Modern Wisdom - #157 - Ben Greenfield - The Ultimate Daily Routine

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

Ben Greenfield is a Coach, Author, Speaker, ex-Bodybuilder and Ironman Triathlete. We are what we repeatedly do. So when you have every known biohacking strategy at your disposal, what does one of the world's best known biohackers do every day? Today expect to learn Ben's entire daily routine from morning until night including his strategies for a morning routine, training, work, nutrition, supplementation, focus, naps, sleep and much more. Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Extra Stuff: Buy Ben's book Boundless - https://amzn.to/2xO1VT6 Check out Ben's Company - https://getkion.com/ Check out Ben's Podcast - https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/ Follow Ben on Twitter - https://twitter.com/bengreenfield Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hello friends in podcast land. Welcome back. Can you tell how excited I am for today's episode? Mr Ben Greenfield, coach, author, speaker and one of the best known by a hacker's on the planet joins me today. And we get to go through his entire daily routine from morning until night. I have no idea how many strategies and tools and tactics and hacks he drops on this episode, but it is an awful lot. So get yourself ready. Manage to catch up with him while he was having an afternoon walk, which was even better. Like the opportunity to speak to Ben while he's by your hacking his way through a podcast,

it was just so great. Unbelievable episode. I think podcast notes at podcast notes on Twitter may be doing a feature on this. So if you want to try and find out a little bit more about some of the products that he speaks on, we may have a set of notes from them. And if so, I'll be sharing it on my Instagram very soon. But for now, get yourself ready. It's been Greenfield time.

Oh yeah, PS, if you want you here, hit the subscribe button and you will receive two episodes every week, one on a Monday, one on a Thursday with some of the most fascinating humans on the planet delivered directly to your listening device of choice. Go and hit the button, go and hit it now. Ben Greenfield in the building, how are you man? Good, not in the building. I'm actually outside of some farm road back down my house. But yeah, I can only stay in a building for so long. The sun's

out today, got a nice cool wind whipping up over the plains, so I apologize if it sounds occasionally like I'm in a hurricane. But yeah, we'll call it a building, God's Giant Building outside. That is where you are, man. So you're getting a little bit of walking in, keeping yourself moving in these times? You know, I walk a lot every day. Anyways, and excuse I can get the walk. I just love to love the move and get some sunshine. And yeah, I spend a lot of time these days, doing consults and call sometimes indoors or doing a lot of writing.

And so if I can get outside, I'll do it. I like it, man. We are not using the seawood today. The seawood is not being included in his podcast. We are talking about we are talking about some evergreen stuff your new book boundless might actually be useful if people are in lockdown because it is one of the heaviest books I've ever felt in my life so it double up, double up, it's the weight or is it? Yeah throughout throughout so much, throw some blood flow restriction restriction bands on and start to do some overhead presses with that bad boy. Well, you could use it as a step to reach high objects if you needed as well, you know?

So today, I want to go through three main areas. I want to talk about your morning routine. I want to talk about your setup for working. I want to talk about your sleep in your night time routine. So, okay, starting off Enough what does your current morning routine look like I want the full Monty The full Monty all right well interrupt me if I tend to right hole too much don't but I Yeah, usually You know wake up without an alarm unless I got a catcher flight or something like that I just find I naturally tend to wake some time around like, it's usually like 545, 615 somewhere in there and I just find that waking naturally. I'm not

opposed to some of these devices. I sleep on one of these chili pad things that keeps your body cool while you're asleep which is great for enhancing your deep sleep and there's apparently a function on it where you can activate it to circulate more warm water to gradually wake you. I don't use that function. I'm nervous I might just pee my pants from the warm water turns on. And then I have one of those sunrise alarm clocks for when I do gotta set the alarm on. They just kind of gradually bleed sun into your room so you wake a lot more slowly which I think is just wonderful for not you know ripping you out of a deep sleep cycle if you happen to be one in one in the morning. And so yeah, I wake.

I roll over and I do some gratitude journaling for the first few minutes of the day. I write down one thing I'm grateful for. I write down a one person who I can help that day, whether it's like, you know, calling my mom or, or, you know, helping the neighbor move something or, or even just like, you know, giving a bottle of wine to somebody who I know might need a, a smile that day. And, you know, I just really like that others facing type of mentality to start today because I figure if I, you know, if I'm writing down one person I can help each day, that's 365, you know, good things I might do during the course of a year. So I do that and then I write down also any insights that I had from my dream cycles earlier in the night or, you know,

any just little encouraging words to myself that I want to act on during the day. And then I get out of bed. I'm kind of into the Ayurvedic concepts in terms of the morning routine. So I do a quick tongue scrape, which takes just a few seconds with a little copper tongue scraper. What's the logic behind that? Back of the tongue to the front of the tongue just helps to clean out some bacteria in the mouth that accumulate during a night of sleep. And then I also do oil polling.

So I use coconut oil blended with some essential oils like clove and peppermint and swish that around in the mouth while I'm tunin' around during the day, you know, taking a pee and getting things ready for the day. And that's also a really, really great oral hygiene tactic, again, barred from Ayurvedic medicine. and that's also a really, really great oral hygiene tactic, again, barred from Ayurvedic Medicine. And so I then go downstairs into the kitchen. And if I've woken pretty early, or if I have been traveling a lot,

and I'm trying to kind of like reset my circadian rhythm to whatever time zone that I happen to be in, I'll usually wear those blue light blocking glasses that people wear at night. I'll to be in. I'll usually wear those blue light blocking glasses that people wear at night. I'll wear those in the morning because I find that that reddish orange lens kind of does a good job simulating sunrise. So if I'm flipping on lights in the kitchen or glancing at my phone or opening the computer or anything, it's a little bit more of a gentle way to wake up kind of that same concept of not waking within the alarm clock. Wearing these blue light blocking glasses in the morning kind of gives you that really kind of

sunrise-esque feel in the morning because my lazy ass is not going to be out of bed in the sun rising. So what's the what's the brand of sunrise glasses you use? I use the ones made by raw optics. You know the the owner of that company, Matt Marooka, he's a friend of mine. He's just he's so steeped in light research and he's constantly retooling the lenses to block out specific wavelengths of light. A lot of these blue light blocking companies, they know how to make a quick buck, you know, little import cheap lenses from India or China or whatever, and then mark up the price and sell on Amazon.

And he's actually doing a really good job with his lens technology. And so I use the raw optics brand. There's a few a really good job with his lens technology and so I use the raw optics brand. There's a few of the good ones out there. I think what's the company, I'm flanking on their name, blue blockers I think. They do a pretty good job and there's a couple of those out there but I use the raw true dark, true dark is another one, it does a good job. So I use these these raw red lenses and usually I'll take them off, uh, typically after I've been up for about 20, 30 minutes or so. So again, I'm just kind of easing, easing from a light standpoint my body into the day. And then, um, uh, once I've spat out that coconut oil, I kind of rinse my

mouth out because you don't want to swallow it because it's just like, it's a cumulative, I didn't eat bacteria and stuff in your mouth. So it's, it's, it's just like cleaning, you want to spit it out. So I spit it out in the trash can. So I don't clog the toilets with oil. I learned that less than the hard way. You don't want to spit in a toilet or a sink, it clogs the plumbing. So you actually spit your oil into trash can, rinse out your mouth. Then I have a big glass mason jar full of goodies. So I make myself a big glass mason jar with some hydrogen tablets in it because hydrogen, there's a lot of good research from the molecular hydrogen foundation on the hydrogen for a tantite inflammatory and selective antioxidant properties and, you know, I'm convinced by the research enough to do a big glass mason jar of that. At both the beginning and the end of the day, but at the beginning of the day I put minerals

into that. So typically like a pinch of a really good salt, like a Celtic salt, or another one I've been using of late are these minerals that are harvested from these algal blooms. And it's got like 80 plus minerals in it. It's called Quinton, Q-U-I-N-T-O-N. It's like a hypertonic plasma. So I put some of that in the water along with the hydrogen and then I do a two to one ratio of vitamin C and baking soda.

There's a really great book that delves into all the science of vitamin C and baking soda called Forbidden Healing. And I was so convinced I had to read in that book about some of the effects on everything from a mild change in pH to an increase in some immune factor compounds. So just the overall physiological effect of both vitamin C in baking soda

that I just have right there in the pantry, bulk, a squirrebic acid. And then just armen hammer baking soda, which is naturally lumen and free. And so I got baking soda, I got vitamin C, I got hydrogen water, I got minerals, all in this big glass mason jar of water. And I just sucked that down.

That's kind of like tonic. And sometimes we'll throw a little apple cider vinegar in there as well, because that is a really nice insulin sensitizing effect at the beginning of the day, and lens even more alkalinity to the drink. So, I have that. And then I put on a pot of hot water, or I start the coffee, and I'll go back and forth. Some mornings I do coffee, and then just because I don't want my adenosine receptors

to get too insensitive to the acutally. Yeah, it makes me sleep later on the day. I don't do coffee every day because I don't want to create a scenario in which I'm insensitive to a denocene later on in the day and can't fall asleep. Because even if you metabolize caffeine really well if you're a fast coffee oxidizer and even if you're not having cup of coffee after noon just frequent regular use of coffee without breaks builds up so much of these adenosine

receptors that just gets harder and harder as months go on to fall asleep at night. So what I do is I'll either do coffee or the other one that I'll do is cacao tea, which is lower in caffeine, or lower in caffeine, but it has like theobromine and some dopamine precursors in it. It has this real good kind of pick me up feel good effect. Some people like Yurba Matae for that, but Yurba Matae makes me a little jittery. And I like the way cacao makes me feel instead. So I'll typically blend that with chaga, which is wonderful.

It's chock full of melanin. Chaga is, which can actually interact with sunlight to kick off electrons and produce some free ATP. So any photons of light will interact with things like melanin. Chlorophyll would be another example. Methylene blue, which is marketed now as a neutral pick. That's another example.

But because I'll tell you in a second, I go down to the office and I do some red light therapy. I like getting a little melanin or chlorophyll or methylene blue in my system before I go to the red light therapy and blending this chaga with some cacao or doing the coffee, but the chaga with the cacao is really great

if you're doing like red light therapy in the morning. Just prime for that red light, right? Just before we move on, the... Yeah, you basically produce extra ATP. You were talking about ways to assure that your adenosine receptors don't get down regulated by spacing your coffee use. What have you found to be an optimal way to pulse that?

Every other day, three times a week, twice a week? What? Well, in the book, I talk about how one tactic for people who just want to drink coffee every morning. You just do coffee for three weeks and then switch to a really, switch to a good decath like Swiss water process decath or CO2 extraction decath for about a week.

Takes around six to eight days to reset those adenosine receptors, but if I'm just kind of doing it naturally, I just listen to my body. Basically, if I wake up and I don't feel a need for the extra caffeine, I just don't have coffee. I do the chog, so typically comes out to about of two or three mornings of the week

as the chog and the cacao and the other mornings, it's just a good cup of organic coffee. Cut you. Just organic black coffee. I don't do any calories just because I don't want to take myself out of a fastened state in the morning. So no, no MCT oil or butter or anything like that, just black coffee. And then, well, the hot water is going for the cacao tea or the chaga or the coffee brewing. I spend 10 to 15 minutes just doing body work, like foam rolling.

Sometimes it's like the little vibrating balls, sometimes the cross balls, but I take 10, 15 minutes every morning to deep tissue work. So whether or not I get a massage, I try to get a massage once a week, but if I don't, I figure by the end of the week, I'm getting a good 75 to 90 minutes of really good, deep tissue work.

And I just find a prime spot body for the day. A lot of times I combine it with some breath work, a little bit of inversion. So I'll hang from an inversion table or from some, from, like some gravity boots, but it's kind of like my non-negotiable me time for like 15 minutes in the morning. I usually listen to like a sermon or really good spiritual podcast while I'm doing that just to start off my day on a really positive note. And then once I've done all that, I'll grab the coffee or the tea and I'll head down to my office. And I'll generally spend about a half hour going through typically like research articles, science, some of the feeds that I follow in, and you know like like health exercise, science,

nutrition science, you know, some some different Twitter feeds of research journals. I just really like to learn at the beginning of the day. I find my body just soaks up and feels really primed to learn. So I'm typically not doing emails or social media and stuff at that time. I just kind of soak up some knowledge at the beginning of the day.

Well, I'm having my coffee or my tea. And while I'm doing that, I use red light therapy. So I've got these big, these Juve red light panels in my office that I flip on. So as I'm standing there going through all the research, I'm just bathed in red light. I take off all my clothes and I just do like naked red light therapy full body. And that's for like 20 to 30 minutes. It's amazing. You get nitric oxide release. It stimulates

mitochondrial production of ATP. It's just this complete feel-good effect. And it's also very similar to sunrise again. So I'm getting that big red light dose in the morning, which is great for circadian rhythm. And you know, I like my office to be just like this, totals end down. So you know, I've got essential oils kind of getting diffused into the air. I got that red light therapy. I've got a little grounding mat that I stand on. So it's as though I were outside kind of sucking up some negative ions from the surface of the earth. Same thing if I'm standing on that in my office. I get the same effect. So that's just kind of my me time in the morning. And

I finish up all that. You'll find if you guys use that tactic of baking soda with that glass mason jar after about 45 minutes, a baking soda kicks in and you just go have this awesome, awesome dump. So I flip off the red lights after about a half hour. And I can tell right away, you feel the stomach gurgling a little bit, it's like, all right, it's fine. And go upstairs and just have an amazing, amazing, amazing bowel movement.

And then, by then, it's typically around, like 7, 45, 8, 15-ish in the morning. And I usually, before I jump into the rest of the day, and kind of start working everything or have some breakfast, I like to do some kind of like a morning, some kind of morning protocol that makes me feel really good. I don't like to hit the weights hard or do like a big high intensity interval training session in the morning. So usually for me it's either about a 20 or 30 minute walk in the sunshine or

a 20 or 30 minute sauna session. So this would be after I go to the bathroom. Yep, yep. You know, I'll do you like a sauna plus a cold soak, you know, 20 or 30 minutes in the sauna, just the deep sweat. Again, I 20, 30 minutes in the sauna, just with a deep sweat. Again, I'll put essential oils in the sauna. Sometimes I'll put on like a topical rub, like any of these topical muscle creams that have things like, you know, cayenne and menthol and black pepper

because they're just sweat buckets. I found if you smear some stuff over your skin before you get into the sauna, I'm using one called Prototype 8 by ATP Science right now. I was just like smear it on my arms and my legs, put some really good uplifting essential oils in there like rosemary or cinnamon or something that's really kind of like stimulating to the brain to get me all charged up for the work day. And do the sauna until I'm sweating really hard.

Then go jump in the cold pool or take the cold shower for about three or four minutes. And I might be doing that or just like a long walk in the sunshine. And so do all that. And then I own a company called Keon. We always have a call every morning at 9.45. So I gotta be done, showered, ready for the day. Spend a little time with the kids and say good morning at 9.45. So I got to be done, showered, ready for the day,

spend a little time with the kids and say good morning to them and hear about how they're going to spend their day, their homeschooled, so they're at home with me all day anyways. So I just got to check in with them, make sure they're all set for the day and check in with my wife, make sure she's all set for the day. And then I just make myself a giant superfood smoothie while I'm getting ready for that call with my team.

And that, you know, the smoothie just changes every day, but typically it's things like, you know, for my base I just use ice. And then I'll put some stevia in there, some monk fruit in there for sweetener. And then I just love to toss a bunch of great stuff in there. So for my liquid, I'll usually use bone broth or a keyfer or stuff in there. So for my liquid, I'll usually use bone broth or a keyfer, or sometimes coconut milk.

I make my own yogurt at home, usually using coconut milk or goat's milk as a base. So I'll put some yogurt in there. And then typically a few scoops, so something like a greens, I'll put some collagen in there, squeeze of a lemon or some kind of vitamin C in there. And then I just blend all that up. If I want a little bit more creaminess, I'll put like half an avocado in there. Sometimes

for a little bit of extra greens, you know, I grow sprouts at home. So I'll put some sprouts in there. And then I'll top it with just a bunch of goodies like spirulina, like after I blended it, I'll top it with like spirulina, coconut flakes, cacao nibs, but I blend the smoothie really thick. So I basically like eat it out of a bowl, almost like a side bowl with all these super foods. Oh yeah, it's amazing, it's so good. It's like the highlight of my day.

I'm thinking about that one, doing my son or my walk. I'm already thinking about that amazing super food bowl. I'm gonna make it home. And so I typically I'll eat that while I'm on the call with my team. Just chatting with my team, you know, hearing about what everybody's gonna be up to for the day and just touching base with the whole squad

because I'm running my company virtually for the most part because our offices are in Boulder, but I'm up in Washington State. And they're down, you know, most of my team is down, kind of around Colorado. So, I do that call, and then're down, most of my team is down. Kind of around Colorado. So I do that call and then after that, from about 10 until around two or 230, I just, no push notifications, no Twitter, no Facebook,

no social media, I just work like a horse with blinders on for the next four or five hours. Kind of that deep work concept, you know, like CalMuPort's book, where I'm just, you know, whether I'm writing or working on a book or a series of articles or shooting videos, doing content, doing consults with my clients or people who have hired me to go over their nutrition or their workout plans with them or their, you know, their lab work, their blood work. Sometimes, you know, I advise a lot of companies in the health

and fitness space, so sometimes it's advisory calls for different businesses. Every day kind of varies, but for me, that kind of like 10 to 2 or 2.30 slot is just deep work time. Just crush the day during that time, hyper productive. And I take breaks about every, it depends on the style of work that I'm doing. But every 30 to 60 minutes, I'll take breaks

and do some pull-ups, do some kettlebell swings. Jump up and down on a trampoline. I just like to take little breaks just to keep my body moving during those, four or five hours of work. But generally, once I've finished all that work, I come up and again, I have a home office. So I'll make myself some lunch.

Lunch for me is usually, you know, some good greens, like some more sprouts or really nice, play the greens with, you know, a big fan of the whole smashed diet, like sardines, macro, anchovy, you know, I'm a big fan of the whole smashed diet, like Sardines, Macro and Chowee, Herring or Salmon. So usually I'll do like some kind of really good Omega-3 rich cold water fish, you know,

some nuts, some avocado, usually another cup of bone broth. And I just have, they're kind of like breakfast. I have like a super food kind of salad type of thing for lunch. But made up with fish in it. That's super food, super food-feat. Yeah, you But made up with fish in it. That's super, super food-sauce. Yeah, you usually fish or not.

Sometimes if we've had steak or chicken or whatever the night before, I'll use that as the protein topper. But again, I don't really have any appreciable amount of carbohydrates until the evening. I save all my carbs until the evening. So I'm typically in a state of fatty acid oxidation or mild ketosis most of the day. And unless you're like a two a day hard charging athlete,

there's no need for like two big carbohydrate boluses during the day, unless you got a maximize glycogen restoration after an early day hard workout. So I find, because I typically do my hard workout in like the later afternoon or early evening, as long as I've had carbohydrates the night before, my glycogen levels are pretty topped off anyways and with that strategy, I avoid a lot of glycemic variability like a lot of glucose fluctuations during the day. I find to have more stable energy levels and cognitive levels. And it also allows me to because our dinner time is usually like a big family dinner or a social time or

Going out to a restaurant with friends or whatever like I want to I want to be able to for the more social meal actually You know indulge a little bit like have some red wine or some dark chocolate or some sourdough bread or some sweet potato fries or whatever So I save all my carbohydrates for the end of the day, which is also nice because since I typically am not doing my hard workout like weights or high-end hits, the interval training or anything like that until the later afternoon or the early evening,

that means that I'm very insulin sensitive after that workout. So those carbohydrates very easily get partitioned into muscle tissue. Should we leave them? Should we leave them all to the right muscles. Yeah, so they don't spend a lot of time in the bloodstream with my blood sugar spike. So it's a good scenario for me, doing the easy workout in the morning or the easy movement

in the morning, no carbs all day, and then the hard workout later on in the day than the carbs at night. I like for the people that are listening, I've been a big fan of carb-backloading for a long time. And, backloading carbs, for me, one of the main reasons that I like it, is that it plays with the sacrifice reward mentality that you have. You know, you're like, right,

it might be nice to feel satiated with some slightly more starchy food earlier in the day. But as you, I can get through, I can get till two o'clock. Right, well, get my workout in. Now it's four o'clock. I've only got to wait until five, five, 30, and then you've got your nice big starchy meal. You feel nice and full.

And obviously you've got this change in insulin sensitivity. You've got the improved shuttling and partitioning of nutrient-intensive muscles. It seems like a real kind of easy hack. Yeah, I end the release of serotonin in response to the carbohydrate feeding, which enhances your melatonin release at night. So you sleep better too.

So I just think, I think especially for an active person, or someone who's working out later on in the day, and someone who's willing not to like suck their face with random snacks and sugar earlier in the day, as long as you pay attention to the rules, you know, this whole idea of car back loading is actually a pretty good strategy.

So anyways, so I finished lunch and I'm a huge fan of mapping, huge fan of mapping. So I take a map almost every day for like 20 to 45 minutes. And I kind of protect that time quite a bit. I tell my team, like, don't schedule me any calls from about like 2.30 to 4. I just want that time to kind of like have that breather in the middle of the day. And so for me, you know, typically after lunch or with my bone broth at lunch, I'll have something that's kind of relaxing. Like right now I like Rishi mushroom extract kind of relax. Like right now I like re-sheet mushroom extract.

Kind of relaxes me, tones me down in the middle of the day. And I just slip away either in taking a nap in the bedroom or I have one of these of late, what I've been using for my naps is I have a soft shell hyperbaric chamber, which just concentrate oxygen. So I go in there, I'm under concentrated oxygen, flip on the oxygen mask, and I'll put on some really

relaxing beats. I like the one I've been using of late is this, this vagal nerve stimulator, an app called Newcomme, and that thing you'll just, they say based on the research, it'll simulate a full 90 minute sleep cycle in 20 minutes. Wow. I don't know if that's true, but I can literally just turn that thing off for 20 minutes and be dead to the world and feel amazing.

And sometimes I'll cycle through it two times, so I'm going to pull 40 minutes. And that's my go to. The other one that I like is Brain FM. That's another really good app for just kind of checking away. So I put on some good noise blocking headphones, a good sleep mask, I like the sleep mask called Mindfold. It just blocks out all light. And I go dead to the world from like, you know, two 30 to 350 in or so.

And that nap just like I have a better workout later on in the day. I'm more present for evening activities. I just like, I'm a huge fan of the nap. So I find sometimes with naps that I can suffer present for evening activities. I just like, I'm a huge, huge fan of the NAPS. I find sometimes with NAPS that I can, I can suffer with a little bit of mood change afterward. I wonder if you've ever come up against that. Yeah, typically I'll take a stimulant after my NAP.

Okay, bring you background a little bit. Yeah, yeah, sometimes it'll be a touch of coffee, sometimes I'll pop like some nicotine gum, sometimes I'll use a new trope, like I like one called qualia mind, something that kind of like picks me up again in the afternoon. So, maybe that's where I'm going wrong. I mean, it's, I think my ability to go from hyped

to chill to hyped again, just my ability to change that speed, to decelerate and then re-sellerate is pretty tough. If you're having a conversation with a client and you're getting real hyped up there having a great day, you're having a great day, you're going back with them forward, is that mushroom extract that you mentioned sufficient to kind of bring you down and brain FM, couple of manual beats?

Is that enough to kind of take the stinger of what you've been doing? Yeah, that combined with the food in your stomach from lunch. I find just it works fine. And then the other thing is that, you know, if you take a nap and you put some kind of stimulant into your system around 315, I typically don't go to bed to like 10 anyways. And I don't find that that interferes with sleep. The only thing I'm careful with is if it's if it's coffee, I'm a little bit careful with that. So if it's coffee, it's like four ounces of coffee,

whereas like a microdose of coffee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's enough. Just give me a little bit of a pick me up and kind of get me going again after the afternoon nap. And then just to circle back to your work schedule at the moment, can you just tell me

about your desk setup that you're using at the moment? Oh, yeah. So like I mentioned, I have one of those grounding mats so that I'm getting a little bit of the mild anti-inflammatory effect that you can get from the negative ions from the ground. And then I've got a standing desk and I just have a hand crank desk. I think mine's made by a company called Rebel desk. Veridess does really good desks too. And then I've got a treadmill

that I can walk on sometimes. What a true falls. Yeah, I have the true form treadmill just because I wanted a manual treadmill that could keep up with my, I've grown really long legs and I also walk pretty fast. And I find that a lot of these manual treadmills for offices, they're like too slow and too short.

So I like that true form, because it, you know, double as a workout tool anyways. We're gonna get it by a treadmill. As we're good one, you can, you know, throw down some sprints and stuff. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Plus, the curved nature of the treadmill engages your glutes a little bit more.

Man, ruining doing sprints on that thing is miserable. Hamstring, blue, lower, just the whole posterior chain gets fried. Yeah, it's impossible to run without engaging your posterior chain on that thing. And it's actually hard to walk without engaging the posterior chain as well. So, I got the true form, standing desk, grounding mat.

The red lights I mentioned, but I'm only using those in the morning, there's actually some evidence that you can you can overdo it. You can create excess reactive oxygen species if you overdo the red light therapy. So I just do that in the morning. You said about 30 minutes. Now, closer like 20. Okay. Even if I'm in the office, you know, sip in the coffee during the research stuff for 30 minutes, I only leave the red lights up for like 20 minutes. And then what else is in my office? I said there's a, it lives like an essential oil diffuser in there. If I want to kind

of be in a different position than just standing or walking, I've got a, I've got a chair called a saddle chair, which kind of is it by like a cell? I've got one by Sally, S-A-L-L-L-I. Yeah, go ahead. And then I've also got a stool that's also in a pelvic shape position. That one's made by Focal upright. It's called a mogo. So there's no chair in my office at all. It's either the pelvis stool or the saddle chair. Have you tried... When standing, have you tried a small step to rest one foot on in front while you're standing? Yeah, I use the treadmill for that, actually.

I've got the treadmill for that actually. I think I'll try to jump right there. Yeah, I get you. That's been such a game changer for me for anyone who's listening that uses a standing desk, buying like a kid's step. You're like what a kid would use to get up to the kitchen counter, or anything that raises your foot,

maybe between half a foot to a half off the floor, and it really does decompress my back. That's made a big difference. Also, I wondered, have you tried the rocker boards? I have one called the fluid stance. Yeah, yeah. It's like a balance tool that's not that hard to balance on. So I can be like on a phone call.

Yeah, I'm a big fan. I feel like I'm not able to balance. Big fan. The other one that you can put your foot up lock works well. This is a new one I have called, it's called a slack block. And it's basically like a slack line. It was developed for balance training. So I have it in my office as one of those things

I could stand on for a little bit during like a pomodoro break. But it can double as something you could put your foot up on too. That's cool. So that's like a mobile miniature slack line. Yeah, exactly. But it's like a little progression. Yeah, so you get a little bit more increased proprioception.

The other thing I have related to the feet is I always have a couple of golf balls like right underneath my feet. So I'm always doing some foot rolling. Well, I'm standing on my desk. So just some some Jeep tissue therapy for the feet. That works pretty well. I've found as well, I'm not sure if this is the same for you,

but sometimes when I'm doing some work that doesn't involve my hands, having something to just get rid of the excess energy. So I always have a pen in my fingers, and I twirl a pen. I tend to do that under the desk when I'm podcasting, and I actually find my ability to focus on what I'm doing when I have a small amount of really basic movement

going on elsewhere, makes a big difference. Oh yeah, that's a good idea. I feel like I'm getting a little bit of that by rolling the golf balls under my feet yeah, that's a good idea. I feel like I'm getting a little bit of that by rolling the golf balls under my feet, but that's a good idea with the pen. Well, you could use, I suppose you could use like captain's or crush, and grip. Drinks, I'm not that stupid.

So the idea came from seeing kids who have ADD, and they're given Play-Doh, to just play with with the hands while they're in classes. So the kids have this play-doh and what it allows them to do is just expel the top end that excess energy that they've got. They do something with their hands and it allows them to focus better. And I just, I've had pens in my hands through, you know, all of university, all of school, put a pen back in my hand and I found that my focus improved, unbelievable.

That's a great idea. I like that. Yeah, pan, I suppose a rubber band or like some Play-Doh. Yeah, that's a great idea. I like that. So, yeah, so let me think of the same thing else in the office that's interesting. I use, if I'm working in there at night,

same thing up in the master bedroom, the master bathroom, like I'm not a there at night, same thing up in the master bedroom in the master bathroom, like I'm not a fan of LED lighting because even like these newer like so-called biological LEDs, they all produce like an imperceptible flicker. That's a little bit irritating to the retina and there's even some evidence that it may cause a little bit of damage to the rods and cones. And so I use incandescent lighting. Incandescent light bulbs simulate pretty closely

the natural spectrum that you get from the sunlight. And so all the cans in the house have incandescent light, but then I've got like a lamp in the office for nighttime work that's a red incandescent light bulb and then up in the bedroom and the master bathroom and my kids bedrooms, it's all red incandesescent lighting so it kind of looks like a nightclub A little bit when you when you flip on the lights You know you better was at night, but there's no blue light. It's amazing

So you so you don't disrupt your circadian rhythm when you're getting ready for bed at night Or you know you flip on the lights go take a pee at night or whatever. It just keeps things You know really stable from circadian rhythm standpoint. Is there a particular brand of bulb or lamp that you've got with that? You just slide in. I just grab whatever's on Amazon. It's just all red and condescent light. They're a little bit more power-hungry than LED lighting, but it's worth it to me, the extra 20, 30 bucks a month from my electrical belt to go within condescence. So, yeah, use an incandescent lighting and then red incandescent lighting at night.

And, yeah, those are some of the biggies in the office as far as what I have. There's always, I got a kettlebell on the floor of the office, you know, always. So I got to step over. It's always top of mind. So, remember, I'm in there, you know, I'm always thinking, ah, I got to throw down some catabull swings, you know, a little pull up bar in the door of the office. I can hang from everyone's and while I'm walking in and out, you know, I got a little rule. I got to do five pull ups. You know, it's like, every time you go through the door.

Yeah, it's such a good hack. I've got a, I'm currently opening up my shoulders to do some mobility for weightlifting. And I've just got so many resistance bands on the floor. It's like, if I don't pick them up to use them, I'm going to fall over them and hurt myself. So I might as well, it's the same as you with your kettlebells. It's like, oh god, I got to step over it. I might as well use it.

Yeah, my office is just littered with shit like that. Just kind of keep me moving, moving during the day. And then I've got, you know, I pay a lot of attention to not having a lot of non native EMF like Wi-Fi devices, Bluetooth devices, you know So everything's hard wired with ethernet cable So I just have like cat seven metal shielded ethernet cable instead of the Wi-Fi So I'm just plugged directly into the router and the Wi-Fi is off and then I've got these Because I had a building biologist come to my home do like a walkthrough of anything that might be producing a lot of dirty electricity

or a lot of a lot of EMF. And so I put a dirty electricity filters in the office too. So these just plug into the outlets and filter any power surges that might be occurring. And then, yeah, so no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth in these dirty electricity filters. And so I just feel better when I don't have a lot of signals bouncing around. That's also the advantage of a manual treadmill. Is a lot of people don't realize like treadmill's produced a huge amount of EMF.

And so if you can have a manual treadmill instead of a motorized treadmill in your office or in your gym, I think it's a good idea from a health standpoint. Got you. I wanted to touch actually on Bluetooth. Did I hear right that you don't wear air pods or any of the Bluetooth headphones

because of the adverse effects of Bluetooth? I noticed that you're wearing wired Apple headphones at the moment. Yeah, I'll either use AirTube or Wire-Anne versus Bluetooth just because of a few different studies that have looked at at a dark blood-filled analysis and shown like some clumping of some of the cells in response to these Bluetooth signals.

And compared to Wi-Fi or say like a 4G or 5G signal, it's less of an issue. But I'm using a phone or talking on a lot of these devices so much. I just figure, there's an extra three or four hours a day. I don't have to have some kind of non-ATVMF up around my head. I just don't.

So. Got you. So yeah. You've touched on a topic there that I know a lot of people will be interested in. What's your thoughts on 5G at the moment? Is there any way that people can protect themselves? Is 5G phones get rolled out?

Well, you can go into your settings and just switch it back to 4G if you want. But that word, 4G has issues as well. The problem is, you know, and Dr. Joe Mercola just wrote a great book called EMF on this. I have even been about it on my podcast is, you know, the effects on the calcium channels of the cell, you know, you get a steep calcium influxion of the cell, which basically creates in that positive charge inside the cell when it's supposed to be in that negative charge. And then you get some amount of DNA and rabbling

from the radiation, the non-monizing radiation. And then you also get a little bit of effect in terms of the down regulation, what's called your NF-CAPAV pathway, which is a response for remodulating it, a lot of your inflammatory processes. So the problem is that with 5G, not a ton of studies have been done on either it's deleterious impact or the absence thereof.

So it's one of those deals where, well, if no studies have actually been done, showing its effects on the human body, we're rolling it out. I'd rather wait until we see the studies. So I'm pretty careful with it. As far as weight you can do to protect yourself, obviously with 5G panels being put up everywhere, and you know, the fact we can't escape it, I would say the best thing you can do is to counteract some of that calcium influx into the cell,

just make sure you're supplementing with magnesium, you know, or you can eat organic produce that's grown in really mineral rich soil to get your magnesium But it's tough to get good organic produce grown in mineral rich soil these days And I think magnesium is a good supplement in the evening anyways for nighttime relaxation So I just take magnesium every night, you know, keep your red blood some magnesium levels topped off That'll help with the calcium influx and then for the For the DNA piece the two things things that can really help to repair the DNA are any sort of two ends, like risvera trull or blueberry powder or tarot still

bean or cacao, any of the things you might be working into, like that superfood smoothie or whatever in the morning anyways. And that really, really works well hand in hand with any NAD precursor, like NMN or NR, or even like NAD, the occasional NADIV, once a month, just to keep your NAD levels topped off, NAD and Sir Twoons work hand in hand to help protect the DNA. And so that's number two, is do magnesium,

make sure you keep your sir Twoons and your NAD levels topped off. And then the third regarding that inflammatory pathway, the NFKAPA B pathway, the best way to kind of modulate that and keep it active would be a mild ketosis, which we're getting from that kind of car backloading type of approach. And then also exogenous ketones actually can really help with that pathway. So like using ketone esters or ketone salts, especially if you're traveling airplanes,

airports, hotel rooms, places where you can't turn the Wi-Fi off, or you're getting exposed to a whole bunch of other signals that might go beyond your phone on what you might have the Wi-Fi disabled or on what you might have in airplane mode. You can't control other people. So when I travel, I really step up my supplementation with these ketones and kind of keep my ketone bodies even more elevated to assist with that inflammatory pathway. So that's another good hat. I like it.

Those are a few things you need to protect yourself would be magnesium and And then sir two wins and ad precursors and And ketones so I like it. I like it. Does a keon do a ketone? No, we don't we don't but there's some good ones out there like hV and man has some good ones The company ketone aid. They've got some good ones All right, you know, I ketones are so interesting, because for me, they give me almost a buzz very, very much what I get from alcohol, probably because of the something called one-three butane dial in some of these ketone esters. And when I'm like making cocktails at night, a lot of times, I'll just, you know, when

I normally use Jan or vodka or whatever else, you know, that makes them with ice or lemon juice or bitters. I'll just use a little bit of ketones instead. I actually just today literally today at BenGreekfieldFitness.com I publish an article on like how to make amazing cocktails that don't have alcohol in them but that's still kind of spin some dials in your brain and have this feel good effect and actually ketones are one way you can do that. You can use them as an alcohol substitute. I run nightclubs, I wonder if I could sell some ketone cocktails, if I ketones are one way you can do that. That's funny. You can use them as an alcohol substitute.

I run nightclubs. I wonder if I could sell some ketone cocktails. If I could throw some of those up, I wonder how many people? You want to be careful, and I should say this too. If you mix ketone esters with alcohol, the byproduct is kind of similar to GHB. And that's the top day, right? So you wouldn't want somebody ordering a mocktail and then also getting a cocktail

and wind it up just like face down in their plate. So. That would be a bad look. That would be a bad look. Okay, so we are onto the nighttime routine. Tell us about your nighttime routine. What's it looking like at the moment? Yeah, so like I mentioned, you know, I take that nap and then after my nap,

I do a lot of my reactive work, like emails, social media, you know, people meeting the hop on last minute phone calls with me, all that shit that that's kind of like not necessarily, that doesn't fall into the productive bucket, but it's kind of more reactive. Yeah. Like I save all of that for later on in the day, you know, because I'd rather strike while the iron is hot when I have low amounts of decision making fatigue or cognitive fatigue early in the day and do a lot of my productive work. So I wake up from my nap and typically,

there's another hour and a half or two of just kind of putting out fires, so to speak, right? I can't care of all this shit that would normally distract you earlier in the day. And then once I finish all that, I'll typically jump into a workout. And for me, I just finished my Russian kettlebell RKC shirt. So for me, for the past few months, it's been snatched, Turkish get-ups, goblets, squats. Usually, a lot of concurrent strength and endurance training.

So I'm mixing that up with like, you know, airdine, sprints, rowing machine, just just you know a lot of kind of circuit style work with the kettlebells and typically it's something like that since I just finished that shirt up last week I'm kind of getting back into just basic weightlifting all right push, push, pull, hinge, et cetera. So, so either weight training or high intensity interval training in the afternoon or the early evening, typically I'm working out from about, kind of like that, five, 30 to six, 30-ish range

right around and there. I remember a little while ago you mentioned that you'd pivoted from performance to longevity. So probably about a year and a half ago I think. What's where's your goals at now? Definitely a lot in Jeviti, you know, because for years I was competing in Iron Man Triathlon and racing for Reebok and Spartan training. And now I just want to feel good.

I want to be strong, maintain muscle. I, you know, still, if anybody joins with me in a workout, you know, they tell me I'm a pure massacist, but you know, even my workouts now are nowhere near, you know, going out and crushing, you know, two hours out in the mountains, you know, and, you know, or five hours on the bike. Like, you don't have to do any of that shit anymore.

I'm working out like 40 to 60 minutes max. Okay, you're conditioned based on your Instagram at the moment, you condition looks to be even leaner than you were. Looks to be the leanest I think I've seen you. I'm about 185 pounds, around four or five percent body fat. Quite lean, that's quite lean. Yeah, but I'm naturally lean.

Like my dad's the same way. My dad doesn't believe in too much training and he's probably, you know, he's 60 something. He's probably like 9% body fat. So a lot of astro genetics. Good genetics. I don't really go out of my way to like stay super lean, but you know, my testosterone is fine, my thyroid is fine, you know, so as long as my endocrine system is working fine, I'm okay with just maintaining where my body wants to be at.

I can go you know, because I'm a foodie, I eat a lot of food, I punish a lot of river steaks and lard and ghee and liver and you know, I just, my body doesn't hold on to a lot of fat honestly. Just, it's the way it goes. So anyways though, so after that, kind of like early evening-ish workout that finishes up sometime around 6'30 or so,

typically after that, I'll make sure there's no more email fires to put out, no work that's left to be done. And then from about 7'30 on, it's all family time. Like we have these wonderful like family dinners where we play board games and go over our gratitude journals and sing songs and and and just just connect as a family. We all typically are gathering together and making the meal together and everybody's contributing and cooking and laughing and playing music. And so from like 730 until 9, it's just like full on family time, dinner time. We finish dinner and then we go play more music. I'll read to the kids or play them some songs in the guitar. You know, we don't really go out to restaurants that much, but typically it's just like super duper focused and

Relax and fun family time All the all the way up until after nine and then typically by about 930 or so, you know, the kids are tucked away and then my winds down routine In addition to those red lights would be, you know, as we're making that family dinner and getting back in the dinner, I've typically got, you know, the blue light blocking glasses on again to start to, you know, suppress any exposure to, you know, large amounts of blue light. I, what else do I do?

How long have you been with the blue light blocking glasses? 90 minutes, two hours before bed? Yeah, it's usually about 90 minutes, two hours before bed. Unless I'm plant like, you know, whatever. If my wife and I want to have like, you know, like, you know, a really intensive sex session, or something, you know, we're plant being up till 10, 30 or 11, you know, talking, having sex, stuff like that.

Like sometimes I'll just like purposefully not do a lot to wind myself down, so I don't want to be tired. Thank you. But yeah, I also, I tend to have a pretty raging appetite, even after dinner. So I'll typically do something with glycine or gelatin in it, which really, just so I make jello. I make jello with just like some gelatin

that I'll mix with coconut milk and a little stevia. Sometimes I'll put a pre-botic fiber in there, which also helps to sleep, like a cacia fiber. And then I'll just put that in a food dehydrator for about a day and stir that up, keep that in the fridge. And I'll just give myself a nice kind of like, you know, like a two inch by two inch piece of jello at night. Sometimes I'll put a little bit of almond butter on that,

a little touch of sea salt, and that's like, that's my go-to dessert for keeping my appetite, so you can't get a gel. Yeah, it's because I get that gelatin, the glycine just helps me go to bed and not feel hungry later on, So I'll have that typically for dessert, after dinner, and then for the wine down routine, other than that, what else do I do? My go-to supplements for sleep are CBD. I do about typically high-dose CBD. Most of the research on CBD that shows that it enhances sleep uses a lot more than what they use for like the angioletic effect.

Usually it's anywhere from 100 to 600 milligrams per sleep. So typically I'll take about 100 milligrams of CBD. Sublifation. Yeah, yeah. I like the droppers. I find I respond best to that. I just hold it mouth for a couple of minutes. And then like I mentioned, the little bit of glycine with gelatin and then also like I mentioned magnesium.

So CBD magnesium and then a little bit of that gelo. That's kind of like my go-to snack. What's your magnesium supplement? I'm using right now Mag SRT by Jigsaw Health. It's, I think it's glistening 8, 3 and 8 and citrate, I think. Okay, what's the dosage? It's about 400. Okay. Yeah, so you just go to, go to battle tolerance and I'm out when you, when you mix that with having the vitamin C in the baking soda in the morning, it's great for the battles

as well. And then the, the red light and then what I sleep on is I have a gravity blanket. You know, I'm a big fan of an addition to making sure you're sleeping in a cold environment and you're paying attention to light and you're paying attention to not having a lot of ambient noise in the bedroom. I think safety is big, so I don't work in bed.

And I'm in a laptop in bed. I don't even keep business books or health and fitness books or anything like that up in the bedroom. It's all just like fiction or something not related to work. And then I also find when I pull like one of these big breathable 25 pound gravity blankets over myself for sleep, it kind of amplifies that feeling of safety even more. So it's just, it's super duper relaxing for me. So I sleep with a gravity blanket on top and one of those chili pad devices underneath because the chili pad will circulate about 55 degree cold water under my body while I'm sleeping, which really enhances your sleep cycles quite a bit.

And then I've got an essential oil diffuser. And kind of like in my office, I'll diffuse uplifting sense like peppermint, rosemary, etc. in the bedroom which is like lavender or burgamot or some really relaxing scent that I'll diffuse while I'm asleep. And then same thing I'll put on sleep, sleep blocking mask, some foam ear plugs. I have an app called SleepStream on my phone and there's a lot of research showing that you know there's a lot of research showing that, you know, there's all these different noises that can block that sound like white noise or brown noise.

It turns out that pink noise is the one that enhances your sleep the most. So I put some pink noise on that, and then let me think of this as anything else. How are you doing that with the earplugs in? Well, I got the foam earplugs in, but then the phones and airplane mode next to the bed, with the e-plugs in? Well, I've got the foam ear plugs in, but then the, the, um, the phones and airplane mode next to the bed with the sleep stream app on,

just playing pink noise. Just out of your phone speaker? Yeah, yeah, cause we have, you know, we have like roosters and owls and all sorts of stuff out here in the forest. So I just like to cover up that, that ambient noise. And, um, then I use, uh, breath work to just kind of load myself to sleep typically four count in,

seven count hold, eight count out, and I'll do that for about five or ten minutes and I'll just, you know, doze off at that point, just kind of breathing myself to sleep. Definitely one of the things that I like about your day and the way that it's constructed is that everything has its place, that you're not half into anything, apart from perhaps doing little bit of extra training while you work, but the focus there is in facilitating work, not in doing work while you train, right? I particularly like the idea of the family time, the focused family time. I know that Ben Bergeron from Chasing Excellence, Big Fan of this, I know Joe Rogan, Big Fan

of this as well, you know Spending time with your family, where it's not half looking at your kids, half looking at your phone, half thinking about work, still does the emails to do, does this that and the other. I like the idea that you've got your sections in the day that focus you toward what you're supposed to do.

Yeah, yeah, I think that a multitasking, in the sense of rolling golf balls into your feet or flipping a pen while you're working Is just fine, but multi-tasking as far as not being focused and mindful on the task at hand is just a huge issue these days and so yeah I agree full on unbelievable look Ben man. It's been absolutely fantastic your new book boundless linked in the show notes below Where else should people go to to check out what you do? You know, my podcast, all the articles I put out, you know, all that jazz, it's just all at bengreenfieldfitness.com.

And then my supplements company is key on K-I-O-N. And that's at getkeyon.com. Unbelievable. Everything will be linked in the show notes below. It's been mind-blowing today, so I'm sure there's a lot of people that are going to go back and listen to this. If you enjoyed it, make sure to hit the subscribe button, go and check out Ben's podcast. If you enjoyed what we went through today, then he does deep dives on there all the time.

Ben, man, thank you so much for your time. It's been awesome. Oh, thanks, man. Thanks for having me on.