

Starting point is 01:45:39 has been kicked to death, you know, I've talked about STEM cells a lot, but it's interesting. There's one other category in my research for this book that I found really interesting, and that was a profound improvement in rodent lifespan with fecal transplants, with actual bacterial replenishment,

Starting point is 01:45:57 especially in my life. So you're seven, so one should up your ass now? No, I'm not. I'll get to that. You're eating ice with issues like clostridium difficile, Cedificile seems to cause a decrease in lifespan, but by replacing colonic bacteria with some kind of extra fecal matter from someone else,

Starting point is 01:46:15 there appears to be some kind of an immune modulating effect. Now, even though there's clinics now, like the Taymout clinic in Britain, there are websites where you can purchase stool from a healthy donor, have it shipped to you, and some pretty straightforward videos about how to do your own at home fecal transplant. Forget the pulse.

Starting point is 01:46:33 Check underwear. I would rather eat a lot of really good prebiotics and take care of my gut, and hopefully keep my gut to the point where I'm not getting cluster-inventive. So, but if you did, if you tested and did have it, it might actually be prudent to do something like a fecal transplant therapy. But what I find more interesting,

Starting point is 01:46:51 and this is something I started doing after seeing some of the data on this, working very, very similarly from a longevity standpoint in terms of immune system modulation and gut health, is this whole old friend's hypothesis, the fact that we live in this ultra clean culture with antibacterial hands so, and super clean hospitals and antibiotics,

Starting point is 01:47:13 and you don't want your dog to kiss your kid, God forbid. And so what happens is you see a decrease in beneficial bacteria in the immune system becoming stronger in response to germs and bacteria. And so a lot of people, not only are eating fermented foods and they're laying their kids, go to pettings ooze and play with farm animals. And now word is beginning to get out.

Starting point is 01:47:32 That is pretty good to get dirty and to get in touch with the bacteria. These are the parties. But then you take that to the next level because many of these things, measles parties. That's actually pretty funny. That's not right over you, but that was actually pretty funny. That's not right over you, but that was actually pretty funny.

Starting point is 01:47:46 The, uh, some of these things are a little bit lesser known, like, say, whipworms or tapeworms. These actually have some very potent immune modulating effects, and many of them are not parasites, because a parasite has to do damage to the host and live within the host to be classified as a parasite. If it lives within the host, that doesn't do damage. And one could even argue mitochondria fall into that category as an ancient thing. It's a eukaryotic organism that got enveloped into a cell. I read a book on this. There was a guy who wrote a book who had terrible Crohn's disease and started reading about how people who would get infected with like hookworm, for example, had much lower rates of symptoms

Starting point is 01:48:25 from their Crohn's disease. So he actually went to a third world country because nobody would give him hookworms to infect himself with. And he walked barefoot around latrines and stuff, got infected and his Crohn's disease pretty much went away. Today, now I don't think you can find any of these clinics in the U.S. but I know in Mexico, right? In Mexico, they have some of these where you'll go there and they'll actually infect you they'll inoculate here's here's talking about here's the problem with that

Starting point is 01:48:50 those live within you and they don't go away so a lot of people who do this let's say with with like tapeworms and they go to mexico and get inoculated you start like pooping the tapeworm babies in your ass hole it's just like it can create a situation where you are intensely aware that something is living within, and some people lose weight because it begins to eat a lot of your calories and food stuff, but at the same time, there are certain forms of, yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 01:49:15 There's a lot of you. Along with your fat, along with your fat burning calorie restriction mimetic, we feature hookworm, and keon hookworms. Anyways, though, so some don't actually have the capability to survive for long periods of time within the body, but still cause immune system modulation.

Starting point is 01:49:32 And there are specific forms of rat tapeworms and pig whipworms that I researched for this book and for the past four months, every two weeks, I've been dosing with... Oh my God, whipworms. whiplorms and tapeworms. Literally just you drink them down that's like this little salty I'm not making out with you anymore. It's like a shi-

Starting point is 01:49:52 I was going to. You're sitting in my seat right now. I'm shitting or I'm sitting in my seat. What I have, what I have noticed is my gut feels much better particularly when I travel, right, so I used to get some gut issues and constipation, I get would just feel kind of funky when I go overseas that one away,

Starting point is 01:50:14 and my immune system feels like it just feels better. I didn't get sick a lot anyways, but I know I'm doing a lot of things, there's a lot of confounding variables, but ultimately, just the injection of the Just the data alone on dosing with it's called Hellmynthic therapy, right? There you go. I've got therapy now you have to keep taking you have to keep taking them because they die right? So it's not like if you stop yeah, your body gets rid of her meat of dose for four months

Starting point is 01:50:43 I think it was about 1700 bucks. So it's yeah, it's a protocol for you to do. And I don't know if I'll keep doing it, but at least wanted to try it out. And see, I felt pretty good. People used to pay to get rid of those things or paying to get them. But anyway, no, I want to know how often like, so I know you've tried so many. I mean, you're the guy too, for sure. I love reaching out to I did the BPC 157, by the way, for my Achilles, and it was miraculous for that. I really was. I know Sal was anti-acoustic.

Starting point is 01:51:07 Oh, no, I don't like the way it made me feel. But it was huge for me. So sensitive, coffee, BPC. Yeah. Did you know it? That's why it's called. Did you know it actually made influence the way that the dopamine acts in the brain,

Starting point is 01:51:21 and there's some studies showing that they'll give BPC to rats and then give them amphetamines and amphetamines won't affect them the same way because their brains become less sensitive to dopamine or administration. Yeah, they were doing ejection and then... So I took a few shots of it and I felt flat. Subcutaneously. I did and I felt flat and so I stayed away from them.

Starting point is 01:51:42 Shutting your gut, right? Yeah, I did. Wow, wow. I've injected in a joint, I've never done like the subcutaneous into the gut. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so. But anyways, I'm asking this because you've put so many things

Starting point is 01:51:55 probably in your protocol for a while. How often is it that you eliminate something that maybe you've been doing for a while, and you're just like, okay, just the hassle to do that. I'm not seeing or noticing the benefits that much, It's not gonna become something very regular for me. I can't imagine you can keep up everything. Yeah, pretty regularly. Pretty regularly. They're stuff like, um... Yeah, well, we're some of the last things that fell off.

Starting point is 01:52:17 I guess the last couple, I hate to say so because I feel like I'm shoving people under the bus. I also have to be radically honest and just say how it is. Appreciate like, uh, agreeing, like the agreeing. It was developed by one of my friends, Sean. And it's like supposedly the super potent creatine precursor that gives you energy for days and et cetera, et cetera. I went through two bottles of it and just didn't feel a thing.

Starting point is 01:52:41 And I was hoping it would be like the next new biggest creatine and grant, it could be just me because I know they have some good data behind it and some decent clinical research, but I didn't notice anything from it. So that's one example. Another one would be of course like CBD for energy. I haven't really seen any benefits or something like that,

Starting point is 01:53:00 but I haven't used too much of those like pick me up, energy, focus, caffeine, CBD pre workouts. I have them at home to try probiotics. Almost zero probiotics have I noticed much of a difference from. Is that because you do such a good job of eating foods that are fermented? But they say probiotics increase cognitive performance

Starting point is 01:53:19 and see, I only feel that's true for people that are not probably getting it in their diet. They're deficient in their diet. They're spreading of perceived exertion and improved sleep their diet. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. I'm not depressed, but markers of depression.

Starting point is 01:53:31 And I don't notice that much. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics.

Starting point is 01:53:39 They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. They've connected probiotics. One of the formulas I want to do for Keon is a complete gut formula. You know, I want so far a fain and I want a lot of strome and I put whipworm in there. No, I'm not putting whipworm in there. Plus it's not scalable, you know, cost.

Starting point is 01:53:52 It's not NSF certified for sport. Anyways though, I also want to include a form of probiotic that could potentially seed the gut. And so I'm an investor. I'm not going to say the name of the company right now, but I'm an investor in a probiotic company developing a probiotic that could potentially seed the gut and stay in there and not get degraded by the stomach acid and prevent none of the difficulties that are currently presented with probiotic absorption. And if that one turns out

Starting point is 01:54:22 to really flesh itself out in more clinical trials, that's what I would include in something like a supplement. That would be a probiotic that I take. But I've tried like 12 different kinds of probiotics and just never kept up with them because I haven't noticed the thing. I haven't heard much about colostrum. Could you go further into detail from that?

Starting point is 01:54:37 Isn't that from breast milk? Yeah, it's the first part of mammalian milk. It has a lot of immunoglobulins in it. It has a lot of growth factors in it. It's a precursor for both growth hormones. That's an old school bodybuilding supplement. It's an like growth factor, old school bodybuilding supplements. Studies have shown that it helps to heal a leaky gut by improving the stability of

Starting point is 01:54:59 zonulin, approaching the gut lining that can, when it's not moderated, cause leaky gut, like increased gut permeability, it's also been shown to allow athletes to experience less gut distress and less gut permeability, especially when exercising under stress in hot conditions. So the fact that it's relatively anabolic has some pretty good gut barrier,

Starting point is 01:55:24 protective capabilities Make it something that I like but that is something I cycle based on the fact that it's such a potent Growth hormone precursor and IGF precursor like you don't want to be in a constant anabolic state We're turned to our press pulse discussion. So I load with colost I'm on colostum right now I take eight keon colostum every morning because I have the Tahoe race coming up right here and here in a week. So I know my body's gonna be going to battle for, I think that race will be 20-7 out.

Starting point is 01:55:53 No, for me, that'll be like a two in a, I've raced the big long one there, but this year I'm racing the fittest CEO challenge. So I'll be racing pretty hard for about, who the hell's gonna compete with you at that? Dave Asperer. I'm also yeah I have a triathlon on on Sunday that I'm racing I like to do some some short fast race so I get multiple reasons for me to take a colostrum

Starting point is 01:56:15 so I Don't take it you around But what I do is whenever I have a big event coming up I load with it for two weeks prior in the same way that you'd load with Beat juice for two weeks prior in the same way that you'd load with juice for two weeks prior to endurance event. Did you jab Dave Asprey twice in the show? No, just once. No, he jabbed him once earlier. Well, that was off air.

Starting point is 01:56:32 No, it was off air. So, thanks Captain Obvious. Have you ever messed around with the anabolic effects of cholesterol, dietary cholesterol? This is something that bodybuilders have used for a long time and I've experimented with doubling or tripling my cholesterol levels intake for a week or two strength increases every single time. Every single time I get strength increases from doing,

Starting point is 01:56:56 have you ever messed around with anything like that? Do you think that that's because of the availability of fat soluble vitamins or because it's an increase in cholesterol. Increasing cholesterol, I ask, is that there's some research out there that shows that food does not have a big impact on cholesterol levels. Well, so you're right, but here's what's interesting. I just read that what you're talking about, but here's what's interesting.

Starting point is 01:57:22 So, I control for all those factors, so I control for all those factors. But also, there are several studies that support what I'm talking about, where they'll take, there was one in particular where they took people between 50 to 60, so they were a little bit older, and they broke them up into three groups, and it was a low cholesterol, moderate cholesterol, and very high cholesterol intake,

Starting point is 01:57:41 and they compared them all to each other, and the biggest difference was strength and muscle. Strength and muscle gain and it was directly related to the amount of cholesterol that they were consuming and it came from egg yolks. And body, like Vince Coronda, who was with the old school scientist bodybuilders back in the 19, maybe 40, used to put his athletes on these high cholesterol, you know, full fat dairy, lots of chicken liver

Starting point is 01:58:06 and beef liver and egg yolk type diets and people would see these crazy gains. Since I started experimenting with this, I started saying even when controlling for all the other anabolic factors, like more protein, more calories. Correct, correct. And so I started, I've now told several people,

Starting point is 01:58:21 they've tested it themselves and they've also noticed the same, Doug in fact, I fact, I think Doug didn't you do the same thing and notice the increase in cholesterol gave us some more strength. So yeah, so I would love for you to look into that because you dive deep into things and I think it's a fascinating. It's been interesting. It's been interesting. We've been told for so long that it's not good for you.

Starting point is 01:58:38 Is it an increase in HDL or LDL cholesterol? You know if they've didn't blood test. I don't do any blood test. It's just I literally will go from eating on average to a yolks a day to 12, a yolks a day. So dramatic increase in diet. And I can tell within a day or two, I literally can feel it when I work out.

Starting point is 01:58:59 And it almost feels like my CNS fires harder when I live with my attention. I've never intentionally tried to raise cholesterol, but I guess I kind of have in that I try to keep my total cholesterol above 200. Oh, yeah. So you get your exeagator's testing? Yeah. The cognition, enhancing, and the effects on the cell membranes and having high cholesterol.

Starting point is 01:59:19 Assuming you don't have familial hypercholosteremia, assuming you don't have high blood glucose, which can oxidize that cholesterol, assuming your HDL to triglyceride ratio is favorable, meaning you don't have high cholesterol, but also high triglycerides, which would indicate overeating or high intake of vegetable oils or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or something like that. And finally, assuming you don't have high levels of inflammation, like high HSCRP or high homocysteine or high fibroinogen, in the absence of any of those factors that make cholesterol, a cardiovascular risk factor, it's a good idea to keep your cholesterol elevated. You just have to, in my opinion, this is where I like blood

Starting point is 01:59:55 testing. You got to kind of pay attention to some other variables or at least know intuitively what's going to affect those variables. Like if you're eating a high cholesterol diet, processed sugar, invest in what I was probably worse for you than the person eating the low cholesterol diet because you've got more around to be oxidized, right? You've got more around to build these phone-based plaques and the arteries. So yeah, like I'm a fan of keeping cholesterol elevated,

Starting point is 02:00:19 but it needs to be couched in terms of you also mitigating risk. What about sodium? Do you manipulate that at all? Are you paying attention to that as an athlete, especially? It needs to be couched in terms of you also mitigating risk. What about sodium? Do you manipulate that at all? Are you paying attention to that as an athlete especially? I have really been geeking out on minerals, meaning a lot of minerals, less water, more minerals based on all the stuff I've been doing with light.

Starting point is 02:00:39 The fact that your body needs to be rich in minerals in order to properly respond to light-based signals, whether it's the juice or sunshine or whatever. And just drinking more water is not necessarily going to increase your level of minerals. You must actually drink like salt water or put Himalayan sea salt, I hate to say this, but it's high in iron, it's high in metals, it's one of the reasons it's colored. Even though it's pretty high in minerals, Celtic salt is actually higher in minerals and clean. If you're going to have a salt, yeah, you have a Celtic salt. Hey, so big fan of that, there are companies now selling these super salty sachets.

Starting point is 02:01:22 There's one called Quintron, another one called Quint Essentials. I showed you, like, I was pulling out my magical Mary Poppins bag. I showed you, like, these trace liquid minerals that I travel with on a plane. So I do a lot of minerals, but I got into that way back in the Iron Man days again, when I would go to bed and I could hear

Starting point is 02:01:39 my heart rate pounding in my ears, right? And I knew there was some kind of blood pressure regulation issue or something. It turns out, I just went for a long period of time, mineral depleted. And we used to have an exercise physiologist come in and use a sweat sodium analysis patch to test all the athletes when I trained for team timers. Is this how much sodium they lose on this? ZC or sweat sodium loss.

Starting point is 02:01:58 I was two to three times most of the other athletes. So you just sweat out a lot of salt. I have robust sodium excretion mechanisms, which dictates that I need to take more sodium in or more minerals in. And the interesting thing we talk about genetics is that I come from a heavily northern European heritage where traditionally there is a lot of fermentation, a lot of saltine, a lot of pickling. It's what is used to cure food.

Starting point is 02:02:25 And so it makes sense that the body would respond by developing a mechanism that allows it to get rid of excess sodium or excess salt so that you don't see too high of a rise in blood pressure or the other thing that can happen is it can have a little bit of a de-alcolonizing effect. Let me tell you something that I just did recently, and I want your opinion on it, like, what you think it might be. So something happens sometimes when we get so caught up and work here, we'll work like a 12-hour day,

Starting point is 02:02:54 we're talking like crazy. I don't get a chance to eat. I do make sure, because I've teased this out to make sure it's not that. I hydrate myself, but I'll sometimes start to get these headaches, and I get, they're pretty bad bad headaches. And you know, I've gone home and tried, oh, thinking it's a hydration drink and more water thing. And it's, oh, I just need food in your period. Right. So we were having this conversation. We got into a talk about sodium the other day.

Starting point is 02:03:18 And I thought, man, I wonder if I'm just like really depleted. And I wonder if my body goes through it really fast. Because I also noticed too, like I can hold and release lots of water too. And so I wonder if I just have this ability to use it up really quick in my bodies. Needing that maybe has something to do with blood pressure. Maybe that's what my headaches were happening. And so the last three times this has happened, I've ate two deal kosher pickles and the headache has gone away like almost instantaneous. It's crazy and it's a pretty serious headache. What do you think that is?

Starting point is 02:03:50 Pickle fetish. Pickle fetish. I mean, it did very good, very gargling, very well could be related to a mineral deficiency. Although with headaches, it's typically magnesium and I don't think pickles are very high in magnesium, but it certainly could just be as simple as what you've just elucidated, right? It's a mineral issue causing blood sugar or disreg, or blood pressure or dysregulation, which is resulting in a headache. It's, it's, I'm three for three right now, so I don't know yet for sure, but I mean, this has happened to me three times, three times. I've gone back to that, and it's like, instantly, it's relieving. It's,'s you also crave things like bananas, sausages, because we can have a discussion about this later.

Starting point is 02:04:31 There are some other things that could be a play here. The doctorate, keep talking shit. Okay. So two more things. What were we just talking about before Adam? The actual clue is headaches. You were talking about the minerals, the genetics. So when you look at the African American population,

Starting point is 02:04:49 not a strong heritage of salting and pickling and fermenting foods, a not-to-stereotype, I know this sounds horribly racist, but time spent in, especially in like the Southern American areas, time spent on slave ships, right? Like losing a lot of sweat, losing a lot of sodium during those long periods of time and boats transported over from Africa

Starting point is 02:05:14 and potentially the development of some pretty robust sodium retention mechanisms. You put someone with that type of genetic ancestry. That's a fact. That's a fact. Of heavily salted foods in all of a sudden, you see an epidemic of high blood pressure in African Americans that you don't see

Starting point is 02:05:33 with the same type of salt intake in northern European. It actually says in medical journals that African Americans tend to be more sensitive to sodium in relationship to high blood pressure. That's actually in the, if you read medical journal, it would actually say that. Do you, because your body gets rid of sodium so quickly,

Starting point is 02:05:50 do you test your other minerals? How are you with your calcium, for example? Are you worried about building up too much calcium? So I test on a quarterly basis, hydroxy vitamin D, which can be relevant to calcium levels, because if you have too much, which I rarely have, based on the reasons I was talking about earlier, you can get excess calcification. I test calcium, I test red blood cell magnesium, potassium, CO2, which can be indicative of minerals

Starting point is 02:06:20 because a low bicarbonate level can indicate that you have, for example, too much unopposed sodium that you're consuming, which would typically be from packaged foods, and I test chloride levels. Those are the minerals that I analyze on my blood. Really, the ones I pay closest attention to would be that chloride, that bicarbonate level, which can indicate overall net acidity in the body. You got to eat less sodium, less caffeine, less alcohol, less red meat, step up your. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it.

Starting point is 02:06:46 You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it.

Starting point is 02:06:54 You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it.

Starting point is 02:07:02 You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. I do track that stuff. Excellent. And the interesting thing about pickles, this was the second thing I was going to say, is that, you know, this is relevant for all those people listening in who might be racing Tahoe next week or who are athletes, is that it turns out that cramping during exercise is very rarely due to mineral depletion or due to dehydration, especially in people who are already paying attention to those variables. They're using electrolytes, they're salting their food regularly going into a competition,

Starting point is 02:07:27 they're staying adequately hydrated, I cramps during my race or during my workout, what the hell? You know, how could that have happened? Well, it turns out that the majority of cramps are due to a protective mechanism, an alpha-motor neuron reflex, that basically causes the muscle to go into a protective spasm or cramp so that you don't tear it or rip it. It's generated by the an alpha motor neuron reflex that basically causes the muscle to go into a protective spasm or cramp so that you don't tear it or rip it. It's generated by the Golgi tendon organ. So what you can do to reverse this cramp, and we know this works because when you do this, there's not enough time for any of these things to get absorbed into your system and absorb

Starting point is 02:08:01 into your muscles and provide salt to your muscles. Instead, it's all neural. So you can inhibit this alpha motor neuron reflex when you cramp by tasting anything incredibly salty or incredibly spicy. And this is why there are companies now developing high priced, like, you know, like these gel shots that are like carbohydrate gel shots.

Starting point is 02:08:20 Well, they're doing like pickle shots with cayenne pepper. And things that are like, you know like like mustard powder With incredibly high amounts of salt so there's almost like this gag reflex But as soon as that hits you it's a trick to reverse a cramp So what I do when I'm racing is I carry these electrolyte capsules that that they if you ever break open an electrolyte capsule and dump it in your mouth It's horribly like gag reflex salty But if you cramp within 20 seconds after that thing hits your sublingual or the inside of your cheeks or anywhere else where you can taste it, the cramp goes away.

Starting point is 02:08:50 What? It's crazy. Now, why does not every athlete have these on hand? It's it. Now, is it because the... Because they don't listen to mine, Puff. There you go. Is it because of the taste, the taste is signaling something in the brain to reverse this?

Starting point is 02:09:02 Exactly. The taste of something salty or spicy causes what's called a motor neuron reflex and the cramp loosens. Now this is something that you're talking about. People are making products for it. So I'm assuming that this has lots of science supporting it. And it's a taste that sends a signal. So with that, this is one of the arguments I tend to make a lot with people in our space who try to say things like artificially flavored products with zero calories have no negative effects on the the body and I always tell them the taste alone, even if even if what you were eating was a nerd, the signal of taste alone does

Starting point is 02:09:34 tell the body to do certain things. It does and I'm a, did you see this study that came out this week on sucralose, Melinda? Which one was it? Which you get next to it? Oh, that it stores the that, it's, it's, it's stored in the front of the lane of it. It's the lane of it. Activates glucagon-like peptide, GLP1, and that actually results in insulin insensitivity

Starting point is 02:09:51 with frequent sucralose intake. Now, granted, because you know, you mentioned lane, Norton, I'm sure a guy like this is gonna know, this is gonna say this, that's with the equivalent of close to a dozen packets of Splenda per day. That equivalent of sucralose, but frankly, when you look at a lot of these energy drinks and way proteins and artificially sweetened compounds,

Starting point is 02:10:10 there's the equivalent of a good two to four packets of sucralose or Splenda in just a single serving of those. So there's a lot of people in the fitness industry especially in the fitness industry. Yeah, how common is this? And we've talked about this, we've shared this on the show before where I would have two or three of these in my coffee in the morning because I'd have two or three cups of coffee So I'm having it getting at least three there. I have a protein shake

Starting point is 02:10:31 I have a protein bar and I have some sort of a pre workout pre workout shake or something Easily we were over that yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's also duration. I'm using it for years because yeah What I do every day. Yeah and granted I realized that this might sound hypocritical coming from a guy who regularly uses stevia, but I've never said that I believe that stevia may not be having an impact on and cretin' hormones or an insulin. For me, the pros outweigh the cons. I think there's less, it's less artificial and less potentially neurotoxic than a spardomy or sucralose. Right. initial and less potentially neurotoxic than aspartomy or sucralose. And it allows me to restrict calories very easily.

Starting point is 02:11:08 When I'm, for example, on a long plane flight and I put some organic vanilla stevia into my, into my celtzer water to make it taste like creme soda, right? So, so for me, the pros out way, the cons of using an artificial sweetener, but even for that, I use either monk fruit or organic stevia. So yeah, the artificial sweetened thing. And with you. Yeah, good, good point though, based on the fact that when you taste something, it can reverse a cramp,

Starting point is 02:11:32 then why wouldn't it be that when you taste something, it can cause an insulin release, or at least a release of, you know, colacistic kindin or some other incretinormal? Well, we need to remember that these signals exist for a reason. Why do we even perceive taste to begin with? Because it tells us a lot about what's happening around us

Starting point is 02:11:48 or inside of our mouths. And that signal by itself over thousands of years of evolution, that signal itself already starts a cascade of events before whatever was anticipated acts on the body. And so it only makes fucking sense. So we manipulate all these different senses thinking, oh, but the calories aren't there. It's inert or has zero effect wrong. That's impossible. Now there may be a less of an effect or maybe a cost benefit analysis that you do. But there's definitely a fucking effect. And you're I'm the same way. I would

Starting point is 02:12:18 I would err on the side of something that's natural versus something that's synthetic just because it's been around longer. And we tend to know and react better to things that have been around longer than things that are synthetic. Ben, what do you, how do you feel when you, when people refer to you as like the pseudoscience guy? You know, I saw that comment a lot after you did your Rogan interview, people like, oh, pseudos, a lot of trolls on there. Yeah, how do you feel about that when someone says that?

Starting point is 02:12:44 Technically, some of the things that I talk about are pseudoscience, such as religion and spirituality, which is very difficult, or I would even say impossible to prove in many circumstances. But I would argue that some of the things that I talk about, such as the fact that cells communicate via biophotonic light signaling,

Starting point is 02:13:04 has been a proven scientific fact since almost the 1700s. It's just that a lot of this stuff is not common knowledge or people are to a certain extent afraid of it because it disrupts societal expectations, meaning when you find out that plastic bottled water, that you always knew had some of these plastics and phytoestrogens in it, and is probably bad for you also, has a different electrochemical structure than the spring water that you get from a natural spring.

Starting point is 02:13:37 That sounds like pseudoscience, and people kind of get a little bit uncomfortable about the fact that, gosh, that means I need to replace the water filter in my house and go to find a spring.com and start drinking more natural water. I think a lot of people, it's uncomfortable, it's inconvenient to accept the fact

Starting point is 02:13:53 that sometimes pseudo-science, what we call pseudo-science, can tell us things that we get very uncomfortable with. Yeah, I mean, those are the two things that come to mind. And then, I think the last would be that there is a certain amount of industry influence, everything from the pharmaceutical industry influencing most medical physician stance that essential oils would be useless or worthless simply because there are pharmaceuticals that could do the same thing

Starting point is 02:14:26 or there's a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor that beats out the St. John's Whart that we were talking about. So using St. John's Whart as an antidepressant could potentially be pseudoscience. You know, Ben's out collecting yellow flowers with his kids in the wilderness. Let's make a ha ha, you know, skipping naked through the meadow joke about Ben because you should just take prosack.

Starting point is 02:14:46 Right, exactly. We have all these studies on prosack. Why wouldn't you just take that? So I think a big part of it too is that there's some amount of industry manipulation. Same thing when I say that, oh, you should have. If you're gonna have milk,

Starting point is 02:15:01 have it from cattle with an A2 genetic history because that protein compared to A1 is better absorbed by the human body and results in less of an allergenic response. But if you're really wanting to dial things in, then you should drink milk and prepare for all the trolls to jump in and laugh here. Like Q-Trolls, you should drink something that's a little bit more thermodynamically favorable for the human body, meaning it has a smaller protein than cow's milk, like goat's milk, or camel's milk, or water buffalo milk even has a smaller protein than cow.

Starting point is 02:15:36 And that's where everybody jumps in and laughs, because this is the stuff that either people aren't talking about, or there's a big, you know, there's a lot of industry influence from the American dera, it was the American Derri Association. Probably. I think it's the, I forget if that's the exact title of the Derri Association. I think the E.D.U.S. Derri Farm was Association, or the D.D.U.S. Whatever you call it.

Starting point is 02:15:55 You know, so, so I think those are a few of the things that that you need to bear in mind is A, yes, some of the stuff I talk about, religion and spirituality, that is pseudoscience admittedly and I'm okay and comfortable with that. I think if you could prove it, it would not be as magical as it is. If you could prove in JRR Tolkien's book that the dragon was there and the ring actually works and here's the science behind how the ring could work

Starting point is 02:16:18 and here's how Golem could have lived to be as old as he lived. All of a sudden all the fun is stripped out of this magical pse-science book. You could say the same thing about religion and spirituality in the life that we're leading. In addition, it's inconvenient for a lot of people and people just tend to basic evolutionary ancestral mechanism

Starting point is 02:16:37 be afraid of something they don't understand or something that's going to inconvenience them. And then see, there's the C or three, I don't remember again. That's the D, D, D. That's so easy. The industry influence that I think also pretty dramatically influences consumer choice. And yesterday's pseudoscience was microbiome health.

Starting point is 02:16:57 It was leaky gut syndrome. I mean, I remember talking about these things to my doctor clients, I don't know, 14 years ago, and then laughing, I'd be like, 14 years ago, and then laughing, I'd be like, oh, that's a hocus pocus. That was considered pseudoscience. Today, that's real science, the real stuff coming out with it. That was the reason why I asked,

Starting point is 02:17:15 because I would imagine, because we know you really well, and so, and we have a lot of respect for you, and I think anybody who doesn't know you very well, and they ask about you, like to us, that's the first thing that they say to me, is like, oh, that pseudoscience guy, He's like, oh, that pseudo science guy, I'm like, oh, you really don't.

Starting point is 02:17:27 Right. And I'm guilty of that myself. I make fun of Dr. Marcola for talking on the phone on his frickin selfie stick. But you know what? Maybe when people are dropping dead of brain cancer 20 years from now, everybody's gonna say, gosh,

Starting point is 02:17:40 that's pretty smart of him to do, right? So, I've been in that chair before, I've laughed at him doing that, or the fact that he wouldn't get in a, and I'm sorry if he's listening in, I'm not throwing him under the bus, I'm just using this as an example. I love him by the way.

Starting point is 02:17:54 Yeah, I love Dr. Merkle too, I learn a shit ton from him, but he wouldn't get in the car to travel with me, from LA to Malibu to visit a friend over there that I wanted him to hang out with because of the EMF potential in the highways and all these 5G power lines. And I didn't get there, but he didn't go.

Starting point is 02:18:11 So he teleported and you know what? You know what, 10 years from now, rather than me raising an eyebrow at that, I think, God, Jesus, live a little, so you can't prove that by taking a car from LA to Malibu, you're going to get cancer. You know what? All that quote, pseudo science, unquote, that people might accuse him of, he could be laughing at us 10 years from now when the people that followed his advice

Starting point is 02:18:37 are far healthier and living a longer time. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, you have to, you have to juggle modern life with a lot of these risks, but I think he's somebody who, I mean, he lives it and breathes it. And so he goes in that sleep in a fair day case. Sleep in a fair day case, right? So, and people like you, I appreciate people like you. Do that kind of stuff so that the rest of us can pick

Starting point is 02:18:58 and choose what we think is important based on what you're doing. So you may be doing all this other shit, all kinds of crazy stuff. And I'm gonna take two or three of those big rocks of the big ones that I see make the biggest difference. Right. And I'm gonna put my dick falls off, you know, to avoid doing anything up

Starting point is 02:19:13 and then do his dick. Yeah, that's right. Don't do dick shots. By the way, speaking of, of your dick. Yes, man. Yeah, nice big way dick. Yeah, that's right.

Starting point is 02:19:21 I'm listening. Talking about my dick. Totally shoved my, my, my, whoa, hey, whoa, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, I've never hung out with Lane. He did use fan talk shit about him. A little bit, but honestly, everything I've heard of him, he seems like a very, very cool grounded, nice dude. So I meant nothing by the dick segway, but it was actually referring to the fact that, I guess he's gonna be debating Dominique D' D. Agustino on the Joe Rogan pod

Starting point is 02:20:07 yes about a ketogenic diet. How do you think that's going to go? You're opinion. I wish you were on there. Yeah, I kind of wanted to I saw you through your name and that. Well, no, I'm not a PhD, you know, but both of those guys are doctors. Right. So lame. So to reason. I just think, yeah, I think if you're going to have a deathmatch doctor against doctor versus doctor against like, you know, pseudo science guy. I'm exactly how an exercise physiologist and nutritionist, but not board certified and exercise physiology. You know, I'm a master's degree in it. But you know, there, there, there's a whole bunch of reasons why I'm less qualified than both those dudes. So I, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be way more humble way better. You know, I'm less qualified than both those dudes. So I think it's gonna be,

Starting point is 02:20:45 I think it's gonna be, way more humble, way better ego than the guy. I'm not sure. And I think there's another guy that's gonna be debating on their Joel Khan, vegan dude. I don't know who he's gonna be debating. Chris Chris, what's that, right? It could be.

Starting point is 02:20:58 It is Chris Chris. Yeah, Chris. Gosh. Interesting. It's hard because everybody have just listed except Lane and it's just we haven't had any up to hang out. They're kind of sort of my friends and acquaintances for me to make a prediction in public.

Starting point is 02:21:11 But you know what, there's also something we said for radical honesty. So I'm sorry to say this, Joel, but I think Chris is gonna kick your ass in that debate. Just because I think he's a little less dogmatic, perhaps. I love you, Joel, you know that. And then regarding Lane and Dom, I suspect that that's going to turn into a polite exchange of ideas versus an actual debate.

Starting point is 02:21:40 I think both of those guys... They're both friends, too. Yeah, they might be on a little bit too friendly of terms or or they are it's way too friendly polite and gentlemanly and i think it's just going to turn into a scientific exchange of ideas it's just going to be the mc yeah if no it's going to be like that i can see that especially i mean uh... and you know i've hung out with dominos like a big cuddly teddy bear i think i he's not not gonna rip your head off and say, you know, that's bullshit.

Starting point is 02:22:06 No, I'm actually a little disappointed in Joe as matching, I don't know if Joe made the decision or if somebody else is matching those two up because if you wanted some good radio, you would have put something fiery on the other side of like his lane can be that. Yeah, lane can be, you poke it lane.

Starting point is 02:22:20 You have lane and Gary Tubs or something like that because that was who he was going after initially, I think. That's what he should have done. I think he would have made better radio. Dom, I know Dom too, is going to be, and I know Lane. Lane will throw some points out, and Dom, okay, in that case, I could see that, but in most, it's going to be a lot of agreeing back and forth on their points. I don't see him challenging in that much.

Starting point is 02:22:40 Right. Well, the older I get, the less I give a shit about what people actually care about me, and the less I find myself being a people-pleaser, which is probably why the older I get the less I give a shit about what people actually care about me And the less I find myself being a people pleaser, which is probably why you know the old men in the locker room walk around their hips Thrust out and they're digsing out Blow dry their balls, blow dry their ball because they don't really give a shit anymore. I do that now Same thing. If I were to go on that podcast and debate somebody I would be blow-drying my balls all day long And call on out bullshit right and left, as I really don't give a shit.

Starting point is 02:23:07 Good, like that. That's great. We love you, bro. We fucking love you, Ben. Yes, we love you, brother. Always a good time when we run into you and always a good time, man. Yeah, when you take off, when you tonight or tomorrow.

Starting point is 02:23:20 Off-lates, and I think like seven or something. So I actually have San Francisco, so I should probably. Oh, God, you better get around here. We're pretty soon. Maybe maybe maybe pop a few of these wonderful candies that we have laying around Yes, sir over to do it flight. Yeah, I count it. Yeah, I think you're okay. Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe maybe four I don't know what I No, just just by the way I want to finish with this that I only endorse responsible use of any mind altering substance. And furthermore, I think that it's perfectly fine for bros to sit around shooting the shit

Starting point is 02:23:56 and dropping f-bombs and everything else. But when I'm around ladies in a polite etiquette situation, I'm not a phallemouth drugie, I guess is what I'm going to say. Great disclaimer, I'm glad you cleared that up for it. No, no. You are a very stand-up person. You have tremendous integrity, you're very humble off, but I also like to hang with the dudes. We're just having a great time in your mind pump studio,

Starting point is 02:24:19 and this is how we roll. So we do it. We appreciate it, thank you. Awesome. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic.

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Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 867: Ben Greenfield on Anti-Aging, Minimizing Jet Lag, Starting a Supplement Company & MUCH MORE!

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