January 23, 2020

http://bengreenfieldfitness.com/assemblage

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:51] About this Podcast

[00:02:15] Podcast Sponsors

[00:05:15] Living Through a Truly Boundless Life

[00:18:18] How to Have Healthy Neurotransmitters

[00:21:28] Tips for A Dynamic Blood-Brain Barrier

[00:24:32] How Breathwork Will Improve Your Life

[00:27:49] Podcast Sponsors

[00:30:53] Smart Drugs and Nootropics

[00:35:17] How to Choose the Diet That's Right for You

[00:38:19] Proper Food Preparation

[00:41:49] Cleaning Your Gut

[00:45:48] What Telomere Lengths Have to Do with The Size of Your Muscles

[00:49:15] Staying Lean

[00:51:09] Biohacking Tools

[00:52:42] Recovery Tools and Tactics

[00:57:37] How to Optimize Your Symmetry and Beauty

[01:00:23] Boosting Your Immune System

[01:02:16] 3 Tips to Eliminate Non-Native EMF From Your Environment

[01:04:46] The Best Nutrients for Hormones and Fertility

[01:06:28] Importance of Having A Life's Purpose and Expressing Gratitude

[01:12:02] End of Podcast

Ben:  On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Think back to what you like to do when you were a kid. Think back to what makes time go by super fast right now, what puts you in the zone. Crazy things like that. You know what's the number one thing that cause my blood sugar to stay regular during the holiday? Like until 6:00 p.m., I would envision something. I've been having a balanced body, which I was just hardcore to balance body for years and years, but I wasn't paying attention to other things, [00:00:30] ______.

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Welcome to the show. You are about to hear a keynote talk that I gave at an event called Biohack the World in New York City. It was a ton of fun. We had a fantastic number of questions after the presentation. I'm giving you both the presentation and the questions, and a link to the resources page for the presentation, a downloadable PowerPoint PDF of the presentation, and everything that I mentioned in today's podcast I'm going to put links for you if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/assemblage because the place I spoke out was called The Assemblage. Really cool place in New York City, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/assemblage, A-S-S-E-M-B-L-A-G-E, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/assemblage.

And if you like what you hear, I have three more book launch parties planned in L.A. where I'll also be giving talks and big Q&As, some more VIP events you need tickets for, all of them you need the RSVP for, but all of these, book launch parties in L.A., the one on the 29^th, the one on the 30^th, and the one on the 31^st you can get access to if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/calendar. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/calendar.

Now, one of the very, very important folks who bring this podcast to you each and every week are the wonderful people at my company, Kion. And if you have not yet tried our coffee, which I just finished a fantastic cup of earlier this day, then you are missing out on some of the most amazingly flavorful, antioxidant-rich, toxin-free coffee you're ever going to experience. We crafted this coffee for health and for purity. However, it turns out that when we went out and had it cupped and flavor-tested, the flavor is actually amazing. It's like this rich cacao, berry, almost like a chocolatey type of taste to this coffee that everybody just swears is the most flavorful coffee they've ever had. And on average, our coffee contained four times the antioxidant levels of any other organic coffee that we tested it against, and it's fully organic. Only 3% of the coffee in the world is organic and ours is absolutely organic. It's the best coffee you're ever going to drink, I guarantee. You get a 10% discount on it if you go to getkion.com, getK-I-O-N.com. That's where you can get your Kion coffee. And the discount code that you can use on it is BGF10, BGF10 at getkion.com.

And while you are drinking tasty coffee, you might also consider drinking the tasty, tasty greens juice powder from Organifi. I was in Las Vegas yesterday and I was in one of the casinos I dropped by. I grabbed a green juice and it's been a while since I've had to buy those because I've just been making my own Organifi stuff at home. Costs me $13 to get a tiny little bottle of green juice. I can make something twice that size for what comes out to about 3 bucks using this Organifi, and depending how you order it. It's as little as $1.70 per serving. It's a blend of Moringa, chlorella, mint, spirulina, wheatgrass, ashwagandha, all of these powerful superfoods, but it's a powder. You simply can drop it in a Nalgene water bottle, chill the stuff up, and it's exactly what you'd get at one of these fancy juice type of facilities, but at a fraction of the cost, and honestly, with a lot better ingredients. Plus, they're going to knock an extra 20% off your green juice order if you just go to organifi.com/bengreenfield. That's Organifi with an “I” dot com/bengreenfield to get fully organic superfood green juice that tastes amazing and that does not break the bank, organifi.com/bengreenfield. Check it out. Enjoy the show. And remember, all your show notes are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/assemblage.

I thought tonight, we have the book here, but I wanted to talk about some of the things that I thought were really especially interesting in the book that we could generate some cool discussion around and walk you guys through some cool key concepts. I'd love to teach. I wake up every morning, I get to learn cool shit and tell people about it, and that's just–like that tickles my [00:05:46] ______ every day when I wake up, if I can do that. And I think everybody, everybody should have a purpose in life, and a purpose in life should include loving other people with your purpose, like figuring out how you can take whatever it is that you might happen to, for some random reason, be naturally skilled at and figure out a way to help other people with it, and that's just what I love to do. So any way that I can help you guys, I'm super happy.

And tonight's casual. Have a great time. Get completely toe up on chugger, whatever crap they had over there, it doesn't matter, alcohol, and it will go to the Irish bar downstairs afterwards. Yeah, [00:06:24] ______. Anyways though for now, [00:06:28] ______ crackers in lunches. Anyways though, so I should get going because I have a lot of stuff I want to tell you all, and then we'll have a Q&A afterwards. Sometimes I take questions while I'm talking. We'll save them for after. So, if you have a question, save them for later, 18 billion hands don't go up when I talk about [00:06:47] ______or something.

So, yeah, as was already alluded to, yeah, I've always been in the physical culture. Which one you think is me on this photo? The middle?

Audience:  The right.

Ben:  The right, like the right of the photography. I'm this guy, I'm this guy. It's kind of funny because when I got married, I was a bodybuilder and my wife is just [00:07:16] ______20 minutes every night, so I miss her, because you'd do your show. That's why [00:07:22]  ______. Just whole body cramp. You can see, I started at an early age and I went to–this is the beautiful University of Idaho campus where I studied the physiology and the biomechanics. I just love this stuff. All the people ask, “How did you get into this?” Now I have some sexy wounded healer story. I just always, always love this stuff, always been to the physical culture and the outdoors. Eventually, after I met my wife, I was a farmer, a rancher, and was like slaughtering pigs in her garage. I started to get into nutrition and how to make your own food, and hunting, and fishing, and all these things that bring us in closer connection to the substance that we're fueling ourselves with.

Early on, there was a lot of exercise stuff, a lot of fitness stuff, and I did bodybuilding. You can see on every other shot, I promise, I'll just put [00:08:11 ] ______. Bodybuilding was like the original biohacking. I don't know if you all notice, but if you go into the whole bodybuilding forums, I mean, everybody was doing all this stuff way back in the day. It's like there's a few sectors, bodybuilding and European soccer, Silicon Valley execs. There's a small subset of people who were early adopters of biohacking, and now it's cool because the information is written, trickle-down biohacking information.

And when I say biohacking, it can be a silly term sometimes because the original biohackers are–they were grinders. They treat their bodies as wetware and they put hardware and chips, and compasses, and electrodes in the ears, and all sorts of stuff to enhance the body. And now, we make ourselves a high-fat smoothie, tablespoons of coconut oil and call it biohacking. I call it cooking diarrhea. Ultimately, we've got access to a lot of cool information now, which I think is great. But originally, I was [00:09:11] ______in the deep underground dark world of bodybuilding. And then, I got into the next most unhealthy sport on the planet, Ironman triathlon for 10 years.

The whole time, I swallowed hook, line, and sinker and I thought I was fit, and I felt good in spandex, and I could ride my bike really fast. And I did Spartan racing, too, also very masochistic, arguably way more functional fit than the Ironman triathlon. I really got into all these new ways to beat up the body and make it your slave and buffet your body, get super fit. But I got into [00:09:51] ______ “Beyond Training.” I got in this whole realm of self-quantification, blood biomarkers. I started looking at stuff, randomly high cortisol, [00:10:01] ______ testosterone, extremely low thyroid, rampant inflammation.

And that's when I really started to delve more into what I would consider becoming a holistic side of things, how do we care for our bodies, how do we engage in practices that are more conducive to overall wellness, health, longevity. And really, with balance, the big focus is energy and how can you have all the energy that you want [00:10:22 ] ______. I can finish a workout and I'll be draining and laying on the ground, sucking wind. But how can you actually feel good and energized throughout the day, and sleep well, and have good digestion?

And so, “Beyond Training” was more for like incoming athletes and exercise enthusiasts to fight in some of these battles I discovered myself. And then with “Boundless,” because I get these questions that I answer for you guys, it's about living a long time, feeling good doing it, and it's even got things about spirituality, relationships, and gratitude, and all these things. I mean, I got to say this, we are all on this adventure of self-improvement and we're doing a lot of really cool things to get that, but I see this over and over again. You want to talk in clients on the phone or on conferences or talks like this.

In the end, everything we're doing still [00:11:09] ______ unless we have friends, unless we have good relationships unless we're caring for the most important part of us. This part, there's this one part of us who want to live forever [00:11:18] ______, the spirit, caring for that and understanding that the old grandmas in Sardinia in Italy who smoke cigarettes and drink gin every day, they're still living a really long time because they've tapped into the spiritual happiness of social life and relationships. But ultimately, I wanted “Boundless” to really be more about energy, about just having all the energy you want, whether or not you want to go and do, whatever, CrossFit or Ironman or Spartan or anything like that.

And the way that I comment things, the angle I comment things from is let's figure out how we can still stay true to our ancestry, how can we have one foot in the realm of ancestral wisdom and the other foot in the realm of modern science. Meaning like if the sun is shining outside and you have a phone call to take, don't stand in front of your stupid $8,000 infrared light panel with your pants pulled down while you're talking on the phone. Go outside and the sun shines. Wear some grounded shoes or go out there barefoot. If you have a fancy cryotherapy membership but your shower is just effing cold as this year in New York City like where I'm staying at as I take a shower in cold water. Go to the beach, go for a walk, go jump in the ocean. If you have the option in a good healthy whole food meal versus taking you the superfood smoothie that's processed [00:12:38] ______ cost you 80 bucks, you've got to have it, got to put your smoothie, but little backyard patty with rosemary and thyme, and you can get yourself grass-fed liver and mushrooms.

That's my angle. I embrace the modern science, but especially in this biohacking world, we have to maintain our roots to our ancestry as well because a lot of this stuff, even the biohacks, like there could be evolutionary mismatches, right? We can have Wi-Fi devices on our wrist and Bluetooth meditation apps, blazing through our skulls, and all these crazy things that we're doing that aren't necessarily healthy. So, I always look at things through the lens of, is this an evolutionary mismatch? Are we marrying ancestral wisdom to modern science or we're just grabbing every last cool things that come up and then buying it and trying it and not thinking about our biology and the way that we humans have been hardwired for thousands and thousands of years to live because all this stuff is pretty new for ourselves, for our body.

I don't want to feed false information, [00:13:35 ] ______. I was hired this afternoon. I collapsed on my bed after fucking 17,000 steps around New York City, a meeting here and a podcast there, another meeting. I just collapsed, but I take out my NuCalm, and my binaural beats, and my lavender, and I used this whole scientific realm to really push the reboot button on my body very quickly. So, it's not about never running out of energy, it's also about being able to push the reboot button. You want to push the reboot button. So, don't get me wrong, humans get tired. We're supposed to get tired. This isn't about feeling like you're on modafinil all day, but it is about knowing how to tap in the energy, how to reset energy, how to restore, and how to refill energy and everyone. That's what balance is about.

So, balance the body, right? We want metabolic efficiency. I talked about in the book how to put together workout program to get endurance, mobility, strength, power, stamina, good immunity, high nutrient status. These are all the elements that would go in having a balanced body, which I was like, I was just hardcore to balance body for years and years, but I wasn't paying attention to other things, which would be what?

Audience:  [00:14:43 ] ______.

Ben:  [00:14:44] ______ body. Actually, did you guys know the Kion logo? You know what that is, the three swoops? Its body, mind, and spirit. So, there's the mind, like are you learning new things? You have balanced neurotransmitters. Are you fixing the leaky blood-brain barrier? Do you have good sleep? Do you have good memory, good cognition, good executive working function? That's another area that we want to target. It's like the second cog in the wheel of balanced energy. And then the third of course, as I already alluded to, is the most important. Are we caring for our spirits? Are we caring for our souls? Are we having meditation practices, gratitude practice, relationships, service in the local community, silent solitude, study?

I mean, having a trance spirit is not just about going to ayahuasca retreats in Costa Rica or whatever [00:15:33] ______ coming over to. There's a lot more that goes into having a boundless spirit. And man, when you put that icing on the cake–because I kind of did all three in order, like it works on my body. I was like, “Oh, I have to take care of my bloodstream or my mind, my blood-brain barrier, my neurotransmitters,” and I was still empty, I was still empty. Really, I didn't feel full fulfillment and happiness in my life. So, probably two years ago. It was about two years ago that I really was like, “Oh, I'm actually happy now. I'm actually happy because I'm not at the gym at 7:00 p.m. at night. I'm laughing with my kids at the kitchen table playing TableTop, extra hour and a half long family dinner. And in the morning, I'm not stressed because I'm running downstairs to check email so I can make it to my morning workout or my sauna in time. I'm actually on the floor cross-legged in my office or in my living room praying, meditating, writing down my gratitude journal.”

And that's the part that I think is the most selected and the most important, but you got to have body, mind, and spirit. And if you guys like anything I'm going to tell you in the next 21 slides, when we get to talk about some of the cool things you can do to optimize body, mind, and spirit, and you tweet it out or Instagram or whatever. The hashtag we're going to use tonight like if you read a book and you see some cool thing you want to talk about, it's going to be #beboundless. I wanted to say it. This book, it's going amazing, guys. I feel so blessed and so grateful. We've like quintupled what the publisher thought we were going to do for pre-orders. Every single New York publishing house turned me down because they said this book is dead in the water. Nobody's going to want a 650-page, $65 [00:17:13] ______ on human blueprint.

And we're proving them wrong. There are tons of really good books out there. My editor told me he did feel bad about one thing in the book. He said he realized that reading this book, people are going to need to buy 100 other books because I talked about I read a book every day, and so I'm always like–between that and people I interview in my podcast, it's like I have all this information on put now. And so, I read a lot of that in the book. And so, if you visit the webpage for any of the book chapters, there's a website with all the information that got cut and ended it out because I have to kiss 450 pages goodbye, but they all live on the book website.

And there's more books that delve more deeply into each of the different topics. There's different podcasts, there's different articles. So, it turns into this huge wild adventure, but I apologize because we need to ask your family for Amazon gift cards for your birthday present because you need so many books you're going to all read after you read “Boundless.” Anyways, aside from that though, it turned out really well. So, I think you guys could do is spread the word that would be amazing because I want to just get into a lot of people's hands.

So, a few things that I talked about in the book. Number one is your neurotransmitters, and these are these chemical messengers that travel throughout your body. There's a lot of ways that you can take care of them. And you can see here on the slide where toxins and replacing building blocks, moving the nerves, cleaning the brain, quantifying your neurotransmitters. So, just a few little things. First of all, stimulation. You don't want to overstimulate specifically or overexpress your adenosine receptors, these receptors that interacts with caffeine, and that you need more and more adenosine to be able to interact with those receptors to get to sleep at night.

So, even if you're having a cup of coffee and not having an afternoon, your adenosine receptors are still becoming saturated. So, the trick for that is for every one to two months, you switch to decaf, switch to something like a decaf coffee or cacao tea or green tea and it really helps to stabilize those neurotransmitters of toxins, like I drink all the time. But when I run out of my [00:19:20] ______ three bags from Kion on a month, and I usually run out of those by like week three, and then I call my mom who has a coffee shop and she sends me decaf coffee. And I drink the decaf coffee for a week to reset and go back into the regular coffee. That's one example, just thinking about neurotransmitters.

Another example would be helping to repair some of the neurons in the brain that can get damaged from all the inflammation, from the toxin [00:19:44] _____, from non-native EMF. There's a lot of compounds that you can use to repair the brain. One that I talked about in the book that's particularly effective is you'll hear about glutathione, right, which is wonderful for detoxification for the brain. But man, when I was doing research for the book, N-acetylcysteine, that is amazing if you actually do have some brain issues with [00:20:07] ______ inflammation and flying a lot, like having that in your back pocket. That's something I talked about in the book and I think it's better than glutathione for some of the brain function stuff.

And then, finally, if I can talk about one other thing for the building blocks, your neurotransmitters need specific building blocks as the myelin sheaths that help to transmit that information. So, I can tell you four things, two for the myelin sheaths and two for the neurotransmitters. So, the two for the neurotransmitters are vitamin B complex and amino acids, a properly structured protein-rich diet or the use of amino acids. And then for the other component, a vitamin B complex like Thorne multi or any other vitamin B rich complex is really good for neurotransmitter precursors. Then for the myelin sheaths, [00:20:51] ______ DHA. DHA is fantastic for that. What's the other one? What's the other one that the myelin sheaths are comprised of, really important one? Anybody know? Then we'll get [00:21:02 ] ______. No. An oleic acid, like from omega-3 rich Mediterranean diet, olive oil and olives, virgin olive oil, that's wonderful for myelin sheaths. So, if you have a combination of DHA and these oleic acids, it's wonderful for those sheaths.

So, those are a few things to think about when it comes to neurotransmitters. But the other thing you need to do for your brain is address the blood-brain barrier because we hear about the gut blood barrier a lot, but not about the brain-blood barrier, which is just as important, which can very similar to the gut blood barrier become permeable, especially when you're exposed to things like toxins and EMF, et cetera. There are certain things that you can do to repair the blood-brain barrier. A few of the important ones, one would be a lot of people have a high blood pressure, right, especially in the biohacking community, we're all just using nicotine now [00:22:00 ] ______.

That seems to be the new stimulant, but that'll increase blood pressure. You just exercise. In general, that's too hard where you're possibly stimulating stress. That can have an impact on blood pressure. Overall stress can have an impact on blood pressure. And most of us know about garlic, about fish oil, about [00:22:20] ______ blood pressure, magnesium. One of the things that I talked about in the book, if you deal with high blood pressure, was a device called the Zona. I bought it for my mom. She has high blood pressure. It's a handheld dynamometer that quantifies your grip. They've shown in clinical studies that thing will decrease blood pressure in just about five minutes of use every day. So, that's a really, really good half of the blood pressure. It kind of flies on the radar of the body. You can understand why.

I had a podcast with the guy like six years ago. It's an amazing device. Another one would be saturated fat. Saturated fat can actually induce blood-brain barrier leakage if it is in the presence of low plant intake or low fiber intake. So, that's one of the things that kind of sort of concerns me about high-saturated fat carnivore-based diet. One of the things that's not talked about a lot is the blood-brain barrier and the effect that may be induced by high amounts of saturated fat, the absence of some of these fibers, polyphenols, et cetera, that we need to help combat some of the inflammation occurred in the gut and also in the brain in response to a high-saturated fat diet. So, if you're on a saturated fat coconut oil butter type of thing, make sure you're also including plants or other fiber sources in your diets. It's very important for the blood-brain barrier.

We talk a lot about the vagus nerve in biohacking, chanting, singing, gargling, humming, cold water face thumps, all these things that we can do to tone the vagus nerve. And I'm definitely not even opposed to the use of these vagal nerve stimulators. I use them. I have a Fisher Wallace Circadia and a NuCalm device, and these are amazing for toning the vagus nerve and actually allowing yourself to shift from the parasympathetic very readily. But paying attention to vagal nerve tone is also extremely important.

And then the last one is that–there's a lot of stuff in there, but coffee and tea actually should be very good for the blood-brain barrier, but there's a law of diminishing returns. It could be related blood pressure, it could be related vagus nerve activation, but small amounts of coffee and tea. Doing like one to two cups a day is fantastic for the blood-brain barrier. And then, once you get more than that starts to get damage the blood-brain barrier. So, it's important again some of the neurotransmitters are cognizant, but are stimulants that are coming into the system. So, those are just a few little ones to pay attention to for fixing [00:24:31 ] ______.

Now, number three is breathwork. How many of you in here have a breathwork habit? I was going to lead you guys through breathwork, but they already did it, which is fantastic. I'm so happy because breathwork is just huge freeway to lower stress and also to just change your life. Probably the three biggest ones that I do every day is I breathe myself to sleep every night. So, I track the sleep latency with an Oura, and I do 4-8 breathing. I started doing it after I interviewed Andrew Weil on my podcast, this 4-7-8 breathing. But I didn't like the 7 count hold. It kind of kept me up. So, I just did 4 in, 8 out, and my latency, which is pretty good already. I was like, seven, eight minutes [00:25:12] ______ three minutes and I'm not like 4-8 breathing.

When I'm in the office, typically, I'll use the alternate nostril breathing, alternate nostril in through the left nostril, cover the left nostril, out through the right nostril. And then the other one that I also use, especially when I'm on planes, when I'm just like–I use this while I'm walking through busy sections of town. If we're in airport, I do box breathing. I can do like four-count step, four-count hold, four-count exhale, four-count hold, and I'll walk like that, and it almost feels like moving meditation.

And then the final form of breathwork that I use quite a bit, meaning, about twice a month is I have holotropic breathwork routine. If you go to YouTube, you can download even just like 15-minute holotropic chunks that just take you to a whole different plan in terms of supposedly DMT production, although that hasn't actually been quantified and supposedly causes DMT production very similar to what you get from something like LSD, but it's kind of a freeway to tap into almost like what plant medicine will give you, but with far less serotonin exhaustion. That's one of the problems with plant medicines and psychedelics is they really exhaust your serotonin receptors.

There are things you can do if you're using plant medicines and psychedelics like replenish 5-HTP, take a good absorbable vitamin C, take a methyl donor like SAM-e. These are all things because I'll use plant medicines on a quarterly basis, but I always replenish going in and replenish going out to make sure that I fill my body with what it needs to get my serotonin levels back up. When you're doing holotropic breathwork, you can get all of these same benefits without actually doing the same number on your serotonin receptors.

So, those are a few of the breathwork routines that I use. There's also a guy I interviewed, The Renegade Pharmacist, Niraj Naik. He has a 21-day SOMA breathwork course. I'm taking my kids to it right now. And in week three of that course, he has like a 60-minute choreographed holotropic breathwork routine. And I keep that on my MP3 player and that's the one I listen to when I'm laying flat on my back in the sauna when I do the holotropic routine, again about twice a month. It's just amazing. I feel wonderful for days afterwards.

I also tried it the other day in my hyperbaric oxygen therapy, like a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. I got one of those soft shells about three months ago. Oh, man, it's a game-changer. You recover so much more quickly. You saturate your tissues with oxygen. And now I go with that and I do breathwork. What I do is I started taking my naps in there, and I wake up, and I'll play like a 10-minute breathwork routine, and oh man, you breathwork in that thing and you're just full of oxygen. It's amazing. So, if you haven't tried hyperbaric, it's really cool.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying today's presentation. I wanted to tell you about a really cool massive time saver home exercise device invented by a guy who's been on my podcast before, Dr. John Jaquish. He used to invent these high-end exercise devices developed to increase bone density called OsteoStrong. And rather than people paying literally tens of thousands of dollars to have one of these OsteoStrong units in their own home, he decided to develop these series of variable resistance elastic bands that come with this high-end bar that simulates what like an Olympic weightlifting bar would do for you, but it's travel-friendly. It's very short. It rotates, does everything that Olympic bar would do.

But when you pair this thing with these resistance bands, you can simulate hundreds and hundreds of pounds of force without actually traveling with an entire gym setup. It's called an X3. So, this X3 is fully portable, but you can also use at any home gym. It might look like these normal elastic bands that you could get for a fractional cost on Amazon, but these bands are specifically designed to maintain resistance throughout the entire range of motion. So, you get this really potent muscle building and strength building effect with a fully portable exercise device. And he's going to knock $50 off an X3 for any of my listeners. So, if you want to get that deal on this really cool piece of equipment, I travel everywhere with it, it's called the X3 Bar. You go to X3, the number 3, x3bar.com and use code BEN to get that $50 discount.

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So, smart drugs and nootropics, those are obviously very interesting for, I know, a crowd like this that came to a biohacking event. There's lots of stuff out there, lots of plans out there. There's a few that I really like. I'm not big in a Deprenyl or modafinil or Adderall just because of the problems those can create, again neurotransmitters, dopamine, serotonin, when I say to avoid stimulants, to take care of your neurotransmitters. I have modafinil. I have a little Ziploc bag which lasted about a year, and I'll use that like if I [00:31:24] ______ India next month and there'll probably like one day when I'm just exhausted. I got to take a modafinil maybe the first day or whatever to get over the jet lag of the sequence. But I'll pull it out in very, very few circumstances.

But the other ones that I use, L-theanine if I do have a cup of coffee in the afternoon. It helps to stabilize and release the caffeine. If you're a slow coffee oxidizer, you can test your genetics. If you're slow coffee oxidizer, L-theanine should have a pantry if you can have caffeine and just make you feel so much better with caffeine. I do use nicotine. I'll chew nicotine gum sometimes, although I've kind of increasingly switched. People [00:31:59] _____, “Oh, gum-chewing [00:32:00] ______ chocolate gum, bro.” I switched to this peppermint oil gum. It's amazing. It's like frankincense and peppermint. I get it from Young Living Essential Oils. It's called Slique. I like that. I really like nicotine gum for a while, but I didn't want to be dependent on a stimulant form for my gums. So, I switched to this essential oil gum. But I still like nicotine every once in a while. It's a pick-me-up, especially before, like an evening dinner or an event like this because it is transient, it sends out to your system pretty quickly. It doesn't keep you up that much at night afterwards.

I actually take my nicotine and I mix it with methylene blue. And because methylene blue stands as superior mitochondria, nicotine has an impact on the mitochondria as well. That's a very cool mix. It's a very cool mix. And I think it was Dr. Ted Achacoso, who I interviewed and talked about the sublingual trophies that they're making to have microdose of nicotine and CBD, methylene blue in there. That's a very, very cool little mix for cognitive pick-me-up. But I'm just showing you guys the ones I found to be really good. Microdoses of CBD, the company Alive by Nature now, they're doing an intranasal spread with NAD and CBD, great small dose of CBD. And we tend to associate CBD with sleepiness or decreased anxiety and stress, but actually usual cognitive pick-me-up, especially that's compounded with an NAD. So, that's another really cool mix.

There are certain peptides that are now becoming pretty popular that work pretty well for cognition, if you go to their website from the International Peptide Society and hook up with a good doctor. A couple that I like that you could ask them about, one is this dihexa and one is C-max. And these peptides, they're just amazing for cognition, gives you a very similar feeling as though you had taken modafinil in terms of the wakefulness that induces, but without kind of a robotic, almost like a de-emotionalized type of impact that modafinil has. So, these peptides, dihexa and C-max are also really good.

And then, of course, I think everybody knows about psilocybin lion's mane right now, and that's also kind of a cool little stack for cognition, I mean, there's a lot of stuff, but that's kind of like what's in my back pocket as far as the certain things I would rely upon for a little pick-me-up from a nootropic, or a smart drug, or microdose, or the Fisher Wallace. Those are cranial electrical stimulation devices, technically. And those are also really, really good for inducing some effect on the vagus nerve.

And then, of course, there's apps like N-Back for training, which I like, Brain.fm. And then as far as neurofeedback goes, I mean in the biohacking sector, things like the 40 Years of Zen over in Seattle, that's very popular. Another one is a Peak Brain in L.A. I don't use Neurofeedback quite as much. I'm waiting for something to come out with a good user-friendly device, like a helmet [00:34:49 ] ______. All the electrodes are placed properly. You can use biofeedback, which is a very simple program you get on your computer. Right now, the world of Neurofeedback I think is a little bit behind the times and you still need to go to a clinic. And I would love to see some other good app, a good device. That doesn't quite exist yet, but Neurofeedback is [00:35:09] ______ if you want to do things like get faster sleep onset or you have a concussion or something like that.

So, I have a big section in the book about diet. Like, I didn't want to give you guys a diet. I want to teach you how to look at all your blood, all your biomarkers, all your biochemical individuality and using all that. Choose the diet that's right for you because the ketogenic diet helped. You may lose 20 pounds. If you've got familial hypercholesterolemia or like an FTO gene and would predispose obesity in response to saturated fat, you have a gallbladder or liver bile production, bile storage issue, that diet might just be completely wrong for you while it worked for somebody else.

So, biochemical individuality, testing gut, blood, urine, saliva, food allergy, getting those metrics and figuring out based on that and your ancestry what diet is right for you, that's the way that you do it. I can tell you that no matter what diet that you're on, there are prevailing characteristics of all these Blue Zones, all these areas where people really seem to be living healthy despite them having vast differences in their macronutrient intake and the composition of their diets. Some of those things include eating in a parasympathetically driven state, [00:36:21] ______ breathe before we started this talk the same thing like [00:36:24 ] ______. Do like three to five rounds of that before we eat and we'll say a blessing and we'll be grateful for the food.

In addition to eating in a parasympathetically driven state, we also see things like some element of fasting, protein strips, Mediterranean diet is very popular, but in the Orthodox Church, which is a more healthy legitimate adaptation of the Mediterranean diet, there's periods of time during the year where you're not eating meats, and certain days of the week where you're not consuming olive oil, and there's certain periods of time where you're restricting protein, eating protein. And so this idea of having compressed feeding windows, intermittent fasting, sort of periods of time when you're engaged in protein restriction.

I had a fantastic conversation about this with the guys at Wild Health a couple of weeks ago that I put on my podcast. So, they take their clients through autophagy cycles and anabolic cycles throughout the year. So, there's periods of time where they're focusing on longevity and periods of time where they're focusing on muscle building, and that's too advanced period. You can just have certain periods of time during the day where you're focused on anabolism and high blood levels of amino acids, carbohydrate refeedings. And then other times of the day where when you're not eating, you're engaged in cellular autophagy, morning cold thermogenesis, morning sunlight and walks, fasting, and this press-pull cycling so to provide response very, very well to.

We also see [00:37:47] ______ food, they're eating with people, they have good relationships, typically there's a wide variety of food groups, especially wild plants, herbs, and spices. And so no matter what diet that you're eating, make sure you've got autophagy and anabolism dialed in. You're fasting, you're eating in a parasympathetic state. You're preferably having some meals with people and it's not just about sucking down the latest superfood shake while you're hunched over your email inbox. So, that's really what we see in a lot of these areas that are doing the right thing with diets.

Now, next is some rules that you follow based on fuel. Some of this stuff is from the fueling section of the book, but a lot of us already know about avoiding rancidity and vegetable oils, heating our food wisely. Paying attention to histamines is pretty important. I'm surprised at the number of people these days who are [00:38:38] _____, who have histamine sensitivities. It's pretty easy to test genetically for that. If you take a 23andMe results or your genetic test results and you upload them to Dr. Ben Lynch‘s service Strategene, and you can look at your histamine pathway, see if you have a histamine sensitivity. I found out that I did and I started to use a histamine blocking supplement prior to consumption of alcohol, prior to consumption of some fermented foods. And even probiotics are going to cause a histamine release.

So, using antihistamines or histamine blocker is actually a pretty good idea if you find yourself struggling with things like brain fog, et cetera, after a meal. Sometimes there's a histamine content and I'm running into that more and more. Lipopolysaccharides are another big one a lot of people struggle with, and those occur when you eat a high-fat, high-carbohydrate meal. So, this is why, for example, when I go to a steakhouse now, I'd love to have a big fatty ribeye [00:39:30] ______ with it. But now, I'm pretty careful with my sides, I go for mushrooms, either kept as a breadbasket. I skip doing sweet potato fries and have steaks at our house because that potent combination, the high carbs and the high saturated fat really resulted with a lipopolysaccharide release, even though when you order vegetables at a steakhouse, you guys know they're not really vegetables. You seemed like the Jim Gaffigan [00:39:55] ______, they ordered broccoli. We cooked it in ice cream, and that's how our vegetables are like at a steakhouse. So, you may not want vegetable at steakhouse, period.

But the ultimate idea is just because of the lipopolysaccharides. And then the [00:40:10] ______ is wonderful. Like, our house, you walk into our pantry and the cupboards are like bowed and curved because we have so many wild planet boxes of sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel, and salmon. Those are like stables of my diet. Every day I've got one of those worked in. I'm a huge fan of that smash approach to diet.

Glycemic variability. Does everybody here know what glycemic variability is? Yeah, the amount which your blood glucose fluctuates during the day. That and inflammation are the two most important markers to track if you focus on longevity [00:40:40] ______ myopically focus on two things. It's looking at your hs-CRP, your cytokines, and your fibrinogen, and your homocysteine, and some of these inflammatory markers. But then the other ones, hemoglobin A1c, and glucose, and insulin, and IGF-1 because it's really important, glucose is going to cause your retinal cells to go into free radical formation, and can oxidize in arteries.

And so, paying attention to how many times your blood glucose fluctuates. If you can find it in your budget or you can convince your doc to prescribe you something like a Dexcom G6, continuous blood glucose monitor. I will run for a year and there's so much valuable insight under that thing. Foods, I didn't expect. I was fighting my blood sugar like green beans. Crazy things like that. You know what's the number one thing that cause my blood sugar to stay regular during the holiday? Like until 6:00 p.m., I would do cold in the morning. Even like five minutes of cold. There's nothing like a 20-minute cold out, but cold in the morning, the best thing for the blood sugar blew my mind. There were some days where I could have carbs at lunch and I can go up and it is the cold. It's the cold. So that was the number one thing I found that would control blood sugar. It's crazy.

So, number nine is to clean your gut. Of course, having a coffee enema bucket over there. But usually, when a client come to me and they've got gut issues, I'm not a doctor, don't misconstrue, this is medical [00:42:00] ______ gut and health or something like that [00:42:03] _____, but here's I would do if I were in your shoes. This is what I know, but I'm not prescribing medical advice. But I usually recommend two things, a three-day stool panel because things like parasites is nasty to think about, but they hatch over cycles. So, if you're just doing the stool test over one day, [00:42:20] ______ three-day stool panel, which is wonderful when you go to fridge and you got FedEx bag, number one, [00:42:26] ______. And to my wife, she's [00:42:30] ______.

Then the other one is a food allergy panel. It isn't going to give you a laundry list of false positives. I like the Cyrene food allergy panel for that. So, typically, if there's gut issues that are found, I really like the trifecta. It's more than trifecta really. There's colostrum, L-glutamine, bone broth, and then the supplement that Dr. Zach Bush makes, the Lignite for healing the [00:42:50] ______ ravages of glyphosate, like those are all things that you'll find at the Greenfield house. So, taking care of the gut. Just foodies and travel, it's hard to say glyphosate these days, but we're always paying attention toward the gut, and these are some of the main things that we use.

I detox, but I don't go on these huge hefty detoxes anymore. Like at the beginning of the year, I detox every day. I do shaking when I wake up or trampolining. I have a vibration platform. Once a week, I do the coffee enema, infrared sauna any more than three to five times a week. I'm always thinking about hiking. As stuff is coming in while I'm traveling on jets and getting as close to jet fuel in airports and toxins and walking in a few section of Macy's. I'm just constantly thinking, “Okay. Did I, today, do something to kind of clean out my body to keep stuff moving along?”

So, think about that. Don't just be like, “Yeah, January's my detox month.” So, you want to pay attention to daily microdoses of detox. That's right, you write that. That's my next book, the detoxification microdose book. Write that down, folks.

And then, another big one, again it comes over and over again to activate the parasympathetic nervous system before you consume food. It's so important, especially some of the food issues of onset by stress. And then at the bottom there, I have deactivated. This comes down to a very controversial topic right now, whole paleo carnivore sector, paleo, you don't eat grains, you don't eat dairy, built-in claim defense mechanisms and inflammatory molecules, carnivore diet, avoid these hermetic compounds and plants.

I'm omnivorous, but we always pay attention to ancestral food prep methods. I would not go down to Hawaii and bow hunting again and cut it open there in the field [00:44:35] ______. It's not the way. I would prepare it properly, just so you know, washout, cook it. I know it's a horrible, horrible visual. I mean, [00:44:45] ______, especially my [00:44:48] ______. The other thing is eating plants, soak, rinse, sprout your quinoa, and you soak your legumes and ETA-activating predigested glutens and the sourdough bread and the fermentation process, old-world ancestral preparation methods of plants and grains and legumes.

If you learn how to do this, you don't have to be one of those people, like it seems so many folks are now who are afraid of plants, afraid of grains, milk, ferment the milk. I'm making kefir now, predigest all lactose in terms of these wonderful probiotics that produce things like the longevity enhancing compound, urolithin A in the gut that produces collagen peptides in the gut. And so, you learn how to take all these foods that are no-nos from people because they preach this but they don't know or haven't tapped into the time to be able to soak and sprout and ferment and deactivate via the time to do it or their knowledge. It opens you up to a whole wide world of food. Sometimes we get restricted and we get afraid of food, but we don't need to be. We just need to deactivate and treat it properly.

I talked a lot about fitness in the book and one of the things that I talked about is a fascinating study both on guinea pigs and powerlifters that shows that the longer telomere lengths are associated with the fast, wiry explosive muscle month, a big muscle. And I'm training for the Russian kettlebell certification right now personally, and I love it because everything is explosive and quick and powerful. And because the kettlebells are kind of heavy, you can still maintain some amount of muscle. But in writing the book, yeah, I was really surprised that the data showed how crucial powerful explosive movements are.

And my apologies because I know CrossFit did want a couple of times, and I think CrossFit is excellent for getting fed. But the only issue I run into the people who I'm coaching for more longevity want to be in for the long game is that sometimes doing the fast-powerful explosive lifting in a metabolically exhausted state can set you up for a little bit of injury potential. So, typically, I recommend like lighter weights, bodyweights, sometimes kettlebells, et cetera, for the explosive stuff and not to combine the explosive stuff with super-duper metabolically demanding work.

And then you focus on the strength in the different session. But if there's one thing that when I walk into a gym that I see a lot of people neglecting is moving lighter weights more explosively. Like if there's one thing for longevity from the book is bigger is not better, moving light weights explosively, like that small wiry explosive powerlifter. They're going to live a longer time, the big bulky bodybuilders that carry and cool all that muscle and higher antioxidants. And so, it's something to think about, the way that you structure and train you want to be. How much muscle do you want to have versus do you want that really functional small wiry explosive muscle?

I talked about a lot of other strategies in that big data section, but I want to make sure I get everything in for you guys, so I'm going to keep moving along. For staying strong, probably the number one thing that I talked about from the book that I'm doing more and more of these days, it's really two things. It's super slow training one to two times a week and read a book like “Body by Science” by Dr. Doug McGuff, and the peripheral blood pressure response, the strength, the bone density. It's just amazing and it's very easy on the joints and sustainable for life, and it takes like 20 minutes to do one single set to failure, or even this biohacking, which I'm going to do one tomorrow under ARXFit machine, guide you through the super slow exhausting single set to failure type of movements. I really, really like, especially for busy people with limited time, that form of training.

And the other ones, blood flow restriction training using Kaatsu devices or using these blood flow restriction bands in Amazon and actually target the arms and legs prior to workout. I use them all the time when I travel. I'm doing bodyweight workouts to maintain muscle. It's amazing. As a matter of fact, I was reading some literature just yesterday. I was talking with somebody in the back room here about it like 20 minutes ago. If you can track high levels of blood amino acids in the muscle, they will select a [00:48:47] ______ to repair the muscles that are being worked for the blood flow. So, now I'm going to try buy into it, the Kion Aminos [00:48:54] ______ right before blood flow restriction training. I think that one-two combo is going to be super effective. That just comes up this week. I'm super excited. I'm a nerd, I know, I read this research and I came and try this and see what happens. But I think that one-two combo blood flow restriction training and amino acid supplementation, I think it's going to be a game-changer.

Okay, staying lean. Probably the biggest tip that I gave in the book that I do 365 days a year, freaking Christmas morning I do this, is I always wake up in an intermittent fasted state, 12 to 16-hour fast, close to 12 hours for women, close to 16 hours for me. It's a pretty good rule to shoot for. Next, I get a little bit of caffeine in my system to immobilize fatty acids, cup of black coffee, green tea, nothing in the coffee, no calories. Any calories will take you out of a fasted state. Okay. So, the water [00:49:50] ______, nothing. That's great for cognition, but if you just want full [00:49:55] ______ response, you keep that stuff out.

And then the next step is I do 20 to 30 minutes of fasted aerobic cardio, walk in the sunshine, sauna session, anything kind of conversational aerobic, and then I finish with two to five minutes of cold. I do that every day. I do it with a ton of my clients. Man, it is one of the best ways to just trim fat off the body, get lean super-fast. There's been no human clinical studies that I know of that have combined all of those and actually studied them. And so, I can't say that research shows that it's the best way to lose fat, but I swear by it, like that's a number one tip pristinely. You might do that every single day, wake up fasted, caffeine, aerobic, cold, and that's it.

And it's sometimes on a super busy day when I don't know if I'm going to have time to do a hard work, I get on the kettlebells. I'll sometimes have to do a harder workout on that fasted state, but usually, it's easy aerobic stuff because then you don't hyper compensate on egg, omelet, bacon and avocado and Go Cheese, slapping yourself on the back because you got the hard work out. That's the tricky part of a soul-crushing workout in the morning [00:50:59] ______ sometimes. So, you got to be careful with the hard workouts, [00:51:03] ______ for carbohydrate intake with dinner. I like striking them.

So, the next one is some biohacking tools that I like. I talked about the Kaatsu bands. One that I've been using quite a bit, this one-two combo, if you can hunt it down at like a biohacking facility, or if you have a higher disposable income, you can get this one-two combo for your home. And I realized some of the stuff I talked about, it's like, “I'm not going to spend $70,000 on a one-two combo for my home.” But that Vasper machine. That combines full-body exercise with blood flow restriction. That thing's a game-changer, man, oh man. And what I do is I have that LiveO2  next to it, so I can do hyperoxia and hypoxia.

So, you're getting exercise of oxygen therapy, kind of like a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber while you're doing the full-body workout. That's probably my favorite of all, like the super techy biohacks. It's funny because I've got like a quarter-million dollars with the biohacks and I [00:52:06] ______ exercise technologies. Eighty percent of the time, I'm in the garage on the cold cement floor, there's kettlebells and the sandbag. But, when I go to the other gym, I walk through the forest and he opened his door and he's like, “Oh.” There's just like all this stuff, everything known to man for biohacking. You might go to this Vasper with the LiveO2. That's the best one-two combo, and you feel like a million bucks afterwards because you have a growth hormone release and oxygenation to the brain. So, for those of you who like to really do a cool shit, that's a really cool one-two combo.

Next is recovery. There's a lot of stuff that you do for recovery. I'll get on my soapbox briefly here, but I'm a bigger fan of the biohacking world when it comes to recovery versus performance. I saw one of my buddies a couple of months ago and he actually looked remarkably heavier and less fit and less healthy than the previous time that I'd seen him. When we started talking about fitness routine, he's doing something with cheat machine. I said, “What's the cheat machine?” He said, “Oh, you work out 10 minutes a day and doing some machine, do some ranges of motion, boom, in, out, done.”

The problem is, and this is something I run into in the biohacking world, is people don't want to do the work. They don't want to actually feel a little bit tired during a workout, maybe putting a little bit more volume, maybe take their 15,000 steps a day instead of 1,000 steps in the morning and have [00:53:30] ______ all day because those thousand steps in the morning involve them smearing some special cream on their body and staying on vibration platform. And so, I would love for more of the world of performance and athleticism to bleed into biohacking. I actually like that video they played earlier because these folks are biohacking that you could tell they're also working their asses off, right? That's the way it should be done. All these hack sheets are like the icing on the cake.

But the recovery biohacking, that I think is even more valuable because that stuff, that really helps. If you're already putting in the hard work, man oh man, using some of these tools is really good. I've got a bunch lifted there, but a couple that I like particularly, other than that hyperbaric oxygen chamber that I talked about. If you can get yourself–probably one of my favorite things for recovery, and especially if you get injured or you have some muscles that are super sore from workout. I learned this from a physician who worked with the Tour de France cyclists. What you do is you get a really good topical anti-inflammatory cream on CBD oil or topical transdermal magnesium or something like that, and you smear all the areas that are sore, the legs or maybe the elbow or whatever.

And then you get an electrical muscle stimulation device. And it doesn't have to be like the $12,000 high-end one. I have a NEUBIE on the other slide. I have one of those things, amazing for retraining the muscles, stimulate like a 600-pound squat. If you using like a Marc Pro or a Compex or an [00:54:53] ______. You put that on top of the cream and it drives the cream more deeply into the tissue. And then, the last thing you do for that one-two-three EMS combo is you put ice, either an ice pack or like frozen peas over top of the electrodes, and that allows you to jack up the electrical muscle stimulation even higher, and you get this rush of blood into the muscles when you take it off. And man, oh man, that's a really good way to get muscles to repair more quickly. I love that. Like, if I've torn [00:55:21] ______ or screwed up an ankle playing a ball or trail running, that's my go-to method is a transdermal electrical muscle stimulation, plus ice.

I think everybody should have like just an easy small portable electrical muscle stimulation unit and an easy small portable pulse electromagnetic field or PEMF unit. I think those are really, really good to own for kind of biohacking recovery more quickly. What's that?

Audience:  What kind of cream is that?

Ben:  Oh, the CBD cream, magnesium cream, Traumeel cream. There's a lot. I mean, tons of creams.

Audience:  [00:55:53] _____ analgesic or–

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, it was analgesic cream, yeah, exactly, arnica, anything like that.

So, the next one, I talked about the nap, we talk about boundless energy. And man, it's figuring out a way to just slip into a parasympathetic state really quickly. I mean, my two naps now are, A, I'll do NuCalm, the NuCalm device, and that thing is amazing. It's the vagal nerve stimulation, it's the binaural beats, it's these tracks that lull you to sleep over 20 minutes, simulates a full sleep cycle. And then the other one that I use is Brain.fm.

Those are my two top methods for getting myself into a relaxed state really, really quickly. And I figured if I'm going to be laying over 20 to 40 minutes, which is how long I nap, I own a few things that help that nap to become even more effective, slipping on some Norma Tec recovery boots. That in and of itself allows you to sleep and it just milks all the blood out of those muscles that makes you feel light as a feather. Another one that I really like is a gravity blanket, like a good 25-pound breathable gravity blanket. You feel safe. Safety is what kind of activates that parasympathetic state.

Neck Nest is back sleeping pillow that if you back sleep when you're sleeping, especially if you just wanted that quick 20-minute back sleeping nap, it keeps you from kind of like [snorting] kind of waking up like that, doing a little piggy thing with some kind of a habit as you're dosing off, Neck Nests are amazing for that. And then, the other one that I really like is the BioMat. The BioMat is infrared and it has these crystals in it that release negative ions very similar to earthing or grounding. So, I have some of those things. If you want to build your own Zen den or your own kind of like a place to slip away to, these are some of the cool things that you can put into it.

Okay. The chapter on symmetry and beauty in the book. I hope you're really going to like that because I believe in everything from my workplace ergonomics to how to combine clay masks with infrared lights to different chewing and nasal breathing type of exercises. But as far as some of the–probably the biggest win for symmetry in the face is nasal breathing. I don't know if you've read Patrick McKeown‘s book, “Oxygen Advantage.” But one thing I've really been focusing, and I appreciate the guy–I'm working with Joe DiStefano right now in my kettlebell training, and he always has me breathe through my nose. We even have like a popsicle stick in my mouth to keep my mouth closed. I recently switched to a little device called an Opti02, which just keeps you from breathing through your mouth when you're working out.

And when you train yourself, I think the best way to learn how to do nasal breathing, which is amazing for your facial structure, for oxygenating everything as it comes in for decreasing activation of the [00:58:38] _____ receptors in the chest, which cause that cortisol release. I think one of the best ways to learn how to do that is to learn how to nasal breath while you're doing hard exercise, during yoga, during anything. That nasal breathing is amazing for facial symmetry and facial structure. And if I can point out one other thing on here that I'm a huge fan of that I do a lot of, there's so many things to choose from, but one thing that's been a game-changer for me–because I went to the dentist for my tooth cleaning.

I haven't been to the dentist in like eight years and they're like, “Oh, you've got [00:59:12] _____ tooth clean eight years.” This was about 11 months ago. But I've done the oil pulling for about a year and a half, the Ayurvedic practice of using extra virgin coconut oil or The Dirt now on Amazon and they sell these amazing blends of different oils. And I squished it in my mouth about 10 to 15 minutes. When I get up, I spit it in a trashcan, not the sink or the toilet because I figured out my wife gets pissed off when my nasty oils clogged the pipes. So, you use this stuff to clean your mouth. It cleans the gums and it's just amazing, it's amazing. So, it’s a work out for your face when you get up.

So, oil pulling and nasal breathing are two good ways to jumpstart your way into facial symmetry. And then pay attention to the section of the book where I talked about little movement snacks like Eldoa training, foundation training, self-myofascial stretching. I have a bunch of routines in the book, these little three to five-minute snacks of movement that I'll give to folks to use on airplanes, to use at their office, but they're wonderful for symmetries like the Core Coiling exercise and some of these inversion exercises. So, those are a few things that I really focus on when it comes to kind of making sure that that symmetry in the face is good.

The immune system chapter get into a lot of stuff on immunity. And of course, I already talked about some of these detoxification practices like trampolining and vibrating, whole body shaking, dry skin brushing, massage. All these things are wonderful for the immune system and for moving fluid through the body. If you were to open my medicine cabinet, I'll tell you the best things. First of all, if you start to get a cold, dissolving one of those life extensions, zinc acetate lozenges in your mouth, doing about four to six of those a day, it's amazing for decreasing the duration of upper respiratory tract infection.

Colostrum, I already talked about for healing of the gut lining and assisting with immunity. That one's fantastic. I'm always traveling now with oregano. I'm doing these events now, it seems like almost every day with a whole bunch of people, shaking hands with all the dirty sick people, signing books, and it's like I came in here. Before I left the house, I get oil oregano. Really good for anti-parasitic, antifungal when I got here, I got the bee propolis spray in my mouth and it's just wonderful with all the travel that I do for airborne pathogens. I usually will drink a cup of chaga with my coffee. Well, not [01:01:31] _____, but the chaga into the coffee. And I have a lot of chaga in my coffee, and that's okay to do in a fasted state. Chaga doesn't have any calories. It's actually in some of the cocktails back here.

Chaga is wonderful. Then the last one, in our house, there's seeds and we defuse seeds and travel with seeds that you use topically on wounds and cuts. This is another really good one. But those are my biggies. In my medicine cabinet, those are the go-tos for the immune system for getting the shields up so to speak. Okay. What's that?

Audience:  Where's your turmeric?

Ben:  My turmeric? Actually, I take turmeric, but it's turmerosaccharides and Kion Flex. I pop three of those at night. So, I'm getting my turmeric. I am getting it, yes. Big question because that's good for the immune system as well.

So, eliminating non-native EMF. So, non-native EMF, I'm giving you guys three tips, okay? A, non-native EMF is going to cause an influx of calcium into your cells. So, because of that, one of the best things you can do based on the studies, people with electro hypersensitivity actually had a reduction electro hypersensitivity on when using calcium channel blocker. You can also take magnesium, keep your magnesium levels topped off.

Number two, the DNA damage that occurs in response to non-ionizing radiation. It requires NAD and sirtuins to repair that damage. Sirtuins you're going to find from a rainbow of foods. Fisetin is probably the top that you'd find from wild strawberries, red wine, dark chocolate, blueberries, et cetera. And there are certain companies that sell little cocktails of SIRT activators. When you combine those with NAD supplementation or NAD IVs, one of the best things you can do to that with non-native EMF.

And then finally, the last pathway that takes a hit, it's called your NrF2 pathway. It modulates your inflammation. One of the best ways aside from fasting to activate that NrF2 pathway are ketone salts or ketone esters, and actually taking those when you're flying and you're exposed to a lot of radiation, inflammation, non-native EMF, magnesium, NAD and sirtuins and some form of ketone salt or ketone ester are three things that really help you in your battle against non-native EMF. When it comes to air, filtering the air that you breathe. When it comes to light, I think many of us are already aware of all the issues with light, but the biggest one for me is just a flicker from a lot of these LEDs.

So, I now use the Ra Optics clear lens during the day, I use Ra when it comes to light. And that is that in the night, know you should put red candescent bulbs in the bedroom and wear like reddish horns lenses at night and simulate the sunset and red light as much as possible during the night. But what happens in the morning? Sunrise, right? It's reddish-orange in the morning. So, now when I'm wearing those blue light blocker glasses at night, I take them off, I put them on the bedside. When I wake up in the morning, I put them back on, and I wear those for the first hour of the morning because my body is gradually waking up. And I'm getting almost like that sunrise effect and I'm looking at screens and read my morning emails. So, I use the glasses. Most people think you're supposed to use at night only. Using in the morning simulates sunrise. I figured that out. I don't know why I didn't think of that, but it started about two months ago and it really helps waking in the morning, slower [01:04:43] _____ that cortisol response. It's a good way to wake up.

Okay. Hormones. A couple of things about hormones. I released a big podcast on testosterone and hormones today. I talked about hormones and sex and libido a lot in the book. And most of us know the biggies, but I would say both men and women, for both fertility and hormones, the biggest nutrients, whether or not you're going to use bioidentical hormone replacement therapy or testosterone, anything like that, the biggest nutrients to supplement with before you go to a doctor and get on some anti-aging hormone or peptide therapy, very simple, creatine, magnesium, boron, zinc, DHEA, and vitamin D.

If I'm working with some of you guys low testosterone, before I talk to them, look for some functional medicine doc on an anti-aging protocol, I first look at those to make sure those supplements that they're taking, to make sure the levels are topped off, as one of those important things, both males and females to do, testosterone, progesterone, DHEA, [01:05:42] _____ compounds, creatine, magnesium, boron, zinc, DHEA, and vitamin D. A lot of other things you can do.

Okay, I'll address that one last little thing on the nitroglycerin cream. I use that for sex. It's amazing, it's amazing. If you can get nitroglycerin cream, [01:06:01] _____, you can also use it, she can use it too for instant blood flow. I mean, like it's [01:06:07] _____ within two minutes. This stuff's amazing. You just smear it on and you're off to the races. So, look at the nitroglycerin cream if you want to have a good time. That and intranasal ketamine and oxytocin and you have an amazing date night. [01:06:26] _____.

So, having a purpose. I talked about having a purpose. Think back to what you like to do when you were a kid. Think back to what makes time go by super-fast right now, will put you in the zone, that will give you clues about what it is that really lights you on, what it is that you're passionate about, do things that as author, Mark Manson, said make you forget to eat and poop. These are the things that we're doing. Like when I write, my wife will look at a blank page and she'll be looking for hours and tears will start to stream down her face. She hates writing. For me, I'll sit down to write at like 4:00 p.m. and my kids will come to the office at 7:30 p.m. [01:07:06] _____ 20 minutes ago.

For me, writing was just like–it just happens. It just flows. But that's because that's the skill that I was born with, it's one of my passion. I love to teach, I love to write, I love to read and research, and time just flies by when I do this. Time also flies while I'm speaking, I'm sorry. I realized the time, but I'm almost done. I'm almost done, I promise. And then, once you've identified your passion, you can say in one single clear sentence what your passion is. I'm Ben Greenfield. I want to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. I want to live to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. You should be able to say your passion and purpose in one succinct sentence.

So, when all the bullets are flying at you from the matrix of the email inbox of your computer, you know you have a why, you know you have a purpose, you know you have a reason for getting up in the morning. And I think that that's something a lot of people would ask, “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing what I'm doing? What's the ultimate purpose?” But once you identify your purpose in life, then all you need to do with that purpose is, follow the golden rule, which is what? Love your neighbor as yourself, or as I just like to say, love people. Figure out what your passion is, figure out what purpose is, then go out and love people with it. It's just such a magical amazing way to live life, and I wish more people to just do what they love to do and what they're good at, and then figure out how to help other people with that or how to love people with your passion and your purpose in life, and we see this over and over and over again in the Blue Zones.

And then finally, be grateful. Gratefulness, man, it's just–it's I wake up every single day and I'm so grateful. And I write down every little thing that I'm grateful for, that breath of air. “Oh, thank you.” Another breath of air. “Oh, thank you.” These tiny, tiny things would go run as a family in the morning and we do it again at night. What are you grateful for today? What happened today that you're grateful for? Who are you grateful for? What was that moment you experienced that you're grateful for? What was that food you tasted that you're grateful for? The tiniest of pleasures you can be grateful for. All these attachments that we have, all these attachments that we have to our biohacks, and to our special diet, and to our favorite pair of clothes, and to our car, and to our job, that just attaches silly things.

If you can let those go and just be grateful for the moment, grateful for every single moment that occurs, be mindful of that moment. Quit thinking about where you're going to go after this. What are you going to do tomorrow morning? Be grateful for the right here and right now. You can close your eyes if you want. Go ahead and try and just think of something that you're grateful for that happened to you today, you're grateful for. I loved it when I walked out of my little condo this morning and the sun hit my face. “Oh, my gosh, [01:10:08] _____.” Even if it's cloudy, it's right there shining through, giving me light, feeding the plants, feeding my body, not burning up our whole planet with some giant ball of fire, it's magical. I'm grateful for.

I want you to think of something and come over your heart. Come over your heart. Your heart sent it. Just take that moment with gratefulness and breathe it in, right there in. Just feel that gratefulness sloshing your body. It's just so good. Do that. Do that some more a few times, with some breathwork habits you learned about, or combine them with being grateful. Write down one thing you're grateful at tonight and in the morning. Breathe into your heart. Say to yourself you're grateful. It's amazing. It's amazing to be alive. It's just an amazing. You can play with all these cool things and going to eat good food and walk around the city and meet cool people, every single person in here, every single spirit and soul, everybody, and you're just like an angel, every single one of you. You have this spark inside you.

Keep that feeling. Feed your soul, feed your spirit, be grateful, have a purpose, and then go out and play with all these other amazing scientific things and wonders of the world that we're surrounded with that allow us to be way healthy and have more boundless energy, and human beings have ever been blessed to be able to have. Take that stuff along and  have an amazing time with that. Have an amazing night tonight, you, guys.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormone, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also, know that all the links, all the promo codes, that I mentioned during this and every episode, helped to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. When you listen in, be sure to use the links in the shownotes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

 

 

 

I recently spoke at The Assemblage in New York City as part of my Boundless book launch tour. (See my calendar for more upcoming Boundless events in Los Angeles, and click here to purchase Boundless, which just launched this week and is already a Number 1 Amazon Bestseller in several categories!)

Anyways…during my talk, I revealed my top tips, tricks, and biohacks for optimizing mind, body, and spirit—including everything from neurotransmitters to the blood-brain barrier to fat loss/muscle gain tips, a 20 minute Q&A, and much more—recorded it, and packaged it all together for today's podcast.

In this episode, you'll discover:

-The moment Ben Greenfield realized he was living a truly boundless life…6:45

• Began as a bodybuilder, eventually sought a more holistic approach to health and fitness
• Wrote Beyond Training for athletes who may be asking the same questions he grappled with
• Boundless is a comprehensive guide to live the ultimate life – boundless energy, vitality, quality of life
• Seek out natural “biohacks” before man-made tech
• Boundless body, mind, spirit, and environment
• The Kion logo represents the Body, Mind, Spirit elements
• Being “boundless” means a joyful, adventurous, fulfilling life, a managed stress load, quality time w/ family

-How to have healthy neurotransmitters…18:15

• Proper stimulation (watch caffeine intake)
• N-acetylcysteine (NAC) to repair damaged neurons in the brain
• Four building blocks (2 for neurotransmitters, 2 for myelin sheaths):
  • Vitamin B complex
  • Amino Acids
  • DHA
  • Oleic acid

-Tips for a dynamic blood-brain barrier…21:27

• Balanced exercise
• Fish oil
• Saturated fat can be problematic
• Vagal nerve stimulation
• Coffee and tea is good in small doses
•  Zona blood pressure device (use code ZONABEN to save $50)

-How breathwork will improve your life…24:32

• 4-8 breathing (4 in, 8 out) 3 minutes sleep latency
• Alternating nostril breathing (cover left nostril and breathe in through your right nostril, then cover right nostril and exhale through your left nostril, in through left, out through right, repeat)
• Box breathing (4 in, 4 hold, 4 out, 4 hold)
• Holotropic breathing
• BGF podcast w/ The Renegade Pharmacist
• Hyperbaric therapy followed by breathwork

-Smart drugs and nootropics…30:53

• Ben's not big on deprenyl, Adderall, modafinil
• L-theanine
• Nicotine gum (mix w/ methylene blue)
• Slique Youngliving essential oil gum
• Microdose CBD
• Peptides
  • Dihexa
  • Semax
• Apps
  • n-back
  • Brain.fm
• 40 Years of Zen
• Peak Brain Institute
  • Neurofeedback

-How to choose the diet that's right for you…35:16

• Book: Biochemical Individuality by Roger Williams
• Book: Blue Zones by Dan Buettner
• Religious practices encourage fasting and caloric restriction
• Intermittent fasting
• Social element is important

-Proper food preparation…38:19

• Pay attention to histamines
• Strategene
• Sardines, anchovies, mackerel are staples in the Greenfield home
• Glycemic variability and inflammation are two important metrics to track for longevity
• Dexcom G6
• Cold thermogenesis is great for blood sugar regulation

-Cleaning your gut…41:50

• 3-day stool panel
• Food allergy panel (Cyrex)
• Colostrum, L Glutamine, Bone broth
• Lignite (Dr. Zach Bush)
• Have a constant mindset of detoxing
• Activate parasympathetic nervous system before consuming food
• Pay attention to ancestral food prep methods

-What telomere lengths have to do with the size of your muscles…45:48

• Article: Telomerase Activity Coevolves With Body Mass, Not Lifespan
• Powerful, explosive movements are particularly efficacious
• Bigger's not better
• Ben's preferred workout:
  • Super slow training 1x/week
  • Blood flow restriction training

-The routine Ben does to stay lean throughout the year…49:15

• Wake up in an intermittent fasted state
• ~16 hours for men, ~12 hours for women
• Consume a small amount of caffeine (1-2 cups of coffee)
• 20 minutes fasted aerobic cardio

-Biohacking tools Ben uses…51:10

• Kaatsu bands
• Vasper machine
• LiveO2

-Recovery tools and tactics…52:41

• “I'm a bigger fan of biohacking for recovery than for performance”
• A recovery stack Ben likes:
  • Topical transdermal magnesium
  • MarcPro
  • Ice pack on top of it
• Mid-day nap
  • NuCalm device
  • Brain.fm
  • Norma Tec recovery boots
  • Gravity blanket
  • Neck Nest
  • Biomat

-How to optimize your symmetry and beauty…57:37

• Nasal breathing during hard exercise for facial symmetry and structure
• OptiO2
• Oil pulling
• Eldoa training

-Boosting your immune system…1:00:23

• Zinc acetate lozenges
• Colostrum
• Oregano
• Chaga coffee
• Turmeric (via Kion Flex)

-3 tips to eliminate non-native EMF from your environment…1:02:16

• Take a calcium channel blocker
• Eat foods containing NAD and sirtuins
  • Poultry
  • Milk
  • Yeast
  • Fish like sardines and salmon
  • Whole grains
• Ketone salts and ketone esters to active NrF2
• Filtering light
  • Blue light blockers
  • Iristech on monitors
  • Light blocking tape or stickers
• Ra Optics blue light blocking glasses (use for an hour in the morning too)

-The best nutrients for hormones and fertility…1:04:47

• Creatine
• Magnesium
• Boron
• Zinc
• DHEA
• Vitamin D
• Nitroglycerine cream

-The importance of having a life's purpose and expressing gratitude…1:06:28

-Audience Q&A w/ Ben…1:12:06

-And much more…

Resources mentioned in this episode:

– Link to my presentation

– Boundless: Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body & Defy Aging

– BGF podcasts:

• Niraj Naik – The Renegade Pharmacist
• Dr. Ted Achacoso
• Drs. Matt Dawson and Mike Mallin of Wild Health
• Sebastian Wasowski of the Vasper Machine
• Dr. Peter Martone, inventor of the Neck Nest
• 32 Natural Ways to Increase Testosterone

– Beyond Training by Ben Greenfield

–  Zona blood pressure device (use code ZONABEN to save $50)

– Fisher Wallace Circadia (cranial electrical stimulation device)

– NuCalm device (discount applied at checkout, 65% off the first month of any new monthly subscription)

– Soma breath course from Niraj Naik (the Renegade Pharmacist)

– International Peptide Society

– Book: Biochemical Individuality by Roger Williams

– 40 Years of Zen

– Peak Brain Institute

– Kaatsu bands

– LiveO2

– Strategene

– Vasper machine

– OptiO2

– Dexcom G6

– Ra Optics blue light blocking glasses

– Ketone salts and ketone esters

Episode sponsors:

–Kion Coffee: Carefully selected and roasted for taste, purity, high antioxidants and health. Ben Greenfield Fitness listeners, receive a 10% discount off your entire order when you use discount code: BGF10.

–Organifi Green Juice: Now you can get all your healthy superfoods in one glass…with No Shopping, No Blending, No Juicing, and No Cleanup. Get a 20% discount on your entire order when you use discount code: BENG20

–X3 Bar: Grow muscle 3x faster than you can with free weights! The X3 Bar will change the way you train forever. Get a $50 discount off your X3 bar when you use discount code: BEN

–Water and Wellness: The best solution for clean and safe drinking water. Water and Wellness also offers an amazing line of essential water additives such as Quinton Marine plasma which contain over 78 trace minerals and elements from the ocean to help restore your biological-terrain. Get 15% off your order when you use discount code: GREENFIELD