March 7, 2020

Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/connect-ventures/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:47] About This Podcast

[00:02:24] Podcast Sponsors

[00:06:35] Start of Podcast with Krishna and Shiva

[00:08:08] The “Ecosystem” Within Connect Ventures

[00:14:35] Why Healthy Soil Is So Vital for Sustainability in Agriculture

[00:21:13] How Biodegradable Plastic Came About

[00:28:07] How Connect Ventures Is Reducing the Level of Organic Waste

[00:31:46] The Philosophy Behind Working Out at Connect Ventures

[00:34:33] What's in the Gym?

[00:42:28] Podcast Sponsors

[00:45:42] cont. What's in the Gym?

[00:46:29]  Speed Strength Training

[00:52:33] What The “Health Office” At Connect Ventures Is

[01:03:19] The Story Behind All the Personal Care Products at The Facility

[01:06:48] Metabolic Testing and Cardio Coaching

[01:16:26] An Ideal Diet for The Typical Indian Man or Woman

[01:21:31] The Snack Room

[01:25:47] Biofeedback Devices

[01:35:57] Closing the Podcast

[01:37:38] End of Podcast

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

Shiva:  In fact, all you're doing is not getting in the way of nature, you're just allowing nature to do its job.

Ben:  Rinse it, soak it, sprout it. And if you want to take things to the next level and love our planet, take that water that you've rinsed it with, toss that in the laundry, and you got laundry detergent.

Shiva:  It doesn't matter how good a nutrition plan you have. If you're going to be stressed out every time, that's the kind of feedback loops that we've been able to build in because of the connectivity, because you're saying, “Wow, why isn't that working?” And you're like, “It's never going to work if it's going to be stressed.”

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

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. I just got back from India and one of the places that I went there absolutely knocked my socks off, blew me away with what these folks are doing as far as not just fixing the environment over there with things like water remediation and biodegradable forms of plastic, nanotechnology, food-grade enzymes, but they're doing personal care products, household cleaning chemicals, biometric testing of blood, biomarkers, genetics, the gut to personalize nutrition and fitness programming. They've got their hand in like 15 different pots. And when I walked in, my socks were actually blown, my socks were blown off. I don't even know if that's a phrase. Alright, I'm just going to roll with it. My socks were blown off by what these people are doing.

So, I got a chance to walk around and tour their entire facility, microphone out, microphone hanging right out in the open with my guest on today's show, Shiva Subramanian. And you'll also hear during today's show a client of mine named Krishna, who is a big entrepreneur over to India who joined us for the episode and the three of us spent a long time just geeking out on all the different cool things that they're doing over in India. I think you're going to find this episode fascinating. I personally was just absolutely intrigued during the entire show. So, I know that you will be, too. All the shownotes for everything that we talk about you're going to be able to find over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness.

Now, before we jump in, I should tell you that this podcast is brought to you by something I'm very excited about. We just finished a complete reformulation of our very popular joint support supplement for reducing the soreness when you wake up the next morning after workout. So, this is a blend of three different components that we kind of upgraded our very popular Kion Flex compound with. Everything is backed by human clinical research. At Kion, we're very strict in terms of making sure that we're adding the exact amounts that have been shown in human research and that we are not putting anything out there that's some fringe proprietary blend that's sprinkled with little bits of what you need. This stuff is actually a full-on shotgun formulation for your joints. So, it's got Turmacin, which is way different than curcumin when it comes to a bioavailable extract of turmeric. It's the turmerosaccharides, which are the ones that are especially soluble, water-soluble, bioavailable, and go straight to your body to heal what ails you.

AyuFlex, which is an organic extract, speaking of India, of an Ayurvedic superfruit called haritaki, which has very unique joint health benefits that help you move more freely, and then proteolytic enzymes like serrapeptase and serrapeptidase, which help to break down fibrinogen to let your achy and sore joints bounce back faster. You take three of these once daily. I take them before I go to bed at night on an empty stomach. You roll out of bed in the morning after you take this stuff the night before feeling like a freaking teenager. And what I mean by that is your joints just feel like they're young again. So, if you want to anti-age your joints, if you want to bounce back faster from your workouts, if you want to heal up an injury more quickly, this stuff just works. It's called Kion Flex. I'm giving you a 10% discount on it. So, all you do is you go to getkion.com. That's getK-I-O-N.com and use discount code BEN10.

This podcast is also brought to you by a very unique company. They're harvesting not just honey, not just like raw organic honey from bees, but they're also harvesting the part of the bees that we often do not tap into, the propolis, the royal jelly, the superfoods that you can get from a hive that many people have no clue can help a ton with things like the immune system, for example. Like when I traveled to India, I had their bee propolis throat spray. I did that about three times on every flight, five, ten sprays right in the back of the throat. Amazing for the immune system. Bee propolis is wonderful, not just for soothing sore throats and coughs, I give it to my kids if they get a little cold, but for anybody who wants to protect themselves during things like airline travel or any time you're exposed to a lot of airborne pollutants. Totally easy to pack on the go, totally TSA-friendly is their bee propolis throat spray.

Another really unique one is the bee pollen. I love to sprinkle this stuff like a superfood on top of smoothies, on top of salads, you can throw it on avocado toasts. It's just wonderful on anything, but it's bee pollen, which has protein, B vitamins, minerals, free-forming amino acids, but again it comes straight from the bees, they don't heat it, so it preserves all the natural enzymes and vitamins. And these are just a couple of the extremely unique formulas that are being put out by this company called Beekeeper's Naturals. So, they're going to give 15% off of any of their stuff to all of my listeners if you go to beekeepersnaturals.com/ben, and the discount code is just BEN for that 15% discount. So, it's beekeepersnaturals.com/ben. I recommend you at least try their propolis spray and their pollen that you can sprinkle on top of your foods. It's just amazing. So, check this stuff out.

And again as we go into today's show, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness for all of the shownotes, and there will be a lot. Everything we talk about, I'll put photographs, diagrams, everything. So, it's very comprehensive. We work really hard in the shownotes. So, again, that's going to be at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness, and let's jump in.

Alright, folks. I just finished an amazing sweaty, sweaty workout after sitting for 24 hours on a plane from Seattle–no, actually, from Spokane to Seattle, Seattle to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Bangalore. And finally, after sleeping three hours last night and having a delicious movie–say hello, Krishna, my host here in India.

Krishna:  Hello, everyone.

Ben:  Krishna is an amazing, brilliant local entrepreneur, fitness enthusiast, biohacker in his own right. We've been punishing anti-aging smoothies —

Krishna:  Oh, yeah.

Ben: –and already an amazing morning, but I just finished a workout at this facility. That's about 10 minutes from Krishna's house, and they're doing a lot of innovative things here and I could not not fill you guys in on all the cool things that I've seen already. So, this is going to be one of those field trip-esque podcasts where we'll be walking around talking about and describing to you a whole host of things. There'll be plenty of shownotes. So, the shownotes for you today are going to be at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness. And standing on my left side here is another gentleman–you want to introduce yourself?

Shiva:  Yes. My name is Shiva and I'm the head of Connect Ventures.

Ben:  Connect Ventures. And is Connect Ventures the name of the place I'm at right now?

Shiva:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Okay. So, first of all, I walked into your facility. We came in off the busy streets outside, came upstairs, and when we first walked in, I'm going to put a photograph of this for you guys in the shownotes, but there was this whiteboard and I'm going to walk out here to this whiteboard. It's right in the wall and it says, “The Connect Ventures Ecosystem.” And as soon as we walked in, this was the thing that first caught my attention. And so can you describe what this is and what exactly you guys are doing here at Connect Ventures, what it means to have an ecosystem? And you can take as deep a dive as you want, man. We got time.

Shiva:  The idea behind an ecosystem, Ben, was to actually fill in all the gaps that are there in any health scape or an environmental scape because we realized that our genetic sustainability is equivalent to our environmental sustainability and that we couldn't talk about one thing without actually addressing the other. So, what we did is we came up with 17 ventures, which we all self-funded and created this ecosystem connecting the health of the soil to the health of the gut, and human health and longevity and performance all connected with the paradigm of energy radiation so that we have tools to prevent radiation. All of that put together with this idea of actually living supernatural.

Ben:  Okay. So, I don't understand, and I know my audience might not understand this, but are you saying that in addition to the facility I'm standing in now, we'll go into the gym, walk people through something like the different exercise and recovery tools you have here, but are you saying that you guys have things like farms and water management facilities and things like that outside of this facility I'm in now?

Shiva:  Absolutely. What we're trying to do is flesh out the whole journey from agriculture to natural functional farming to natural functioning foods and making sure that those foods fit into the anthropology of India as we are and then translate into things like performance and health.

Ben:  Okay. So, for example, that superfood muffin that I took a bite of after my workout, that's coming from a farm that you guys are harvesting these natural ingredients from. So, you've got that as one aspect. You've got an athlete consuming something like that after their workout, the water they might be drinking. I think I had like a structured filtered water post-workout. So, you're tying all this stuff together?

Shiva:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Okay.

Shiva:  So, the way we're actually doing that is interesting because the potency of the soil is going to make sure that the nutrients and there's no dilution of nutrients in the food. We're still an agrarian economy, which means almost 70% of India is still in the agricultural zone. What we could do is quantum leap, actually in a sense, backwards, and actually, still be able to get away from mass fertilization and pesticide because we still have large tracts of land that are still in natural state.

Ben:  Are you talking about like regenerative agriculture system, sustainable farming versus monocropping?

Shiva:  Absolutely. We are doing poly cropping agroforestry, trying to grow a plethora of crops because one of the problems of modern India is that most people are moving into the cities, which means that the agricultural fields don't have as much labor as we used to traditionally.

Ben:  Yeah.

Shiva:  The other way to now do it is to actually do agroforestry. So, we are layering our crops using the principles of permaculture and the principles of biodynamic farming. And with that, we're able to get the value addition because we're able to blockchain all of this stuff. We put it into an artificial intelligence and blockchain it. So, you know it's coming from this farm, it's going to the facility for the food, and then it becomes a super muffin and the athlete knows exactly where that comes from and the journey that it's taken from.

Ben:  Now, when you say you're tracking beyond the blockchain, most people are mildly familiar with the blockchain, but would this mean there would be like a QR code on the muffin that I could scan and see where it came from, trace back the contracts, trace back even the payment method used for? Is that what you mean by blockchain?

Shiva:  Yeah, absolutely spot-on, and that's what we've been in the journey of creating. We've got a beta version of it up and we're doing that with all our athletes, and this is our micro-ecosystem. Now, imagine taking this out and giving it to the whole country and then to all of Asia, right, because we will then have a strong ethos based on our own anthropology, our own genetics, our own food, their nourishment coming from our own history.

Ben:  Now, I know that India, like the U.S., is largely, from a political standpoint, a democratic system. How do you overcome the fact that–at least I know in the U.S., there's a huge barrier to taking a model like this and actually implementing it on a mass food standpoint, like for example, monocropping of wheat rice and corn is huge in the U.S., and I could start even in Spokane, Washington where I live something like this, right, where we're growing food from local farms, that's what's being used in the gyms where folks are in air quality, water quality, solar production, et cetera, but are you actually going to scale this politically as well, do you think?

Shiva:  Absolutely, because we need to have a pull system, and a pull system means that urban living, the people who are educated, the people who understand health are going to pull these products because there's suddenly a demand for them. There's a demand for variability. There's a demand for sustainability, which wasn't there 10 years ago because 10 years ago, it was still mass cropping because it was economical. But today, we're seeing diabetes. We have over 60 million people with diabetes in the country. We're seeing like millions of cases of cancer, cardiovascular issues. So, obviously, it's become a concern.

Ben:  Yeah. And it comes full circle. You made a good point. I mean, if you read like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel once you have an agrarian economy, you have mass quantity of people compressed into a small space where you also see propagation of disease, you see sedentary lifestyles, chronic disease, diabetes, obesity, et cetera. So, it's an interesting system that you've put together. It seems very–like us standing in front of this whiteboard–and again, I'm going to put a photo of this. I have a whole team here taking notes and photos. We're going to put all this over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness so you guys can see what all this actually looks like on the board.

But I would like to delve into some of the nitty-gritties of how you've woven some of this together into the actual facility because when Krishna brought me here, I expected to have a cool gym I was going to work out in and I walked in. The very first thing was a bunch of like superfoods, personal care products. I think I saw some household–were the household cleaning chemicals, you guys doing that? So, we —

Shiva:  Migrated the plastics.

Ben:  Yeah. Okay, cool. So, walk me through this. And I'll let you be the boss because you know what all the sexy stuff is, so where do you want to start?

Shiva:  Oh, let's start with the soil health because I think that's where anyone should start. Healthy soil means healthy everything else.

Ben:  Well, I mean stuff you could show me here at the facility.

Shiva:  Yeah. I can walk you —

Ben:  You guys have dirt here?

Shiva:  Yeah. Well, we've got all the microbes.

Ben:  Oh, amazing. Let's go check it out. Talk to me while we're walking.

Shiva:  So, basically, healthy soil has been depleted because of the years of fertilization and pesticides that have been used. So, it's become very alkaline. What we have to do is bring the microbial biodiversity back. And because of that, we have our own life sciences department that we've been working on getting all the old microbes back. So, if you actually have a look in this room —

Ben:  Oh, wow.

Shiva: –you can actually see all the biodiversity that we actually have.

Ben:  Oh, can you guys take a photo of this for folks? Put this one in the shownotes. Oh, wow. Okay.

Shiva:  So, all of this is a nanotechnology. Now, you could understand that going organic in India is going to be very, very difficult. So, what we have to do is work on the transition. So, we came up with an organic nano-bio growth enhancer. What it has is all the micronutrients —

Ben:  Actually, these are big bottles. You would put this into the soil itself as you're growing the food?

Shiva:  This is a foliar spray, but the beauty of it —

Ben:  Oh, so this would be sprayed on trees, for example?

Shiva:  On the leaves. Now, here's the thing. While the soil is a medium and long-term strategy, the farmer still needs to produce because we're a poor country. So, you can't really have another problem, right, because going organic is a three, five-year process. And during that time, your productivity is going to drop.

Ben:  Because you're not using herbicides, pesticides, you have to transition from a monocrop, essentially dirt instead of soil, et cetera?

Shiva:  Absolutely. And also, if you think about it, the plant itself has epigenetically adapted to having that amount of chemicals and pesticides to survive. So, you're going to have this die-off. You're going to have this period of low productivity, but the regular farmer is not going to be able to sustain himself through it. So, the first thing we needed to do is actually put something out that's going to help with increasing the productivity, increasing the health of this plant. Why are we working on the medium and long-term strategies?

Ben:  Now, this reminds me a little bit of what Dr. Zach Bush is doing in the U.S. He's been on my podcast before and he's not only working on developing products that would regrow the microbial diversity of the soil, he's also harvesting something called lignite from the soil that actually helps to predict the gut from the ravages of glyphosate. And that leads me to something I'm thinking about here and that is as you're adding all these growth enhancers, all these biotics, you guys are developing to regrow soil. What do you do about pesticide and herbicide residues that are left over? Is there a way to mop those up somehow?

Shiva:  Absolutely. The microbes are already doing that for you. If you can get a diversity back, it's automatically going to happen because what we're doing is not only putting in this aspect of it, we're also putting in things like the leguminous plants that we're going to be putting the nitrogen back. You're going to have like a phosphate solubilization microbes. All of that are working in concert. And because of the layering that we have, you have the mulch coming in, the fibers are already going to dilute the effect of the pesticides and the fertilizers. And to add to this, Ben, if I may just go back, our great problem is water because the water is also contaminated as you know and many countries —

Ben:  Yes. I'm being very careful while I'm here. Everybody scared me. Not only am I only drinking water that either comes straight from Krishna or someone who I trust or water that is like a Pellegrino or Perrier, and I'm even checking to see if it's been open first. I'm pulling out all the stops, but I'm also, as Krishna witnessed, this morning at breakfast, I'm eating lots of hot peppers and curries. Matter of fact, I told him I was burping up one of those giant–what kind of pepper did you give me at breakfast?

Shiva:  Well, it was a South Indian green chili. That was kind of roasted.

Ben:  Yes. I was burping that up while I was doing my push-ups.

Shiva:  Yeah. It's got some [00:19:04] ______.

Ben:  Yeah. I think anything that was in my gut is dead now in a good way.

Shiva:  That might be [00:19:08] ______.

Ben:  Yeah. That's all right. I don't mind the razor blades on the anus as long as the worms aren't there. Okay. So, all of these different biotics, I've got about 12 different bottles in front of me, each is a different bacterial strain or specifically designed for a tree versus a–say like a ground grown crop versus a legume, et cetera?

Shiva:  Yes.

Ben:  They have a big brochure here. Okay. Cool.

Shiva:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Wow.

Shiva:  If you look at it like you have things from the neem tree, that will help you control pests. You have specific things for specific problems.

Ben:  And there's fungus, too.

Shiva:  Yes, absolutely. And you can look at all the things that are coming out of nature that we're just taking out and basically making them accessible to the farmer so that it's available in large quantities and we can change or revolutionize the system. And this is cheaper than fertilizer and pesticide and our productivity remains the same. But if you have a look at this, this is pepper from our farms.

Ben:  This is a black pepper that you grow?

Shiva:  Absolutely, and it grows on our vines. Now, this is the average size of pepper while we were using fertilizer and pesticide.

Ben:  Okay. So, that's kind of a small peppercorn–what do you call this? Black pepper of course. Okay, black pepper.

Shiva:  It's Indian black pepper. And this is what happened after we sprayed the nano-bio growth enhancer. These were our first experiments.

Ben:  It's probably three times larger if you look at the width and the length combined?

Shiva:  So, what it told us was very interesting. It meant that a plant should hit the potential of what pesticides and fertilizers they could take chemically anyway. Once we went natural, the potential of the epigenetics that are in the plant itself blossomed.

Ben:  Yeah.

Shiva:  So, in fact, all you're doing is not getting in the way of nature, you're just allowing nature to do its job.

Ben:  Yeah. Wow. Okay. So, you have this brochure here. Can we put a PDF of this brochure in the shownotes?

Shiva:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Awesome. So, folks can check because I know there's going to be–I mean, I'm personally interested just because we have a small backyard garden. There's a lot of people listening to the podcast who are interested in food growth and sustainable ag, and I've never seen anything quite like this as far as the diversity that are in fungus and the bacteria. Now, it appears to me also that there are some products here. I see some like natural alternative wraps to plastic, these BuzzBee Wraps. Are there things that you're creating in here that are in addition to the probiotic compounds? Are these just like random things you have hanging around the office?

Shiva:  No, no. We actually have basically come up recently with biodegradable plastic. So, what we managed to do is get starched into a plastic machine and actually make it into a plastic film. We've been able to do bottles. We can now basically throw your PET bottle outside and the PET bottle is biodegradable.

Ben:  This is like the plastic covering I would use to cover my yogurt when I put in the fridge, but it's like beeswax. Amazing. Wow. And this one's like cellophane almost, but what's the actual ingredients in this? It says —

Shiva:  It's the starch.

Ben:  Beeswax, tree resin. How do you pronounce that? Jojoba oil.

Shiva:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah, jojoba oil and 100% cotton. And it's fully biodegradable and you'd use this to cover food?

Shiva:  I've got some more stuff in the other office because that's the one that actually has all the tools, but you will be able to mold the keychain, and the keychain will be biodegradable, which means you throw it out in the soil, it degrades into glucose molecules and fats.

Ben:  I don't know why I want to throw out my keychain, but that's a cool idea. Wow. This is amazing. Okay. What you just showed me, that's like–how many different aspects of that whiteboard out there were there, like 15, 17? Okay. So, this is the soil diversity aspect of that?

Shiva:  Yeah.

Ben:  Amazing.

Shiva:  Then the water diversity, which is also in the same office. But over here, this team actually runs the biggest aquatic nursery in India. We have around 800,000 plants today with 150 species of aquatic plants that clean water. So, if you think about it, that's why the water plants existed that was part of their ecological necessity. What we've been able to do is because of India's vast aquatic ecology, being able to pick the plants and look at the biology and match this biology into [00:23:13] ______, you got to understand that India is a powerful country. And if you think about water cleaning, Ben, and I know that you have a lot of experience with that, most other countries have power that actually cleans water. But what happens if you don't have power?

Ben:  Yeah.

Shiva:  So, then it becomes a huge problem. Then we're not addressing a problem of people. We are addressing a problem for a certain economic level of people. What we then designed is an anaerobic system that connects up with the aquatic plants, which means that any farmer can actually design a natural system, which will actually flow through their farms. And imagine the water coming through is water it goes through, but it's a consequence of the nature of water going through the anaerobic systems and plants, which is anyone can develop.

Ben:  Amazing. I'm smiling, but I'm also cringing because you're taking me back to my microbiology days where I had a whole summer hunched in front of a chromatography and a fluorescence analysis type of apparatus to find specific bacteria that would bio-remediate water and have been aware that that can be done, but it sounds like you guys have actually cracked the code on cleaning up water using things like bacteria, which is amazing.

Shiva:  Bacteria in conjunction with aquatic plants, if you think about it, the plants are oxygenating the water. The root zone has got like a rich anaerobic area. Each root zone of each plant actually has a different anaerobic area. So, if you mix and match it, I would give you one of the best ones that we're doing, and I can show you a video of it. It's coffee, but pH of coffee water is around two or three, and we're able to clean all the bacterial load, as well as the chemical load off that using this system of nothing but plants and just gravity flow with aggregates. It's an energy free system in poor countries that will then give them access to absolutely clean water, right?

Ben:  Amazing.

Shiva:  When you say coffee water, you're talking about the processing the coffee bean on the plantations and how to handle the wastewater and re-purify it.

Ben:  Right. That's a very high acidity, low pH that's used for that, yeah.

Shiva:  Yes. [00:25:22] ______, if you look at the coffee plantations in India, the runoff from them and from this processing causes a lot of ecological damage and systems like these could allow farmers to have essentially closed-loop systems in water–sorry, in drought areas or areas of the water table is low so they're not constantly pumping water out of the ground. So, there's like levels of synergy here in terms of ecological sustainability that would give farmers a lot of advantage.

Ben:  I can tell you that cup of coffee you gave me before my workout was amazing. It wasn't Kion Coffee, I don't think, but it was good, whatever it was. It tasted good.

Shiva:  Those are from [00:26:01] ______.

Ben:  Yeah. Same place you're growing the black pepper, you're growing coffee?

Shiva:  Absolutely.

Ben:  I love it.

Shiva:  And we grow other things like bananas, and this is the poly cropping idea that we actually came up with.

Ben:  Yeah. I wish I could grow bananas and coffee and black pepper up in Spokane, Washington. I would feel far less guilty about importing avocados and bananas for my smoothies. Well, so this is the plastic?

Shiva:  Yup, absolutely.

Ben:  Oh, wow. But this feels like actual plastic. I could toss this out the window. It's going to biodegrade?

Shiva:  Yeah.

Ben:  Amazing.

Shiva:  This is the final process of getting our international certification for 100% biodegradability. And you know what, the best part of this is that our concern was that the plastic industry is going bust in India because it's all about single-use plastic is being banned, which means that you're going to have thousands and thousands of family without work. So, what we did is we designed the starch and all the organic input to go into existing plastic machinery, so nobody has to do anything different. It's just the raw material that goes and that's different. So, you keep even the families and their jobs together and you can provide the rest of the world with reusable plastic, single-use plastic, food plastic.

Ben:  It begs the question, was this going to make plastic far more expensive?

Shiva:  No. It's going to make it like just the same price as the polypropylene or everything else that they're using currently because it all comes from natural sources. It's starch.

Ben:  Amazing, amazing. And a big part of this, not to get too woo-woo on you listeners is for me, the message of love is so important. I tell my kids, “To the best things you can do as you go through life is to love God and to love others,” and I think a big part of loving others includes loving the planet, and it's something we don't–I mean, it drives me nuts when I see highly spiritual people in the U.S. eating Twinkies and Doritos out of plastic packages and plastic bags just like you preach the message of love, but this includes actually loving the planet that we live on because–it's not going to be here anymore if we are doing stuff like this. So, this is very cool. What else have you got to show me?

Shiva:  Okay. So, this is pretty much the agriculture, the water, and the plastic.

Ben:  Amazing.

Shiva:  We also deal with waste over here. So, we've done two amazing things.

Ben:  Okay. Are we walking somewhere?

Shiva:  Oh, no. We can stay in here.

Ben:  Stay in here? Okay.

Shiva:  I will send you the photographs of the system itself. What we did is use microbes to break down organic waste. India has got 70% organic waste. So, refuse from sewage is organic waste. Waste coming from the garbage, because we have so much fresh fruit and vegetables, we're not a completely processed food country as yet, so there's a lot of organic waste. Now, all of that organic waste, we managed to get these methanazing microbes to get us a huge quantity of methane. And what we're able to use with that methane —

Ben:  I have a huge quantity of methane, you can just ask me. I'm a walking methane machine.

Shiva:  Excellent. Now, we can make a biogas electrical unit.

Ben:  That's my next calling. I should be careful what I wish for. You guys do believe in reincarnation over here. I don't want my next life as a methane producing bacteria. So, you guys are producing these methanogenic bacteria?

Shiva:  Yes. So, we have these waste management units and we produce methane, but what makes it interesting is because for every ton of waste, we're able to get a ton of gas. And with that, we can get one kilowatt of energy. Now, for a power-hungry nation, imagine all your waste becoming electricity, which can then power your pumps and the next part of the process, right, because now we're talking about water and we're talking about all of that. But what we've been able to do when you say the ecosystem is to do all of that in every area, which then makes it sustainable even away from the grid, and that's the magic of it. But to add to that, we figured out that the return on investment from a business perspective is going to be very difficult for a farmer to put in.

So, what we then did is built a reactor to be able to take this methane and make it into carbon nanotubes. So, we can make multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Just to give you an idea about this, the market for a kilogram can be anywhere upwards of $200 to $300. But because of the reactor and are set up with a methane and a zero-energy loop, we can make these carbon nanotubes for like as little as $30. So, you just made that that much cheaper.

Ben:  And for the listener who is scratching their head, the carbon nanotube will allow you to achieve what?

Shiva:  The carbon nanotube is an amazing composite material. If I put 0.01% of carbon nanotubes into cement, I could make it 25% stronger, and that is for like every ton of cement.

Ben:  Wow.

Shiva:  So, you're thinking like that much is going to save you 20% off your carbon footprint of cement.

Ben:  Wow.

Shiva:  But every farmer can have one of those carbon nanotube units. It's cheap, it's efficient, and that's the kind of integration that we're talking about in an ecosystem, right?

Ben:  Wow.

Shiva:  And if you think about fuel, if you put carbon nanotubes with a surfactant into fuel, it can make the fuel more efficient. You can use 30% less fuel just because of the way it acts as a lubricant in the fuel. You can use it for composites, you can make plastic into steel, you can get second grade steel and make it into the strongest thing possible.

Ben:  Water filtration systems?

Shiva:  Water filtration systems. It's unbelievable.

Ben:  Human exoskeletons?

Shiva:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Have a country full of Ironmans?

Shiva:  Yeah, Ironman.

Ben:  Yeah. I love it.

Shiva:  Exactly.

Ben:  Cool.

Shiva:  Yeah.

Ben:  Amazing.

Shiva:  You're able to bring the highest level of technology simply to this, right?

Ben:  Cool.

Shiva:  That's the kind of —

Ben:  And again, for any of you who want to take a deeper, deeper dive on any of this, we're putting shownotes, we'll link to all the interest in science behind this if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness. Alright, what's next?

Shiva:  Okay. So, let me walk you through the —

Ben:  Alright, I will follow. Alright, we are now walking into the gym. Possibly a slight change of topic here, but this is where I just finished working out. First, just completely possibly non-relevant question, but there's like samurai swords and ancient Japanese training in martial arts equipment all over. It was actually kind of cool working out with all this equipment in here. What's the deal with all the Japanese weaponry?

Shiva:  Actually, the whole ethos of Connect Ventures was built on the culture of a Japanese martial art, which we arch in, and that's the ethos of our office. It's this art called ninjutsu by a current living grandmaster.

Ben:  Ninjutsu?

Shiva:  Ninjutsu. It's called Bujinkan Ninjutsu, and the current grandmaster is a gentleman called Masaaki Hatsumi. The inspiration for putting up this whole facility actually comes from him because he's the one who developed many of the concepts and principles that we use for our business today, and it's all about the supernatural nature, I should say. So, that's where we draw our inspiration, it's all movement. Ben, I was watching you move. And if you look at your movement as well, everything is natural and connected and flowing and —

Ben:  Thank you. I'm like a ballerina.

Shiva:  Yeah, exactly.

Ben:  I mean, a ninjutsu artist.

Shiva:  It's exactly the same thing. But imagine an environment being exactly the same, connected, moving together, collaborative. What I often like to say is that our organization is very much like a microbial symbiotic relationship.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, I mean, everything flows in that way, too. And as someone who's done a great deal of plant medicine, when I'm in that deep, you can see things on a quantum physics, on a particle-wave level, that just makes you realize how deeply complex and interconnected everything is. But the best word I can use to describe the movement of the particles and waves is flow, like everything flow, like we respond to soundwaves, we respond to airwaves, we respond to energy waves, and that flow can be chaotic or it can be a little less full of entropy, a little less full of chaos. And it sounds to me like you guys are trying to create almost like order out of some of the chaos.

Shiva:  You know what, it's interesting. Chaos has so much of energy. It's about harnessing it and moving with it, and it orders itself. I don't think you can install order as an individual, but working together, it sort of collaborates and flexes and moves in the direction that you wanted to. As you said, the quantum wave is falling into the structures that we desire even.

Ben:  What kind of interesting things do you have here in the gym?

Shiva:  Well, as you can see, we have all the traditional kettlebell, weight —

Ben:  It's very similar like a CrossFit or a functional fitness training facility here. I was a little bit bummed not to have a pec deck. I always like to hit the pec deck when I get off the airplane.

Shiva:  We also have an integrated physiotherapy and exercise physiology unit over here. So, we have a lot of rehabilitation. Over there, we have the EWOT energy. That's your —

Ben:  So, EWOT, exercise with oxygen therapy. And so this is a bike next to a device. So, this bag, this giant bag here next to the exercise bike appears to be full–is it full of oxygen?

Shiva:  Yes, absolutely. It's full of oxygen and it has a [00:35:15] ______ oxygen. And what we've done is rigged the machines so that you have a negative flow. So, you get up to like–it's 21% oxygen when we are actually out here, but we can get that to get down to 14%. So, you create a hypoxic —

Ben:  So, you're hypoxic?

Shiva:  Yeah.

Ben:  But then you follow that up with hyperoxia?

Shiva:  Absolutely.

Ben:  So, you're cycling hypoxia and hyperoxia during the workout. Having experienced this myself, because I have a machine similar to this at home, the LiveO2, you essentially get a vasoconstrictive, vasodilative effect as you fluctuate between hypoxia and hyperoxia. It's somewhat similar to what you'd feel like after doing a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber session. But with this EWOT, the red blood cell response is pretty dramatic, like it's amazing for VO2, it's amazing for clearance of lymphatic drainage from the brain. I mean, I'm a huge fan of EWOT. So, what you guys have done is you've rigged up this machine next to the exercise bicycle. You would flip it on a little bit before the workout to harness the oxygen from the ambient air in the gym and then someone will get on this and actually alternate between hypoxia and hyperoxia.

Shiva:  Absolutely. And also, we're just at 800 meters over here. Many of our athletes are going to go off and train in different countries at different heights. We don't have the benefit of elevation over here. What we are able to do then is during the training period, put them in a hypoxic state for longer periods of time. We have some of the top motocross champions who do the Dakar and all of them. So, you can see that this will be a great tool for a lot of our athletes to be able to simulate that considering we come from almost the plains. It's very difficult to get everything.

Ben:  Yeah. I don't know how much you've done it, but probably the best thing about exercise with oxygen therapy is when you've gone hypoxic and you've done one of your 15, 30, 60-second intervals or whatever in a hypoxic state, and then you flip the switch and bleed into full oxygen, and it is literally just–it's like being stuck underwater and coming up for air. It's absolutely amazing. And of course the only thing is you know it's going to be temporary and you got to go back into hypoxia. But the most exercise with oxygen therapy protocol is they finish with hyperoxia, and so you finish just breathing pure oxygen. It's amazing. It's like dessert.

Shiva:  It's spot-on, Ben.

Ben:  Yeah. Cool, cool. I like it.

Shiva:  Everything we have is like we've been trying to get data on functional movement screening and musculoskeletal analysis because many people today are just running into a cart without any understanding of their body. So, for us, everything is about being injury-free, training for long periods of time. And I think part of our protocols was to get qualitative information for our Indian population to see where we're at and what's happening. So, for everyone who walks into the gym, we always do a screening and we build programs based on their outcomes that they desire, and then we are able to back it up with physiology, nutrition as you saw, the functional foods, and of course all the tools for each and every individual.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. As we walk into the next room, one thing I wanted to comment upon is I noticed most the athletes here and the folks who are working out with a trainer and the trainer is always doing deep tissue work with them and a lot of movement protocols prior to jumping into the workout. So, you've almost got a real emphasis on prehab prior to going into the routine. My own personal flavor as–then we get boots on the streets with all the CEOs and the execs listening in, and Krishna knows this because I work with him a little bit and he did his 15 minutes mobility this morning, I did in my 15–the way I do it is 10 to 15 minutes every morning. You treat the day like the entire day is going to be a workout. So, I start my day with prehab. So, at the drop of a hat, if I got to jump into a workout, two-minute warm-up and I'm good to go. But man, if you have the luxury of having a trainer who can do prehab only before the workout —

Shiva:  I have to say, I mean, I'm about to give you a shameless plug, but some of the routines that you've had me establish in terms of mobility have made such an incredible difference. And maybe even more so than the workouts that you've had me do, especially the intermittent low levels of physical activity because after I do that foam rolling and lacrosse ball work in the morning, doing that low-level stuff during the day, I mean, it's just my body feels so much better and it's so much maintained and loose, and I feel ready to do something almost anytime. I know we're a little off-topic, but it's just a huge difference.

Ben:  I haven't given you this workout in a while, but the Greenfield mobility routine, do you remember the one-hour one?

Shiva:  Yup.

Ben:  Yeah. So, I've got this one that's an hour long. I came up with it as a program for recovery days, but it's a mash-up of foam rolling and dynamic stretching and breathwork, and you just basically do a full hour and your body–your body feels kind of similar to as if you've done a massage afterwards. That's like combination of massage and a workout. So, maybe if I remember, I'll put that —

Shiva:  Just with the burpees and jumping jack.

Ben:  Yeah. You got some calisthenics in there, you got some foam rolling, you got some lacrosse ball work, you've got some dynamic carbon leg swings, but it's a full hour-long and, yeah, on a recovery day, it's a step up for mobility and rehab.

Shiva:  When we first started working together, you had me on that routine for about eight weeks.

Ben:  Yeah.

Shiva:  Yeah. A lot of dynamic instead of stretches and foam rolling and —

Ben:  I do that a lot when I —

Shiva:  And the specific instructions on how to breathe while I'm doing it.

Ben:  Yeah. I just took on like a super athlete in the U.S. and he's going nuts because his first six weeks of training, he's like walking, breathing, meditating, foam rolling, like he's not doing his usual bodybuilding splits in the gym, but I keep telling him, “Trust me, dude.” We're pushing the reboot button. We're rebuilding the foundation.

Shiva:  But you know, what's funny was at the end of that, all of a sudden, I put on seven pounds of muscle mass just from doing that.

Ben:  Yeah.

Shiva:  Wow.

Ben:  It's crazy. Your mitochondria start to respond.

Shiva:  Yup.

Ben:  Alright, what else have we got here? Oh, we have a table with some devices on it. What have we got here?

Warren:  So, this is —

Ben:  You can introduce yourself.

Warren:  Yeah. So, hi, I'm Warren (ph). I had the performance over here in Invictus.

Ben:  You're one of the trainers here at Invictus?

Warren:  So, I'm one of the founders for Invictus that handles the entire performance piece for at least recreationally habitation. We have a lot of our athletes that are actually going from India for the Olympics. We're building systems for India in terms of protocols, standards, performance, as well as rehabilitation. So, these are all the things that we use, something called as a ShoulderSphere. [00:41:34] ______ for the rotator cuff training and showing —

Ben:  The ShoulderSphere?

Warren:  Yeah.

Ben:  Okay. Cool. We'll put a photo of this in the shownotes for you, guys.

Warren:  Perfect. So, we primarily use it for the shoulder in terms of stability. It's kind of cultivation training, but what has worked for rotator cuff is its ability to contract and relax and that's what adds to dynamic stabilization.

Ben:  Yeah. So, you would strap this to the wrist, you would extend the arms —

Warren:  Exactly.

Ben: –and go through a full rotator cuff protocol?

Warren:  Yup.

Ben:  I've never seen anything like this. That's cool. Can you get this in the U.S.?

Warren:  Yes. It's actually made–I mean, we bought it down from the states.

Ben:  Okay. The ShoulderSphere. Alright, cool. I'll put a link in the shownotes.

Warren:  So, if you're talking about any throwing sport or anything with the overhead, you're talking about to indicate maximum velocity through the entire range. I'd say a difficult rotator cuff training doesn't really apply because it's not dynamic stabilization, it's not working on velocity, it's also not working through the entire pattern in which you are going from.

Ben:  Hey, I want to interrupt today's show to tell you about something that I was actually wearing when I recorded this podcast episode, my Vuori shorts. So, Vuori makes amazing workout gear for both men and for women, but it's highly fashionable. It looks good. You can wear it while you're traveling, you can wear it to yoga class, you can wear it to a boardroom if you happen to work for a casual company and you want to pull off the, I don't know, I guess the Mark Zuckerberg look. I don't really give a crap. I'm in hoodies and shorts. Or you just want to feel good. You want to move well. You don't like the traditional tight-fitting spandex, but you like this stuff that actually lets your skin breathe and that looks good.

All the Vuori products are incredibly versatile, for running, for training, for spinning, for yoga, for cruising around the rest of the day, you name it. And what they've done is they've put together this entire collection, your shirts, your shorts, they all look good together. Nine times out of ten if you see me at the gym or walking around the city, I'm wearing my Vuori clothing because I'm a creature of simplicity and I like to go into my closet and just have like a couple brands in there that I can choose from, and Vuori is at the top of the list. So, they are going to give 25% off to all of my listeners. Twenty-five percent is pretty big discount. So, you just go to vuoriclothing.com/ben. That's V-U-O-R-Iclothing.com/ben. And the discount code that you can use is BEN2020 at checkout. That'll get you 25% off. So, it's vuoriclothing.com/ben and the code is BEN2020, V-U-O-R-I.

This podcast is also brought to you by the fantastic Four Sigmatic. When I traveled to India, I also used this stuff for my immune system, specifically their Chaga Elixir because it is one of the most power-packed things you can do for your immune system. So, chaga mushroom extract has been used for hundreds of years for its immune system properties, but what Four Sigmatic uses is wildcrafted, wild-harvested chaga that they extract from the fruiting bodies grown on birch trees in Siberia, harvested by one-armed monks. Now, I don't know about that last part, but it's incredibly unique, the chaga that they use.

Then they use a water and an alcohol extract to make sure you get all the active immune system boosting components of chaga. They then mix it with eleuthero, which is Siberian ginseng. Also amazing for stamina, endurance, and the immune system. Rosehips, which are incredible as far as their vitamin C content, which is also, you guessed it, great for your immune system. They throw in a little organic mint so it tastes fantastic, and boom, you've got your Chaga Elixir. So, if you want to get your hands on this stuff or any of the fantastic mushroom compounds from Four Sigmatic, you just go to F-O-U-Rsigmatic.com/bengreenfield. That's foursigmatic.com/bengreenfield. Use discount code BENGREENFIELD. That'll get you 15% off of anything from Four Sigmatic. And the one that I was just telling you about was their Chaga Elixir. That stuff is amazing. So, check it out. Back to today's show.

It's largely even at the professional sports level, elastic bands, internal/external rotation, horizontal flexion-extension, what's the cross–you know the elastic band system I'm talking about; a lot of MLB pitchers are using it. Crossover Symmetry, I think it's called.

Warren:  Yeah. So, you're talking about Crossover Symmetry.

Ben:  Yeah, but it's all the same type of motions. This is more dynamic.

Warren:  Yeah. So, you can use the same thing for stabilization for baseball. In cricket, we talk about fast bowling, you're talking about javelin, you're talking about all of those. It's about rapid contraction and flexion, it's not just about creating a concentric or an eccentric force. You're talking about how quickly can it dynamically stabilize to be able to constantly stabilize to [00:46:27] ______ that maximum velocity.

Ben:  Yeah.

Warren:  Right. So, the forces that you have is different from when you're strengthening for rotator cuff using bands with whatever.

Ben:  Right. It's one of the biggest holes still in training. Ryan Lowery in the states–do you know Ryan Lowery? Yeah, speed-strength athletes. I think it's his website and he's been on my show before, but we talked about velocity training and the importance, especially for athletes, of moving at a velocity that simulates sport in a dynamic scenario.

Warren:  Absolutely. So, you're talking about how the body self-organizes when you put it through a variety of different tasks.

Ben:  Mm-hmm.

Warren:  And that's pretty much what it is. And largely, predominantly, right now where we are going with the entire training is less about the muscular aspect and is more about how do you affect the neurophysiology of the body and what kind of training that we can do to connect. It's less about the muscle and how it functions independently of the nervous system.

Ben:  Yeah.

Warren:  So, how can we bring it together?

Ben:  Or independent of the cardiovascular system. That's one issue that I still see with speed-strength training at least in the U.S. is they've got a pretty good system for speed-strength training, but once you throw a physiological fatigue into the mix, there's still not a lot of systems that are combining physiological fatigue with any type of speed-strength, which is a scenario. I mean, you look at a quarterback in the NFL.

Warren:  Absolutely. So, there is a diminished motor control when you have double fatigue but the primary reason for that is because–I mean, the brain's function in terms of activating muscle [00:47:59] ______ by electrical output to the muscle. And hence, if that fatigue sets in, then you have a lesser amount of [00:48:06] ______ to the muscle. And hence, you have a decreased motor control as well, and which is why we're talking about it, but then that's where I think VBT is being great, velocity-based training in terms of figuring out what are the fatigue levels that they had and what are the correlating dropping performance for that particular athlete, right? It's not a universal thing saying that everybody has this fatigue the same way. Some people react very different to fatigue and organize very differently under fatigue from, say, you and me. Right?

Ben:  Yeah. What are you using to quantify velocity? Are you using like an EMG that an athlete would wear?

Warren:  So, we use EMG, we use the PUSH Band.

Ben:  What's this device?

Warren:  So, it's a PUSH Band.

Ben:  The PUSH Band.

Warren:  PUSH Band.

Ben:  Got it.

Warren:  Right. So, it actually checks velocity off the [00:48:57] ______. So, it has an accelerometer on it, but it works on a vertical axis and now we're working on multi-directional movement as well.

Ben:  And so for someone who's not familiar with this device, it would allow me to, for example, measure velocity. And if you did the calculation also, power output during something like an overhead push press.

Warren:  Push press, squats.

Ben:  Yeah.

Warren:  I mean, you're looking at primarily for more body movements where force, velocity, power are big factors, also in terms of rehab, right? So, if I'm working with an ACL rehab client, I can't really reduce the load, but what I can do is work at a velocity–I can work on velocity at the same load.

Ben:  Right.

Warren:  Now, what we've seen is because of that where I can take 60 kgs, which I know this athlete can handle safely even if he's doing the ACL rehab. And over a period of four weeks, short traumatic increasing [00:49:51] ______.

Ben:  Yup.

Warren:  Right?

Ben:  Yeah.

Warren:  So, I'm not talking about a purely physiological adaptation only over here, I'm talking about our neuromuscular adaptation that I'm looking for to increase the overall power output.

Ben:  Yeah.

Warren:  Because tissue adaptation has to happen at a certain timeline, but your neurophysiology can happen way faster.

Ben:  Now, for those of you who are not super athletes or don't have an interest in, let's say, professional sports and velocity curves–Krishna, this is relevant. You'll notice how sometimes like on your program, we'll do bodyweight routines that are quick, explosive, get in, get out, move as fast as possible. And the reason for that is this is relevant for anti-aging and longevity as well because telomere studies they've done in everyone from powerlifters to rodent models like guinea pigs, they've found a distinct longevity advantage to the activation of those fast switch type 2b muscle fibers and the ability to be able to move explosively.

So, even from just a pure anti-aging and longevity play standpoint, yeah, we do our super slow training under heavy loads, which I like for the average, just a decreased risk of energy or of injury and maintain muscle mass and strength. But then you combine that with the de-loaded power high-velocity type of workouts, just like the old school, whatever, New York Times 7-Minute Workout where it's all bodyweight, super quick, fast, explosive, and this is something that even if you're not a super athlete is important just from a pure longevity play.

Krishna:  I've always been curious about why that longevity impact is there. It has something to do with the nature of your switch over from the creatine phosphate system to your mitochondrial-based energy and the rate at which that happens, but it's kind of what's going on there based on longevity.

Ben:  I suspect it is, and this is a word that's already been thrown around here, it's the neuromuscular advantage, it's the ability to be able to have enough neuromuscular awareness to where you can move quickly and functionally and precisely at a fast pace. And this would be I'm stepping off a curb. And oh wait, no, I'm not. Here comes a truck, right? Or reducing a risk of fall in the elderly because they actually have neuromuscular awareness and the ability to be able to move just a little bit more quickly because they've got things like motor neuron activation going on. And this even delves in the world of biohacking where we have devices now like the Halo, the tDCS for the head and as motor neuron activation go in and–yeah.

And it's not something I program a lot in my workouts. I try not to make people think like they got to own some spendy biohack to do a workout, but if you use something like that prior to like an explosive power training type of workout, you have enhanced the motor neuron activation, get more bang for your buck out or something like that. So, yeah, you guys are doing cool things in the gym, too. I like it. Thanks for showing us, man.

Alright, where are we heading next?

Shiva:  This is the health office.

Ben:  The health office.

Shiva:  Yeah. So, this is our health by design, and what we do over here is we have a lot of radiation problems because we have a whole bunch of telephone towers across.

Ben:  Cell phone towers?

Shiva:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. It's a huge issue.

Shiva:  Yeah. So, we have around only 2,000 watts that's permissible according to the WHO, but because of India and the complexity of telecom, we have more than 20,000 watts in this area.

Ben:  And for you guys, is it more of the large millimeter-wave cell phone towers? Is it more the 5G panels?

Shiva:  No. It's the large millimeter right now.

Ben:  Yeah.

Shiva:  So, what we've been able to do is actually come up with like glaze and paints that actually bring it down to less than like 500 or 100. So, every house can be protected inside, and we do the whole radiation. We measure radiation inside the houses, and then we're able to seal the system using paints and the glaze.

Ben:  Amazing. Actually, I'm painting my house this spring now with the 5G roll in the U.S. It's going to cost me about 15,000 bucks, but I'm doing a full meal deal at my house just because now that there's–I live out in the forest, but I can't escape from balloons and satellites.

Shiva:  Yeah. Exactly. But Ben, I think because of India, our economies over here are fantastic. It's a nanotechnology that we came up with in India with one of our partners. So, actually, it's economical. Everyone can have it. That's what makes it really accessible. And also, we're doing things like looking at the fungal issues that go along with our temperature fluctuations. So, sports that are–because of the air conditioning and other things like that. So, we have the genetics, as you know, and we are able to test the microbes, as well as the genetics. So, imagine, we have that for including things like the walls, the air conditioning. We're using floor cleaners —

Ben:  Specifically for mold and mycotoxins for that?

Shiva:  Exactly.

Ben:  Like similar to the bio-remediation protocols you're talking about earlier, you use a specific bacterial or fungal strain. There's a company in the U.S., AI Biome, something like that. They sell like a spray that you can spray in your house.

Shiva:  Yeah. That smells really good as well. Yeah. They're using it as a deodorant as well, if I'm not mistaken, things like that. So, what we're able to do is integrate all of that together and do like paints, which are antifungal, and also floor cleaners because the amount of chemicals that are put in floor cleaners are disruptive for our health. And what we've been able to do is build micro-communities that actually manufacture microbial floor cleaning agents, detergents, hand wash, dish wash, machine wash, and all of that is a part of what we're doing with health by design because you're like everybody is investing in design and interiors. India is a growing economy and now what we're doing is adding the health aspect of it. So, what we call it is the health by design. So, you design your house, your home from the go, from the get-go with all of that integrated into your home systems.

Ben:  So, a couple of questions. First of all, if I drop a giant hot pepper fart in here, are you saying it's not going to smell at all?

Shiva:  No. I think you're going to kill us, but —

Ben:  You make a lot of money if you can develop one of those. The other question is–just a bigger picture question. So, on that whiteboard in there, remind me the Connect Ventures. So, essentially, you guys from a business standpoint, almost like a holding company for each of these different smaller companies doing like designs for health, or I'm sorry health by designs, the biome company in the other room we looked at, are you essentially a holding company for all these other companies?

Shiva:  Not at all. Actually, we are partnered with every other company. So, essentially, all of us, I have a stake in all the companies, and we all work together. So, the idea being that we are an open platform of collaboration so anyone who comes in, we're self-funded, we integrate them. We already have the marketplace so that's why the ecosystem, because anybody who walks in has already got everything. So, imagine each individual company is going to feed off every [00:56:24] ______.

Ben:  Which is the root of the issue, and that's the problem in the U.S. It's a completely disparate and disconnected culture, like when I go down and–I was recently in the training gym for a professional basketball team that brought me in to advise them on some of their training protocols in their facility, and when I got into air, light, water, electricity, mold, the nature of the hydration protocols, the coach's eyes were glazing over because it's a complete disconnect, which shocks me, especially on a professional sports level in the U.S. with as much money as you're putting these players.

Shiva:  There can be small increments of performance enhancement [00:57:02] ______.

Ben:  Oh, the lifetime value of contract?

Shiva:  [00:57:04] ______ national championship and lose it [00:57:06] ______.

Ben:  Exactly. But the problem is there's not a model, right? Okay. Who are we going to bring in for air? Who are we going to bring in for water? So, there's not really any one company that you just say, “Okay. This is who we bring in to make sure our athletes are 100% optimized or our executives are 100% optimized.” So, I get it. That's always been like a pain point for me is how do we actually connect everything?

Shiva:  Well, I think the idea of a systemic approach to a lot of these things, I think it's something that has got to really take hold. I mean, it takes a hold a little bit here, a little bit there. I mean, you're seeing one aspect of it here in India, but I mean, you got to also realize that people like you, people like Shiva who are real exponents of this holistic systemic approach to help well-being, fitness, performance enhancement, it still really is at sort of the cutting edge. I mean, maybe people are more aware of it now than 20 years ago when concepts about holistic well-being aren't really, really fringe, but it still has not even hit this deep part of the curve in my mind in terms of acceptance and understanding by [00:58:09] ______.

Ben:  And those strength conditioning coaches measuring force-velocity curves in the presence or absence of mold and mycotoxins in the training job, like something as simple as that, like these are just things that we're just thinking about yet. Okay. So, the primary thing you're doing with the health by design then is mold, mycotoxin, environment, EMF. You're essentially creating shielding and remediation solutions.

Shiva:  And also, lacks, that lacks levels as you know is huge. So, we —

Ben:  [00:58:36] ______ the brightness.

Shiva:  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, we actually do that for individual housing so you can control the whole mood in the evening, you want to get into the red light spectrum during the day, and actually educate people on that so they have the option already built-in into their control systems so they don't have to do that later. You have all the systems in place. You have two different lighting systems in play. So, you have the morning lighting, you can have your evening lighting.

Ben:  My only beef with that is, at least from my limited knowledge, is most–actually, all of those lighting solutions that I found so far in the U.S. that exist, they all have to be run by Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Like my home, I hardwire. We have amazing [00:59:19] ______ in my house where we hardwired [00:59:20] ______ Ethernet cable. So, are you guys thinking about the way that it's controlled, like Wi-Fi versus Bluetooth versus hardwired?

Shiva:  Actually, we're just using controls just to stay away from as much of Wi-Fi coming into the house. Now, these are the choices that–what we try to do is give —

Krishna:  [00:59:39] ______ hard-based controls.

Shiva:  Exactly, and keep it even simpler because —

Krishna:  Not digital-based Wi-Fi.

Shiva:  Yeah. We don't need to. The choice is actually very interesting. The choice goes to the consumer. You just are there to educate them and say, “Look, these are the options.” That's why it's health by design. What level do you want to engage in?

Ben:  Well, but consumer wants convenience. The consumer wants to flop in bed and pick up their phone and shift their entire house in the night mode. And the problem with that is if it's controlled by your phone and you're making that trade-off for the convenience, you're essentially getting–unless you have the ability to postpone activation, do a kill switch. And that's what some of the better wearable devices are doing. Like I'm wearing one morning the Oura ring, and then last night I was wearing the Apollo ankle band here. I can activate both from my phone, but then as soon as I do, that switch into airplane mode. So, as long as you can cut off all communication to the device once you put it into the setting you wanted to be in, then you've kind of got the best of both worlds.

Shiva:  Absolutely. We also came up with a Faraday cage for the bed. So, you have like the mesh–so the idea was to get a mesh made interspersed with the nanotechnologies that we're talking about, and you actually have the mesh around your bed. That's another one, which means that you have the convenience around —

Ben:  It is the Faraday mesh around the bed because my wife is still resistant to this because of the Feng Shui of the bedroom. Has it been made attractive yet?

Shiva:  Well —

Ben:  Isn't it what it looks like?

Shiva:  No. This is some of it. This is —

Ben:  It looks like a zoo cage.

Shiva:  Yeah. But we've got a really nice mesh as well. And just to give you an idea about like some–I mean, the possibility of it, this just goes behind anything that you want, and you can use it anywhere. But we've got a really nice one.

Ben:  I feel like if it could be kind of–similar to what we were just talking about, for example, it's hidden away, you put on your phone, you activate it. As soon as you're in bed, it comes up from the wall, surrounds the bed, almost like a blackout curtain. Those will automatically come down the hotel room.

Shiva:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben:  Something like that, so it's not in the way later on or you don't want your Faraday cage when it's lovemaking night. That would be a way to do it.

Shiva:  Absolutely, because today, we see more and more people with electro sensitivity or sensitivity to electrical devices. And as you know, Ben, I think you've covered that already in many of your podcasts, and that's what we develop things because again, it has to be cheap, accessible. A lot of people over here may not have the economies of spending too much. So, we had options available, and then actually, we have our architects who actually do the design principles exactly like you said and actually customize it for each person to whatever they need.

Ben:  Yeah. I'm trying to find a doctor who will diagnose me with electro hypersensitivity right now so that my local power will remove the smart meter from my home without charging me the $50 per month they want to charge me. To not have the smart with $50 a month is not–it's not a lot to pay for help, but it just irks me that I have to pay for that. So, I'm trying to get a doctor to diagnose me and tell them, “You got to remove this. I have a disease. I have a disorder. It can't be in my house.” So, very cool. Anything else you guys are doing with this health by designs that's notable?

Shiva:  Yeah. We've got the plants. I mean, I think you already discussed that one as well. We have a lot of the plants, taking out a lot of the stuff in the air.

Ben:  So, not only do you have the technology in here, but you've also got something similar, like what the clean air study–

Shiva:  Exactly.

Ben:  Peace lily, ferns, English ivy, the natural bio-remedients.

Shiva:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Right. I love it.

Krishna:  Ancestral wisdom and modern science.

Ben:  Cool. So, as we're walking down the hallway here between rooms, I'm seeing dry skin brushes, organic cane sweetener, soaps. I took a shower with your turmeric soap in the bathroom after my workout. What's going on with all these personal care products?

Shiva:  Performance, [01:03:37] ______, you've already covered a lot.

Ben:  You guys are making these?

Shiva:  Yeah. We have our partners working in villages in sustainable areas in our ecosystem, actually building it, so the economy goes back to the rural areas where the raw material actually comes from. And it becomes a small business for the people over there and the NGOs over there that actually make all the products. So, the idea is this one such venture that actually does that. And to promote them, what we do is we are able to take these small ventures from the rural part of India and connect them up because they are way healthier than anything else that we find in the supermarkets.

Ben:  So, I'm holding the laundry powder right now, and of course I always go straight to the ingredient label to see the laundry list of ingredients, and there's one ingredient says, “Soap berries.” What are soap berries?

Shiva:  Actually, it's an Indian plant that actually lathers, and this has been how we have been bathing for centuries.

Ben:  So, [01:04:29] ______ power is just like fruits, fruit peel, and seeds.

Shiva:  That's it.

Ben:  Amazing.

Shiva:  And it works amazingly because it emulsifies everything.

Ben:  Glass cleaner spray. I mean, look at the ingredient label on this one. What's this one? Oh, [01:04:42] _____ oil, three oils in water. Amazing. Can you get this stuff in the U.S.?

Shiva:  No, I don't think it's available as yet, and that's what we're trying to do.

Ben:  I mean, I know there's companies like Thrive Market and the EWG. You could probably find the equivalent of this stuff, but you guys are producing it all as part of this fuller model. What's this one? This is [01:05:04] ______. Okay. So, this is an all-purpose cleaning powder, soapberry. I'm not familiar with the soapberry. I'm intrigued. Reetha, is that the name of it in India, R-E-E-T-H-A?

Shiva:  That's right.

Ben:  Reetha. Okay. And so you harvest this berry?

Shiva:  yup.

Ben:  And you powder it?

Female:  It's a nut.

Ben:  Oh, Indian soapberry. I have heard of this.

Female:  Yes.

Ben:  Okay. Yeah.

Female:  So, it's a dried nut that you sort of fall to the ground and then you pick it up from the ground. And there's certain processes that take place after you boil it, and then you filter it, and then when it lathers, you let it cool, and then that's what you extract and then utilize in all these formulations.

Ben:  Amazing.

Female:  It can clean your clothes, it can clean your surfaces, it can be used in your hair, as well as [01:05:49] _____.

Ben:  We so seldomly think about the foods that we eat and the natural built-in defense mechanisms that are in them and how those things–like so many people in the U.S. eat quinoa, right? Why aren't we when we're rinsing our quinoa, actually taking the saponins and using that to wash our clothes? We just don't even think about that. We instead say, “Quinoa is evil. Don't go near quinoa.” No. Wash your quinoa, rinse it, soak it, sprout it. And if you want to take things to the next level and love our planet, take that water that you've rinsed it with, toss that in the laundry, and you got laundry detergent.

Shiva:  Or mop the floor with it.

Ben:  Yeah. Or mop the floor with it. I mean, these are things people need to be thinking more about. If you're listening to the podcast, I'll try and teach you guys as much of this stuff as possible. And of course a big part of the podcast is once you learn something, you can take a deeper dive on your own, but man, I love this idea of taking something that we'd normally find in nature that would hurt our guts if we ate it, harvesting all the cleaning mechanisms off it and using it for a purpose. I love it. Alright, what's this room that we're walking into?

Shiva:  This one's for metabolic testing, Ben. We have the cardio coach for the VO2 testing.

Ben:  The cardio coach. I feel like I'm talking a lot about myself. I ran an exercise physiology lab for about five years in Spokane, Washington. So, this looks like my old stomping grounds. So, you have your cardio coach here, which will analyze VO2 Max?

Shiva:  Absolutely. And what we want to do is when we have many people coming in, we have people of all ages and we don't have very good VO2 data for India. We're not very heavily funded on data. So, what we've been doing is actually beginning to create that with our clients. A, it educates them and gives them objective parameters to consider to improve and to understand. And in addition to that, it also gives us data so that we can see what the standard for an Indian population would be because we actually don't have it.

Ben:  Right. You've got [01:07:47] ______ primarily in VO2 max, from what I understand. And VO2 max, most of you who are listening are mildly familiar with maximum oxygen utilization that you can take in during rest and exercise. It's a wonderful program for fitness. It's actually, along with the grip strength and walking speed, associated with longevity. And Krishna, I actually didn't know you had access to this or would have told you this, but you can actually do a VO2 max test and something like the cardio coach or any metabolic [01:08:17] ______ you used to measure your VO2 will tell you because it's [01:08:21] ______. It's measuring the amount of carbon dioxide produced and oxygen consumed. So, you know based on carbons burnt how much fat and how much carbohydrate you're burning in every single heart rate or speed. Thus, you can identify something like your maximum fat burning zone.

Shiva:  So, your [01:08:40] ______.

Ben:  [01:08:43] ______ my morning fasted walks during which I want to maximize fat burning. I now know [01:08:50] ______ 145 to 150. Right. So, if you want to get the most out of morning walk, [01:08:55] ______ 145, 150, you know you're burning as much fat as possible at that heart rate. Now, there are other things to think about, like for example, if you are working on a higher heart rate, sure, your post-exercise metabolic burn is going to be higher, and so is your appetite, so is your recovery time, et cetera. So, it means [01:09:13] ______ VO2 max. Again, we're not just talking something for super athletes, this is something that the general population can use to identify things like fat burning zone, calories burn, an anti-aging type of metric to keep track of what [01:09:26] ______ your age. So, I completely dig this. This is my [01:09:32] ______.

Krishna:  Well, after linking up with Shiva, because I've been in India and I haven't had the resources, I didn't know where the resources were, I know we're going to work together and it's been hard for me to coordinate bloodwork and coordinate some of these more advanced biometric quantification techniques that you've wanted to implement. And then I met up with Shiva and it was like, “Oh my god, this is all here.” I mean, I didn't even know I had this available until three months ago, four months ago, until him and I started talking and then all of sudden there was like a light bulb went off.

Ben:  I love it. And you also have high-speed video cameras in here, so I assume you're doing gait analysis?

Shiva:  Absolutely, because we have many people coming in and it's great for us to give them data and work on the data because what we've been trying to establish over here is credibility, and the best way to do that, Ben, is whether it's biomarkers or markers for metabolites or markers for RMR, VO2, anything, is to give them a before-and-after to show significant change. It's like a profit and loss account and everybody understands that. But what happens is then they are able to, like you said, understand that this is the optimal place to be. And when they fall off the wagon, they know how to get back on and what to do, and the power is with your clients, your patrons, and that's how we've been able to educate. And also, engage them and motivate them into their own health.

Ben:  Right. Whether you're in the U.S. or India or Canada or wherever else, I mean, some of this stuff is as simple as googling the name of your city, plus metabolic laboratory or metabolic testing, and you can find out things like I just talked about, maximum fat burning zone. Actually, you just said RMR, resting metabolic rate, right? Like, am I having difficulty gaining or losing weight because my metabolic rate is low? Which most of the time, I used to test people who'd be like morbidly obese and you'd find the metabolic rate, and you'd test, and they burn like 3,000 calories a day. No. It's like your non-exercise activity of thermogenesis each day. Your movement each day is to what?  That's a much bigger contributor to fat burn and metabolic rate.

Krishna:  You're just eating too much.

Ben:  Right. Just snacking on those macadamia nuts all day long at the office. So, the other interesting thing with the high-speed video cameras–and I used to find system like this at Champion Sports Medicine in Spokane. What we would do is folks with chronic repetitive motion injuries–now, I did a lot of triathletes. We do a lot of run and bike analyses, but man, folks in New York City, in L.A., folks who are walking like three, four, or five miles a day and your feet are bugging you, your knees are bugging, your hips, your psoas, in many cases, we would find that the high [01:12:04] ______ found this here, you watch the ankles and the feet during a high-speed video camera analysis and something as simple as custom orthotics, changing shoes, mild changing gait pattern, some tweaking of like the peroneal tunnels down around the Achilles and soft tissue work done around there, for people who walk a lot settle with pain. I mean, one single high-speed video camera analysis of the gait can be a game-changer with my only complaint being people walk a little different on a treadmill than they do outdoors, but that's what it is.

Shiva:  So, what we do is we get the video outside as well and then try and match it. So, that's the only difference that we try. And look, the idea is at the end of the day, it's not just data unless it's actionable. So, you want to be able to see that in reality. And what we're able to do is do that, and exactly like you pointed out, that's the reason that we have.

Ben:  Yeah. What software are you using for your gait analysis?

Shiva:  I'm not actually sure, but I can ask the team for that.

Ben:  Yeah. I'm totally blanking on the one that I used to use, but after I quit working at that facility, they developed a phone app with this slow-motion speed of the phones now and the better cameras. You can actually friend and the iPhone and that software–it starts with a D. I'm blanking on the name of it, but you guys would know if you were to google just like gait analysis software phone. You can actually have a friend do it yourself and look at a lot of the movement patterns yourself.

Shiva:  So, you can actually gait analysis on the phone now?

Ben:  You need gait analysis [01:13:26] ______. It's not as good as like three high-speed video cameras like this.

Shiva:  [01:13:29] ______ some idea.

Ben:  It's not 3D, right? It's not 3D. You don't have the z-axis [01:13:33] ______. Yeah. What else? Any other cool little things you want to show me?

Shiva:  This is the physiology part of it. And what we've again doing like I told you before is to get all the biomarkers and the analytics. And in there —

Ben:  Okay. So, just a quick thing, to give folks a visual, we just walked into this room where of course every single room seems to have all these superfoods and things that you guys are producing. This one's got buttermilk and milk crackers, turmeric, barley grass, black pepper, all sorts of different teas, but then across the table are a host of lab reports and metabolic analysis that got microbiome report, your metabolite report, vitality panel, genetic reports. You guys are running all these tests here?

Shiva:  Absolutely. We have our own systems biology lab, and what we've begun to do is actually integrate all this data together. India has less than 0.2% of its genetics mapped with over like a billion people. We hardly have any data that's actionable and we are the only ones who actually have the microbiomes and we've done like 150 microbiome tests and we're beginning to see all the correlations.

Ben:  Meaning, you guys, Connect Ventures, are the only people in India who were doing gut microbiome?

Shiva:  Yes. We and our partners have called leucine, and this is what we've been putting together, and it's called bug speaks, as you can see, and we put together a whole metagenomic sequencing of all your microbes.

Ben:  Can I get like a sample PDF of some of these printouts to put into the shownotes?

Shiva:  Absolutely.

Ben:  This is confidential information.

Shiva:  No, not at all.

Ben:  That would be amazing. These are very comprehensive kind of printouts that you have for–so for your genome analysis, you're looking at everything from the microbiome response. This is kind of similar to like a Viome in the U.S., the biome response to certain foods, pathogen characterization. Is your urine metabolite report as hormones?

Shiva:  No. Our urine metabolite is everything. We do neurotransmitters, we do hormones, we do the Krebs cycle.

Ben:  This would be similar to almost like a SpectraCell analysis in the U.S.?

Shiva:  Exactly. And we have none of that here. So, here's an amazing story. During the past seven, eight years, I got most of these tests from all the labs that you recommended, and we figured out that we don't have any of it. So, part of our journey was to many of the things that–

Ben:  So, you're saying I helped to build this?

Shiva:  You helped to build this.

Ben:  Oh, wow.

Shiva:  And that's what makes it very interesting.

Ben:  You owe me a drink.

Shiva:  I think we owe you more than a drink. That's why we are [01:15:56] ______ got us to do, Ben.

Ben:  Amazing. Okay. So, your organic panels, you're able to analyze pesticides and herbicides that are?

Shiva:  Absolutely very practical —

Ben:  Within the body or are you actually analyzing–

Shiva:  Oh, this is the genetics.

Ben:  Oh, wow.

Shiva:  So, this is the genetics report. It's like your strategy, but our version of it. And this is telling you about your caffeine or the common ones that you do. This one is more like the StrateGene kind of report. And all of this is in India because we don't actually have access to 23andMe. We don't have access to any of those tests.

Ben:  You know what I find interesting when I travel to other countries and I have a win in Rome kind of approach where a lot of times I'll partake in the local cuisine. Sometimes it does agree with me, sometimes it does not because we're all genetically diverse and I'm an American mutt. And I'm curious with you guys, with your genetic report and your analysis of the Indian population, have you yet struck on a specific diet that works well for Indians in general?

Shiva:  Actually, we're coming very close to figuring some certain things out. One of the most interesting things that we figured out is a microbiome is so diverse. The microbiome for the —

Ben:  Compared to?

Shiva:  Compared to the Caucasian microbiome. But it's also as diverse for the obese people as it is for lean. So, the diversity is not the issue, it's the acting of bacteria part of it. So, it looks like we were a fiber-rich race. What's happened with the depletion and processing of food is that this seems to have a huge cause of our metabolic diseases today. So, this is something —

Ben:  Lower butyrate, lower Akkermansia.

Shiva:  Exactly spot-on. And this has been an interesting part of our discovery, which is why if you look at the foods and stuff that we're beginning to curate is to actually get all that back into the system. So, yes, fiber is a huge one that we found. We also found something very interesting in terms of a DEXA scan and the analytics that we ran over there.

Ben:  The DEXA scan meaning, using for bone density and fat mass?

Shiva:  Absolutely. And the reason I bring that up is we've done around 5, 600 of them. And from that data, we figured out that the–it looks like we were a squatting society, but we've stopped squatting after our English occupation over the past 100 years. Every time we activate our pelvis, our bone density actually increases, and it's the first place that we put on bone density and it's also the first place that we begin to lose bone density. Because we also have the standard conditioning, we're able to see those correlations happening because we have the repeat testing.

Ben:  So, you've got a one-two combination with industrialization in India causing constipation and low bone density?

Shiva:  Exactly.

Ben:  Interesting. You never think the two would go hand in hand. Also, this is relevant to something that's been on my mind recently, this whole carnivore diet craze and the potential danger of taking a diet that might largely agree with, say like, a pure, say, Northern European population, who might be able to get by on fish, nose-to-tail organ meats, et cetera, who did not have for thousands of years copious amounts of legumes and fibers in their diet and then trying to extend that diet saying it's the perfect human diet or something like that. I think it's dangerous territory versus taking–and again, it's difficult when you have a melting pot like America versus, let's say, something like India where I think you guys are a little less genetically diverse, but you can do tests like this and figure out a biome that's actually going to be appropriate generally.

Shiva:  And once you start figuring these things out and say for people like me, what am I? I'm half Indian, German, Irish, Ukrainian, and Czech. What's my diet? I mean, you're an American, but [01:19:39] ______. Once you start figuring things out for people like me, how should I eat? How should I be [01:19:46] ______ my diet? How have I been tracking my lifestyle? How does all of these things come in and how my body handle stresses? Or the SNP mutations, how do they really affect me on say my MTHFR, my CMT?

Ben:  And I think the answer to that is quantification going in and quantification going out.

Shiva:  Yup.

Ben:  Meaning, you quantify and you get approximation of what you need. And then from there, you track heart rate variability, you track inflammation, you track glycemic variability. And from there you can say, “Okay. This and this series of tweaks is what's actually causing your diet to become customized.” And that's frustrating for a lot of people because they just want to buy a book and find out that what's within that book is God's truth than the diet for them, and it's so much more complicated sometimes. It does require some digging, but I think what will happen is the people who are doing the digging will generate trickle-down information that keeps the people who can't afford to the digging from having to do it.

Shiva:  And also, I mean, there is a certain amount of–except you have to–at some point in life, we all have to learn to accept that the reaction is some complexity to life.

Ben:  Yeah.

Shiva:  Not everything can just be simple. Not everything can be a yes or no question. Some things in life are going to require you to be your own unique individual and do things that are uniquely individual and good for you and they may not be the same thing as for other people and you have to try to figure that out sometimes.

Ben:  I have accepted there are mysteries in the universe I cannot explain. I even catch flack for this where I like talking about God or higher powers or spirituality. If you're like, “Prove it,” I'm like, “Can't.” It's a mystery to me, and you know what, I'm okay with that. I believe in magic, so there I settled. Yeah, yeah.

Shiva:  And we're all going to the same place one way or another. So, we're all going to figure it out sooner or later.

Ben:  Yeah. Alright, what else have we got in here? My mouth is watering. You got crunchy nut butters, you got honey. What's up with the honey?

Shiva:  This is actually jaggery.

Ben:  Jaggery. What's jaggery?

Shiva:  So, it's the raw form of sugar. So, when it's not processed, it's got all the [01:21:47] ______.

Ben:  From a sugar cane?

Shiva:  Yeah. It's all the molecules of magnesium, everything with all the micronutrients in it. And what makes it interesting, it's got all the 36 molecules of magnesium that you need to process, the glucose.

Ben:  Wait, are you saying sugar is not poison if it's actual real unprocessed sugar?

Shiva:  I think that's —

Ben:  Robert Lustig is going to roll over in his grave.

Krishna:  Sugar cane is [01:22:07] ______.

Ben:  Eventually.

Shiva:  It's from the sugar cane.

Krishna:  Is it a different part of the sugar cane that's used for in refined sugar? It's the same stuff just [01:22:15] ______.

Shiva:  No, it's just the juice.

Krishna:  Just the juice.

Shiva:  And it's just coagulates and then you make it into —

Ben:  Right. The best approximation would be like my wife's slow-fermented non-GMO red wheat berry, sourdough bread from the rolling hills of the Palouse versus Wonder Bread.

Krishna:  [01:22:31] ______ coming out of the house is another thing.

Ben:  Oh, amazing. I'm glad I crushed it on the rowing machine earlier. Wow. So, it's mind-boggling how you guys have woven all this together. What is this?

Shiva:  Pepper, fresh off the tree.

Ben:  Fresh black pepper off the tree. Oh my gosh, that smells amazing.

Shiva:  You get to take that back home with you, Ben.

Ben:  Oh, get all that bio pairing. Wow. This is coffee, elephant shade coffee. Oh my goodness, permaculture coffee, half Arabica, half Robusta, and this is grown in kind of that permaculture type of environment that you were alluding to.

Shiva:  Yeah. These are [01:23:09] ______ states.

Ben:  Wow. Amazing, amazing. Man, this is so cool. You guys are doing so much here. And these [01:23:20] ______, you gave me a bag of these last night when I arrived at the airport. I almost, I had good self-control because I know about circadian rhythmicity and I was careful not to eat too much last night when I got in because I always wait until breakfast as much as I can, but I did, I admit, eat half of a [01:23:39] ______ last night before I went to bed. Almond flax, sesame, Moringa seed, choco chips, dates, figs, pink salt. So, it's like crackers that you guys are making?

Shiva:  We have a zero [01:23:48] ______ version and these are–we have many versions of it, but essentially, what we needed is we have a 50% of our population is vegetarian.

Ben:  Yes.

Shiva:  Now, if you look at the protein issues that we have–and we don't have access to P-protein in most places in India and we're used to solid food. So, what we did is we essentially came up with all the essential amino acids in the best proportions along with a really good ratio of omega-3 to 6. We got a four is to one only. And we put an immunomodulatory Moringa protein in there, and that's the one that we actually did in our food lab, which actually showed us amazing immunomodulatory effects.

Ben:  You know, if you have almond flax, sesame, and Moringa in here, you can actually change the label because this covers–you have BCAAs. You've actually got all your essentials in here, that combination. So, you could change that to EAAs instead of BCAAs.

Shiva:  We've got all the EAAs.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Amazing. That's a good formulation, especially with people who are plant-based for their protein.

Shiva:  And also —

Ben:  It's healthy to eat a hell of a lot to get enough protein versus ribeye, but I'm jaded.

Shiva:  I also get–it's full of dietary fiber. And now from the previous conversation, we'll understand for the Indian biome, that must be like phenomenal.

Ben:  And probably pretty good with some of that peanut butter you guys make on top of it, too. Wow, wow. Cool.

Shiva:  Yeah. That's the [01:25:13] ______.

Ben:  Okay. And what we'll do is, for those of you who want to look at some of the labels of some of this stuff, more information on the ingredients, on the amino acid ratios, et cetera, we'll put all of this over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness. You're probably guessing the shownotes are going to be pretty comprehensive of this because we're covering everything from food to agriculture to physiology and fitness to bioremediation, mold, mycotoxins, EMF, but it's a comprehensive picture and I'm very, very impressed. Anything else you want to show me?

Shiva:  This is the last —

Ben:  Alright, this is the last piece. Here we go.

Shiva:  This is the —

Ben:  The brain. Oh, wow. So, we've got a computer with some electrodes, look like they attach to some kind of a head-worn device. What have we got going on here?

Shiva:  So, we got the biofeedback device. Here's where we do the EEG, the biofeedback, we got the Halo, all the things that we discussed because India is the land of yoga. But how do we know we're meditating? I mean, it's very interesting. There are many people who do it, but we have no, again, data for it. So, what we've been doing is actually with these specializations that we have in this department, essentially beginning to create all the data so people are actually able to visualize what different breathing systems do for them, what kind of EEG they're able to do. Stress responses, we use this for everyone. It doesn't matter, athletes, CEOs, anyone who comes in because again, nobody is capturing the data of the brain, and it's an illusion of meditation. It's worse than if you're not actually able to do something about it.

Ben:  Yeah. Do drive. I've played a game very similar to this in which–so to describe it to you guys, go listen to my interview with Dr. Andrew Hill, if you want to take like a 90-minute deep dive into this. But essentially, the electrodes are collecting information about your brainwave patterns, which will change almost subconsciously as you're staring at a screen. And for example, if you switch to higher degree of beta brainwave activation versus alpha, the car might slow down and the exhaust might stop coming out the back or the music might fade, in which case, your brain gets this subconscious slap on the wrist and shifts back into alpha.

I actually wound up purchasing the laptop and all the equipment from peak brain in myself and my kids trained with this thing for like six months and I noticed like better sleep onset, decreased distractibility, better focus. Even during a podcast like this, I would have been–not that I'm not kind of like a “Hey, squirrel,” or, “Hey, look over there” kind of guy already, but I would be able to hear conversations going on outside and I'll be able to focus on you guys and this stuff completely changed my brain. Yeah. Amazing.

Shiva:  And what we managed to do is once we get all the data here, this is something you take home. It's a pulse oximeter with a HRV device. So, then the same technology, which you simulated on and worked on, you can take home and it's a small —

Ben:  So, this is a pulse oximeter. I can wear this on my finger to measure the amount of oxygen. And what does this have to do–oh, so you've got an app, and as you're meditating, you're able to increase the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream?

Shiva:  Yes. And as well as —

Ben:  So, it would be cool for Wim Hof people.

Shiva:  Yeah. And the HRV as well, by the way, it's got all the data at the backend —

Ben:  So, do HR–oh, it's huge.

Shiva:  Yeah.

Ben:  I didn't even know this thing existed. Amazing.

Shiva:  Yeah. That's a gift for you, Ben. You can take that and play with that.

Ben:  Wow. So, can people get this in the U.S.?

Shiva:  Yes, I think so.

Mon:  There are only two markets, the U.S. and the India.

Ben:  Are you the biofeedback guy here? Biofeedback expert?

Mon:  Yes.

Ben:  What's your name?

Mon:  Mon.

Ben:  Cool. Where are you from?

Mon:  Israel.

Ben:  Israel. Okay. Cool, cool.

Mon:  Four years ago, I decided to come to India and see what India have to offer, and I believed in the Eastern psychology more than the Western psychology and I found out the way to connect between the Western technology and the Eastern philosophy, we can prove performance, not only heal diseases or disorders, but how can we upgrade people and have better performance on a database using ancient techniques and simple things that you can depend on yourself or not on your psychologist or therapist or someone else but only on yourself.

Ben:  Yeah. And so you could use something like real-time HRV and pulse oximetry data as you're meditating in real-time, see what style or form or length or flavor of meditation affects your specific physiology in the most favorable manner. And this is something we run into. I don't know if you see this person, but there's like 30 different flavors of meditation out there, just like there's 30 different diets out there.

Krishna:  You can do just transcendental meditation; you can do strength in how breathing focus on your breath meditation. And I think there's a million other flavors as well. Another interesting thing, Shiva, which just coming here and listening to you talk about this, you have the genetic testing and then you have the biometric feedback on meditation. And when you look at things like SNP mutations on, what is it, the MAOA or the C-1T gene, which are responsible for clearing–one of those is epinephrine and norepinephrine.

Ben:  And dopamine, yeah.

Krishna:  And dopamine, right. How, if I'm saying it's slow on the–I've got an SNP for being slow on that, maybe a device like this, they can develop a specific program like, “Okay. You need to be up here to actually get the stress relief and be clear because you're clearing slow.” There's a way to be [01:30:43] ______ genetic data with biometric performance —

Ben:  The other thing that's cool about neurofeedback and about self-quantification real-time by our brain waves or things that correlate to brain waves is you can test out your nootropics in [01:30:56], Qualia Mind or [01:30:59] ______. And you can actually see how specific nootropic plants affect your mental function. How much does this cost, this I Feel Well device?

Mon:  This is around $100.

Ben:  So, for 100 bucks, somebody could quantify their meditation?

Mon:  The meditation, even the timing gets stuck in traffic. You can see how calm you can be when you are stuck in traffic. When you just finished sending your kids to school and you have five minutes to rest until you need to organize yourself, you can see what can you do in these five minutes. Nowadays, we can't stop for two hours meditation, we have no time for that. If you want to be efficient, we have little, little or five, five, five minutes will accumulate to two hours a day that we are wasting on different, different things. In this five, five minutes, we can do so much for ourselves without changing our behavior much that we need to stop our day and continue. We can just on the go, create the better flows.

Ben:  That's the important part is that we tend to chunk meditation. I was talking to my kids about this the other day, the importance and the power of prayer and how you don't actually have to feel the pressure to carve out 20 minutes in the day to stop and pray because it's either the prayer of constancy, right? You walk outside, you take a breath. Oh, thank you, God, for that breath. And then you have your bite of meal. Oh, thank you for that bite of food. By the time the day's over, you prayed 30 times, but it's just like constant connection, just like meditation, constant breath stops for breathwork.

Mon:  And you activated all the [01:32:32] ______ pathways, all the pineal gland, everything that can heal you without too much effort very easily and effortlessly, and this is what we are looking.

Ben:  Yes.

Krishna:  It's so interesting. It's like the meditative equivalent of the intermittent low-level physical activity.

Ben:  Right, or the micro workouts, yup, exactly.

Mon:  Ben, for example, for us, it's integrative because of society and stress. If you're going to eat while you're stressed at work, you may as well not eat because you know how the metabolism of that food is going to go down.

Ben:  It's a waste. That happens to me sometimes, like I got to drive and it's lunchtime, and so I'm going to eat in the car and you eat this–I'll make myself an amazing superfood smoothie and be completely dissatisfied and miss out on the flavor, on the nutrient because I'm driving, I'd rather just not eat.

Shiva:  Exactly. And tools like that for us are saving so many things because it doesn't matter how good a nutrition plan you have. If you're going to be stressed out every time, that's the kind of feedback loops that we've been able to build in because of the connectivity, because you're saying, “Wow, why isn't that working?” And you're like, “It's never going to work if he's going to be stressed. You got to get him.” And then we have this department that comes up with a tool that will help with that, so it has to be integrative ethos.

Ben:  The devices seem gimmicky, but they work. Like Krishna, you and I were talking about this last night, like I have a 15,000 step minimum. And for me when I wear the Oura ring, like I'll push myself away from dinner at night, glance down, see 13,900 steps and I'll go for a 10-minute post-prandial stroll because I've gamified that 15,000 step count per day and it seems gimmicky but–and my wife, for example, she'll say, “Why don't you just go for a walk after dinner every night just out of out of habit or out of self-control?” And for me, that's like I'd like to have a device that just tells me. It motivates me. It motivates me as gimmicky as it might sound. Some of these so-called gimmicks and gadgets, they lend themselves to motivation for having a better life.

Krishna:  Just with the training piece, right? And I've been having a hard time doing the gym workouts, but I've been really getting into the [01:34:39] ______ activity. And even just tracking that and they're like, “Okay. I did my 120 Bowman push-ups. I did five reps of single set to failure X3 shoulder press. I did–not five reps, five sessions of single set to failure over the course of the day, and I did all these little things and I can see it.” And it motivates you. You see the progress and you see the goal, and it becomes part of your habits, and it becomes just like the Zen of your daily routine. It's difficult sometimes to get there, but once it becomes that, it just relieves that need to package everything, these disparate aspects of your life, your health and your maintenance and it just becomes like the flow of your everyday routine.

Ben:  I did my 40 damn squats every time I use the bathroom during that 20-hour flight to India.

Krishna:  I've been starting to go to the bathroom and do squats on planes, too. I'm doing some push-ups [01:35:37] ______.

Ben:  I have been known to do push-ups in some pretty strange places and thank God for antibacterial hand spray. Let's just say that.

Krishna:  I'm sorry, Emirates. Emirates has towels in there. So, you put the towel down and do push-ups.

Ben:  Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yup, yup. The things that happen in first class that people don't know happen. Well, guys, this has been amazing. This has been absolutely amazing. Shiva, thank you so much for sharing all this with us.

Shiva:  Thank you, Ben.

Ben:  Krishna, thanks for exposing me to —

Krishna:  My pleasure.

Ben:–wonders of the diversity of health that's happened here in India.

Krishna:  You and I have been talking about doing something in India for quite some time I think at the Runga about two years ago. And when I met Shiva, I knew I had to put you two guys into the same room with something to record a podcast on because I knew it would just spark a lot of ideas. He's a big exponent here of a lot of the things that–I've been listening too on your podcast for the past two, three years, and that we've been working through together and it's just amazing to see someone in India who can see also about you. And I remember telling you, “Hey, there's this guy in India. He's literally got 50 front backs of notes on every single podcast from the last seven years, and this guy is really religious about trying to implement stuff and I wanted to see you guys get together.”

Ben:  Yeah. Well, for those of you listening in, I hope this has gotten your creative wheels turning and perhaps gotten you interested in some things you might not have thought about. Maybe your fitness junkie has never thought about permaculture, maybe you're a mold enthusiast who's never thought much about tracking your meditation in a quantified format, maybe you've never thought about using your quinoa from Costco to wash your clothes, but there's all sorts of interesting things this universe has to offer. And again, I'll make some pretty comprehensive shownotes for you guys over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/indiafitness. And thank you so much for listening in. Until next time. I'm Ben from BenGreenfieldFitness.com signing out. Have an amazing day.

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.

 

 

During my recent media tour of India, I had the pleasure of meeting many brilliant individuals who are doing very cool things in the health, fitness, and biohacking arena in India.

One of the most impressive tours and meetings I had was with the good folks at Connect Ventures in Bangalore.

Connect Ventures is blending everything from advanced lab and biometric testing of blood, biomarkers, genetics and the gut; to personalized nutrition and fitness programming; to the development of high-end nano-material segment for environmental cleanup; to nanotechnology, agro-technology, water and waste treatment, food-grade enzymes for sugar, distillery, brewery and tea industries, nutraceuticals, and next-generation agricultural technologies. We explore all these factors on today's extremely interesting and educational episode, which I recorded while touring Connect Ventures.

My primary guest on today's show is Shiva Subramanian. He is a graduate from United World College of SEA and Nottingham University (U.K.) where he studied international management & finance. Shiva Subramanian is at the forefront of India's entrepreneurship market. His primary business interests were in textiles, the production & export of coffee, and F&B ventures in various locations across Bangalore. Today, as head strategist of Connect Ventures, he handles multiple roles as communicator, decision maker, and leader to drive their vision of transcending. A constant source of inspiration to his team, he is also a prolific sportsperson and a thespian with over 27 years of training in different forms of Martial Arts.

In this episode, you'll discover:

-The “ecosystem” within Connect Ventures…8:40

• Fill in the gaps in the environment; human sustainability is contingent on environmental sustainability
• 17 ventures that are self-funded
• The goal is for people to live “supernaturally”
• Preserve natural state of land, soil, etc.; no fertilizer or pesticides
• The Blockchain can be used to track ingredients, farming methods, etc.
• Proper education = demand for better quality products

-Why healthy soil is so vital for sustainability in agriculture…14:36

• Soil has become alkaline due to years of fertilization and pesticides
• Going organic is a 5-year process (decreased productivity)
• BGF podcast with Dr. Zach Bush
• Water for farming is also contaminated
• Connect Ventures creates products that allows farmers to grow healthy product while transitioning to an organic model
• “Allowing nature to do its job”

-How biodegradable plastic came about…21:13

• Starch in a plastic machine; similar to beeswax in texture
• Adjusting for a certain economic level of a people
• Landfill system that contributes to a sustainability model of farming
• Single-use plastics being banned results in widespread unemployment
• Biodegradable plastic makes single-use plastic sustainable; cost is comparable to regular plastic
• “Love” includes loving the planet we live on

 

 

-How Connect Ventures is reducing the level of organic waste…28:08

• A ton of waste becomes a ton of gas which = a kilowatt of power
• Cost of carbon nanotubes is drastically reduced

-The philosophy behind working out at Connect Ventures…31:52

• The gym on the property is inspired by Japanese martial art ninjutsu
• Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi developed concepts and principles used in their business practices
• Flow… We respond to sound, air, energy waves. Trying to create order out of the chaos
• Gym is similar to a cross-fit facility
• Oxygen therapy
  • LiveO2
• Lots of deep tissue work prior to working out
• Foam rolling, low-level therapy is highly efficacious
• Greenfield Mobility Routine
• ShoulderSpherefor rotator cuff training
• Crossover Symmetry
• EMG, push bandsto increase velocity
• Neuromuscular advantage: muscular awareness that allows you to move fast and precisely
• Halo device

-What the “health office” at Connect Ventures is…52:31

• “Health by Design”
• Lots of radiation issues due to cell phone towers; 20k watts in the area
• Listen to Ben's podcast w/ Dr. Mercola on 5G
• Mother Dirt AO Mist spray
• Anti-fungal paints and floor cleaners
• Connect Ventures is a partner w/ all the other companies discussed; not a holding company
• There's a lack of a model on how to optimize a living environment
• Mold, mycotoxins, EMF shielding
• Plants in the office contribute to a clean environment as well

-The story behind all the personal care products at the facility…1:03:18

• Small businesses in the area are the beneficiaries
• Reetha – soap berries
• Repurpose water used to wash food (laundry detergent, floor cleaner)

-Metabolic testing and cardio coaching…1:06:48

• Lack of funding for data on VO2 max
• Data determines standards for the local population
• Google your city + “metabolic testing”

-Whether or not there is an ideal diet for the typical Indian man or woman…1:16:26

• Microbiome is very diverse compared to other populations
• Industrialization has contributed to constipation and low bone density
• BGF podcast on the Carnivore Diet w/ Paul Saladino
• Quantify to get an approximation and go from there
• Can't just buy a book and decide on the right diet; requires a lot of digging

-The snack room and biofeedback devices…1:21:30

• BGF podcast w/ Andrew Hill
• I Feel Well device for meditation
• Prayer and meditation throughout the day; constant connection with the spirit and higher power
• Gimmicks can lend themselves to real motivation

-And much more…

Resources from this episode:

-BGF podcasts mentioned:

• BGF podcast w/ Andrew Hill
• BGF podcast on the Carnivore Diet w/ Paul Saladino
• Ben's podcast w/ Dr. Mercola on 5G
• BGF podcast with Dr. Zach Bush

–Connect Ventures

–LiveO2

–Rumble Roller

–Greenfield Mobility Routine

–ShoulderSphere

–Crossover Symmetry (code: BENFIT for a 10% discount)

–Perform Better Bands

–Halo device

–Power Lung

Episode sponsors:

–Kion Flex: The ultimate recovery formula, Kion Flex is a bioavailable blend to support joint comfort, mobility and flexibility, and bone health. Ben Greenfield Fitness listeners, receive a 10% discount off your entire order at Kion when you use discount code: BEN10.

–Beekeeper's Naturals: A wellness company specializing in innovative nutraceuticals made from healing hive compounds and plant-based ingredients. Get 15% off your order when you use discount code: BEN

–Vuori: Activewear and athletic clothing for ultimate performance. Vuori is built to move and sweat in, yet designed with a West Coast aesthetic that transitions effortlessly into everyday life. Receive 25% off your first order when you use discount code: “BEN2020″

–Four Sigmatic: I’ve been using Four Sigmatic products for a while now and I’m impressed by the efficacies of their mushroom products. I use them. I like them. I support the mission! Receive 15% off your Four Sigmatic purchase when you use discount code: BENGREENFIELD