The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Ben Greenfield On Fasting, Diet, Better Sleep, Nutrition, Dirty Electricity, & Good Vs. Bad Light

Episode Date: February 18, 2020

#248: On today's episode we are joined by Ben Greenfield. Ben is a former bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, human performance consultant, speaker and author of 13 books. Ben has been voted by Greatist as one of the top 100 Most Influential People In Health And Fitness. He works with individuals from all over the globe for both body and brain performance, and specializes in anti-aging, biohacking, and achieving an ideal combination of performance, health and longevity. On today's episode we discuss fasting, better sleep, dirty electricity, good vs. bad light, nutrition and much more. To connect with Ben Greenfield click HERE To check out Ben's new Book: Boundless click HERE To learn more about the benefits of Red Light click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by GLOSSIER What matters to you most when it comes to skincare? Quality of ingredients? Effectiveness? Glossier believes beauty starts with skin first, makeup second. Glossier's Milky Jelly Cleanser is the perfect way to start your skincare routine. Plus, all new customers will get 10% off their first order on Glossier.com/podcast/skinny This episode is brought to you by BETABRAND and their Betabrand dress pant yoga pants. To try these pants go to betabrand.com/skinny and receive 20% off your order. Millions of women agree these are the most comfortable pants you’ll ever wear to work.  This episode is brought to you by Talkspace. We all have something we want to change or improve about ourselves. Talkspace is the most convenient and affordable online therapy that can help make a lasting change in your life with access to thousands of licensed therapists. To get $100 off your first month on Talkspace visit Talkspace.com and use code SKINNY to get $100 off your first month now! Produced by Dear Media 

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

And you have to accept the fact that if you decide to climb your own personal Mount Everest and go train for a marathon or a series of marathons or train for an Ironman triathlon or train for a Spartan race or any of these things, that's pretty cool. It's inspirational. It's fulfilling. I think we need to get out and do hard things every once in a while, but don't fool yourself into thinking that's what's going to make you healthy or that's what's going to make you live a long time. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. That clip was from our guest of the show today, Ben Greenfield. On today's episode, we are talking all about human optimization, sleep hygiene, good and bad light, dirty electricity, fasting, and how to balance our nutrition. Definitely a jam-packed episode. For those of you that are new to the show,

my name is Michael Bostic. I am the co-founder and CEO of the Dear Media Podcast Network, as well as the co-host of this show. And across from me, my beautiful, beautiful, luscious new mom, Lauren Everts Bostic. Yeah, you're also a dad. You have to add that to your resume from now on. Daddy-o, papa. Well, nothing's going to change for for you you can keep calling me daddy a big puppy uh hey guys lauren everett's from the skinny confidential blog brand podcast today we're so excited to have ben greenfield on the show before we get into the show first of all it's a 70 minute episode so it's packed with value but i have to say something so ben gave me this tip and i put

it on my instagram story and it's honestly life-changing. And if you follow me on Instagram story, like I said, you probably already know this, but you have to try switching out your light bulbs to red light. Red incandescent light bulbs. He gave us this, you'll hear him talk about it on this episode. And we did it after, you know, this is one of the rare episodes we have to go back and listen to, um, to take, take notes cause there's so much in it, but we did take his tip and switch to red incandescent light bulbs in our bedroom when we wind down as well

as switched our phones to basically red screen at night. And it's a game changer. It completely changes the mood at night. And I have a blog post up that breaks it all down. But red light, when you go into the room, it feels like you're in this romantic, beautiful cave and your brain just automatically knows to shut down. It's the weirdest thing. I think it's one of the smartest things we do. And I noticed that I'm going to bed a lot earlier. Now that could be because of the baby, but it could be because the baby- Could be because we're old and boring now. I don't know. It's like a retirement home in there, but yeah, definitely try it. I think

it's like $18 on Amazon. We got red light bulbs. We switched both of our lamps out. And like Michael said, we're doing it on our phone too. We're switching to red light when we go to bed and it's a life changer. Red incandescent light. And people ask, is there like a specific light bulb? I think Lauren linked it in her blog post, but it's basically on Amazon, just red incandescent bulbs. And I'll add it to the show notes. All right, guys. So like I said, this is a long episode. So who is Ben Greenfield? Ben Greenfield is a former bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, pro obstacle course racer, human performance consultant, speaker and author of 13 books, Jesus Christ,

including the New York Times bestseller Beyond Training. Ben has been voted by the NSCA as America's top personal trainer and by greatest as one of the top 100 most influential people in health and fitness. I can see why, honestly. He works with individuals from all over the globe for both body and brain performance and specializes in anti-aging, biohacking, and achieving an ideal combination of performance, health, and longevity. Ben is also the host of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, which is an amazing podcast. And his most recent book, Boundless, Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body, and Defy Aging is out now. This is an amazing episode, guys. It's jam-packed. Take out a notepad. Ben is such a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the human body and

how to optimize it. So with that, welcome Ben Greenfield to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. Ben Greenfield in the studio, just veteran. Lauren's a little intimidated. 12-year podcast veteran, better than many things, but now she's a little shook. 12 years of podcasting? Yeah, you guys are such rookies. I know.

That's a lot of pressure. Yeah, that's a lot of now making me feel old, thank you very much. Oh, my God. You don't look that old. It's my birthday tomorrow. Happy tomorrow happy i'll be a year older okay happy birthday less than 24 how old are you okay you gotta guess now i'm gonna guess is this is this video or audio it's both okay so other people can guess too i guess um 36 it's pretty close what is it i'm 37 but wait are you turning 37 tomorrow i'm well i'm turning 38 okay

all right well i was a little bit off, but you look good anyway. Thanks. All right. Give us some background on you. For anyone that doesn't know you, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people that do, but just give us the quick spiel. Okay. But you know what the key is to what I do for my face, for the skin?

Yeah. What's the key? You ever seen a clay mask? Yeah, I love a clay mask. I do that every single week. Really? I get out the derma roller. I've been doing it for like three years. I get out the roller do the whole face and then it burns like hell but i mix

the clay with apple cider vinegar i put that on and then like the the key is infrared light so once you get the clay on your face if you could use one of those infrared light panels like the juve like the juve or you get on the sunlight because we just have the two guys on here i got one so i'm not just gonna get your clay yeah sunlight. We just had the juve guys on here. I got one. So now you're just going to get your clay. Yeah, you do the clay plus the infrared. Then you rinse it all off. And then you just put on your serum or your oil or whatever. Okay, but he stands naked in front of the juve.

So should he clay his balls too? He probably could. I don't know what would happen. That's what you're supposed to do. You stand naked in front of that thing. I think you're supposed to, right? You want to get all of it. Detox the boys.

It's got to suck something out. Is the clay that you use the Aztec healing clay mask? I use this stuff from Alitura. Okay. The other one I've used is Anne Marie's, but it's not. Hers is more like a rub on than a mask. Four Sigmatic has like this chocolatey mushroom one that you can like lick off your face. It's really good.

Michael is getting ideas. You know what? Michael's really good at taking care of his skin too, but he doesn't do a good mask. No, I'm like, listen, right he doesn't do a good mask. No. I'm like, listen, right now I look like an old weathered saddle. We have about two more days in this office. My team's going crazy. And so it's just been, it's been the last push,

last push of the year, you know? No, my masks look like shit. Like they're all clumpy and they fall off as I'm walking around the house. It works. You look young. Yeah, but they work. Yeah. You got to get a clay mask.

I'm in. Listen, whatever Ben's going to tell me to do on this show, I'm probably going to do. I need somebody like you to come in here and tell me how to fix my life. Mask and the light. We can talk about a bunch of other anti-aging stuff too. Yeah, that's a really good tip. So you take the mask and then you stand in front of the light. Then you stand in front of the light. Okay, I'm going to do that.

Yeah, like 20 minutes. Okay, so give us the spiel. Give us where you started, how you got into biohacking. It's a niche. I don't know if I like that word very much. What's the right word? I don't know if i like that word very much what's the right word i don't know just like science better living through science i mean but well bio like the original biohackers were these cats that they called grinders and they called their body wet wear and then they would install hardware on their body like you know magnetic implants in the ears

to hear better or injecting chlorophyll into the eyeballs to have night vision or putting a compass under the skin on the chest. So whenever you face true North, it vibrates just crazy shit like that, that the original biohackers did. And now it's like, you know, jumping up and down on a trampoline with a, with a, you know, oxygen mask on, or, you know, putting two sticks instead of one stick of butter in your coffee or whatever and you know it's i i consider that more like science or or cooking than biohacking but people understand what it means now i mean it's it's kind of like a catch-all term for people have started to be kind of liberal with the term biohacking i would say so so i'm a biohacker if i get my butter in my coffee yeah but how i got into this idea of just like scientifically hacking the body was i went to University of Idaho.

I started exercise physiology there, exercise physiology and biomechanics, so movement of the human body. And while I was in college, I started bodybuilding. And there's like a bunch of kind of, you know, biohackers and the whole underground world of bodybuilding. And these guys are doing, you know, peptides and steroids and hormones, basically figuring out how to hack muscle gain and fat loss. And so I messed around, not with hormones and steroids, but just like figuring out more things like sodium depletion and repletion protocols, how to decrease your body fat percentage more dramatically, different ways to lift weights, to put on more muscle, stuff like that. And and then after that i got into ironman triathlon

which is like the next most unhealthy sport on the planet next to bodybuilding and for that i competed for like 10 years and got into like ketosis and different forms of training that that would be considered kind of like biohacking like minimal effective dose of exercise then i got into spartan racing after that. And now I'm kind of getting a little more natural, like bow hunting and spearfishing and hiking and just spending time outdoors. Why is Ironman so dangerous?

Before we dive into that, let's discuss Talkspace. Guys, Talkspace is cool. Basically, it's an online therapy and it's the most convenient and affordable way to make lasting changes in your life with the support of a licensed therapist. I am so about bringing the conversation of mental health onto this podcast and talking about it more. So Talkspace is very much up my alley. Basically Talkspace matches you with a licensed therapist based on your needs and

preferences. They have thousands of licensed therapists trained in over 40 specialties. So if you have something that's really specific that you want to work on, you can find someone that's right for you. I know personally, you know, when you think about therapy, you wonder, okay, like, well, how much is this going to cost? How am I going to find a good therapist? Is this right for me? Like, is this, you know, I'm a little bit nervous, et cetera, et cetera. Like a lot of people have different stigmas when it comes to therapy. So this is an amazing way to one, have an easy access point and two, to try and see if it works for you. And what I try to do on the Skinny Confidential is really talk about the importance of self-care.

So when you're busy, like we all are, the first thing that falls to the bottom of the list tends to be that self-care and this is self-care and it shouldn't fall to the bottom of the list. So many people think, you know, therapies, you know, talking about problems or digging into painful memories, but can also be really powerful tool. It can help you deal with stress. It can help you take accountability. It can help you achieve your goals. I believe, you know, we get the benefit of doing that on this show all the time is talking to people, like talking about how you feel talking through issues. And if you don't have someone to do that, that you're comfortable

sharing all your inner feelings, like definitely take advantage of something like this because these are all licensed professionals that can help you work through any issue you may have. The bottom line is that life can be hard and Talkspace wants to give us more of the support that we need at a price we can afford. As a listener of this podcast, you can get $100 off your first month on Talkspace.

To match with your perfect therapist, go to talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code SKINNY to get $100 off your first month on Talkspace. To match with your perfect therapist, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code SKINNY to get $100 off your first month and show your support for the show. That's SKINNY and Talkspace.com. All right, let's get back to Ben. What's bad for your body?

I mean, it's, so there's this term in health called the evolutionary mismatch, which means that there are certain things that we're exposed to nowadays that the human body has not really had a chance to evolve to be able to handle. I mean, I was just reading Wired magazine out in the lobby and, you know,

I was talking about the rollout of 5G, right? Like millimeter waves that technically we haven't really been exposed to in that grade of concentration ever. And that's a little bit of an evolutionary mismatch for the human body. Who's to say, there haven't been any studies that have shown to be harmful. There's also no studies that have been shown to be safe. With Ironman triathlon, it's like the human body for thousands or arguably millions of years, when it needed to run or when we need to

run, we were like chasing you know, chasing a lion maybe, or, you know, running from a predator or going to battle. But it was pretty seldom that we would just like run from a lion for like 10 hours a day, you know, very small subset of hunter gatherer tribes who might've done a little bit of persistence hunting might've done some of that, but they were still moving at very low level of physical activity, like very aerobic conversational pace versus like balls to the wall Ironman for 10 hours a day. And for me personally, I thought I was healthy.

I thought I was fit. And I started to get into blood testing and biomarker testing. And I was doing all this endurance sports. I was also not eating a lot of carbohydrates because I was combining that with ketosis, which is actually a really good way to fuel the body for endurance if you want to be able to go for long periods of time. But man, my testosterone was basically like hypogynatal, like super duper low.

My thyroid was way out of whack, almost hypothyroidism. My cortisol was through the roof. My inflammation was through the roof. My inflammation was through the roof. Because you're stressing your body so much? Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of like that healthy on the outside, dying on the inside type of scenario. And you see that a lot in, well, not just triathlon, right? You see a lot of women with amenorrhea or low bone density or hormone depletion. You see guys with low thyroid, guys with low testosterone. In bodybuilding, same thing. You see people from afar and they look like fricking, you know, Adonis.

And then you get up close and it's, you know, their skin's like the grandma from something about Mary. It's just all wrinkled and inflamed. I love Magda. Yeah, Magda. Exactly. You know her name. I can remember her name. So yeah, Ironman triathlon is kind of an evolutionary mismatch, right?

Like the human body really isn't supposed to run from a lion for like 10 hours a day, nor train to run from a lion for like two or three hours a day going into a competition like that. So I think that it's important to draw the distinction between performance, right? Which CrossFit gives you or triathlon gives you or Spartan racing gives you, you know, any of these popular forms of fitness and health or longevity, right? Those are not synonymous. And you have to accept the fact that if you decide to climb your own personal Mount Everest and go train for a marathon or a series of marathons or train for an Ironman triathlon or train for a Spartan race or any of these things, that's pretty cool. It's inspirational. It's fulfilling.

I think we need to get out and do hard things every once in a while, but don't fool yourself into thinking that's what's going to make you healthy or that's what's going to make you live a long time, right? What's going to make you healthy and live a long time is walking in the sunshine and gardening and maybe building a little bit of a rock wall or something like that in your backyard or occasionally lifting something heavy, you know, family dinners, hanging out with friends, clean water, getting outside barefoot. Those are the kind of things that are not an evolutionary mismatch, but are more matched to the way that the human body was supposed to function in close conjunction with the planet Earth. I have this theory about spinning that I think,

and this is maybe like I don't want to offend any spinners, but I used to spin from 18 to 21. And I think that it makes you gain weight because the music that they play is so loud and you're in the dark, you're high-fiving and you're going so hard over and over on the same joints. And it's making your cortisol go up, which I think makes you gain weight. And so I decided to just switch to walking like you just said, because I also think the gravity is not good on your skin. Like you were saying, it's not good on your boobs. It's not good on your face. Your knees, your joints. So I was a spinning instructor for four years. That's what I did in college. Actually,

when I was bodybuilding, I didn't do a lot for my legs. I had a squat day, but I played for the water polo team and I was a spinning instructor. So my legs are great. Like I barely even had to lift for my legs. However, with spinning, it kind of depends. So a couple of things there, first of all, chronic cardio, like chronic repetitive cardio, like I was mentioning earlier, it can cause hormone issues, right? It basically sends a message to your body that you're in a state of starvation running from a lion all day long. So you get down regulation of thyroid, you get down regulation of hormones like testosterone and progesterone. And the bounce back from that can

be a lower metabolic rate or a lowered ability to be able to burn fatty acids, or even the deposition of new fat in your waist, your hips, your butt, wherever you tend to store it, because your body wants to hang on to that for these times of need that you're in. At the same time, I don't argue against the fact that you can burn a lot of calories and a lot of people could lose weight in a spin class. It could be done. If you overdo it though, then you'd run into some of the cortisol issues, the thyroid issues, the testosterone issues, et cetera. Technically, spinning is just high-intensity interval training. We know that in moderate amounts, it's actually pretty good for fitness or for weight loss. But yeah, doing a spinning class every day or doing these modern newfangled versions of a spin class, which is like jumping up and down on the bike, and you see people and you can tell that their

resistance is really, really low. So they're not really burning any calories. They're just like pumping their legs and listening to music. And that's great if you're having fun, but it's not going to, it's not going to move the dial for fitness. So I think it kind of depends with spinning. I would say if you're going to spin and you want that as a part of your fitness routine, it'd be appropriate based on the research studies that have been done on frequency of high intensity interval training and what's actually going to move the dial for you without overtraining you, it would be two maximum three times a week that you do something like that for 45 to 60 minute spin class, assuming you're actually doing it as an interval workout. Meaning when you go hard, you go fricking hard. And when there's the easy rest period, you're going really easy.

When you look at all the studies on high intensity interval training, that's how they're done. Not just like riding the bike at a steady pace for 60 minutes. And what are some ways that you can lower your cortisol that are super effective? Probably the number one method, shoving aside adaptogenic herbs, right? Which can work, you know, things like reishi, for example, you know, reishi mushroom extract or ginseng or ashwagandha, like those adaptogenic herbs can, they can help a little bit. Another very common one that a lot of people will take before bed to lower cortisol is phosphatidylserine, which is a, you know, is a supplement and that can also do a very good job lowering cortisol. The number one thing would

be breath work. It's free. Our prana, our life force, our energy. I am a huge fan of breath work. So when I'm lulling myself to sleep at night, it's a four, eight breath count. Four count in, eight count out. Oh, I do that when I have headaches. Yeah, it's good for that too. Before we dive into that with Ben, let's talk about Glossier. I mean, everyone knows about Glossier. I'm sure you've heard of it. It's all over. It's delicious. It's pink. It's fresh. It's youthful and it represents everything Dewey. My personal favorite thing about Glossier though is just like from a branding perspective, they tap into their community. So they're a community driven beauty brand. And I feel like they've made glowy dewy skin cool. So basically it's up every skinny confidential listeners alley. You know what

I mean? Recently, as you guys know, I gave birth and my skin is so sensitive. I am not even joking. I got this horrible rash from epidural tape on my back and every part of my skin, including my face is super, super sensitive. So glossy is amazing because their stuff never irritates my skin, including my face is super, super sensitive. So Glossy is amazing because their stuff never irritates my skin. Specifically the product that really doesn't irritate my skin is their Milky Jelly Cleanser. I'm sure you've heard this everywhere. It's like this luscious, creamy gel formula that makes washing your face a very elevated experience. And it washes away excess dirt, oil, and makeup. But the thing here is, is it's really gentle on your eyes and your skin. It's soft and it's a pH balanced formula. So it has a blend of five skin conditioners.

I even used it in the hospital and now I'm addicted to it because not only is it dermatologist tested, it's hypoallergenic, non-irritating, cruelty, and paraben free, which is exactly what I need right now. So if I'm going to kiss the baby after a shower, I know I'm good to go. Your turn. Get that glowy dewy skin for yourself by visiting Glossier.com slash podcast slash skinny. Learn more and take the quiz to find your ultimate Glossier skincare routine. Plus all new customers will get 10% off their first order on Glossier.com slash podcast slash skinny. Again, that's Glossier spelled G-L-O-S-S-I-E-R.com slash podcast slash skinny. Certain exclusions apply.

All right, let's get back to Ben. Another method is box breathing. And I learned this when I was doing a, like a Navy SEAL training course down in Encinitas. A lot of these guys would use this to control stress. It's four count in, four count hold, four count out, four count hold. Another one is alternate nostril breathing. Cover your left nostril, breathe in through your right nostril, and then cover your right nostril, breathe out through your left nostril and do a few rounds of that. And that can cause a drop in salivary and plasma cortisol,

any type of breathwork program. And as you would imagine, because of that meditation and yoga are also very good for lowering cortisol. Another one is alternating like hot, cold therapy, hot, cold contrast therapy. A lot of people are into this now, like sometime before bed, either, you know, after dinner, some people do it in the morning, for example, you know, doing like a 15 to 30 minute dry or infrared sauna, followed by a two to five minute cold shower or cold soak. And the cold needs to be in moderation, not like dumping a bunch of ice in the bath. You know, the whole Wim Hof thing is, is cool for other things, you know, immune system modulation or arguably weight loss to a certain extent, but that's actually going to jack up the cortisol because you're getting super cold. But like a quick hot, cold contrast can be

really good. One thing to bear in mind though, as you're talking about high cortisol is a lot of people think they have either rampantly high cortisol or they think they have adrenal fatigue, right? That term is thrown around a lot. Yeah. People throw that term to me a lot. They're like, your adrenals are fatigued. Yeah. In medicine, it's called Cushing syndrome, hypocortisolism, very low levels of cortisol. The fact is very few people actually have that. What they do have is rampant cortisol clearance, meaning that the adrenal glands are producing cortisol just fine. It's just that the cortisol is getting cleared from the bloodstream very quickly. And a lot of times that can be the case if you, for example, aren't eating enough fats, you're underfed. In some cases, it can occur with hyperthyroidism as well. The other issue

would be you think you have high cortisol, but you're just not clearing out the cortisol well enough, meaning that you're not producing rampant levels of cortisol. You just have sluggish clearance. And a lot of times you see that with people who have sluggish thyroid, right? Who aren't getting enough iodine. They're not getting enough selenium. Maybe they need to eat more sea vegetables. They need to have a little bit more cold water fish. In this day and age, kind of like the high fat, low carb era, a lot of active people are not eating enough carbs, right? They're eating a low carb diet that's more of like a hospital diet designed to manage epilepsy, not a low-carb diet designed for an athlete.

And the difference between the two would be, you know, the difference between like 30 to 40 grams of carbohydrates a day versus like 100 to 200 grams of carbohydrates per day, which would be more fitting for an active person. So if you really want to know if your cortisol levels are actually at the level that you want to know that they're at, there's a test called the Dutch test, D-U-T-C-H. It's a dried urine test. It's very accurate for measuring estrogen, progesterone, cortisol, melatonin, testosterone. You can do it at home because it's urine. It's called the Dutch test. And the cool thing is that test will now measure neurotransmitters right so if you're concerned about dopamine or serotonin or you're wondering if you can't fall asleep at night

because you have low levels of you know gaba or some other inhibitory neurotransmitter you can find out with pretty good laser-like precision your level of hormones and your level of neurotransmitters. And it's literally just like, you know, piano stick a few times a day. Let's talk about sleep a little bit. There's so many people that struggle with sleep, especially in cities, right? What are like top three tips to get better sleep? You know, somebody is sitting there like, man, I like really just can't sleep and I'm all fucked up. My schedule's off, you know. So basic sleep hygiene, most people have their heads wrapped around. It's just the execution of that, right? So basic sleep hygiene, most people have their heads wrapped around. It's just the execution

of that, right? So basic sleep hygiene would be your light, your cold, the nature of the bedroom, and sound. So the first one, light, right? A lot of people here don't look at screens before bed, or don't have your TV in the bedroom. Don't binge on Netflix before you're falling asleep. And that's true because blue light, and actually a research study that came out yesterday suggests that it's just as much yellow light and white light as it is blue light that suppresses melatonin, right? So it interferes with sleep cycles. It does what's called a phase shifting. It shifts your circadian rhythm forward. So when you normally start to get tired and fall asleep at 9.30 or 10, it'll shift that to 11 or it'll shift it to 12. Now, the issue with that, it's pretty easy to hear that, but what do you actually do to limit the blue light?

Some of the things I do is on my phone, you can put it in night mode, but there's also, if you Google it, iPhone red light trick. You showed me that the other day. You have an iPhone. You can suck all the blue light out of the phone it also makes instagram really boring at night so it kind of helps does it can it is it set so that at a certain time of night it automatically ships or do you have to do it manually yeah i'm sorry but taylor you have to bring me a notepad for this podcast because there's been things that i need to write down and i have pregnancy brain so can you come bring me a notebook i want want to write this down. Do you have like a pen? This stuff is all in my book. I'll send it to you. Okay, okay, okay. Go on.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Pump the brakes, Lauren. Let me ask you one quick question. Why is that ass looking so good? It's looking pretty juicy in my beta brands, Michael. The beta brand JessPant Yoga Pant is insane. We have discussed this on the Skinny Confidential. It's affordable. It's chic. It holds you in. It doesn't allow your muffin top to come over the sides. So if you want to keep things looking flattering, you got to check out their dress pant yoga pants. Basically, I like the black. I like the skinny jean.

There's tons of different colors if you're not a black fan, and there's tons of different styles too. So they have like a boot cut, a straight leg, the skinny, like I said, and a cropped. These pants are not cutting off your circulation. You know the kinds I'm talking about. There's nothing worse. You can basically run straight from a meeting to happy hour. You can cook dinner, you can lounge around on the couch, and you can still be comfortable. Basically, they're ideal for the busy woman who wants to look insane and doesn't have time to be distracted by uncomfortable clothing. Very much about this. Right now, all TSC him and her listeners get 20% off their first order when you go to betabrand.com slash skinny. That's 20% off your first order at betabrand.com slash skinny.

Millions of women agree that these are the most comfortable pants you'll ever wear to work. So just go to betabrand.com slash skinny for 20% off and definitely stock their black skinnies. All right, back to the show. The red light trick is really good for the iPhone. On our TV, we have what's called a drift box, which you just, you plug into the TV and it sucks like 70% of the blue light out of the TV at night.

On all of our computer monitors, we have a special program called Iris installed. Yeah, and Iris will suck out all the blue light. You can put a paper mode, you can put it red light mode. My kids have that on their Mac books and they shifted to sleep mode when they're doing homework at night. So screen, screen, screens, that's really important. The other one would be the light bulbs in your house, right? Because you can have all your screens out, but if you flip on your master bedroom lights, when you go into the bedroom at night, or you get up at one to pee and you go flip on your master

bedroom lights and all of a sudden you're just bathed in light or even like go open your refrigerator at night. Not that anybody ever snacks at midnight, but let's say you do. You open the refrigerator and you're like bathed in blue light. And all that stuff just basically Fs up everything you were trying to do with your screens. So what we do at our house is the bedroom, I replaced all the light bulbs with red incandescent light, which is kind of cool because it looks cool. I don't know the rating of your podcast, but it's amazing for sex. It makes the whole bedroom look like a strip club almost.

It's kind of cool, red incandescent light. It's like how often do I don't even want the lights on when I'm in the bedroom. They're so low. We have a salt rock lamp. Are those good? Salt rock lamps the bedroom. They're so low. We have a salt rock lamp. Are those good? Salt rock lamps are good. Candles are good. Yeah.

Anything like that that's not producing an appreciable amount of blue light. So master bedroom, master bathroom, kid's bedroom, that's all red incandescent lighting. And then I just have on my nightstand for when I get up during the night, if I want to go hit the fridge or if I'm walking around, I need to go downstairs, turn the alarm, whatever. I've got some of those blue light blocking glasses. And there's one company I like that does a really good job. It's called Raw, R-A. I'm not financially affiliated with them at all, but they have a really good spectrum of light that they block. And theirs don't really look like birth control for your head. They actually have like stylus versions of them. So I always have those around. My kids have a set, my wife has a set. So when we're, you know, even if I got to like, whatever, go on a, go on a run

to the grocery store, the mall where you just blasted with fluorescent lights, I'll just put those on when I go out at night. So that's number one light. The other very important thing to remember about light is your circadian rhythm starts when you get up, meaning that whereas you should limit your exposure to blue and white and yellow light at night in the morning, you to remember about light is your circadian rhythm starts when you get up meaning that whereas you should limit your exposure to blue and white and yellow light at night in the morning you should get as much of that damn stuff as possible like get out in the sunlight if you can't get out in the sunlight like disable those settings on your screen so your screen just like blasting light so it's not bad if you wake up in the morning you hit the phone well for other reasons i'm saying

that the light like take away the like you know just you don't want to jump into your phone yeah i know i know what you're saying the kind of you if you want to to really delve into the nitty-gritty science of it the only problem with the phone and looking at that as the first thing that you look at is it's blue light with the absence of near and far infrared light right so you're not actually getting naturally what you get from the sun i know what you could do you know, we were talking about like the infrared light panels earlier. I use the juve in the morning. That's the first thing I do in the morning.

Flip that on while you're looking at your phone. And then you're getting basically almost like a combination of what you get from sunlight, right? The blue light from the phone and the red light from the panels. So as much natural light or blue light or yellow light or white light that you can get during the day. And then you just start to dial all that stuff back at whatever time the sun happens to be going down in whatever area of the world that you're in. See that Jew thing helps because when I wake, I wake up in the morning before the sun's

up, right? It's just, and so I need something like that. So as soon as I found that, I turned that on and that's kind of when I get into my phone or like reading the, like the newspaper, whatever I'm reading. I have a selfish question though question though okay do you think if he wakes up before me that he should open the shades up so i wake up with the light because we're we're in this fight where he doesn't open the shades and i want them i want to i feel like the shades need to be open so when i wake up around seven o'clock it's like i'm ready to go yeah i wake up an hour before my wife and i don't like i keep everything off just because she's like she's like the queen of our house like i just want her to just sleep until she wants to wake up yeah that's what i learned that's a dangerous move for me if i start opening shit

and moving things around yeah exactly if i open the shade so so here's the thing once you know this about light you can mess around with your circadian rhythm like what you can do is say okay i've been waking up at 5 a.m but i really don, okay, I've been waking up at 5 a.m., but I really don't like that. I've been waking up at 5 a.m., my thoughts are racing, maybe I've been traveling, and so I'm used to waking up at 5 a.m. because I've been back east. I really want to wake up at 6.30 a.m. I want that extra hour and a half. So what you do is when you start waking up at 5 a.m., you don't just lay there for an hour and a half. You get up, but you put on your blue light blocking glasses in the morning. You keep all the lights off in the morning and you wait and wait and wait until let's say 630 or seven or whenever you want to begin waking up.

And then you start flipping all the lights on, exposing yourself to light and does a really good job at allowing you after you do that for a few consecutive days to sleep in because your body gets that message that, oh, morning is actually happening later than I thought it was happening. So if you open the shades when you get up, Lauren will wake up eventually. You'll transition into a more or less stressful waking period than if you were to wake up to an alarm clock. But if you just want to sleep until you want to sleep, he should probably leave him a shot. I want to go back here for just a second because you're such a fountain of knowledge. We could just go on and on and on.

Was there like a triggering event in your life? It sounds like you've always been into the human body, health, fitness, all of these different things. But was there a triggering event that got you basically obsessed with this kind of stuff? No. I just always loved it. Just was in it.

No, I'm not a wounded healer. I never really had any. I've just always, always loved this stuff, even when I was a kid. The outdoors, reading, writing, teaching others, that's just what I've always loved to do. Speaking of sleep, I do want to bring something up with you that I think you'll know about. I noticed that a lot of women, especially in LA, that I talk to take Adderall. And I feel like that also is a huge, if you're on certain different things,

I feel like that fucks with your sleep a lot. Have you heard that Adderall is like affecting people's sleep and hormones and cortisol levels? Yeah. Well, it's like methamphetamine. I'm going to leave you hanging for just a second and I'm going to go through the rest of sleep hygiene. Then I'll come back and I'll answer that question

because not only do I have the answer, but there's also something like Adderall that's new that doesn't create all the issues. Well, that's going to have our audience just tune in longer. Sorry, guys. Sorry. Okay. So anyways, the other ones would be, like I mentioned, temperature, right? So people hear, well, if you're super hot, and most of us know this, if you go to the steakhouse and wake up with the meat sweats or something like that, like, you know, that being hot doesn't help you to sleep. And if you quantify your sleep, like if you use any of these new quantifying wearables, like the

aura or the whoop or a, you know, or a bedded device or any of these things, you know, that being warm actually depresses sleep cycle. If your resting heart rate is higher during the night, trying to cool your body, it depresses your sleep cycle. So 64 to 66 degrees Fahrenheit is the sweet spot in the bedroom for sleep. My rule is if there's a little bit of kind of like a resistance to taking off my clothes before I get into bed at night, because I'm kind of cold, that's perfect. Because once you're under the covers and especially like you have a partner and you're snuggled up with them, like your body heats up just fine after that. The other ones would be, there are a couple of systems that will cool the bed while you're asleep. Like the one that we have

is called an Uler and it runs 55 degree cold water under my top sheet while I'm asleep. And there's a his and hers. So she's got hers on her side. She can put on whatever she wants. I've got mine on my side. I can sleep at whatever temperature I want you're gonna make us broke michael's there's another one called the bed jet that does it with air so both of them work but you you that's another way to keep yourself cool the other cool thing to do is if you put on socks like smart wool socks if you keep the feet warm it causes the rest of the body to stay cool so you can literally just like put on socks put the room at 64 to 66 degrees, get one of those bed jets or, or ruler systems under your bed. And that really helps to keep you cold. And if you work out, if you have a workout and it ends any closer than three hours before your bedtime, take a cold shower after the workout,

or, you know, jump in something cold after the workout, because any closer than three hours, your body temp is still going to be up by the time you get to bed. This is also why, you know, having a heavy meal right before bed, you know, most people know that interferes with sleep, but be careful with that as well. So that's, that's the temperature thing. And then the other two that I mentioned, one is sound or like drowning out ambient sound. So the way that I do this is I have this app on my phone. It's like a DJ for sleep. It's called Sleep Stream. And it can make like white noise, brown noise, pink noise. It can do like sounds of whales talking, whatever. And that really helps me, especially when I'm traveling.

I do foam earplugs and then I put my phone in airplane mode and I put that Sleep Stream on. They actually did research at Stanford and they showed that of the different forms of noise that can enhance your sleep cycles, if you put it on pink noise, that's even better than white noise or brown noise or any of these other settings. So I go pink noise, foam earplugs, and I'm just out. So that's the sound thing. And then finally, the last thing is just like keep the bedroom for sex or sleep. don't, you know, if you're even at a hotel or an Airbnb, like don't lay out on the bed, like a lot of people do and, you know, lay on your stomach and type on your laptop and like,

don't send your brain the message that it works in bed. Even the books that I read that are on my bedside, they're all like spiritual, devotional fiction. You know, all the business books are in other places of the house. What about biography? Yeah. Biography. Yeah. Unless you're, I guess, unless you're like a biographer. How do you read in the red light you can see in the red light you can see yeah you can see it's not as bright as the blue light but you can see we need it what's the brand of those light bulbs we need to put them in our lamps next to the bed right well red incandescent the the brands i forget the brand that we got but actually a couple of months ago up until recently incandescent was very hard to get because they quit manufacturing because they're a little bit of a power hog it's worth it to me to have this i mean the power bill

i mean for most people it's it's negligible it's like a few bucks extra each month but the the trump administration recently just allowed for it was it was some part of a law they recently passed that incandescent light bulbs were actually something that you can get nowadays like they're producing them again there was a there was a time when you just couldn't produce them and they were going out of stock on Amazon and everything, but red incandescent, you can now get. Don't get the whole Phillips Hue dimmer systems, any of that stuff, because I had this guy called a building biologist come to my house and they test all the electricity that pours off the varying devices in your house. There's a lot of stuff that makes electricity, like the dryer, the washer,

any smart device that runs off Bluetooth, et cetera. But dimmer switches on lights kick off a huge, huge amount of dirty electricity. So you don't want dimmer switches. We have dimmer switches on our lights. That's what I do every morning. You've got a lot of work to do on the bedroom. I'm going to spend this whole weekend rewiring the house now.

You honestly have a lot of work to do on the bedroom. All right, I'm going whole weekend like rewiring the house now. You honestly have a lot of work to do on the bedroom. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to get on it. Well, that's why I got, that's why I got to get this guy on the show. I want you to put that thing on the TV

that makes the light go down for us. I want you to put the red lights in. I'm going to, it's going to be one of the rare instances where I got to go back and listen to my own podcast. I want that cool thing. Yeah.

Yeah. You got a lot of- I got to go back in and take notes on this episode. You got a lot of notes. Yeah. I want you to nest before the baby comes.

This is like so much good news. Definitely don't. Yeah. Like get rid of that stuff in the baby's bedroom for sure even a baby monitor spits out a huge amount of emf so you want to be really careful with that stuff so speaking of if you google low emf baby monitor there's a few that don't do that yeah we gotta google that um speaking of emf khalil's house have you ever seen his house uh okay it's like emf proofed good can you speak on that because michael doesn't believe me that this is a real thing and i want i want the the the real it's not that i don't believe i just want to hear from somebody that knows what they're

talking you know because sometimes you get people that just start yeah but they i want to i want to hear from somebody that's actually done the research yes yes um Yes. Okay. But first Adderall. Yeah. So during the day, that's more of a neurotransmitter issue. So what Adderall is going to cause is a surge of serotonin and also desensitivity to dopamine. So essentially by flooding your receptors with serotonin, you're going to desensitize yourself to serotonin and be less able to produce melatonin at night because you've exhausted your serotonin levels. So Adderall, it's a very good wakefulness strategy in that it keeps you awake, but similar to modafinil, similar to deprinil is another that's commonly used, these off-label drugs being used

for wakefulness. There are better alternatives that don't exhaust your neurotransmitters. So some of those would be, for example, caffeine combined with theanine. Like when you have coffee, you take about 100 milligrams of theanine with it. Another one would be nicotine. Nicotine has a bad rap, mostly because of what's occurred in the tobacco industry and all the toxins that come along with nicotine. But nicotine in isolation or with caffeine is actually a very good wakefulness and alertness agent with the only downside to it is that it's mildly addictive. I'm not even opposed to microdosing. Microdosing can be very good for wakefulness, for creativity, for merging of the

left and right hemispheres of the brain, like a small microdose, like a 10 microgram of an LSD or an LSA or a PLSD, or a small microdose, like a 0.1 to 0.2 of something like psilocybin. So ultimately there's a lot more than just like a cup of coffee that can assist with wakefulness, but Adderall would create a neurotransmitter issue. You know what? I think some of the problem here, this happens throughout the country is people are taking Adderall because they see the weight loss, right? And they see the weight loss.

So they think, oh, if I keep taking Adderall, I'll stay in shape. But really like, I kind of want you to speak on what it's actually doing to your body over time. Because for me, there's a lot of other healthier, better ways to manage weight. Right. It would be the neurotransmitter depletion, neurotransmitter imbalances. That returns like that Dutch test I was talking about, that urine test where you can actually see what kind of imbalances that you're creating. So what that means is if you're exhausting your neurotransmitters, then there are certain things that they need to rebuild them. Minerals would be one essential amino acids be another choline, such as you would get from like egg yolks or liver.

Like there's all these things that you have to replenish with. And most people aren't getting enough of these types of things, minerals, amino acids, choline, riboflavin, all these good nutrients and vitamins in their diet anyways. And when you're stacking on top of that neurotransmitter depletion with the use of something like Adderall, you create a scenario where you just have exhausted neurotransmitters, which are literally like the chemical signals that your brain uses to speak to your nervous system. Is there anything that someone can take that has all the minerals in it already? Like, can they scoop something in their smoothie that has all these things that you need? There's not something that would have, actually there is, there's one

supplement called, it's a pretty good formula. It's very expensive, but it's, it's made by a company called neurohacker collective. It's called a qualia. They have a supplement called mind and they have like a caffeine mind and they have like a caffeine free and a non or a caffeine free and caffeinated version and that's got a lot of the things that help to replenish all these building blocks you wouldn't want to take that and adderall you take that as like an alternative to to adderall but that'd be a good example of like a well a well formulated like neuroprotective supplement yeah yeah i want to ask you a question because i feel like you'll know all the science behind it what is your thoughts on fasting and not just

intermittent fasting but this new thing that's everyone's talking about called omad which is one meal a day yeah i only answer that or the emf question oh god well both we answer them whenever makes sense okay so well i guess we we can just talk about EMF first. I told you there's going to be a lot of areas to go here. There's too many. I have so many questions. We're trying to extract as much information as possible. Sorry. Yeah. No, that's okay.

I'll have to do this again sometime. I'll keep it sorted. There's a really good new book on EMF coming out. It's got a great title. It's called EMF'd. And I recently read it, even though it's not out yet, I got my hands on a, on a pre-release version and it's, it's pretty nuts in terms of, so, so what's happening is that all of your cells operate based on an electrochemical gradient across the membrane of the cell, like certain, certain amounts of sodium and potassium on the outside, certain amounts of sodium and potassium on the inside and certain amounts of calcium on the outside with trace amounts on the inside. What happens in response to an electrical signal such as 5G or Wi-Fi, to a lesser extent Bluetooth

because it's a pretty weak signal, or the type of electricity that's kicked off by a nest or by a dimmer switch or all these different appliances that we're now surrounded by these, again, to return to that term, evolutionary mismatch, is there's an influx of calcium into the cell. And that lowers, or I'm sorry, it raises the millivolt potential inside the cell. And so you actually produce less ATP. The mitochondria don't operate as efficiently. So you see a suppression of metabolic rate and you see a drop in normal cellular metabolic function from the influx of the calcium. So that's one of the issues that we're looking at. The other issue is inflammation. For example, there's been studies

that show that the levels of something called NAD drop in exposure to Wi-Fi and dirty electricity. Now NAD is something that's being championed quite a bit these days. It's like the ultimate anti-aging and longevity molecule. And it is actually a very, very important molecule in your body because it is what interacts with something else called sirtuins, which we find in chocolate and blueberries and red wine. Well, NAD interacts with that to help protect your DNA, right? So you can see DNA unraveling or broken DNA in response to that intense drop in NAD that occurs in response to these wifi and dirty electricity signals. So it's the NAD, it's the calcium influx. And then finally, there's another pathway called the Nrf2 pathway. And that helps to produce your antioxidants, helps to shut down free radicals, it helps to battle inflammation. That pathway gets downregulated in response to these electrical signals, right? So you got calcium influx, drop in NAD, and disruption of the

Nrf2 pathway. So- And what's the, so then the end result to the human body- So the end result would be drop in metabolic rate, drop in ATP production, increased inflammation, increased oxidation, and an overall depletion of the molecules necessary to protect your DNA. All things that you would not want occurring metabolically. Would we evolve at some point to perhaps have stronger cell membranes that don't allow for that calcium channel influx, or maybe we endogenously produce more NAD? Yeah, maybe a few dozen or a hundred years down the road, our bodies will start to get used to this and create its own protective mechanism. But right now, it's an evolutionary mismatch. And this is why there are certain things that even if you're

working in an office that has all this stuff flying at you, you can take NAD, right? Or you can- Is there a brand you like? When it comes to NAD, the best way to get bioavailable amounts of nad is intravenous or transdermal patches right like that's that's the fast track to really jacking your levels up i mean like when i'm going through airports or flying on airplanes i have an nad patch on my inner thigh always because it's protecting me from a lot of that stuff i do an iv i'm actually getting an iv after this podcast we go to next health for an iv i get an IV about once a month to kind of keep my levels topped off. And then there's a lot of different forms to supplement with, but the two best ways to do it would be oral administration of something called

nicotinamide riboside, which is also NR. So this would be like Elysium basis or true niagen or any of these forms that use NR. Thorne has one one too i think it's called resveracel which combines the nr yeah they're a good brand what the fuck's going on in your vitamin cabinet like if i open what the hell's going on in there oh if i open that thing i bet there's just i envision just like a like a mound of of vitamin just flying out i take maybe eight or nine things yeah and i i try to get most of what i get from food from you know so that's the way everyone's looking for the quick fix you gotta eat right yeah and then okay so so that will cover your energy the other one the other molecule it's very absorbable it's called nmn

uh there's a company alive by nature that does like a sublingual nmn that's also very well absorbed and that one winds up getting into your hypothalamus. So it's protective for your brain as well. And then for the Nrf2 pathway, that other pathway that gets affected, there's a lot of different things that you can do for that. But the thing that's really interesting is both ketones and fasting upregulate that pathway. Fasting also, to return to your other question, that upregulates the NAD pathway as well. So if you do like intermittent fasting or a weekly 24-hour fast or even like a quarterly, like what's called a fasting mimicking diet, right, where you're just backing off calories for about four or five days and eating a lot fewer calories than you would normally eat, these are all ways that you can upregulate the Nrf2 pathway, as well as heat and cold,

which I talked about earlier, right? Like doing the sauna, doing cold thermogenesis, cold showers, things like that. That will help to activate that pathway as well. And then finally the calcium influx pathway, that would be like taking magnesium at night before you go to bed. That can really help out with the calcium issues, like getting a good magnesium supplement with a good absorbable form of magnesium, like natural calm is one that I use called Meg SRT. Like all of these things can help your body to battle the damage that it's getting from all the dirty electricity signals. And then finally, the last thing you can do

that's like a reboot for your body. I always do this. If I'm traveling, as soon as possible, after I get off the airplane or I get to my hotel, you just go outside barefoot, right? There's a ground show. The planet, yeah, you get outside barefoot, go for a walk on the beach, jump in the ocean

because you're produced, you're getting exposed to negative ions. She's giving me the look right now because she knows she's, she's actually, cause she fights me on a night. Yeah. Those counteract the positive influx of ions that you get from calcium. All right.

So just basically get in touch with mother earth and it'll, it'll hit the reboot button on your body. The cool thing is the time that the planet produces the highest number of negative ions is right after a lightning storm. And that would be anywhere in the contiguous US, for example. So if there's a lightning storm in Florida and you hear about it and you get outside barefoot, you're sucking up a lot more of the negative ions because they travel that quickly across landmass. So yeah, that's kind of the general overview of EMF. And again, 5G, I can't definitively say that it causes a lot of issues. I'm just concerned about the size of that millimeter wave, right?

It's a millimeter wave signal. That's why it's so effective for high-speed transmission. It'll only travel like 3,000 feet, I think. So that's why they got to put up all the panels and have all these waves bouncing around all over the place. So that's why they got to put up all the panels and have all these waves bouncing around all over the place. But that small wave can penetrate plant matter. It can penetrate animal, human tissue. So I'm just concerned until I see the safety studies. I don't know why they're rolling it out so quickly without the safety studies. That's what baffles me because there aren't any. What are some little, tiny, easy tactics that people can do to make the EMF not so strong in the house?

So like example, maybe putting your phone on airplane mode when you sleep or not sleeping next to it. Or getting rid of the dimmer. Yeah. What are just little tiny things people can do? Some of the biggies would be turn off your Wi-Fi router and buy like some good Cat7 shielded Ethernet cables like off of amazon and plug into the router instead whenever you can you might have to get an ethernet firewire converter ethernet usb

converter for plugging your your computer in and if that's too annoying for you at least just buy a cheap ass digital timer off of amazon plug it into the wall that your wi-fi router is plugged into and set it to go off at 10 p.m and on again at 6 a.m. So there's at least a third of the day when you're asleep and you're not using the Wi-Fi anyways that you wouldn't need to be exposed to it. That's a great idea, especially when you have a newborn in the house. Hint, hint. I'm going to be working for the next month getting everything in order. Well, I mean, children's neurons are rapidly dividing.

Their skull is thinner. For kids, the importance of this stuff, in my opinion, goes up like 10 times. So what should we do in the baby's room? So a few other things, in addition to the Wi-Fi router, would be the bulbs would be non-flickering bulbs, like not a lot of LED, not a lot of dimmers. Like I would go for the incandescent instead. I would not have any smart appliances that operate on like Alexa, for example, or Nest, or even a security system that runs off a lot of Bluetooth and wifi. I

would be really careful with having those. And then one other thing that works really well, cause I tested a lot of this stuff in my home. Like I had a guy come over with meters and test. And one thing that really moved the dial was these things called dirty electricity filters. You only need to have one of these filters in every outlet of the house that's run off a specific breaker. So if you've got three outlets in your baby's room, you don't have to plug a dirty electricity filter into all of them, just one of them. And that drops the EMF dramatically. There's a couple companies like Green Wave makes one, Stetzer makes one, Shielded Healing makes one. In California, a lot of people have solar panels. I have solar panels at my house. Huge, huge kicker off of dirty electricity because it has to convert DC to AC. But you can also, that company called Shielded Healing sells a dirty EMF for solar panels that reduces the kickoff right where the DC AC conversion takes place. So the biggest would be wire in when you can wire in, or at least

disable the wifi when you can disable it, install dirty electricity filters in each outlet of the home. Don't use smart appliances unless they're absolutely crucial. And then if you have solar panel, consider one of these, these inverter protectors and wear a tinfoil hat at all. And when your husband buys a bed that moves up and down and plugs into the wall. Oh my God. You're never going to stop talking about this. What do you think about that? I don't like the fact that we're sleeping on electricity.

Yeah. I keep as much off in the bedroom as I can at night. I mean, we had the advantage of being able to build our house and I had the electrician actually install a kill switch in every bedroom. Meaning every single bedroom has a switch where if you're not going to use shit at night, you just hit that switch and boom all the electricity you better get some info from that and next time you buy a mattress you need to talk to me because i would have never allowed that i had the best mattress in the world yeah there's no electricity on anything

and then like she did she had this whole thing was that when we moved in together we're just like listen i don't know what's going on on that bed like you gotta get rid of it isn't one of those gravity beds that kind of like goes up and down. Yeah. So in college, no, no, no, no, no,

no. He had a bed in college. That was, it wasn't like, I'm not going to sleep on your bed that you had. You could, you could plug the bed into a dirty electricity filter and assuming you're not using the electricity at night,

like putting it up and down, that should cut off most of the issues. Okay. So we can have it. We just got to get the filter. Just plug it in a filter. I can't wait to see you do that this weekend. I like this approach because,

you know, I don't like the approach where everyone's like, get rid of the electricity. But if there's things I can do to minimize with kill switches and lights, like that makes like 100% sense to me. Yeah, exactly. And then, yeah, on the fasting piece, to backpedal that other, am I doing a good job keeping track?

Yeah, you are. Your mind's like a steel trap. Yeah, jeez. We got to talk about these nootropics. I'm like, Jesus Christ, what the hell are you talking about? Well, this morning I had a cup of coffee with a little bit of lion's mane in it from porsche yeah yeah yeah exactly so that's that's a that's a good pick-me-up that doesn't give you a lot of jitters and stuff like that um then a really good night of sleep last night i actually took cbn last night i slept like

eight and a half even even in the hotel yeah you're in a hotel yeah airbnb yeah still i gotta i gotta get some of the cbn yeah i. I mean, I'm in. So anyways, the fasting thing is interesting because yeah, you're right. It's a hot topic. And I think a, a lot of people are feeling pressure, you know, from guys like whatever, you know, Jack Dorsey or whoever who's, you know, the media is painted as having an eating disorder because he's doing the OMAD thing. And I, I don't think that that's necessarily an eating disorder. It can actually be a productivity hack, right? You don't have to worry about taking time for breakfast or lunch.

You can wait until dinner. You can have this big, fantastic meal at night. Like most of the people who I know are doing OMAD, they have these amazing either lunches or dinners where they're just like eating. It's like a feast. Rib eye steak and a half a bottle of wine, a bunch of sweet potato fries and a piece of dark chocolate and maybe half pint of coconut ice cream, and a piece of dark chocolate, and maybe

half pint of coconut ice cream, or maybe a full pint of what? So they're eating like 2,500 calories for that one meal a day. And I think if you have that approach and you're cognizant that you do have to nourish your body, you have to get enough vitamins and minerals, that it can be an effective tactic if you're not some CrossFitter or exercise enthusiast or gym junkie who is depleting the body and stressing the body by over and over and over again exercising without replenishing some of the amino acids, some cases the carbohydrates, some of the minerals that are necessary for an active person living an athletic lifestyle. I'm very athletic. I love to stay fit. I can't do the OMAD because if I'm getting up in the morning and crushing it for an active person living an athletic lifestyle. Like I'm very athletic. I love to stay fit. I can't do the OMAD because you know, if I'm getting up in the morning and crushing it for an hour,

like I played an hour of pickup basketball this morning. And then after that I did about 20 minutes of heavy weightlifting, right? I'm not going to wait until dinner tonight to eat. I'm going to be angry. I'm going to be grumpy. My body's going to get this message to hold onto fat because I'm not giving it anything in that post-workout scenario. So I think OMAD can work if you're some, you know, Silicon Valley exec, who's just like kind of boardroom in it all day or, you know, in, in Ubers or in meetings or, you know, just not doing a lot aside from maybe low level physical activity, like walking, right? Furthermore, in men, this idea of fasting for more than 16 hours a day is something that does not seem to be as deleterious from a hormonal standpoint, assuming that meal that they do have is adequate compared

to women. Now, women produce this hormone called kispeptin and kispeptin is very important because it is linked to all of what are called your gonadotropin releasing hormones, meaning it allows for you to produce luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, all these things that keep fertility elevated, all these things that keep a woman vibrant, progesterone, estrogen, all these things. That tends to, after about 12 hours of fasting in an active female and 16 hours of fasting, even just like a sedentary inactive female, to be downregulated. So this means from an evolutionary and ancestral standpoint, probably because men in many conditions were given the role of being out hunting,

gathering, fighting, et cetera, for long periods of time without food, whereas women's bodies were more adapted to having more readily available access to food. It's more of an evolutionary mismatch for a woman to an OMAD or a fast for more than 16 hours a day, or if she's active even more than 12 hours a day versus a man who can get away with that a little bit more. So with the clients I work with, the men, I do encourage a daily 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast. For those who want to do an OMAD, I'm fine with that as long as that one meal is composition correctly and they're getting enough calories. And then many of them will also do like a Saturday dinner to Sunday dinner, like a 24 hour ish fast, that type of thing. For the women, it's closer to a 10 to

12 hour intermittent fast. Not a lot of the OMADs. For some women, I'll still have, especially those who have like weight to lose and body fat to rely upon. They'll still do occasionally like one or two times a month, that 24 hour fast. And then everybody who I work with, I highly recommend, and I do this myself. This is based off the research of a guy named Dr. Walter Longo.

This whole idea of on a quarterly basis doing what's called a fasting mimicking diet. So rather than doing like a three to five day water fast, which is uncomfortable, it's hard for a lot of people. It can be difficult if you're trying to live life, if you want to exercise, et cetera. Instead, all you do is you take whatever number of calories that you normally eat and you cut that down to about 40%. Okay. And, and, you know, even Valter Longo's company has

like kits that they ship out to make this super easy for you. It's called a prolon kit. Day one, you eat what's in the day one box. Day one, you eat what's in the day one box. Day two, you eat what's in the day two box. There's another guy whose system I like better. He is an Ayurvedic physician based out of Boulder, Colorado, and he has more of like an Ayurvedic cleansing approach. I think his meals are better compositioned. The Prolon kit isn't too bad.

I like this guy's kits better, Dr. John Duyard, and he'll send you like a five-day kit to your house that's more of like an Ayurvedic cleanse. Or you can just do, if you were to Google like DIY FMD diet, like do your own fasting mimicking diet, you can just download a bunch of recipes and rely upon those and kind of just make your own recipes that are low in calories, but nutrient and mineral dense that let you get by for that spring, summer, fall, winter, little five-day cleanup that you do. So in summary, 12 to 16-hour intermittent fast for guys, one up to four times a month,

that dinner time to dinner time fast on a quarterly basis, a five-day fasting mimicking diet. For women, closer to a 10 to 12-hour intermittent fast, occasionally one maximum two times a month, that dinner time to dinner time fast. And then same as men, four times a year, do that five day fasting mimicking diet. And that's a very sustainable, easy fasting scenario that has some research behind it. If a woman comes to you and she wants to lose weight, aka me after I'm done being pregnant, where would you tell them to start some easy tactics and tools not i don't want to say easy maybe that's not the right word some straight to the point tactics and

tools yep um i'll give you three things one is intuitive the other two are not the first and and this is something i personally do even the men i work with do this. You get up in the morning and you do about 20 to 30 minutes of aerobic cardio in a fasted state, aerobic cardio in your fat burning zone. It's very, it's very, very simple to find out what your personal fat burning zone is. All you do is you get on a bike or a treadmill or elliptical trainer, whatever you get your intensity up to the point where your muscles are burning, like you're working kind of hard and you maintain your maximum sustainable intensity for 20 minutes. And you have a heart rate monitor burning, like you're working kind of hard and you maintain your maximum sustainable intensity for 20 minutes and you have a heart rate monitor on, or you're holding the handles that show your heart rate. You measure your heart rate the whole time. It's not like as hard as you can go. Cause obviously you got to maintain it for 20 minutes, but muscles

are burning. You're breathing hard. Maybe you can taste a little lactic acid in your mouth. Like it's kind of, kind of a chore for 20 minutes. So let's say that you find out your heart rate during those 20 minutes is 175 beats per minute average. All you do is subtract 20 beats from that. And that's a very close approximation of what your maximum fat burning zone is. So you'd say, okay, I'm going to get up in the morning, 20 to 30 minutes, fasted state. I'm going to do that at a heart rate of 155. That can be a brisk walk. It can be some flow yoga. It could be a swim, you know, anything that's not super duper hard and, you know, jacking up your cortisol, your cortisol is already naturally elevated in the morning. And then you finish that up with two to five minutes of cold, because when

you're fasted, you're going to tap into fatty acids while you're doing that aerobic cardio in your maximum fat burning zone. And then when you finish up with the cold, you tap into more adipose tissue to convert that into brown fat. And you activate what's called an uncoupling protein, which is a special protein in your body that will gather calories. And instead of using calories to generate ATP, we'll use the calories to generate heat to warm your body back up. And that's like 365 days a year until you've gotten to your goal weight loss, fasted aerobic cardio in the morning with a cold session right after. And when you say cold, do you mean a cold shower, cryotherapy, an ice bath? Anything. Cryotherapy could be, I mean, the ice bath, the only problem with that is I don't

recommend you go that long because A, it's stressful. B, you're not going to do this every day if you got to fill a freaking tub with ice every day. So I like a cold shower. Depending on where you live in the world, you can just have a cold body of water that you might have access to. I have a pool I have at my house. I just don't heat it. So it stays pretty cold. There's a new company called Marozco Forge that does a done-for-you ice bath that stays super cold, even when it's 100 degrees out. And it's like one of those ice baths you see people in, but it's clean with UV and ozone. It's kind of a sick little setup. I think I want that. Smart company. They're probably going to do well.

They probably are. I think I want an ice bath. Now they are. So that's one. Number two would be to be careful for the reasons we've already stated with chronic cardio, which is attractive to a lot of like get on the elliptical trainer for an hour and burn your eyeballs out and staring at the screen or the spin class where you're not actually doing intervals or just like the uphill huff on the treadmill and instead focus on heavy weights and high intensity interval training. Okay. So a lot of women get concerned they're going to bulk up unless they're on testosterone or steroids. That's very seldomly the case. And you'll respond very well hormonally to heavier weights and high-intensity interval training compared to long steady-state cardio.

The only steady-state cardio you need to do is that 20 to 30 minutes in your fat-burning zone that I talked about in the morning that you follow up with the cold. Everything else can just be brief spurts of high intensity interval training and weight training. What about any low intensity workouts here? Well, that's what that, like that morning fat burning. Is it low intensity? The other thing that I'll encourage a lot of people to do, I have to be careful with this because like, you know, the Ironman triathlete folks, they do this every day.

But just like once a week, like on a weekend, a long hike in a fasted state or a long bike ride in a fasted, but just like, you know, two to three hours and that you're not dipping into that well frequently. That's just every once in a while that can be helpful for men and for women. And then the last thing for women, again, very counterintuitive. I have seen women hormonally and from a fat loss standpoint, respond to this so well over and over and over again, a well-compositioned higher fat intake diet. I'm talking about like ghee, extra virgin olive oil, avocados, olives, to a limited extent, seeds and nuts. You want to do a lot of them because they're high in inflammatory omega-6

fatty acids, but some of those I've, I've helped a lot of women out, especially through their pregnancies and afterwards while breastfeeding and the ones who have done the best, big, heavy, happy, healthy babies, growing in wonderful hair, teeth, strong bones, good muscles. They almost all follow what's called the Weston A. Price diet, the Weston A. Price diet. And that diet is like ghee and lard and bone broth and fermented foods and raw dairy and creamer and wild caught fish and grass fed beef. And, you know, it's a diet that at first glance, you think, oh, geez, I'm going to balloon up. But it's not the case. I mean, I'm not saying that you eat calories, add libidin, but the composition of that diet is very, very favorable,

especially for women and especially for women's hormones and especially for breastfeeding or pregnant women. My Ayurvedic doctor told me, she's like, go eat ghee, go eat bone broth, go eat grass-fed meat, go have every morning, she's like, start with nut butter. That's what I've been doing this whole pregnancy, a lot of fat. All those fat-soluble vitamins are amazing for your baby, amazing for you. The only one I'd be careful with, I think about nuts, seeds, and nut butter as if I actually had to break open the nuts myself. Because if you've ever gone and tried to open almonds and hazelnuts and walnuts, you don't eat them by the handful because it's a pain in the ass. So again, evolutionary mismatch for us to pick up a jar and have access to, let's say, you know, 2000 cashews in that jar. So I treat the almond butter, the nut butter, cashew

butter, walnut butter, the seeds and nuts. I treat those more like a condiment than I do as a staple. Like that's the one form of fat that you want to be kind of careful with as far as like excess. That's a really good tip. I mean, I think that you need to come back on. Is the top of my head still there or is it exploded off? Yeah, you are, you've got- Still there, it looks really good actually. Thank you, brother. If our audience was to start

with one of your 8 million podcasts in the last 12 years, where would you tell them to start? It sounds to me like you asked a lot of questions about fat loss. So I've got one that's like 20 some reasons that people don't lose weight and the mistakes that they're making about fat loss. That I've got one that's like 20 some reasons that people don't lose weight and the mistakes that they're making about fat loss. That's a good one. I think that would be relevant. And then, you know, you also ask a lot of questions or some questions about women,

about hormones, about breastfeeding or not breastfeeding, but just like babies, pregnancies, stuff like that. I've got a really good interview with Dr. Thomas Cowan, who's wonderful. He's such a great doctor. I love him. I've got like five interviews with him. All of them are really good. Everything from water to cancer, to nutrient dense diets, to pregnancy. And then also I have one with this lady called the natural mama. And we talk a lot about like diet and return to weight after pregnancy and that type of stuff. So that'd be another good one too so can you tell i'm stressed losing my pregnancy weight yeah she's a lot your body changes so much it's a lot it's a lot of weight to gain in a short amount of period of time yeah um it's it's it's normal though like your body cycles back yeah you just have to yeah

i think the women who have a hard time putting or getting the weight off after pregnancy are those who eat a lot of sugar and junk food during pregnancy because of the insulin insensitivity that sets in and you almost get like this pre-diabetic type state after pregnancy that makes weight loss really hard so i gotta put down the cookie at night if you composition it to be like more fats moderate proteins proteins, Mediterranean style, that's a little bit better. So, yeah. Well, so you got the book coming out now. Tell us about the book.

I'm thinking about this book. This is like the Bible. This is the encyclopedia. Yeah, it is. It was 1,200 pages when I turned in the publisher. Holy shit. We kept all the stuff in there that we cut out, like this special secret part of the website that you get access to when you get the book. But the book is still 650 pages long. It's everything from brain optimization to fat loss,

muscle gain for the body, a lot of stuff on spirituality, sex, relationships, gratitude, just like a lot of the stuff that I think tends to get neglected in like a health and fitness title. It's called Boundless,grade your brain, optimize your body, and defy aging. We didn't talk much about aging, but there's like two huge chapters on anti-aging in there. Chapter on beauty.

But yeah, it's all at boundlessbook.com. Well, now before you go, you got to give us one beauty anti-aging tip. Just one, a little one. You just opened Pandora's box. Let's round it out. You started with the masking juve tip. Okay, I'll give you one.

I'm going to give you one that probably doesn't get mentioned a lot. This Russian researcher named Dr. Kovindsen, and this research kind of flies under the radar, but he conducted this human trial in which he showed a reduced all-cause risk of mortality, like cancer, cardiovascular disease, all these issues, return to like a normal, like a youthful state despite aging, increase in mitochondrial density, which is something that decreases dramatically with aging. And these people twice a year, we're doing a 10-day protocol of this thing that you can inject that's not that hard to get your hands on. It's called Epitalon, E-P-I-T-H-A-L-O-N.

There is a website called the International Peptide Society, where they have a whole list of physicians who can work with peptides, who if you were to contact them, like they have a whole practitioner director on their site, they can hook you up with Epitalon. And you just do this a couple of times a year, 10 day protocol of Epitalon, one of the most powerful and not super-duper expensive anti-aging agents that you could use. And it'll have an effect on hair, skin, nails, mitochondria, everything. Is it intravenous or you take it out? Subcutaneous, just like insulin, just like insulin. There's millions of people who inject themselves with insulin who have diabetes.

There's no reason people can't get a little insulin syringe and do this for 10 days in a row. You pinch a little fat around your belly, you inject it it's pretty amazing like if you look at the research does your wife just say hey can you can you inject a little bit in this in me no she doesn't like she's she's actually she is like the polar opposite of me when it comes to my approach to this stuff so she's just like outside all day playing with the goats and the chickens playing tennis with her girlfriend sleep until eight just like and i'm very like type a like you don't say very systematic and so she's got more of like the i mean think about like the the old woman in sardinia who's like smoking a cigarette but she's 120 years old and she's had this amazing life like social relationships glass of wine or a shot of gin every night like that's more my wife she's she's she's more that type of person yeah she keeps me

sane i think i'd go crazy if i had another me that i had to get along with at home where can everyone find you and where can they find your book uh boundlessbook.com and then my website my podcast everything is bengreenfieldfitness.com instagram same thing bengreenfield next time you're in la we got to do a follow-up. Open invite. I have a hundred more questions, but I won't. Next time you're in LA, definitely. I told you, I was looking at this thing of all the topics we could talk about.

I'm like, this could just go on and on and on. We've got to save some stuff. Yeah, I'll be back in January. You guys are going to my book launch party. Please. If I'm not giving birth. You can bring a baby. Yeah.

I mean, I'll deliver there. That would make a good Instagram. Well, baby cocktails. Yeah. Breast milk cocktails. Breast milk cocktails. You know, I'll be making those. One could be bartending.

With Bailey's, Michael. That's right. Hopefully you'll unplug the bed. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, you guys. Everybody, thank you. Before you guys go, you have to enter this giveaway because Ben is giving away one of his books.

It's called Boundless. It is a serious book, you guys. It has everything you need to know. It's about upgrading your brain, optimizing your body, and defying aging. All you have to do is tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram at The Skinny Confidential, and we will send one of you Ben's new book. As always, thank you so much for listening. Make sure you rated and reviewed the podcast, and we'll see you next time.