The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Ben Greenfield Pt. 2 On Gut Health, Inflammation, Immune System Boosting, Better Sex, Chronobiology, & Psychedelics

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

#287: On this episode we are joined again by our friend 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 gut health, inflammation, how to boost our immune systems, how to have better sex, our chronobiology's and psychedelics.  To connect with Ben Greenfield 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 Parsley Health  Everywhere you like there's an offer or a trendy diet, a workout method or a life changing app. What these quick fixes miss that none help you truly understand why you feel so band and how to solve your health issues for good. Enter Parsley Health. A totally new approach to medicine.  Get $150 off an annual membership by going to www.parsleyhealth.com and using code SKINNY at checkout.  This episode is brought to you by RITUAL Forget everything you thought you knew about vitamins. Ritual is the brand that’s reinventing the experience with 9 essential nutrients women lack the most. If you’re ready to invest in your health, do what I did and go to www.ritual.com/skinny  Your future self will thank you for taking Ritual: Consider it your ‘Lifelong-Health-401k’. Why put anything but clean ingredients (backed by real science) in your body? This episode is brought to you by Daily Harvest Daily Harvest is a life saver. They help you stock your home with clean, delicious food that’s built on real fruits and vegetables. They’re farm-frozen to lock in peak nutrients and taste. With Daily Harvest there’s tons of options for anytime of day, from Smoothies, to Harvest Bowls, Flatbreads and more. And The best part? It’s ready to enjoy in minutes. Keep it simple this summer with Daily Harvest. Go to www.dailyharvest.com and enter promo code SKINNY to get twenty-five dollars off your first box!  Produced by Dear Media  

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. do not get the vitamins and minerals they need on a daily basis. So Ritual created a smarter vitamin with the nine essential ingredients women lack most. Go to ritual.com slash skinny today to choose clean ingredients backed by science. Sign up now at ritual.com slash skinny. 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. Often you may find the same type of breakthroughs you were looking for drugs to get you, you can find by actually doing the stoic hard work. And I think that if

you've done that type of hard work, if you do decide after that, that you're still called to medicine, then the character development that you'll get from the medicine is going to be far more meaningful because you actually put in the hard work first. Welcome back, everybody made it to another Tuesday. That clip was from our guest of the show, second appearance on the Skinny Confidential, him and her, Ben Greenfield. And on this episode, we are covering a lot of ground, talking all about boosting immunity, sleep, chronobiology, how to optimize your brain and your body and defy aging. There's a lot going on in this episode. Ben Greenfield is one of the smartest people I think we've had on

this show, Lauren. And it's a rare occasion where both of us literally have notepads out while he's talking to us in the studio. I had a notepad out. I was taking notes on what kind of ice bath I need. I was taking notes on hormones, thyroid, weight loss tips. He gives a weight loss tip in here that is so simple that I never have thought of that I implemented immediately. You have to listen to the end for that one. It's a real gem. There's kind of everything in this episode, but I'm telling you, you want to take out your pink trapper keeper or your composition notebook, grab your white pen and take some notes. If you want to learn how to feel better, stay healthy and sleep better, this is definitely

a great episode to listen to. It's rare. You meet all sorts of different experts, especially doing what Lauren and I do on this show. You're meeting all different walks of life, people that are authorities, people, experts, authors, all different walks of life. But it's rare you meet someone that is such an expert. And listen, Ben is not a doctor, and he'll be the first one to say that. But you could literally throw out any subject about the body, the brain, the mind when it comes to health and wellness, and he will start rattling off sentences and

sentences and paragraphs and paragraphs of information that's all fact-based. And he'll cite the research studies and the authors and how he found it. It's just really incredible to be able to pick his brain and get some of this knowledge. Lauren and I, we just talked about it recently, like it's really important for us that we provide this audience information on how to live a better life, how to boost their immunity, how to stay safe during these trying times. And Ben Greenfield in this episode is one of the best resources that we found on this show. I also think too, sometimes people get overwhelmed when people give all these tips and tricks, but here's the thing. He's so about human optimization. That's how he lived his life.

So it's almost like he just extracts all the goodness from everything for you and tells you, like I said, how to keep things optimized. Michael read his book and just all I could see was him dog-earing it, highlighting it, underlining it. And I have to say, you have applied a lot of his tips into your daily life, which I'm shocked. I feel better. You have a vitamin fridge in your fucking bathroom. I mean, I'm not kidding. I'm always skeptical about this kind of stuff when it comes with health and wellness. And I'm always trying to figure out who has the right knowledge. And when you first meet Ben, he's so intense and he's got so much information. You're like, okay,

where do I start here? But honestly, a great place to start is his book, Boundless. It's called Boundless, Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body, and Defy Aging. And I look at it as kind of like a textbook slash resource slash manuscript. You can kind of come in and out of it, go back. Say you're struggling sleeping, you can go into the sleep chapter. If you want to know how to digest food better, you go to the digest chapter. If you want to have better sex, there's a sex chapter. So it looks overwhelming when you first see it, but when you actually start diving in, it's a very valuable resource. In this episode, he may tell men how to last longer with a simple tip during sex.

So listen to that one. For my eight male listeners, I got a picture on the last episode. Play it in front of your boyfriend and husband. It's a real good tip. With that, let's welcome Ben Greenfield to the show. If you guys haven't listened to his first episode, I highly recommend you go back after this episode and listen. Do you know what episode number it was, Michael? Yep. That episode's a recent one. Episode number 248. With that, Ben, welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show.

This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. Ben Greenfield back on the show, brother. Whoa. I know. Came in hot there. Here with my giant suitcase once again. I'm excited, man, because I've been a fan of your content a long time, but I've been devouring it lately, ever since you came on the show. With everything going on in the world, I'm like, who can I trust here during all this chaos?

And I've been reading a lot. I've been reading your book. I think it's like a fucking Bible, by the way. It's not a light read. No, it's kind of heavy. I'm just hoping my readers get more fit picking it up. My biceps are stronger from just picking up that thing. Was there a schedule that you wrote at the same time every day? No, no. I'll write in the back of an Uber and underneath the table and just wherever I can

here and there. And some days it's 200 words and some days it's 2000 words. And that's just how I write because writing isn't my full-time job. I wish it was, but I don't know if I'd write that much. You know, you hear about authors who get up in the morning and have some emails and then maybe go walk the dog and I got work out. I got this phone call and you get to 3 PM and it's finally time to write. And then you open your computer and you write for a little while and then you decide to go make a coffee. And so, yeah, I, I, I'm not a full-time author, so I just write here and there, but three years ago, I wanted to write a book on anti-aging and longevity and all the things that the blue zones are doing, you know, the, the teas and the

flavanols and the polyphenols and how much alcohol are they consuming and time in the sunshine and all the natural stuff. But then I was also really interested in NAD and peptides and a lot of the more advanced anti-aging protocols that we might see in a more Western type of approach. And the fact is that as I delved into it, began writing the book, fighting aging, you have to take care of the immune system and the gut and the brain barrier and neurotransmitters and hormones and just on and on and on. So it wound up taking on a life of its own and being more of just like a manual for the human body and brain. And of course, we see in a lot of these blue zones that spirituality is heavily tied into

anti-aging and longevity, connection with purpose, relationship, union with God, prayer, meditation, journaling, silence, solitude, all these spiritual disciplines. So then I wove those into the book and yeah, it took a while. When I write, I have a Google Drive and I just have a separate folder for each chapter of the book. And then I've got a team of scientific editors and research assistants. And so some days I'm so, you know, some days I'm writing on one chapter, some days I'm writing on another chapter as new research articles come out or there's things that I want to put in. And then finally, after three years, the manuscript

was 1300 pages long. And then that went on to the publisher. And that was where, you know, we had to cut and cut and cut. And it was kind of like kissing babies goodbye as we'd get rid of little sections. But what I did was I saved everything. So it's all, when you get the book, there's a secret section of the website where you can go in and just see all the cut material, all the extra hidden resources. Because obviously you can't publish a 1,200 page book. Wait, I'm writing a book too right now. And the publisher and I are having a call today because they want to cut a bunch of stuff too.

I wrote like way too much. So you just did like a secret situation online so people can go consume more if they want. Right. So if everything's in the cloud, right, and you're writing your book and someone's editing a chapter in, let's say, a Google Doc, an online Google doc, then the first version of that Google doc is something you can save. And then you send them a backup version of that. They edit that. And so I have like V1, V2, V3, V4, V5 of each chapter. And so at the very end of the book, I just put V1 of each chapter online. So anybody who gets the book can go in and type in a little password and if they want to have 650 pages, whether enough for them, then you'll knock themselves out with more.

One, I love your book because the way that it's written, like you said, it is like a manual, like a manual. Like you can go in and reference somebody that's a novice like me in a lot of these subjects. You read a book front to back and it's like, that was so overwhelming. How do I remember? But what I like is you can tap into each chapter and be like, okay, what did he say about this specific thing? Whether it's sleep or my gut or whatever. And so you can go back and use it as a reference, which is amazing because if you're just getting started on this stuff and trying to figure things out, having to go and pick up some long textbook with all these different highlight pages, it's hard to figure out contextually where you are,

but with this, you can actually go into like, okay, right now I'm having trouble with sleep. Let me go into the sleep chapter. It's sex. Let me go to the sex chapter, et cetera. I did want it to be kind of a cookbook where if you're having a difficult with this, you can actually go into like, okay, right now I'm having trouble with sleep. Let me go into the sleep chapter on sex. Let me go to the sex chapter, et cetera. I did want it to be kind of a cookbook where if you're having difficulty with sleep, say you go and just go through the sleep chapter. Or if you're super interested in, let's say all the anti-aging and longevity secrets, that chapter is like 120 pages long. But then B, I feel really self-conscious right now that this is me pimping and it being a giant commercial for my book. No, no, no. Don't feel self-conscious. I'll tell you why. It brought Michael so much value. I always feel self-conscious when I'm talking about it.

No. My next question was actually going to be about the book. I wouldn't have let in so hard about the book if I wasn't such a fan. It's so good. No, I watched him study it and bookmark it and dog-ear it. And I would pick it up and just open a page and just start reading about it. Michael's learned so much. He has like a whole vitamin thing now with his like little fridge, a mini fridge in his bathroom. He's having those minerals every single morning. I needed to get my shit together because I was falling apart. The Quintan minerals. Those are amazing. Those are amazing.

I mean, you can get, we may have even talked about this last time, like good salt and what the good salts are. And I was talking to one researcher who did a mass spectrometry analysis of all the different salts that you could buy at the grocery store. He looked at the minerals, the microplastics, the metals. Himalayan salt, like Himalayan pink salt actually turned out to be kind of high in iron, which could be problematic, especially for males. Cause, cause guys who have iron buildup in their bodies, it can be like internal rust for your body, which is why I think it's important for anybody to test their iron a couple of times a year, just to make sure it's not. My dad does that. He actually has to get blood removed every couple. Yeah. Well, that's, that's the best way to do it. You just, you just give blood, you do society a service and you get rid of some of your extra iron. But the, um,

the Himalayan salt actually wasn't that great. And there were other salts that were pretty good, but at the top of the list, you know what the best salt was as far as mineral content and purity? Was it the Kintan? No, it was a, well, Kintan isn't a salt. It's more like a mineral solution that you're not going to dump that on your food as a spice though. It was the Celtic salt that you, you know, the blue bag that you can get at any grocery store,

which is fantastic for me to know. Cause if I'm traveling and I throw a bag of salt in my bag, TSA always wants to check out the white powders. So I put baking soda when I'm at home and a glass of water in the morning to kind of alkalize my body a little bit. And it helps with your morning bowel movement. And I put a little vitamin C in there, but a lot of these powders I don't travel with just because it's difficult. But if I go into a city, I can just go to the grocery store and get Celtic salt. How do you use it? I sprinkle it on food. I put it in a morning glass of water.

It's just salt. Yeah. I probably eat like six to eight grams of salt per day. And the problematic issue with salt is, of course, isolated sodium chloride, which you'd find in table salt. You need to be careful using high amounts of that because it's not accompanied by minerals

to help to balance out the sodium. It doesn't have the potassium, for example, or 72 other minerals that you're going to find in a lot of better salts. In terms of your salt intake, you wouldn't want to eat six to eight grams of salt and have it be from sodium chloride. The only good thing, the saving grace of table salt, and this is why as people are getting super picky about salt and getting their floor to sell and Kona black salt and all these fancy salts is the nice thing about table salt is it is pretty high in iodine, right? So if you don't want to get an iodine deficiency and you're switching out from table salt, you may have to include some sea vegetables in your diet, like dolce or kelp or,

you know, or, uh, or Nori or just supplement with iodine. Is there iodine in calptic salt? Not that much. Not that much. Not compared to iodized table salt. Okay. And not everybody needs to consume six to eight grams per day. I used to race Ironman Triathlon. I did that for like 10 years. And we had a team exercise physiologist who would come in and do what's called a sweat sodium analysis on all the athletes. And I was losing like two and a half times the amount of minerals in my sweat than the average person. And so I started salting heavily, you know, food, putting it in water.

First thing I noticed was I used to lay awake in bed at night and I could hear my blood pounding in my ears just because my blood pressure was offset by mineral depletion. First thing I noticed, first day I started heavily salting was that went away. And I just thought it was normal. I thought athletes who train hard can hear their blood pounding in their ears as they fall asleep. And it's just something that's part of training hard. And I realized, oh my gosh, I'm just deficient in minerals, which is also important if you're stressed out, your adrenal glands are a storehouse of vitamin C and of minerals. So one of the important things you can do if you're going through a stressful period of time is you wake up in the morning

and you take your nice big glass of water and you put a few pinches of a good salt in there, like the Celtic salt or some of those Quintan minerals that you're using, Michael, and then you add some good vitamin C, some ascorbic acid. That's a great little morning cocktail for your adrenal. I read about that Kington stuff, that the family that developed it, they've had the proprietary blend or formula or however they made it for years. Nobody knows how to make it but them. Yeah, they harvest it from algal blooms. If you're in LA, you can get it at Moon Juice. It's like a little vial. Yeah, it comes in a sachet and then like a little glass vial.

Yes. No surprise here, but I am going to tell you about Ritual Vitamins. It's something that I cannot shut up about. Ritual has a vitamin for women, the essentials. They have a vitamin for when you're pregnant, the prenatals, which I've tried in their major. And now they also have a vitamin for men,'re pregnant the prenatals which I've tried in their major and now they also have a vitamin for men which Michael is using and loving so let me give you a little background on ritual they're very very committed to showing you their nutrients where it came from and why they chose it they call it traceability I could not believe when I went on

their website and saw everything how it was so well researched and laid out and just streamlined and clean. And I could just, it wasn't like overwhelming. You know how sometimes when you look at the back of a vitamin box and it's just like speaking gibberish, ritual is not like that. So how I like to take ritual is I'm doing the essentials for women right now. I like to take it in the morning. I wake up. I definitely drink a lot of water. I like to water my body like a flower. And then I take my Ritual. It's pepperminty fresh. It doesn't give you those nasty ratfish burps.

It's going to give you that minty taste that you want. And I should also say that I scrape my tongue before I do it just because I have to give a hot tip. If you're an obsessive label reader like me, Ritual uses vegan-certified, non-GMO, gluten-free, allergen ingredients. They tell you where your sources are, like I said. Vitamin D is obviously extremely important, and of course, it's included in Ritual. Daily changes can lead to big results, so start small today. Ritual is offering all Skinny Confidential, him and her listeners,

10% off your first three months. Try it out. Satisfaction guaranteed. Go to ritual.com slash skinny to start your ritual today. That's 10% off during your first three months at ritual.com slash skinny. And definitely manipulate your man into trying the men's ones because they are good. Do you like those little packets of vitamin C? What's the brand that we have? I kind of- They're little tiny packets of vitamin C, or do you like Quicksilver better?

The one that I use right now I think is Jigsaw Health. It's actually called, I think, Adrenal Cocktail, and it's a powder. It's a little sachet of powder, and I like that because I can travel with it. I've got a tub of it at home. So I just put a couple of scoops from the tub, but then when I travel, I use their little sachets. You just want to look for good, you know, non-GMO ascorbic acid. When it comes to you and your content, the reason I think I identify, we, you know, we talk to people all the time on this show, all walks of life and, and people that do similar things or try to do similar things that you do, like let's talk about like a broad range of health and wellness and biohacking,

all these things. But like, you know, you talked to a lot of these experts and either they, you know, don't walk the walk and are out of shape themselves. And I'm not singling anybody out or, you know, maybe they haven't researched. And what I like about your content is it's super heavily, I mean, it's extremely heavily researched. You always have all these different references and resources and articles and people. And then you yourself, obviously, are a practitioner of a lot of these things. It sounds like you try most of the things you talk about first before you start talking about them, at least what I've seen. And so what I like to do is say, okay, there's somebody that's heavily researched and they've also tried it

and they've also had success with it. And to me, those are the three things you need in order to be a credible source for a lot of this stuff, because there's so much information out there. And when you're talking over here, you're like, you know, what we try to do is on this show is, is zone it in to say like, okay, these are the people you should listen to. And these are the ones like maybe be cautious of, but presenting everybody, but also, you know, putting that disclaimer out there and saying like, be careful who you're listening to and how. Yeah. And that's not to say that short little white haired, five foot five basketball coach is a great basketball coach. He's bringing a dunk of basketball. And I know some wonderful functional medicine practitioners who are technically on paper, they're probably overweight

or mildly obese yet. They've kind of sacrificed themselves to a certain extent to help others. And so I think in some cases, someone cannot be walking the walk, so to speak, and still be a good source of information. But this is advice for anybody writing a book. People relate to stories. People relate to someone coming out from the trenches or the field and say, okay, here's what I've experienced and here are the things I learned. And I tried to do that in the book was start with a personal anecdote or a story. My children, they do a book report every week. I think that there's kind of like five key things that I focus on in my kids' education that I think would serve anyone well in life, whether you're going into engineering or law or medicine or anything like that.

And it is reading, writing, arithmetic, logic, and or computer programming, and then rhetoric and or persuasion, right? Like those, those kind of five key things, reading, writing, arithmetic, logic, and rhetoric, I think are really good things for a kid to learn early on in life. I think that it prepares them well for just about any career. And as part of the reading and the writing component, we go down to the big bookshelf in the basement and books are highly prized in our house. If there's downtime in our house, usually the TV's not on, there's not a lot of

screen time. Some, we typically all have our noses in a book or we're playing music on a musical instrument, like a guitar or a uke or the piano or whatever. But I take my kids down to the basement and I let them select a book, like any book from all of dad's books that they get to read anything that kind of piques their interest, because I really try to let them pursue their passions and interests and what it is that they're actually curious about. That's kind of the way that we, that we school them. And then they take that book and their job is to spend a week reading that book. And then at the end of the week, write a quick little one to two page book report. So I think reading is kind of like a muscle. And as they're going through life, I mean, if they can read 50 plus books a year, that's great. Especially when they're

reading the books that I've already read with the pages folded over and the stuff that I think is really important highlighted. So they're kind of like seeing it filtered through dad's eyes and kind of seeing the stuff that I thought was really important in the book. And then their job is to write that book report. And I always tell them, write that book report from your perspective, tell your stories, talk about how you learn. You know, if you're reading this book on breathing, you know, how did you use that breath work? Did you, did you try it at night and see if it helped you to fall asleep faster or before workout to see if it amped you up, you know, tell stories. And I think if you're going to write a book, you want to be able to give your own personal experiences, your own personal stories. And so there's that. And then

I also do agree that, that to a certain extent, like I'm not going to tell people to go put eight grams of baking soda in their morning glass of water without realizing myself that if you use too much, you're going to like paint the back of the toilet seat, liquid poo coming out your backside, you know, if you, if you overdo it. So I tell people, you know, start with, you know, three or four grams and up at the bowel tolerance. And here's what happened to me when I took too much. So yeah, I think, I think personal experience is important. I want to know with everything that's going on in the world, COVID everything, if you were to tell our audience to do three things differently in their daily routine, little habits that they could add, what would those three things be?

Oh, geez. You got to give me a number three. You can do five. Yeah. Well, I can tell you what I started doing when this whole pandemic began, and I'm not a doctor. I don't misconstrue this as medical advice. I'm not saying any of this stuff is a COVID cure or preventive or anything like that. However, I was already taking care of my immune system and I actually had already written the immune system chapter of the book and kind of wished after this whole pandemic struck. It's the first thing I want to talk about is the never get sick chapter. Right. Right. Because I started learning about all these other new things from

functional medicine docs in my network who I bounced things off of, you know, about peptides like thymus and alpha one that they're using for acute COVID. And, you know, some of the ozone and the nebulized glutathione, all this crazy stuff that even goes beyond what I went into in the immune system chapter of the book. But I was already taking care of my immune system, right? I was using vitamin C and a little bit of zinc and selenium and, you know, having a decent amount of flavanols and polyphenols and antioxidant rich herbs and spices in my diet. I was paying attention to my bacterial status, eating a wide variety of fermented foods, just because so much of your immune system resides in your gut and doing a lot of things to care for my body. But when the pandemic struck, I did add in a few things. I got an ozone generator

because it turns out that that ozone can be extremely efficacious. So what is an ozone generator? Ben, do you have to do this to my husband? He's bought every fucking contraption. He has the chili pad. He has his new fridge. He has all these new machines. And now he's going to go andption he has the chili pad he has his new fridge he has all these new machines and now he's gonna go and order this ozone how big is this now you guys got build a new shed no it's it's small it's it's like the size of a little uh you know like like a laptop you know like around that size and so um i i started drinking ozonated water in the mornings just just to help to to kill off anything that could be

in the digestive tract. And it turns out that ozone is actually really, really good for immunity. The other thing that I started doing, especially when I travel, was they sell these things called nebulizers on Amazon. And you breathe nebulized, whatever it is you're nebulizing in that little portal that you put into the nebulizer into your respiratory tract, into your nasal passages. So I started nebulizing glutathione and silver as just like something I would breathe in during the day while I'd be working on emails or working on my laptop. And when I travel, I have a little portable nebulizer that I use. So the only things I changed, I started using ozone. I started nebulizing. And then with my kids, we did this for six weeks in a row, just because we were stuck

at home during this pandemic, was we did a bunch of sauna and breath work. So we were in the sauna, sweating out toxins, making the cells more resilient to the production of these heat shock proteins that a sauna does for you. And then we did a lot of breath work, like breath holds, holding on carbon dioxide, breathing in nitric oxide or activating nitric oxide production by breathing through our nose. And so we did sauna and breath work, and then we'd always finish with a quick cold, like a cold tub soak, which is also really good for the immune system. And so I started doing those things on a really regular basis, ozone, nebulizing,

and then sauna and breath work. So I want to unpack this a little bit, and I want to kind of go back to basic because if we're getting to the advanced levels- Right. I did kind of just jump straight into that. No, but that's okay because I think for people that are already taking care of the immune system in advance, these are great things and I'm actually going to look into it myself now. Oh, and now we're going to have a sauna show. Let's say you're a young person, you're in a metropolitan city and you're just like, I want to start getting my immunity under control. We don't have to go back and hash about COVID now. We've had plenty of doctors on the show saying like, hey, maybe this thing's not going away.

And even if there is a vaccine, maybe you don't get it, maybe it's not effective. So I think the bigger thing that we're trying to champion here with people like yourself is to say, okay, the biggest thing you got to focus on right now is boosting your immunity. That should be a good in any time of life, pandemic, no pandemic. And what are the basic things here? The basics, we know that air pollution or just not breathing clean air can predispose you or put you at higher likelihood of contracting COVID. So make sure that you're breathing good, clean, pure air. If you have the ability to have like a HEPA air filter or something like that in your bedroom or your office, that's important. We also know that inflammation and overweight or obesity are both associated with increased susceptibility. So make sure you're not eating a lot of foods that would inflame the body, particularly vegetable oils and processed sugars

or processed carbohydrates. Try to cut those out of the diet as much as possible. And of course, when it comes to the obesity or overweight, exercise and preferably exercise outdoors, because we know that there's some protective effects of UVA and UVB from sunlight. A lot of times there are fewer aerosolized particles outdoors. We see a lot fewer instances, aside from some of the protests that have happened recently,

where a whole bunch of people are in one place of people getting sick by being outdoors. So tackle inflammation with a dietary approach, and then also make sure that you're exercising, preferably outdoors in the sunshine. And then as far as nutrients go that we know can help to protect you or upregulate your immune system, it would be vitamin C, zinc, selenium. Quercetin is really good. The EGCG and that matcha green tea that you're drinking, Lauren, that would be really good. Wait, can we go over each of these which brands? So say that again because I'm even writing this down. So say it again. I am so excited about this. Daily Harvest. You've seen it on my Instagram stories. It is

such a hack, okay? Basically, you get these little cups delivered to your door with portion controlled fruit and veggies. And then all you have to do is pour it in a blender and then you pour the cup that they give you with almond milk or water into the blender, add some ice, blend. And here's the hack. You're running out the door. Just pour that blended situation back into the cup, add a silicone straw, and you are good to go. It is my favorite hack by far when I'm running late. Also, Daily Harvest,

you need to know this, just launched their refreshing, delicious scoops. It's a plant-based ice cream. So while you're ordering the smoothies in your cart and you're just like so happy because you have your hack for when you're running late and you're just like so happy because you have your hack for when you're running late and you're hungry definitely check out scoops their new plant-based ice cream it is good guys even michael was eating it i was shocked the dogs were trying to lick it zaza was trying to lick it it was a whole thing eating clean food with daily harvest is easy it's effortless if you're having a night home or you just want a quick bite or you have a hypoglycemic significant other, everything stays fresh in your freezer until you're ready to enjoy it.

And if you're wondering my personal favorite one of the moment, it is definitely the acai cherry. I'm a real big fan of acai right now. It's just filled with so many antioxidants, you kind of can't go wrong. And while we're on the subject, my favorite scoops, their ice cream is definitely, I mean, everyone could have guessed this because I while we're on the subject, my favorite scoops, their ice cream is definitely, I mean, everyone could have guessed this because I talk about this all the time, the mint and dark melty cacao chip ice cream. Plant-based, like I said. Add it to your cart and enjoy. Keep it simple this summer with Daily Harvest. Go to dailyharvest.com and enter promo code SKINNY to get $25 off your first box. That's promo code skinny for $25 off your first box at dailyharvest.com. Dailyharvest.com, promo code skinny. Enjoy.

So vitamin C, we already talked about that. And there's a lot of different brands. Of course, you know, there are foods like, you know, kiwi fruit and tart cherries that are also very rich in vitamin C. So eating a diet that's widely varied in dark, colorful plant matter is going to get you a lot of vitamin C. Liposomal vitamin C, if you're going to take it orally, appears to be one of the better ways to go as far as bioavailability. You like Quicksilver? And Quicksilver does one. Jigsaw Health also does one. And you can dose it multiple times per day.

That appears to be the best way to kind of keep your vitamin C levels topped off. We know that. What's the next one? Zinc and selenium. And Life Extension makes these zinc acetate lozenges that you can dissolve in your mouth. So the zinc is kind of getting into your respiratory tract a little bit. That's a good one. I have a different hack for zinc. And I use this pre-workout, this stuff called black ant powder. And this is kind of fringe, but it's amazing for like libido, stamina, endurance. Cause it's from ants, right?

I heard about this. It's just blended ants. Yeah. The whole doctrine of signatures thing, right? Like things that are innate, like, you know, walnuts look like a brain and they're good for cognitive function. And, you know, pomegranates, can we cut them open? They look like a, the atrium and ventricles or the atrium ventricles of the heart. So those are kind of

good for cardiovascular function, but it turns out that the, um, the black ant, you know, gives you, gives you a lot of stamina, but it's also like 10 times higher in zinc than shellfish. So that's a really good source of zinc. And of course, shellfish are also a really good source of zinc. And then selenium, there's a lot of manufacturers. Thorne does a really good job with a lot of their supplements. So selenium would be one. What do you think about raw Brazilian nuts, three of them for selenium a day? That's a pretty good source of selenium, but be careful because Brazil nuts tend to get moldy really easily. So keep them in the freezer oh guaranteed so i've been eating mold okay yeah because she never puts anything yeah and you

can do the sniff test it's like the sniff test on fish oil if it smells all fishy it's probably rancid and oxidized and you should keep your fish oil in the refrigerator or the freezer with brazil nuts same thing if you smell them and they smell kind of off they probably already have mold they just tend to get moldy really easily. So, um, so the other one, in addition to vitamin C, zinc and selenium is a quercetin, Q U E R C E T I N. Uh, I know some really good docs who are just, you know, sending out like subcutaneous injections of quercetin to get a whole bunch of it all at once. You'll find kerosene in things like red apples or red onions, but you can also purchase it as a supplement.

There's a lot of good supplement manufacturers out there. I'm not beholden to anyone, but Thorne does a good job. Life Extension does a good job. Standard Process is pretty good. Now Foods does good stuff. From what I've heard, it's hard to go wrong with Thorne. Yeah, yeah. I like Thorne.

And they originally kind of had a lot of brands or products that were marketed heavily to athletes because they are what's called NSF certified for sport, meaning it's less likely to have contaminants in it. But they do a really good job. They've got great manufacturing facilities and they trace every single bottle back to the original source so you know what's in it is actually what's in it. And you're big on colostrum too. Why so big on colostrum now?

Oh, I love colostrum. Colostrum is, is, you know, something that is part of breast milk. You know, it's kind of the first, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's like nature's first food. It helps a baby mammal when they're born to get a lot of growth hormone and growth factors to grow up big and strong. But it also has this interesting effect because a lot of young mammals are born with a slightly leaky gut, like these slightly open permeable proteins in the gut and colostrum helps to seal up those linings. And that's also very supportive for the immune

system again, because gut health is so heavily tied into proper immune system function and you can get colostrum capsules, but the better way to go is colostrum powder because it turns out if you're using colostrum and you put it into a smoothie and you're kind of like swishing the smoothie around in your mouth, or even if you just like eat it straight out of the jar, I think it tastes really good. Actually it has this nice umami kind of salty flavor. It, uh, the saliva, the salivary enzymes in your mouth help to activate a lot of the growth factors in the colostrum. So if you get colostrum powder and you kind of let it sit in your mouth a little bit, that's really good for the immune system. Although I have to admit that if you

look at, say, the Institute for Functional Medicine's website, where they have a lot of really good peer-reviewed research on the type of things that seem to be effective for COVID that would fall more into these natural categories that we're talking about. Colostrum hasn't been studied for that, but it is good for the immune system. And then EGCG, the epigallocatechins, I believe is how it's pronounced, that you'd find in matcha, like Lauren's drinking over here, or like a really good green tea, that's also very, very good for the immune system, particularly for COVID. So that would be another one that I would consider including. So we've got our vitamin C, zinc, selenium, quercetin, EGCG, colostrum,

staying away from inflammatory foods like vegetable oils and processed sugars, and then exercising outdoors in the sunshine. I think those would be some pretty good places to start. Do you want to know what's changed my life that you recommended that we do? If I could give a tip of something. I would say the tantric sex multi-orgasmic breath work, but we were just talking about that. We haven't tried it yet. We're going to do that after this episode. Right before you're about to come, I need you to do tantric breath. I'm here breathing heavily. No, I want to talk about that. You might want him to practice before sex just to make sure he's kind of – Great, you and Taylor can go practice.

If you hear loud breaths coming out of my man cave, just stay away for a little bit. The audience is like, what are you guys talking about? Is that what it sounds like? No. I don't know if I can handle Michael really deep breathing when we're having sex. How deep are we talking? Quick rabbit hole. All tantric breath work is,

and this would be very similar to what you'd find in like pranayama breath work or tumi breath work, or even like Wim Hof has some components of this, is you're moving energy from your root chakra where your genitalia and down by your crotch, and you're breathing that up to your head, trapping it up in the crown chakra, all that energy. And then you can move it via the exhale back down to the root chakra. And as you practice doing this, like a deep breath in and you kind of squeeze your perineum

and all of your kind of like your, your, uh, your muscles all around your genitals. And then you, you trap it up in the top of your head and then you relax everything in the pelvic floor musculature and you let that energy go back down to the pelvic floor musculature and what you do is tutorial yeah there probably are on youtube if you do patantric breath work but what you do is right when you're about to come you breathe you just take one breath in and you breathe all the energy up to your crown chakra and you hold it there, right? And you can stop thrusting and kind of slow down a little bit, just to make sure that you're not distracted as you're doing this. And then once that sensation,

and you'll have like a mini orgasm without an ejaculate when you do that. And then when, when that kind of washes over you, then you relax the pelvic floor musculature and breathe back down to the root chakra. And you can do that floor musculature and breathe back down to the root chakra. And you can do that multiple times. There's a book called The Multi-Orgasmic Male. And in that book, he calls it the power draw, I think. Same type of technique. You can practice this, whatever. For example, I like to kill two birds with one stone. I'm a total multitasker. And there's this exercise I do in the gym called the hip bridge, right? Where you have your heels up and you're kind of thrusting with your heels up. It's a great butt exercise. And what I do is when I, when I thrust with my hips up, what I

would do is breathe in, like trap all the energy up in my crown chakra. Well, at the same time, all my pelvic floor musculature is contracted anyways, cause I'm up in that hip bridging position. And then when you come back down out of the hip bridging position, you exhale, you relax everything. And so you can literally just like do a gym exercise and- I need to do that exercise more. Hold on. So Taylor's come on the podcast and talked about how he comes in one minute and he's had this big problem with coming. And we mentioned that he does edging, which is masturbating until you're about to come

and then stopping and you think that this is going to be more effective for taylor to apply is to breathe into his crown chakra hold it contract all his muscles and then breathe out i'm not saying he shouldn't edge because you know that that doing both might actually give him even more time. But I think the tantric breathwork is super effective. And I don't masturbate a lot anyways. And so I don't do a lot of edging. Do you not masturbate because you want to have sex more pleasurable? What's the reason that you don't? Yeah, I find that my orgasms with my wife are more pleasurable when I don't masturbate.

You know, you kind of, you know, when you're, when you're like most guys know, you know, like the best sex is when you're kind of blue balled and like, you're really, really ready for it. And so, you know, I'd rather go that way.

Oh, so I want to speak to the bedroom. I mean, this is obviously, I have to tell him what the main thing is about the bedroom. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We got on a tent.

We went down to such a rabbit hole here. The, um, by the way, all guys start breathing into your chakra before you're about to come. It'll do all the girls that are listening a favor. Crown chakra. If you're in the bathroom and your husband or significant others in the background, turn that part up and just walk away and manipulate him without manipulating him.

There you go. Okay. So one thing that you told me that has absolutely changed my life is putting red light bulbs in the bedroom. Oh yeah. It is. I have this whole wind down period now that I never had. I would just get in bed and think like, okay, it's time to go to sleep.

Old school red and condescent light bulbs. Yeah. Honestly, they're hard to get now in California. They are so amazing. It's probably because of our podcast. Yeah. Honestly. Well, didn't they change some laws too?

They did shortly. And then, so there was a while up until 2000, I think it was 2016, that incandescent light bulbs, because they're a little bit of an energy hog, were kind of hard to get. And then I think Trump reversed that at some point, because we know how much he loves the environment. Now you can get incandescent bulbs again. Wait, we need to talk about parsley health. This is so fitting for this episode. I couldn't pair a more fitting combination. Basically everywhere you look is like a quick fix, but what these quick fixes miss is that none of it help you truly understand to why you're feeling so bad and how to actually solve your health issues for good. So let me introduce you to Parsley Health. It's a totally new way to

approach medicine. Parsley is designed to solve your most persistent health problems and heal your body, ready for it, my fave, from the inside out. So it combines modern science-based primary care with a personalized holistic approach. And if you haven't noticed this year, a lot of the topics that Lauren and I have been covering on the podcast, which is important, is about how to boost your health, how to take care of your health, how to boost immunity. We're going through very trying times here, a lot going on in the world as everybody is well aware. And it's been important for us to really champion some conversations about how to take care of yourself. And Parsley Health is a perfect partner for this show because they do the same and they help you learn all about yourself and

what information you're going to need to make sure that you're taking care of yourself. And there's this crazy statistic that they told me that I can't shut up about. It's basically that people get 15 minutes a year with their doctor, but Parsley members get 200 minutes a year. If it's a time to focus on your health in the world, it's right now, like Michael said. Their secret is the whole body approach. They use the best of conventional medicine with the best of holistic medicine to create a personalized health plan that focuses on ready nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, and more. You're really, like I said, healing yourself from the inside out. I love how it's an Eastern meets Western medicine approach.

Sound like a game changer for you? Parsley Health is offering our listeners an exclusive offer for $150 off an annual membership by going to parsleyhealth.com and entering our code SKINNY. That's P-A-R-S-L-E-Y health.com with code SKINNY to get $150 off a year-long membership. I am really into this, especially for Michael, because I feel like he needs all the help he can get. And I think this is just a great way to stay healthy. So what we did is we replaced all the lights in our room with these red light bulbs. And every single night we turn on

those lights and our room is like a sex slave dungeon. Yeah. It's like an Amsterdam nightclub. It's like an Amsterdam nightclub. And Taylor's familiar with that. And so we go in and we turn all the lights on with this red light and it cascades this light glow. But what the best part of it is, is I think it's helped my cortisol. Is that a benefit? Oh, absolutely. So when you wake up and sunlight hits your eyes in the morning, which it should, it's a really good idea to try and get a lot of sunlight exposure in the morning. And actually, if you can't, like the blue light blocking glasses and the screen protecting software and all that, rip all that. Like you want to be staring at bright screens and blue light, break all the rules that you normally do at night.

Like you break all those rules in the morning because all that light, especially that blue light and that greenish light, those are a couple of the spectrums that you get from full on sunlight or a screen in the morning, preferably sunlight again, because you get a lot of other stuff like infrared and near infrared, but you, you get a release of cortisol when that happens. near infrared, but you, um, you get a release

of cortisol when that happens. And that's your wakey wakey hormone. It makes you feel good and gives you energy in the morning. And this is also why if you have that cortisol surge in the morning and you also do a cup of coffee and you also do a CrossFit workout and you're just like stimulating, stimulating, stimulating in the morning, some people can get a little bit of an afternoon slump just because they get such a big cortisol surge in the morning. Your body has to use a lot of precursors for other hormones to make cortisol, you know, like a pregnant alone and, um, you know, some of your cholesterol, some of your vitamin D or DHEA, et cetera. And so in the morning you get this cortisol surge, but of course, if you stare at a bunch of bright lights at night, obviously, you're also getting a cortisol surge at night.

So you also get the melatonin suppressing effect of those bright lights. You'd want to avoid a lot of the brightness at night. So it is likely that you see a little bit of a suppression of cortisol when you're not blasting yourself with light in your bedroom at night. It's unbelievable. I want to talk to you about hormones. I told you earlier that I went to get my hormones tested and they were all out of whack and my thyroid was low. Do you recommend balancing your hormones naturally or would you recommend someone go the medical route?

There's an argument that could be made for both. There is something to be said for better living through science. For example, a ton of women and surprisingly men who are kind of like ADD, ADHD-ish, there's even one doc, Michael Platt, who will prescribe it for kids who have ADD progesterone, like a 5% progesterone cream that you apply, for example, on the inner part of the arm where you don't have a lot of hair follicles which can inhibit some of the absorption of the progesterone that can be a wonderful way to get a pick-me-up in energy and libido especially for a woman who has progesterone deficiency or who has what's called estrogen dominance right and and that would be a surplus of estrogen that's a lot of times brought on by both uh um perimenopause or menopause, but then also can be related to drinking lots of water from plastic bottles, getting exposed to a lot of xenoestrogens and personal care products and shampoos and household cleaning chemicals. And then you throw things like flax and edamame and some of these estrogen-rich plant sources typically aren't problematic for most people. But if you're already estrogen dominant, those can just dump more fuel on the fire.

But progesterone can be really, really nice. And that would be something that might not be considered a natural route for hormone management, but that can be very effective. A lot of women will respond really well to like a microdose of testosterone as well uh as a matter of fact if you apply just like a small small dose of testosterone cream back to sex prior to sex on the clitoris for women like you you can have amazing orgasms that or uh nitroglycerin cream is another one that works oh yeah we talked about that last time do we yeah yeah the the nos cream taylor's Googling both. Yeah, but for the hormones, A,

you need to test, and you need to test frequently if you are using any type of replacement therapy, like, say, progesterone. Meaning, like, you don't just get one test, do it, and then stay with that. You gotta go back after and see what the- Right, you wanna monitor your levels so the hormones that you're taking aren't, say, being over-aromatized to produce

excess amounts of estrogen. In males, sometimes who are taking testosterone, you see an impact on things like hematocrit and red blood cells that could cause those to become too high. Occasionally, you'll see an increase in prostate-specific antigen. Sometimes you'll see an increase in estrogen, again, in men, or an over an over conversion of the testosterone to something called DHT, which can cause things like hair loss or acne. So you do want to test frequently. How frequently is frequently? If you are on hormones, I would say a quarterly basis is pretty good. And there are different ways to test hormones, but I think the best way is urine because of urine measurement. There's a great test called a Dutch test, a dried urine test for hormones. And that one does a really good job at identifying not just your hormone levels as they fluctuate throughout the day, because you got to pee on a little stick like five times during the day to do the test. So you're not just, you know, some people get a blood test for say cortisol

and it'll be, let's say kind of low. But then if you look at it throughout the rest of the day, after that one single snapshot from the blood, it's actually pretty normal. And so the Dutch test allows you to see how the hormones are fluctuating throughout the day rather than getting you a one is if you're low thyroid, sometimes you don't break down cortisol that well, right? And so you might see someone who has rampantly high levels of cortisol get a test. But if you do the dried urine test, you may see that what's actually occurring is that cortisol metabolites are low because the cortisol isn't getting broken down properly. So it's not an issue, say, of let's say like you being way too stressed out, you having too much coffee in the morning, you can dig a little deeper if you see a high amount of cortisol metabolites or a low amount of cortisol metabolites, and it might be an indication that your thyroid is not functioning

properly, right? And so the Dutch test can give you a lot of clues. And if you work with a good functional medicine doc who can look at the results and analyze them for you and then make little tweaks as you go, that can pair really well with some type of hormone replacement therapy. If someone has low thyroid, like I was diagnosed with, and then they get that thyroid balanced, what are the differences of how I'm going to feel?

Well, first, I mean, if you test low thyroid, you don't want to just have a doctor look at, say, what a lot of doctors will look at is TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. A thyroid stimulating hormone is high. Some docs will say if it's above four. I think above two is an even better measurement of whether or not it's excessively high. That is an indication that your brain is trying to get your thyroid to produce more, more thyroid hormone because it's not, or because the thyroid hormone isn't getting converted properly into its active form into what's called T3. And the problem is if you're just getting TSH, it doesn't really tell you why you're, you're,

you don't have enough thyroid hormone, right? be that you test and your TSH is high, but then if you do a more advanced thyroid panel that's looking at T3, T4, free T3, free T4, thyroid antibodies, and reverse T3, all of a sudden you have all the clues that you need. Let's say that you've got high TSH and poor thyroid function, but your thyroid antibodies test high. Well, that's indicative that there's some sort of immune system reaction that's suppressing thyroid function. And in many cases, those are things like wheat, soy, dairy, you know, problematic allergenic foods or foods that people are often intolerant to. And so the approach there would be to use a more, more of kind of like an autoimmune approach to adjusting thyroid. Sometimes you'll see that thyroid antibodies are just fine. And this is

something you'll see a lot of times in like the ketogenic community, especially like the ketogenic active athlete community. They're not getting enough glucose to support the conversion of inactive thyroid hormone T4 into T3. And so with somebody like that, you might say, okay, we just got to eat a little bit more carbohydrate at night. Maybe don't train quite as hard if you are going to do a low carb diet. And so you always have to step back and look at why thyroid is low. But in the case of something like a Dutch test, it doesn't measure thyroid. So you'd have to do just a basic thyroid panel. And you can order those from direct labs, from Wellness FX, from a lot of these services that will just allow you to print off a lab form and bring it to a lab core or a quest

and have the test run. I want to come back to this stuff. I want to get back to inflammation and glycemic index and also thyroid because it's in the next topics that I have. But I want to address one thing first, and that's sleep. We started to kind of touch on it because I feel like if you solve a lot of the issues that you're having with sleep, there's so many people that are stressed right now and like, you know, anxious, and maybe they're not getting the best sleep of their life. And I feel like if you can solve, at least if you can

get some better sleep, a lot of these issues can be somewhat easier to tackle. We did, Lauren and I both did that chronobiology test to see what, you know, and we can talk about that. You had like, whether you're a dolphin or a lion or a bear or a wolf. Yeah. And I want to talk about, we've never talked about it on the show before. We're both bears, which I feel is a good thing. But, and when I figured that out, we've changed the way that we like our sleep cycles, where we eat, when we drink coffee, when we eat and all that, all that stuff. And I feel like it's helping a lot because I was one of those guys before I'm like, Hey, I'm just going to have a lot of discipline here. I'm going to try to get up at 5.00 AM. And then I'm going

to go through the whole thing when I realized like, maybe that's too early for me. So you were a bear, like more of a 10 PM to 6.00 AM kind of guy trying to adhere to a lion, you know, more like an eight or 9.00 PM to a four or 5.00 AM to sleep schedule. And by the way, that is, that is that, that whole patterning of sleep chronobiology is not from me. That's from Dr. Michael Bruce. He's actually local. He's in LA. I want to have him on here. Yeah. And he gave me permission to actually talk about some of that stuff in my book, but he's the guy who originated that idea, Dr. Michael Bruce. We signed up for his newsletter. I was going to mention him too, but I want to talk,

and if you have permission, I want to talk about the chronobiology because I think a lot of people don't know. I mean, right. You just hear like night owl or morning, whatever the hell they call the morning. And I was one of those people that was like, okay, well like, you know, it's good to get up super early. So I'm going to get up at five and work. And what I realized I'm actually way more effective if I get up at like six, go to bed at like 10, 30, 11. Um, but before I was trying to do that different. So like, maybe we can dive into this a little bit before we get back to the other stuff. Yeah, certainly. So there, it is true that certain people do better on certain sleep cycles. Like we, we mentioned like, you know, the bear is a 10 to six, the lion

is a little bit earlier to bed, earlier to wake. The dolphin is kind of all over the map. And one of those people who often struggles with insomnia and really weird fluctuating sleep cycles. And then the wolf is that person who does really well at whatever, staying up till 2 AM, tapping away on the keyboard of the computer and then, you know a.m. And they I mean by that is if I have been back East for like a week, and then I come back over to the Pacific coast where I live and you know, I'm up in Washington state, so I'm Pacific time zone and I'm waking up at, let's say 3 30 AM, right? Because that was 6 30 AM for me back East where I was waking up. That's a problem for me because I don't want to get up at 3.30 a.m. because life is going to be kind of

crappy by the time 1 p.m. rolls around. So what you do is you keep everything dark. And when you get up, you put on blue light blocking glasses if you do get out of bed and you don't look at screens or if you do look at them, you have a good light protection software installed on your computer. I think one of the better ones out there is called Iris. And you don't get out and go watch the sunrise at 5.30 AM. You essentially try to treat your house or your bedroom like a cave until the time arrives when you actually do want your body to start waking up. And then you open all the curtains and you take off your blue light blocking glasses

and you turn off the screen protection software and just blast yourself with light. And within about two or three days of doing that, you can shift your circadian rhythm really quickly back into the time zone that you want it to be in. And so light can be used, you know, same thing if you're back on the, um, on the East coast and you want to be able to stay up later, right? You could, for example, get good light exposure at seven or 8 PM and thus push your circadian rhythm forward, right? So, so it kind of depends where you're at in the world and what you want to do

with light. But the chronobiology is something that's a natural tendency. What I'm getting at is it's not totally fixed, which is important because if you are say wired up to be a wolf and you have a job that you're supposed to be at 8am, it's not like you're going to change your whole life to go to bed at 2am and get up at 10am. So you're going to go to bed at 10pm. You're going to limit all your light exposure at night. And then you're going to blast yourself with light in the morning when you get up and you're going to be okay. You're going to function in society, even though

you might be wired up to be a little bit more of a night owl. Well, what was helpful to me is just framing out that like, oh, there's not just one way or another. It's not just like you're a morning or night person. It's like, there's little shifts that, that, that happen within their night. For me, I was like, I have to be up at five because I like to be up super early and ahead of the day. But I realized I wasn't as effective as if I get up at six, I get up at six and maybe work out an hour longer than I would have if I got up at five, I'm actually way more effective. I switched my workout to the afternoon as opposed to the super early morning. Like I actually sleep better. And I think that's, what's interesting to go into. So I get up at like five, when my kids aren't up and my wife's not up and the house is quiet and I can do a little bit of meditation and some stretching and some breath work, and I can drink the coffee before my wife gets to it and drinks the whole pot. And then I have to make another pot. Yeah. I can do all my, all my nice little body care stuff

when I get up early in the morning and I can write and I can read. But of course the problem is that I'm technically in an ideal scenario, I'm a little bit more wired up to get it at 6.30. So for me, like the perfect scenario is I go to bed around 10 PM, I get up around 5, 5.30 AM. And then I just do a quick afternoon power nap for about 20 minutes. And I have this whole elaborate napping routine where I get out a little bit of lavender oil to rely and put a little bit of that of my upper lip to relax me as like aromatherapy. I experimented with a bunch of relaxing compounds like CBD and valerian chamomile and everything kind of makes you kind of groggy when you get up from your afternoon nap,

except the one thing I find that allows me to relax and get into a good, nice afternoon power nap without making me feel groggy afterwards is reishi, reishi mushroom extract. So I'll usually use a couple of packs of that four-sigmatic reishi, and sometimes I'll put it in hot water. Sometimes I'll just dump it straight into my mouth. And I find that kind of shifts me. Before or after? Before. Before. Before. Yeah. And then I will usually play something really relaxing with some noise blocking headphones and a really good sleep mask so i treat my power naps almost like miniature plant medicine journeys right you just

go full-on sensory depth you know the noise blocking headphones a really good sleep mask like mindfold makes a really good one i recently discovered another sleep mask called the um silent mode mask which is like a cocoon that wraps around your whole head and it has little speakers built into it. And it just, it feels like you're super protected. That's another thing he's going to buy. Okay.

Thank you. Jesus Christ. Hang that up by the ozone generator. And, and so I'll play something really relaxing. Like there, there's an app called brain FM that does some really relaxing power nap tracks.

There's another app I like called sleep stream that plays plays some ambient noise that helps you to fall asleep. My favorite is one called NuCalm, N-U-Calm. And I didn't believe these guys when I interviewed them on my podcast. They said their 20-minute power nap cycle that they have built into this nap or into the app can simulate a 90-minute sleep cycle and just put you dead to the world within a couple of minutes and i started using it and i could i i will drop down for 20 minutes when i put this thing on and i'll wake up with like drool coming out of my mouth from whatever i had for lunch you know like some green avocado and sardine and olive oil drool and and feel like i've completely pushed the reboot button i'm good to go the rest of the

day. And that, that one is amazing, but that's, that's how I do my power nap. And then typically, and of course is the one problem with an afternoon nap is you are, you can still feel like you need a little kick in the butt to get going and get motivated to jump back into your work day. So I will either have like, just like a, a good strong shot of espresso or cup of coffee, or because I, I work at home a lot and I'm taking this nap at home next to my home office, right outside my front door. I have this cold tub that I keep at about 33 degrees. And it's annoying to have to take all my clothes off and jump in the cold tub. What I do is I just take my shirt off. I just plunge my whole upper body into that cold tub and kind of, you know, splash my head around a little bit,

stand up. And man, like if you're able to just like throw your body in the cold water after that afternoon nap, you feel like a beast to the rest of the day. What's the brand of the cold plunge pool you have and what's the brand of the sauna you have? The cold pool is called a Marasco. It just came out last year and it's really cool it's like this slick sexy stainless steel tub but it's in this really cool designer wooden box and they built in ozone and uv to clean so you have to put chlorine in it stays clean and it'll maintain like 32 degrees fahrenheit when it's 110 degrees outside there's still little chunks of how big is ice floating in it size of, um, uh, have you ever seen people doing like cold thermogenesis on Instagram or

whatever? And then the big stainless steel tubs, it's like the size of that, like a one person stainless steel tub, but it just frigging works. It's amazing. And then the sauna that I use is called a clear light, but I have the big one. It's called a sanctuary, which I love because when I have dinner parties at my house, the way it works is we don't sit around the living room for an hour, drinking wine and chatting and having cocktails before dinner. I gather everybody. I say, yeah, come over to our house. We're going to have a big barbecue on Friday night. We're going to bring your swimsuit, change your clothes. And I give everybody a towel and I turn on the sauna like a half hour before everybody's going to show up we go down to the sauna and we sit in the sauna

and we play music and we sweat and sometimes you know we'll bring some essential oils in there or burn some palo santo or i'll bring like you know a vaporizer in there and vape a little bit of you know tobacco or essential oils or weed or whatever and then we all after we've got a good sweat on for 20 or 30 minutes you you know, we're just sitting around the sauna because it can fit six people in it chatting. We all traipse outside and go jump in the cold pool or jump in the cold tub. And then everybody comes in for dinner. And it's amazing because A, you're kind of hungry and like you're ready to go punish

these amazing organic meals that we make at our house. But then B, if you do heat and cold like that at night, you sleep like a freaking baby. And it's just an amazing feeling. It's so funny because I have, ever since I got pregnant, I've had this like really, really gnarly need for nature. Like I just, LA is starting to feel, and I don't know if it's the quarantine mixed in with it, starting to feel like it's closing in on me and i just told michael i think i only have four years here like i for me to live here the rest of my life and commit to that i don't want it i want space i want to have the sauna and all the things that's like what's that's what's my goal in life it's not really material it's more like having this sort of setup that you have with the grounding and the sauna

and the water thing that you, the ice plunge pool. Oh, the Morosco. Yeah. Yeah. That to me is like goals. And don't get me wrong. You could have like a quarter acre of land in a backyard and have all that stuff. But I do agree there. There's something about nature and I was blessed and I realized I sound like a rich effing asshole, you know, saying this on the podcast, but I've got 10 acres of property up in Washington on the Washington, Idaho border, where I built our house. And it's just like this private oasis. And we got goats and chickens and a vegetable garden. And, you know, and, and me and my twin 12 year old boys, we all have bows.

So we can go out hunting for deer or Turkey or, you know, or meat. If we need to put some meat in the freezer and we've got all these wild plants, like wild metal and wild men. So, you know, if, if I want to make a meal and I'm stuck at home, we don't want to go out to the grocery store. Cause it's annoying to do the mask and go stand in line and blah, blah, blah. You know, I can go out in the forest and I can gather some wild metal and some wild mint and maybe a little bit of plantain leaf and then traipse up through the garden and collect a little bit of rosemary and thyme. And I'll put all that in a food processor and throw some walnuts or some pine nuts in there,

a bunch of olive oil, some sea salt, shave off a little bit of lemon rind, and then just press go on the food processor and I have this wonderful wild plant pesto that, you know, you can put on crackers or on steak. I mean, who fucking cares about a handbag or cars or shoes? I want to make my fucking like wild, like pesto sauce. We moved up here obviously because we had to, I set up this business, but like it was never, I mean, LA I say is like a pit stop in, in where we'll. In our journey.

In our journey. Yeah. And I mean, granted, like I, so I bought that land seven years ago. I used to hunt on that land and I made an offer to the landowner for $90,000 and got the land, spent a couple years saving up so I could make a down payment to have a doable mortgage to be able to build a home there. Then we built a home and then we eventually built a little pool house and we built the goat and chick. And over the- we we've been adding like over the past four years we just built a little guest house you know my kids built this tree for part of their education their

mathematics curriculum last year was building a tree for you know figuring out geometry and angles and calculating square footage of materials i love to do things like that their education you know life-based, experiential-based education. But we've just kind of built things up as we go. And I mean, so I paid that much for the land and then all said and done, by the time you take what I saved up and put down for a down payment, I'm paying like 2000 bucks a month for a mortgage. And so it's- You're not going to get 10 acres in LA for 90K. No, no, no, no. But if you move up to Idaho or Washington or one of these places, it's not- Washington, no taxes either.

It's not that expensive to do. Here's my question because we would have to come to LA like you come to LA. Yeah. Do you just do like a week every three months? How do you sort of structure it? Yeah, I batch it. I batch it. So what do you do?

When I go to LA, mostly LA and New York, somebody's like, oh, we want to have you on the podcast. I kind of save up all the requests or all the meetings I want to LA, mostly LA and New York, you know, somebody's like, oh, we want to have you on the podcast. Well, I just, I kind of save up all the, all the requests or all the meetings I want to have. And then I'll just pick a free five or seven days. I'll hop on a plane, fly down here, you know, stay in a hotel or an Airbnb or at a friend's house or whatever, you know, go all around town and then fly home. And so I batch it. Yeah. I like that too. I mean, I'm telling you this and there's a lot of people that listen to be in LA and be like home. And so I batch it. Yeah. I like that too. I mean, I'm telling you this.

And there's a lot of people that listen to be in LA and be like, Oh, LA is the best. But like, you know, I, we grew up in San Diego and LA is okay. No, hold on. If someone thinks LA is the best and that's fine, they can think it's the best. But for me in my life, I, my goal is to have space and nature and my whole thing set up. That's all she asked for. My goal, space, nature and my whole thing set up. That's all she asked for, Michael. Space, nature, maybe a private jet, a helicopter pad. I actually don't need the private jet. That's all she asked for on page one of the ask.

And only three walk-in closets for the shoes. I don't need that. I don't need walk-in closets. I don't have that many shoes. I'm low maintenance. You know what's cool about, I mean, actually about my wife, like she's just not, she's never been into that stuff, which is like, obviously save me a shitload of money. Cause she doesn't have to, she doesn't care so much about that.

You're not materialistic. That's just not what gets me off is material things. That's not what that's... I mean, she appreciates nice things, but she's not heading to get a new handbag every month. I like a good lunch. Yeah, I hear you. Well, my wife, she likes nice things,

but she likes to make them herself. So she comes from a rancher girl background. So you make the cinnamon rolls from scratch. You ferment the sourdough. Everything in the kitchen is made from scratch. So you go to her house. There's not a lot of boxed, processed, packaged foods because just everything, the flour and the bran and the germ and the legumes, everything's just in glass mason jars or fermenting in the refrigerator. So it's all from scratch. And then, you know, the she'll find some, some chair at the, at the vintage store, you know, for, you know,

one 10th of the cost and she'll bring it home and upholster it and make a chair. And so she's very into taking things and then reinventing them. So the home has good feng shui, but it's, there's not a lot of expensive stuff. It's more like handmade stuff. That's so cool though. How do you guys work on your relationship? What are your tips for being in a strong relationship with a good foundation? I love that question. First of all, we have this kind of rule in our house that love covers all. There's just this out for any argument that we have where you can just look your lover

in the eye and say, I love you. This isn't worth it. Whatever. You drank all the coffee back to that again. And it's not worth us ruining our day over. Give me a hug. Let's put this all behind us. And we just have that simple understanding. And then the other understanding that we have in our house, not only with my wife and I, but with the boys is we have no judgment zone talks where you can, you can just come up to your spouse or your kid and say, I need to tell you something. I need to get something off my chest. Can I have one of the no judgment zone talks with you? And it's your space to go and tell that person, maybe something that's really annoying you about them, something they did

that hurt you. And the understanding is that the person who is receiving that no judgment zone talk, they're not supposed to argue. They're not supposed to say why they did something. All they need to say is just, okay, thank you. And that's it. They don't even need to apologize. Let's adapt that. Those are two really good, honestly, those are two really good rules. And then there's full on transparency. So what I mean by that is, is anything, anything is just completely on the table in our relationship, full transparency without judgment. And what really got us kind of started down that route. Cause we do a lot of, a lot of eye gazing. We pray a lot together in bed

before we go to sleep at night. We have this shared Google doc, my wife and I do, or whenever somebody tells us, you know, I'm going through this hard time, please pray for me, or, you know, I'm going to have a baby or, you know, or, you know, I'm sick or I'm struggling financially. You know, can you pray for me? My wife and I just keep this big Google doc and we, we pray together at night for like 10 or 15 minutes before we go to bed and somehow coming together, like as a team, as a unit and praying for other people. It's been, it sounds kind of gimmicky, but it's actually been really, really nice for a relationship to finish the day and have that end cap on the day.

Now, speaking of end caps on the day in the morning, everybody's running around. There's not a lot of time, but we take 10 minutes as a family. And this is typically right after or right before breakfast. And we go out on the porch if it's the summertime, or we gather around the fireplace in the living room if it's the wintertime. And we all meditate for five minutes. We sit on the floor, cross-legged. Sometimes we'll listen to a meditation app, like the one that we're using right now is called Abide. And it's this kind of breath work, positive message, devotional kind of app. And we sit around and we listen to the meditation and we breathe. And then after the meditation, we all have a journal and we do two things in the morning. We write down one thing that we're grateful for that day. And then we write down one person who we can pray for or serve that day. So we start the day with meditation, with gratitude and with service. And that might sound like super exhausted, but that takes like 10 or 15 minutes for us to gather

as a family and do that. And it's just a non-negotiable and we all hold each other accountable, which is nice. And we even have this app called Habitory, which is an app that allows you to make a checklist for different people who are a part of a group and have different things listed on that checklist, like journaling or meditation or breath work. And all of us, you know, the kids on their little Mac books, me on my Mac book, mom on her computer, no matter where we're at, I'm traveling, I'm in LA, you know, Jess is off on the coast or whatever. We all go into that app and we check box each day that we've done it. So we all hold each other accountable. And then at the end of the day, we've done it. So we all hold each other accountable. And then at the end

of the day, we have these glorious family dinners. Everybody pitches in and we all cook together. We break all the rules about circadian rhythmicity and eating late at night. I understand that sometimes sleep cycles are improved by not having a heavy meal within three hours prior to bed. But for us, the pros of this big, glorious family dinner each night, when everybody's kind of done and you're not thinking, oh, we still got to take the kids to jujitsu after dinner. Two or three kids you have. But two, twin boys. Yeah. And so we gather for these family dinners and we laugh, we joke, we play games like Scrabble or Quiddler or Boggle or Scattergories or Canastaasta hearts, you name it. And we have these wonderful dinners.

And then we all help to clean up together. We go upstairs to the boys' bedroom. And usually I'll play them a little bit of music, play them some bedtime songs. And then we finish the day. The end cap of the day is we take out our journals again and we do what's called self-examination and purpose. So what I mean by that is for self-examination, we all write down the answer to what good have I done this day and what could I have done better today?

So how did you rise to the occasion? How did you help someone out? What did you do that day that feels really satisfying or fulfilling or that really helped you to love God or love other people or love the planet? What did you do that day that was good? And then also, where did you fail? What could you have done better that you could learn more about? For me, last night, what I wrote in my journal for what I could have done better was I could have done more breath work when I was driving. I was driving in Nobu. I was stuck in traffic. It took me an hour to drive freaking five miles from Malibu out to Nobu. I was supposed to

meet my friends there. I got to dinner. Dinner was not fun for me because I was all stressed out from the drive. It was because I was driving, I was breathing, I was looking at my watch, looking at Google Maps, trying to find a different direction. Whereas I guarantee if I just would have done, like I tell other people, some de-stress breath work, listen to some uplifting audio or some nice music, and just use that as a chance for moving meditation for a little while, dinner would have been a lot more pleasant for me. And so when I write down that thing, I could have done better than, you know, if I have a dinner tonight and I'm stuck in traffic, I guarantee because I wrote that down in my journal, I'm going to be a little bit more mindful about not allowing something I'm doing before dinner to stress me out. So we do what

good have I done this day? What could I have done better today? And then finally, what is one way that I lived out my purpose statement in life? Because we all have this one single succinct purpose statement that defines why we get out of bed in the morning. What's our unique skill set that we can bring forth into the world to affect other people with, to love other people, to make this world a better place? Like mine is to read, write, learn, teach, sing, speak, compete, and create in full presence and selfless love to the glory of God. That's my purpose statement. And so every day in the journal, I'll write down what's one way that I lived out that purpose statement. And so every day in the journal, I'll write down what's one way that lived out that purpose statement. And we do that with our kids and my wife and I, even the kids are gone. My

wife and I do it together at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. Okay. So we've got transparency. We've got no judgment zones. We have the love covers all rule. We have our morning and our evening routines that we all do together as a family. And then the last thing I don't think is necessary for everyone. And probably, you know, some people are called to this, some are not, but every quarter, my wife and I do a plant medicine journey together where we have a facilitator who administers some certain medicines from the Amazon that allow us to just drop back into bliss and ego dissolution and kind of journeying in a space where we're not self-analyzing and the left and right hemispheres are working together. Is it psilocybin or what is it?

The facilitator we work with, he's got access to like 60 different Amazonian meds. He's like the Dr. Strange of plant medicine. And I discovered him through another couple that was using him successfully. And this is all he does is work with couples. Up in Washington? Can you share his name or is it private? Well, because it's technically illegal to do in the US. I can't share his name, but he lives down South.

And we actually, a couple of times we've flown him up to our house, but we usually travel down South on a quarterly retreat to go see him. We tack on two extra days to journal, to walk together, to integrate. Typically what comes out of those sessions is that we've got more insight into things we want to start doing more together as a family or ways in which we're raising our boys that we feel we could do a better job at or things that have come between us that we want to talk about. And then this is the really powerful part of that is after we've kind of done our own journeys in separate rooms, he brings us together and we sit in these chairs

called back jack chairs in bed facing each other, legs intertwined, and it's like truth serum. And we're staring deep into each other's eyes. He administers more medicine to us. And then we're literally journeying together, looking straight into each other's eyes. He administers more medicine to us. And then we're literally journeying together, looking straight into each other's eyes, just talking hours and hours and hours. And we have a digital recorder set up that records the whole thing. And then afterwards we, we listen to it. We write down all the little takeaways, you know, um, it can be everything. I mean, the sky's sky's the limit for the kind of stuff that we talk about. It can be, do you feel like, you know, that the boys are having a good childhood and what could we change with what they're doing? Or, you know, Taryn seems unhappy right now with life. Let's talk about, you know, how we can support him better as he enters into adolescence.

And sometimes it's something like, do you want to fuck me in the ass? Right? Like, it's literally anything goes when we're having these conversations. And so we're sitting facing each other and we do that once a quarter. We've been doing that for two years and that has been transformative for our relationship in terms of, we literally feel like we're spiritually intertwined and you'd, and the first few times we did it, we're like, yeah, that was just like drugs. I just, you know, we were on medicine, you know, and we say all these things, but then we realized like everything we were talking about, everything we were integrating, everything we were implementing, when we get back, it was sticking. Like, you know,

we weren't arguing anymore and we were super transparent even when we weren't on medicine because we'd learned how to be in that space, you know, in that kind of truth serum space. And, um, yeah. And again, like that's kind of fringe. I don't think every couple needs to go off and do drugs, but, but that's, that's been a real game changer. Lauren and I have had some of the better conversations, I think for our relationship on psilocybin when we, you know, like I think we always say like it gets rid of the ego so you can actually listen and hear the other person saying in conversation. And like you said, it sticks. But there's something you posted the other day that I thought was really smart.

I actually shared it with Lauren. I think we're getting to a place where more and more people are talking about psilocybin and plant medicine. And it's also in some ways it's kind of becoming recreational or people feel like it is. Like maybe there's a path to legality for a lot of this stuff. And so we see a lot of people that are maybe overdoing it or abusing it. And I think like personally in my life, I've known some people that they start taking it and all of a sudden, they're like, your brain's getting a little out of whack here, buddy. And like, they're starting

to get like a little bit too far where the intention of this stuff, at least for me, is to have those breakthroughs, have those conversations to go a little deep within yourself and figure something out, whether it's a problem you need to work through in your brain or something. When you posted about it, I shared it with some people. I was like, listen, maybe we're getting to a place where people are feeling a little too comfortable with this stuff and they're using it as like a night out on the town or to go party and they're doing it frequently, but this is powerful stuff. And so from your perspective, I wanted you to like elaborate a little bit more on what you shared. Yeah. I don't remember what I shared,

but I have three- You have to do serotonin levels and different kind of the brain a little bit. Yeah, yeah. I've got three thoughts on that. First, you are correct. Because plant medicine is considered now in many situations to be noble or laudable, you know, finding my true self and dissolving my ego. PTSD, all such stuff. But people are now using that to use psilocybin and MDMA every single

weekend and have that as an excuse when really I've often found that for many people, it's an escape, right? You're, you're, you got your headphones on and your, your mask and you're, you say that, Oh, I'm, I'm journeying and finding it. And you're pretty much just like tripping balls as an escape from life. Right. And I've, I find that some people will use it as an out because now it's considered to be acceptable and you need to be careful. You need to check yourself. You need to read a book like Anthony DeMello's book, awareness, and understand that if there's anything in your life that you can't look at and say, you are a pleasure, I derive pleasure from you, but I do not depend upon you for my happiness. Right. I am not attached to you you're

a pleasure in life that i could do with or without if you can't say that to anything you know whatever cannabis or or steak or you know uh um porn you know netflix porn alcohol you name it then you probably need to step back from that object or that thing and detach yourself from it. So that's one is be careful that you're not using something that because society now considers it to be noble or laudable as like an escape or just a way to trip and get away from life for a little while. The next thing is that any shortcut, any hack does not build the same type of character, control, development, and all the aspects related to the fact that often the destination is not as meaningful as the journey. And what I'm getting at is that I think anyone who begins to partake in plant medicine or wants to go off

on an ayahuasca retreat or take a heroic dose of psilocybin or whatever the case may be, you need to first go on a camping trip where you're fasting with your journal, detached in your own space, lonely to a certain extent, dissolve your ego in that setting, do the hard work first, learn how to fast, how to meditate, how to journal, how to be off in nature without medicines. Because often you may find the same type of breakthroughs you were looking for drugs to get you, you can find by actually doing the stoic hard work. And I think that if you've done that type of hard work, if you do decide after that, that you're still called to medicine, then the character development that you'll get from

the medicine is going to be far more meaningful because you actually put in the hard work first. It's the same mentality that would want to get a gastric bypass versus going on a diet or beginning to eat more healthy and more mindfully, right? The shortcuts usually don't result in the same type of personal development or character development as the fast track. So that's another thing is don't use medicines as a fast track. And then finally, what you were alluding to, Michael, is the fact that I view the use of these type of substances, not microdosing with psilocybin or LSD or something like that. That can be something that's somewhat safe to do on a regular basis. A small dose is very similar to a nootropic or a smart drug,

safer than high amounts of coffee in some instances but the problem is that the larger doses i equivalent much of what happens in terms of neurotransmitter depletion and neural inflammation to getting a tbi or concussion right in terms of what actually happens on a neural level so you need a great deal of support going into and coming out of these type of things you need to make sure that for example in, I'll use things like vitamin C and NAD and glutathione or N-acetylcysteine or any of these things that would be considered to be neural anti-inflammatories. And then afterwards, I'll replenish serotonin levels by using 5-HTP or replenish methyl groups by taking liver capsules or trimethylglycine or

esodinacylmethionine or any of these things that help to restore methyl groups. I think you're referring to an Instagram post that I did recently saying, well, if you are going to do a plant medicine journey, here's what to use going in to protect your brain. And then here's what to use going after to restore neurotransmitters, to shut down inflammation, et cetera. I mean, you can even, you look at a lot of the practices used to heal someone of TBI or concussion. It's like hyperbaric oxygen chambers and ketones and high dose fish oil. And if you have access to those types of things, that'll help you bounce back even more. And so I do take this kind of stuff pretty seriously. Well, I thought it was an important post because I think there's people that just don't know about this information. They're just like, oh, I'm just going to take this. And they

start taking it really frequently and they're not doing any of the things to balance anything. And all of a sudden, like you look at, we've all know these people that may be going too far on these trips and all of a sudden like meet them a year later and they're just like whacked out of their skull. Oh yeah. You can create lasting damage. and most of the time it's related to inflammation or neurotransmitter depletion. I will say that I had such bad postpartum anxiety. It was horrible and I'm not a doctor, but what got me over it was microdosing. I don't know what the science behind it is, but to go into doing psilocybin in nature and having an intention going into it, which was that I needed to figure out why I was having this anxiety, coming out of it the next day, I felt exponentially better. I did it three times and I feel like it's

gone, the postpartum anxiety. Yeah. It's very common for people to feel more stable when they engage in a microdosing protocol. Like, for example, for 10 weeks, every three days, use a very, very small dose of psilocybin. For some people, that might be 0.1 grams. Others who have higher tolerance, it might be 0.5 grams. And typically, you'll combine it with something like niacin or some other blood flow type of precursor, and then Lion's Mane. That's a common stack for a microdosing protocol. And you do that every three days for 10 weeks. And when you dose, you go for a long hike or a walk in the sunshine. You don't just use it as a way to get through emails faster.

And many people feel that they get a great deal of personal development from doing that and a little bit more of a better connection to their true authentic self. You also get a little bit of a shift towards the right hemisphere of the brain in terms of accessing more creative, less OCD type of left hemispheric thinking that can just in and of itself decrease a little bit of stress because you're a little bit more freewheeling and a little bit less stuck in your habits and your rituals and your routines. So that's not uncommon for it to be somewhat anxiety relieving. What about alcohol? I noticed I was telling Michael the other day that I used

to be able to drink normal, not a normal, but I used to be able to have a couple glasses of wine and not feel really anything the next day. And now that I'm postpartum, I'm so sensitive. I can't believe it. I had two margaritas the other day and I feel drunk. Is that normal? I think anybody who has used alcohol stopped and started drinking and knows that you're more sensitive to ethanol just because you don't process it quite as well. I mean, there are certain enzymes that some people are deficient in, like some of the alcohol, I believe it's called the dehydrogenase enzyme, that you'll see some Asians, for example, can't handle as much alcohol because they just don't break down the ethanol quite as well. And more of the ethanol gets converted into kind of a toxic molecule that gives you that

hangover-ish effect called acetaldehyde, right? And so when you stop drinking and you downregulate a lot of those enzymes because you haven't been drinking in the same way as you would get increased sensitivity to caffeine when you stop drinking coffee for a while, the same thing can happen with alcohol. So absolutely, my protocol with alcohol, and this is actually something really interesting, back to writing my book and seeing some of these blue zones and how they live, many of them, they, they have women about one to two drinks of a really good organic wine or some bitters and digestifs mixed with, you know, a little vodka or gin or a clean burning alcohol. Uh, and that's,

that's every single day. And in men, sometimes you'll see two to three drinks a day. And there's kind of this, uh, protective effect this protective effect, probably based on the concept of, A, there's a lot of antioxidants and flavanols and polyphenols and some nutritious compounds that you would find in good natural alcohol-based drink, like a good organic wine, or again, like a bunch of bitters and herbs and spices and lemon juices and extracts that are mixed into some kind of a cocktail, you of course get a little bit of the stress relieving properties of the alcohol in many cases in many cultures, such as the blue zones, it's consumed with people smiling, laughing, you know, in the evening, during dinner, it's a little bit of a social

lubricant. And then, you know, ethanol is somewhat toxic, right? But there's this concept of hormesis. Things that could kill you in large amounts are actually good for you in small amounts is problematic and can be carcinogenic, but in small amounts is actually really good and is anti-carcinogenic. We know if you sit in a cold tub for four hours, you're probably going to get sick sitting in the ice for four hours just because your body becomes exhausted and your adrenal gland just can't keep up with that amount of stress. But a quick cold soak for two or three minutes in the morning is amazing for nitric oxide production and immune system regulation. If you sit in the sauna for three hours, you're going to get dehydrated and mineral depleted, but small amounts can actually

help you to live longer when you eat plants like quinoa or nettle or even kale. A lot of these plants have built-in protective mechanisms because they don't have hooves or teeth or claws or horns that help a plant to protect itself. And if you eat large, large amounts, like giant buckets of kale in your morning smoothie and tons of quinoa, you'll wind up with some gastric upset. You know, that's sparked whole movements like the paleo movement and the carnivore movement. And I don't necessarily think you need to eliminate plants, but instead by eating small amounts of them in a wide variety every day, they also have this kind of hormetic effect. And what I'm getting at is I think some of the life extending properties of having alcohol on a regular

basis are related to the fact that you're consuming a mild toxin in small amounts and inducing a little bit of cellular resilience. People just go the other way and go too far. Right. It's funny. Ryan Holiday did this whole podcast on how the Stoics used to add water to their wine. Like instead of just drinking all this wine, they would add water to their wine. And I think that's. It was also much stronger back then.

No, but I mean, with everything in life, like you need to add water to your wine. It's like too much of a good thing is going to fuck you up. There's no sparkling wine that's going to come anywhere near my Bordeaux's though. Depends on the wine. Well, Ben, I mean, listen, next time you're in LA, we've got a batch of games.

Hold on, I have to ask him the main question I wanted to ask him. You can't. Well, you've got to go quick because I got. Okay, okay, really quick. You've got to go. He's an important man. No, I'm trying to lose 25 pounds. I know a lot of women have reached out.

They're trying to lose 25 pounds from postpartum or they've gained it in quarantine. Maybe they've gained 5, 10 pounds. What doum or they've gained it in quarantine. Maybe they've gained five, 10 pounds. What do you recommend for women? What are some tips? I'll give you my three top tips. I'll try to keep this in five minutes to be sensitive to Michael's time. And then the fat loss chapter of my book has 23 reasons that you cannot lose weight and what to do about it. Well, there's so much, I have this whole thing here I wanted to get to, but I realized that there's so much to unpack with you that I have to do like a whole, we're going to do it again. I mean, we're just going to have to be one but i realized that there's so much to unpack with you that i have to do like a whole we're gonna do it again i mean we're just gonna have to be one of those

guys like next time you come down just come every time you come on let's keep on coming my giant suitcase on the way to the airport um so the top three things that i would consider i'm gonna give you my top tip that allows people to just strip fat off their bodies super fast i do with a lot of my clients and then two basic things before i tell you that. So the first is that I find so many people, even people who get up in the morning and go to a hard CrossFit workout or go crush the dumbbells or the kettlebells or whatever the case may be, or their soul cycle class. When you actually look at their step count during the day, you're supposed to be getting 10,000 and preferably over 15,000 steps a day to be able to get enough of what's called non-exercise activity thermogenesis

to burn an appreciable amount of calories. And so many people who are even self-proclaimed recreational athletes or weekend warriors or exercise enthusiasts, they're getting maybe like 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day, right? So get a step tracker and make your goal 10 to 15,000 steps a day, whether it's walking treadmill, taking all your phone calls while you're out on a walk in the park, just move, move, move. So that's number one. Number two is a lot of people are stocking up at Costco and Trader Joe's and Erewhon and Whole Foods with all these dark chocolate covered almonds and cashew kale chips and all these so-called healthy foods that are so easy to dip your hands into here and there

at little points throughout the day. I'm going to go and work out. I just grab a little handful almonds. I'm done with my workout. I got dinner in an hour. I'm a little hungry. Maybe I'll just do the kale chips or just have like half of this really good raw energy bar with a spirulina. These things are super calorie dense. Like there are people getting in an extra thousand calories a day from their healthy packaged foods because they're so palatable, right? They're almost addictively palatable. And so be aware of how much you're shoving snacks, even healthy snacks into your gaping maw. And, and, and, and my, my recommendation is have two or three square meals a day and just have like water.

And that's why I have no snacks in the house. I don't have any snacks. I can't even snack. I have water and gum and tea and coffee in between those meals. Okay. And then the last one is, and I stay lean, super lean, like 365 days a year. And this is something I do almost every day without fail. You get up in the morning and you are in a fasted state, right? Preferably it's been anywhere from 10 to 12 hours since you've had dinner and you go out and you do about 20 to 30 minutes of aerobic exercise. Okay. So I call this in the book, strike, shiver, stroll, get up in the morning. First thing you do

20 to 30 minutes of aerobic exercise. The reason it's aerobic is because a, as we've established, you already have that cortisol surge when you get up. So you don't have to go out and do something super duper hard and be just about everybody can get up and go for a walk, right? It's not like it's something that you're going to dread doing every day. And so there's a lot of stick there. And then when you finish your fasted morning, 20 to 30 minutes of aerobic exercise. Is that no matcha either? Like nothing? Well, I mean, if the matcha has coconut milk and MCT oil and butter in it, but if it's just, I'll do black coffee and arguably the caffeine from matcha or black

coffee that doesn't have calories added to it can actually upregulate your burning of fatty acid. So you can actually have coffee before you go for this walk or green tea just without things in it, like sugar and cream. And then when you finish, and this is the icing on the cake, literally and figuratively, you do a cold shower or a cold soak or jump in a cold river or lake or ocean, but not long. Like, again, we want this to be doable every day. Two, three minutes. We do that every day. I haven't had a hot shower.

I don't think we've had hot showers all quarantine, really. And then that's what you do every day. You don't have to go punish a huge meal after. You can wait an hour or two to have breakfast if you want to kind of keep the fast going. But it is so effective. You wake up, fasted aerobic exercise, a little bit of caffeine is okay, preferably outdoors. You finish up, you get cold for two or three minutes. What does the cold do specifically?

Rinse, wash, and repeat every day. The cold mobilizes adipose tissue. And so you burn more fatty acids and you even convert fat into what's called metabolically active brown fat. So it forces you to burn calories to heat your body even convert fat into what's called metabolically active brown fat. So it forces you to burn calories to heat your body back up. And it's just magical. And it's so simple. And I find most people can just get up, go for a walk, come back, take a cold shower.

What's crazy about the cold stuff is once you start doing it regularly, like you crave it, you actually don't really want this endorphin release. I know we have to go, but I just have, he can just say one sentence about this for everyone out there. Who's listening. That's experiencing anxiety because of what's happening in the world. What would you say? What's one sentence you would say? You have to do a whole nother fucking round it out with one tip.

Number one thing that you can do to control stress. That is 100% free. That is built into every human body is breathing. Learn breath work, become intimately familiar with your breath, learn the different forms of stress control. There's a whole chapter in his book about breathwork. Thank you, Michael. There is.

So yeah, breathe. We're doing that. I'm really proud of us. Yeah. No, I mean, listen, I'm not just yanking your chain and I know it makes you uncomfortable, but your content is fire. It's amazing.

I love the book and there's a lot of value. I mean, even like I am somebody that has, you know, I'm not like super into this stuff, but I'm getting more and more because I, now I can apply it. I'm like, okay, here's somebody who's done it. Here's the examples. Here's the research. Like this is, it's applicable. It's not so, I mean, it's not easy to become an expert, but a lot of this stuff is very basic stuff that you said is already built in. Like you do breath work, you do cold, you can do exercise, like you can eat properly. There's all things that any human being can do if they take an interest in and educate themselves on how to do it. You're doing really, really good work. I mean, you're helping a lot of people like for my husband to sit down and listen and really

change his entire routine has been amazing to watch. Because I don't like, you know what? I equate a lot of the quacks in every space too, but it's like, okay, there's a lot of people and I'll go on a tangent. Say there, you know, these people that go and they build a business on teaching you how to build a business. You know what I'm talking about? These people, and they go into like, buy my course so I could teach you how to do this. Yeah. And my thing is like, I see all these people and they're talking and they're doing these seminars and like buy the course and buy the E thing and like buy the podcast series or buy the business series. And the first thing I do is I go and look and be like, okay, what business have they actually built? Who have they actually employed? What have they actually sold? What's

the product? What's the thing? And if they don't have it, I immediately- Is that Lamborghini rented? Yes. I throw it right out the window. I see that stuff. And I think a lot of people are building businesses on the idea of I can sell you how to build a business. And they're not actually doing the practice. So when it comes to that stuff, I stay very quiet. I'm like, Hey, let me show up. Like by example, like maybe I'll build things, but I never am going and talk. And I don't, I just, but I don't identify as with these people that are just like selling you on the sale. Like it has to be tangible things that they've actually done and built and then like, okay, they're credible. And so I think you've, you've done a lot of that

and you've demonstrated a lot. So to give you a compliment, like you've done an amazing job with building great content for people. Thanks dude. I know I said this once, but I'm not a doctor. I know we talked about some medical stuff. Just remember, I'm not a doctor. Well, that's okay. I mean. Yeah. Very, very well fucking researched. Where can everyone find you? Book is called Boundless. So anywhere books are sold or boundlessbooks.com. And then my website is bengreenfieldfitness.com. That's where I blog, do podcasts, articles, videos, Instagram, same thing, bengreenfieldfitness. And your podcast where i blog do podcasts articles videos instagram same thing ben greenfield fitness and your podcast if someone wants to start on an episode should

they just go from the beginning podcasting for 12 years twice a week so i would not go back podcasting for 12 years yeah i wouldn't go back to the beginning just jump in wherever you want just scroll through some episodes that look good to you and call your name. And yeah. Oh, fuck, man. All right, Ben. Got to do it again next time you're making the rounds. Anytime you want to come on. For sure. Open invite.

Yeah, sweet. Thank you, brother. All right. Thanks, guys. Do you want to win some pink, cheeky, cute, skinny, confidential stickers? As always, all you have to do is rate and review the podcast. It takes you two seconds. And honestly, if the podcast has brought you any kind of value, we would really appreciate

it. And then simply tell me on my latest Instagram what you want to see next. We will talk about anything. So like, go there. Tell us specifics. Thank you guys, as always, so much for listening. And we'll see you on Tuesday. This episode is brought to you by Ritual.

You guys know I'm a human guinea pig, and I'm still here taking Ritual and loving it. Okay? It's filled with iron, vitamin E, magnesium, folate, and omega-3. Kind of everything. It's made in the USA without synthetic fillers. 95% of women do not get the vitamins and minerals they need on a daily basis. So Ritual created a smarter vitamin with the nine essential ingredients women lack most. Go to ritual.com slash skinny today to choose clean ingredients

backed by science. Sign up now at ritual.com slash skinny.