the bossbabe podcast - 111. Why Women Shouldn't Be Fasting & Other Biohacks You Haven't Heard of with Ben Greenfield

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

Here at BossBabe, you know we’re all about hacking our health (aka biohacking) to achieve peak performance in business and life. Today, we’re joined by Ben Greenfield, a health and wellness expert, human performance consultant, author, speaker, and the ultimate biohacker. Whether you’re new to biohacking or consider yourself healthy, if you want to learn how to optimize your biology and be at your highest performing self, then listen up. We’re diving deep into all things health, longevity, and performance, as well as which biohacking methods actually work and which ones you should ditch. Ben’s approach to biohacking is understanding how the human body operates like a battery and leveraging natural ancient strategies (which are the foundations of health) and modern science. Ben also shares his top biohacking recommendations that you can do for free and of course, technology and tools that you can invest in when you’re ready to take biohacking to the next level. Make sure to take notes because in true BossBabe style, Ben over-delivers on value. After this episode, you’ll be equipped with everything you need to start enhancing your mind, body, and soul. Links: Sign up for our free 10-day Instagram Challenge: bossbabe.com/instachallenge Grab your copy of Ben Greenfield’s Boundless: https://amzn.to/3fvP3AV Products mentioned: Dutch Advanced Hormones Test: https://dutchtest.com/ Joovv Red Light Therapy: https://joovv.com/ Negative Ion Generator: https://amzn.to/2Cbq0po Grounding Mats: https://www.ultimatelongevity.com/  Re-timer Light Therapy Glasses: https://www.re-timer.com/ Human Charger Headset: https://humancharger.com/ Eye Protection Computer Software: https://iristech.co/   Follow:  @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis, @iamnatalie Ben Greenfield, @bengreenfieldfitness

If you have really low levels of cortisol on a blood test, it might not mean that you have adrenal fatigue or you're not making enough cortisol. It might just mean that you're turning over cortisol really actively. It is a hormone. I'll be careful. Whether you're male or a female, you want to monitor blood levels or even better yet, urine levels. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all.

I'm Natalie Ellis, co-founder and CEO of Boss Babe and your host for today's episode. I am so excited about today's guest and if you've been following me for a while then you probably know how much I love biohacking and today I'm actually sitting down with the biohacking expert himself Ben Greenfield. Ben is a health and wellness expert, speaker, author, a human performance, a consultant, just all of the things. Now if you don't know what the term biohacking means, it means essentially hacking your biology. It's a fancy word that describes all the things you're doing to keep yourself healthy, energized, and at your most high performing. Ben is all about health, longevity,

and performance. And through various practices of biohacking, he believes we can achieve peak performance, defy aging, and live an adventurous, fulfilling, joyful, and limitless life, which I am all about. He specializes in performance, fat loss, digestion, brain, sleep, hormone, anti-aging, parenting, relationships, smart drugs, nootropics, and overall wellness. So today we're going to do a deep dive on his favorite biohacking practices and we'll chat about which methods actually work and which ones don't. This is a really important conversation I want to have because, you know, I see people giving this blanket advice all the time and we need to start understanding there's a big difference between men and women when it comes to their

biology and we shouldn't just be applying the same biohacking principles across the board. So I love this interview. I know you're going to as well. So get your pens and notebooks ready because this episode's filled with tips to really enhance your mind, body, and soul. As always, take a screenshot and share your biggest takeaways and Insta story. Tag me at IamNatalie and at BossBabe.inc. Okay, listen up because I am doing something that I have never ever done before. I am hosting a

completely free 10-day video challenge and I am going all out with this one, seriously. I want to introduce you to 10 days to monetizing your small audience and it's all kicking off on August 31st and there is a place with your name on it. I'm going to be showing you exactly how to monetize your small audience on social media and training you for 10 days straight for free. Like I said, I've never ever done this before. This is for you if you have less than 10,000 followers, are struggling to attract your ideal clients, and are really unsure how to sell to or monetize your current audience. My guess is that you're constantly on the follower roller coaster. You're pushing so hard yet making no sales. Or in fact, you might just be neglecting social

media completely because it's so frustrating. You might have absolutely no idea what to post, or when you do end up posting, you're not getting any engagements. You're like, what's the point? And you're hearing all these people say, you can monetize your audience. And you're like, show me the receipts because I'm not seeing those results. So if that's you, then this training is going to be a game changer for you. I feel you, I have been there and I've also had thousands of clients

who've been there too. So this 10 day challenge is gonna completely change the game for your life and business. This challenge will work best for you if you're an online service-based entrepreneur, consultant consultant or coach or you're wanting to be one. So you can either come armed with a ready-made business or an idea and I will get you started on the path to profitability. Head to bossbabe.com forward slash insta challenge to sign up and save your space. I will see you on the 31st of August. That's bossbabe.com forward slash

instachallenge. That's all one word. And again, I will see you on the 31st of August. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going, and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Ben, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. So I'm really excited to dive in. I want to start in the deep end. So let's say someone has... As you do. Why not? Why not? Let's say someone's got all of their bases covered, right?

They're sleeping really well. They're meditating. They are spending time outdoors. They're eating well. They're doing the things. Breathing, good relationships. Yeah, that's true. Breathing, good relationships.

How do they start taking that to the next level? Maybe let's start with breathing because I completely missed that one out, which I guess is a fundamental. Let's start with that. And then how do they start to take biohacking to the next level and start to upgrade a little bit? Yeah. Well, a lot of this stuff that you just talked about, it's all natural ancestral strategies that we know serve the base, the foundation of health. I like to look at it this way. I like to think of the human body as a battery because we kind of are.

There's even books about this. Like a guy named Robert Becker has a book called The Body Electric in which he outlines how all the cells operate on what's called an electrochemical gradient, like a negative charge on the inside of the cell and a positive charge on the outside of the cell and a positive charge on the outside of the cell. And when you get an influx of positivity, which would sound like a

pretty good thing into the cell, you actually don't want that. You want the inside of your cells to be negative, not from an emotional standpoint, but just from an electrochemical standpoint. And when you look at the way we live nowadays, we live in what I call an evolutionary mismatch. So what I mean by that is we're not living the way the human beings would have lived a hundred or a thousand years ago. We are in boxes. You and I right now are under like fluorescent lights instead of sunlight that in no way match the full spectrum of what the sun would be giving us. We're, I don't know how many stories above the ground so we're not in contact with with mother earth we are surrounded by all these

signals that our bodies are not really used to you know whether it's a 5g millimeter wave signal or a wi-fi or phone signal or even bluetooth We're essentially fighting an uphill battle against a lot of this stuff. And many of those things I just named, they actually do cause an influx of positive ions into the cell. And in the case of a lot of this so-called non-native EMF, right, like appliances, smart homes, 5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, it's an influx of calcium into the cell. Now, there are certain things that you can do to restore the charge of the human battery. And many of them are the type of ancestral tactics that you've alluded to. So I like to step back and look at things this way. Let's say you've got a healthy movement

pattern, right? Like you're exercising or even just engaged in low level physical activity throughout the day, you're taking little stops at work to swing a kettlebell or hang from a pull-up bar or whatever, and you're aware of your diet. You're at least eating healthy whole food that hopefully is recognizable and not ultra-processed, and you've kind of got that taken care of, which I think a lot of people who are keen on health and the people who are listening probably are already aware of that stuff. So then when you move on to some of these other principles, it would basically be a matter of considering how do you treat the human body as

a battery and how do you care for that electrical charge? So I boil it down to a few different factors. One would be light. We know that photons of light interact with molecules within the body to release electrons. That's why you feel so good when you go for a walk in the sunlight. There is even this concept now that's emerging. There's a lot of good research piling up on this idea that humans can photosynthesize. We can actually create ATP in the presence of photons of light. I'm not arguing that we should all stop eating and become breathitarians or lightitarians or whatever, but it's interesting that you can actually get a significant energetic

surge from sunlight or from any of these modern newfangled biohacks that simulate sunlight, such as like a red light panel, or there are companies that are researching Alzheimer's and dementia that have like head worn light devices. I use one in my office. It's like a cup of coffee for your brain. I actually have in my office, a light panel that's behind me, a light panel that's in front of me. And you don't need to use these for a long period of time. You actually shouldn't because it's so good at simulating the isolated red and infrared light from sunlight that just like you wouldn't want to be out in the UVA and UVB too long, you wouldn't want to use these for any more than about 20 to 25 minutes a day

but getting something like that if you can't get outside in the sunlight on a frequent basis is one way that you can keep your body charged up with photons of energy and based on this newer research on photobiology right on the ability of the human body to photosynthesize. What I find really cool is there are specific things you can eat that enhance your body's ability to harness sunlight or infrared light or red light or any of these light biohacks to turn them into energy, like melanin.

We know that we already have some melanin on the surface of our skin as a photoreceptor protein, but anything that's like dark and blackish is really rich in melanin on the surface of our skin is a photoreceptor protein, but anything that's like dark and blackish is really rich in melanin. My favorite and one of the highest is chaga mushroom. So you can consume chaga mushroom or chaga tea and then go out in the sunlight or stand in front of these red light panels. Another one is chlorophyll, right? That you would get from, you know, a lot of juice shops now are doing like the blue green spirulina. You can purchase like chlorella powder or chlorella tablets, same thing. If you have high levels of chlorophyll and or high levels of melanin and you get out in the sunlight, not only is it fantastic for your skin, but it helps your

body produce ATP and it charges the human battery. So one would be light. Another would be the ground, the earth, right? I alluded to us not really being in contact that frequently with our planet. I went on an hour-long barefoot walk on the beach this morning, and I always feel amazing when I do that because we know that any time lightning strikes the surface of the planet, which it does a lot, it charges the earth's surface with negative ions. Anytime you go out barefoot or you're wearing a conductive shoe, and there are even companies now that are selling shoes that have little copper plugs on the bottom of them, or if you go to Amazon and you search for earthing strap or grounding strap,

you can put a strap around any set of shoes and actually have a conductive surface that's in contact with the planet. Concrete is pretty conductive too. Sand is very conductive. Dirt is conductive. Grass a conductive surface that's in contact with the planet. Concrete is pretty conductive too. Sand is very conductive. Dirt is conductive. Grass is conductive. So anytime you're walking on any of those surfaces, you're actually getting a pretty good influx of negative ions up into your body

with sand and salt water being the best two. So if you're swimming in the ocean or you're on the sand, like I'm jealous of you living here in LA because I'm up in central Washington state inland. But man, when I go out on the beach every morning and I walk in the sand and I jump in the water, the body just soaks up those negative ions. And now to get to the technology biohacking piece of things, you can buy mats, like mats that you stand on while you're at work that you might use when you slip your shoes off when you're at your office. They sell mats now that you can put underneath the top sheet of your bed. So you're sleeping in a grounded state. Like I mentioned, you can buy shoes. Like

I have these sandals called earth runners. Is that what you're wearing now? No, I'm just wearing my monkey shoes right now. These are just Vibram five fingers, but I was barefoot a really long time today. And actually you only need 20 minutes to get all the effects of the right now. Oh. These are just Vibram five fingers. Okay. But I was barefoot a really long time today. And actually you only need 20 minutes to get all the effects of the negative ions. Yeah, 20 minutes is a good period of time to shoot for. I podcasted on my show for like two hours with this guy who researches earthing and grounding and the anti-inflammatory effects,

the mood effects, the life-extending properties, all the things that it does for you are really profound. But the way it's working is it's causing negative ions to get soaked up into your body. If you want to, you can also breathe in negative ions. And for like 25, 30 bucks, you can buy these negative ion generators that you plug into any outlet in your home and it will fill the air with negative ions as well. similar to what you get if you're walking outdoors. So light is one, earthing and grounding is another, whether going outside and doing it in the natural way or using biohacks to bring that into your office or into

your home. Another couple of things that really move electrons around the body, so they're basically flowing more readily, would be two things that most people are probably aware of that vasodilate and vasoconstrict your blood vessels and allow for better movement of electricity through the body. And that also allow for electricity to move through your fascia because we know that now that fascia operates very similar to a crystal. When it compresses and releases, it operates on a principle called piezoelectricity so you can actually move electricity through your body when you're getting a massage when you're on a foam roller when you're moving but the two things that really help are heat and cold heat and cold so something like a regular sauna practice you know i bought an infrared sauna and actually put it in my basement and i feel amazing i'm like like addicted to it. I go in that thing every morning

and I sweat and I feel fantastic. Then I get out and I go out into the cold. Like I have a cold pool out in the forest back behind my house. You can use an ice bath. You can use a cold shower. If you're traveling and you're stuck in a hotel room, you can just take a hot, cold contrast shower where you're doing like 20 seconds of cold with 10 seconds of hot and going back and forth. But this practice of not just exercising, but also fluctuating temperature frequently. And we know from studies done in Finland, for example, that not only does it vastly decrease your risk of things like dementia and Alzheimer's, but it increases lifespan dramatically to do like this hot, cold kind of practice. So again, you can go out in the ocean and you can go save your workout for the heat of the afternoon, or you can get an infrared sauna,

you know, join a Bikram yoga class, get access to a clinic that has like a cryotherapy chamber or a cold plunge. There are even done for you cold tub manufacturers now that are shipping these really cool, good looking cold tubs to people's homes. There's one called the Mirosco Forge. I just got one, and it will maintain 31 degrees temperature at up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. So it'll stay really cold. You almost got to break through the ice to get in, but it's got a small footprint. It could go on a porch or a patio or a backyard. So that combined with the heat is really good. So you got light, earthing, grounding, heat, and cold. And then a couple other ways that you can charge your body is by putting things into your body that help to carry that charge through

the body with the two most important being really good, clean, pure water as close to nature as possible. Because when you get water from a spring, or if you go to the grocery store and you buy the water that says artesian on it, or you get a form of water called structured water, that water actually has a lot more free hydrogen ions in it. So it's more electrically charged. So it allows the water to travel through your blood vessels more readily. When you combine that with high mineral intake, right, like a really good salt or trace liquid minerals that you sprinkle into each glass of water that you consume, organic produce that's grown in mineral-rich soil, then you're topping off minerals. And then you have the foundational principles of nutrition and movement. You really keep that battery charged really well. The only other thing that you should think about, and this is really interesting, especially when it comes to

things like airline travel or periods of time where you get exposed to a lot of inflammation or a lot of radiation, that's when calcium influx into a cell becomes the highest, right? That's when the positive gradient inside the cell becomes the highest. And this is a good reason to take off your shoes when you've flown from point A to point B and go stand out in the grass behind your hotel. But the other thing that's interesting is that the thing you can consume as a compound that helps to counteract the calcium influx is magnesium. So having a diet that's high in magnesium or consuming magnesium before you go to bed at night, that also helps out a lot with the electrical gradient.

So that's another kind of trick that you can use, especially if you get exposed to a lot of Wi-Fi and non-native EMF and things like that in your workplace or in your home. Magnesium is a good supplement to take. So that's my long answer to your question is think of your body as a battery and then think about how you can keep it charged. I love that. And what about breath? You briefly mentioned breath at the beginning. Do you have any certain breathwork practices? I do. And most of my breath work, although breath can be used to channel a state of arousal, like sympathetic fight and flight arousal. This would be, for example, like Wim Hof breath work, right? You want the body aroused, a lot of blood flow, activated immune systems. You can go jump in

cold water, climb Mount Kilimanjaro in your underwear or whatever that crazy guy does. I find hair a sympathetic breath work to be something that is of far more utility to me. So what I mean by that is I would say there are three forms of breath work that I use most often to relax my body, to activate a parasympathetic state, to increase one of the best ways to measure your state of stress, which is heart rate variability and many rings and wristbands and things like that now measure heart rate variability. The three forms of breathwork I use most often, number one is box breathing. I'll use that when I'm in an environmentally stressful setting. That would include when the sauna gets really hot, when the

cold tub gets really cold, when I'm taxing and I'm late for a meeting on the airplane and we're stuck on the runway for 20 minutes. These are the times when I'll use a form of breathing called box breathing. Four count in, four count hold, four count out, four count hold. It's a very settling breath, but it especially helps you to deal with stressful situations or environmental stress. The second is alternate nostril breathing. Cover your left nostril, breathe in through the right nostril. Cover your right nostril, breathe out through the left nostril,

and continue to cycle like that. That's good if you just have a quick moment, like a minute, and you just need to quickly settle the body down. Maybe you're at a stoplight and there's a lot of traffic or something disruptive just came out of your email inbox and you just need to step away for just a second. That settles you very quickly, very quickly. I measure my heart rate variability with a heart rate strap that will allow me to collect it in real time. In something like the aura ring, they just introduced a feature called the moment feature. So you can measure in real

time what's happening to your heart rate variability. And that is above all the most effective form of breath work that I found. And the last one that I use to lull myself to sleep at night, because it's hard to put my hands on my nose when I'm trying to fall asleep, is 4-8 breathing. Now, Dr. Andrew Weil, who I interviewed a couple of months ago, he was really lauding the benefits of four, seven, eight breathing, four count in, seven count hold, eight count out. And I experimented with that for a while. And I found that the seven count hold kind of is too long. It's too much when you're trying to fall asleep at night, but I can lull myself to sleep at night. I can decrease what is known as sleep latency, how long it takes you to fall asleep at night, but I can lull myself to sleep at night. I can decrease what is known as sleep latency, how long it takes you to fall asleep at night. And I can go lights out

in like three or four minutes by just doing four count in, eight count out, four count in, eight count out. And that's a really good deep meditative breath as well. But I find that one to be most useful for sleep. Alternate nostril to be most useful for quick bouts of stress that I need to release and the box breathing better for like environmental stress or longer periods of stress that i want to manage and almost go into a deeper meditative state during i love that and i love how all those things like you say are very very easy to do pretty natural it doesn't take tons of tech to be able to get the breathing to go ground to just relax, like eat well, these things, we're not asking you to go and buy hundreds. Like you don't need a sauna. Breathing is not very monetizable. I mean,

it can be there. There are companies that, you know, there's like the training mask, which used to be called the elevation training mask. They had to change the name because it's not actually elevation, but it restricts your breath and you build up CO2 in that dead space in the mask. And it's actually really good if you're training to increase your tolerance to carbon dioxide. Like if you're an athlete or you're trying to get stronger inspiratory or expiratory muscles or stronger diaphragm, there's another very similar handheld device called the power lung, which is kind of similar, resist your breath in and resist your breath out. There is a concept in the whole breathwork physiology movement that your ability to be able to tolerate high amounts of carbon dioxide is directly correlated to both performance and

longevity. And the reason for that is when you have high levels of carbon dioxide and high levels of oxygen simultaneously in the bloodstream, the oxygen more readily dissociates to muscle tissue. So you can oxygenate your body much better. Many of us over-breathe or we engage in shallow chest breathing and we blow off a lot of CO2. However, you can train yourself to retain simultaneously high levels of CO2 and high levels of oxygen so that you have this higher CO2 tolerance. There's a very small, inexpensive device, and this is fresh on my mind because I wore it during my entire beach walk this morning, called a relaxator. And you just put it in your mouth, and it causes you, you can't breathe in through it. You can only breathe out through it.

And so you breathe in through your nose, but this relaxator is in your mouth like a whistle. It has a little strap that allows it to hang around your neck, so it's super easy. And then when you breathe out, you breathe out through your nose, but this relaxator is in your mouth like a whistle and it has a little strap that allows it to hang around your neck. So it's super easy. And then when you breathe out, you breathe out through your mouth, but it's got like a small hole. So it's almost as though you're breathing out through a straw, right? And you breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, and it might take you five seconds to breathe in through your nose, but then 20 seconds to breathe out through your mouth against the mild resistance that this thing has. So the whole time that you're walking, not only does it kind of force you into almost like this meditative state, but you're training your CO2 tolerance.

So there are devices out there that you can use, you know, most of them pretty inexpensive to train your breath even more. But yeah, you're right. For the most part, breathwork is free. Prana is free and that's what i like about it is that it doesn't involve any fancy expensive biohacks let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform kajabi you know i've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which i love not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything

is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe yeah

and i have this philosophy that if you aren't using the free stuff you probably won't use the stuff that you pay for and so i've invested in i'm slowly like trying new things i got a sauna i got a new calm i'm slowly building that up, but only when I'm doing something regularly, because if I can't go to a hot yoga class regularly, then I don't know why I think having a sauna is going to make me do it any more often. Or if I can't meditate regularly,

then buying a device to help me isn't going to help. And so I have this thing with myself. I have to do it consistently for a certain length of time before I can invest in it. And I think that's a really, really good place to start with biohacking. Yeah, it can be. I mean, granted, I think sometimes when you've invested in something, you put your mouth where your money is, money where your mouth is. I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but ultimately, if you spent

money on something, sometimes you can be more likely to use it, right? So if I buy a nice, fancy infrared sauna for my house, I'm probably going to be using that thing pretty frequently, even if I wasn't up until that point waiting until the heat of the afternoon to go outside and exercise, right? So there might be some exceptions to what you just said, but I think the bigger problem in biohacking is using a lot of these things as a shortcut before you've either done the hard thing or implemented the more natural route, right? Like if you can actually get outside and go for a 20 to 30 minute sunshine walk every morning, don't go by the infrared light panels on a beautiful sunny day and stand there in your office with those things flipped on as you're buck naked, you know, bathing your body in infrared light because the sunlight's right there. You can go

outside. Don't go buy a $80 pair of shoes with the carbon plugs built into the bottom of them. If you live on the beach and you can go outside and walk barefoot, that's one problem is sometimes people get so carried away with the technology. They forget that sometimes just being outdoors gives you a more natural and I would argue sometimes a more concentrated version of what you just paid a lot of money to get. And then the other problem is sometimes these things, and this is especially true in the weights in the weight room for an hour and really train your body and train your brain to be able to focus for that period of time and deal with that lactic acid and be a little bit exhausted and actually put the time under tension and the volume in you're likely not going to get a whole lot of benefit out of that fancy whatever thirty

thousand dollar exercise device that promises to give you a full body workout in four minutes, right? Like there are some things that actually take hard work. Three minutes in a cryotherapy chamber may move the dial for you a little bit, but you should get yourself to the point where you could like go on the ocean and swim for like 15 or 20 minutes and be kind of cold and you're gonna get way more benefit out of something like that. So there is a certain amount of hard work that needs to be put in. And I think, especially in biohacking, there's a lot of people just viewing it as a shortcut as a way not to put in like the sweat or the hard work. But, you know, we know just based on the concept of hormesis, right? What doesn't kill you makes

you stronger. Small amounts of things that kind of suck, like exercise or UVA and UVB radiation or heat or cold, et cetera, they really do make you stronger. But sometimes you actually do need to feel them. These can be tiny little bouts that you're using technology to simulate to make it easier. Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. So going back to a couple of things you mentioned for in the office. So you mentioned a red light panel. You also mentioned something you plug in to your wall. Yeah, a negative ion generator, and you can just get that off Amazon. Yeah. Okay. What other things would you say are really helpful for people that are working in an office where you are maybe elevate ground or you're spending a lot of time

under those lights? Like how can you start to counteract them? Okay. So we've got, let's, let's make a wishlist. Let's do the list. Everybody get out your notepads. Here's your office wishlist. Could get expensive. So you have some kind of infrared light, right? Like a panel or they even make small ones, but I like the big ones just because you can do it all at once. So the one I use is called a Juv and I have their big panel called an Elite. Actually I have two. I have one in front of me, one behind me. Easy. I just flip it on for 20 minutes. The negative ion generator we talked about. Another one that plugs into the outlet is called a dirty electricity filter. A dirty electricity filter that causes fewer power surges. And for people who are electro-hypersensitive or kind of feel brain fog in the afternoon,

I had a building biologist come to my house and just test all the different things in my office that were kicking off a lot of electricity, affecting that human battery that I was explaining earlier. And one of the best things that I did in my office, because we went through it before and after with one of his fancy meters, was just plug a dirty electricity filter into all of the outlets in the office. There are companies like Stetzer, Greenwave, and Shielded Healing, all of which make these cool little dirty electricity filters that you can plug into the wall. So that would be another. I mentioned briefly a grounding or an earthing mat that you can stand on. There's a company called Ultimate Longevity that sends out like a sleep

mat, an office mat, little patches you could put on so you can do whatever you want. Typically they'll plug into the grounding outlet of whatever room you happen to be in or if you're on a ground floor you can literally like string a cable out the wall and stake it into the ground if you just want to get as natural as you can. All right I hope you enjoyed the episode so far. Stay tuned as we share a bit of info about who supported this episode. This episode is brought to you by Skillshare. Now, if you've been following me for a while, then you know how much I love taking online courses,

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don't want the bright blue lighting overhead the whole time because that actually produces a lot of flicker, which is mildly irritating to your retina. It's like this low-level flicker that a lot of LED and fluorescent light and backlit LED screens produce. However, blasting yourself with some amount of that blue light in the morning can be really helpful for jump-starting your circadian rhythm, especially if you're in a dimly lit office or if you've just traveled. And wherever you just traveled from, it's still nighttime and you want to send your body a message that it's daytime. So there are two things on the surface of my desk that I'll occasionally put on if that's the case.

One is a set of glasses called the Re-Timer glasses, and these emit a bluish green light that simulates like the morning sunlight that you'd see. You put those on for about 20 minutes. And then the other one is called the human charger, which actually does the same thing, but these are like earbuds and you put them in your ears and it blasts the photoreceptors in neural tissue to wake up your brain. So I've got those on my desk just in case I have any circadian rhythmicity adjustments that I need to make, or I want to kind of get the sunlight going. I mentioned that they also make red light for the head and primarily those originated from Alzheimer's and dementia research, but they're also fantastic as like a cup of coffee for your

brain in the afternoon. They can also enhance a meditation session quite a bit. Is that as well as a juve or? Okay. Yeah, but it's targeted to your your brain to your head and that one's called a v light v-i-e light and they have one that operates at 10 hertz and one that operates at 40 hertz the 10 hertz one is called the alpha and the 40 hertz one is called the gamma and the 40 hertz one the gamma i think is way more effective and you feel it a lot more so if you were going to get one because they're kind of expensive they're like like over $1,000, I would get the gamma if you wanted something to wear on your head. As far as a treadmill goes, if you wanted to get a treadmill

for your office that you could walk on, because I do that a lot if I'm going to dictate emails or dictate. I use a software called Dragon Dictation on my computer and it allows me to dictate, which is nice for when I'm walking. I also use it for the treadmill for taking phone calls or for sometimes recording podcasts. I recommend you get a manual treadmill because of all the things that kick off a lot of that dirty electricity, the affect, the human battery that have wifi that you can't disable. It is motorized treadmills. That's why I'm not a huge fan of just like going to the treadmill lineup at the gym and pounding away on that thing. If you

can be outdoors. Being outdoors is better. So I have a manual treadmill. I have one called a Trueform treadmill. That's in front of a stand-up desk. And what I like about the Trueform is that some of the manual treadmills like the Woodway, they only go like three miles an hour. But I got the Trueform treadmill because on occasion during the day, like break into a sprint, I've got big long legs, right? I'm six foot two. And so my stride length is such that three miles an hour kind of feels like I'm

just like confined, but the true form I can really stride out on. So that's the manual treadmill that I use. And it's probably seen at the CrossFit games before. It's that same kind of curved treadmill that they'll run on. And it's kind of cool too, because it's impossible to walk or run on it without kind of cool too because it's impossible to walk or run on it without activating your glutes because it's that curved belt so it kind of teaches you how to walk and run with good form i think i need this i just spend so much time sitting yeah and obviously you'll want to get the one that doesn't have the dashboard on the front of it if you're going to be using in an office setting to work on so you don't need the electronic dashboard or anything and they've got like a dashboard free version. A couple of other things that I would consider

for workplace and office help. Number one is there's a really nifty piece of software that you can install on your computer that's kind of like F-Lux which got popular for a while because it would cause your computer to kind of go into red light mode at night. But this one will decrease the screen brightness, the screen temperature, even the font style. It has like pop-ups that you can program into it to remind you to do neck breaks, eye stretch breaks, etc. And so it's far more versatile. It's like the Tesla of screen software for health. It's called Iris. And that's the one that of screen software for health. It's called Iris.

And that's the one that I have installed on my computer is this Iris software. The only other thing that comes to mind right now, just while we are talking about lighting, is if you have the ability to be able to dictate what kind of lighting is in your office or your home office, and you want to choose something that is the most like sunlight and the least damaging to the retina and has the least amount of flicker, it's actually incandescent lighting. So if you can replace the cans with incandescent light bulbs, what I've done is at my home office, it's all incandescent lighting.

And then in the bedroom and the master bathroom, which I want to be like a sleeping area, there are curtains and so it's just natural light by day. But then every light bulb socket in the bedroom is all red incandescent light. And so when I flip on the lights before bed at night or I get up in the middle of the night to go use the restroom, it's as though I'm under firelight or torchlight, right? It doesn't suppress melatonin production, doesn't suppress your sleep cycles. And so these red lights in the bedroom are really useful. So I would say regular incandescent in the office

and then red incandescent in the bedroom or the master bathroom is a really smart choice. Okay. For anyone who didn't get a chance to write that down quick enough, we'll put everything in the show notes. Sorry to whoever's making these show notes. We've got people driving trying to dictate in the notes i love it so one thing that i want to talk about is what women should be considering when it comes to biohacking that may be different one thing that i've noticed when you read biohacking books or maybe certain diets female hormones are kind of neglected and not talked about as often and i know

when i first started getting into biohacking and starting to pay attention to my health, I was kind of forced on this journey. And I started reading about things and I just wasn't reading about how things differ for women. And there were certain things that I tested that worked so well for my husband, but had me feeling not so great. And just doing more research, I've really come to understand that women and men actually differ so much. And so what kind of biohacks have you noticed that maybe don't work as well for women or extra things women need to consider? out there is done on male subjects, rodent models or human models, and you cannot extrapolate to females. There was one study I was just looking at, speak of the devil, this morning in the Uber on the way over here. That was one of the few studies that exists on intermittent fasting in females. We talked a little bit earlier about heart rate variability and sympathetic nervous system response.

Well, in response to a 16-hour intermittent fast, sympathetic nervous system activity, stress, and kispeptin regulates what's called gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which is the master regulator of all your fertility-based hormones, like luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone, everything that would normalize a menstrual cycle or normalize fertility or natural hormone production. Fasting for longer than 12 hours, especially in active lean females, significantly drops these levels of kispeptin, thus reducing fertility and normal hormone balance. I'm not against fasting, but in women especially, closer to a 10 to 12 hour intermittent fast is better,

whereas men appear to be more equipped to get closer to like a 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast is better whereas men appear to be more equipped to get closer to like a 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast and that would be the biggest thing would be fasting yeah i'm glad you mentioned that because when i first started out on this i was like great fasting 16 hours this sounds great and there's you know the mention of having certain coffees in the morning and makes you feel great so me and my husband started trying it and I felt great but I'm already pretty lean and it started to get to a point where I was feeling dizzy and I went and got my blood work tested and my adrenals were just flatlining and my hormones across the board were really flatlining whereas he was thriving and he felt great and I started looking into all these different things that it could be

but not realizing that actually I was fasting and it just wasn't good for me at that period of time, especially not fueled by coffee on an empty stomach. And changing that made a big difference. And I just wish that was kind of more represented in these books or studies. And it's not really. No, it's not. And part of it is it's easier to get male subjects for research. And part of it is still a lot of the researchers themselves are male. I can tell you though, from a hormone standpoint, and I've paid a lot of attention to this for my female clients and for my wife, particularly, you talk about hormone and adrenal balances and some of being affected. I find that especially for women who are approaching premenopause, that progesterone

and DHEA are really useful supplementation with progesterone, preferably under the guidance of a good endocrinologist or hormone replacement physician. And then like 25 to 50 milligrams of DHEA per day, my wife's energy levels and sex drive went up dramatically on progesterone. And then the other just small aside is that if you are postmenopausal, throw everything that we just said out the window, because it appears based on everything from like mTOR downregulation to increased longevity, increased cellular autophagy, cellular cleanup, detoxification, et cetera. If you're postmenopausalal intermittent fasting for that longer like 12 to 16 hour period actually does appear to be pretty beneficial but up until that point i would be

really careful with it especially if you're lean and active i love that and i found progesterone to be really helpful for me so i supplement with progesterone and it's been a game changer and i know a couple of my friends who have had hormone issues have been trying that and it's been a game changer. And I know a couple of my friends who have had hormone issues have been trying that. And it's been obviously under supervision has been amazing. Progesterone can be great for people of all ages, men and women. And it's kind of not talked about enough. Yeah, there's even a new book. I read it recently.

It was about the adrenals. And this physician who wrote it is actually using progesterone in children who have anxiety issues. It was really interesting. Yeah, they say ADHD could be completely taken actually using progesterone in children who have anxiety issues. It was really interesting. Yeah, they say ADHD could be completely taken away with progesterone. That's exactly what he was using it for was ADHD. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. And I love that this is becoming more readily available.

You don't need a prescription to go and get progesterone. But it is a hormone. It is a hormone. I'll be careful. Whether you're male or a female, you want to monitor blood levels or even better yet, urine levels. There's one test called a dried urine test, a Dutch test, in my opinion, because that measures hormones five different times during the day because your hormones do fluctuate during the day. You don't want that single blood snapshot in the morning, for example. It measures upstream

and downstream metabolites of hormones as well. So this means that if you have, let's say, really low levels of cortisol on a blood test, it might not mean that you have adrenal fatigue or you're not making enough cortisol. It might just mean that you're turning over cortisol really actively because maybe you're a frequently exercising person. And so you might rush out to get on all these hormone replacements, compounds, or whatever, you know, increase the amount of fatty acids in your diet or, you know, take DHA or whatever, because everybody's telling you have low cortisol. But when you get a urine test, it might just show, oh, cortisol is low, but cortisol metabolites in

the urine are high. So you're producing tons of cortisol. You're just fine. It just happens to be that you're turning it over really quickly because you're an active person. So I'm a fan of getting a urine test if you are going to test hormones. As a matter of fact, I think the order of tests in terms of importance would be blood would be the least efficacious as a hormone measurement. Saliva isn't bad because saliva will give you how it's fluctuating during the day, but it won't tell you metabolites. And then urine is the best because you see what your hormones levels are at, how they're fluctuating during the day, and then what the upstream and downstream metabolites are. Yeah, I really highly recommend the Dutch test too. I'll put that link in the show notes for anyone interested. What else have you seen to be really helpful for

women that want to regulate hormones? Well, being cautious with utilization of hormone contraceptives is pretty important just because of the huge dent you make in estrogen and progesterone levels, but also the data in the latest studies showed a significant increase in stress and anxiety markers in women who are on the pill. We know that it affects facial recognition patterns. If you're familiar with something called the major histocompatibility complex, the MHC complex, what that is, is that is a complex of genes that in a normal situation would cause a woman to become more attractive to or be more attracted to a partner who is slightly different than her from an immune system standpoint so they have more resilient children who get sick less and the pill completely reverses that and causes you to become attracted to people with the identical histocompatibility complex as you. And they've actually done studies and shown that in women who bear children and are married when they're on the pill or have children when they're on the pill,

those children actually get sick with significantly greater frequency because their immune systems are less strong. So there's a lot of things that would dictate that my recommendation is to go more towards either an intrauterine device or to even use something like a fertility tracking method. Like my wife uses a newer one called the UVA, O-O-V-A, and it's a urinary, I believe it's measuring progesterone and luteinizing hormone. I think that women should be real, I know the pill's really convenient, but there's kind of a cost to the convenient. And to me, the risk reward ratio does not balance out that well at all. So that's something I would be really careful with.

Another thing that I would be careful with, and it kind of shocks me that I still need to say this, but it would just be fat phobia. And the problem is, I think especially, you know, when you talk about biohackers, many of them are kind of into ketosis. But the problem with the modern ketogenic diet, as opposed to an ancestral ketogenic diet which would be achieved through some elements of fasting and caloric restriction high intake of

plants etc a modern ketogenic diet often involves like whatever coconut oil fat bombs and putting a half a stick of butter in your coffee etc it's not naturally high level of saturated fat which we know can cause blood brain barrier leakage. It can cause gut inflammation. Like in most people, like a saturated fat intake that's higher than 10% of your total dietary intake of fat is actually metabolically unfavorable. So I would say if you're a woman and you've heard that fat is great for your hormones, you should increase your fat. That doesn't mean you have to go for the end cut of the ribeye every time, butter in your coffee, you know, oodles of coconut oil. I would instead be considering high amounts of DHA and oleic acid. Those are the two best forms of fat that you can get. DHA from omega-3 fatty acid rich sources. I love the idea of a smash diet, right? Sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon,

and herring. I have a whole pantry full of like the wild planet canned and boxed you know sardines and all their products just because it's so high in dha and then dha partners really well with oleic acid and one of the best things you can do is just go through tons of extra virgin olive oil it's wonderful for children's growing nervous systems for women's hormones but if you can do a lot of fish omega omega-3 fatty acids, Mediterranean style diet, along with lots of extra virgin olive oil, those are the two best things you can do if you want to get those fat precursors that support hormones without getting all the deleterious side effects of like a modern keto-ish diet chock full of just saturated fat.

Yeah, I can't echo what you said enough and I'm super passionate about talking about the pill and perhaps questioning advice that you do get like a lot of women go to their gynecologist and the pill is the first thing that they're recommended and just speaking of diets what I know from myself and also a lot of women that I know is when you do come off the pill and you regulate more your you get used to your own cycle your body tells you what to eat you know Your body knows when it wants to be in a more ketosis state or it knows when it needs more carbs. And listening to your body is a lot easier when you're not on the pill or you're on some kind of synthetic hormones like that. So I could speak to you about

lists and lists for days. I wanted to get your travel list but i would love to ask about your book because we were just talking about before we came on air and it sounds like it's a bit of an encyclopedia of all the lists yeah and all the things tell me a bit about it that's why i wrote it so people didn't have to take too many notes while they're listening to a podcast like this you retain information like crazy yeah it took like three years to write. And what I wanted to do is create like a tome, manual, just a blueprint for all things body and brain optimization from hormones to the fat loss, muscle gain, immune system, everything from hair, skin, nails, beauty, and symmetry as you age, but then also, you know, what can increase telomere length? What can keep me around to see my grandkids, you know, playing football in the backyard or just be able to be there with my family or achieving my purpose, my passion, my impact in life for a greater period of time. So a ton of research on, you know, hormones, peptides, arms, you know,

all these strategies from the blue zones, more modern biohacking ways to increase longevity. And I put it all in the book. I turned it in. It was like 1,200 pages long. It took three years to write. We got it down to about 650 pages. It just came out a couple of weeks ago. It's called Boundless, Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body, and Defy Aging. And it's going really well. Like the publisher did not expect that people would want to get like this huge, big, beautiful, hardcover, colorful copy table-esque, almost like collector's item book. But people are digging it. The only complaint I get with some people is it's like, you know, it's hard to travel with because it's such like a big encyclopedia.

There's a Kindle version, there's an audio version, but I personally just wanted the kind of book I want to read, which is like a big, fun, colorful, splashy book with diagrams and illustrations and graphics that you could just say, okay, whatever. I have a big trip planned overseas. I'm going to flip to the immunity chapter and the sleep chapter and just do everything I can for my immune system and my circadian rhythm or January first part of the year. I just want to do everything I can this year to focus on longevity and living a long time. And so, you know, you flip to that chapter and you read that. And, um, that's what I wanted to do was just create like a really fun kind of cookbook for, for the human body and brain. And, and I get it even into like happiness and purpose and

spirituality and family and parenting. And so, yeah, it kind of took on a life of its own but it's done now it's done now people can actually get it so and if you had to pick one maybe a chapter or like specific part of the book what's your favorite you know I mentioned that chapter on beauty and symmetry and I took a deep deep dive in there from like the, we didn't talk about this when we talk about the office, but the kind of chairs that you can have in the office to the type of beauty products that actually have been proven to increase collagen and elastin to different breathwork patterns and tools that you can use to increase symmetry in the face to things you can feed your kid to form proper face, facial structure, stronger teeth, etc.

That chapter got kind of fun, you know, like little exercises, like movement breaks. You know, I've got six different kind of routines that you can do in quick three to five minute breaks during the day to increase posture and symmetry during a work day. My publisher even said when he read the book, he's like, this is my favorite chapter. I think it's chapter 18 on maximizing your symmetry and your beauty. So I kind of like that one. I thought it surprisingly turned out really well. Okay, I'm going to read that one. I'll put the link in the show notes for anyone that wants to grab a copy.

Where can everyone find you? Just Google Ben Greenfield. I'm on there. And the book you'll probably put in the show notes is called Boundless. And then my website and my podcast and everything is at bengreenfieldfitness.com love it thank you thanks if you loved this episode please subscribe download a few more and please leave us a review i really want to hear what you enjoyed what your main takeaways were and i also want to know what

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