June 14, 2018

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/386-the-best-biohacks-for-longevity-drive-the-magic-of-sprinting-fighting-psychology-more/

[00:00] Introduction

[03:55] News Flashes: Morning Fasted Exercise

[11:05] High-intensity Interval Training & Concurrent Training

[19:31] Combat Sports Studies

[25:59] Weight Loss Studies

[29:17] Special Announcements

[38:20] Listener Q&A: Biohacking & Longevity Devices

[48:41] Photobiomoduation Methods

[53:11] Using Infrared Saunas

[57:19] Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy

[1:00:55] Molecular Hydrogen

[1:06:18] Methods To Enhance Sexual Performance

[1:18:21] Absorption Rates of Suppositories

[1:27:32] Review and Giveaways

[1:29:03] End of the Podcast

Introduction:  In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast: The Best Biohacks For Longevity and The Best Biohacks For Libido, The Magic of Sprinting and High Intensity Interval Training and How To Do It The Right Way, The Psychology of Fighting, and much more.

Ben:  Hey Brock, we were kind of having a fun discussion before we even started recording about our first jobs and how much we enjoyed working for our parents.

Brock:  Yeah, I think it started when I was suggesting that you could put your boys to work for you to get all the prep done for the podcast.

Ben:  Yes, we were talking about how laborious it is to put together all these show notes for you guys.

Brock:  Oh, man.  You have to click a link and then click another link and then open a page, but when I was a kid, man, I used to spend hours photocopying stuff for my dad in his office on the weekends, and I loved it.

Ben:  You photocopied too?

Brock:  Yup.

Ben:  Me too, I remember.  I'd smell like carbon that I had to photocopy so much.

Brock:  I'm sure the acetone in the air that we breathed in as children is responsible for all our ills now.

Ben:  Oh, don't even get me started on how many unhealthy things I did when I was a kid, but the photocopying that I did was because my dad had an ambulance service, a non-emergency medical ambulance transportation service.  So not only did I work for him doing medical billings, so I would spend two to three hours.  I used to get up at 4 a.m., and this was how I learned how to type, this is how I learned the medical industry.  My dad used to drag me around all these medical conferences and health conferences and paramedic conferences, but I used to do all of our medical billing which is probably illegal in the state of Idaho, but there is a little twelve-year-old boy anyway sitting there with a computer doing all the medical billing.

Brock:  Well, it was the eighties.

Ben:  Filling out all the reports and learning about Mrs. Smith who got dragged to the hospital because she had some kind of a pain in her left rib and Mr. Smith who had a colonic explosion, and I would just learn all these interesting things about medicine.

Brock:  Another colonic explosion, oh dear.

Ben:  Yeah, and the other thing that used to happen is, and perhaps this is why I'm so open to the idea of IVs and needles and injections.  The EMTs there used to chase me around and used me as their guinea pig for injections and IV practices.

Brock:  Were your arms and legs as vascular then as they are now?

Ben:  Oh, I was such a vascular child.  I was like a tiny tiny little… Have you seen the M Tour Knockout?  I think he's a little German boy?

Brock:  Oh, he's a little Russian boy, isn't he?

Ben:  I don't know.  Russian, German, same thing.

Brock:  Little muscular kid.

Ben:  They're all brute powerlifters over there, so anyways, not that I'm stereotyping.  Anyways, yeah they have these M Tour Knockout kids.  I was like an M Tour Knockout kid except without the muscles, just the veins.

Brock:  Just the veins, scrawny with veins.

News Flashes:

Ben:  Well Brock, it's actually been a while since we've done a Q&A.

Brock:  Yeah, I actually forgot who you are, I forgot everything.

Ben:  Yeah, for those of you listening in, this is actually fun because on the Q&A episodes, we go through the latest in fitness and nutrition and wellness and biohacking and longevity research, and then we answer listener questions.  And so if you're new to this show and you actually want to call in a question, Brock, how do they do that?

Brock:  They go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/askapodcastquestion.  Now hoping there's links all over the place, just click on the ask-a-question link.

Ben:  An incredibly long URL, can't they just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and click on something, on the sidebar thing and you leave a question?

Brock:  There's a sidebar thing, there's a link in the top nav.  It's all over, you can find it if you're looking.

Ben:  So all the news flashes that we're about to talk about, you can get them over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/386.  Now I'm a fan of morning fasted exercise, and there was this study in the journal of sports medicine and physical fitness.  Now I don't actually do morning fasted, high-intensity training unless I am travelling.  Say I'm at a conference, and I know my tiny little window of time that I'm going to get an exercise session in is right then in the morning, and if that's the case, then I'll do whatever, burpees in the hotel room or go down to the gym and do some sprints and do some weight training, but I typically tend to do easy fasted workouts like walking in the sunshine and that type of thing.

Brock:  What?  Walking in the sunshine's a workout?  Come on.

Ben:  That's tough, I wear a backpack and a training mask and drag a giant infrared light behind me.

Brock:  Sorry, I was being facetious because it's just one of those things that people always dismiss walking.  Walking is so good.

Ben:  Walking is when I get a lot of my thinking done.  I walk with a Post-it note and Sharpie in my pocket.  I leave my phone at home because I don't want to be tempted by it, and all I do is just practice breath work and think and that's how I walk.  And then if something comes across my mind, that I want to get off my mind, I write it on the Post-it note and then take care of it when I get home.  That's how I walk.

Anyways though, this study actually looked at sprinting, like hard exercise sessions, and specifically, they were doing thirty seconds of all out cycling followed by four minutes of active recovery, which by the way, based on the studies on mitochondrial density.  That's one of the best ways to build mitochondrial density.  It's very short, hard sprints followed by very long recovery periods, so we're looking, in this case, at an eight to one, work-to-rest ratio.  Thirty seconds, all out cycling followed by four minutes of active recovery.  They were doing this in a fasted state each morning.

Brock:  Yeah, to build mitochondrial density, you don't need to do it in fasted state.  It's really just that timing protocol.

Ben:  Just so happens to be that they use kind of like the classic mitochondrial training protocol in this study.  And what they found was that even though those fasted folks, compared to the folks who did this fed and also got a carbohydrate drink after.  The folks who fasted actually, on the post-training follow-up exercise session in which they were supposed to exercise to complete exhaustion and then they also tested their power production and their mechanical work.  Their power production, the total amount of work that they were able to produce, in terms of like their strength, went down, but their actual endurance exploded.  There's some other studies that have shown this how when you train low in a low-carbohydrate state, or in this case, in a fasted state.  For some reason, even though it doesn't seem to have much crossover for increasing your power or your strength or your all out capacity.  In terms of endurance, the time to exhaustion tests in the folks who fasted versus the folks who had done all those training sessions in a fed state was over three minutes longer, which is a pretty long period of time.  Should we just pause for three minutes to kind of give people an idea?

Brock:  Just to give you a sense of how painfully long three minutes?

Ben:  Just to imagine.  So it was at 85%, so imagine if you raced your friend, and you said I'm going to race you to whatever, the coffee shop down the road, and you get to the coffee shop and think about that.  Three full minutes before they arrive because you did your morning high-intensity interval training in a fasted state.

Brock:  You could drink a cappuccino and finish a pale chocolate in that time for sure.

Ben:  Oh yeah, or I just got back from Sardinia, and I got big time into, oh I'm blanking.  What do you call it when you pour a shot of espresso over gelato?

Brock:  Affogato?  Affogato, yeah.

Ben:  Affogato, yes.  I got hooked on affogato.

Brock:  You say it like it's in Japanese.

Ben:  Affogato, I'm actually going to speak in Japan in some time.

Brock:  A-ffogato.

Ben:  Affogato, anyways.  By the way, affogato, I get this question a lot.  Does that take you out of ketosis?  Does that take you out of a fasted state?  Yes, you're eating ice cream with sugar and cream in it.

Brock:  Come on, good lord people.

Ben:  Anyways though, even though this might not be relevant to people who are trying to just go after power or strength if you are a triathlete or a marathoner or maybe a Spartan athlete or you're doing anything that would require improved time to exhaustion at an exercise rate that isn't all out, but it's closer to that 80 to 90% intensity.  Do some of these harder intervals in a fasted state because that's incredibly significant in terms of the time to exhaustion.

Brock:  It sure is, nice.

Ben:  Yes, exactly.  Now the reason that I don't, by the way, do high-intensity interval training in the morning much is because your body temperature peaks and your reaction time peaks and your grip strength peaks and your post-workout protein synthesis peaks, and all this stuff peaks.  Even your deep sleep is enhanced by a hard exercise session that finishes about three hours prior to bedtime, but that's done in the later afternoon or the early evening.  So I, for those reasons, have tended in the past to just do my harder exercise sessions in the evening.  Unless, like I mentioned, the day is just going to be too packed to do that, but based on this study, I might start throwing in a couple interval training sessions in the morning in a fasted state just 'cause I'm still competing in endurance sports.

Brock:  I do a lot of mine first thing in the morning, but even though I know all of that stuff that you just listed about all the benefits of doing it in the afternoon, I just plain won't get it done if I don't do it first thing in the morning.  I'm just a morning workout guy, and the chance of me actually getting a decent workout in drops exponentially after like 10 a.m., so I guess I'm getting lucky in this side, in this case.

Ben:  You need to shut up the inner bitch, and just do your afternoon workout.  That's what it comes down to for me 'cause by the end of the day, I don't want to work out.  I've got decision making fatigue, I'm tired.  I've been on my feet in my standing desk all day.  I want to finish up the day and just lounge.  But once I start my workout and I get about two minutes in, I'm good to go, so yeah.  Just do it, Brock.  Come on, swallow the pill.

Anyways though, here's another one for those of you who don't want to swallow the pill of sprinting, but you want to do this high-intensity interval training that we talked about.  Like maybe you're injured, you don't like to run, you can't run, whatever.  There was this recent study that looked into an alternative to running and found that this particular HIIT workout works just as well as sprinting for maximizing your cardiovascular endurance and also increasing your overall fitness, you know?  They looked at a whole host of metabolic parameters in the study, including body composition and body fat.

So they're looking at performance related outcomes and body fat, and what they did was they created this exercise routine that you could easily do in like a freaking hotel room. Right again, let's say you don't have the space to sprint.  So they used classic Tabata sets in this protocol which have been shown to be one of the best ways to improve not mitochondrial density but muscular endurance, right?  Your ability to be able to tolerate huge amounts of lactic acid, and that protocol is eight efforts of twenty seconds hard, ten seconds easy.  So it's essentially like a four-minute interval, and they did three of these sessions per week.  Now one group was doing these on the treadmill, right?  Twenty seconds of sprinting, ten seconds of easy recovery, like walking or stepping off the treadmill and just standing there while the treadmill continues on.

Brock:  Standing there, heaving.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly, and then the other group did combination of burpees, mountain climbers, squats and thrusts and jumping jacks at a maximum effort, so they were cycling through these five different exercises versus the group that was just sprinting.

Brock:  Wait, what?  It was squat, thrusts with a three-kilogram dumbbell.

Ben:  Yeah, sorry, squat and thrust.  So basically you do 20 seconds of burpees, 10 seconds of recovery, 20 seconds of mountain climbers, 10 seconds of recovery, 20 seconds of squats with the thrusts-to-overhead, 10 seconds of recovery and then 20 seconds of jumping jacks and 10 seconds of recovery, and you would go through two cycles of that versus the group that just did the sprinting, right?  So either way, both groups of exercise for eight minutes, and they found was that the group that did this body weight-style training, granted they also included these thrusters with the overhead dumbbells which you could do.

Brock:  They're pretty light though.

Ben:  I freaking use backpacks, luggage, the coffee table in the hotel room, all sorts of things for overhead presses, or you just travel with an elastic band which is great for these squat-to-overhead presses, these thrusters, so to speak.  They found that the performance-related outcome and the body composition between the two groups was pretty similar.  The only thing that they did find was that the treadmill exercise resulted in better running performance which comes as no surprise at all.  Better running economy and better running performance, but ultimately, when it comes to just like losing weight and improving overall fitness, this whole body, high-intensity interval training, you know the title of the study was “Whole Body, High-intensity Interval Training Induces Similar Cardio Respiratory Adaptations Compared with Traditional High-intensity Interval Training”.  That was on the treadmill.  They also threw in a group that just did moderate intensity, continuous training.  Just like eight minutes of running on the treadmill, or four minutes of running on the treadmill rather than doing the high-intensity interval training, and ultimately it turns out that if you've got limited space, sprinting is not the only thing that you can do.

Brock:  I love this kind of stuff, anything that shifts the paradigm, like the cultural paradigm away from having to go for a run.  Like when somebody says they want to do some high-intensity or even just cardio.  The first thing everybody always defaults to is going for a run and saying no, there's so many more ways to do it.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly.

Brock:  So I love this kind of stuff.

Ben:  I don't want to tell you the number of times where I've had a sore knee or a sore hip or a beat up back, and running really wasn't an option, but knowing I could just step into the gym and then do, let's say, kettlebell swings, right?  Non-impact to get the heart rate up, but there was a similar study done on kettlebell swings a couple of years ago, same thing.  You do a high-intensity interval training session with kettlebell swings and is simulates the same cardio respiratory and body composition changes as doing a sprint.  So there you have it.

Brock:  And you don't even have to go to a gym, again you can use a backpack or something like that.

Ben:  I've got one more for you though on high-intensity interval training, so this is the way that I train when I travel.  So a lot of times, I mentioned decision making fatigue at the end of the day, right?  And sometimes that can make that hard workout at the end of the day tough.  Same thing when you travel, right?  You step off the plane, you check into the hotel and dude, the last thing you want to do is go destroy yourself in the gym.  It's just hard.

Brock:  Yeah, you want to go down to the bar and get the little bowl and nuts and order a beer.

Ben:  Yeah, maybe if you're Canadian, I guess.  Like for me, I want to like go for an easy swim or a walk in the sunshine and then go get my beer and my nuts.  Anyways though, so what this recent study looked at was high-intensity interval training combined with resistance training, what we call concurrent training.  This is where you would go to the gym and you would do a weight training session that involved going back and forth between cardio, like high-intensity cardio, and weight training which is exactly what I do when I travel.  Meaning I've got this hotel gym workout, and I'm actually travelling tomorrow.  I'm heading out in Tucson, Arizona to be at the Mind Body Green Revitalized Conference where my job is to be the morning sunrise hike leader.  It's a tough gig, but somebody's got to do it.  Anyways though, I will go to the gym there, and the way that I do this, the way I set it up in the gym, and this study backs up that this is an incredibly effective way to train for muscular strength, for maintaining your building lean muscle mass and also kind of having your cake and eating it too because you get all the cardio vascular training adaptations.

Brock:  Did you say cake?

Ben:  Yes, cake, that's all you're going to hear during this entire study.  It's cake.

Brock:  I get to have cake.

Ben:  Yes, where does the cake come in?  The high-intensity interval training mixed with muscular strength training that I do, it looks like this.  Go to the gym and you choose an exercise for pushing and for pulling upper body, for pushing and for pulling lower body and for the core.  So for example, I would choose chest press, I would choose a pull-up or a pull-down, I would do a squat, I would do a deadlift, and I would do let's say like a low back extension for the core.  And after each of those different exercises, I would do two minutes of cardio as hard as I can, right?  And then I go back and I do it again.  Sometimes I'll arm rep as many rounds of that as possible as I can do for thirty to sixty minutes, so I'm going back and forth from strength to cardio to strength to cardio, and I can just kind of shut my brain off almost.  You know, I'll still pay some attention to biomechanics and proper form, but it just allows me to kind of jam and get a workout in and maintain my metabolic fitness and still be able to build endurance and strength at the same time.

So again, it's just five different whole body exercises, each one separated by about two minutes of high-intensity interval training, and this recent study shows that you can.  It was actually a meta-analysis of a whole bunch of different studies, and essentially the takeaway and what they say in here is that data suggests that concurrent, high-intensity interval training and resistance training doesn't negatively impact hypertrophy or upper body strength.  They did find a slight negative effect on lower body strength, and I think the reason for that is that most of the time when you're doing cardio in between, and in this case, they actually looked at cycling and running, right?  They were doing the cardio with their legs, so it's no surprise that maybe they sacrificed a little bit of lower body strength, and if you didn't want to sacrifice lower body strength, you could do your cardio as like something more upper body intensive, like maybe a VersaClimber or a rowing machine or an upper body ergometer and some of those still use your legs, but maybe a little bit less than running or cycling.  And for me, I just kind of play musical machines, and I know those of you who are legit strength and conditioning coaches are scoffing at this, but it just works.  It works when you travel, you don't have to go back and forth from strength to cardio, so there you have it, and science backs it up, say science.

Brock:  Says science.

Ben:  There you go.  A couple other interesting things, and again, I'll link to all these at bengreenfieldfitness.com/386 if you want to take a deeper dive, but the first one is probably one of the best articles on the psychology of UFC and boxing and fighting that I've ever read, and there's a lot on there.  They go into nine fascinating fighting involving boxing and other combat sports, and even if you're not into combat sports and UFC and fighting, I think some of them are pretty interesting.  For example, you see a lot of these folks, not only in the UFC but at football, soccer, basketball.  You know the NBA Finals are on right now, Lebron James of course is sporting a huge amount of facial hair, and we see a lot of these fighters growing thick beards, as what they claim is a way to appear more intimidating and more masculine.  But they actually did a study on 395 different UFC fighters, and they found that those with beards were just as vulnerable to being knocked out.  So not only does the beard not offer any protection, but it turns out that there's really not much of an advantage to having a beard to fight, aside from the fact that you look like Conor McGregor, so interesting.

Brock:  Except that my beard grows in ringlets, like what's that little red-haired girls name?

Ben:  The actress girl, like from way back in the day?  I don't know, it's going to be on the tip of my tongue.  Shirley Temple?

Brock:  Shirley Temple, that's it.

Ben:  Yeah, Shirley Temple.

Brock:  My beard looks like Shirley Temple's head, so actually get knocked out a lot faster.

Ben:  Nice, I like that.  My beard usually looks like pubic hair when I try to grow a beard, so I just don't.

Brock:  So nobody wants to touch you?

Ben:  Right, exactly.  Other than people who like to stroke pubic hair, so anyways, we digress though.  Another thing that they found was that southpaws do indeed have an advantage, and this is something that a lot of people are aware of, tennis and boxing especially.  Left-handed people always kind of throw a loop to right-handed people who are used to fighting right-handed people 'cause the majority of the population is right-handed, and this is called the fighting hypothesis.  And this is that even if you go to prison, you'll find a disproportionally large number of left-handed people or southpaws, and the reason for that is that southpaws and left-handed people have tradition in better fighting.  They would have been better warriors, they would have been a little bit more hardwired to be violent and aggressive because they tend to win when placed in an environment where they have to be a warrior or a fighter, and this analysis of 2,500 different boxers records from 1924 all the way up to 2012 found that southpaws, hands-down, pun intended, have a better win-to-lose ratio, and we've seen the same thing in tennis as well.

Ultimately, it's very interesting.  If you are left-handed, not only do you have more violent tendencies, but you're also more likely to win.  Just stay out of prison.  I've got one left-handed boy and one right-handed boy, and so they play a lot of tennis as a doubles team, and it's perfect because they can cover the entire court.  So there you have it, and that's what I'm going to retire on is my boys winning Wimbledon.

Brock:  You're right-handed, right?

Ben:  I'm right-handed, yeah.

Brock:  I'm a leftie, I'm a southpaw.

Ben:  My dad is ambidextrous.

Brock:  Yeah, I think most of us lefties are a little bit ambidextrous.  I can actually play tennis with both hands, I can use them most with both hands.

Ben:  It's interesting.

Brock:  It's one of those things, I think 'cause the world is sort of right-handed, and I'm left-handed.  It makes you have to be both a little bit.

Ben:  Yeah, I've tried to teach myself to be left-handed by brushing my teeth with my left hand.  It hasn't worked yet, it's actually pretty awkward.

Brock:  Keep it up.

Ben:  I'm a little bit spastic with the teeth brushing on the left side, just saying.

Brock:  As long as you don't jam it into your nose or something, you're okay.

Ben:  Yeah, so the last one I thought was really good, really good takeaway was they did brainwave studies of boxers and also fencers, and they found that they responded to go and stop commands better.  They had better, what they call preparatory brain activity. They had faster response times, and they also did this study in young and old martial artists and anyone who did judo or karate.  They were faster and they showed less age-related cognitive decline.  Now, of course, there is the flip side in that, you risk getting hit in the head and hit in the face, and so you put your brain in a potentially disadvantageous position as well.  However, do you know what my happy medium is for this?

Brock:  I don't know, I can't even guess.

Ben:  I play tennis and I play ping-pong.  Now some of the smartest, fastest athletes in the world, if you ever look at table tennis videos on YouTube are table tennis players, but in addition to that, I consider tennis to be very much like boxing 'cause I've boxed as well.  I get the same kind of cognitive load when I play tennis, especially at a fast pace as I do when I spar or I bow, and the idea is that you're essentially boxing over in that without getting hit in the face.  That's what I claim tennis to be.

Brock:  I can see that for the ping-pong because it's in close proximity and you have to react so much quicker, but tennis.  I mean sure if the ball is going really fast, which is often does with often higher caliber players.  You've still got some distance to judge what you're going to do next.  So yeah, I guess the combination of the two.

Ben:  It depends, now remember I was a collegiate tennis player, so I played at a pretty high level.  Like the level where when the person is serving to you, you're watching the person.  Like in baseball pitching, professional baseball pitching, you're not even watching the ball.  You're watching the person 'cause the ball is going to get there too fast for you to track it.  So I'm talking about playing at a pretty high level.  But when I play fast, competitive tennis, same thing.  Like your brain is working overtime, plus rather than getting hit in the face and bleeding out the nose, you get to where all white and eat strawberries and cream afterwards at the club.  So there's that.

Brock:  Did you ever fence?  Have you ever fenced?

Ben:  You know my uncle was the fencing instructor, in the University of Idaho, so yes.  He used to dress me up in fencing gear, try and teach me how to fence.  I love fencing, I haven't done it in twenty years, but I used to do a lot of it in college and really enjoyed it.

Brock:  It's another place where being ambidextrous comes in really handy.  I can do that whole Princess Bride thing where I throw the foil into the other hand, I'm not left-handed

Ben:  It's like the old Looney Tunes show with Daffy Duck?  Remember that one?

[Looney Tunes Audio of Daffy Duck Plays]

Okay, so I've got one more study because we are going to talk about sex and libido and buttholes and all sorts of good stuff on today's episode, so this is eventually going to turn into an earmuffs episode, potentially for the children unless you are okay with your children being cool with enemas and libido.  Let them listen, they're going to learn this stuff anyways.  They might as well learn it from me and Brock.  Anyways though, I'm pretty sure this latest study means you should have sex to fight obesity, because it's the study on oxytocin.

Brock:  The Hugging Hormone.

Ben:  Yes, the Hugging Hormone, the hormone that gets released when you have sex or when you touch other people.  What they found in this study was that the administration of oxytocin could potentially be what they call a therapeutic peptide for obesity and for diabetes due to the improvement in insulin resistance and the improvement in glucose tolerance.  So I'm pretty sure that the takeaway is you need to have sex to decrease your risk for obesity, and there you have it.

Brock:  What other conclusion can you come to?

Ben:  Well, there are actual ways that you can increase your oxytocin naturally.  Do you want to know some of them? Naturally, not injecting it.  Having sex and orgasm obviously causes a big burst in oxytocin, that's probably one of the biggest ones, and they found this to especially be the case in multi-orgasmic women which I thought most women were, but I'm just saying.

Brock:  Only when they're with you.

Ben:  I guess so.  Nipple stimulation, cuddling and touching and even falling in love, vagus stimulation.  Vagus nerve stimulation, so this would be like cold showers, chanting, singing, meditation, etcetera.  Music, eating can increase oxytocin which may fly in the face of this whole high oxytocin, probably if you're trying to get oxytocin into your system to lose weight.  Eating would not be the best of the choices that I'm presenting to you.  Warm showers increase oxytocin, that's why you feel so good when you take like a nice warm shower in the morning.  By the way, I learned from that badass big wave surfer, Laird Hamilton.  The last time I was hanging out with him, he told me that's his morning routine is he does a really long warm shower every morning which sounds fantastic.  I do that about once a week.  I used to not take a warm shower ever and pride myself upon never turning the water to warm and always taking a cold shower, and now I treat myself with a warm shower once a week, it's amazing.

Brock:  You decadent fool, you.  You really know how to burden.

Ben:  Massage increases oxytocin which is great.  That's a wonderful way to increase oxytocin.  A few other things, melatonin, so getting good sleep can make you more sensitive to oxytocin, and then here's a good one, MDMA.  The drug ecstasy, can increase oxytocin.  So in other words, if you want to continue down this road of flawless logic, the best way to combat obesity and diabetes and improve glucose tolerance and insulin resistance would be to rave with ecstasy, and then follow that up with a little bit of sex, some soothing music, a massage and perhaps a little bit of dark chocolate, so there you have it.  That's going to be the next big weight loss book.

Special Announcements:

Ben:  Well welcome to the special announcements.  This is the part of the show where we talk about all of the crazy things going on.  Like I mentioned, I'll be in Arizona this weekend at the Revitalized Conference in Tucson, leading the nature hike, where I get to bend down and show people little pieces of nature.  This little leaf and this piece of soil and this plant and this mushroom.

Brock:  Do you do that thing where you like taste the soil and say, “oh, this animal was here just thirty minutes ago.”

Ben:  This tree looks like an aspen, this is an aspen tree.  You know why?  Just 'cause it is, it's an aspen.  It's a funny YouTube channel by the way, you know, the nature guy on YouTube.  I will also be in Boise Spartan Sprint, for those of you who are in Boise, June 23.  I'll be there with my boys racing the Boise Spartan Sprint, and then the family and I will be over in Estonia, in Tallinn, Estonia for two weeks at Mind Valley University which is a university-style education model where they bring a whole bunch of families together.  Probably too late for you at the time you're listening to this podcast to get in, but if you happen to live in Estonia, come say hi, and then there on July 19^th is the Ancestral Health Symposium in Bozeman, Montana, AHS.  More on that later in today's episode 'cause I think I want to mention something about AHS when I'm talking about biohacking and longevity.  So more about that later, but you can go check out bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar to learn about any of these amazing events that you can become a part of over there at bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar.

Brock:  I'm trying to figure out if I can make it to Toronto for the biohacking conference.  We've never had a biohacking conference in Canada, so how can I miss this.

Ben:  Oh yeah, so that one's on October, right?

Brock:  Yeah, and I have to be in Chicago.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly.  You're going to learn how to dump copious amounts of MCT oil on your poutine, so there you have it.  Come to the biohacking conference.

Brock:  Isn't that just all great?

Ben:  So this podcast is brought to you by what I, speaking of teaching myself how to be left-handed, brush my teeth with every day.  I coconut oil pull in the mornings, but then I brush my teeth in the evenings, and what I use every time I brush my teeth is this fantastic cacao mint MCT oil toothpaste.  It is essentially the cleanest toothpaste that exists.  It's corn-free.  I didn't know toothpaste could have corn in it, but apparently some does.  It doesn't have fluoride, no GMO, no soy, no gluten.  They don't actually put bread in the toothpaste, so it's Paleo-friendly and it tastes absolutely, mind-blowingly amazing.  It's like brushing your teeth with cake.  That's the best way I can describe it, cacao mint cake.

Brock:  We're really on a cake-to-cake.

Ben:  We are.  It's got Stevia, it's got an essential oil blend of peppermint and cacao, a little bit of beeswax and then charcoal, and this is one of the many fascinating items that you can pick up over on the website of our friends at Onnit, O-N-N-I-T.  You can save 10% off of MCT oil toothpaste or any else if I can talk.  You can save 10% off of their wonderful MCT oil toothpaste or anything else including Captain America Chilled Barbell Plates and Chimp Kettlebells.  You just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/onnit, that'll save you 10%.

This podcast is also brought to you by something you can wear while you're brushing your teeth if you want to look absolutely amazing.  Actually have you seen this stuff, Brock?  It's this new company called Vuori?

Brock:  No, I saw that in our notes and I was wondering what the heck is Vuori.

Ben:  I hope I'm pronouncing it properly.  They sent me a bunch of clothing like shirts and shorts.  My wife absolutely digs this stuff, she says it looks amazing on me, but of course, she's biased.  And the clothing, it's almost like it molds around your body with this really soft design that just flows every time that you move, so I've got about four pairs of those shorts, four pairs of their shirts.  What I've been doing every time that I travel is I've been staying really minimalist and just throwing all my Vuori travel clothing in my bag along with a couple of Kion shirts, and that's pretty much like if you've seen me wearing clothing while I'm travelling, which I do sometimes, I'm typically wearing Vuori.

So the way that they produce it is it's made primarily for men, it's primarily made to have a great deal of comfort while also giving you performance 'cause it kind of moves along with your body, and it's the closest thing I could come to like wearing silk, kimono-like pajamas without actually wearing pajamas.  It's actual athletic gear, but it’s super-duper comfortable.  I play tennis in it, I run in it, I travel in it, and they're offering all of our listeners a 25% discount.  It's very simple, you go to their website.  It's vuoriclothing.com, so Vuori, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right is V-U-O-R-I.  V-U-O-R-I, so you go to V-U-O-R-Iclothing.com, V-U-O-R-Iclothing.com, and you enter the code “Ben G 25”.  That automatically gets you 25% off of anything on their website, and they're primarily known for their athletic gear for men.  So check it out.

This podcast is also brought to you by cereal 'cause you know that I actually have cereal now, Brock?  In my house, I eat cereal?

Brock:  Like big bowls of Cap'n Crunch cereal?

Ben:  Yeah, no it's actual cereal.  It's the first time in my life I've been able to find a cereal that tastes good and is guilt-free and is made by Thrive Market, and it's basically three ingredients, organic coconut meat, organic coconut water and organic palm starch, and I can just pour a little bit of coconut milk or almond milk or hemp milk or anything else over this.  I'll put like a handful of almonds or walnuts or macadamia nuts in there, and I can eat cereal.  Isn't that amazing?  While I'm watching cartoons on Saturday morning, I can eat my coconut cereal.

Brock:  That is the quintessential cereal moment, isn't it?

Ben:  It is, it really is, and then you drink the milk.  But first you add more cereal to the milk, so it gets extra-syrupy, and then you drink the milk.  So it's called Thrive Coconut Flakes cereal, and what Thrive is offering any of our listeners is a big old discount.  So the way that this works is you get 60 bucks of free organic groceries from Thrive.  You get free shipping, and you get a 30-day trial on your Thrive membership.  So it's almost like a membership to an online Wholefoods.  So their prices are already up to 50% off, and then they give you an extra 60 bucks in free groceries and free shipping.  You need to make sure that you absolutely grab a box of their Thrive cereal while they're at it.  And speaking of boxes, pretty much everything you get from them, their packaging, their boxes, their inserts, they're all made from recycled paper and they're recyclable.  You can just probably eat the cereal box, I would imagine for added fiber.  One hundred percent zero waste, so that's Thrive Market and the way that you can take advantage of this offer is very simple.  Just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/thrive, bengreenfieldfitness.com/thrive.  Sixty bucks for your organic groceries, free shipping automatically, and did I mention cereal.

One last thing that I wanted to check in on was this big detox retreat that I'm leading in Switzerland, or not this year, next year.  June through July next year, I'm doing a two-week detox retreat where I'm taking a whole bunch of people over to Switzerland, and we're doing everything that you can't get in America.  Or that it's harder to hunt down and find in America, and we're going to be out in the Swiss Alps, hiking in the Italian-Swiss Alps and hanging out at one of the most cutting edge clinics of biological medicine in the world where they do nutrient IV infusions and dark-filled live blood analysis, liver hyperthermia, colonic hydrotherapy, full-body massages.  They have a whole bunch of different physicians on staff there.  I'm going, my wife is going, I believe if I can get her to agree to do colon hydrotherapy in exchange for hikes in the Swiss Alps, and it's going to be absolutely amazing.

Brock:  Did you say liver hypothermia?

Ben:  Liver hyperthermia, far different than liver hypothermia, Brock.

Brock:  You're heating your liver?

Ben:  You're heating your liver, so if you want to come microwave your liver in the Swiss Alps with me, I will put a link over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/386.  So go to the show notes, all of the information and details to the Swiss retreat will be linked to from there.  But if you want to push the reboot button on your body and go the Swiss Alps simultaneously, this is a must do for you, so go and check it out.

Listener Q&A:

Ian:  Hi guys, my name is Ian, and I'm wondering where would be a good place to start when I wish to start purchasing some devices for biohacking and longevity.  I only have a few thousand dollars kicking around right now that I want to invest into some of these devices, so if you could point me in the direction of the best place to start, I would really appreciate it.  Also keep up the good work, your products from your store, the podcast, all of it is pretty awesome.  I'm really looking forward to getting some of your coffee.  Thank you.

Ben:  I love this question.

Brock:  I figured you would.

Ben:  Because I happen to have a few biohacks.  Unfortunately, only has a few thousand dollars kicking around, to spend on biohacks.

Brock:  When I was listening to his question, I was waiting for the penny to drop where he says I only have 50 bucks, and they'd be like, oh.  But a few thousand, we can work with that.

Ben:  We could work with that if you got a few thousand dollars kicking around, so what I'm going to do, it's kind of funny because I mentioned how I'm going to be speaking at the Ancestral Health Symposium in Bozeman in July, and one of the things that I'm talking about is this whole concept of biohacking versus less expensive alternatives to some of these expensive biohacks.  I have some ideas for Ian that are kind of similar to some of the things I want to talk about in that presentation, but that are different meaning like in the presentation, I'll be talking about how you could, for example, use a Cryotherapy chamber then I'll give a bunch of alternative methods to that, like cold showers, etcetera.  What I'm going to do for Ian is I'm going to present to you with some really expensive biohacks, for Ian and everybody else listening in. Specifically for longevity, and then also biohacks that would be less expensive than that but still considered to be a biohack, if that makes sense.  Does that make sense?

Brock:  I'm with you.

Ben:  Alright cool, so the first one would be, and some of these are conducive to not just longevity, but also fitness.  So electrical muscle stimulation is something that has a lot of good research behind it for improving power, improving strength, recruiting new muscles that you might otherwise not have recruited and even maintaining fitness when you are injured or you're unable to train the way that you would normally train.  The Cadillac of electrostim units that sits in my office right here, behind me, and I use this about once per week.  It's called a Neubie, N-E-U-B-I-E, and that stands for Neurobioelectric Stimulator.

Brock:  How does that stand for that?  That doesn't make any sense.

Ben:  Neuro, N-U, bioelectric stimulator.  That's what they decided to call it.  I was not responsible for their marketing.

Brock:  This is not your fault.

Ben:  Yes, this is not my fault.  Anyways, it provides a DC current, and it matches the signals that the nervous system already sends on its own.  Now just about any other electrical stimulation device out there uses an AC, so an alternating current is cheaper and easier to engineer, but a DC current can literally simulate hundreds of pounds of let's say a squat or a deadlift or anything else.  Meaning you use the thing, and I'll admit, you get a little sore after you use it.  Like my delayed on-set muscle soreness lasts like four or five days after I do a full body workout with this thing, but in my opinion as far as a biohack for EMS, electrical muscle stimulation, nothing comes close.  By the way Ian, I'll include as many links and discount codes and all that jazz as I can over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/386 if you want to hunt down some of this stuff 'cause I can usually get insider discounts on just about anything, but that one's called the Neubie.  So that's an electrical muscle stimulation device that really moves the dial for strength and training.  It takes a lot of grit, you got to breathe your way through it.  I'll put it on my abs for 10 minutes and feel like it is a thousand crunches the next day, it's pretty amazing.  But an alternative to that would be either the Compex, which is a little bit less expensive, or the Marc Pro.

Now the Compex is an electrical muscle stimulation device that you can also use for strength and power and endurance, and then the Marc Pro uses what's called a square waveform to actually grab muscle fibers in a more therapeutic way, and this would be something you'd have on hand, say for recovery, right?  So you'd use it on areas of soreness or you'd use it on an injury.  I'll slap the electrodes sometimes and then cover them with ice and also a little bit of an anti-inflammatory cream like magnesium or CBD.  This is a technique I learned from a physician who worked with Tour de France cyclists to get them to heal up faster, after their brutal day long stages.

Brock:  Are those guys allowed to use CBD oils or solution?

Ben:  Well I don't know if they use CBD per say, but like any anti-inflammatory, right?  Like a topical magnesium or an arnica or something like that, right?  And then you put the electrodes on top of that, then you cover that with ice.  So ultimately, get the Neubie, or as an alternative, the Compex or the Marc Pro.  Now the next one would be vibration. In my living room, I have this vibration platform called a Power Plate, and you can use it for isometric sets.  You can use it in the same way that you would use like a rebounder or a mini-trampoline to get lymph fluid moving in the morning.  You can use it to prime muscle groups.

Brock:  Not just lymph fluid.

Ben:  Yeah, actually it's great for inducing a bowel movement as well.  I mean have a cup of coffee and go stand in a vibration platform for 10 minutes, and you'll be ready to go.  Slip into the restroom and not have to poo the rest of the day, everything comes out. Voila, just falls out exactly, just like a baby.  No pushing required at all 'cause I'm pretty sure that's how that happens.

Brock:  That's how babies are born, yeah.  Just swoosh.

Ben:  Barefoot in the kitchen, and just kind of drops out of you.  But anyways, Power Plate, they make this vibration platform that is like the Cadillac of vibration platforms. That's the one that I have, it just sits in my living room.  My kids use it too, they love it. They do little squats and push-ups on it or just stand there and laugh.  You can even lay on it and give yourself a massage for any muscle group that you put on it, so pretty versatile.  I like that, an alternative would of course be far less expensive and that would be just to get a mini-trampoline, like one of these rebounder mini-trampolines where you still get a lot of lymph fluid, you could still use it for like a morning bowel movement, you could still use it to warm up for a workout in a similar way as you're using a vibration platform, but that would be another one, it'd be a vibration platform. The next would be some kind of way that you can induce hypoxia.  Now I have this device called a Live O2, and what that does…

Brock:  Oh, you have one of those?

Ben:  Yeah, it's behind me.

Brock:  Lucky.

Ben:  My bicycle is set up next to it, and it draws all the air out of the room, concentrate the oxygen, and then with the flip of a switch while you're exercising or even just while you're passively sitting by it, reading or whatever, you can flip from hyperoxia to hypoxia, and a single 15 to 30-minute training session on this thing simulates about 24 hours spent in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber which is extremely expensive.  We're talking about like 40,000 dollars plus for one of those.  Now this Live O2 unit is still somewhat expensive, its several thousand dollars, but an alternative to that would be to induce hyperoxia followed by hypoxia, so you get that same vasodilation, vasoconstriction effect, one of these training masks.

And so what I'll do now, after having experienced the Live O2, I never thought about doing this until I had done the flip of the switch on for high oxygen then the flip of the switch off for low oxygen with the Live O2 if I don't have access to it.  Say I'm travelling, I'll have one of these training masks, and you can do, for example, 30 seconds of hard sprinting on a bike with the mask on, and then you pull the mask off of your face a little bit and you do a 30-second recovery while you get more oxygen.  Then you pull the mask back on, you do your sprint.  Pull it off, do the recovery, and you could simulate, kind of a similar effect of that high-oxygen, low-oxygen type of environment.  You know the training mask 'cause maybe I think 70 to 80 bucks, but that would be like the alternative.  I don't want to say the poor man's alternative 'cause you don't see a lot of poor, homeless people walking around with training masks on, but yeah.  They got better things to do, but ultimately, long line at the soup kitchen, folks wearing training masks.  It's not something.  Comment aside, it would be pretty cool.

Brock:  You'd look like Batman villains.

Ben:  Exactly, anyways though, the Live O2 and the alternative, that would be the training mask.  Now the next would be a cold pool, and you know I have one of these.  I bought a pool from Aqua Fitness, and it's like an endless pool.  Right, I can swim against it, I keep the water very cold so I can use it for fitness, water running, swimming, whatever.  Obviously it's a little bit expensive.  You get a nineteen-foot above ground endless pool.

Now I will put a link to an article that I released a few weeks ago in which my friend, Luke Storey, wrote about how he just purchases an inexpensive freezer and then fills that with a little bit of food-grade hydrogen peroxide and keeps it plugged in, puts ice in it and essentially just has like a freezer that he uses as one of these cold tubs.  And if you go to some of these websites that sell done-for-you cold tubs, I think coldtubs.com is one.  I'll link to the article where I have a whole host of different cold tub options.  You know, it's maybe I think three hundred, four hundred dollars to get your hands on a freezer large enough for a human body to fit into, preferably a live human body, and you fill it up with ice and water and I've got the full instructions written out that I'll link to in the show notes if you just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/386, but I believe he just went to Sears and bought this thing, and so that's another alternative that would just be a few hundred bucks to do something like that versus the full-on endless pool set-up.

Brock:  Our friend, Brad Kearns, also has one of those.  He's got that same set-up in his backyard.  He just loves it, swears by it.

Ben:  Exactly, so more than one way to skin the cold pool cat, so to speak.

Brock:  Yeah, you can't really swim in it, but you can soak in it really nicely.

Ben:  Right, exactly.  So the next on would be this concept of using a photobiomodulation, which is just my fancy way of saying shining light on.  Basically the idea is that you can get these lights.  For example, many of you have heard me talk about this company Joovv in which you purchase this light that causes formation of new capillaries and elevated production of collagen, the production of ATP, when you use it on your gonads, you can get increased testosterone production.  And what these lights do is they produce near-infrared and far-infrared light in the specific safe wavelength that induces a lot of these scientifically proven benefits.  We even see enhanced muscle recovery in some studies, speeding up wound healing, helping with infertility in men because when you shine it on your testes, you get increased activity with the leydig cells in the testes and increased sperm production.  So there's a lot of benefits to having these lights, and I have two in my office.  One in front of me and one behind me, and I'll often take off my shirt and shine it on my upper body.  Sometimes I will pull down my pants, and I'll have it shining on my gonads.  I don't know why I'm using that word versus just my junk.

Brock: Your nuts.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly.  But the idea is that it's simulating a lot of the same wavelengths of light that we could get from sun, and so the other thing that you could get is this thing called a Vielight, and that's based on the concept not of full body photobiomodulation like these Joovv lights, but its head photobiomodulation.  They make one that's called an Alpha, which is what I own and it creates a 10 hertz pulse, and it brings you into this Alpha brainwave zone, and what that does is it activated the default mode network to make you a little bit more logical, more analytical, allows you to process information more quickly.  As a complete aside, microdosing with psilocybin or LSD or any of these type of compounds or even going on a trip dose of psilocybin or LSD or DMT.  That completely deactivates the default mode network, and you get enhanced left-right brain hemisphere activity, better creativity, disillusion of your ego, etcetera.  This kind of does the opposite, right?  It actually enhances your default mode network, so you're more logical, more analytical.

Your ego explodes when you wear this thing, plus it looks like a giant space element and it has a little probe that goes into your nose.  Anyways though, so they sell one that's designed for 40 hertz which is the one that's been shown to clear protein deposits in the brain, so this would be like the model you'd use if you were concerned about your risk for Alzheimer's or Dementia or that something that was prevalent in your family history.  The Alpha is the one that I use, and I'll use that for focus.  I'll use it to increase nitric oxide production.  It actually works on what's called the Cytochrome P450 pathway in mitochondria in your brain, and so you get increased neural cell activity and those are two forms of photobiomodulation, the Vielight, and also the Joovv light.  But of course, there's also the idea that you can simply use sunlight, and it'll save yourself a whole bunch of money on a Joovv and a Vielight and just build a giant fence around your yard and sunbathe nude, and I hope your neighbor doesn't have a drone or a very high-storied window.

Brock:  Hope they do.

Ben:  Yeah, I hope they do.  Hey neighbor!  Anyways though, the idea is that sunlight can produce a lot of these same effects, especially if you expose a lot of skin to sunlight. I'm totally not kidding, you actually can and we see studies that go back as far as the 1940s, showing that men who expose their genitalia to sunlight do see increased testosterone production.  So getting out in the sun can be, obviously a free or relatively cheap alternative to the use of photobiomodulation, but it's not as targeted.  It's not a direct, near and far infrared exposure, it's not as close to your skin, etcetera.  So you don't see all of the benefits, but you do see many of the benefits by simply getting out of the sun.  If you can do that regularly, you could save some money on these neuro-infrared devices and spend your multi-thousand dollar pile of cash that you have socked away for biohacks on something else.

Okay, so next is the concept of infrared saunas which, for example, I did that just this morning.  So I spent about 30 to 40 minutes in the infrared sauna, anywhere from three to four times per week.  I use it quite a bit, it's what I do for detoxification, for increased red blood cell production.  We see an increase in heat-shock protein which improves your resilience to stress, specifically cellular stress.  There's a lot of benefits to these infrared saunas, but they can be expensive, right?  If you get one of these full, you know like I have the one called the Clear Light Sanctuary, which is big enough for four people or for one person doing yoga and lift dumbbells and doing elastic band exercises.  Like this morning, I actually had these Kaatsu, these blood flow restriction devices on my arms and my legs, and I was doing a push-up and squat workout in the sauna.  So I was doing like heat training and blood flow restriction training at the same time, which sounds like a funny video that our friend, JP Sears, might produce about stupid things that make them look silly, but we're already far, far down that road.

So the alternative would be, and I have a whole video on this that I'll link to in the show notes if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/386, and it is the idea that you get a Biomat which is about one-fifth to one-sixth of the price of Clear Light Sauna, so it's like a mat that produces infrared and heat, and you can actually just get these Mylar blankets, like the space age silvery blankets, and you can wrap those around your body.  Get them to the Biomat, you can work up an amazing sweat, like a whole detoxification sweat, granted you're just kind of lying there, staring half into space, maybe reading a book or listening to this podcast.  But ultimately the Biomat with a sauna suit or the bunch of these Mylar blankets can give you a less expensive version of a full-body sauna, and so that'd be another way that you can go when it comes to the sauna.

Brock:  And also smaller 'cause one of the biggest problems with those infrared saunas is I don't have room in my house.  I'd have to give up the kitchen to have the sauna.

Ben:  Right, you've got a very, very small footprint.  Okay, I've got a few others for you that are pretty interesting.  One would be I sleep on this device called a chilipad.  Now a chilipad is basically circulating cool water or hot water, depending on what I choose, underneath the mattress, or underneath the cover sheet while I'm sleeping.  I forget what the cover sheet is.  It's one that's a pain in the ass that I could never get on that you tried from one corner of the bed to the other, and then it falls off and you start over again, when you're trying to make your bed.  You know the sheet?

Brock:  Yeah, the think of the sheets.

Ben:  Yeah, the sheeted sheets.  So annoying, yeah.  Anyways though, so it goes underneath the fitted sheet, and my wife can set her temperature which she never does 'cause she doesn't really care, so she doesn't even ever use it.  But on my side, I've got that remote going every night.  I set it at 55 degrees, I sleep like a baby in this cold, cold environment which has been shown, by the way, in research to improve the percentage of deep sleep that you get.  Now let's say you are travelling or let's say you can't afford one of these chilipads underneath your mattress.  Well they also make cool mist humidifiers, I learned this trick from Tim Ferriss who would travel with it to allow him to breathe humidified air, to re-humidify the sinuses and stuff after travelling to keep the area right around his bed in the hotel room a little bit more cool, and I bought one of these, and it does indeed achieve that.  Like I'll be travelling to Tallinn, Estonia with a little cool mist humidifier in my bag because we're staying in a little Air BNB over there that doesn't have AC, and it's the middle of the summer, I'm not going to bring my chilipad.  So this cool mist humidifier, just fill it with a little water, you set it next to the bed, and it kind of generates a little bit of cold air around your body while you're asleep, and so that would be kind of like a less expensive, less bulky alternative to something like a chilipad.

Brock:  You could also just use a chili dog.

Ben:  Yes, you can.  You can, exactly.  Preferably if the sausage is filled with cheese wiz, that's the best version.  That used to be my favorite way to do a chili dog was I'd make a chili dog with a bun and the chili and the beans and everything, but then for your sausage, you use the one that's filled with cheese wiz, like the cheddar-filled.

Brock:  Yeah, you do know how to party.

Ben:  Dude, I know all the party tricks.  Trust me, I grew up on these things.  Okay, the next one would be pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, or what is known as PEMF. Now this has been studied for everything from reducing cellular inflammation to improving healing of bone fractures and stress fractures to decreasing symptoms of TBI and concussion, healing neural tissue more quickly, enhancing sleep when placed in like more of a delta wave mode.  It just gives you a lot of the benefits of grounding or earthing, but it's almost like a more targeted delivery of that, and what I own is this giant unit.  Not to overuse this fray, but it's like the Cadillac of PEMF units, you know?

Brock:  But it's the Tesla.

Ben:  Yeah, Tesla.  It's got coils, it's got pads, it's got rings and it’s got a giant table.  When I have a massage once a week, I'll literally lay on this and the massage therapist will work on me while I'm blasting my body with PEMF, it is probably one of the most potent healing tools I own because any injury, you can simply blast with that thing and it almost melts away.  It's pretty crazy, and you can also just lay on it, you know?  Before you go to bed, you can use it.  You can take a supplement and then place like the head pad next to your head, and you can feel like a nootropic or a brain-enhancing supplement hitting you more quickly.  It's got all sorts of extremely cool benefits, but it's expensive.  You know, we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars to own one of these pulse center's units.  Although you can rent them, you can go to facilities that allow you to try them out.  I'll put a link in the show notes to their website where you can just go hunt one down in your area.  Just go lay it out and try it out for free, just like visiting a mattress store.

Brock:  It's surprising too, like I've used some of the small ones like the Earth Pulse and things like that, and you don't feel it.  Like there's nothing, you just start to disgruntle.

Ben:  Sometimes you fee a slight pulse.

Brock:  Those pulse center ones.

Ben:  Yeah, I mean this is like chung, chung, chung.

Brock:  Yeah, you actually.  Your whole body, if you turned it up, your whole body pulses with it.  It's quick surprising.

Ben:  Yeah, I had one of their trainers, Emilio, to my house a few weeks ago to train me on it, and I mean you can activate the thyroid gland and the gonads, and you can use it the same way as you'd use that GainsWave sexual performance enhancement.  You can use it for that, you can use it to enhance stem cell production if you place the pads on the long bones of the femur is where you produce a lot of the marrow, all sorts of benefits from it.  But again, expensive.

Brock:  I used it to erase my iPhone.

Ben:  Yes, you could use any metal object or digital device that you placed near it.  It gets its battery drained extremely quickly, so you got to be careful with that.  Anyways though, there's a device that's relatively versatile that I travel that can produce a three-hertz, a ten-hertz, a hundred-hertz or a thousand-hertz signal, so it could be used for sleep, for focus, for injuries, etcetera.  Not quite as potent or as powerful, but I've especially found for this device when I place it in three-hertz mode and kind of put it on the back of my head near my occipital bone, and Dr. Mercola taught me this trick.  It really helps you go to sleep or fall back asleep when you wake up, and again, it can be used on injuries as well.  This one's called the FlexPulse.  I did an interview with the guy who designed it, Dr. William Pollock, several months ago, but it's called a Flex Pulse.

Brock:  That was a good one.

Ben:  Yeah, it's very similar to like the Earth Pulse, which I've also talked about, but it's almost more portable, smaller, a little bit more user-friendly, and that would be like an alternative, more of a budget alternative to something like this pulse center's device.  So that would be another one, and then I'll go over for two more.  One would be molecular hydrogen.

Now drinking hydrogen-rich water has been shown to reduce oxidative stress to improve what's called redox homeostasis which increases your levels of glutathione and super oxide and dismutates and a lot of these endogenous antioxidants without, by the way, blunting the hormetic response to exercise which means that unlike many other antioxidant that you could take, like Vitamin-C or Vitamin-E that would shut down the normal satellite cell response to exercise, this doesn't do it.  So you can shut down inflammation post-exercise and fight oxidation without necessarily blunting the hormetic response to exercise with the use of this molecular hydrogen.  A ton of research, especially out of Japan on this stuff.  It can have an anti-inflammatory effect, anti-allergy effect.  My wife drinks a glass if she has a headache and it goes away.  It has anti-apoptotic protective effects, meaning that it can basically simulate in many cases or enhance the effects of fasting and cellular autophagy.  I did a very thorough podcast about molecular hydrogen with a guy, honestly he is unbiased.  He doesn't sell the stuff, but he does a lot of research on it, specifically in Japan, Tyler Lebaron.

Brock:  Yeah, it's been in Japan for a while.  We're really slow in North America on this one.

Ben:  Yeah, slow in the uptake, baby, but anyways, it's good stuff.  By the way, I'm going to speak in Japan in September.  I briefly mentioned that earlier.

Brock:  Oh where?

Ben:  Tokyo, and once I've got the exact location nailed down and everything, I'll let you guys know, but it will be in Japan in September.  So there you have it, and then the last one I was going to mention was this idea of repairing DNA and enhancing your own production of reactive oxygen species for healing.  So some reactive oxygen species produce signals that can be damaging to the cell, some produce more healthy signals, and they'll be used for repair and recovery.  And there's this device called the NanoVi, and I have one right here on my right side, next to my side, next to my desk, and it allows you to breathe air that has been infused with this same frequency that reactive oxygen species, the good reactive oxygen species in your body would contain, and the idea is that it'll repair cell damage and it would repair DNA damage, and I'll put a link in the show notes to a podcast that I did with these folks on the NanoVi technology, but if you wanted something that would still be like air that you breathe that is good for you that would still induce a little bit of a longevity effect, one of my favorite tricks is just do an essential oil air diffuser and put a little bit of rosemary in there.

Like rosemary essential oil which is fantastic for cognition, but rosemary itself.  You know rosmarinic acid can have a pretty good effect on DNA repair, on sirtuin production, on stem cell production.  There's a lot of interesting studies on rosmarinic acid.  There's even that island in Italy.  No it's not an island, it's a town.  It's a little village that has a specific form of rosemary that like 10 times more powerful than any other form of rosemary, and they attribute a great deal of these folks' longevity to the fact that they consume a lot of this rosemary in their beverages and in their teas and on their meats, etcetera.  So it’s rosmarinic acid, but you can get rosemary essential oil, and you can just diffuse it and still have something that you're breathing while you're working during the day that's assisting your body and making it better.

So those would be some of the biggies, some of the biggies as far as biohacks you could have hanging around the house.  Now I realize it's a lot of stuff, I'll try to be as thorough as possible and put links to both the main biohacks as well as some of the less expensive alternatives in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/386.  But I believe we have sufficiently emptied Ian's wallet with our reply to this question, Brock.

Brock:  I would say so.

Joshua:  Ben, my question is about all of the experimenting you've done on your penis. I have not been sexually active for maybe six years or so, I'm getting married here in a few months and interested in possibly doing one of those experiments you've done to have better sexual performance.  So I know all three of those are costly, I thought maybe you had a suggestion as far as which one give you the best bang-for-your-buck, no pun intended.  So yeah, I guess which one, maybe not only works 'cause it sounds like all of them work, but maybe which one lasts the longest or which one you thought was the best?  And like you, I don't think I have any problems, but a heightened performance is always a good thing, so I would love your input.  Thanks so much.

Ben:  Now Joshua, before we proceed, please use caution, you don't want to get married to this new girl and have her walk in now, doing your penis weightlifting with your penis magnets and your penis light and maybe your little penis sound wave generator.  You want to be careful, you want to kind of ease her into the idea that she's just married a man who is obsessed with biohacking his penis.  I would ease yourself into this.

Brock:  Don't send the wrong message right off the bat.

Ben:  Yeah, I've been married for fourteen years myself, and it wasn't until about twelve years in that I began biohacking my penis, you know?  I had to wait about a dozen years for my wife to feel.

Brock:  Well openly biohacking?

Ben:  No, I just didn't really do any biohacking at all.  You know what I did use though was, for a while, I used that Private Gym.  They sponsored the podcast for a little while, and so the Private Gym really was this little magnet that you attach to your dick, and then you do weightlifting with it.  Go get an erection, and it's similar to the old school, wet towel technique where you do weightlifting with an erection with an increasingly larger wet towel, starting with just a dry, small wash cloth or a napkin and then eventually progressing to a giant bath towel soaked in water.

Brock:  A duvet.

Ben:  Yeah, it's very similar to our friend who's been on this podcast before who does vaginal weightlifting with kettlebells and coconuts.  What's her name, do you recall?  I forget her name, she's got like the vagina and however you say it.  The vagina training salon, I don't know.  Look it up while I'm taking to Joshua.  Yeah, just do a google search for a women who lifts kettlebells with her vagina.

Brock:  It is Kim Onami.

Ben:  Yes, it is, and delete your history after you do that on your browser.  Anyways though, so the idea, Joshua, is that I would give you a few different levels for biohacking your dick that I found to be pretty effective.  One I've already talked about, this would be level one.  It's going to set you back a few hundred bucks, but it would be the use of photobiomodulation 'cause I've done a lot of stuff.  You can go read the January 2018 edition of Men's Health Magazine which I'll link to in the show notes.  You could go snag that off of Amazon 'cause I talk about this three-month journey that they sent me on for biohacking one's genitalia and found out a whole bunch of stuff.  But grab that magazine, its one Marky Mark on the cover.  I didn't make the cover unfortunately, just this short little dude, short little dick made the cover appropriately enough.  So anyways though, I digress and I hope Marky Mark isn't listening.

The Joovv photobiomodulation light, okay?  So that would be the first way, and of course, you could do nude sunbathing, but I found that for size, for vascularity, for testosterone production, for sperm production to really move the dial, so that'll be one.  Level two, and I got some really, really good results with this.  This would be this company GainsWave.  They've got like 80 different clinics spread around the U.S., you walk in there, they smear numbing cream or you smear numbing cream all over your crotch, and then they blast you with these high-intensity acoustic sound waves for about 20 minutes.  And the idea is that for about the next month, you get really good erections and really good sexual performance and very long orgasms, and it's something that you would repeat like every one to two months in theory.  I've done it maybe five times in my life, so I don't do it every one to two months, but you can totally do it as frequently as you wanted to and guys with erectile dysfunction or Peyronie's disease or something like that, they'll do it more frequently.  But ultimately, that would be kind of like level two.

Now level three would be something that I've found to move the dial for me more than anything else.  For me since I've done this, not only is it morning wood every single morning without fail.  It increased the length of my orgasm from I would say about eight to ten seconds to almost a minute.  Literally, I just go and go and go, and it's amazing. And that would be the sexual optimization treatment that I did down at the Docere Clinic in Park City, Utah, in which they actually used stem cells, and they mixed these with exosomes, and they did platelet-rich plasma injections.  So I got injected on the right and the left side of my penis, in the area called the corpus cavernosum and then up by the head of the penis.

So three different injections with PRP, exosomes and stem cells, and this compared to anything else that I've done, not only does it last for months or months or theoretically forever, based on the stem cell theory of aging that as you age, you lose stem cells, and so you're essentially replacing your body's available sources of stem cells, but it in terms of the host of benefits that I've gotten out of it.  It's pretty staggering, and I was under sedation when I got this one, but it's either sedation or numbing cream when you get it.  I even have a video, a safe for work video because things are blurred out, etcetera, of the entire sexual and cosmetic enhancement surgery that I underwent because they inject it.  It was Dr. Amy Killen in Park City, they injected my face, my hairline, my penis, and they also of course did with stem cells the entire musculoskeletal frame.  I have a big podcast interview that I did with them that I'll release soon, in which I go into deep detail about what they did, but ultimately, that exosomes plus the PRP injection, that would be like level three.  That was the biggest, best thing that I've ever done to enhance sexual performance, so that's the one I would say.

Brock:  And that one, that's pretty expensive although I guess you did the full.

Ben:  So the full meal deal, yeah, the full meal deal is like 30,000 dollars to do the `full body stem cell makeover, to do just the sexual and cosmetic enhancement I think is closer to make like somewhere between four and eight K, so if Ian is still listening and has any money left, there you go Ian, we just drained the last little bit of your change.

Now of course, there are things that I think would move the dial.  A lot of these guys looking for these biohacks, but there's little things that are missing.  Like some of the little things, I notice, are missing over and over again, and guys who I do consults with. We look at their micro-nutrient analysis with their blood work, or we look at their supplementation protocol or we'd even look at their sexual practices and their sexual knowledge.  There are a few things that I would definitely recommend that you also look into, so for example, zinc.  Zinc is a very common deficiency in men, and a deficiency of zinc can drastically affect libido and sexual performance.  Now for a while, I would recommend just zinc extract or a zinc capsule or something like that or a good multivitamin with zinc and frequent consumption, or shellfish is really good for zinc. But recently I was on that Joe Rogen podcast, and we brought up black ant extract and a lot of people have been asking me about this black ant extract which is really good pre-workout, pre-sex, pre-endurance, but it also has 10 times more zinc than oysters which makes it a very, very good source for men who want to increase zinc to increase their sexual performance, so that would be one.

Another one would be Vitamin-D, you always want to take it along with Vitamin-K, that it's bioavailable and doesn't increase your risk for arterial calcification, but Vitamin-D along with Vitamin-K is another one that works very well and tends to be deficient in a lot of men who have sexual issues or who want to enhance their libido.  Creatine is another, creatine has a host of benefits for staving off muscle loss as you age, it’s a known nootropic.  I simply take five grams per day.  Your actual absorption of creatine at any given point is only one-and-a-half to two grams, so you have to split that in about two to three kind of daily doses of creatine.  I used to take all five grams at once, and I learned actually from that guy I mentioned earlier, Tyler Lebaron, the guy who runs the molecular hydrogen foundation about the fact that you actually have to split your dosages up with creatine.  And so I like Thorne, for example.  They have a really good bioavailable form of creatine called Creapure, and about five grams of creatine per day.

Nitric oxide, a lot of guys, based on their lifestyle, are deficient in nitric oxide, right?  Not enough sunlight, not enough good water, surrounded by WiFi and Bluetooth production which affects nitric oxide production, a whole bunch of issues, and one of the best ways to increase your nitric oxide production is just getting out and getting frequent sunlight exposure.  You know these infrared devices, I've kicked that horse to death on this podcast already, but like the Joovv, the Vielight that I talked about, all of that can work too, but some kind of sunlight exposure, frequently, regularly for guys, that's another really important one.

The last thing I'd mention, and by the way over on the show notes, I'll link to all the different articles that I've written on hacking or increasing your testosterone production, the last one will probably be one of the better books I've read on libido, and that would be the book “The Multi-Orgasmic Man” and it has instructions for stimulating your prostate through your perineum, for lengthening the penis, for controlling the mind-body energy during sex, for reverse orgasms, probably in terms of like a good handbook for sex.  You know I'll definitely give that one to my boys when they're at an appropriate age for it, to teach them a little bit more about controlling their rate of arousal and becoming pretty intimately aware with their anatomy.  It would be the “The Multi-Orgasmic Man”.  That one's written by Mantak Chia.  It's one of the better books on sex that I've read, especially for men.  So cover some of those basics, like zinc and Vitamin-D and creatine and nitric oxide and a healthy relationship with your sexual self before you go spend a bunch of money on having somebody inject stem cells into your dick.  But ultimately, those are some of the things that have worked pretty well for me.

Brock:  Now I want to remind Joshua that it's not just about him and his parts too, like if you want to be really good in the sack, so to speak, you've got to focus on your partner, right?  Just having a whole bunch of testosterone and a manner on a huge erection and all that kind of stuff is fun for us, but if you really want to please your married one, you got to concentrate on them.  So finding some books and resources on that, and one of the things I stumbled across in my adventures was a thing called orgasmic meditation or OM, and there's a company called OneTaste that does this.  You can go in by yourself, but you can also do it in couples which I would encourage you to do if you're about to get married, where you can actually learn stroking techniques and just the meditation aspects and the togetherness aspects of orgasm and that kind of stuff.  I think that would go a long way for Joshua.

Ben:  Yeah, I've heard of OneTaste before.  They're really good, and ultimately, teach your wife how to lift coconuts and kettlebells with her vagina, and that way, she'll be able to keep up with you.

Brock:  And then you can both join the sexual Olympics.

Thomas:  Hey, Ben, this is Thomas calling from the boonies of Louisiana.  I was just wondering as biohackers, why aren't we taking advantage of the higher absorption rate of suppositories?  I'd much rather stick something up my butt than swallow dozens of pills every day.  Maybe that's just me.  Plus there's the DIY factor, thanks.

Ben:  You know, he might be asking this question because I've talked before about what I call “grass for your ass”.  Have you heard about that?

Brock:  No.

Ben:  Yeah, actually there's this company called Forea that sells medicated weed tampons for women, and I heard about this, and I thought well if you can absorb cannabis through your vagina, you can probably absorb it with your butt hole too.

Brock:  Oh there are heroin suppositories, so people get super high off those.

Ben:  Absolutely, so I bought this 10 milligram THC capsules.  Now when you eat cannabis, the digestive enzyme will transform the THC into what's called the 11-THC-Hydroxy, which is a pretty potent psychedelic metabolite, and when you eat an edible, only about four to twelve percent of the THC gets into your bloodstream.  When you smoke, it's a little bit higher than that, about 10 to 35 percent, but they've actually done studies on THC via rectal ingestion, and they found it to be very close to what you'd get when you say smoke a joint, but what I found via personal experimentation is that the high stay relatively localized to your crotch.  Meaning that pre-sex or anytime you would like to direct the high to your crotch regions, THC delivered via any of these coconut oil capsules that can be used in a very similar way as a suppository, tend to be pretty efficacious.  So if there's anything that you've learned from this podcast is to shove weed up your ass.  However, joking aside.

Brock:  Don't do that.

Ben:  Yeah, suppositories can be a pretty effective delivery and less uncomfortable than you'd think if you haven't used them before.  So rectal suppositories, those would of course go in your rectum.  They tend to have this bullet-shaped tip where you could use a capsule, for example.  Like a THC capsule is mixed in coconut oil, and they'll use those to treat everything from allergies to anxiety to asthma, and there's a lot of drugs that you would not believe comes as suppositories.  For example, Valium, you know the benzodiazepine that I don't necessarily recommend because it calms brain activity, and it brings you into state of sleep.  You don't actually enter deep sleep, however that medication is available as a highly efficacious rectal suppository.  Muse, which is used for erectile dysfunction.  You know, you've heard of Viagra, you've heard of Cialis and these other treatments that we just talked about, but Muse is basically a suppository that is not erectile suppository.  Do you know where you insert the applicator for Muse?

Brock:  Your nose?

Ben:  No, your urethra.

Brock:  Oh, that actually makes more sense.

Ben:  You put it into your pee hole, it has a little button at the top to release a pellet, and you get an erection about five to ten minutes.  It's called Muse.

Brock:  I was thinking of the wrong protrusion on the body.

Ben:  Yeah, Muse.  Ask your doctor, ask your doctor, folks.  For example, there might be one for Joshua to ask his doctor about a urethral suppository which just sounds incredibly uncomfortable.  I have yet to actually do any form of drug delivery through my urethra, should anyone be wondering.  There's another one called phenergan that's found in cold or allergy medications.  They sell that as erectile suppository.  Oxymorphone, or morphine, taken orally, morphine can upset the stomach, and so a lot of times doctors will give it to patients as a rectal suppository.  Then of course, antibiotics, like urethromorysin or urethromyasin.  They'll give that as a suppository as well, so there's a lot of drugs that are already delivered as suppositories due to the fact that the rectum can be an incredibly blood vessel-rich and a very efficacious way to get absorption of a whole host of different nutrients and vitamins and minerals.  There's a company called Doctor Vitamin's Solutions, I think its doctorvitaminssolutions.com.  They actually sell a whole host of suppositories.  They sell glutathione, they sell DMSA chelation, they sell multivitamins, a ton of stuff that you can order as a vitamin suppository, and if you don't like to swallow pills, but for some reason, are far more comfortable just sticking them up your butt, that might be a website for you to go surf.

Now probably the suppository that I actually own and use quite a bit, because I'm into coffee enemas for glutathione production and bioproduction and enhanced peristalsis in the GI tract and the dump of antioxidant that it gives you, pun intended 'cause you do have a pretty big dump after would be glytamins, G-L-Y-T-A-M-I-N-S.  Glytamins, and this is like a coffee enema in a suppository form, so if you want to continue that health practice, if it's something that you do, you can use these glytamins when you're, for example, travelling, and you just stick them up your butt when you wake up in the morning or after you've had a bowel movement is even better because then you can just keep it in, and it'll continue to work its magic much of the day.  It's called a glytamin, so I'll link to that one in the show notes.

But ultimately, Thomas, to answer your question, you ask as biohackers, why aren't we taking advantage of the higher absorption rate of suppositories.  Well I am, I don't know why others aren't.  Maybe they're just clinched and constipated and they need to open themselves up the wonderful world of rectal suppositories, vaginal suppositories, and of course our favorite, urethral suppositories.  Now that might seem like a lot to swallow, or I suppose in this case, a lot to put up your butt, but if you're a health coach or you're a personal trainer or you're a nutritionist or you're a doctor or a chiropractic physician or anyone else who kind of fits that bill of a health professional, I've got a lot more for you to swallow when it comes to feeding through the fires of information that I put out because we just launch Kion University.

Kion U, it's called, and what we've done is we've taken over two decades of the information that I've put out on this podcast, the information I've written about in this book, and we have developed it into a curriculum, into an actual certification that you can get, the Kion U certification in which you go through monthly webinars with me. You have tests, you have a whole curriculum that is made available to you.  We begin to send you clients your way through Kion.  You get the certification that you can display on your website.  We just launched that coaching program, and although this podcast is getting a little long in the tooth, and speak of the devil, Brock and I, right after we record this podcast are off to do a webinar for all of the people.

Brock:  In eleven minutes.

Ben:  Kind of becoming part of the graduating class, the first graduating class of Kion U.  Just go to getkion.com/coach.  That's getK-I-O-N.com/coach, and what you'll find there is an application where you can apply.  This is only for people who are currently fitness professionals and hold some kind of a certification or people who are in M.D. or N.D. or a chiro or a physical therapist.  You need to have a somewhat existing base foundation of knowledge to get in, but if you feel like it's for you and you want to apply and you want to become recognized as one of the top fitness and wellness experts on the face of the planet, then check out Kion U over at getkion.com/coach.  And that all being said, first everything that we talked about is going to be over at bengreenfiedfitness.com/386, and second, shall we give something away, Brock?

Brock:  Yes, let's do it, quickly 'cause we've got to go.

Ben:  Alright, so if you leave this podcast review, and you hear your review read on the show, then we will send you a handy dandy Ben Greenfield Fitness gear pack with a wonderful tech t-shirt that makes you look amazing, makes your muscles pop.  You never need to work out when you wear this t-shirt, a BPA-free water bottle that's completely guilt-free when you drink your seven thousand-dollar molecular-rich hydrogenated water, and finally a beanie, or as Brock would call it, a toque.  If we read your review on the show, all you need to do is email [email protected].  That's [email protected] with your t-shirt size, and we'll send your gear right off to you, and today's review is read by Me Think Orange.  He gives us five stars.  He titles his review “Minds Will Be Blown”.  Brock, you want to take this one away?

Brock:  Yes, and since you're incapable of speeding up, I'm going to as fast as I can.  “I used to hate podcasts, and I realized they needed to find the right one.  Ben has made his layout cohesive even with some of the added shenanigans.  This podcast is very informative and never boring, I enjoyed Ben's thoughts and opinions and also those of the rag tag group of people that he interviews and picks their brains.  Even though a lot of the topics and information are above my thought process and pay great, they still give me something to aim for.  Not to mention, they tickle my brain.  Keep it up, keep it rocking, thumbs-up, devil's-horns and devil’s-horns.”

Ben:  Yeah, a lot of emojis.  Well we appreciate the review, Me Think Orange.

Brock:  You know I read it emotionlessly.

Ben:  You did, you read that like a robot.  Yeah, exactly.  You really made leaving reviews exciting for people, Brock.  Thank you for doing that.

Brock:  If you want your review read by me in a very boring voice, submit now.

Ben:  I'm going to re-title this episode, “The Brain Tickler”.  That would be a good title for a podcast episode, “The Brain Tickling Podcast”.  Yeah, check it out, or actually in this case for this particular episode, we should probably call it “The Penis Tickling Episode”.

Brock:  Probably.

Ben:  So yeah, so thank you for listening for “The Penis Tickling Podcast”, and all the show notes will be over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/386.  Plenty there because of all this biohacks we talked about.  Like I mentioned, Brock and I are off to teach a Kion U webinar in just a few minutes, so we're going to have to rumble, but thanks for listening in.  Leave your comments, your thoughts and your feedback over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/386, and have an amazing week.

 

 

June 14, 2018 podcast: 386 – The Best Biohacks For Longevity, The Best Biohacks for Libido, and Suppository vs. Vitamins.

Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right (or go to SpeakPipe), use the Contact button on the app, or click the contact link in the footer..

News Flashes [00:03:55]

• Looks like morning fasted sprints can really enhance endurance!
• Want to HIIT it, but Hate Sprinting? 4-Minute-HIIT-Workout using Burpees, Mountain Climbers, Squats + Thrusts w/ 3-kg Dumbbells, and Jumping Jacks Works Almost as Well.
• Appears my favorite form of working out – HIIT combined with resistance training – is just fine for muscular hypertrophy and strength.
• Best article on the psychology of the UFC, boxing and fighting I’ve read (in this news flash, I mention my interview with Tony from Box n' Burn)
• I’m pretty sure this means you should have sex to fight obesity.

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Ben's Adventures:

-NEW! Click here for the official BenGreenfieldFitness calendar.

– June 15 – 17, 2018: Revitalize Conference, Marana, Arizona. Each year, #mbgrevitalize gathers the world's most knowledgeable experts and influential thought leaders for discussions on the future of wellness for you. Join me and dozens of other inspiring leaders in the vibrant Sonoran Desert, the perfect home to revitalize. From spiritual sunrises to star-filled evening skies, this is a special place which will touch your soul. I will lead a nature hike during the conference on Sunday, June 17. Register today!

– June 23, 2018: Boise Sprint, Thomas Pence Ranch, Payette, Idaho. Don't let the beautiful scenery of Idaho fool you, this 3+ mile sprint will prove to be a formidable task for even the most seasoned Spartans. Register today and I will see you there!

– June 28 – July 22, 2018: Mind Valley U, Tallinn, Estonia. Mindvalley U is a month-long transformational event that is designed to create a university style education model for all ages. This will be one of those things you look back on and say: it changed my life. Mind Valley U will be held in Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn, Estonia has one of the highest number of startups per capita and is one of the most cutting-edge tech nations in the world. Sign up, join me, and transform your life!

– July 19, 2018: Ancestral Health Symposium, Bozeman, Montana. “AHS” is a scientific conference which provides a forum so that learning and qualified discussion on all areas of human health can take place. Most noteworthy, at this conference you will go beyond diet and learn about the latest research across a wide range of topics, all united by an evolutionary perspective. speakers present on topics including diet, movement, sleep, stress, epigenetics, and more. Join me this summer! 

– August 17 – 19, 2018: Colorado Rockies Ultra Beast and Sprint Weekend, Breckenridge, Colorado. The mountain is calling! This is an extra-special Spartan race. Team members from my company, Kion, and I are competing together in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. Experience the immense beauty of Colorado while conquering climbs, crawls, carries and traverses. See you there!

– October 5-7, 2018: SPARK BioHacking Conference, Toronto, Ontario. The 2018 SPARK Bio-Hack Conference features a series of talks by leaders across a range of fields with an eye on optimizing human performance, recovery, and longevity. Researchers, medical specialists and other biohacking experts will share provocative, informative, and inspiring presentations meant to invigorate your curiosity about health and amplify your life journey. Registration is now open, secure your spot here.

– October 11 – 14, 2018: 2018 RUNGA California Immersion Retreat. Runga is going to Napa! Join me, my wife, Jessa, Joe DiStefano and a small, intimate group of like-minded individuals for a weekend-long getaway. We’ve rented a beautiful mansion located in one of the most iconic countrysides in America– Napa Valley. We’ve thought of everything that you could possibly need to gently “press the reboot button” on your body and completely tune in to your heart, mind, body, strength, and spirit. Join the waitlist!

– December 2-8, 2018: RUNGA Retreat, Dominican Republic. You're invited to join me at RUNGA in December 2018. Join me in the Dominican Republic, one of the most beautiful places in the Caribbean, for this retreat. In all RUNGA activities, RUNGA invites you to come home to yourself. To see everything you'll be getting into, just click here. Use code BEN when you register so you get your gift when you arrive! I'll be there, too. Join the waitlist here.

– June 23 – July 7, 2019: Restorative Detox Retreat with Robyn Openshaw Join us for an immersive experience including total liver detox, and rest and relaxation at the beautiful Paracelsus Clinic al Ronc in the Italian quarter of Switzerland. You will stay on-site and receive diagnostics and treatments from the best doctors of biological medicine to detox your liver and your soul. Plus you’re going to have a wonderful time hiking, sightseeing and enjoying one of the most beautiful places in the world. Get all the info to sign up here!

-View the Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Calendar Here

Giveaways & Goodies [01:27:00]

-Click here to get your own GreenfieldFitnessSystems.com gift pack, handpicked by Ben and chock full of $300 worth of biohacks, supplements, books and more. All at 50% discount!

-Grab your Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Gear package that comes with a tech shirt, a beanie and a water bottle.

-And of course, this week's top iTunes review – gets some BG Fitness swag straight from Ben – click here to leave your review for a chance to win some!

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Listener Q&A

As compiled, deciphered, edited and sometimes read by Brock Armstrong, the Podcast Sidekick.

The Best Biohacks For Longevity [00:38:29]

Ian says:  I am wondering where a good place to start would be when I start purchasing some biohacking devices for longevity. I only have a few thousand dollars kicking around that I want to invest in these devices so if you could point me in the right direction of where to start, I would appreciate it. I am looking forward to purchasing some of your Kion Coffee.

In my response, I recommend:

-Ancestral Living vs. Modern Biohacking presentation at this year's AHS (see calendar above!)
–Neubie – alternative: Compex or MarcPro
–PowerPlate vibration platform – alternative: mini-trampoline rebounder
–Cold pool – alternative: Luke Storey's freezer hack
–NanoVi – alternative: essential oil air diffuser with rosemary
–LiveO2 – alternative: TrainingMask – (use code GREEN1 for 20% discount)
–JOOVV – alternative: a good fence in your backyard for sun bathing
–Vielight – alternative: RadioLab 9 volt battery episode
–Infrared Sauna – alternative: a sauna suit + a Biomat
-PEMF – PulseCenters – alternative: FlexPulse
–Chilipad – alternative: cool mist humidifier
–Wellness and Water – alternative: Water and Wellness

The Best Biohacks For Libido [01:06:17]

Joshua says:  Question about all the experimenting you have done on your penis. I have not been sexually active for about six years and am getting married in a few months. I am interested in doing one of the experiments that you have done to have better sexual performance. I know they are costly, so do you have a suggestion as to which one gives you the best “bang for your buck” – no pun intended. I don't think I have any problems, I am just looking for heightened performance.

In my response, I recommend:

-Level 1: JOOVV
-Level 2: GainsWAVE
-Level 3: Exosomes + PRP (the video of Part II of my surgery with Dr. Amy Killan)

BUT first address the following:

-Zinc (recommend black ant extract)
-Vitamin D (recommend Thorne D/K)
–Creatine
-Nitric oxide (recommended photobiomodulation with sunlight/JOOVV/Vielight)
–Multiorgasmic Male book

My testosterone articles on how to biohack testosterone:

–Could Lance Armstrong Have Increased His Testosterone Levels Without Cheating?
–How Testosterone & Hormone Injections Work (Along With Growth Hormone, Peptides, SARMs, PRP & Much More!)
–Biohacking Your Manhood: The Proven Habits, Foods, Exercises, Workouts, Nutrients & Tools That Boost Testosterone & Drive.
–How Low Testosterone Can Destroy Your Heart And What You Can Do About It.
–The Ultimate Guide To Biohacking Your Testosterone: 17 Ways To Maximize Muscle-Building, Drive & Anti-Aging.
–Doubling Your Testosterone Levels, Tactics From The World Of Speed Golf, Primal Endurance & More With Brad Kearns!
–#312: How To Increase Testosterone And Decrease Estrogen, Meditation To Replace Sleep, The New Gluten Study And More!
–2018 January Men's Health magazine
–OneTaste

Suppository vs. Vitamins [00:00:00]

Thomas says:  As biohackers, why aren't we taking advantage of the higher absorption rate of suppositories? I would rather stick something up my butt than swallow dozens of pills every day. Maybe that is just me? Plus there is the DIY factor.

In my response, I recommend:
–Glytamins