Pursuit of Wellness - Ben Greenfield On Sleep Health, Cortisol, Walking Pace, Red Light, Carbs, Grounding, Hot/Cold Therapy, Meditation, Parenting and The Power Of Spirituality

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Ep. #8 Today we're joined by Ben Greenfield - one of my dream guests! Ben is a health consultant, speaker, New York Times bestselling author, 13-time ironman triathlete, former bodybuilder and has been voted as one of the top 100 most influential people in health and fitness. He’s an expert when it comes to anti-aging, optimal living, longevity, biohacking, nutrition, fitness, cognition and so much more. We go deep on all things health, mental health and spirituality today. I hope you guys find this episode as valuable as I did!   For Mari’s Instagram click here!   For Ben’s Instagram click here!   To pre-order Ben’s new book: Boundless Parenting click here!   To shop Bloom Nutrition Greens click here!   To download Mari’s workout plan & recipes click here!     From the beginning, Greg and I felt like the Bloom customer was a Target girl, and now our Greens are easier to find than ever. I’m so excited that Greens are available in-store for the first time. You can also find Greens on Amazon, and a special offer just for our listeners - use code POW on the Bloom website at www.bloomnu.com for 10% off.   Bite is offering our listeners 20% off your first order. Go to trybite.com/POW or use code POW at checkout to claim this deal.   Right now, Modern Fertility is offering our listeners $20 off the test when you go to ModernFertility.com/POW   Go to HelloFresh.com/pow65 and use code pow65 for 65% off plus free shipping!     Produced by Dear Media. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey listeners, Dan Harris here, host of the 10% Happier podcast. Imagine all your audio entertainment available in just one place. That's what the Audible app is all about. With Audible, you can always find the best of what you love or discover something new. Audible has an incredible selection of wellness titles and originals, like The Light Podcast by Michelle Obama, Work It Out by Mel Robbins, and Confidence Gap by Russ Harris.

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Today on the show, we have one of my dream guests, Ben Greenfield. He's an expert when it comes to anti-aging, optimal living, longevity, biohacking, nutrition, fitness, cognition, and so much more. I have his book Boundless, which is basically a giant encyclopedia for all things health. And he just released the pre-order for his new book, Boundless Parenting, which I'm so excited to chat about. Ben, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on. Yeah, got to hype you up for a sec. My husband and I have been listening to you for years and you have had a big impact on our health journey and a lot of what we do. So I know you're a wealth of

knowledge in so many areas, but for anyone listening who doesn't know you, what's kind of the elevator pitch of who you are and what you do? Yeah, my background is I got a master's degree in exercise physiology and biomechanics from University of Idaho. Did a pre-med degree down there and then wound up working in the fitness world for about a decade or so, you know, training clients and opening up studios and gyms. And eventually decided I want to kind of be a stay-at-home dad and homeschool my kids. And so I moved into the house and made it my excuse to work in my underwear from home. So I started to do a lot more like book writing and podcasting and a lot of what I do now. Amazing. And just to paint the picture for anyone who's listening but not watching, Ben is walking on his treadmill

right now. He's got the red light behind him, in front of him, the picture of health. I'm very inspired. Well, you know what? I think there's even some evidence that you make more brain-derived neurotrophic factor and more of what's called vascular endothelial growth factor, which both of which are calling miracle growth for the brain. If you're moving when you're learning or moving when you're teaching or moving when you're talking. And a lot of times I'm recording a podcast or doing a consulting call.

I didn't mention this. I do a lot of coaching for health and fitness with clients who have me go through their lab work and stuff. I use most excuses I can to walk either outside or inside. And I lift weights a few times a week, but honestly, like, I think like the 15, 20,000 steps I take a day is so good for metabolic health and so much more ancestral. You know, it's, it's not like those of us who work indoors can be farming and gardening and building fences or whatever all day long, but kind of simulate that by walking on the treadmill in the office and keeping a kettlebell on the floor and having a pull-up bar in the door. And you just kind of keep the body moving during the day. And then I think the only issue with the treadmills is

manual treadmills put out a lot of dirty electricity, EMF, the reason a lot of people are being careful with their phones up by their heads or, you know, turn their wifi routers off at night. Well, I mean, a treadmill is just like a giant soup of EMF. So I think if you're going to do a treadmill workstation, get like a manual, a manual treadmill. And then I got one because a lot of the manuals and even the engine driven treadmills are super slow. Like, especially the desk ones,. I go like three or four miles an hour. But like the one I'm on is very similar to those curved treadmills that you'll see in, for example, like the CrossFit games. So you can run on it and it keeps your body in really good alignment biomechanically. And all I did was just took the front dashboard off the treadmill. So I've got full access to my computer. And the only thing I don't like to do when I'm on the treadmill is write. Sometimes I'll record ideas for articles or ideas

for book chapters and then transcribe them either with like a manual transcriptionist or using something like Otter. But there's something about like the deep act of creative writing where I don't like to be moving. But besides that, I mean, it's surprising how many things you can do during the day, you know, team calls, podcasts, chats, conversations, consults, etc. While you're walking. And I have heard you mention the pace being crucial because everyone's obsessed with getting their steps in now, but you've mentioned that pace is important. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Like if you look at, I mean, two recent meta-analyses on walking showed that, you know, almost just as important as the number of steps you take per day, which it generally, I mean, depending on the pretty broad brush, it's like 10,000 or more is a good goal to shoot for, which a lot of people think they're getting at.

And then once they use an aura or a whoop or whatever, it turns out they're not, you know, some people think they're moving all day long and they look and it's like 5,000 steps a day and they just got to start parking far away in the grocery store in the mall and getting a walking treadmill workstation. And maybe all those phone calls you take while you're sitting on the couch, you take while you're walking circles in your backyard or while you're waiting for a flight to take off. You're not sitting there waiting to sit some more in the airplane, but you're walking back and forth. There's all sorts of ways that you can hack your environment to move more. But yeah, you're right. It turns out that as important as that count is the pace. Your actual walking speed is heavily correlated with longevity. It's right up there with things like grip strength, which is another pretty big

corollary for longevity or VO2 max, right? So your maximum oxygen utilization, how much you could hold, like your grip strength, both of those are really well correlated with how long you're going to live and how healthy you'll be with that life. And it turns out that walking speed also falls into that category. So my rule is, honestly, unless I'm on a podcast, like a conversation that you and I are having right now, like I'm not walking super fast, but if I'm just like walking, one, listen to an audio book or a podcast or on a hike, I just tell myself, to be some way to like cue the body to walk faster. It turns out that in cardiac rehab in hospitals, they have these like super expensive, they look similar, like the compression boots that athletes will wear for recovery, but they pump blood from the body, but they time the pump to the diastolic phase of the heartbeat,

meaning that as the heart is just getting ready to fill the legs pump, and it causes more blood to rush back up to the heart. And it can be really, really great for cardiovascular performance and oxygenating the body to be able to do that. But you obviously can't get like a $50,000 pair of, of cardio respiratory rehab boots, you know, in the average basement. So I found another device, it's called a counter pace. And I haven't used it in a while because I kind of trained my body using it and then quit using it. But what counter pace does is it plays like a beat, like a metronome type beat as you're walking and it comes with a heart rate monitor. And so what it's

essentially doing is timing your step count to your heart rate, which allows blood to get pumped from your legs back up to your heart at the perfect moment and keeps you walking at a relatively brisk pace. And it'll say, speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. It'll even have like a little metronome option or a music option. So I use the counter pace on a lot of my walks for probably like five or six months before I thought, okay, I got this. I don't have to use the device anymore. But that was one thing I found to really help to get the pace up. And then the other thing is, even though it's not as good for the butt, you don't have as much ground reaction forces. You don't use quite as many muscles. I mean, walking on a treadmill

is really great. And this is not a manual treadmill. So throw everything I said about Wi-Fi and EMF out the window. You know, sometimes you got to take one for the team. But treadmill with an engine on it, obviously, if I set that, I don't know, 4.0 for walking speed, I've got no choice but to walk at that pace or fall off the back of the treadmill. So a treadmill can be good for training the body to keep its step count up as well. Treadmills are really good for that for runners too, like people who want to do a marathon

or a half marathon or a 5K or a triathlon run or whatever faster. Using a treadmill forces you to run at a faster pace than your brain would actually want to train at. Similar to the idea of like these electrical muscle stimulation suits for fitness, right? They grab a whole bunch of muscles the brain wouldn't normally otherwise grab. And it'd be wonderful for building muscle, for building strength.

Shameless break here for a second. I won gold medal for the USA in long course triathlon. I think that was 2013. And I barely ran outside at all. I had two treadmill sessions a week that were very, very high intensity interval training, you know, like 10 all out 30 second repeats with, you know, two minute recoveries after each. I had one more like pace-based 90 minute run on the treadmill. And then sometimes I'd throw in one additional outdoors run, but I almost did all

my running on the treadmill. And I was the fastest runner I ever was in my life was when I did almost all my running on the treadmill I think it was because it forces you to keep the cadence elevated and do you think it's because maybe there isn't that element of like danger like you don't have to worry about stop signs people things like that squirrels and cats and clowns and black cats and zombies and stuff like that. Yeah. Out of all the different fitness trackers, you know, aura ring, whoops, which one do you recommend to the average person? I like the aura and that's mostly because I wear a watch.

I didn't want an extra thing in my wrist. I just wear like a cheap ass, you know, $15 Timex watch. I'm pretty low tech when it comes to watches and even gadgets in general, but I like the Oura Ring because it's got really good sleep data. I mean, their sleep data is up there as far as like getting pretty close to like a professional plesmiography based sleep lab. It'll do oxygenation now. So, you know, if you're having issues with like pulse oximetry or sleep apnea during the night of sleep which is a huge issue for a lot of people it does a great job with temperature tracking which is great especially for women who want to track their cycles or even you know that type of tracking can be predictive for things like covid as well it does a pretty good job with heart rate variability and readiness and yeah like i like I, I think of all of them, I like the Oryx.

I can wear the aura and then just have a regular watch on and it's pretty no frills. It's I, I put it in airplane mode all the time. And then whenever I want to sync up the data, I just quickly take it out of airplane mode. So I can kind of like have one less device bombarding my body with Bluetooth or wifi or whatever. I like it. I think if you do want a wristband, the Whoop does a great job. And then there's another device if you just want to train breath and heart rate variability and use it more for stress management. There's a device called the Hanu, which is like a chest

strap with a pretty decent app with breath cues and a breath pacer. That one works pretty well also, but I don't think it's as good for fitness tracking and sleep tracking as much as just for nervous system tracking. Establishing healthy habits is so important to overall longevity. And one thing I make sure I never miss is my Bloom Greens. My husband and I founded Bloom Nutrition in January of 2019 after my own fitness journey. I lost over 90 pounds and completely turned my life around. My mental health was a mess and I went through a nine-month journey of just completely changing the way I thought about life. Now, when I started being healthier, I wanted an all-in-one supplement

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bloat, and so much more. And I have such exciting news for you guys. From the beginning, Greg and I felt like the Bloom customer was a Target girl, and our greens are now easier to find than ever. They are now in Target stores nationwide. You can also find greens on Amazon and on the Bloom website at www.bloomnew.com. That's B-L-O-O-M-N-U.com. I also have a sneaky little code for you guys. You guys can use code POW, P-O-W, for 10% off your greens right now. That deal won't last long. I had to convince Greg to give me a code, so I would recommend using it right now. Love you guys. You guys have probably seen me on my Instagram talking about tests. I think getting our bodies tested is so, so important. We need to see where our level's at and knowledge is power.

When you know more, you can make better decisions for your body, your health, and your future. There aren't many decisions bigger than having a kid, but for many women, their fertility is a big question mark. As Greg and I start talking about having kids and starting our family, I want to make sure that my fertility hormones are looking good. And that's why Modern Fertility was created. It's an easy and affordable way to test your fertility hormones at home with a simple finger prick. Mail it in with a prepaid label and you'll get your personalized results within six business days. You'll get insight into your hormone levels like your ovarian reserve and other important factors that can have an impact on your fertility. The results go deep into what every hormone means,

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which is a fraction of what it would cost at a fertility clinic. Get $20 off your fertility test when you go to modernfertility.com slash pow, P-O-W, modernfertility.com slash pow. Are you looking for some good, clean positivity? Good. Me neither. I'm Maddie Murphy, and I host The Bad Broadcast, a weekly comedy podcast dedicated to talking about everything we love to hate. I searched my whole life to find my passion. Little did I know I had So, Ben, you're obviously like living as optimally as you possibly can. 10 out of 10. Let's say someone's listening who's maybe at a 3 out of 10, 2 out of 10, who's hoping to increase that a little bit. Where do you recommend they start? All right. Well, first of all, I know some 10 out of 10s. I'm not a 10 out of 10.

I punish the bread basket at the steakhouse when it comes out and have an extra cocktail and stay up late sometimes just playing or being out in the town. I am a total foodie and I love to eat. And I probably eat like 4,000 calories a day. I love life, but I also like adventures and appreciate good food and really like to take care of my body and get paid to figure out stuff that helps people live a long time. So I'm constantly guinea pigging stuff in my body. But at the end of the day, I'm not like a poopy-faced orthorexic guy who's living his whole life cold and hungry and libido-less in some quest to live till I'm 160 years old. Probably like a solid eight and a half though. But let's say you are like you said, like at a two or three, but you're already aware

of what most people are aware of, which is exercise and try and eat less crap. Let's say you've already wrapped your head around that and you're like, okay, I got it. I'm not going to fast food and I'm hitting the gym a few times a week and I'm walking. If there were things to do in addition to eating well and moving that would help to keep the body's battery charged, one would be the earth itself, right? Like being outside barefoot, getting outside and going for long walks on the beach or swims in natural bodies of water. Or even if you can't get outside that much using some of these modern tools like grounding mats or earthing mats or grounding shoes,

or even what's called pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, which is kind of like grounding on steroids or typically like mats or little devices that kind of concentrate the Earth's frequency that you can even sleep on. I think a lot of people don't realize how healing the natural electrical frequencies generated by our planet can be. So that's one. Two would be photons of light. Like we were talking about light earlier, not just fancy expensive infrared light panels

or infrared saunas or infrared treatment devices, which a lot of people use for collagen, for elastin, for endocrine hormone function, for wakefulness, for circadian rhythmicity, for simulating sunrise in the morning or sunset at night. And those are really good to include because those photons, particularly of red light, help to excite the mitochondria and keep the battery charged. But of course, sunlight has a natural full spectrum of light too. So being careful not to burn, but trying to hunt down 20 minutes to two hours of natural light per day, preferably early in the day, and pairing that, if you can afford it or have access to it, with some form of infrared

therapy or red light therapy on a regular basis, that's also fantastic for the body's battery. That'd be a second one. I think another thing that a lot of people neglect who might already be exercising and eating well is thermal stress, meaning stressors of heat and stressors of cold. And we see across generations, especially in indigenous hunter gatherer societies and, you know, tougher societies like Russia or long-lived societies like Finland, robust use of heat and cold, like sauna practice three to five times a week, deep sweat, jumps into cold lakes and rivers and oceans, the use of cold baths, use of cold showers. And a lot of times people

nowadays are doing breath work in combination with that, which is fantastic for moving oxygen through the body, for blowing off CO2, for filling the body with nitric oxide. So, I mean, that's a key part of my program, like one of my secret weapons. I think I have two secret weapons, actually, and secret, obviously, because I'm talking about about you but one is i fast every day for 12 to 16 hours i wake up in a fasted state i do some form of exercise and i finish with cold and i think if you want to stay lean that's a really good strategy but then the other thing that i do and i include my my kids in this since they were eight years old so it's like a little bit of a father-son bonding time, is we do heat, breathwork

and cold three to five times a week. Sometimes it's 20 minute breathwork session in the sauna. Sometimes like on a weekend, we'll go like an hour, just like flat on our backs, just sweating a ton and breathing. It always finishes with some type of a jump, like a cold plunge. And I'm usually getting a couple of cold plunges because I also will take a cold shower at some point. And that combination of heat, breathwork and cold, or just this general idea of pairing thermal stress with the use of something that regulates your nervous system, namely your breath. That's a really great strategy. It goes beyond just treating the body as a battery. There's just so many benefits, White fat conversion into metabolically active brown tissue, better insulin sensitivity, better cardiovascular performance, better control of your nervous system in general,

better nitric oxide production, breathing off more carbon dioxide, so alkalizing the body. I think kids at school, as part of their physical education programs, should have heat, cold, and breath work as things that are included right along with burpees and running ladders. So there's that. And then if I could name something in addition to good relationship, getting in touch with the planet Earth, or even using devices to help you do that, and then sunlight and red light and heat cold and breath work i would say that a lot of people from an environmental standpoint there's a lot of stuff they don't pay attention to like household cleaning chemicals and personal care products and all these endocrine disruptors and eating food out of styrofoam plastics and things like that but i think top of the totem pole is water like really

good clean pure filtered water you know frequently throughout the day with salts added to it, with electrolytes added to it, with good salts added to the food with, you know, some form of electrolytes coming out on a regular basis. Cause if you think about it, you know, if you look at the periodic table, the elements or whatever, like that's what carries a charge to our bodies. And so if we're picky about our water drinking out of glass bottles, using good water filters like say reverse osmosis or carbon block, and then we add minerals back to that water and also add a lot of minerals and electrolytes to our food, our body actually has the charge that it needs to keep the cells operating the right way. And so, yeah, if you're already moving well and eating healthy,

get grounding and earthing in at some point during the day, some form of sunlight, red light, or both some kind of thermal stress. It'll be every day, but at least a few times a week. And then just be like ultra picky about the quality and cleanliness of your water and add minerals to it. And I think if people would just do that, they'd go from, you know, like a three up to like a solid seven or eight on one to 10 scale. Question in terms of minerals. So I use the Kinton water and wellness minerals every day. I don't know how you feel about those. Yeah, those are harvested from basically like phytoplankton bloom in the ocean that's been filtered. And the electrolyte content of them is actually shockingly close to mammalian plasma.

So far as they've even like done blood transfusions on dogs and the dogs have survived with Kington in their veins instead of plasma. And if you want to stay really well hydrated with a spectrum of electrolytes, that's the closest to human blood. You know, you let you hear a lot of people will say like, Oh, drink coconut water. You know, if you're dehydrated or after a big sauna session, cause it's really close to the mineral composition and osmolality or concentration of human plasma. Well, Kington's actually even better than that. And so, yeah, you're using a good one. It doesn't taste that good. It tastes like you're drinking seawater and it's expensive.

And so I would say there are other brands out there that either have a flavor profile that's better and are easier on the pocketbook if people can't do the Kington. And that would be like Protect is a good brand. Jigsaw Health makes one called Adrenal Cocktail. It's a good brand. Element, like L-M-N-T, they do a good job. So, you know, you don't have to use just one electrolyte. Some people get bored and, you know, I've got Protect liquid electrolytes in my pantry. I've got Kington in my pantry.

I've got Element in my pantry. I've got really good salt, a couple of different varieties that I use on food. So, you know, just like, you know, you kind of mix up your workouts throughout the week I'll mix up my electrolyte sources throughout the week and then just to speak to salt for a minute because I think You know people who are in the health and fitness industry know how beneficial salt can be But I do think there's a significant amount of people out there who don't Think salt that is good for you. I think if you really want to wrap your head around this

There's a great book called the salt fix by Dr. James Nicolantonio. And I've interviewed him on my podcast before. But the long story short is that processed food or even like the typical iodized table salt, it's hefty amounts of sodium chloride. And usually, yeah, we would find sodium in a pretty large concentration in nature and in our bodies, but not all by itself. You know, there are 70 plus other minerals electrolyzed that the body needs. And so arguably, if you're going to use salt, you want to salt with a really good spectrum of minerals that goes above and beyond just like table salt or sodium chloride. And so there are a few good brands out there. Redmond salt, they do a pretty good job. And when I say good, I mean, decent concentration of minerals without a lot of microplastics and metals. Interestingly, like a lot of sea salt, especially like the dark pink or reddish stuff,

it does have a lot of iron in it, which can build up in the body, especially in males. It does have some toxins and microplastics and metals in it. So just because the salt is spendy or foo-foo or came from France or whatever, doesn't mean it's healthy. And you can usually Google the names of most salts. And there are a variety of companies that have done mass spectrometry analysis of the actual mineral content, the actual toxin content, or plastic and metal content in salts. You can know if something you're using as a staple in your diet or on a regular basis is a thumbs up or a thumbs down. I personally, like I mentioned, Redmond does a good job. Celtic salt, that's a really good brand. It's like a little blue bag. You can find it at most grocery stores and it's pretty clean and has a really good electrolyte profile and a good flavor profile too

which is important you want your salt to taste good and then the one i use most often is called colima c-o-l-i-m-a it's from the mexican coast it's kind of harvested by these salt harvesting solaneros at the basin of this mountain where the water comes down and kind of collects the minerals and something about like the flavor profile and, you know, don't laugh, but I'm super picky, like the size of the salt crystal and everything about it I like. So, you know, those are a few good brands that you could look into Redmond or Celtic or Kalima. While we're on the topic of all things health and longevity with Ben, I want to talk about toothpaste. There are so many everyday ingredients we don't think about that have ingredients that may be causing issues in our bodies. Did you know we swallow five to seven percent of our toothpaste every single time we brush. And most commercial

toothpastes are filled with harsh chemicals, artificial flavors, and preservatives, not things I want to be putting in my mouth, let alone swallowing. And this is where I discovered Bite. Bite makes dry toothpaste tablets made with clean ingredients. They're sulfate-free, palm oil-free, and glycerin-free. Plus, they're so convenient. They come in these cute little glass jars. You can just throw in your carry-on bag or put on your countertop. You pop a bit in your mouth, chew it up, and start brushing. It turns into a paste what it used to, but no plastic tube and no messy paste. I have absolutely loved traveling with these. So convenient to bring on a flight and makes you feel fresh when you come off. The glass jars are so, so cute as well. Great for the countertop. And I just absolutely love these. Greg has been really enjoying them too, P-O-W at checkout to claim this deal. That's T-R-Y-B-I-T-E

dot com slash pow. One of my favorite times in the day is in the evening when I get home from work, Greg gets home from work, and we come together to make a delicious, healthy meal. It's the perfect way to wind down, and that's become even easier with HelloFresh. With HelloFresh, you get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make at-home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. And that's why it's America's number one meal kit. You can actually customize and select meals by swapping proteins or sides, or even adding protein to a veggie dish. And you can even upgrade for organic chicken or organic ground

beef. You'll only find quality ingredients in HelloFresh's recipes. In fact, ingredients travel from the farm to your home in less than seven days. So, you know, they're fresh. Greg and I have been finding this so, so convenient, especially when we're busy. All we want to do is sit down and talk to each other and actually enjoy the meal. And this has made it so convenient. We just grab it out of the fridge, whip it up, and it's ready. Our current favorite has been the seared steak potatoes with bearnaise sauce. It's absolutely incredible. Lulu is like drooling watching us eat it. It's made cooking so easy and fast and so enjoyable for me and my husband. You can go to hellofresh.com slash pow65 and use

code pow65 for 65% off plus free shipping. Go to hellofresh.com slash pow65 and use code pow65 for 65% off plus free shipping. This is America's number one meal kit. I highly recommend you guys try it. I know you've been asked about your routines many times, but I know you kind of have a new focus right now on family and spirituality. So I'd love to kind of hear an updated sleep routine with that in mind. We typically, and I typically kind of like break work at the end of the day around seven. And yeah, like for circadian rhythmicity, you know, a lot of people will say, oh, you want to have dinner at like five or six and give the food two or three hours to digest.

And it's just the fact that by the time everybody's done with their day and we're ready for dinner, it's closer to 7. And we're old fuddy-duddies. Everybody in our house is usually in bed by like 9.30. So obviously, we're breaking that rule of finishing dinner two to three hours before bedtime. But we all meet in the kitchen around 7. Typically, everybody's pitching in to help make dinner. You know, I usually do like the meat, you know, salmon, you know, steak. We do a lot of organ meats, like bone marrow, bone broth, heart, kidney, liver, like a lot of these super nutrient dense cuts of meat. And I figured out ways to prepare those and make them taste good, like sous vide or smoker or grilling or long cook times, crock pot, pressure cooker, et cetera.

So even though I think my wife's way better cooked than I am, I like to cook meat. So I'm usually like putting my hand up and helping out with the meat. And sometimes that means I have a home office, but, you know, I'm popping up from the office at like four to, you know, to piece the chicken out and season it and put it back in the refrigerator and have it ready to, you know, put in the oven at six 45. So we're ready to gather for dinner around seven. So some PM's dinner, usually, you know, some kind of a big, lovely salad or roasted vegetables, you know, carrot fries or sweet potato fries, you know, sushi rice just kind of varies, but you know, some form of a start, some form of vegetable, some form of a meat. And then, you know know i usually have a glass of red wine or you know these days i drink actually a lot less wine even though i always drink healthy like organic biodynamic wine there's this new cocktail like drink called ketones and you can drink ketones

the ones i like are from a company called ketoneone Aid, because they make like a Moscow Mule flavor and a gin and tonic flavor, and even just a regular flavor. And you mix it all up, usually pour over ice with a squeeze of lemon or lime. And it has this socially lubricating, relaxing, inhibitory, like end of the day, yes, neurotransmitter type of effect. But there's none of the toxic byproducts of alcohol. I mean, let's face it, even like healthy organic wine, they're still making acetaldehyde. It's still ethanol. It's still a little bit hard on the cells. And some people will say, well, that's why it has a longevity enhancing effect is it's slightly hard on the cells, just like heat stress or cold stress or exercise. So your cells bounce back and become more resilient, but nonetheless, whatever you want to say, I do

like half the time I'll do a glass of wine. Half the time I'll do some of these ketones poured over ice, like these ketone aid, ketone drinks. We usually play games and laugh for like an hour during dinner, just these long family dinners, a lot of times card games, board games, you name it, even like table topics, just random questions for people and so yeah right before dinner we sing a song we pray we go through a book i play a song on the guitar and we say a prayer do some gratitude uh sometimes a little bit of breath work to settle the body down just a few like long inhales longer exhales getting in touch with the body preparing it to receive food so we're not eating like a rushed sympathetic state which is often one of the reasons people get indigestion or leaky gut

or heartburns. They're just eating too fast, not being grateful for their food, not saying a prayer with their food, maybe stopping to breathe before they eat. So I make it a point to do that and make sure my kids understand the importance of that, you know, not just mindlessly rushing into the meal. And usually if you want to get like all biohacky, I'm wearing blue light blocking glasses at night. We use a lot of soft lighting in our home, either incandescent or halogen lighting, which are two forms of lighting that are a lot friendlier to the circadian rhythm and sleep than say like led or overhead fluorescent lighting. So use a really nice nice light but i still got blue light blocking glasses on most of the time you know for those brighter things like opening the refrigerator you know looking at the phone things along those lines and we finish dinner

around like 8 8 15 and then we all clean up the kitchen together usually we're like playing music singing laughing hanging out and then once we've done all of that, we go up into my son's room and I'll either read a bedtime story or we say a prayer. We almost always meditate or review something that we're in the process of memorizing. Usually we memorize some new part of the Bible each week. I think memorization is another,

kind of like breathwork and heat and cold, like a lost aspect of staying young. So we force our brains to kind of get a little smoke coming out the ears and practice what it is that we've memorized. Supplementation wise, you know, if my wife and I are planning on having sex or, you know, or hanging out for a little while after dinner, after we put the kids to bed, I won't take something that's going to make me sleepy, obviously. And I'll save that for right before I go to bed. But usually after we tuck the kids in, I take a little bit of Keon Sleep, which is a sleep formula that I helped to make. It's got a bunch of stuff in it that

settles the body down, but doesn't leave you too groggy the next morning. And I typically will do a little bit of CBD along with that. So I like to do CBD with Keon Sleep. And then if I've been traveling a lot, I'll include melatonin as well to help to kind of reestablish the body circadian rhythm. And I go pretty high dose on melatonin. I get suppositories of melatonin from this company called Mitozen in Florida. And they're hefty, like 300 milligrams of melatonin. And that's not something I do every night.

But I just got back from recording my album in Nashville last night and went to bed about 1 a.m. And I usually get up and went to bed about 1 a.m. And I usually get up about 430 or 5 a.m. So I had to get up pretty early to start work today. And I find that melatonin allows me to just like slip into sleep pretty quick, even if I'm outside of my time zone. And it does leave you groggy the next morning. Melatonin does.

But if light hits your eyes and you just get a lot of natural sunlight exposure or even just like, gosh, looking at a computer or a smartphone, which generates a lot of blue light, which is the reason you shouldn't look at it at night, it'll really wake you up and get melatonin out of your system in the morning. So if you use melatonin, you wake up groggy and you're like, crap, today's going to suck. Just get exposed to as much light as you can. And it's usually out of your system pretty quick. And so I'll take my sleep supplements either after my wife and I have hung out for a while or right after we put the kids to bed, if we're planning on going to bed anyways, I always have a stack of books next to the bed that are non-business, non-fitness, you know, get my mind out of work type of books. So like right now I'm studying the Torah, like the Levitical law, like Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus.

So I read typically for about 15 to 20 minutes. I have a chili pad on my bed, which circulates 55 degree cold water underneath my body, which I find really helps me to sleep. I use a sleep mask. I use earplugs. I'm kind of a princess sleeper, right? So I put in earplugs. I put on a sleep mask.

I get things nice and cold. I take my key on sleep and my CBD and we'll usually breathe myself to sleep. And I like to play a little background noise because we live by a road where I can sometimes hear the cars in the morning. And so I use an app called sleep stream, kind of like covers up some of the noise in the background. I'm experimenting right now actually with mouth taping, and I kind of like it. What I don't like is I obviously can't put it on right before my wife and I pray. I sound like Kenny from South Park or something.

So mouth taping is just like one more thing I got to remember to do. But I actually, I've been getting really good sleep cycles, you know, based on my aura ring. And the only thing I've changed significantly has been mouth taping. So there's something about it that's causing my body to shift into a relaxed state better. They say you get more nitric oxide into your system. They say that, that it allows for the jaw to relax a little bit more. Something's working with mouth tip. I've been doing that for a couple of weeks. I use this stuff called hostage tape, which is designed for men who have facial hair. I obviously don't have facial hair,

but the only thing I should mention not to freak people out too much with all the things is the importance of earthing and grounding. I mentioned how cool that is for fighting inflammation along the body to recover faster. Well, I actually have one of those right underneath that cold water circulating mat. So I'm getting the benefits of earthing and grounding the whole night while I'm asleep while also staying cold. And I won't lie, I'm pretty happy with my sleep. Another thing my husband and I started doing because of you is the red light bulbs, which I think is really helpful. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. I mentioned how our whole house is all incandescent and halogen lighting, but in the bedroom,

it's specifically red incandescent lighting. So of the lamps on either side on her side and my side when you flip them on at night when you're reading and stuff it's just red so you sleep really well you know especially if you're doing that and then if you're looking at a phone or whatever maybe you're reading on a candle you also have like the blue light blocking glasses on you just sleep so much better when you control light in your environment and they're like five bucks on Amazon or something. They're super easy to get your hands on, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and like in the morning, it's actually important. Even though natural light in the morning is important, you want to ease your body into the day because natural light produces this cortisol awakening response. And sometimes it can be a little much. It'd be almost like waking up, you got a coffee

maker on your bedside, and the first thing you do is a shot of espresso. That's kind of jar your butt it'd be almost like you know waking up you got a coffee maker on your bedside and the first thing you do is a shot of espresso that's kind of like how your body interprets you know looking at your phone the computer and turning all the lights in the room when you get up so like i mentioned i get up like 4 30 or 5 but i have just a cheapo headlamp on my bedside the same thing from amazon's like i don't know 15 bucks or something but it's a red light headlamp so i can put that on i want to own around the house in the morning. You know, when I don't want to just blast my body with all this light, I just use red light in the morning also. So, I mean, if you think about it makes sense, right?

You're trying to simulate sunset at night and then sunrise in the morning. And it'd be weird for the body to just like have the sun up at noon, which is technically what you're doing. You flip all the lights on your bedroom versus keeping the lights off and just using red light to get around for the first hour or so of the day. I feel a lot better when I do that. In the women's health space, everyone's talking about cortisol and hormone health. What is your take on working out as soon as you wake up in terms of cortisol? I think that it shifts the circadian clock backwards a little bit and makes you sleepy in the afternoon and sleepier in the early evening. If you just shock the body with a workout right when you get up, even if you look at a lot of Ayurvedic body clock timing type

of stuff, let's say you're getting up at five or six, generally you want to take the time that you get up and add two to three hours. And that's the time of day that's best for some type of robust physical activity. Even though I have to admit that I like to do easy walk in the sunshine, yoga, sauna, cold breath work, stuff like that in the morning. And then I try to do like my harder workouts whenever I can later on in the day, like the later afternoon or early evening, because your body temperature and your testosterone and your grip strength and your reaction time and your overall strength, all this stuff kind of peaks at that time of day. So if you can, if you can do it in your schedule, even though, of course, the best workout is

one that you're actually going to do. But if you have the luxury of time to be able to kind of like do something easy in the morning and then do like the harder thing in the later afternoon or early evening, it is better from a physiological and a circadian rhythmicity standpoint. Now, the same could be said of like coffee. Technically, you'd want to wait a couple hours after waking up to have a cup of coffee, unless you, like me, love the bowel movement effect of a cup of coffee. So I personally break that rule. I typically have a cup of coffee within like I personally break that rule. I typically have

a cup of coffee within like an hour after I get up because it kind of helps you move my bowels. And I like to do that in the morning. Um, technically you could use decaf coffee or, you know, any warm beverage, but I sometimes find a cup of coffee can help with that process. And then the other thing to think about is I personally, even though this isn't everybody's jam, I don't eat a lot of carbohydrates until the evening. I find that if I can save most of my carbs for the evening, whether it's dark chocolate and red wine or rice or sourdough bread or sweet potato fries or whatever,

because carbohydrates are a precursor for serotonin, which is a precursor to melatonin, and because it results in me not getting low blood glucose that can sometimes wake you up around 1 or 2 a.m. is very common. Saving my carbohydrate, the majority of my carbohydrates I have with dinner works out really well. And a lot of people will hear that and say, well, you know, a lot of nutritionists, for example, they say, well, that's bunk because you're most insulin sensitive in the morning. You're most able to take glucose and put it into muscles and the liver in the morning. And that's true just because of that cortisol

awakening response I talked about. You are more primed to deal with carbohydrates, if you want to phrase it that way, in the morning, such as like blueberry smoothie or oatmeal or whatever. But at the same time, you can induce this temporary state of insulin sensitivity if you're doing a workout or even like a walk or a cold shower or something in the later afternoon or early evening, thus making the carbohydrates that you're going to have at dinner less likely to cause these wild fluctuations in blood glucose. And with that approach, you're just shifting your body into burning more fat, you know, plants, vegetables, good fatty acids, proteins, et cetera, during the

day, all the way up to dinner. And then you have all your carbs at dinner or the majority of your day's carbs at dinner, you sleep better. Then you wake up the next morning and you've also got some energy in your tank for a morning movement session. And so that's the way that I like to do things from a, from an exercise and also from like a, like a carbohydrate intake standpoint. And it seems to help a lot of the clients that I do that with, you know, they wake up women 10 to 12 hour overnight intermittent fast for premenopausal women, just because that's friendlier on fertility and the endocrine system. And they just feel better men a little bit longer, 12 to 16 hours

wake up in the morning fasted some aerobic exercise some cold go throughout the day eating protein good fats vegetables get close to the evening and if possible do a workout session it was just like quick 15 20 minutes burpees lifting weights whatever and then eat dinner and have carbohydrates with dinner. And that seems to work really well, particularly for leanness and for sleep. Those are two things that seem to respond pretty well to that scenario. That's how I like to eat as well. And I've found that it's great for cognitive function. I don't know if there's any science behind that, but I feel like I focus way better when I save my carbs for nighttime. Yeah. Cause ketones are kind of like a very metabolically stable fuel that are great for

the diaphragm and the liver and the heart and particularly the brain. So without a lot of blood glucose fluctuations, you tend to have better cognitive performance within reason, you know, start yourself. Cause then you get brain fog, but yeah, limiting carbohydrates, at least it can be very helpful with that. And then in the evening, as long as you're getting enough carbohydrates in later on, you're fine. I think the mistake some low carb and keto folks make is they just like restrict carbs way too much, hit a wall, the thyroid starts to plummet. They make it like four weeks and throw up their hands in despair and go have a giant pizza. But I think if you just basically tell yourself, all right, I'm just going to refeed on carbohydrates just about every evening and then rinse,

wash and repeat and do it again. Yeah, you're right. Like your cognitive performance seems a little bit elevated as well. So I want to jump to mental health for a second, because I know you and your family practice gratitude, prayer, meditation. What kind of an impact can those practices have on our physical health? Well, it depends on which one you want to choose, but let's paint with a broad brush and say just like a spiritual disciplines practice in general. Having a time during the day when you're writing down something you're grateful for. Praying, meditation, breath work, having friends in the local community

who you might worship a higher power with, or sing with, or engage in some form of collective worship. Nature walks without headphones where you're just talking to God or listening to God. Well, I mean, when you look at the decrease in blood pressure, increase in profile of mood state score, better sleep, less cardiovascular risk, in some cases, lower onset of diabetes, in some cases, such as church attendance, for example, just lower all-cause mortality in general,

I think there's a pretty good case to be made for the fact that having a robust spiritual disciplinary practice that's mindful and well thought out and even calendared is something that can be as good for physical function and mental function as say like exercise or eating healthy. And of course, if you look at books like the biology of belief or the healing code, we know that trauma, stress, bad relationships, and the like tend to be something that cross over and affect you biologically. I mean, even like the Bible and Chinese traditional medicine are two examples of forms of teaching that link anger to bone cancer and bone wasting. Or that link bitterness to onset of chronic disease, or that link, you know, and this would be all the way into Western medicine, just chronic stress in general, associated with a host of diseases. You know, this all dictates

that, yeah, I mean, what we do spiritually affects ourself physically. And I mean, I haven't go so far as to say, well, you should think of yourself as a soul with a body, not a body with a soul. And the most important part for you to take care of is that one part that sadly, and many people is just shrunken and neglected and not taken care of because you can't see it. It's not sexy and you can't be an Instagram influencer showing off your soul, right? But happiness and love and peace and joy and all those positive emotions that arise when you're loving yourself enough to give yourself the time of day to meditate and to pray and to dive into spiritual teachings and to connect with your creator and to mend broken relationships. I mean, that's so important. I mean, you don't hear about a lot of folks on their deathbed, you know, writing about how many

burpees they could do or how much they could bench press or their body thought percentage, right? It's all basically comes down to, did I love adequately and was I loved adequately? I mean, if you get into the five regrets of the dying that palliative care practitioner Bonnie Warre has an article about and a book about, it's basically the five things people tend to say is that I keep in touch with old friends. I wish I'd stayed in touch with old friends. I wish I'd chosen to show my true emotions. I wish I'd chosen to be happier.

I wish I hadn't worked so hard and I wish I'd been my true authentic self rather than who I thought the world expected me to be. And I can't think of a single one of those instances that would not require you to have some type of spirit care worked into your routine for you to not have something like that as a regret. So yeah, I think it's incredibly important for lifespan and healthspan to care for oneself spiritually. And what does that look like for you and your family? What that looks like for me is I wake up in the morning. I'm typically listening to a sermon or a devotional or really uplifting spiritual song as I begin my day. And then at around 730, our

entire family meets for family meditation where we're sitting on the floor outside in the backyard reading the bible reading a devotional praying together singing together having kind of like a team huddle a big hug for physical touch as a family and then we all go throughout our day and i already described our dinner time and bedtime routine to you but you know based on that description you can understand how we're coming together at the end of the day again and connecting spiritually. And so if you look at each day, it's kind of bookended with the most important part of the day, even before physical health and mental health and work and school. It's spiritual health and the spiritual disciplines that begin the day and the end of the day. My husband and I don't have kids kids yet but we're starting to collect all

the advice we can get and we've listened to you and jessa speak about parenting before if you could sum it up what would you say your parenting principles are oh well first shameless plug you gotta read my new parenting book 30 plus different sets of parents and just got tons of wisdom and advice and tips from the trenches and that just came out so that's a boundless parenting book.com if you want that book but i would say the most important foundational principles of our family and our marriage i could boil a few of them down one would be those coming together in the evening for family dinners. Like I mentioned,

that's so important and so critical as are those mornings, comings and goings like the meditation and the prayer and the breath work, you know, both in the morning and in the evening. And then we have always operated with this principle of what's called love and logic parenting style, meaning there's not a lot of discipline in our house. There's a lot of, not a lot of discipline in our house. There's not a lot of no's. There's no bans on screen time or gluten or sweets or alcohol or

anything, right? We just educate our children about the consequences of any decision that they might make in life, like what porn does to your neurotransmitters or what alcohol or marijuana might do to a young liver or a young brain or how too much gluten at a birthday party they're going to might affect their cognitive performance the next day. And then we step back and let them make the decision. And if they choose the wrong decision, they can deal with the consequences of that. They can deal with the consequences of indigestion or a poor night of sleep or not having exercise and being embarrassed in their jujitsu match because they lost you know like but we don't really require them to do anything it's all just educate them about the consequences of the decision and then let them make the decision

there are obvious exceptions that like i don't know if your toddler is going towards a hot stove and you don't want to get a third degree burn on their hand you're gonna you know tell them hot don't touch but then you might also like also physically slap their hand away or pull them back because they're just not old enough to understand. But for the most part, painting with a broad brush. Yeah, we don't spank and hit and say no, no, don't do that. We always educate about the consequences of any decision and then let them make the decision.

And the result is a self-actualized child. The requirement, yeah, for you as a parent to have deeper, more educational discussions with your child about the way that the world works, because it's, let's face it, it's easy as a parent to just like hit and say no and lay down the law and create a spirit of fear in the household but to create a spirit of like cohabitated love and educated decisions about something that they might make and the present mindfulness of a parent to be able to take the time to explain something to a child and to to you know lay down an understanding for why certain rules might exist you want to call them rules you're like well you know we don't lie, but here's why

here's what happens when you lie and here's the repercussions and here's the trust that you lose. And there's, you know, the, the braveness and the courage that you build by telling the truth. And there's dad breaking down during devotions and crying because I'm confessing a lie that I told the family last week. And here's what it looks like to ask for repentance and forgiveness. If you have a lie, like just a whole host of both transparency and love and education from a disciplinary standpoint is just, it's so much better than like a blanket yes,

or a blanket no. And then finally, if I could throw one other thing in there, we have dedicated calendar date nights, one-on-one date nights, mom with one kid, me with one kid, dedicated date nights for me and my wife, at least a couple of times a month, dedicated quarterly getaways with Jess and my wife and I, where we'll spend two or three days just going on walks and hiking and often like a staycation or being in a hotel room, where we're just talking deeply about the things we haven't had a chance to talk about, hopes, dreams, kids' education, things we're concerned about, things that annoy us about each other that we want to work on. And so we carve out time because you take it for granted that you live together.

And once you have kids, I mean, you can easily have a whole year go by where it feels like you're just like ships passing in the night, unless you intentionally carve out the time for one-on-one time, all the way down to just like those evening prayers. If we're skipping an evening prayer, that means something's wrong. We're mad at each other or something went wrong. We don't just get in bed and say goodnight and fall asleep now. We always finish by connecting with God and our spirits, our souls. Well, the book looks incredible. And I saw you brought together a whole bunch of experts, so I can't wait to get my hands on it. Ben, thank you so much for coming on.

Where can people find you online? Where can they find the book? Oh, geez. Thanks. So the book, I guess, is just boundlessparentingbooks.com. But then all my books, my podcast, everything, my coaching, all of it is at bengreenfieldlife.com. We do nutrition plans, fitness plans, coaching for CEOs and execs and athletes and celebrities. And we do just basically one-on-one work with people, group work with people. I got a fitness app, got a bunch of books, articles, podcasts. Everything you need, I would say, is on that hub. So bengreenfieldlife.com. Thanks for asking. Amazing. I have a thousand more questions, but we've run out of time. So we'll have to do this again. Thank you so much. Well, I'm honored you had me on. Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Go comment on my last Instagram at Mari Llewellyn with the guest you want to see next. I'll be picking one person from the comments to send our Bloom Greens to. Make sure you hit follow so you never miss my weekly episodes. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to share and leave a review. See you next week. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products