Episode#371 – Full Transcript

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Podcast from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2017/07/371-why-you-get-constipated-what-to-do-about-it-the-truth-about-metformin-geeking-out-on-green-tea-more/

[00:00] Introduction

[05:49] News Flashes/Metformin And Anti-Aging

[16:19] The Benefits Of Green Tea

[24:39] Running And Hardened Arteries

[30:25] Photobiomodulation

[38:54] Kimera Koffee/Organifi Red Juice

[44:14] Ben's Calendar For Events

[47:56] Listener Q&A/Constipation And What To Do About It

[1:06:58] How To Get By On Less Sleep

[1:21:40] How To Use SARMs MK-677 and RAD-140

[1:32:20] Wim Hof vs. Buteyko

[1:39:35] Review of the Show/Giveaway

[1:43:36] End of Podcast

Introduction:  In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:  Why You Get Constipated And What To Do About It, The Truth About Metformin, Geeking Out On Green Tea, How To Get By On Less Sleep, How To Use SARMs, and much more.

Ben:  Hey, Brock!  I'm reverse aging as we're talking.

Brock:  Ooh, you doing some Benjamin Button action?

Ben:  Mhmm.  Yeah.  Got a little Benjamin Button actually going on.  Specifically what I have going on is this giant mug of tea when it was handed to me by Chef David Bouley when I was in New York last week.  He informed me it was called Longevity Tea.  He got it in Okinawa.  It's called Longevity Tea.  It's apparently kind of like a cousin of matcha tea, matcha green tea.  I believe it may also be related, have you ever heard of Gynostemma?

Brock:  I have not.

Ben:  Not to be confused with man boobs, which is gynecomastia…

Brock:  That's awfully similar.

Ben:  Yeah.  Gynostemma, it's a green leafy herb consumed through Asia to promote health, and it's like this dark green tea, but it tastes like matcha, but I think it has some of the same bioactive components in it as this Gynostemma, which maybe one of these fringe Okinawa longevity secrets that decreases the rate at which their telomeres shorten.  Specifically I think it's an adaptogen I think is how it actually works.  Regardless, this stuff tastes amazing.  And I've been putting a little bit of butterscotch flavored stevia into it, and then I have this temperature, like the thing that you would stick into a turkey to measure of how well your turkey is or is not done.

Brock:  A thermometer?

Ben:  Yes!  A meat thermometer.  I stick a meat thermometer into the little pot of water.  And based on the instructions that I was very carefully given when I was handed this longevity tea, I do not pour the water into the tea until the water is about 160 degrees Fahrenheit.  And so I make this tea and I've been drinking that instead of coffee in the morning just to see what happens if I drink green tea instead of coffee, and I've been doing that for about two weeks.  I haven't had any coffee in two weeks.

Brock:  Yikes!

Ben:  Just been drinking green tea.

Brock:  Weird.  I've upped my green tea intake as well, and my matcha intake, but unfortunately it's been in the form of ice cream.

Ben:  Ah, yes!  Matcha ice cream.

Brock:  Have you had that?  It's so good.

Ben:  Is that a Ben And Jerry's?

Brock:  No.  I don't think.

Ben:  I'm pretty sure that the Ben And Jerry's Chunky Okinawan Monkey is the new flavor that they've developed.

Brock:  I'll go look for that.

Ben:  Yeah.  It's a longevity monkey.  Anyways though, we digress.  We've got plenty of research to go into, including research on green tea.  We have a ton to talk about on this podcast episode.  But before we jump into the news flashes, and I've got some good ones for you, I have to get something off of my mind and it has nothing to do with green tea.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  I have never in my life run a Kickstarter campaign, but we are in the throes, so to speak, of a Kickstarter campaign at the time that we're recording this podcast.  So any of you listening in, and by the way, every pagan/devil worshipper/anyone who's not into Christianity or God is going to run for the hills when I say this.

Brock:  Yeah.  Including me.  I'm an atheist, so I have trouble with this.

Ben:  Yes.  Exactly.  Brock's an atheist.  Now hear me out here.  The power of gratitude across all religions and all people cannot be denied.  It is enormously helpful when it comes to decreasing blood pressure, improving longevity, even without copious consumption of green tea, improving happiness, improving purpose, meaning, everything.  And I have designed a gratitude journal, we have a Kickstarter page going for, it is a Christian gratitude journal.  And what I mean by that is that there are Bible verses at the top of each page because I read the Bible a lot, I pick some of my most inspirational verses, and I put them on each page.  However, you don't have to be a Christian to use it.  And you can support the Kickstarter if you go to christiangratitude.com.  There.  I got that off my back.  And now we can move forward.  I'm grateful for any of you.  No, seriously.  Not to be too woo-woo, but I'm grateful, or cheesy, I'm grateful to any of you who can go over there and contribute to the campaign and get on it.  Alright, let's do this.

News Flashes:

Brock:  Head over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/371 to find the links to all of these awesome things, if you happen to miss them on Twitter, and Facebook, and Instagram, and all those other wacky places.   Are you still Snapchatting?

Ben:  I Snapchat every day, dude.  I Snapchat anything embarrassing everyday.  Primarily what I do, I read for about an hour every night.  I lay in bed and I read.  I have a very boring life, obviously.  But anyways, I live life by the idea that not a whole lot of productive activity happens after about 9 PM aside from making love and writing in my gratitude journal.  So I read and…

Brock:  At the same time?

Ben:  At the same time as I'm making love and writing in my gratitude journal.  My wife absolutely adores me.  Anyways though, so I generally use Snapchat to take photographs for people of the things that I'm reading, the things I'm highlighting, the things I'm underlining.  And I use it quite a bit for that and I also use it to take photographs of embarrassing or cute things that I know are going to disappear within 24 hours but that people might like anyways.  Like last week it was a video of my goats giving birth to the five new little baby Nigerian dwarf goats that we have.

Brock:  That's awesome!

Ben:  And everything from little baby goats jumping around, to placentas hanging out of mommy goats butt.  So all sorts of cool things going on snapchat.com.

Brock:  Are you sure that was her butt?  I don't think that was her butt.

Ben:  The parts, the whole parts at the end of a goat, whatever those are called.  Anyways though…

Brock:  Anyway.

Ben:  I guess we can say goat vagina on this podcast and mark it as explicit.

Brock:  I think so.  Probably more appropriate.

Ben:  Anyways though, so yes, I do Snapchat.  bengreenfieldfitness.com/snapchat if you like goat placentas.  But speaking of placentas, news flash, the first news flash is based on this new article that came out, a ton of people asked me about, it was in Wired Magazine, the title of the article is “Forget The Blood Of Teens, This Pill Promises To Extend Life For A Nickel A Pop”.  Do you know what drug this article was talking about?  What pill it was talking about?

Brock:  I absolutely do.  It's metformin.  And man, Wired Magazine, you jumped the shark with that title.  That is so click bait-y.  I thought Wired was beyond that.  I really…

Ben:  Wired Magazine.  And this is based on the advice given to me by the man who is considered to be the father of functional medicine in the United States and one of the most brilliant physicians I know, Dr. Jeffrey Bland.  I was with him at a conference three months ago and I asked him if he could read one book what book, would that be.  And he said it wouldn't be a book, he said, “I read a magazine every month.”  And I said, “What magazine?”  And he said, “Wired Magazine.”  He said, “Mark my words, just about everything you read in Wired Magazine is something that is going to come to pass, or that extremely relevant or ahead of its time.”  So regardless of the click bait-y headlines, I left that conversation, I went over to my phone literally, like went over to the table I was sitting at, opened my phone, and subscribed to Wired Magazine based on his advice, and I get the magazine now.

And this article is about this metformin stuff, which I did not know this, comes from a plant known as French lilac and also goat's-rue, and it's been around since the 1600 as a treatment for diabetes and as this sort of longevity tonic.  And what this article goes into is this idea that all of these folks, from over a dozen of the people in Tim Ferris's book “Tools of Titans”, all the billionaires, and icons, and world class performers in that book, to Craig Venter who heads up The Human Longevity Project, and they're sequencing the entire human DNA, to Ray Kurzweil, the guy of singularity fame, and Ned David, who co-founded a Silicon Valley startup called Unity Biotechnology, which is basically like an anti-aging drug creation facility, they all take metformin.  And perhaps one of the reasons for that is based on something that Dr. Peter Attia has told me on this podcast before and also what he's written about on his show before, and that is that one of the keys to longevity is keeping your blood sugar levels low and reducing rapid fluctuations in blood sugar levels.  But there's a whole lot more that metformin does, in addition to lowering blood glucose.  And this article…

Brock:  And not necessarily good, I'm guessing.

Ben:  Well, what this article goes into is a lot of good, and the reason that it's the darling of the anti-aging industry right now and why so many people are either purchasing it online, which you can do pretty easily on online pharmacies, or the dark web, or whatever.  Or you can just simply get a prescription from a physician, or a doctor friend or whatever, but I am working, and I'm going to publish it this coming Monday for those of you who are listening in, on my own take on this, because I've been taking an anti-aging capsule that is very similar to metformin in terms of reducing post-prandial blood glucose for the past three years.  I take two capsules of it prior to dinner, and I have not yet gotten on the metformin bandwagon, and I am outlining in extreme detail why in this article that I'm writing about the dark side of metformin, but you need to remember a few things.  It works primarily on the liver, and so there is a pass through the liver and there is potential for an elevation in liver enzymes, and you only have one of those organs that I'm aware of.  So I'd be careful in that respect.  But there's also other downsides.  You see reduced efficacy of it the older that you get.  So the older you get, the more you have to take.  You see reduced efficacy with prolonged use.  You see GI tract issues in many individuals.  And perhaps most interestingly, it effects sleep spindles, and I’ll explain what those are later on in the show, and also sleep cycles.  It may also affect the ability of a part of your mitochondria called the electron transport complex 1 to normally function, and that is actually something that also is extremely important for a good night's sleep.

So when the article is suggesting the chronic intake of what is a, more or less a synthetic drug that gums up a natural mitochondrial process of the body, yes, it lowers insulin, and it lowers insulin like growth factor, and it limits mTOR, and it's a calorie restriction mimicking type of drug, and all of these things can indeed decrease the rate at which telomeres shorten and improve longevity, I think there's a lot of side effects to it that can be unpleasant and potentially life threatening long-term that give me pause in terms of getting on this whole metformin bandwagon.  And again, I'm writing a big article about this that I'm going to publish this week at bengreenfieldfitness.com.  But ultimately, I think that a lot of people are popping this pill without taking into consideration all the implications.

Brock:  Well that's not at all what it was developed for either.  Like wasn't the longevity thing sort of discovered as like an afterthought or are they just, kind of like the heart medicine that then became the baldness medicine, like that sort of an idea?

Ben:  Right.  Exactly.  Yeah, it's like the heart medicine that became the baldness medicine.

Brock:  I'm totally forgetting what that's called.  Propecia?

Ben:  Yeah, exactly.  This is the sugar medicine that is becoming the anti-aging medicine that is, in my opinion, a bit overhyped and potentially dangerous.  So either way though, for those of you who want to read the article, I will link to it at bengreenfieldfitness.com/371.  I will also link to what I use instead, and I'll tell you what that is in a second, and then I will also be publishing an article Monday that really gets into the dark side of metformin for those who want the scientific nitty gritty on this.  Now what I use instead is the same stuff that, actually the guy who gave me this bag of longevity also gave me a bag of this other stuff and said, “This is the other thing that the Okinawans use copious amounts of.”  Do you know what that was?

Brock:  Is it berberine?

Ben:  Berberine is close.  And berberine is something that I send my kids out into the forest to harvest every week.  So every Friday, my kids go up and they dig up what's called Oregon grape root, which is a plant that grows out here in the property, and they take their little pocket knives, and they cut it into one-inch chunks, and then they come back inside and they make it into the tea.  And I now put that into my little bark tea that I make and that I put into my smoothies because it actually itself has a lot of really cool potent blood sugar regulating effects.  Plus when you harvest something from the local land, it's just nice to be able to use a local plant rather than going to, whatever, Amazon paying 60 bucks for a capsule bottle of it.  But, no.  This stuff is actually not berberine, even though I like berberine.  It is bitter melon, bitter melon extract.

Brock:  Oh, yeah.

Ben:  And I have tested my post-prandial blood glucose after using this stuff, 'cause I do eat carbohydrates in the evening, and I drink red wine, and I eat dark chocolate, and it shoves my blood glucose, it causes it to plummet after a meal.  And I've compared it with and without this bitter melon extract, there's a huge host of longevity benefits to this, this bitter melon extract stuff.  And I'll also talk about this when I write this article about the dark side to Metformin, but you know I'm a fan of a natural plant-based herb like that rather than a synthetic drug that gets passed and processed by the liver.  So anyways, that's what I use instead, the bitter melon extract.

Brock:  It sounds delicious too.

Ben:  Well I guess since we're talking about bitter melon extract, and teas, and longevity, we should get into a fantastic article that I read recently on green tea that actually influenced my decision to add a big cup of green tea into my morning routine.  It actually at this point replaced my coffee with green tea.

Brock:  That just seems wrong.

Ben:  I should get right out there and say that I really miss coffee.  I love coffee.  I love the taste of coffee, I love the anti-oxidant effects of coffee, I love the comfort food aspect of coffee, I do consider it to be a comfort food, but…

Brock:  The ritual of coffee, I love it.

Ben:  The ritual of coffee.  But at the same time, green tea has its own rituals.  A tea in general has its own rituals.  when I was actually in New York City last week where I actually discovered a lot more about green tea simply because this chef who I've already mentioned once on the show, this famous chef in New York named David Bouley, he's very into Japanese cuisine and he's very into tea, and he taught me a lot about tea when I was there, and he sent me home with all these tea varieties, including this longevity tea, and this bitter melon tea.  But he influenced me to really get me, and also my boys who've been doing this in the morning, to get on the bandwagon of preparing tea correctly.  The correct temperature, and you've got the little Japanese pot, and you boil the water, and you let the water cool, and then you put it in the pot.  I forgot what the name of this little pot is, but it's actually kind of cool.  It's a different way to start the morning versus the French press of coffee, or whatever your method of coffee preparation is.

Either way though, this article that I'll link to over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/371 goes into some very cool effects of green tea that are based on recent research.  For example, it can improve blood lipids very similar to taking a statin drug, but without the side effects of a statin.  Meaning like a statin can, for example, strip a very important mitochondrial component called coenzyme Q10 from your tissue.  And what you see with consumption of green tea, and specifically what are called the epigallocatechin gallates, the EGCGs in green tea is a drop in oxidized cholesterol due to what appears to be what are called the glycosides in green tea without the change in the coenzyme Q10.  So in terms of, I do not think in any way that LDL is bad.  I try to keep my own cholesterol elevated above 200, my LDL cholesterol very high.  But at the same time, when it comes to small particles or oxidized cholesterol, that's what I'm careful with, and it appears that green tea does a very good job decreasing some of those deleterious blood lipids.  So that's one interesting thing about it.

Another thing is that it appears to assist with post-exercise glycogen resynthesis.  Meaning that after a workout, or let's say I'm working out in the morning and I want to store up my carbohydrate levels after that workout more quickly from whatever I might eat for breakfast and I also want to oxidize fat more efficiently because it mobilizes fatty acid, there appears to be a beneficial effect from that as well.  And I'm not eating a lot of carbohydrates in the morning along with my green tea for that glycogen synthesis, but remember your body can synthesize glycogen from the glycerol backbone of fats and it can also, via a process called gluconeogenesis, synthesize glycogen from the glucose derived from proteins.  And it appears that green tea might actually help with all of these type of mechanisms for giving your liver and your muscle extra glycogen to burn later on for a hard workout.  So there's that.

Brock:  That's really interesting.  So it just sort of stuffs it all into the muscles instead of letting it turn into fluffy fat.

Ben:  It upregulates a certain transporter that makes you less reliant upon insulin and more able to push, for example, glucose from the bloodstream into muscle to store it away as glycogen.  That transport is called the GLUT4 protein.

Brock:  Interesting.

Ben:  That is interesting, isn't it?  Another thing that it does is it can prevent the visceral adiposity, with a visceral body fat being one of the more deleterious forms of body fat compared to like subcutaneous body fat, visceral body fat's the type body fat that would build up around the organs.  Another study, and these are all recent 2017 studies, show that in response to a hypercaloric diet, like an unhealthy hypercaloric diet, green tea actually alleviates the visceral body fat accumulation.  So this means that you can go out and you can have Chicago deep dish pizza, and as long as you drink a little bit of Japanese green tea on the side, you're going to be just fine.  So all sorts of cool things going on with green tea.  Now I have a request for our listeners, however.  And I didn't even get into all of the, actually let me mention one other thing here.  Just while we're geeking out on green tea.  It increases what is called endothelial independent nitro mediated dilation.  And I realize that's a mouthful, but what that basically means in layman's terms is it's almost like Viagra for your whole body in terms of what it can do to vascular flow.  And so…

Brock:  What?

Ben:  Full body erections from green tea.  What I mean by that is that…

Brock:  If you're having trouble staying erect…

Ben:  It's excellent for vasodilation of vascular tissue, of vessels.

Brock:  That makes more sense.

Ben:  So yeah, very similar to like a nitric oxide of type effect, which is also why it's something that works quite well and it actually pairs quite well with bitter melon by the way for a sauna.  Because when you get in the sauna, you want more blood flow.  A lot of people will take like nitric oxide type of supplements, or like a nitrate, or something like that prior to doing a sauna…

Brock:  Niacin.

Ben:  Or niacin for a detoxification and for a blood flow.  A big ol' cup of green tea could be just as good.  So there you have it.

Brock:  There you have it.  And these studies were all brought to you by Ben And Jerry's Longevity Green Tea Ice Cream.

Ben:  Yeah.  The Chunky Longevity Monkey.  Anyways though, my request for listeners would be was I'm still looking for the ultimate green tea experience, like start to finish.  ‘Cause I've kind of got it hacked together, with my turkey thermometer, and my boiling pot of water, and my relative gumshoe approach to creating green tea in the morning.  So if you're listening in and you're a green tea aficionado, and you have the best tools, and tips, and toys, or perhaps a blog post, or an article, or something like that on how to replicate like a true Okinawan or Japanese green tea experience in the average American home, I would love to hear your feedback on that.  So if you could go to the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/371, 'cause again both my children and I are kind of enjoying this morning tea experience but I feel like we're bastardizing it a little bit just by kind of using whatever random kitchen tools we happen to have around the house.  So if you have suggestions or ideas on how to really make tea the ultimate daytime, or morning, or evening experience, leave comments over there at bengreenfieldfitness.com/371 'cause I'd love to hear how folks who really know tea are getting the most of tea 'cause this is kind of like a new thing for me.

Brock:  Well if I've learned anything from the Japanese restaurant in my neighborhood, it's that you should take a whole bunch of the cheapest green tea bags you can find, put them in a plastic jug in lukewarm water, and leave 'em there for hours.  So you might want to try that.

Ben:  Mmm.  That comes out with the General What's-his-name chicken, right?

Brock:  Yes.  On the side.

Ben:  Exactly.

Brock:  For free.

Ben:  Exactly.  Alright, we aren't done yet.  Speaking of Viagra for your whole body, here's the latest on whether running hardens your arteries.  Did you see this study, Brock?

Brock:  I did, yeah.  Alex Hutchinson does such a great job of writing the synopses is of these kinds of studies.  I follow him, so I see all this good stuff through him really.

Ben:  Alex Hutchinson being one of the excellent bloggers over at Runner's World and one of the guys who's been following this kind of controversy.  It's been going back and forth for several years about the relationship between exercise and heart health, and specifically the relationship between running and heart health and the idea that for almost seven years now.  There's been data pouring in that shows that runners, and especially long endurance runners, ultra-endurance runners, marathoners, et cetera, seem to have a surprisingly large amount of plaque, a higher what is called coronary artery calcium score than matched groups of controls who do not run quite as much.

Brock:  Have you had a calcium score done?

Ben:  I have not had.  I've had an ultrasound echocardiogram to see if I have athlete's heart, like an enlarged ventricle, and I've had of course like a stress EKG for two reasons, number one to see if I'm able to exercise at a hard intensity without getting what are called paraventricular contractions, or abnormal heart arrhythmias, and also because I'm going to do an Iboga retreat, like seven day plant-based medicine retreat.  They had me do one to make sure that I wasn't going to die of a heart attack during the Iboga ceremony.  That's perhaps a discussion for another day.  But ultimately I have not yet gotten a coronary artery calcium score.  Have you?

Brock:  I have.  I've had the other two that you mentioned as well, but I had a calcium score done.  Before it was sent in, the cardiologist said, “If your score is like a hundred, we won't worry about it.  But if it's a thousand, we're putting you on statins and stuff.”  And basically my number came back as 85 and I never heard from him again.  Which was good news.

Ben:  So you would not fall into that category of a runner that has this coronary artery calcification then?

Brock:  I guess not.

Ben:  Okay.  So what the latest data is showing, and this is going to keep all you runners from hanging up your running hats and switching to golf or ping pong is that the pattern of plaques that form in these runners tends to be a different form of a plaque, a plaque that's less likely to cause serious problems like a heart attack.  So not all plaque is created equal.  The deal is that there are hard calcium-rich plaques and then there are softer calcium deficient plaques.  And the hard plaques can narrow the arteries and they can cause these blockages that can trigger a heart attack, it appears that the soft plaques are a little bit less of an issue.  And so there's all sorts of different theories out there as to why endurance exercise would cause any form of plaque build-up at all.  Like the turbulent high pressure blood flow through arteries during exercise contributing to plaque formation, or the hormones associated with exercise is playing a role.  But ultimately it appears that it's a different form of plaque and it's not something you have to be quite as concerned about, although, and this is certainly, I'm glad you brought this up, Brock, because I plan on doing this later on this year, I do want to go get a coronary artery calcium score myself just to see where I'm at because I'm curious.

Brock:  Yeah, it is interesting.

Ben:  Yeah.  But in terms of the type of plaque, it appears the type of plaque matters.  And so there's more to it than meets the eye.  So if you're seeing the headlines that say, “Runners Get Plaques”, or “Running Is Bad For Your Heart”, please realize that whoever wrote that article in the media might not realize that there's a difference between the type of plaques.  And what I'll do is I'll link to the in-depth article by Alex Hutchinson that kind of delves into this in detail about whether the blockage is harmful versus not harmful, or whether plaque is harmful versus not harmful.  But ultimately the takeaway point here is that running is not necessarily going to accelerate coronary atherosclerosis.  And we still have yet to see a law of diminishing returns.  Now I have written an article about this and it does appear that once you exceed about 60 minutes of high intensity exercise per day, or about 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per day, there is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to mortality.  Meaning that you're not going to make yourself live longer by going out and doing more than an hour of intense exercise per day or more than 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per day.  But ultimately, it also appears that running is not going to kill your heart in moderation.

Brock:  One of the most interesting points that Alex made in his article about this was that sort of playing into that idea that you can't outrun a bad diet, and that because there isn't really, there isn't a conclusion for whether it was causality or just the result of actually running that it may just be that all these runners are going out and eating way too much pizza after they go for their long runs.

Ben:  Yeah.  I talk all about that in my book “Beyond Training” about how when you look at the diets of many athletes, you have to take that into consideration too, that whole “eat to train, train to eat” vicious cycle and how we can actually break that cycle.  So, yeah.  Absolutely.  It's a good consideration as well.  And then finally we're going to get to, and by the way as we are talking right now, I am blasting the entire back of my body with what is called near infrared radiation.  Near infrared radiation.  The reason I'm telling you that is because there was an excellent article published by our friends who produced the ball light that I use, the Joovv light.  Yes, this is the light that is based on this concept of photobiomodulation, this idea that certain wavelengths of light can activate leydig cells in one's testes and cause increased testosterone and sperm cell production, and also improve skin health, and assist with detoxification, and all these other cool effects.  But the article that I will link to in the show notes is about the difference between saunas and infrared, because a lot of people kind of get confused about that.

And the few little takeaways that I wanted to get into from this article was the impact of light energy at the cellular level.  Meaning that specific wavelengths of light have some really interesting effects on the mitochondria in our cells.  And when you look at some of these narrowband wavelengths of light, about 600 to 950 nanometers or so, they're able to penetrate human tissue very effectively.  And when they penetrate human tissue, what happens involves something called cytochrome C-oxidase, and that's the last enzyme in the respiratory electron chain transport of the mitochondria.  And during cellular respiration, or what's also called oxidative phosphorylation, specific wavelengths of light, and we're talking about near infrared light specifically, can break the bond between this gaseous molecule, nitric oxide, and this cytochrome C-oxidase enzyme, and that allows oxygen to actually bind to something called NADH.  When that happens, hydrogen ions can allow for your body to produce cellular energy, or ATP.  So when you look at something like near infrared, you're essentially charging your cellular batteries in terms of activating your mitochondria and allowing it to produce more ATP.

Now there's a host of benefits to a dry sauna, for example, when it comes to the production of heat shock protein and detoxification of some metals through sweat, improved ability to be able to produce erythropoietin, like red blood cell precursors.  But ultimately if there's not light in there, you're actually missing out on a lot of these positive mitochondria boosting effects of light.  So what I do personally, in terms of my own use of light, is in my office here, I have these lights, they're made by Joovv, and it's a near infrared light that I can shine on my body while I'm in my office.  And then I also have a sauna, it's made by this company called Clearlight, and that delivers far infrared light which penetrates a little bit more deeply into the tissue which heats the tissue.  But I am a huge fan of this concept of using photobiomodulation to improve everything from skin health, to hormones, to mitochondria, and this article does a pretty good job breaking down why you need to go out of your way to not just get heat from like a dry sauna or a far infrared sauna, but also get exposed to light from some of these near infrared wavelength ranges.  So I think it does a really good job breaking it down and I think that anybody who's kind of into biohacking, or better living through science, or has a little bit of extra money to throw around should definitely consider adding something like near infrared into your protocol.  Because these lights I have in my office, they make everyday shinier, and better, and make my office look like a tanning salon.

Brock:  Oh.  I was at the A4M Conference last year in Las Vegas and I was surprised at how many booths around the entire expo floor had some sort of panel of red lights, like something you can wrap around your face, or you could put under your back, or you could stand on, or you could lay on or something.  So it's really, this is a big movement these days.

Ben:  Yeah.  What's A4M?

Brock:  It's the longevity, I can't remember what A4M actually…

Ben:  Oh, the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine.

Brock:  There you go.  That's the one.

Ben:  Yeah.  You know what?  I think I might be speaking at that next year, I believe.  I think so.

Brock:  It was a pretty fun conference actually.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  It's very interesting.

Ben:  Yeah.  I'm actually headed down to Florida next month to do a bone marrow, like a stem cell extraction, and then a stem cell treatment, and I think that they've connected me to this American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine organization and I'll be speaking there the following year.  So anyways, yeah.  This whole podcast seems to be taking a twist towards longevity.  So there you have it.

Brock:  It does.  Nothing wrong with that.

Special Announcements:

Ben:  Speaking of longevity.

Brock:  Yes?

Ben:  Did you hear the podcast last week with Dr. Dick Gaines?

Brock:  No, I haven't listened to it.  But, god, seriously, his parents need a smack.

Ben:  Well he's the guy who I went to Florida to see where we got, it wasn't we, it was me, I got acoustic soundwave therapy, and what that does is it breaks open old blood vessels, in both men and in women, in your crotch region, and stimulates the formation of new vessels.  So you get better erections, and you get better blood flow, and you get better orgasm quality, and it actually is very cool and it works.  I'm actually going back there next month to do another treatment and to combine it with, this is not to be confused with the stem cell injections I just mentioned earlier, yes, I'm doing all sorts of weird things this year.  They're going to inject me with platelet rich plasma directly into my genitals.  I don't know how that's going to feel, but apparently it has a profound effect on penile health.  So anyways, going down to do that…

Brock:  Are you experiencing some unhealthy penileness?

Ben:  No.  But I consider myself to be a guinea pig for the masses.  A relentless self-experimenter who will put my body and my dick on the line to make other people's lives better.  So, yeah.  I'm very unselfish.

Brock:  I'm making a very unpleasant face right now.  Anyways though, so the idea here is that I interviewed Dr. Gaines last week and we talked about way more than that, growth hormone, and testosterone, and anti-aging medicine, and all sorts of other interesting things that this guy knows about.  But this company that he owns called GainsWave, what they do is they do this treatment for men and for women and they're offering everybody who listens to this show a discount.  And what you do, it's very, very simple, you text the word “Greenfield” to 313131, and what that gives you is 150 bucks off of any GainsWave treatment at any of their 60 different clinics around the nation.  You text Greenfield to 313131.  They also have this website, gainswave.com, and you can click on it, you can find a doctor.  And it is an office friendly website.  It's just mostly like Creative Commons photos of nurses, and physicians, and stethoscopes, so you don't have to worry about strange things popping up on your computer if you visit gainswave.com while you're at your office.  Or you could just text using your phone.  That might be even more safe.  Text the word Greenfield to 313131.  So there you have it.  Are you doing it, Brock?

Brock:  I'm actually trying to see if there's one in my neighborhood, but there isn't.  There's only one in Canada.  Oh, no.  Wait.  There's one in Ottawa as well.  Okay.  So…

Ben:  Sorry, Canadians.  The Americans are going to be far ahead of you when it comes to our sex game.  This podcast is also brought to you by something I haven't been able to drink [mimics a sad trumpet sound] 'cause it's coffee.  And I've been drinking green tea.  This coffee though is the vitamin coffee.  The vitamin coffee that has a brain vitamins added to their coffee.  Alpha-GPC, taurine, l-theanine, DMAE.  You know what's crazy is a lot of those things are the same type of things that you would find when it comes to neural enhancing properties and cognitive enhancing properties in something like fish, like wild caught fish.  Except they've somehow managed to add them to coffee without the coffee tasting like a seafood restaurant.  So it's actually really good.  And it helps to prolong coffee's dopamine effect, and it reduces any anxiety or jitteriness from the coffee.  So it is called, you probably know what it's called, Brock, don't you?

Brock:  Mhmm.  I've had it.

Ben:  Yeah.  Kimera.

Brock:  It's delicious.

Ben:  KIMERAKOFFEE.com.  See what they did there?  Kimera Koffee.  Because it will turn you into a freaking chimera, not a longevity chunky monkey, but an actual chimera.  Use code Ben to get 10% off.  And do you want to know my dirty little secret?

Brock:  Always.

Ben:  Alright.  I have a couple of times, because my wife always has a piping hot pot of coffee upstairs until about 2 PM in the afternoon, I have snuck in a little bit of coffee after lunch a couple days.  I'll admit.  And…

Brock:  You son of a bitch.

Ben:  So when I say I've switched to green tea, I've sipped on the coffee, I've cheated on my green tea just a little bit.  There.  I'll admit it.  ‘Cause I just can't…

Brock:  And you call yourself a Christian.

Ben:  I know, I know.  But I'm very grateful for the coffee, so there's that.  I wrote it in my gratitude journal.  So anyways, kimerakoffee.com.  Use code Ben to get 10% off.  10% discount at kimerakoffee.com.  This podcast is also brought to you by the company that makes this green juice powder, the gently dried superfood green juice powder we've talked about oh so many times.  But they have a new one, they have a red powder now.  They're confusing everybody.  They have red and green now.  And the red…

Brock:  That's super confusing for us color blind people.

Ben:  Well they took all their all the same processes, their same technology that they used to make the green stuff, now they do red stuff that's got acai, beet, pomegranate, cranberry, raspberry, blueberry, strawberry, and then they put a bunch of adaptogens in there like cordyceps, and Siberian ginseng, and reishi mushroom, and rhodiola.  It's called Organifi, brace yourself, you know what it's called?  Red Juice Powder.  Instead of Green Juice Powder.  They're very creative over there.

Brock:  That's a bummer.

Ben:  Super creative.  It's acai and codyceps infused though, gently dried superfood powder.

Brock:  That's not a bummer.

Ben:  Anyways though, so actually is pretty cool stuff.  And everybody who wants to see what this stuff is like, and it's actually really, really great as a pre-workout, or added in your morning smoothie, you get 20%, 20%, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi.  With an “i”.  bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi.  And we'll put links and all these codes in the show notes too for all these goodies.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/371.  I got one more for you, Brock.  This podcast is brought to you by Orchestra One.

Brock and Ben:  [make various orchestra sounds]

Ben:  That's it.  Commercial over.  I think that's pretty much all they wanted us to say.

Brock:  Yeah.  They just wanted us to sing.

Ben:  What it actually does, it's an all-in-one platform for health care practices and providers that does like everything, scheduling, and payments, communications, document sharing.  It's all secure, it's all encrypted, it's all HIPAA compliant.  So if you're a doctor, or you're a nutritionist, or you're a personal trainer, or a gym owner, or a chiropractic, or a naturopath, or health coach, or anybody, it lets you, in one mighty, mighty piece of software, keep track of everything from payments, to appointment reminders, to counters.  It's pretty slick.  I ran gyms for eight years back in the day and I really wish this would have existed back when I ran gyms because I would have pulled out a lot less hair.  And it's called Orchestra, Orchestra One, and it's one of those things that you would normally like pay a monthly fee to access, and instead they're just giving every single one of our listeners six months of it totally free.

So you can just like use it for six months and see if you like it.  And the way that you do it is you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/orchestra.  And use code, my kazoo was better.  Use code Ben for six months of orchestra one absolutely friggin' free.  That's a value of $120.  So there you go.  Just saved you on a bunch of money, so now you can go buy a steak dinner.  And if steak dinners make you constipated, keep listening because in today's show we're going to fill you in on the ultimate fix for constipation.  But before we jump into that, Brock, few quick special announcements in terms of the calendar?

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  There are a ton of places that I'm going to be where you can come, and hang out with me, and we can have a great time from in terms of meet ups, et cetera.  Next week I'll be in Asheville, North Carolina, July 29th.  That's a Spartan Race.  If you're near North Carolina, come on out to the Spartan race, hang out at 10 AM that Saturday, we're going to have a Ben Greenfield Fitness meet-up right outside the Spartan Pro Team tent.  You don't have to be a Spartan athlete, but come on over with your fitness, your nutrition questions, anything that you want to talk about, and you can do that.  I can't guarantee I will not hand you a giant sand bag to carry up and down a hill since you are at a Spartan race, but either way…

Brock:  Seems fair.

Ben:  Same thing, we're going to do the same thing in West Virginia the next month, August 26th.  So two different Spartan races you can come and hang out at.  In addition to that, I will be speaking in Iceland.  You can still get in, you can still get tickets, and Iceland in my opinion is a pretty freaking cool place.  It's called Who Wants To Live Forever Conference, brought to you by Ben And Jerry's Chunky Longevity Monkey, September 8th through 11th.  And we've got discounted tickets over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/371.  Who doesn't love Iceland?  And then also, and Brock, we got to talk, dude.  ‘Cause I need to get you to this event, Helsinki, Finland.

Brock:  Yes.  Oh, I want to go to that.

Ben:  It's the same weekend as the Bulletproof Conference.  I actually, I got a couple of tickets.  I'm sending a couple people from my team to the Bulletproof Conference 'cause it is pretty cool.

Brock:  Yeah.  I've been there a couple times.  It's fun.

Ben:  I'm probably going to wind up in Finland, not over in Pasadena where my friend Dave Asprey's event is, but it's the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki, Finland.  Helsinki, Finland.  I like to go to Finland.  We have like this upgraded dinner and we do wild plant foraging, and molecular gastronomy cooking, and then we have like this three day after-event where we go out into the sticks and like camp, and do smoke saunas, and jump in the Baltic Sea.  It's a pretty amazing time in my opinion.  As much as I like to attach electrodes to my nose and stuff up my butt, the Finland conference is pretty cool too.

Brock:  It's not a competition.

Ben:  Yeah.  Anyways though, the reason I'm saying this is I've gotten a lot of people who are like, “Why do they have to be on the same weekend?”  Well, you know what?  You've got many years in your life.  You can try both.  Anyways though, October 13th through the 15th, the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki, Finland, that's a good one.  Check that one out.  And then there's one other that I'll bring up, two others I want to bring up.  The XPT Experience in Kauai is December 7th through 9th.  That's me, Brian McKenzie, Kelly Starrett, Julia Starrett, Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reese.  We're going to be teaching like underwater workouts, breathwork instruction, recovery biohacking, a whole lot more.  And then straight from there, if you feel like it, you can come on over with me to Panama for a full eight-day digital detox called Runga.  And we've got offsite adventures, like hiking volcanoes, and white water rafting, ziplining, world class spa treatments, amazing food.  So that's going to be a good time as well.  From what I hear, we're also going to be throwing in a crap ton of spearfishing.  So lots of adventures for you to go on if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/371.  The show notes and the calendar are all right there.  Which one are you going to go to, Brock?

Brock:  Oh, do I have to choose?  I want to go to all of them.

Ben:  Do 'em all.  Panama, Hawaii, Iceland, Finland.

Brock:  Is Van Halen going to be there where?

Ben:  Where?

Brock:  Panama!

Ben:  Panama!

Listener Q & A:

Kelly:  Hi, Ben.  My question is I've been taking a probiotic for about six months now and I still continue to have major stomach issues.  It almost seems like every vegetable that I've been is like fermenting in my stomach and that is just not digesting the food for real, and stuff is sitting in there and it won't come out.  So I'm not exactly sure what to take.  I've taken some laxative to try and push it through, but it doesn't seem like it's working right.  It's like what probiotics work the best?  And am I putting too much in there?  Thank you.

Brock:  So Constipated Kelly, as we like to call her around the homestead, is having some trouble.

Ben:  Constipated Kelly.  Kelly the constipated.

Brock:  Sorry, Kelly.

Ben:  Yeah.  Sorry, Kelly.  So Kelly, you're taking probiotics, you're still having major stomach issues, food's fermenting in your stomach.  This is classic, what I would consider to be, I'm not a doctor, don't misconstrue this as medical advice, please go see a licensed medical practitioner.  But in most cases, this is an overgrowth of bacteria in your small bowel.  So what does that mean?  Well, it means that the small bowel usually digest food, and absorbs nutrients, and it's a pretty impressive little organ, and it connects your stomach to your large bowel.  You may also know your small bowel as your small intestine.  But for the purposes of this description, I'm calling it the small bowel because it really is just part of your bowel, and it has a bunch of bacteria in it just like your large intestine does.  And what can happen is that small bowel can get overgrowth in it from the type of bacteria that would normally be found in the large bowel, in the colon.  And what happens is that when colonic bacteria begins to occupy the small bowel, the small  intestine, a lot of those bacteria can produce gas, they can damage the cells lining the small bowel, what's called the mucosa, and that can lead to what is called leaky gut.  It can overrun a lot of the normal bacteria that you would otherwise find in the small intestine.

And there are some other interesting things that can happen.  For example, the wrong type of bacteria in your small bowel that might be just fine for your large intestine but be considered pathogenic in your small intestine can take up certain B vitamins, like Vitamin B12, before your own cells have a chance to absorb those nutrients.  So you can see vitamin B12 deficiency and sluggishness from that, like mental sluggishness, and physical sluggishness, or chronic fatigue.  It can also, those same bacteria can consume many amino acids or proteins that you've digested, and that can lead to protein deficiencies, inadequate recovery, and even an increase in ammonia production by those bacteria.  And so you get a little bit of a burdened detoxification system from an overgrowth of ammonia related to that overgrowth of bacteria.  In addition, if you're taking fat soluble vitamins or doing a good job eating your liver, and your milk, and your butter, and all these things, those same bacteria can decrease fat absorption because they have an effect on your bile acid.  They restrict some of your bile acid production.  I have worked with a lot of people, especially athletes who eat a higher than normal amount of calories believe it or not, who get this issue, especially because a high calorie intake can cause this type of bacterial overgrowth to occur, especially high carbohydrate intake, but high calorie intake in general.  And your body would normally have several different ways of preventing this bacterial overgrowth from happening, like gastric acid secretion, which should be maintaining an acidic environment.  And in many cases when you're eating a lot of calories or you're not producing enough hydrochloric acid because of stress, that acidic environment goes away.

In many cases, normal parastalsis would cause food to move through the way that it’s supposed to but again, if you’re exercising a lot, if you’re stressed out when you’re eating, in many cases that does not occur.  You even have a valve that normally allows the flow of contents into your large intestine and prevents things from reflexing back into the small intestine.  It’s called the ileocecal valve and in many cases, people have like low back issues or muscular skeletal tightness or fascial tightness in the abdominals or in the area above the bones that are right above your hip.  ‘Cause a lot of people don’t get these areas massaged or do deep tissue work in those areas, they’ll get ielocecal valve issues that cause again this small intestinal buildup, this growth of large intestine bacteria in the small intestine which is really interesting because some of this response not just to measure chemical and food adjustments but also to doing things like abdominal massage.  And even like you know, every morning now, what I do is I actually have one of these vibration devices called a MyoBuddy, and I actually massage my ileocecal valve in the morning and it helps a ton with bowel movement but it helps something like SIBO at bay because it keeps stuff kinda moving through you if you do something like this.

Heavy alcohol use like doing those 2 glasses of wine per night, dear men and women, not that any of you ever do that, I’m just saying, that can feed this specific type of bacteria that can contribute to overgrowth.  Oral contraceptive pills, believe or not can also contribute pretty significantly to this what’s called small intestine bacterial overgrowth or bacterial overgrowth in the intestine.  And it can be very difficult to treat because in many cause this overgrowth would respond to antibiotic treatment but then it grows back pretty quickly if you’re not able to address some of the underlying factors that are actually causing it.  So in many cases if you go to a doctor and you have this, it’s called SIBO, they will put you on like low dose naltrexone or they’ll put you on some type of antibiotic protocol.  Sometimes on like a prokinetic agent and it all that means is it something that would increase the muscular contractions of the small intestine but in my opinion, there are some other things that you need to do if you truly want to knockout the type of constipation that tends to be caused by something like this.  And many of these same things even if your constipation is not associated with small intestine bacterial overgrowth, but it’s related to other things.  A lot of these things I’m about to describe to will still work.

By the way, I should mention that if you take a whole bunch of probiotics and you do have these issue, it can aggravate the issue.  And so, in many cases you don’t want to be taking a lot of probiotics at the same time that you’re doing some of the things that I’m going to recommend.  So, either way the first thing that I would recommend to get rid of the gas producing bacteria in the upper GI tract that can cause bloating and abdominal discomfort and constipation and a whole bunch of methane production and by the way, that gas can get trapped and as it moves down into the colon it access what’s called a paralytic agent that caused constipation.

There is a relatively new blend of botanicals that can get rid of this issue.  So it’s peppermint leaf which calms the small intestine and that gives time for the other two components I’m about to describe to you.  It gives the other two components time to work effectively.  The next would be flavonoids from this South American hardwood tree called [56:02] ______ and that soaks up the hydrogen and creates a very unfriendly environment for the type of bacteria that would weaken the cell walls in your small intestine to be able to grow.  And then the third component is a natural anti-bacterial that’s extracted from horse chestnut also known as conquer tree and that shuts down the actual methane production by the bacteria that causes the gas buildup that causes the constipation.  And so there is a supplement called Atrantil, you can find it on Amazon and it’s very simple to use.  Use it for about 30 days and I’ve had many clients utilized this extremely successful for bloating, for abdominal discomfort, and for constipation especially related to SIBO.  And you just take 2-3 of this before each meal that you eat.  And it works like gangbusters.  So, that’s one, it’s called Atrantil, A-T-R-A-N-T-I-L, okay? So that would be one that I would recommend that you put into your protocol for something like constipation.

A few other things that I would highly recommend that you do.  And what I am going to do for you is I’m going to put a link to a secret document that I usually only reserve for the clients who I coach who have constipation issues.  I’m gonna give it everyone lucky enough to be listening in to the podcast right now.

Brock:  (whispering) Secret constipation.

Ben:  Because it tells you the exact morning protocol, exact movement protocol and exact dietary protocol to follow if you wanna get rid of constipation for good.  And I’m gonna give you the brief overview and then I’ll put a link to the entire hidden document.  It’s a Google doc, you can download for absolutely free.  Thank you very much.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/371 and you’ll be pooping like a baby.

Brock:  (laughs) You mean without any control and in to something that needs to be thrown into the trash?

Ben:  Uh-hmm.  Yeah.

Brock:  Okay, fair enough.

Ben:  While weeping uncontrollably and occasionally laughing at silly things like rubber birds.  Anyways though, so you wake up in the morning and you do a glass of salt water.  And when I say salt water, I am specifically referring to this form of electrolyte-enriched water called sole water.  Very easy to make.  Take a glass mason jar, you put a little salt from this sole water into the bottom of the jar and you drink your normal glass of water but you put about a tablespoon of this very salty water in there.  And it helps to move things through you, it kinda keeps the stool just a little bit loose.  Loose enough for you to hop on your squatty potty and take a poo.  Now, we get to number two, is in addition to drink a big glass of this electrolyte-enriched water in the morning, number two is use a squatty potty.  Just buy one.  Buy a squatty potty.  They sell travel squatty potty, they sell ‘em for the toilet at home but it puts you in a position where you’re not kink in that puborectalis angle.

I would recommend that you not bring your phone or a kindle into the bathroom because as soon as you hunch over to read that thing or play on your phone, you kink that angle again.  Instead, if you need to spend a little bit of time in the bathroom waiting for things to come out then do something like listen to an Mp3.  Listen to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show as you lean back and avoid any type of hunched over position.  You just sit in a squatty potty, you can squirm, you can wiggle, you can move, you can twist, you can cross and uncross your legs, et cetera.  Give yourself a little bit of time but don’t take anything in the bathroom that makes you hunch over.  That’s a mistake a lot of people make.  I know it sounds dumb but it pinches that angle and it keeps you constipated, okay?  So use a squatty potty, use it properly.  Don’t squat on it and then hunch over forwards with one on your phone or with a book.

The next thing would be spend about 5 minutes each morning if you can either doing qigong shaking and just Google qigong shaking or go to my little link there on that Google doc or use a mini trampoline.  Anything that bounces you up and down for about 5 minutes will help tremendously in getting stuff moving especially if you do it after that salt water and before that little squatty potty technique that I just gave you.  And then finally, there’s a series of yoga poses that work very very well especially for constipation.  And I will put a link to each of those yoga poses of the 10 best yoga poses for constipation and if you just switch to those for your morning routine, you don’t have to do it for life but until you train your body to get to the point where it’s loosing up some of those ligaments and tight tendons that can cause constipation because again, it can be very anatomical.  You’ll get to the point where you’re limber enough so to speak to move things through.  But there’s 10 different yoga poses that I really liked.  So you wake up in the morning with a glass of water, you do your yoga poses, you jump on the trampoline, or you do the qigong shaking for about 5 minutes, then you get on your squatty potty and you do your squatty potty thing.

Now, if you get traveler’s constipation or if stuffs just doesn’t come out of you and you really need to get to the point where you’ve trained your body to just get rid of stuff especially until you knock out this small bowel or small intestine, you can get a rubber enema bulb and you can use that rubber enema bulb and do either coffee enema or what works just as well is an enema of baking soda and sea salt.  You mix a little of baking soda and mix little sea salt and you put that in warm water and you retain the enema for about 5 minutes and then you poo and that will work like gangbusters if these other things do not.  So, that’s my recommendation for a morning routine for constipation especially if you’re going through a period of time where you’re trying to get rid of the small bowel overgrowth.

Now, a few other things that I would recommend: Number 1 would be sometimes especially if you’re cleaning up the diet and you’re switching to the type of diet I’m about to describe to you, you aren’t gonna be able to do a lot of hard exercise.  So perfect example of an exercise protocol that you could do that isn’t gonna be quite as hard is for example, a couple of times a week you do a super slow protocol for example, Doug McGuff’s book “Body By Science” is a very very good example of just a couple of times a week, 15-20 minutes of heavy super slow lifting.  In addition, you would do something like very very simple 2-3 times a week swimming laps or underwater hypoxic work, or aqua jogging or anything kind of like non-weight burning that’s not gonna tear the body up too much.  This is your repairing the body, taking in less food but still trying to move and keep blood flowing.  And then also Bikram yoga or any form of hot yoga, big fan of that, 2-3 times a week for detoxification and for again, cardiovascular blood flow, getting things moving through the body.  And I’ll put the link to all these things in the notes for this constipation fix that I send to you, and then I’m also a big fan of qigong because qigong has a specific part of it where they focused on what is called your lower dantian.  You know what the lower dantian is, Brock?

Brock:  I have no idea.

Ben:  They’re right down there and it’s where your belly button is, all your sex organs and your large intestine, the entire area that tends to be just weak and turned off in a lot of people.  When I went back to this last week and I interviewed this guy who is a qigong master, Robert Peng, he talked a lot about the lower dantian during our interview in his office and have that in his opinion is the most important part to focus on.  So I own all of his videos and what my kids and I have been doing is going to his entire video series to teach ourselves qigong.  But what you would wanna do if you’re constipated is go through a qigong video series like that and pay very very close attention to any of the parts that get into the focus on the lower dantian.  So you’re learning how to breathe energy into to that and become aware of it and essentially you’re consciously teaching yourself to be able to flow energy, chi, prana, chakra, or whatever you wanna call it in and out of that bowel area and that sounds cheezy and it sounds woo-woo, but that mind-body connection is actually pretty important when it comes to this stuff.  So, from a workout and a movement protocol, that’s kind of an overview of what you’d be doing.

And then finally, in addition to that atrantil that I’ve mentioned that you can take for each meal for about 30 days in a row, you wanna heal leaky gut and so I’m a big fan of using colostrum and L-glutamine and bone broth on a daily basis for that as 3 things to help to heal up any small intestinal damage that has been done.  But in addition to that, I would highly recommend something like what’s called an elemental diet for 30 days and I like my version of this diet ‘cause it’s basically like having chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  So all it involves is 1-2 scoops of this stuff called Thorne Mediclear SGS.  One of the best meal replacement blends on the face of the planet for healing up a leaky gut and fixing your stomach.  And you blend that with water or bone broth in a big blender, you can throw a little bit of stevia in there for some sweetener if you want, and then you add a few things that I feel that that particular meal replacement blend is deficient in, particularly essential amino acids, about a teaspoon or so of a really good salt and then about 2 teaspoons of so a really good fat like an extra virgin olive oil or some krill oil or some coconut oil.  And you blend that all up and for 30 days that’s what you have for breakfast, lunch, and for dinner.  And I have had a few discussions with the docs over at Thorne about the way that this particular meal is made up, this Thorne Mediclear stuff, it’s perfect combined with these other strategies like using some colostrum, using some glutamine, taking the atrantil that getting rid of all of these issues.  It’s like pushing the reboot button on your body, reboot button on your gut, your small bowels specifically.  I know that’s a lot of things but if you put all that together and you stick to what I just describe to you for about a month, you will find that constipation is not something that you ever have to worry about again.  Mark my words.  Thirty days, money-back guarantee, instituted and pay anything for this podcast that’s pretty easy for me to do.

Anyways though, I’ll put a link in the show notes.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/371, you can download my hidden document, The Ultimate Fix For Constipation where I walk you through each of those things and that’s what I would do to constipated Kelly or anybody else listening in.  If you wanna push the reboot button on your gut, if you’re constipated, if you are traveling and you gotta push that out, whatever, I’ll put everything in there that you need to know.

Bruno:  Hey Ben, what’s up? This is Bruno Dagama here in [1:07:02] ______.  Usually I get 8 hours of sleep and I feel amazing throughout the day.  I have the [1:07:10] ______ that I need to do whatever I want to do.  My question is, is there a way to decrease the amount of sleep, let’s say, get’s around 6 hours and still be as productive as I am when I have 8 hours? Meaning, is there any protocols, special foods, special supplements, or anything like that that could give me here this advantage of just sleeping less but still keep (censored) doing in a day? That’s my question.  Thank you so much and I appreciate all that you do.  Bye.

Brock:  I totally understand why Bruno is asking this but I’m not with your Bruno.  If I could sleep 10 hours at night, I would be so happy.  I love sleeping.

Ben:  I love sleeping too but admittedly and I found this to be the case for me of late, I have been sleeping anywhere from 5-7 hours a night and this has been a topic hot on my mind because I had to mitigate some of the damage from that, some of the effects of it.  And so, I have been researching myself something we talked about on the show, sometime back but we haven’t visited in quite sometime.  And that’s the wonderful wonderful world of polyphasic sleep.  Because frankly, Bruno you asked about supplements or foods or protocols, yeah, you know, modafanil and adderal, people talked about that, I’ve talked about the God Pill, Qualia, and I’ll put a link in the show notes to my article on the God Pill which I liked.  And just in short, what that is is it’s a blend of neural anti-inflammatories and what are called choline donors, nootropics, amino acids that’s specifically assist with neuro transmitter formation and then some things that help out with the blood brain barrier and it’s called Qualia.  I have found that in terms of allowing you to get your polyphasic sleep cycling later on in the afternoon as being one of the best things that’s not gonna keep you up for like 24 hours in a row, okay? So Qualia is one that I would look into.

The other one, surprisingly enough that works very well in allowing you to cope with sleep deprivation, still be lucid, still have verbal fluency in memory recall but also still be able to nap and engage in the polyphasic sleep that I’m about to describe to you.  It’s a little bit more fringe but it would be microdosing with LSD.  Very small amounts, we’re talking about anywhere from 5-25 micrograms of LSD.  There’s a specific way that you can do it.  Probably the best way to figure how to do that Bruno if that’s something that you wanna delve into, it’s obviously not legal.  But there’s a website called Third Wave Psychedelics.

They have a PDF that you can download there that will teach you how to microdose and also teach you how to source something like LSD or shrooms or anything like that and I’ll put a link to their website in the show notes, but it’s called Third Wave Psychedelics.  So if you wanted to do something like LSD, it’s certainly an option but again, all of these are kind of covering up an issue and what you don’t wanna do is get the long term neural damage, and the long term memory deficit damage that can occur by using pills to cover up a lack of sleep.  Instead, what I would recommend is like I mentioned, the wonderful world of polyphasic sleep.

Brock:  Oh, I thought you’re gonna say cocaine.

Ben:  Hmm, cocaine.  That’s right.  Coca-Cola, baby.  Did you know that Coca-Cola still has like some kind of like a patent on cocaine? Meaning that they…

Brock:  What?  

Ben:  Yeah.  No, like Google Coca-Cola Cocaine Federal Government, and there is a ton of really interesting information I was talking… oh, Kyle Kingsbury who can appear to podcast.  We went paddle boarding and he told me about the story of Coca-Cola and cocaine.  That just blew my mind about how basically… it’s kinda complex but Coca-Cola Company somehow still imports coca leaves, still imports coca leaves like from the Andes because they were using those as a flavour original, well, everybody knows this, right? Like Coca-Cola originally had cocaine in it and they still obtain coca and they import it each year under special permission from the DEA and they extract cocaine from the coca leaves but they use the cocaine because there’s no cocaine in Coca-Cola today.  And it turns out that all these white powder cocaine that Coca-Cola is no longer using goes to this company in St. Louise.  It’s called Mallinckrodt Company.  And then they wind up turning that over to the DEA and federal regulators and then it all just kinda disappears.  So somehow the US government through Coca-Cola company is getting over 300 kilos of cocaine each year and nobody really knows where it’s going.  I’m telling you, you can look this up.  I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory but you can look it up.

Brock:  That the federal government can import and process the coca plant which they obtained mainly from Peru and Bolivia.  God bless capitalism, baby!

Ben:  Anyways though, we digress.

Brock:  Anyways, that’s totally off topic.

Ben:  Thank you Brock for derailing us. Polyphasic sleep.  So, here’s the deal; there’s evidence that light sleep is non-recovering sleep stage can allow you to get to the point where you can get by on lower amounts of this longer blocks of 8 hour sleep.  So, to understand where I’m about to describe, just to understand that the very very basics of sleep stage, so you got your rapid eye movement, REM – rapid eye movement sleep and this would be the stage of sleep where you get s restoration of mental clarity and it reduces a lot of the symptoms of sleep deprivation.  That’s also the stage of sleep where you have your most vivid dreams, and where your brain wave frequencies are very wave like, okay? That’s you REM sleep, your wave like function during that sleep.  Then you have your slow wave sleep, your SWS – slow wave sleep.  That’s non-REM sleep, that’s where you get your immune functions, that’s where you get your hormone functions, that’s where your completely unwakeable very slow delta wave frequencies.  This is known as deep sleep, okay? It’s also known as stage 3 or stage 4 sleep.  So you have your rapid eye movement sleep which isn’t quite as deep but where you still go to restoration and mental clarity and then you have your non-REM sleep which is where a lot of the repair and the recovery takes place.

You also have a stage of sleep called non-rapid eye movement sleep and technically both light sleep and slow wave sleep are a type of non-rapid eye movement sleep.  And so we see non-rapid eye movement sleep occur during both of these different phases of sleep.  And then you also have light non-rapid eye movement sleep and this is actually one of things that you’re getting into when you incorporate some of the polyphasic sleep strategies that I’m about to describe to you.  So the idea here is that everybody has to go through certain sleep cycles during the night.  I talked a lot about this during my podcast interview with Dr. Nick Littlehales and we go into sleep rhythms and how you need to for example, for any given 7 day period get 30-35 of these different sleep cycles where you alternate between your REM sleep and your non-REM sleep during the night.

Well, the idea is that there’s a concept called sleep repartitioning and this is when your body will divert from a typical one and a half hour sleep stage where you’re moving through all these different sleep cycles and you do this multiple times during the night.  Most people need to go to anywhere from 4-5 of this one and a half hour long sleep stages during the night that consist of those different stages, stage one, stage two, stage three, and then finally rapid eye movement or deep sleep and back.  And so what happens is you’re supposed to go through all those but sleep repartitioning what that happens is that if you start to throw in 20 minute naps at first, and they’ve shown this in sleep labs, at first those naps are only gonna be comprised of stage one and stage two sleep.  Which is why when you wake up from one of those 20 minute naps, you have some amount of mental clarity.  What happens with sleep repartitioning is that overtime the body adapts and you begin to past through your entire sleep phase during like a short 20-30 minute nap.  Meaning, you can cross from stage one to stage two to stage three and even reach deep sleep phases once your body has adapted and began to engage in sleep repartitioning.

You simply have to train your body to be able to do this.  And so there’s all sorts of polyphasic sleep cycles that are out there but one very very simple one and this is the one that I do, is you’ll sleep anywhere from 6-7 and a half hours during the night and you’re getting three perhaps four of your one and a half hour-ish sleep cycles during that night.  But then later on in the afternoon, you’re doing it 20-30 minute nap and what that 20-30 minute nap, what happens is you’re eventually training your body that if you do this nap over and over again to get to the point where you’re engaged in sleep repartitioning and you’re able to go through an entire sleep cycle during that short nap.  You’re training your body how to get very efficient polyphasic sleep.

Brock:  And you’re sort of letting your body train itself, really…

Ben:  Exactly, exactly.

Brock:  It just figures it out.

Ben:  Yep, exactly.  Now, there are some risk there like when you don’t get a lot of sleep, you get a reduced of what’s called sleep spindle.  Remember I said I talk about that later on and reduced what’s called a K complex.  Now sleep spindles are where the brain learns, where nerves control what specific muscles are being used where you form memories, where the nervous system repairs and recovers, and you made me [1:17:39] ______ on a little bit of that with long term polyphasic sleep.  You may miss out on nervous system repair and recovery and you may miss out on some memory formation.

The other risk here is that as you age you become less efficient in sleep repartitioning.  And so the older that you get the less you might be served by polyphasic sleep.  So if you’re like 20-40 years, this is probably a pretty good strategy as you get older you might have to prioritize this longer sleep cycles at night where you are trying to sleep through the night or at least getting many of your sleep cycles done during the night rather than purposefully shorting yourself on sleep so you can engage in a polyphasic sleep cycle.  But the biggest takeaway here and this is what I found and it’s help my life tremendously is that you can do this shorter cycles, get your 3-4 and one and a half sleep cycles during the night but then train your body how to get an extra full sleep cycle during the day by simply training yourself.  And an ideal time is in order from 5-7 hours after you’ve woken, right? So if wake up at 6 AM, the ideal time for a nap would be starting your nap sometime between 11 AM and 1 PM and you do your 20-30 minute nap and that trains your body to eventually get to the point where repartitions and engaging in an entire full sleep cycle during that nap.

There’s all sorts of things you could do to master the nap, right? I have an article at bengreenfieldfitness.com called “How To Master The Nap”, you do like binaural beats with headphones, do a sleep mask, a little bit of lavender, you make sure that it’s at the same time, you could do a little bit of reishi mushroom extract or something like that prior to lunch, and all sorts of things that you can do to enhance the efficacy of the nap.  But ultimately, it all comes down to polyphasic sleep and what I’m gonna do for you Bruno is I’ll put a link to a polyphasic sleep kinda like a how-to document that you can read.  I’ll put that in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/371 and it gets into all sorts of different polyphasic sleep patterns ‘cause I remember Brock and I did a big podcast on this sometime back where we’re getting like byphasics sleep, and every men sleep, and uber-man sleep, and all these different methods but for me personally, it’s just a simple as a slightly shorter nightly sleep cycle and then that 20 to maximum 40-45 minute nap in the afternoon around 1 PM.

Brock:  Have you read the book, “The Power Of When”?

Ben:  I have.

Brock:  By Michael Breus?

Ben:  Yeah, Michael’s one of my friends.  Yeah.

Brock:  That’s something I can’t help to think about that one when I think about Bruno’s question.  In that book Dr. Breus… he’s a doctor, isn’t he?

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  I think he’s a PhD of some sort.  But he writes about a thing called chronotypes and basically breaks it down to 4 different chronotypes and each one of the chronotypes has a very specific sleep cycle or sleep time or wakeful cycle or something.  That would be an interesting thing for Bruno to take a look at too.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  I think you can take a quiz online if you go to the Power of When website.

Ben:  I interviewed Michael Breus and that interview is called “The Best Time of The Day To Exercise” but we get to a whole lot more including like the best time of the day to take a nap, how to nap, et cetera.  So I’ll put a link to that one in the show notes.  Thanks for bringing that one up, Brock, but yeah, he’s smart.  He’s a clinical psychologist, he’s like in a diplomatically American board of sleep medicine, he consults with NASA, he’s been on a clinical advisory board of Dr. Oz for quite some time, and he’s been on the Dr. Oz Show like almost like 30 times and yeah, he’s pretty interesting, dude.

Brock:  That’s the first things you least to grow a lot more impressive than that but…

Ben:  Well, we all know that that’s the best way to verify your scientific fire powers whether or not you’ve been on the Dr. Oz Show.

Brock:  Exactly.

Ben:  Anyway, I’ll link to my podcast episode of Michael Breus and his book, “Power of When” for you as well, Bruno, so hopefully that get you started and remember if all out fails, LSD, baby.

Grizzell:  Hi! I wanted to know if this both products the MK677 and theRAD-140 that that can be used for my father.  He’s 82.  I feel that it would benefit him but I like your opinion on it.  Also, could women use both products? Thanks.

Ben:  Uhmm, SARMs!

Brock:  SARMs!

Ben:  SARMs! They have names that sound that they’re Star Wars’ robots like MK-677 and RAD-140 and GW-5091.  Actually when we talked about exercise in a pill in episode #370, that’s technically SARMs.  The one that we give the mouse that improved aerobic endurance by like 70% without the mouse doing any extra exercise, that’s SARMs.  And it stands for Selective Androgen Receptor Modulator.  It’s what technically called an androgen receptor ligand.  I have written a few different articles on bengreenfieldfitness.com about how exactly to use SARMs and what they actually do like their actual mechanism of action.  But they’re very very interesting because different SARMs have different effects so I really don’t want to go into the mechanism of action here because I’ve written about it so much.  I’d rather just give the practical nitty gritty of how to use SARM if that’s cool.  And for those of you who wanna geek out on SARMs, I’ll put a link to my article and it’s called “New & Potent SARM Stack For Muscle Building, Fat loss, and Anti-Aging: How To Use MK-677 And RAD-140” and then also I have another article on some of these other SARMs – Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators.

Let me mention by the way that they are banned by USADA and WADA, and so if you’re listening in and you’re competing in triathlons, marathons, or cycling or Spartan racing or anything like that, you can’t legally use this and they’re also something that don’t have a great deal of long term safety research behind them.  They’re usually sold by veterinary medicine websites not meant for human consumption.  So just an FYI that we’re delving into kind of like the… well, heck we already talked about last days, so what the heck.

Brock:  (laughs) And cocaine and Coca-Cola.

Ben:  Yeah.  So for example like LGD-4033.  Pretty popular SARMs and it’s one of those that is extremely effective for lean mass gain.  So if you’re trying to put on muscle, it’s an incredible SARMs like some of the other SARMs you cycle it because it can drop testosterone when use chronically over long periods of time.  It decrease what’s called FHS and LH in both men and women and for example, in both sexes that can be assign to your gonads to produce testosterone.  So you need to be careful with it and you need to cycle something like this which I’ll get into in a second but that’s one example of a SARMs.  Another one would be MK-2866.  That one’s better for healing injuries very very quickly unlike something the LGD that doesn’t increase what’s called aromatization.  So it doesn’t increase your risk for estrogen formation and man-boobs and so it’s different.  That would be like a SARMs that you would use for example, for recovery.

There’s another one called RAD-140 and RAD-140 is another one that’s good for lean muscle gains.  It’s a little less of an issue when it comes to decreasing your ability to produce testosterone so it’d be like a less testosterone reducing alternative to LGD-4033.  And then there’s that one we talked about last week which is excellent for exercise and for endurance which is GW-5015.  That’s the one that they call exercise in a pill.  It’s technically exercise in a dropper but that one doesn’t really have much of a deleterious effect on testosterone or on estrogen levels or anything else like that.  Some people have suggested that it may cause cancer to rapidly in several organs and I know that those studies were done in rodent models that already had cancer.  Cause the tumor to grow more quicky but something to bear in mind if that’s something you’re interested in using or maybe a downside to exercise in a pill primarily being lots of tumors.

Brock:  Uhmm.  That’s pretty big downside.

Ben:  That’s pretty big downside.  There’s MK-677, that’s another very popular one.  And that’s one that’s actually been studied in older mammals and it’s been shown to cause a relatively large increase in cortisol and slight increase in insulin resistant but also a huge improvement in things like lean muscle gain and fat loss.  And so as with anything there are some downsides, there are some side effects and that’s why in most cases you would cycle a SARMs to get rid of many of these issues.

So, when I say cycle, you take it for a certain period of time and then you stop.

Brock:  And then you jump on a bike.

Ben:  Yeah, and then you hop on a bike and then you ride a bicycle.  No, you cycle.  So you get on and off of it and when you’re off of it you take things like aromatase inhibitors to shut down the estrogen formation.  Or certain things that will increase the formation of leutinizing hormone like bovine is a perfect example.  And so for an LGD SARMs, you’d go 8 weeks on, and then you’d go 8 weeks off and for the 8 weeks on for example, you’d take like 2-4 milligrams of that everyday and then during the 8 weeks off, you would use for example, things that help with testosterone and we’re talking about tribulus bolvine, zync, magnesium, creatine, some people use things like clomid or HCG along with aromatase inhibitors.  Things that would decrease the formation of estrogen.  You know, we’re talking about components like diindolylmethane is one common one, curcumin or turmeric is another one.  There’s one called brassaiopsis, another one called prunella.  Things that help to control estrogens that you’re not getting the estrogen side effects on being on SARMs long term.

Most SARMs are like an 8 weeks on, 8 weeks off, some are 8 weeks on, 4 week off.  Some are 12 weeks on, 4 weeks off.  My recommendation to most folks who want to be conservative with SARMs is to do 8 weeks on, 4 weeks off.  That’s a cycle that tends to be pretty proven with most SARMs, and for the 4 weeks off, and you could even do 8 weeks off if you wanted to be very careful, you would take something that increases your testosterone specifically your leutinizing hormone or your follicle stimulating hormone, your LH or FSH and also take something that reduces estrogen.  For that right now my 2 favorite supplements would be one called Aggressive Strength and another one called Estrogen Control.  And so, what you do, let’s say you’ll gonna take LGD or you’re gonna stack one of this SARMS like a very common stack would be MK-677 and Rad-140. That’s extremely potent stack for fat loss, for muscle gain, and then you could even do a separate cycle of something like GW if you’re an athlete and you wanted to improve your endurance, but you would do 8 weeks on and then 4-8 weeks of taking morning and evening Aggressive Strength and morning and evening Estrogen Control.  And then you’d go back on to the SARMs and you’d cycle through that multiple times throughout the year.

And I get called out on this all the time because I know that sometimes I talk about things on the show that have not been proven in long term safety studies to be completely bulletproof when it comes to safety and I realized that all of this stuff is kind of like a ‘proceed at your own risk’ type of discussion.  At the same time though, in my opinion worth looking into if you want to accelerate your gains.  I would just say cycle and do a conservative cycle, right? Like 8 on, 8 off or 8 on, 4 off, and again like I mentioned, another kinda more aggressive cycle be like a 12 on, 4 off but anyways, I would definitely include something like Aggressive Strength and Estrogen Control.  Aggressive Strength is being the one that will improve FHS, LH, testosterone when you’re off the SARMs so you don’t get a long term deficit in terms of the testes job of creating testosterone.  Estrogen Control has like the brassaiopsis, it’s got bolvine, it’s got turmeric, it’s got all the things that would decrease estrogen and you do those as when you’re on your off cycle from the SARMs.  Does that make sense?

Brock:  It does.  I’m just wondering in terms of cycling, would there be any advantage to doing say like one week on, one week off which is alternating like that?

Ben:  No.  The body response to multiple weeks that’s why you generally would see the shortest cycle of SARMs you would do would be an 8 week and generally looking at 8, 10, or 12 weeks for your on cycle and then 4-8 weeks for your off cycle.

Brock:  Alright.  That make sense.

Ben:  So, yeah.  It’s one of those things kinda like taking beet root extract for endurance.  It’s better to do it 2 weeks in a row leading up to a race.  For example, to load with it than taking it one day.  Same thing with SARMs, you’re getting a better results by doing a certain number of period of weeks every day and then you take a certain of weeks off.

Brock:  Gotcha.

Ben:  So yeah, that’s the ultimate guide to SARMs and… that’s not the ultimate guide to SARMs, that’s basically my overview of SARMs.  I’ll put a link to my articles on it in the show notes and then Grizzell, once your 87 year father walk around in a unitard toiling both with his teeth through San Francisco Bay, you can attribute all of that to him having listen to episode 371.

Brock:  Can I ask you one thing though?

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Why does everyone talk about chasing their SARMs with OJ like with Orange Juice? What’s up with that?

Ben:  Ascorbic acid improves deliverability.  You could also if you want to avoid the fructose you could take like a lipophilic vitamin C capsule and you could dump that open inside your mouth or take your SARMs and chase it with a glass of lemon juice and water.

Brock:  Alright.  I thought it was just to cover up a gasoline flavour of it.

Ben:  Uhm-hm.  Love that gasoline flavour.

Bryan:  Hi Ben! Could you give us your opinion on the Wim Hof breathing method versus the Buteyko breathing method as per Patrick McKeown oxygen advantage.  Which one would you say gives the best long term gains for health and life? Thanks a lot! Love the podcast.

Ben:  (breathing heavily) Alright.  So, I got this question a lot about the Wim Hof breathing versus the Buteyko, very low and slow breathing.  In the show notes, I will put my interview with the Buteyko method enthusiast Patrick McKeown wrote the excellent book “Oxygen Advantage”.  I will also put a link to my podcast with the equally entertaining Wim Hof.  Anyways though, so…

Brock:  Have you heard of him sing? That guy can really… you can play a guitar and sing like nobody’s business.

Ben:  Yes! He’s a good musician.  He played a guitar on my podcast.  Listen to the episode.

Brock:  Really? Oh! Crap.

Ben:  So the Buteyko breathing method is a breathing method that is designed to make permanent or lasting changes in your unconscious breathing patterns.  It’s very good at activating the parasympathetic nervous system.  It’s very good at keeping you from over breathing.  And we get into this in the book “Oxygen Advantage” but the idea is that excessive intake of oxygen can create a lot of reactive oxygen species and increase respiration rate, and from a longevity and stress standpoint learning to control your breath and not engage in a lot of hyperventilation can be a very healthy practice especially when it comes to decreasing stress and improving heart rate variability.

When you look at the Wim Hof breathing technique, that’s brief controlled periods of hyperventilation like 30 rapid inhalations and exhalations followed by breath holding, usually followed by some kind of emersion in to cold water or hiking up a mountain, barefoot in the snow, in your underwear.

Brock:  Or folding over face [1:34:38] ______ because you passed out.

Ben:  Right.  The Wim Hof method has a goal to prolong breath holding and usually the prolonged breath holding in clod conditions or to allow yourself to be able to handle some type of cold stress better.  It also seems to have this fascinating effect of working to activate areas of brown fat cells and working to access with immune function and even as Wim Hof has shown in clinical studies to decrease the formation of inflammatory cytokines.  He’s even like injected himself with E. Coli and shown that his breath patterns combined with cold work can render the body non-susceptible to the deleterious effects of E. Coli.  So…

Brock:  (chuckles) That was naughty.  That was the craziest thing I’ve seen somebody do.

Ben:  So, the problem with the Wim Hof method from my standpoint is that you’re hyperventilating, and that means you’re blowing off carbon dioxide.  And that hampers aerobic metabolism.  What I mean by that is that when you breath off carbon dioxide, a high amount of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream is the signal for oxygen to get delivered to the cells of the body, okay? So basic physiology is that carbon dioxide will decrease the affinity of the haemoglobin for oxygen and cause the oxygen to become dumped off into muscle tissue more readily so that your muscle tissue becomes more oxygenated.  If you’re over breathing, you’re looking at breathing off more carbon dioxide and a lot of people think, “Oh, that means I’m not gonna be acidotic, that means I’m gonna alkalized my body,” when in fact it doesn’t really mean that.

Your kidneys do a pretty good job of maintaining your body’s pH instead of just means you’re depriving your tissues of some oxygen.  Can that be useful when you blow off a bunch of CO2 for say, getting a dump of nitric oxide and vasodilation to be able to withstand a cold water immersion? Absolutely.  Can it be useful for activating the immune system in like temporary fashion? Absolutely.  Can it be useful for holding your breath for a really long time underwater since carbon dioxide is your body’s signal to take a breath? Dangerous but yes.  So there are applications for the Wim Hof method but they would be acute applications in my opinion that you would use in certain situations like “I dropped my chunky longevity monkey pint of ice cream into this freezing cold pool of water and I have to dive down and get it.  I’m gonna do 30 Wim Hof breaths and I’m gonna dive down there and get it and be able to do that because I did his special breathing pattern.”

Whereas, the Buteyko breathing would be something that you do just like during the day, nice, easy, relaxed, light breathing to keep yourself from hyper oxygenating your body and breathing in too much.  And also to keep yourself from blowing off too much carbon dioxide.  So that you’re getting yourself into a state where you have more oxygen available to your tissues.  But with decreased metabolism meaning that you’re not creating a lot of reactive oxygen species.  So the idea is that they both have their time and they both have their place and I use both.  I love the Wim Hof method when I’m gonna do cold water immersion or I’m getting ready for a race and I got to activate my body and blow off a bunch of CO2 or for example, I want to do yoga fire breathing and I’ll do that sometimes just like a lot of blood flow going to the body to increase nitric oxide production.  There’s a time and place for it but you don’t do Wim Hof breathing, you don’t do this (doing short breathing) all day long, right? At certain periods of time just like exercise just like heat, just like cold, just like any hormetic stressor.  You can overdo it.

So that’s the idea.  You don’t have to be a zealous disciple of anyone breath method that you stick to all the time.  The best for long term gains for health and life is to be breathe nice and easy through your nose, not to breathe too much and then when it comes time, to breathe hard and heavy and do something like a Wim Hof breathing technique that’s when you do that.  And so, yeah, that’s the idea behind the difference between the Wim Hof and the Buteyko and I’ll put a link to both my interviews that we took a deep dive into this stuff in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/371 along with my ultimate fix for constipation, hidden document, all the green tea stuff, and remember if you’re a green tea expert, hop in the comment section and fill me on everything you know about making the green tea experience, the ultimate green tea experience.  I’ll put a link to the article on sauna versus infrared light, the Metformin stuff, and stay tune for my Monday blog post on the Metformin stuff, and a whole bunch more including the polyphasic sleep how-to, and the psychedelic sourcing document, top secret, the Aggressive Strength and the Estrogen Control stuff I talked about when it comes to SARMs, a lot more.

But also, let’s give something away.  Shall we?

Brock:  Sure!

Ben:  So, this is the part of the show where we read a review.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Typically, if you leave a 5-star review on iTunes and say something nice and we read your review on the show, all you need to do is write to [email protected], that’s [email protected].  And when you write to us, what we will do is we’ll turn right back and send you a handy-dandy gear pack full of tech t-shirt, a cool water bottle, and a beanie and all sorts of cool stuff.

However, every so often we’ll just read a review that become entertaining.  And so, in today’s show, we’re gonna read a review that happens to be… Brock is gonna read it actually.  It’s too painful for me to read.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, one star review.

Brock:  One star!

Ben:  First of all, if you hear this one star review right and you got anything out of the show, good karma people, go leave a quick 5-star review on iTunes and it’d take you 2 friggin’ minutes.  Not iTunes, Apple Podcast, whatever they call it now.

Anyways though, so here’s a review from Arob2713, A-R-O-B 2713 says, “Would not recommend one star…” you wanna take this one away, Brock?

Brock:  Yeah.  I’m gonna do a voice.  Just warning you.

Ben:  Okay.

Brock:  “Way too technical and random. huhu  Ben jumps from one topic to the next huhuhu.”

Ben:  Yep.

Brock:  “He has a monotone voice that puts you to sleep huhuhu.”

Ben:  Uhmm, yep.

Brock:  “Did not find this podcast helpful huhuhu.”

Ben:  You know, his review up to the very end is really accurate.  It is technical as random.

Brock:  Well!  I know it’s random.

Ben:  It’s random.

Brock:  It’s random.

Ben:  We jump from one topic to the next.

Brock:  We do.

Ben:  Right? Constipation to SARMs and beyond.  I do have a monotone voice that puts many people to sleep but it sounds like some people based on the question that we got today could use better sleep and so, there’s that.  However, we try to make the podcast helpful. So, I’m sorry about that, Arob.  But Arob, if you are still listening and you’re not asleep…

Brock:  And I haven’t pissed you off with my imitation of your voice.

Ben:  Write in to the show and we’ll send you a t-shirt.  ‘Cause technically 75% of your review is correct.  Three out of four things that you mentioned was correct.  So, with that being said, thank you all for listening to this technical, random topic jumping monotone sleep inducing show.  All of the show notes are over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/371.  Remember to support the Kickstarter going on right now at christiangratitude.com.  Remember to check in on my forthcoming article on the dark side of Metformin and you can do that by ensuring that you subscribe to the free newsletter at bengreenfieldfitness.com and that it is.  Goodbye Brock.

Brock:  And next week I’m putting some really tight underwear on Ben who is not so monotone.

Ben:  Boom!

 

 

July 26, 2017 Podcast: 371 – Why You Get Constipated & What To Do About It, How To Get By On Less Sleep, How To Use SARMs MK-677 and RAD-140, and Wim Hof vs. Buteyko.

Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right (or go to SpeakPipe), use the Contact button on the app, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, or use the “Ask Ben” form at the bottom of this page.

News Flashes [5:45]:

You can receive these News Flashes (and more) every single day, if you follow Ben on Twitter.com/BenGreenfield, Instagram.com/BenGreenfieldFitness, Facebook.com/BGFitness, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Snapchat, and Google+.

Special Announcements [35:40]:

This podcast is brought to you by:

-HealthGains – Text the word “Greenfield” to 313131 to receive a $150 voucher toward your first GAINSWave treatment at any of the 60 participating physicians nationwide. Or go to GAINSWAVE.com and click ‘Find A Doctor' to locate a GAINSWave provider near you.

-Orchestra One  BenGreenfieldFitness.com/orchestra and Use code BEN for 6 months of Orchestra One FREE (valued at $120)

-Organifi – Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/organifi Discount code BEN for 20% off your order!

-Kimera Koffee – Go to KimeraKoffee.com and use code ‘BEN' to get 10% off!

Click here to follow Ben on Snapchat, and get ready for some epic stories on his morning, daily and evening routine! What did you miss this week? A clay mask, a park workout, a morning routine change-up, an epic post-race salad and more.

Ben's Adventures [44:15]:

-NEW! Click here for the official BenGreenfieldFitness calendar.

-Ben will be racing on the Spartan Pro Team for 2017!

You can catch him at any of these races below and you can click here to register:
-Southeast Showdown, Asheville, July 29
-The Ascent, West Virginia, August 26

-Aug 3-6: Mindshare Summit, San Diego. At Mindshare Summit, you’ll learn tools and strategies to get your work where it belongs – in the hands of those who need it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never touched social media or if you’re already selling online like a pro, you’ll meet experts who can help you take your first, or next big step.

-August 12th and 13th Montage Deer Valley Park City, UT: Ultimate Achiever's Club. Ben will be speaking to the finest group of chiropractors on the planet!

-Aug 16-17 San Francisco: Udemy. Ben will be filming in San Francisco for Udemy.

-Sep 8-11, 2017: Who Wants To Live Forever Conference in Reykjavík, Iceland. Most of us not only want to have a long lifespan, but also a long healthspan; to be fit and healthy throughout the course of our lives. As we move into this unprecedented era of human history, a question arises: how far can the human healthspan be extended, and what are the most effective ways to achieve longevity? Click here for tickets!

-Oct 13-15, 2017: Biohacker Summit, Helsinki, Finland. This event is the focal point for learning faster, performing better, living longer, and enjoying more what you wake up to do every day. Discover the latest in wearables, internet of things, nutrition, digital health, and mobile apps to increase performance, be healthier, stay fit, and get more done. Get your tickets here!

-November 10-13 Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions Conference, Minneapolis, MN. I'll be speaking at the 18th annual conference that covers everything from hormone health, adrenal and thyroid health, natural fertility, degenerative diseases, to traditional diets and food preparation & more. Learn how to improve your health through food, farming and the healing arts. Click here to register. 

-Dec 7-9, 2017: XPT Experience, Kauai, Hawaii. Join me, Brian Mackenzie, Kelly Starrett, Julia Starrett, Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reece, for an epic, all-inclusive performance living workshop this Dec 7, 8 and 9 in beautiful Kauai, Hawaii. Come and join us for pool training, underwater workouts, gym training, breathing instruction, outdoor workouts, recovery biohacking and much more! Get your tickets here.

-Dec 17-23, 2017: Runga Retreat, Cambutal, Panama. This retreat spans 8-days and centers around fostering heightened awareness, presence, and connection with others through a mandatory “Digital Detox” – or no cell phones, computers, and other technology. Yoga is offered twice per day, everyday. There is also an off-site adventure ranging from hiking volcanoes to white water rafting or zip lining. World-class spa treatments are available and 100% of the food are suitable for vegetarian, vegan, paleo, gluten-free, or ketogenic dieters. Get your tickets here, and use code BEN for $10 off.

Giveaway:

Grab this 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!

——————————————

Listener Q&A [38:00]:

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

Why You Get Constipated & What To Do About It

Kelly says: She has been taking probiotics for about 6 months now and she still has major stomach issues. Every vegetable that she eats just ferments in her stomach without digesting and “going through”. She even tried taking laxatives to push things along with no luck. Is she taking too much? What probiotics should she be taking?

In my response, I recommend:
My “Ultimate Fix For Constipation” hidden document

How To Get By On Less Sleep

Bruno says: He usually gets about 8 hours of sleep per night and feels great but he is wondering if it is possible to get less sleep (like 6 hours per night) and still feel as good as he does now? Are there any special supplements, food or protocols that will help him feel this good but on less sleep?

In my response, I recommend:
My God Pill article
Polyphasic sleep how-to
My podcast with Michael Breus
Third Wave psychedelics

How To Use SARMs MK-677 and RAD-140

Grizzell says: She is wondering is the SARMs MK-677 and RAD-140 would be useful for her 87-year-old father? How could they benefit an older man? She is also curious if they could help her.

In my response, I recommend:
-My article on “How To Use MK-677 and RAD-140
Aggressive Strength
Estrogen Control

Wim Hof vs. Buteyko

Bryan says: Could you compare Wim Hof's breathing method to the Buteyko method (as described by Patrick Mckeown)? Which do you prefer and which is best for long term gains for health and life?

In my response, I recommend:
My podcast with “Oxygen Advantage” author Buteyko
My podcast with Wim Hof

 

 

 

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