September 26, 2015
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2015/09/anthony-beck-oral-iv/
[00:00] Introduction/ Mack Weldon
[01:46] Harry's
[02:39] Oral IV Discount
[04:45] Dr. Anthony Beck
[07:40] What Makes Dr. Beck So Special
[10:57] What Dr. Beck Tests For
[17:54] How Dr. Beck Got To This Approach
[19:47] Balance Protocol
[22:12] Dr. Beck's Daily Routine
[26:18] How Dr. Beck Works With His Clients
[29:51] How Often Dr. Beck Monitors His Athlete Clients
[31:41] DNA Testing
[45:40] How Oral IV Works
[49:00] Structured Water and EasyWater
[53:07] Drinking Oral IV With Regular Water
[1:01:23] What About Salt
[1:05:47] Taking Oral IV For Something Like Spartan World Championships
[1:07:51] Dr. Beck's Structured Water Filter
[1:15:06] End of Podcast
Ben: Hey. Three quick notes for you before we jump into today's show. First of all, there's a sponsor for today's show and that sponsor actually created the very fabric that is currently cradling my genitals. That's right, I am wearing boxer briefs right now. I don't really wear briefs because I think that they cut off blood flow to your testicles, and I have twin boys to prove it. But I do wear boxer briefs. And the particular boxer briefs that I am wearing are from mackweldon.com. I'll tell you how to spell that in a moment. But the reason I'm wearing these particular boxer briefs is because they've got super soft, what's called 18 Hour Jersey. That's a type of fabric. All I know is it feels amazing. And they've got design features like a no-roll waistband and mesh cooling zones. Mesh cooling zones.
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So the other sponsor for today's episode is Harry's. If you're going to be wearing Mack Weldon underwear, you might as well be wearing Mack Weldon underwear on a freshly shaved body. And you can now wake up to Harry's and you can save $5 when you wake up to Harry's by going to harrys.com/Ben. And Harry's has a variety of different shave plans, including shave supplies that are automatically delivered to your door based on how often you shave. But these aren't cheapo razors that break. These razors look fantastic. They're like art pieces. They're made in this German blade factory. They feel amazing, they've got a heavy ergonomically engineered handle. They've got things like foaming shave gel and aftershave lotion that doesn't have parabens, and phthalates, and no cute little animals were harmed in the creation of this particular shaving product. So check 'em out, harrys.com. That's at harrys.com/Ben.
And finally I've got one more quick little discount for you. You're going to hear Dr. Anthony Beck in today's episode talk about something called Oral IV. Well after we recorded, he shot me a 20% discount on the stuff. How can you get it? You just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/hydrate, that's bengreenfieldfitness.com/hydrate, and use code Ben20. So if you want underwear, if you want to shave, or if you want to ensure that you don't get all cramped and dehydrated, you're now equipped with everything you need to do it. Okay. Now is the part of the show where we get down to business.
In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:
“It's a liquid crystal, it can hold information. And when you organize the molecules into a way and we get 'em into these figures, they can self-organize and then create these layers. So it structures, and then the more organized it becomes, we find along the surface of semipermeable membrane that charges began to separate.” “What I have found is the combination of when those particular crystal electrolytes or crystal structures disassociate in the solution that they lend that charge to that liquid.” “Does it take a minute off of your mile? No. But does it make water work more efficiently? Well, of course!”
He’s an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America’s top personal trainer and one of the globe’s most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. “Power, speed, mobility, balance – whatever it is for you that’s the natural movement, get out there! When you look at all the studies done… studies that have shown the greatest efficacy…” All the information you need in one place, right here, right now, on the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.
Ben: Hey, folks. It's Ben Greenfield here. I have several friends who I would kind of consider to be like VIPs or bigwigs, or leading authorities in the fields of health and biohacking, and although I want to respectfully keep them anonymous, I've noted that a relatively large majority of those folks have one specific guy who actually serves as their personal physician. And he's actually the same guy who advises some of the world's top Spartans, and strongmen competitors, and obstacle racers like April Dee, and Hector Mendoza, and Orla Walsh, and Frank Franco, and Joey Patrolia, and some of these folks who are pretty elite athletes, especially in a lot of these obstacle racing and strongmen type of events.
Now this physician's name is Dr. Anthony Beck, and Dr. Beck is actually my guest on today's podcast. He's an author, a speaker, he's got over 20 years of experience in everything from functional medicine, to Chinese medicine, to clinical nutrition, to orthomolecular medicine, hormone replacement therapy, sports medicine, exercise physiology, you name it. So he's a wealth of knowledge on some pretty advanced health tactics, medical testing, combining biohacking and exercise performance. He also has helped to invent, and is kind of the mastermind behind, a hydration tactic that I've personally been tapping into for some of my races, some of my post sauna sessions, some of my airline traveling, and it's this little shot of water called Oral IV. So we'll talk about that too because it's something that I've been using, but I don't fully understand myself. So I'm going to ask Dr. Beck a little bit about that too. But anyways, in this interview, we're going to delve into a ton of Dr. Beck's health secrets. So Dr. Beck, or should I call you Anthony?
Dr. Beck: Either one.
Ben: Or do you care?
Dr. Beck: Whatever rolls off the tongue. I'm not pretentious.
Ben: Dr. Beck just sounds so much more respectful. But anyways, thanks for coming on the show, man.
Dr. Beck: Hey, man, thanks for having me. Been a fan of yours for a while. For sure!
Ben: Oh, cool! Well that's good to know because I've actually heard, and like I said, I mean I'm serious, I have all these friends who I really respect in the health industry and they're all like, “Well, Dr. Beck says this, Dr. Beck says that,” “He's my personal doc,” and I'm intrigued as to why that would be the case. And actually, that might be a perfect place to start. I mean with all these really smart people in the health industry and a lot of even like top pro Spartan racers like I talked about looking to you as their personal physician, I'm curious what makes your approach unique. Why is it that you think these folks are turning to you?
Dr. Beck: Well, this is a couple reason 'cause I've it is actually even asked them 'cause you try to get that think as first and foremost, I am a clinician and a teacher. I'm not a marketing guru or any of that kind of stuff. And so kind of learning to get out there and I've learned to be called the space, the wellness space. And the thing is I think they like just, it's a very candid point of view, and what I call as my balanced understanding, I really like to find myself centered and grounded in the middle, and seeing all the different dogmas and really getting into the epistemology of things, why they think the way that they think, and then being able to, number one, put them at the very center of everything that I do and recommend.
I don't use a homogenized approach or think that everybody is of the same biochemical individuality or genetic uniqueness. I look at everybody as a category of one and that sets the stage for my entire prism in which I look through. And then of course I have a method called “balance protocol” which is a framework that I use to help give a person a way to find their n=1, how they can actually do things in the right order as opposed to just doing a whole bunch of things. And it just seems to make sense. They've said, “Man, it makes sense. It answers the questions, why this person says this, and these other ones say this.” And I go, “Well, what they're all missing is you. The patient.” We talk very homogenoustically. We see that medicine quite a bit. We have some useful studies in rats, and monkeys, and other guinea pigs, and stuff like that, but at the end of day the human being is just so phenomenally complex and beautiful.
Ben: So let's say that I that I came to you and you were going to find out as much as you could about me, or kind of get started down the road of making me a better athlete, or helping me to perform better physically or mentally. What would you start with as far as quantifying? Like do you have specific medical tests that you prefer to run on folks?
Dr. Beck: Yeah, I do. But the first thing that platforms all of that is the unique story of the individual. All the way back as far as they can recall or elucidate based upon records. Even in vitro. So the patient's unique story is unfolded to me and I basically become their autobiographer. I have them give me their story and I give it back to them to make sure I understand, as if I was writing a book about them because I'm going to dial in specifically to everything that makes them uniquely them. Where they live geographically, how they eat, drink, are exposed to light, nonnative EMF. I mean the entire gamut of what makes them and their unique symphony, their orchestra together. And so we start there. I start with their story. I have a real extensive intake, I won't get in all that, but it takes a while. It's about 15 questionnaires, so it works out to be about 40 something pages, but basically telling their story. So we start there, and then I ask them what are their goals, what are they looking to achieve so I can make it about them. I've always felt that, as doctors, were teachers, and you know the patient is the boss not the doctor, and I work for them. And that's kind of where we start is with their story.
Ben: So after someone fills out questionnaires, what do you test as far as like blood, or saliva, or hormones, or things of that nature?
Dr. Beck: Well basically I do have an initial work-up that works within my framework. ‘Cause the thing about it is it comes down to assessing a couple of things. We go from the path of least resistance up and move from there. So we always want to find out, of course, food is medicine, but what foods work for that person is very individualistic. So the first thing I'm going to do is we're going to take a look and find out what their metabolic tendency or type is. We do that through of course hair tissue mineral biopsy. Get a good idea of are they more towards fast, slow, mixed, or balanced oxidation. So we can definitely…
Ben: What'd you call it? A hair tissue mineral biopsy?
Dr. Beck: Yeah. A hair tissue mineral analysis. There's a couple of different ways of calling it. Basically it's a hair sample that they do, and of course there's a big difference out. There's a lot of labs, oh my goodness, that have different ways of doing it, but I use the ones that don't wash the samples and that's a whole another story. But so we start with that. So that starts to get me into, of course, are they leaning, where do we lean their macros? More towards higher in fats, lower in carbs? More carbs, higher in fats because not everybody is the same. So I do that so that way I can start feeding them. But then as we start feeding people, we need to know what they're reactive to. So I use a particular food intolerance test called ELISA ACT, it's a lymphocyte response assay by the EAB Labs. It's the only one that I use. All the other ones from ALCAT, to Cyrex, to NOVAs, and all these different people that are just looking at IgGs, or particle size, or cell volume stuff, they're all false positives.
Ben: Really? That's interesting because I've heard, and even most recently, like Chris Kresser, for example, just talked about this on a recent podcast about how the lymphocyte testing tends to create false positives and he's more of a fan of the Cyrex testing. So what's your take on that?
Dr. Beck: Well, I have a lot of respect for Chris in a lot of things, and as we say down South, bless his heart, but the difference is is this and this is why this is important to know, because if we're going to use food as medicine for the individual person, we have to make sure that we're not artificially inducing cascades of inflammation or immunological reaction based upon foods that we think are healing. They could be anywhere from, oh my god, I mean I have patients that are reactive to coconut, and avocado, and could you imagine? So the thing about it is the problem with something like, say, a Cyrex is that it's just an IgA, IgG measure. It just measures antibody response, which only tells us that we were exposed to that and the body reacted. It does nothing to differentiate if it was a healthful or a harmful reaction.
The body's doing exactly what it's supposed to do and it responds with immunoglobulins, right? So just because you might have elevated IgA, or IgG, or IgG4s, that does not mean that that was a negative reaction. The example I use is like you have a bunch of people show up unexpected for a holiday dinner and you have to take out more chairs and you have more dishes to clean up afterwards. Well, if it was Cousin Eddie who we didn't want to show up, well that kind of sucks. But if it was your son coming back from Iraq and surprised you like, “Oh, that's a great problem!” So it's not just the increase in chairs and plates, or IgGs or IgAs increasing, it's “was that a healthful or a harmful response”. And the only way to differentiate that is by an ex vivo test where you can actually differentiate and see all the difference between immuno complexes, type I, type II, and type IV immunological responses, and Cyrex just doesn't do that. It'll tell you anything about function. It just says that it went up.
And then here's the other thing, and that's for the missing component. A lot of times, about the time I work with people being in chronic disease rectification is that they don't have the immune response. So it requires you to have a certain amount of immunoglobulin response. And if you're in a weakened system over time, you can't even mount enough to move the numbers. But if you have enough to where we can observe them in specific advanced cell technique, little wells, you definitely can't, doesn't matter. You don't have to rely on a whole bunch of them. So it's a big difference out there. So I don't find any usefulness for particle size or immunoglobulin tests whatsoever.
Ben: Interesting. Now do you test for specific hormones, or do you have like full blood panels that you do as well?
Dr. Beck: Well the next one I do, so we do the hair and get the metabolic types, we can adjust the macros, number two, rule in or rule out foods and supplementation molecules that would be helpful or harmful, then number three, I'm sure you've heard of the NutrEval, NutrEval Plasma from Genova. Fantastic lab because it's going to give, of course, indicators of malabsorption, dybiosis, literally all the markers of citric acid cycle, got to know what our mitochondria are doing, neurotransmitters, B vitamins, amino acids, oxidative stress, all the lipid profile when it comes to taking a look at status of your liver, your kidneys, how your GI is doing. It's phenomenal. So that is really my big hit that gives a tremendous amount as an insight into the individual sit-rep at the time. And then…
Ben: You say that one's called the NutrEval?
Dr. Beck: NutrEval Plasma. Yeah.
Ben: Okay. So that one's the NutrEval plasma. The food allergy panel is which one?
Dr. Beck: ELIZA ACT, a lymphocyte response assay by EAB Labs.
Ben: Okay. Gotcha.
Dr. Beck: Yup. So that's it. The hair tissue, you can either do through ARL or trace element, TEI, two great companies. All the other ones, they wash your sample and it skews the results. So, yeah. So that's. I'll start there. That's baseline. I don't get into hormones initially because so much of what we're going to do to correct their environmental inputs when it comes to their air, water, light, EMF, food is going to change all that anyhow and address the things that we would see there. Then number two, their GI, their gastrointestinal health all the way from the hooter to their tooter. And then we get into mindsets, key number three. So I say hormones really, all the way to step number seven of eight. Because the body has the ability to modulate hormones, but we can replace hormones all we want. But if your GI's not right, if your eating is not right, if your environment and your lifestyle is not right, you are just going to be chasing hormones up and down all around. So I don't do hormones initially. I usually won't get into that 'til about four to six months into program.
Ben: So when you got into all this, in terms of medicine, have you always kind of thought outside the box when it comes to the type of testing and the type of analysis that you do, and having people do like 40 page questionnaires when they come to work with you and that type of thing? Or did you have a personal epiphany somewhere along the way in your medical career that led you to this approach?
Dr. Beck: Yeah. It was a little combination of both. I mean I started out you get some schooling and stuff, and then you're like, “Oh, man. I can't wait to use all these herbs and stuff, and points and stuff.” And then when you find out that people are really going to come to you, the vast majority, they're going to go, “Okay, fatigue, or sleep, musculoskeletal pain, gastrointestinal things, and drive.” That's my Furious Five. So I'm like, “Ugh!” So I really found that I've got myself into chronic stuff as opposed to acute care. So, yeah. Probably for the first couple years, I didn't quite grab it. But then after, you see a couple thousand patients, at least for me the way I think, I think in pictures. The thing about it is I was like, “Well how can I really tell this patient's story and understand this?” And then balance protocol kind of unfolded in front of me. I go, “Well hold on a second,” there is, just like we had Euclidean geometry, and then we came up with fractal geometry, and we see things that way, and I go, “Well hold on a second. When we got health the way we do it. But then there's a math, there's an order, there's actually a bunch of chaos but it organizes itself in a very repeatable order if you just look at the body in a different way.”
So this was back in early, late 80's, early 90's when I was living in Virginia Beach, did some studying at Edgar Cayce's place, Associates of Research Enlightenment. Really fruity, biscuity stuff, and really just started expanding myself in that kind of stuff. So after about five years, I start to go, “Mmm. There is an order of operations. You could do a bunch of stuff, but you don't do 'em in the right order, you won't get them the same result.” So it really dialed in for me back in 2003. So about thirteen years ago was when balance protocol was actually kind of born, and it really became the framework that was just like manifested, and I'm like, “Wow. That's really neat.” And…
Ben: And you call it the balance protocol?
Dr. Beck: Yup! Balance protocol!
Ben: Now you said there were eight different things that you look at in that?
Dr. Beck: Yeah. I basically call it my 2-3-5-8 framework. 2 stands for two questions, what you got to add and what you got to remove. 3 are the three phases. We always nourish, balance, purify. There's a lot of people today that love detox. I do too, but call it more biotransformation than detoxification. But you want to do detoxification last. You don't want to start forcing out stuff that's sequestered in systems into a weakened system. So you always want to focus on nourishing first, then balance things, and then last you go to clean out. The 5 stands for the five causative factors of all disease known to mankind, which are nutritional deficiencies, stressors, microbes, allergens, and toxins. That's it. So it's only one of those five. And so number 8 are the eight keys of balance protocols. So key number one being optimizing environmental inputs, then we move on to gastrointestinal and healing the nation, number three is mindset, number four we get into immune and clearing inflammation, and then we get into cell and physical structure, then we get into oxidative stress and energy production, then hormones and neurotransmitters, and then lastly biotransformation and detoxification. So I walk patients through that framework. It's not rigid to where you got to go step by step through it, but that's the order of precedence as you're presented with things that you have to add and take away.
Ben: How long does the take for somebody to go through the whole process?
Dr. Beck: Everybody is a little bit different. Some like you who's pretty savvy and it's not their first rodeo, we could really work through protocol in about three months. Other individuals, it takes six. Some people, it takes about a year. Just depends upon the demographic of that individual person, kind of what their avatars. It again, it's self-stirring. The person is the center to it. It must form and work within that person's unique story, and everybody's biochemical individuality is different, what their capacity is to change their environment is what really determines the pace that's set.
Ben: With somebody like you seems to be always researching these cutting edge medical tactics, what exactly, I'm just curious. When you wake up, do you have a daily routine? Like do you have specific things that you do each morning or each day? Or is your day kind of random? Or how do things work for you as far as like when you wake up, if you meditate, you have breakfast? Can walk me through a few of your little protocols?
Dr. Beck: Yeah. I'm a big fan, I started way back in the day with the going through the you know, Tony Robbins, and Chet Holmes, full of these stuff, and NLP, and that kind of fun stuff. So, yeah, I've been doing my morning power hour, and miracle mornings, all the different ways of stuff for quite a long time. So yeah, when I wake up in the morning, I usually, I don't wake up before 9 o'clock. I sleep in 'cause I'm a big fan of…
Ben: You sleep until 9 o'clock.
Dr. Beck: I sure do.
Ben: What time do you go to bed?
Dr. Beck: Generally between 10 and 11.
Ben: Holy cow. Isn't there a law of diminishing returns with sleep? Like once you pass nine hours, there's increased mortality?
Dr. Beck: I don't know about all that. There might be the case, but again I wasn't in that study. See? That's my thing. I don't know. Was that rats, monkeys, humans? Was it…
Ben: Do you exercise a ton that you want that recovery? Or you're just somebody who just likes to sleep?
Dr. Beck: Well, no. When I say sleep, so in other words, there's a big thing out there about thinking that humans were really kind of built to sleep all the way through. So if I go to bed, it's usually more towards 11 than not. So I'm a 9 to 10 hour. When I say out of bed, or whatever, so I'm usually, my brain wakes me up at about 7:45 to 8:15 automatically. I don't use an alarm clock, or a phone, or anything of that nature. Plus I have a two and a half year old. So you know how that goes. (laughs)
Ben: I do.
Dr. Beck: Yeah. Well, we have a nanny. So that helps. She comes in the house usually about 8 o'clock. So I'm in bed. So in other word, I don't go rushing to pop up. I like to use that time when I awake to go ahead and walk through my day. I mentally am there. So I start breathing, I come out of that sleep state, and then address my body to be able to make a determination to get up. I don't do the Jerry Maguire where I jump up and slap my hands and both feet on the floor and go for a run. And so basically I wake up and I think, I kind of walk through my body, I do a little bit of Heart Math, but without my little emWave on, and…
Ben: You mean you do like heart rate, you do the, what do you call it, the quick coherence technique?
Dr. Beck: You got it! Yeah!
Ben: Okay. Gotcha.
Dr. Beck: So I start my day with that, and then I walk myself through basically everything I have to do. I always pick one big thing, two little things. Two gimmes, one thing I must get done. Today you're a must, so that was pretty cool. Everything worked around that. So I get up and then I do hydration and hygiene, so I go brush the teeth, empty the bowels, that kind of fun stuff, go grab a little beverage, and then I go outside. I get barefooted, and I ground up, and I breathe, and I just kind of walk in the grass and look, pick my tomato plants a little bit, or work in the garden a little smidge, a couple minutes. Then I come in and then I eat, and kind of get in on the day that way. Nothing really too complicated. As far as like exercise and that kind of stuff, I probably only do physical training per se, I probably say I'm a three to six times a month. The rest of time, I'm just active. I love to just, I like to get on my bike, or I'll play or do fun stuff like that. I'm active. I don't really like, I'm not a big, needing to do performance or stuff like those like yourself to do to where you gotta rock and roll an OCR course or something.
Yeah. So that's kind of how my day starts. So I have a pretty structured day, I see my patients virtually via Skype and stuff like that from all around the world. So I let my daily schedule work around that kind of fun stuff. But, yeah it's pretty simple. A lot of things that you're familiar with is that kind of thing, starting the morning out with getting into some quick coherence, and hydrate, and eating properly, and stretching, and grounding, shower up, and then just go for the day. I mean I really just run a really low stress type of amplification.
Ben: Let's say somebody wanted to look good, naked, and live a long time. What kind of exercise protocol or exercise approach would you recommend for them?
Dr. Beck: Well the thing about it is I would tell them to play and to sleep. And that's it.
Ben: And when you say play, you mean the kind of things that you do where you're just like commuting on your bicycle, and going for walks in the morning…
Dr. Beck: Yeah. Yup. Good ol'… PT or calisthenics. You can do that kind of fun stuff. You can do some HIIT training, different things like that. I have really found, 'cause I'm answering your question on that, if you really just want to look good, naked and you want to live a long time, you really need to train less, rest more, and be calorie restricted. I mean that's really it.
Ben: Yeah. That makes sense. Now and what about these professional racers who you work with? And I'm just using their names because I know that they've said they work with you and you've got this person. Like April Dee, for example, who's one of the top female Spartan racers out there. When you work with an athlete like that, what are you doing with them? Are you doing the same type of functional testing with them? Are you giving them their workouts? Like how does that work?
Dr. Beck: Yeah. Yeah, April, she actually is top. She's the top. And she's a beast. I love her to death. And the thing about it is to see in that particular case, if a person elects to drive hard in that, well that's a different story. That's a different thing between looking good naked and living forever. But, yeah, started with the same process. The person that we look though is still the same, but it's dictated upon their unique story. So for her, she competes for a living and wants to kick butt. So we start with the same thing. Yup, all those functional tests that I've talked about, we've done and completed. Of course another one on top of that is we do a GI Effects 2200 three-day collect. So we want to take a look and sequence the genome and the biome.
Ben: Wait, what'd you call that one?
Dr. Beck: The GI Effects. I love the test. It's a stool sample, three day collect. You take a look and see how they're breaking down food and stuff, is there any inflammatory markers, their bacteriodes versus the…
Ben: Right. The comprehensive stool test.
Dr. Beck: Yeah. Rule in or rule out what their bacterial strains are, yeast, and parasites, and that kind of fun stuff 'cause GI is essential. If you're going to operate elite-wise, you better know what's going on in your GI. So, yeah. We did all of that kind of stuff. So that's what it is. So I work with her virtually, same kind of thing, where she's out in Colorado-based, and we just go over. We do weekly dietary reviews, and of course I work with her when it comes to supplementation, and dietary tweaks, different things when it comes to her training regimen. She has a fantastic coach there on site that pushes her like a Spartan. So it sometimes…
Ben: I know. He's actually, her coach is the same guy that coaches me.
Dr. Beck: Oh, he's awesome.
Ben: Yancy Cole.
Dr. Beck: Yeah. So the thing about it is I love to have that collaboration like that because that's kind of where his passion is, mine's more on the on the biochemical side. And then sometimes I have to remind her to kind of give the body rest time. You got to really make sure that we have rest and recovery. So I work with her that way. And we just kind of let it go that way. Now we're getting, of course, her ready for worlds here in just a few weeks, and she's dialed in, man. It's just, I'm so proud of her. We just had a follow up last night, so that's why I'm kind of giggling, but geez Louise…
Ben: Now when you say she's dialed in, are you running specific tests on her? Are you just basing that on how she reports back to you?
Dr. Beck: Oh, no, no. I take a look at her, like I said, her poop, pee, saliva, and blood. We monitor all that kind of stuff.
Ben: How often do you monitor that in an athlete?
Dr. Beck: Well depending upon where they're at. We really don't need to do it any sooner than a three month interval. But three months if you're really trying to get paid doing it for a living. If you're doing it recreational and things like that, I do recommend biannually, every six months. But as you're training, your body will kick in to certain epigenetic expressions. So we need to be able to be mindful of what those could possibly be doing. So then we do tweak that along the way. Plus depends upon the time of the year. We're symbiotic beings with our environment, and the outdoors, and things of that nature, and the light cycles, how much blue versus red and that kind of fun stuff, is it hitting our eyes, and altitude. And things like. And all that kind of stuff changes the person. So we have to move the physiology to match the environment in which we're training. I know that sounds a little fruity biscuits, but it really makes all the difference in the world. We're not the same in spring as we are in the fall.
Ben: Yeah. It sounds somewhat similar to what I do. I do a full blood test and a three day stool collection. Well I do three days to a collection about once a year and then I do a full blood test once every four months or so. However, I don't run some of these things that you've talked about like the NutrEval and the hair tissue mineral analysis quite that frequently. But it's really interesting to hear about what you're doing. I'm always curious about like what the gold standard would be if you had all the resources necessary to test everything that was going on inside your body. What about genetic testing? ‘Cause there are companies like DNAFit or other organizations that will export and import your 23andMe data to find out like your, whether you're a power responder or an endurance responder, that type of thing. Do you do any DNA testing on your athletes or the folks you work with?
Dr. Beck: Yup. Everybody's got to have a 23andMe, and I'll put it through my super computer, and those kind of guys like that too. The difference is is what you do with the data…
Ben: Your super computer?
Dr. Beck: Yeah. Little softwares, different things. In other words, you can, yeah. ‘Cause there's certain snips that I'm interested in that other people might not be interested in. But all the rage of course is Compti, and MTHFR, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, it just kind of depends on the person. There's a lot of other different things. But I started looking into all that stuff, I remember doing functional labs prior to the Human Genome Project. Remember, that didn't finish up 'til early 2000's, 'til the data came out like '05-ish, '02 to '05. So people were still scrambling to kind of figure out what it is, and there's a whole lot of noise and confusion out there about the snips and things, and people are making decisions based upon their DNA. So what they're doing is they're getting lost in the forest amongst the trees, and they forget that DNA might not necessarily change, I don't necessarily think that we know that yet, but at the end of the day with what we have is more going to be all these things epigenetically being expressed or not.
That's where the real rubber hits the road, not getting stuck in going, “Okay,” and making decisions of how you should eat or supplement based upon what your MTHFR [0:33:02] ______ is. That's just ridiculous. Because I know people who have that predisposition to be poor methylators, they don't have a problem in the world with methylating. And if they were to regulate methylation, they'd be over methylating and creating some other problems that are very similar in the bell curve to the deficiency. So you can't treat or modulate based upon the genetics. They are a great thing to talk about predisposition or antecedents, but they do not reveal triggers or mediators, and that's what we have to really focus on because those things change month to month. So that's one of the reasons why…
Ben: So you're talking about like epigenetics and the expression of genetics versus the actual genes themselves?
Dr. Beck: You got it.
Ben: Okay.
Dr. Beck: Genes are not ticking time bombs. Just because you have a single nucleotide polymorphisms of the VDR, vitamin D receptor, does not mean that you're going to have problems with vitamin D and you should pop a bunch of vitamin D pills. ‘Cause vitamin D is magnesium dependent both on its conversion and binding to its shared receptor [0:34:06] ______ . So the thing about it is what you need to do is get a sit-rep. Well, what's the health of your kidneys? What's the health of your bowel? And are you outside in the sun? Are you getting, pushing up your DHA and keeping it, sources from [0:34:19] ______ position, are you getting things right for you, not just going, “Okay. Well, I have this, whatever. So I'm going to take this pill.” That's what I see is the noise and confusion that's out there. People making decisions of diet and supplementation based upon genetic findings. You're missing the boat you need to know what your sit-rep is. And that's why…
Ben: What are you calling it? Your sit-rep?
Dr. Beck: Oh, yeah. Situational report. I'm sorry. It's a military thing. Yes. I work with a lot of Spec Ops guys, so…
Ben: Were you in the military?
Dr. Beck: I was. Yeah. I didn't go active duty. I was a midshipman at Old Dominion University when I was doing my undergrad.
Ben: Okay. Gotcha.
Dr. Beck: It was pretty cool. So I'm a medical director for Taskforce Dagger Foundation. We provide benevolent care to military Special Forces operators and their families.
Ben: Cool.
Dr. Beck: Pretty neat stuff.
Ben: Yeah. We actually had an interview with Matt Riemann who has this website called ph360 where you go in there and you upload like your body type, and where you're traveling in the world, your sleep cycles, stuff like that, and it kind of spits exercise and nutrition recommendations based off not just your genes, but more of the expression of your genes and the environment that you're living in. It sounds like your approach is kind of similar where you're not just looking at programming based on genes, but also the expression of those genes.
Dr. Beck: You got it. And the difference, nothing replaces the one-on-one communication with an experienced clinician to be able to sort through the outliers, the confounding variables. I love softwares and super computers, different gadgets, and things like that, but bringing the patient grounded back into being a category of one is super important. They can kind of get lost with these things that have neat little layouts, and interfaces, and stuff like that. So where it really makes a difference is finding out what makes you uniquely you, and you can take a look at this biochemical individuality, what your status is. Kind of like the hair. That's one of things I like about it. It doesn't tell everything. Some people will take one of these topics and they'll just go buck nuts assuming that it makes a whole bunch of other information but it just doesn't. But it's a live tissue, it's a real repeatable thing that you can repeat every two to three months and see the ebb and flow of what's going on in your body. So that's why it's useful. Plus it's really inexpensive.
NutrEval on the other hand, it's kind of salty. It kind of depends upon where you're at, whether you have insurance or not, or if I'm your retained physician, what that investment would be. Not to be confused with the NutrEval FMV which is a urinary amino acid collection which is not useful for most folks unless you're older and you have muscle wasting. So it has to be the plasma. But yeah, it gives you such great insight. I mean that really is that. Between that and the lymphocyte response assay, dude. I mean that's the game changer.
Ben: And the lymphocyte response assay is this ELISA ACT food allergy testing you were talking about?
Dr. Beck: You got it, you got it.
Ben: Okay. Cool.
Dr. Beck: And I've played with 'em all for over two decades, and then we all have our different ways, and there's other people that get great clinical results too. So it's not like I’m the only bearer of it. It's just that I definitely feel that I can do it more efficiently and more specialized by the way I do it. I love patients being interested in it. But if we're in the biohacking or quantified self-movements and stuff, people are making a lot of decisions based upon no self-quantification. They really worked on homogenization.
Ben: Yeah. No, it makes sense. Especially when we live in an era where it's so easy to quantify. I want to switch tracks a little bit here and ask you about this Oral IV stuff. Because I know that you, am I correct that you played a role in helping to design it?
Dr. Beck: I was the entire designer.
Ben: Okay. So first of all, I got a box of it, and full disclosure, Oral IV sent me some to try, and I've been experimenting with it 'cause I'd like, everyday I do infrared sauna where I just sweat the heck out of my body for 30 minutes and I've been taking one after that, it's like a little shot, less than an ounce I think in one of these little twist-off caps. And I was talking to one athlete, I think it was, I want to say it was maybe Ryan Atkins I believe, could have been another professional Spartan athlete, I forget, but he keeps them in his arm sleeves when he's out doing his races and just takes 'em out of his arm sleeves and will pop one like right in the middle of a race. I've been using them during some of my longer training sessions. I just got back from hunting elk up in the Colorado altitude around 12,000 feet where you lose a ton of water, and I was taking a couple every day up there where we were hiking around for hours every day. It tastes though just like water. It tastes like you're just drinking this tiny, tiny little shot of water. So I'm curious how this actually works. What is the science and the idea behind Oral IV?
Dr. Beck: Well, the one thing is I usually kind of like to get into where it came from. That'll kind of parlay into there if you don't mind because that was the thing I've always been questing to figure out, “how can I maximize nutrient molecule delivery into cells”, 'cause as you know, you got to go in the mouth, in the intestines, through the intestines, jump that gap, into vascularity, out of vascularity, into the cell, into the next neighboring cell. You've got to go in and out a lot of semi-permeable membranes.
Ben: Right.
Dr. Beck: Right? And it truly just, beings of light, if you will. We're just, it's electrons, man. It's all the body electric. And so for me, I started playing with how do I get nutrients intracellularly most efficiently without a lot of need from the body's power, and also getting the byproducts of cellular respiration out efficiently, even taking into consideration at the biological terrain of the individual might not be conducive based upon toxins, allergens, microbes, different varying pHs, and different things like that. So I figured, “Well, let's look to nature.” The big problem is we don't get out of nature's way enough. And we don't pay enough attention to it. Most of the groundbreaking designs that we see when it comes to all kinds of cool stuff today is they go, “Oh, well. That grip system came because we looked under the microscope of gecko hands and we reproduced that.”
So when you look at nature, it kind of will reveal a lot of things, and so that's where I look to. I go, “Well how do plants get their minerals?” ‘Cause were not really built to chew and eat rocks. Of course I don't believe we evolved from rock. But the thing about it is I said, “Well, how do plants do it? Well let's look the night kind of thought of a way to reproduce that type of an approach using that mechanism because microbes is the answer. I've always said I've been saying it for years, and I'm really glad we're getting more voice on the microbiome and it's importance is bugs got us here and they're going to get us out. So are super super important. They actually digest and break down rocks. Plants don't squirt digestive enzymes into the soil, they have a symbiotic relationship.
Ben: So you're saying microbes in the earth will break down rocks to create minerals, and those minerals are then absorbed by the plant.
Dr. Beck: You got it.
Ben: Okay.
Dr. Beck: In the fields of the electromagnetics of the earth, and then of course light. And so when you bring microbes, electromagnetic fields, light, and water together, they doing amazing things. So how to do that was a whole another deal.
Ben: Can you repeat what those four elements where. You said electromagnetic fields, and what else?
Dr. Beck: Electromagnetic fields in an aqueous environment, that's fancy for water, under the influence of electrical current, water. So you would have the base material, if you will, rocks, atoms, and dirt. But then you have to have water to be the solvent, but then you need micros to do the work, light, and electricity. So all those things is what allows plants to photosynthesize, and I know I happen to kind of believe that the body can also, but that's where people start going, “Oh, there you go. Here's the woo-woo.”
Ben: No, I actually agree with you because there's a recent research and we talked about it on the podcast about how there was a study that just came out showing that the human body can actually synthesize ATP from a combination of sunlight and chlorophyll, very similar to a plant. And this is brand new research, but it shows that there are ways that we can create energy in addition to just like eating chicken and bread.
Dr. Beck: Yeah. And that's it. I just don't believe that ATP is the energy current of the body entirely. If you do the math, you just can't produce enough. And so I believe the answer is light. And water. That good ol' dipole.
Ben: Oh, we've had Dr. Jack Kruse on the show before and he would definitely agree with you that light is an intrical component of creating energy. Not just in plants but also in human beings because of its ability to change your electrochemical balance.
Dr. Beck: You got it. And that's where the protection has to come, which goes back to why not everybody's thing is going to be the same. It depends upon what light spectrums are you being exposed to, and at what altitude, and in what other fields of all these towers and cell phones. You got to think about it, man. Just a decade ago, not everybody had 'em. Then all of a sudden now we all have these big ol' non-native EMF bombs and everybody's got one. I mean even five year old, for crying out loud, staring at these boxes, and it's phoned in to the environment and we're having disruption right. So things have changed. And whether you live in Colorado or Florida like I do, things are different. So the plants still have a way of operating within this environment doing just absolutely magical things. So that's where Oral IV came from, and in that process. I used to not talk about it much because people just wouldn't understand, I've been attacked a few times with just intellectually impotent people from arm wrestlers, to biohackers, to different people that just think that it's all salts, it's all…
Ben: Well, I definitely want to dig into this little bit more. So you said that basically microbes will break down rocks, and that's where plant gets minerals, and that's just basic science. The plant will bring minerals in through its roots, and used sunlight and you know CO2 to create energy, to create carbon, et cetera. So where do we jump from that into like this little shot of water that like I'm drinking when I'm out on a run?
Dr. Beck: Right, so basically, in life there's always movement inflow. Even in plants. They don't have pumps per se, spinning little centrifuges of half horse power impellers. They can move stuff based upon electrical current. Things will move. It all comes down to electrons. So basically I sought to kind of make a recreation of that particular process in aggregate to where we take a particular plant-sourced material, I don't use rocks because then you're skipping a, you're already behind a step. So you can use a plan-derived source of elements, give them to a specific array of microbes, put them in aqueous environment, stimulate them with the spectrum of light for a period of time under the forces of electromagnetic fields and electrical current, while being moved in vortex and that kind of stuff. And they will, just like earthworms, eat the soil in one end and cast out the other. Well, the electrolytes that we use are a byproduct of that process. And so we collect those electrolytes, that's why I call them crystalloid because they have a different shape and charge, different influence, than we add them into a structured water, and then we structure it again.
And what I have found is the combination of when those particular crystal electrolytes or crystal structures disassociate into solution, that they lend that charge to that liquid. And then when the body consumes that, it hits a mucosal membrane, it basically hit, it's like, for lack of a better term, it's not nine volts, but sticking up, guys, like yes we do have more than chicks, but stick a nine volt your tongue. You get a little zap. And the entire body gets it. And what does that do? Well that's what muscles work off of is the body electric. And if you can just give it an increased by electrical potential, the body will come back online and work a little bit more efficiently. Now does it take a minute off of your mile? No. But does it make water work more efficiently? Well, of course! Of course it can. Well, it is technically EasyWater. But it's not, you don't drink EasyWater. You get EasyWater. The trick is to encourage and facilitate the body making its own.
Ben: It's been a very, very long time since I've mentioned the term structured water or EasyWater on the show. I actually interviewed Dr. Gerald Pollack from University of Washington who wrote this book called “The Fourth Phase of Water“, which I actually highly recommend. I'll put a link to that book in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/oraliv. It's not hard to understand, but the book will help you wrap your head around how not all water is created equal and how water can actually carry an electrical charge. But that being said Dr. Beck, for people who right now don't have the time to go back and listen to that episode or read the book, can you explain what structured water is and also what an Easy is?
Dr. Beck: Well the simple way to look at it is we think of water as H2O, but it's really it's H3O2. In other words, it's more than just that one molecule. So this is one things that Pollack's work has done, and man that guy is just a genius. I'd love to give him a hug one day. Big inspiration. Of course prior to that with his cells gels, and engines of life boat. But the thing about it is water can have structure, it can organize because we have vascularity in the body that [0:49:28] ______ that red corpuscle or a red blood cell can't fit through, it has to kind of squish it. And so the thing about it is there's got to be a situation where there's more to water than we actually know, and that's Dr. Pollack covers in his book. So the thing about it is structured water can get organized. In other words, the molecules, the dipoles of hydrogen and oxygen can organize into layers under different physiological conditions or influence when it comes to pressure, temperature, light, electricity. Sound kind of familiar? So what happens is when it has structure, I find, it's my theory, there's not a ton out there of course, I'd humbly submit that where's all the science, well that we don't know everything about water, that it's [0:50:19] ______ , it's a liquid crystal. It can hold information.
And so when you organize the molecules into a way and we get them into these figures, they can self-organize and then create these layers. So it structures, and then the more organized it becomes, we find along the surface of semipermeable membranes that the charges begin to separate and you create this easy or exclusion zone water, there's nobody that talks about it better than Dr. Pollack of course, and he's got better hair than me. I love his hair. The thing about it is you have a situation where you're literally creating a charged or battery surface between the molecules that are in water versus the actual hydrophilic membranes that are our vascularity. So if that energy is running there, you're basically creating this whole systemic superconductor. And so structured water is when water is influenced to become more organized based upon its molecular structure, EasyWater is exclusion zone water that's created when you have a build-up of these layers of organized water up against the semipermeable membranes.
Ben: Gotcha. So the exclusion zone is basically a way that water that is charged or structured is able to, in the case of the human body, be able to get through a cell membrane more easily or to carry a charge more easily within the human body?
Dr. Beck: You got. Because remember membranes are made up of cells, and then cells have their membranes. And so the real control of cells is not the nucleus, it's the membrane. Everything that really happens happens there. And we don't have to just rely upon the gates and the anti-porters, importers, and uniporters. It's electric. All of it is electrical signaling. And so if we can influence that in some way, well there we go. So that's where Oral IV comes into play, and again this isn't a commercial, it was something I stumbled upon and we're still learning to understand it more. But it certainly has an influence on increasing the body's bioelectrical potential at the cellular level along that membrane based upon that charge. So that's at least what we are assuming that it is.
Ben: Now theoretically if you were getting more water delivered into cells by say, using Oral IV, actually even before I dig in to that, let me ask you this. If I take a shot of Oral IV and then I drink a glass of regular unstructured water, what happens? Does the electrical charge from something like Oral IV transfer to the regular uncharged water and change the structure of that water?
Dr. Beck: We have found that it does to a degree.
Ben: What do you mean you found that it does? You've done research on that, or you just suspect, or what?
Dr. Beck: Right. So I'm going based upon in vitro studies. Have I put it into water in the little baths and containers and put the [0:53:26] ______ on under there in the little, you know? No. I haven't done all that stuff with it. That's coming forth with, I mean it's just, it's expensive to do.
Ben: But Dr. Pollack's done that.
Dr. Beck: Oh, yeah. He has. I'm just saying not with Oral IV. Not this. Yeah. So I just want to make sure I'm clear, I'm not saying we've established more than what we have. What I'm saying is what we found is that when the charge, when it's consumed, when it hits the body, that water metabolism works more efficiently. It's not a matter of getting more water into the cells, it's about making it work more efficiently. Why? Because cells, they polarize, and repolarize, and depolarize. And all that polar is, again, we were coming back to that body electric again, the electrons. So when Oral IV lends its charge to the body, I believe that it resets that to a degree. Of course the varying ability to do that is based upon the terrain of the individual. You can only overcome so much, right?
So if you have a whole bunch of things that are displacing, say, EasyWater production, you're not going to overcome it with just a bottle of Oral IV if you're under the influence of certain medications, or molecules, or stimulants, and different things like that. So it's not a panacea per se. Hopefully that answers your question it comes to that. Then what I'm saying we're finding that based upon the athletes that I work with, and what I've been able to do when it comes to seeing changes in functional labs, putting molecules of nutrients into a person's body in the absence of these crystal electrolytes, they now adding and making that be the only change and seeing differences in what their response is metabolically when we take a look at markers.
Ben: Could you theoretically drink less water if you we're using something like this? Like Oral IV? If I took a shot of Oral IV, if I normally needed, let's say, 30 ounces of water during an Ironman triathlon, would I be able to drink less?
Dr. Beck: Without a doubt. Matter fact, you can pretty much assume that you will because…
Ben: One of the reasons I ask is because, like I mentioned, I took it on my hunting trip recently and there was about a 24 hour period of time where we ran out of water. We got so high up and so far away from all the creeks and everything, and both of our water filters were empty, our little filtration bags. I had one shot of Oral IV, and I took that over that 24 hour period and functioned just fine the entire day. Actually the guy I was out hunting with, he was cramping he totally bonked, he had to lay down after a while, and I just kind of kept going. Again, like I haven't seen the science behind it, but that means a lot to me because when I go race Lake Tahoe Spartan World Championships, Spartan races are a little bit, shall we say, Spartan-esque in terms of the amount of water that they give you on the course. And so I can take, say like get an arm sleeve and put like, whatever, three or four Oral IVs in there and take those every couple of hours during the race. Theoretically I could drink less if I do that?
Dr. Beck: One hundred percent. And that's the cool thing. And I'll be there in Tahoe, by the way. I'm going to be there when April wins it. But the thing about it is it absolutely will do that. Because, see people, that's one thing I love about Dr. Pollack is he actually makes this thing. There's just a lot about water we just don't know. One of the other favorites is of course Dr. Tim Noakes, who wrote a fantastic book, “Waterlogged”. It's another must-read. The thing about it is…
Ben: Oh, that's interesting. I wanted to ask you about Tim Noakes because he says you don't need that many electrolytes. But what you're saying, like with Oral IV, it's not electrolytes even though you're using these microbes when you create Oral IV to bring minerals into the water, but it's more the electrical charge that you're drinking, the structured water more than it is you relying on it as like a salt or a mineral source.
Dr. Beck: Exactly correct. And that's just it. We don't have a large concentration of the electrolytes in there. That's why some people have actually, a couple years back, I had a couple of just really not good guys just try to come at me personally about that because the dogma is that you need the salts. Well, listen. I've never met a patient who is deficient in salt. Ever. We have 70 to 80 thousand milligrams in us, in our reserve at any given time. Nobody in a developed country has a salt deficiency. You just don't and you won't. The only time it's a problem is when you're losing liquid from the bowel. So most hydration science is based upon bowel dybiosis, cholera, and diarrhea, and things like that. We're not having Montezuma's revenge when you're on the OCR. You're just not. So all bets are different. So that's the first thing.
So we don't need to add all these salts to make it do what it does. It's really, again, the body electric, and that's what cramping is. It's not a lack of these salts, or the pickle juices, and things like that. It's the loss of bioelectrical potential. And so the thing about it is people go, “Well I got all this salty sweat.” Well that's because that's your body going, “Hey, listen. I don't need all this doggone salt.” And it's literally milligram for milligram, what you take in excess is exactly what you're going to sweat out. Years ago, we didn't even need…
Ben: That's what Tim Noakes says. Like salt intake drives salt excretion. And so if you're taking a bunch of electrolytes and salt capsules during exercise, it's going to drive those out. And that was why, I interviewed Dr. Noakes three years ago when he first came out with this research, it was two months before I went to race the Hawaii Ironman, and I decided to use myself as an n=1 for what he said and I went out and did Hawaii Ironman, and I didn't use a single electrolyte capsule, or a single electrolyte pill based off of his research and some of the studies he cites in his book that, for example, they've put military personnel through 48 hour frigging death marches and found that their plasma sodium levels stayed elevated because they were simply mobilizing their stores. And I raced, I think I raced like a 9:36 or something like that that year at Hawaii Ironman and had no cramping whatsoever. And I think, people ask me about this and I tell 'em, “Hey, the salt pills and the electrolyte capsules? Those don't hurt you but they're just one extra thing that you have to carry and worry about that you may in fact not need.”
The caveat that I would bring up is that the taste of something salty can reverse a cramp. It can reverse like the alpha motor neuron reflex that causes a cramp, and so that was one thing. I had a little Ziploc bag full of electrolyte capsules during the Spartan World Championships last year, and it got so cold at one point during the race, this was on the traverse rope that my calves were cold, I was hanging above the water, and my calf cramped. And so I literally just opened one of those capsules, just like pickle juice, or mustard, or whatever, and put it on my tongue, but it wasn't because the salt was helping me. It was just the taste of something salty. You don't even have to swallow it. You just taste it and it reverses the cramp.
Dr. Beck: And see, I would just kindly and respectfully disagree that they actually do cause harm. And that's just it. See, you didn't have to absorb the salt and have it go into the system in order to have a thing. When you had that taste, you could, so for me, I don't think salt tabs have any place whatsoever.
Ben: So how would they cause harm if they we're going to cause harm? ‘Cause I was always under the impression that if you just take them in, your body's going to excrete more.
Dr. Beck: Yeah. And then that would make sense. But remember this is, this is kind of like maybe an Aha! moment is that if something has the potential for good, it must therefore, in diphasic model, have the potential for harm. The yin and yang of things. So it's the same thing like with light. So it can be helpful, it can be harmful. Well, the salt, remember if you were just taking it in, well now, what is your body going to do with that? Remember these are charged molecules also in a certain ratio that also have their memory. And so then what ends up happening is that the body now has to process them. Right? So they have to be brought in, shuttled, metabolized, taken from the mouth through the intestines, into vascularity, out of that vascularity, through tissue, and then out your sweat. Or your urine.
Ben: So there's basically, there's a metabolic cost?
Dr. Beck: You got it. Anytime…
Ben: Now that makes sense.
Dr. Beck: Yeah. Anytime you're moving something, there is a metabolic economy associated with it. So I don't believe that they're benign at all. I actually find that they create a dependency and they have a net negative on the body. So the take-home I would say is it actually proves my point in that you can take something salty, or even something sweet, put it in your mouth, get the zap, spit it out. And then guess what, you just got the effect. Well, there you have the thing of when it comes to like something like an Oral IV. ‘Course, you know, I'd rather you swallow it than spit, but you get it in the body, it does what it does. And so again it's about electrical impulses. And that's what I believe that where we need to be looking at is hacking into that. And then of course those work better if you have optimized levels of hydration, minerals, DHA, light spectrum, and EMF in your life. All that stuff runs better.
So it absolutely will cause the body to use less water. It makes it work more efficient and stay with you longer. And quite frankly, the people who are running from the sprints to the base, if you're going in in just three hours or so, well some of us, a little longer than that, you don't need anything. You need water, you don't need salt. You should train to be acclimatized to not need either. So that's the key. That's the performance. Because the people who lose the most weight and have the higher body temperatures are always the ones that win. So it's not a matter, you can't say, “Well, I want you to lose 2% of your total body weight, you'd lose 20% of your,” that's baloney! Well tell that to the skinny Kenyans and stuff that win the marathons.
Ben: Yeah. They lose like, they're like 8 to 10% or more.
Dr. Beck: Oh, more. And it's amazing. Now everybody's different on the continuum. Again why? Back to their biochemical individuality and genetic uniqueness. But you want to train. So that's what we work is we help people to really figure out what makes them, and where they in find that, and encourage them to go from that. Now listen, if you're carb adapted, you're going to want carbs when you're running these races and competing. If you're fat adapted, you can rock and roll on fat. You don't need any of those goos, and gels, and all that other kind of stuff. Which is another big problem. People are putting those in, and then now your demand for water goes up because that big CHO molecule that doesn't have its own charge to move through the membranes has to be shuttled. And so your requirement goes up.
So the key is you can work on supply side economics or demand side economics. So I encourage people to stay away from the salts and the goos if you're under exertion under three hours. And then, of course, if you talk to Noakes, you know what he is, I'm a drink ad libitum guy. There's only one symptom to dehydration and that is thirst. When you have a desire to drink and you see fluids, drink them. Drink them 4 to 600 mills, and if a half hour later your body wants that again, then do it. If it doesn't want it for another two hours, then don't drink it. It's a beautiful system.
Ben: How often, I guess I should ask it this way. What's the minimum amount of Oral IV that I could use during, let's say a six hour race, like Spartan World Championships? Would you just take one every hour, every three hours? What's the recommended dosage?
Dr. Beck: Well, here's the thing. ‘Cause remember we're working on the efficiency and the function of water. So it's my recommendation to take one prior to the race. If in the race you feel a decrease in performance or you might feel, whatever, you can take one while you're in the race at whatever interval you are. There's no cookie cutter thing. Same going back to the litmus test, that prism of everybody being unique. And then of course taking it as a part of a recovery, because, that's why I tell people whenever you think of water and its function, think of Oral IV. So whenever you have water, that would be it. Now I would love to tell everybody, “Hey, well drink as much you can,” but quite frankly, you really don't necessarily need to. So minimum, one vial. Recommended, probably more towards three.
Ben: Three over the course of like a six hour race? It's like one every two hours?
Dr. Beck: Before, during, after.
Ben: Okay. That makes sense.
Dr. Beck: Of course, I'd love to be all want to sell something, something, and have a, but no. Quite frankly, it doesn't work like that.
Ben: Yeah. That makes sense. Now I've talked about this before on the show ever since I started to research the fact that water can carry an electrical charge and that water that's, say like, racing through an underground spring over rocks, underneath the earth, it's charged, it's moving, it's in a vortice, it has a lot of these exclusion zones that Dr. Pollack talks about in his book and researches at University of Washington. But by the time it gets to your house, sits in a cistern, goes through a filter, whatever, it's a lot of times void of many of those electrical charges, or it doesn't have the same exclusion zones present. So I have a structured water unit in my house, like I actually have a pipe that water goes through after it passes through my iron and my manganese filters because those are the two main things that I found in my well water. I restructure it, I structure it. Do you personally, aside from Oral IV, use any type of special water filtration units, or structured water, or anything like that?
Dr. Beck: Yeah. I most certainly do. Water, it's like, well who do you love more? Your mom or your wife? It's like, “Who do I love more? Microbes, light, or water?” It's like, “Ahhh.” So, yeah. So water is super important to me. So, yeah, I have a whole house system. I have an RO system in the kitchen with a remineralizer, but then I do have an inline restructurer as well.
Ben: Cool. So you use reverse osmosis, and then you have a remineralizer to add back the minerals that the reverse osmosis takes away, and then you have a water structuring unit that that passes through afterwards?
Dr. Beck: That's it. It makes amazing EasyWater, ice to go in a glass of Yamazaki whiskey.
Ben: Nice. And that was actually, that was why I originally asked the folks at Oral IV about their supplement that they sent to me because I drink structured water at home in my training and everything, but I don't have it when I go to a race and I can't carry my big old water structuring units when I'm at a race. Otherwise, I would honestly just put structured water in a water bottle and drink that instead. But, yeah, this Oral IV thing, it makes sense, and that's one of the reasons I want to get you on the show was because I was curious about how it's actually made. So do you guys, you literally have like microbes in your manufacturing facility that are churning out these minerals into the water and you're creating essentially structured, electrically charged water that's in this tiny little tube that you can just take out with you during the race, twist off, put into your mouth. Do you drink it, or do you need to hold it under your tongue, or…
Dr. Beck: No. It doesn't matter. So the thing is, but one thing that's missing, not to keep, 'cause I don't think anybody could, God bless you if you could reproduce. But the thing is so, but remember the crystal electrolytes are recaptured out of solution into a powder prior to going into the secondary process of what makes Oral IV. There is a special process to where I reconstitute those crystal electrolytes back in to solution under another influence of the certain Gauss of electromagnetic field for X amount of time under X amount of light spectrum. And then we put that into a supply of the water to fill these 15 milliliter vials that we blow fill process. So it's multi-step. And so just kind of clarify, that's kind of how that works.
Ben: Do you worry at all about this stuff being in plastic and getting hot? Or is there a special kind of plastic you use?
Dr. Beck: Yeah, it's a special plastic. It's for that. And, no. ‘Cause I mean I've tested it to make sure that we don't have, and the BPAs, but not just BPAs, but some of the other polymers and some of these things that leach. Most of the time the problem that we have with plastics has to do with the chemical makeup of the water, pH of the water, and exposure to other type of fields. We're pretty protective of that kind of fun stuff. But it's really never in there long enough to where it's going to be an issue. I have not seen it to be an issue, so I'm not concerned about it. What I'd be more concerned about is putting something in glass. The liability, you have to deliver it to the end user somehow right? So we either have glass, plastic, or metal.
Ben: Yeah. Makes sense.
Dr. Beck: So it's kind of a rate limiting factor. So we have to go with that and we do the best we can there.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. Well what I'll do for folks who are listening in, I've been taking a lot of notes about not only all these medical tests that you run, but also some of the resources we've talked about as far as my previous podcasts with Dr. Pollack and his book “The Fourth Phase of Water”, your website, the Oral IV stuff, and plenty more. So if you're listening in and you have questions and you want to leave some comments that Dr. Beck or I can reply to, or if you want to get Oral IV or anything like that, you can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/oralIV. And again, like I want to give full disclosure to everybody listening in, like I approached Oral IV when I heard that there was the possibility of me being able to use structured water while I was out racing. They sent me some, and I'm coming on-board with them as one of their athletes because I'm such a firm believer in this stuff after using it and after digging into the science a little bit. So I just want to make sure that everybody knows that, but I definitely like this stuff. I think that you should try it. If you don't have the capability or the ability to carry like structured water with you during a race, this gives you a way to do it. And I'm a big fan.
So go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/oraliv and you'll be able to access the show notes for this episode and read up more on this stuff. And also Dr. Anthony Beck's web site is dranthonygbeck.com. I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well if you want to work with Dr. Beck on anything from like food allergy testing to some of these other components of his balance protocol. And Dr. Beck, I want to thank you for giving your time today and for coming on the show and explaining all this to us.
Dr. Beck: Hey, man. Thanks for having me. I definitely have a huge respect for the work that you do. As you mentioned about me at beginning, I'd like to issue that same type of thing I hear about you. I have everyone, “Hey, listen. You got to talk to Ben.” Because I kind of have an unconventional personality too, 'cause I'm just a good ol' boy from North Carolina, but we're friends on Facebook so I see you, and your kids, and stuff like that. I'm an archer myself. I even fletch my own arrows. We do a lot of fun, a lot of things in common, man. So I have so much respect for you as well, and I really want to just say, hey, I'm grateful that you have a voice out there that's balanced, fair, and reasonable as well.
Ben: Sweet, man. Well I'm sure I'll see you in Lake Tahoe. Keep my fingers crossed that your athlete, April Dee, wins over there, and I'll keep in touch with you five more questions about this Oral IV usage. And again, folks, if you're listening in and you have questions for Dr. Beck or I, just go over to the comments at bengreenfieldfitness.com/oraliv. That's O-R-A-L I-V. Leave your questions over there. Thanks for listening in and have a healthy week.
I have several friends who I would consider to be VIP's, bigwigs, and leading authorities in the field of health and biohacking.
Although I will respectfully keep those friends anonymous, I've noted that a relatively large majority of them have one specific man who serves as their personal physician, and he's the same guy who advises some of the world's top Spartans, strongmen competitors and obstacle racers, including April Dee, Hector Mendoza and Orla Walsh, Frank Franco and Joey Patrolia.
That man is Dr. Anthony Beck, and he's my guest on today's podcast.
Dr. Beck is an author, speaker, and leader in the medical world with over 20 years experience in the areas of Functional Medicine, Chinese Medicine, Clinical Nutrition, Orthomolecular Medicine, Hormone Replacement Therapy, Sports Medicine and Exercise Physiology. He maintains four national medical board certifications, is the Medical Director for Task Force Dagger Foundation (which provides benevolent health care for U.S. military special forces operators and their families), is the founder and chief medical officer for Balance Protocol Institute, is the founder and CEO of Helion Nutraceuticals and is also the CEO of Hydration Solutions Inc.
So not only is Dr. Beck a wealth of knowledge on advanced health tactics, medical testing, and the combination of biohacking and exercise performance, but he's also the mastermind behind a hydration tactic I've personally been experimenting with: a tiny invention called Oral I.V.
In this interview, we delve into all of Dr. Beck's health secrets, and you'll discover:
-Why so many really smart people in the health industry and top pro athletes look to Dr. Beck as their personal physician…
-The exact food allergy panel that Dr. Beck recommends, and why he doesn't like the Cyrex panel…
-The eight different components that Dr. Beck tests as part of what he calls his “Balance” protocol…
-The exact science behind maximizing water delivery into cells…
-How water can carry an electrical charge, and how it creates something called an exclusion zone (also known as EZ water)…
-How much “less” water could you theoretically drink by using Oral IV…
-Why Dr. Beck believes that you do not need to take salt or electrolyte pills during exercise…
-The exact water restructuring and filtration system that Dr. Beck uses in his own home…
-And much more!
Resources from this episode:
–Book: “The 4th Phase of Water” by Dr. Gerald Pollack
–GreenfieldNaturals Water Structuring Units (you can use code BG15 for 15% discount)
–Oral I.V.
–ELISA ACT food allergy testing
–Nutrival Plasma Test by Genova
–Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis by ARL
–GI Effects Comprehensive Stool Test
–The Quick Coherence Technique by HeartMath