October 5, 2017

Podcast from:  bengreenfieldfitness.com/naveen

[00:00] Introduction

[01:02] MeUndies

[02:00] Thorne Research

[05:43] About Naveen Jain

[10:14] How Naveen’s Company Got Permission to Go to the Moon

[12:17] Naveen’s Unique System for Learning and Being an Expert on a Subject

[22:45] How Naveen Got Interested in the Microbiome?

[31:54] How Injecting Microbiome of Young Creatures Make the Old Creatures More Sprightly and Young

[36:32] The Human Charger

[37:35] The Bark Box

[40:08] Why the Microbiome Tests are a Waste of Money

[45:23] Some Viruses are a Key to our Health

[45:55] A Gut Test That Can Tell How Much One is Working Out

[49:00] How to Genetically Modify Microbiome

[50:29] How Naveen Licensed $21 million Gut Sequencing Technology from Los Alamos Laboratory

[53:42] Can You Customize a Probiotic Strain Specific to an Individual?

[56:57] How Glyphosate is Killing Your Microbiome

[1:00:53] Naveen Predicts: The Next Big Thing in Healthcare

[1:13:35] End of Podcast

Ben:  Hey, what’s up? It’s Ben Greenfield.  I’m wearing my sunglasses. I’m wearing my sunglasses in the morning because I like to use red light in the morning.  I’ve been preparing myself for what’s called an RKC Kettlebell Certification.  So my morning routine is like one of those bad ass Russian dudes or somebody from an Eastern bloc country where, at least this is the way I fantasize that it works over there.  I go out for about a half hour in the morning.  I swing my kettlebells all over the place and then I go jump in the cold pool.  And then I feel amazing.  And then I put my sunglasses on and I stand next to these infrared light panels that heat my body and my testicles.  I don’t think they do that in Russia when they’re swinging the kettlebells around but regardless.

We digress, kind of, although I did want to talk to you a little bit about your precious testicles and how take to better care of them or for you ladies out there, I will take better care of your under regions.  So I have now this amazing pair of underwear.  My favorite one is the one that has all the international flags all over it.  It has a diamond seamed pouch that cradles my jewels and gives my stuff the support it needs without feeling too tight.  My wife has some too and it’s made out of this soft eco-friendly fabric.  It’s so soft and so dare I say, touchable.  It’s made by this company called MeUndies.  They are made by this company called MeUndies.  They’re the best pair of under wear in the world.  I’ve got three pairs now.  They come not only with a 100% satisfaction guarantee but now because you are a lucky, lucky listener, you get 20% off.  You get free shipping on top of that 100% satisfaction guarantee.  So what are you waiting for?  Go to meundies.com/greenfield.  That’s meundies.com/greenfield to take advantage of that fantastic offer for your crotch.

This podcast is also brought to you by Thorne.  Thorne Research.  So I actually have been to the Thorne research facilities.  There’s a bunch of nerds walking around white lab coats and all these physician’s offices and these multi-hundred thousand dollar mass spectrometry machines and basically everything that you don’t find at most manufacturing facilities for supplements.  However, when you look at Thorne Research probably because they’ve been around for 30 years, probably ‘cause they’ve gotten a bunch of cash dumped into them from investors and all of the support that they’ve gotten by being around for so long, they are pretty much the most innovative, high quality, research-based supplement manufacturer that exists, period.  They also produce some pretty cutting-edge health diagnostics technology and medical education but ultimately, I’m most excited about the fact that I can pop a Thorne pill and know exactly what is in there is what it says it has in there and their commitment to quality is crazy.  I mean, between grabbing something off the shelf at freaking Walmart or Super Supplements or GNC or finding yourself a high quality Thorne product, I carry them all, at least all the ones that I use at greenfieldfitnesssystems.com, like their curcumin, their multivitamin, their creatine, everything.  And it’s the purest stuff that exists.  So go to greenfieldfitnesssystems.com and if you go there just do a search for Thorne, t-h-o-r-n-e, you’ll find any of my fave Thorne products.  So check that out.

By the way, today’s show is all about age reversing via the gut.  The ultimate anti-anxiety pill, customized probiotics and a whole lot more with billionaire entrepreneur and Viome founder Naveen Jain.  I had the chance to go hang with Naveen at his pad next to Bill Gates’ house in Seattle and the dude’s the real deal.  And yes, he really does have a moon rock collection and yes he really is not like some [censored] cold rich entrepreneur but he’s actually a super duper smart guy who cares a lot about your poop.  Yes, your poop.  Alright, let’s do this.

In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:

“The next revolution of agriculture is going to come from the technology and entrepreneur who will be able to adjust the microbiome of the soil.  Will be able to adjust the microbiome of the seed.  So we got the next green revolution you’re going to hear about is going to come from entrepreneurs, not from nation states.”  “So our microbiome actually is not only hijacking but influencing every genes that are expressed in a human body.”  “See as this technology is so far ahead of anything in the market place.  At least five years ahead of anybody.”

Ben:  Naveen Jain is one of the most interesting guys I have ever met.  He’s a billionaire entrepreneur, philanthropist driven to solve the world’s biggest challenges through innovation, and he has founded a ton of successful companies in the skyscrapers that we were surrounded by while eating dinner at the Argentinian steakhouse last night in Bellevue, Washington.  It was kind of funny because, Naveen who’s sitting across from me here at his mansion overlooking a lake.  Is this Lake Washington?

Naveen:  It sure is.

Ben:  Okay, overlooking Lake Washington, you were pointing out to me all these different buildings that you’ve worked at.  There was a Blu Dot and TalentWise and Intelius and InfoSpace.  I know now you’ve got Moon Express and also Viome which is really cool and that’s something we’re going to talk about today.  Moon Express we’ll talk about as well because back behind me here just a few feet away is what I believe and correct me if I’m wrong, what I believe is the largest moon rock collection that exists?

Naveen:  Yeah, largest space rocks including moon, Mars and beyond.

Ben:  Are you actually going to let me touch a piece of the moon? 

Naveen:  I won’t, but if you’re really nice to me I will let you do that. (chuckles)

Ben:  Alright.  Alright.  I’m going to touch the moon.  So Naveen is really disrupting health care in a very, very big way and you’re going to learn a little bit more about that on today’s show.  But a couple of other quick things about him that are very interesting.  He’s on the board of the XPRIZE Foundation where he’s finding a whole bunch of solutions to address global challenges in health, education, women empowerment, agriculture, and energy.  He recently launched a million dollar women safety XPRIZE to empower women around the world.  He’s on the board of Singularity University which I’m personally extremely interested in when it comes to the cutting edge of longevity in anti-aging, Naveen knows just about everybody in that industry and he himself is going to live to be what, 200?

Naveen:  No.

Ben:  250?

Naveen:  No, at least 300.

Ben:  At least 300 if you keep on sending your poop in to get analyzed which we’ll talk about a little bit later on.  A ton of awards including Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Humanitarian Innovation Award, Albert Einstein Technology Medal Distinguished Global Thinker Award, Most Inspiring Entrepreneur, Most Admired Serial Entrepreneur, Top 20 Entrepreneurs Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership in the Technology Industry, and I’m holding in my hands here and for those of you watching the Facebook live version of this podcast, Fast Company Magazine where Naveen was named as one of the 100 most creative people in business.  So the dude is a hard charging, high achiever, you get up earlier than I do, Naveen.  I think you were up this morning at what, 4:30?

Naveen:  4:30 it is, yeah. 

Ben:  Well, question of the day, why weren’t you at Soul Cycle with me along with your wife this morning doing the cycling workout?  What were you up to?

Naveen:  Oh, I was actually reading all the science articles…

Ben:  You were reading science (chuckles).  You were actually telling me about this.  You have a very cool kind of system for learning.  Tell me about how you learn and discover all the things that you do?  What’s your system?

Naveen:  So one thing is that I started now 7 companies and no two companies that I start are in the same industry because my fundamental belief is that once you become good at something, you can only improve it incrementally.  So you can improve it 10%, you can improve it 15%.  But if you want to disrupt something ten times or a hundred times, you have to challenge the foundation of everything that experts have taken for granted.  And that can only happen when you come into an industry with absolutely no expertise.  So you are able to look at it from extremely fresh perspective of what things can be, not how things are.  And that to me is a clear advantage.  Everyone who’s listening to this at Facebook live or a podcast should really be thinking about that, “What can I do to be solving these problems?”  And the first thing they say what I know nothing about this thing and that is their biggest strength is they know nothing about it.  So they are able to come in with completely fresh perspective.

So for example, when I look at healthcare or I look at the space, so Moon Express you mentioned, Moon Express is the only company in the universe that has a permission to leave our orbit and land on any celestial body.  That means, we are the only company.

Ben:  If I may interrupt you? How do you get permission to do that? You’re talking like the CIA, the FBI. Who owns orbit?

Naveen:  Well, this interesting thing is that under the current treaty, International Space Treaty, it was designed for only the nation states to go out and do the space exploration.  So it was never anticipated that some private company might do it someday.  So they never set up a department that’s a department for approval to the mission to the moon.  So you will look around every federal department there was no department that say, here’s where you go, when you want (chuckles).

Ben:  Here’s where you buy your ticket to the moon.

Naveen:  Here’s where you go when you want to go launch a mission to the moon.  So we did exactly what you suggested, we went to NSA.  We went to CIA.  We went to the State Department.  We went to every single NASA and you can imagine every three-letter agency we went to, and they all said the same thing that, “look we can give you 10 reasons why it makes absolute we will never grant you this permission and even if you are to satisfy every one of our concern, we just won’t say no because we can’t say yes because it’s not in our chart.”  And finally, we went to the old White House and that’s where they brought all of these inter department agencies and says, “We need to make this happen.”  And the reason that United States has to do it because when we go land on the moon or when we leave our orbit we are flying under the US flag.  That means United States takes the responsibility both for what we do and also for the protection of us as US citizen and a US company.  So no one should be able to interfere with our operations when we are on the moon.  No country or government can essentially interfere because we are flying under the US flag.

Ben:  So you were talking about how you actually learn and discover how moon and space, let’s say that you want to get into moon and space, you have a system for learning.  We we’re having lunch at an event a couple of months ago and I think you described how you actually immerse yourself in one particular subject and become an expert in that subject.  Talk about that.

Naveen:  So what I do is when I come in to a particular field or when I want to start something, there are a couple of questions I ask myself.  If I’m going to do what I’m about to do, God forbid if I’m actually successful in doing it, would it actually move the needle?  Would it actually help a billion people around the world if I’m actually successful in doing what I’m doing? If the answer is no, then I think it’s too small a problem for me to attack.  The second thing is I always focus in what I want the world to be not what the world is.  That means I don’t look at and think: “Is the glass half empty or is the glass half full?” I simply focus on, “Do I want to fill this glass or do I not want to fill this glass?”, because if I want to fill the glass it does not really matter if the glass is half empty or half full.  And if I don’t want to fill glass it doesn’t really matter if it’s half empty or half full.  So always as an entrepreneur, I focus on not what is, but what it can be.  And the way I learn about something, so I say, “Ok, now I’m going to go solve healthcare problem.”  The biggest problem facing the humanity is the exploding cost of healthcare.

Ben:  Wait, I want to back it up a little bit before you talk about healthcare.  I’ve got two loops I want to close it to you.  Get in to the nitty gritty specifics for me in terms of like, when we we’re driving over here in your car, your fast blue Ferrari, your beautiful blue Ferrari, you were talking about how you get up in the morning and you have a certain routine and when you go to bed at night, you have a certain routine.  And that routine involves immersing yourself in this one subject that you’re just going to crush, that you’ve decided you’re going to become a complete expert in.  Tell me how you go about structuring your day so that you can become an expert and pivot from technology and the internet, to moon and space exploration, to the microbiome?

Naveen:  So one of the things I do is I spend the first two hours, so I get up around four thirty and the first two hours or three hours in a day, I read every scientific journal, every scientific magazine and what I do is I set up my Twitter feed for every single science magazine that’s out there.      

Ben:  So you use Twitter?

Naveen: I use Twitter to essentially aggregate all of the latest news that’s coming up.

Ben:  So all these magazines like Nature and…

Naveen:  Nature, Cellular, Microbiome.

Ben:  Rather than reading the magazines themselves you read those magazine’s Twitter feeds and the magazines tend to tweet out the actual research?

Naveen:  And that’s what I will click on and that essentially takes you to the magazine website and then I read those articles.  But it gives me a fairly good idea about what this article is about right from the tweet.  And so I say, “Yup, that’s interesting and I want to read it.”  Or it’s uninteresting it’s not something I care about right now.  But by looking at that, and then I look at some of the people who are absolute expert in that field and what I do is then I go read probably about 20 or 30 books in that filed.  And the reason I never read one book is because then you essentially gets biased by that person’s opinion.  So that expert’s opinion if you only read one book then you more or less start to take that as a fact.  By reading 30 books with 30 different authors, it allows you to aggregate the knowledge and the perspective from different people.  And by reading all of that, you create your own perspective that is completely unique from anyone else because all of these guys are looking at very what I would say, narrow way of their own thinking and their own expertise.  And by my coming from outside the feed I’m able to look at all these keys that these guys are talking about and look at this forest of what is it consist of? Where are the weaknesses and what are the people that everybody agrees on and where is the disagreement and within the disagreement I really, really believe something here what this is makes a lot more sense and I’m going to go out and explore that.

Ben:  So 4:30 AM you’re getting up to read the Twitter feeds and these books, do you read them at night or you do you also read those in the morning?

Naveen:  So normally the books, I would read them on the weekends and in the night.

Ben:  Okay.

Naveen:  But generally on my weekends I am just a voracious reader.  I just can’t.

Ben:  Kindle or paper books?

Naveen:  I love paper books.  I have to admit, I mean being a dead guy, I just can’t leave books on…  (chuckles).

Ben:  Some of the smartest guys that I know and the most highly achieved guys that I know have enormous libraries of paper books.  You know two people I was recently hanging out with, Tai Lopez, big man who lives in Beverly Hills.  Every single room in that mansion has a book shelf chock full of books.  Paul Chek, a fitness pioneer.  You go into his house and it must drive his wife crazy, as my wife is getting driven crazy as my own collection explodes, it’s just wall to wall books.  In a whole bunch of different areas categorized according to certain areas.  I have yet to run into many truly successful and I guess not just successful but people who are actually changing the industry that they are in who don’t have a voracious habit of reading a lot.  That’s why when I tuck my kids into bed every night and they’re pulling out their books, I don’t care.  I let them leave the lights on.  I let them read as long as they want.  They each have their own little set of blue light blocking glasses and they read and read and read.

So that’s very interesting that you immerse yourself in that one subject and of late you have actually.  Actually, like I mentioned there is one other loop I wanted to close before I turn to your latest interest and that is how long will it be before we’re going to be able to go to the moon on one of your ships?

Naveen:  Okay.  So we are going to have in six months a first private landing on the moon.

Ben:  Six months.  So we’re recording this September 2^nd 2017.

Naveen:  Yes. So the reason I say that is that landing in the moon not only will make us the first private company to ever land on the moon.  We actually become the fourth super power.  Only three super powers have ever landed in the moon.  And that just goes on to show that the next.

Ben:  Alright, Russia, China, America.

Naveen:  Russia, China and America.

Ben:  And you?

Naveen:  And there’s going to be a fourth, is going to be a private company.  So imagine by landing on the moon simply goes on to show that the next set of super powers are going to be entrepreneurs and not the nations states because entrepreneurs are now solving the problems that used to be solved by the nation states because it was considered impossible for a small group of people or a private company to do so.  Such as healthcare, education, space exploration, creating the abundance of energy, creating the abundance of food.  These are all considered something the society as a whole and the government would do and we’ll pay our taxes and let the government handle.  Now all those problems are being handled by entrepreneurs with private resources.  And the second thing is as a private company, you can be held accountable every single day not every election year.  So for example when the President Trump banned people from certain countries from coming into America, that day there was a massive protest in New York, and every taxi driver was protesting.  Uber send the Uber drivers to the airport.  That day 200,000 people deleted their Uber app from their phone.  Next day, the CEO of Uber resigned from the President’s council because he realized that’s what his users want.  The point is entrepreneurs can be held accountable every single day whereas elected officials can only be held accountable every election cycle.  That means if you elect an idiot you’re stuck with that idiot for four years whether you like them or not.

Ben:  Hmmm.  Interesting.    

Naveen:  Second and the third thing that’s really interesting thing about why entrepreneurs are going to be next super powers is that entrepreneurs are not really bound by the geographical boundaries.  That means they find the people, the resources wherever they are.  That means people could be in China, Russia, India, Europe, Brazil anywhere they are.  You can work together to solve the problem as long as we all are have the same purpose of we’re going to solve this problem.

Ben:  Do you think that American politics will change based on that? Do you think that will eventually not have like a Senate, and a House, and a President, and will instead be run by a group of entrepreneurs?

Naveen:  So interestingly, what happens if a nation states continue to become irrelevant.  So they may exist but the power they may have will continue to go down because there’s nothing that society actually depends on them to do.  The problem the society has such as healthcare will get solved by some entrepreneur rethinking, reimagining that why should we have to constantly cure things? Why can’t we absolutely prevent and reverse as opposed to constantly just simply suppressing the symptoms that we do today? Why do we have to have this education system that would cost people $250,000 and you basically learn, but whatever you learn becomes obsolete by the time you graduate because exponential technology is making every skill obsolete every 5 to 10 years.  Same thing is going to happen and is already happening in the space.  Now the countries are no longer exploring the space. Who is doing the space?  [0:21:58.5] ______, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, us.  I mean, we are the ones who are entrepreneurs now exploring space and to some extent the nation states have taken the back seat, right? So, that is the kind of things that will continue to happen when the next revolution or the next revolution of agriculture is going to come from the technology and entrepreneur, we will be able to adjust the microbiome of the soil.  Will be able to adjust the microbiome of the sea and to be able to increase the [0:22:27.0] ______, so we got the next green revolution you’re going to hear about is going to come from entrepreneurs not from the nation states.

Ben:  You’re pretty into the microbiome now. 

Naveen:  That’s my new company in the microbiome space on health.

Ben:  So were you one of those guys who is like instagraming your own poop or did you have some kind of a parasite or how’d you get interested in microbiome? I mean, and I know you like to predict things so I’m wondering if this is just something you saw in these scientific magazines you’re following.

Naveen:  Yeah, so actually as I was finishing up my moon project and you talk about actually the moon shot of landing on the moon.  I started to think about what should be my next moon shot and I actually looked at both education and healthcare as the two next big problems that I believe I want to [0:23:17.0] ______.  So as I started looking into both healthcare and education turns out there were very similar problems.  Both the systems people believe are not working.  People believe the border systems have broken and it turns out then that neither one of them is broken.  They’re doing exactly what they were designed to do except our needs today are very different than the needs were when the system was actually designed.  So for example as I was mentioning, in our education system, education system was designed to teach you skills and though these skills you could use for the rest of your life and everything was wonderful.

In the world of exponential technologies it doesn’t really matter what skill you learn.  It becomes obsolete every five to seven years.  That means by the time you graduate you’re closer to being obsolete than essentially being disrupter, you’re being disruptive.  That means education system now has to be really designed to teach you learning to learn.  How do you constantly learn new set of technology? How do you apply interdisciplinary approach to solve problem?

Ben:  Well, at the risk of going down a rabbit hole, you were telling me last night when I mentioned how I didn’t care if my kids went to college or not.  How you thought that was a bad idea and that my kids should go to college but isn’t that what college does it just teaches you to sit there and learn rather than learn how to learn?

Naveen:  So I think you obviously missed the point I was trying to make (chuckles).

Ben:  No, mostly.  I think I was too interested in my steak.

Naveen:  It’s really is that college is not necessarily about you going there to learn.  College is the right age at that age when you are essentially being surrounded by the smartest people.  So if you go to a good college, you are actually they have ordered in the preselection of some of the smartest kids.  So if you are in Stanford, or MIT or Harvard or Princeton, you have essentially now surrounded yourself with some of the most brilliant people that you are able to exchange ideas and you are in the close proximity.  When you are in the close proximity of smart people, like anything else you have idea sets.  And these ideas start to emerge and you’re constantly discussing them and you’re starting to grow as a person because now you’re learning things that you never thought you would ever learn.  So to me going to college is like.

Ben:  Hmm.   So it’s more about the peer involvement.

Naveen:  Peer involvement.

Ben:  But you could just find like 10 really smart people and go travel the world with them.

Naveen:  But the difference is those 10 may not be the smartest people and you’re stuck with those 10, while when you’re in college you have a hundreds or thousands of people and you can essentially move around and get…

Ben:  Yah, force diversity.  Force variety.  I get it as you were saying. We kind of got derailed from the microbiome a little but how did you get so interested in it?

Naveen:  So the second part of the thing that I was mentioning the healthcare, and I started to look at the healthcare it became pretty obvious that the way the current system is designed which is the cost of the healthcare will continue to go up and will never be able to come down.  And there were several reasons.

Our healthcare system has become so big that it has become an organism in itself and anytime something becomes an organism the Darwinian theories start to take hold.  The survival of the system is the only thing that matters.  And it does not matter.  The purpose will be out of the window.  So today our healthcare system believes the patient is a nuisance that they have to deal with and the stakeholders are really the insurance companies, and the hospitals, and the doctors, and those are the stakeholders they need to satisfy and the pharmaceutical companies.  And that’s all they’re focused on.  Most of our healthcare dollars are being spent on chronic diseases not on the infectious diseases or acute care diseases anymore which is why the healthcare system was designed in an era of when people were dying from infectious diseases and that’s what it does really good.  Now we have these chronic diseases that in fact are not episodic what the system was designed for.  Healthcare system was that you became sick episodically and it took care of you.

Ben:  Or you broke your leg, you go to the ER.

Naveen:  Yeah.  And now you are chronically sick and the system wasn’t designed for that.  And here is the irony.  The cure for the infectious disease like antibiotics is largely responsible for the development of chronic diseases.  So not coming back to the idea of as I was reading all these scientific magazines, every single article in the healthcare became so obvious in the last three to four years that every chronic disease whether it is an anxiety, whether it is a depression, whether it is your behavior or autism or it is a Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer.  It is OBCD or diabetes or whether is it cancer or any type of gut issues.  Every one of these things are directly influenced by your microbiome.  And the research after research after research, I’m reading this stuff and saying, “Microbiome is responsible for this.  Microbiome is responsible for this.”  And then you go and talk to the doctor they say, “What is microbiome?” They don’t teach about microbiome in the medical school even today.

Ben:  Really?

Naveen:  Even though all of the signs…

Ben:  But when I’m talking about like the digestion and the gut, how do you know?

Naveen:  Well, I’m just telling you that the few good graduate from the medical school today don’t talk about chronic.

Ben:  I know they barely talk about nutrition.

Naveen:  They barely talk about microbiome.  They believe the human body, if the perfect healthy human body is devoid of any…

Ben:  So if you go to like Harvard Medical School they’re not telling you about the gut microbiome?

Naveen:  No, in fact when you go to these guys and say, “I might have a leaky gut,” and they say that’s a voodoo.  There’s no such thing as leaky gut.

Ben:  Yeah, well it’s kind of like a cover all term like the fibromyalgia or adrenal fatigue or something like that, but that shocks me that they’re not actually studying the microbiome.

Naveen:  That is absolutely not only they don’t teach you.  So think about it, when you go to a doctor that graduated 10 years ago, you are about 25 years behind where the science is.  So I decided that if you are going to go out and get the latest technology, and if we can understand what is happening in your gut since all of that is being responsible for all chronic diseases.  And we go directly to the consumer who is a person who is actually suffering.  We can potentially clear the world where chronic illness is optional.  That means no one ever have to have a chronic disease unless you make a decision to be sick.  And what I really think about, you know, to me that really goes to my core of who I am is.

We finally have a chance to actually look at what is going on inside us and to be able to use the artificial intelligence, to be able to understand what is causing what and for once for all remove all chronic illness from the face of this earth without using any pharmaceutical drugs because food is the best drug the human body needs.  Just understanding what is the right nutrition and food for you.  The thing that has really been wrong in our society is that we go by these fad diets.  So it’s an Atkins diet one day.  The Paleo diet the next day and the new diet comes along.  Ketogenic diet the next day.  But the problem you have is there is no such thing as universal healthy diet.  What is healthy for you may not be healthy for someone else.  What’s healthy for you today may not be healthy for you six months from now.  That’s why you have to constantly check your body and understand what is that your microbiomes or diversity of microbiomes? What kind of microbiomes do you have and how do you keep the body in balance?

Ben:  Alright, I want to talk about customizing a diet in a little bit because I found that to be really interesting because I’ll have that test on.  I’ll send you my poop.  I’ve seen the dietary recommendations.  I’ve bounced it off a few different doctors and gut experts who were pretty shocked at the results in terms of the in depth analysis of the bacteria.  And by the way, for those of you listening in, for those of you watching at Facebook live right now if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/naveen, that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/ n-a-v-e-e-n, I’ll put a video screenshot of what happened when I analyzed my own microbiome using Naveen’s stuff.  But I want to tell you why the microbiome is important because there’s some freaking fascinating stuff.  So I was on the plane right over yesterday.  I don’t know if you saw this but what they did with this fish, you know how they’ve shown that when you inject the blood of young mice into the blood of old mice they actually can reverse aging in the old mice.

Naveen:  Yup.

Ben:  Well they did this with fish but they didn’t use blood.  They used the bacteria…

Naveen:  Of the microbiome?

Ben:  From the gut microbiome of the old fish and they injected that in the young fish and it made this elderly fish like sprightly and young.  Have you seen this?

Naveen:  Other way.  You mean the other way around?

Ben:  No, they injected the young microbiome into the old microbiome.  Yeah, the elderly fish basically became like a rock star.

Naveen:  So basically what’s very interesting is.  Let me stand back for a second there, I’m going to answer your question why it happens.  Human DNA, we believe as humans we are made of our own genes.  Our genes are our destiny.  What people don’t realize is the human DNA only produces nineteen thousand genes.  The earthworm has more genes than humans do.

Ben:  Worm has more genes than human?

Naveen:  Uhm, but what makes us such a complex thing? It’s our gut microbiome produces somewhere between five million to ten million genes.  So think about that for a second.  Nineteen thousand genes being human genes and five million to ten million being the microbial genes.

Ben:  The microbial genes being unhuman or like those are just things living inside of us.

Naveen:  Living inside us.

Ben:  So those don’t count as our genes ‘cause there are like other genes living inside us.

Naveen:  They have separate DNA, right.  So the gene expression if you think about it, they are the puppet masters and very interestingly there was a very recent research that showed that our microbiome directly communicates with the mitochondria.  And mitochondria as you may recall is an ancient bacteria that became the organelle in our human cell.  So our human cells have this bacteria that’s called mitochondria and it still has the same communication mechanism to do for human longevity.  The microbiome is directly communicating with mitochondria.  More importantly, the human cells when they communicate among themselves they use exactly the same biochemical mechanism that our microbiome is using.  So our microbiome actually is not only hijacking but influencing every genes that are expressed in a human body.  That means, it’s not the genes that you have that matters.  So when you do the test like 23andMe it doesn’t tell you much because all that tells you is what could potentially happen.  So for example, every DNA they can see these are the possibilities.

Ben:  23andMe is a salivary test, you send that in.

Naveen:  And you basically get the work your genes are potentially could do.

Ben:  Right.

Naveen:  But the problem with that is it doesn’t mean it will ever be expressed.  So DNA simply tells you what is possible and RNA tells you…

Ben:  Right, it’s like if I have a higher than normal risk of prostate cancer.

Naveen:  But then you don’t need anything.

Ben:  Than I may or may not get it depending on whether I eat fresh tomatoes or whether I wear really tight underwear. Whatever might be like the match that would cause that dynamite to go off.

Naveen:  Yeah, the best way to really look at this stuff really is.

Ben:  I don’t wear really tight underwear, by the way.  That’s stuff, yeah.

Naveen:  TMI.  So if you look at the human DNA, you look at your hair.  You look at your lung.  You look at your tooth.  And you look at your skin. They all have the same DNA.  What makes them look so different if it was the same DNA? It’s the things that are being expressed.  So epigenetically what expresses the changes the same DNA into hair, tooth, skin or lung or heart.  So imagine that.  So that means what matters is what’s being expressed not what it is.  You do not want that tooth growing on your head, right?

Ben:  Right.

Naveen:  So the point is DNA doesn’t do much.  What microbiomes do is they control epigenetically what genes are being expressed.  So if you eat the right type of diet for your microbiome, they will regulate your genes not to express certain things that may potentially could have caused many of these chronic diseases.  So for example, if you’re a diabetic, it’s not that your body is diabetic.  It is your microbiome that are controlling where genes are being expressed.

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Ben:  Hey, I want to interrupt today’s show.  I’m actually about to take off to Finland this week and I met these folks the last time I was in Finland actually, it was two years ago.  I’ve been using this little device they gave me ever since.  It’s called the Human Charger.  It’s got two little buds I put on my ears and it provides you with a full daily doses of sunlight in just 12 minutes.  Now granted, I still like to go outside in the sun but what this can do is when I can’t get out on the sun or when I’m jetlagged or want a little mood booze when I’m stuck in my office.  I just blast myself with sun right through my ear canals because my brain has photo receptors and that your brain does too.  A photo sensitive protein on the surface of the brain and when they get stimulated by this light, they act the same way as they would when you step out in the sunlight.  So better energy levels and better mood and better mental alertness.  A tiny little device.  Super easy to carry.  It looks like you’re listening to an MP3 player.  You go to get a 20% discount on this by visiting bengreenfieldfitness.com/humancharger.  That’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/humancharger and enter code Ben20.  Ben20 will get you 20% off.

This podcast is also brought to you by my dog Comet’s favorite new website.  He has hard time typing on his keyboard but I do it for him.  So every month what Comet gets is a themed box with all these different all natural dog treats and innovative little toys that match a dog’s, in this case Comet, my little blue healer, his allergies, whether he’s a heavy chewer or a light chewer.  His unique needs, what he loves, what he liked the last time.  The cool thing is this entire box comes with the scout’s honor.  If your dog doesn’t like something in the box they’ll just send something to you that your dog will love for free.  ‘Cause they’re all about dog happiness.  These are the folks at BarkBox.  B-a-r-k Box.  So what BarkBox does is they send this monthly boxes of treats and toys for my dog to my house and each monthly boxes’ theme is like Pooh York City, Brooklyn Hipster, Bark Ball, County Fair.  You get the idea.  And you get a free extra month of BarkBox when you sign up for their six month plan or their 12 month plan.  Super doper easy.  So for that free extra month of BarkBox visit barkbox.com/ben.  BarkBox, just like it sounds barkbox.com/ben.  Say that 10 times fast and that’s automatically going to get you that free extra month.  Enjoy.

[Music Plays]

Ben:  You were showing this study last night how your microbiome is associated with type 2 diabetes like based on the bacterial diversity in your gut you can make yourself more or less susceptible to fluctuations in blood sugar.  I actually wanted to ask you this as somebody asked us on Facebook when I put on Facebook I was going to interview you.  Are you familiar with the guy, what’s his name, the Weizmann Institute?  Aaron Segal’s Lab at the Weizmann Institute.  And Robb Wolf talks about this in his book “Wired to Eat” about how some people have a very pronounced glycemic response like cookies and bananas and then some people’s blood sugar doesn’t go up at all.  And what their studying this Weizmann Institute is how the microbial composition in the gut of humans can affect their response to actual foods.  Now…

Naveen:  But the only difference that can, let me just go a step for one second here.  The way people look at the microbial composition is very wrong or they’re not getting the full picture, right? So today many of the people who are watching this say, “Oh, microbiome, I know I already got the microbiome test done.”  What they don’t realize is the test they have gotten done was a complete waste of money.

Ben:  Why like what test? Give me an example.

Naveen:  So for example if you went to uBiome you basically are…

Ben:  Either I’m locked in the American Gut Project, uBiome.

Naveen:  American Gut Project, uBiome, they basically selling you snake oil.  So there’s really nothing you get from them and here’s why.  What they use is for technologies called 16S Sequencing.

Ben:  You be careful what you say dude, I’ve met Jeff Leach from the American Gut Project and he went to hung himself upside down and injected the poop of a warrior into his backside.  So he’s pretty bad ass.  He might come after you on the snake oil.

Naveen:  So let me tell you one thing is that technologically it’s a snake oil because what they do is they use something called 16S Sequencing.  What 16S is a fraction of a gene that only exists only in bacteria, and a portion of the gene can tell you what genus this bacteria belongs to, right? So depending on the primers you use you can get about 50 to 70% of bacteria at a genus level, right?

Ben:  Okay.

Naveen:  And you cannot see any virus and you cannot see yeast, fungus or mold and even the bacteria at the genus level, it does tells you nothing because at the genus level we are all mammals.  So we are man, we could be dogs, we could be rats.  And if you ask women, they will say, “You know what all men are, dogs anyway.  So what difference does it really make?”  But we all can agree not all men are dogs.  My god.

Ben:  So basically what they’re doing is they’re saying, “Hey, this is a fruit or this is a vegetable,” but they’re not telling whether the fruit is an apple or a pear or an orange or a berry or they’re not telling you that the vegetable’s a cucumber or a green bean?

Naveen:  So genus level, we are mammals then we see at a species level, we are homo sapiens.  At a screen level you are Ben.  I’m Naveen.  You are a fitness guy.  I am a space junkie.

Ben:  Interesting, so that’s called 16S Sequencing?

Naveen:  What they do.

Ben:  That’s what they do.

Naveen:  What we do is something called metatranscriptomics and metatranscriptomics if you go to viome.com.  That’s v as in victor i-o-m-e dot com / our signs, you can see the difference between 16S and metatranscriptomics.  Metatranscriptomics, Ben, we look at RNA.  So the thing is that I was going to tell you the Weizmann Institute they’re really smart people, don’t get me wrong, but what they’re doing is they’re looking at the DNA.  They’re looking at metagenomics.  They’re looking at the DNA of the microbes.  And the problem you run into with the DNA of the microbes are two things.

Number one you see, every time you eat any food you see the plant DNA or the fish or the steak you ate.  Their DNA coming in because they’re all dead.  So DNA sees all the dead stuff.  When you look at the RNA you’re only looking at things that are alive and replicating.  So when we look at RNA we’re only seeing the things that are actually alive and replicating.

Ben:  Interesting.

Naveen:  And the second part is the most important part which is how active these things are and the third part is what is it they are doing? What are they producing? Are they producing short chain fatty acids? Are they producing Vitamin K? Are they producing PAM? Are they producing PCE? So we focus on what is actually going on.  Not who they are.  How active they are and what are they doing? And here is the thing that most people don’t realize.  The same organism may do one thing in my gut and depending on the other organism in your gut, it may do a completely different.

Ben:  Yeah.

Naveen:  Just like human beings, Ben.  You and I will act very differently depending on whose company we are in.  If somebody’s in my company, they’re calm and quiet and somebody’s in Ben’s company, they’re all partying.  They’re party time.

Ben:  Yeah, that’s right.  Or we’re going to ride a bike at 4:30 in the morning while you’re sitting in bed reading Twitter.  Now what about Genova, like this three day gut panels that you do? Is that just DNA too?

Naveen:  Actually some of these labs.   

Ben:  ‘Cause I do that test a lot on myself.

Naveen:  So what they do is actually even worse.  Many of these labs, all they do is culture.  So you can’t even imagine when they’re culturing your poop you only can see the bacteria that grow in oxygen, and that means all the anaerobic stuff you don’t even see any more.  So coming back to the thing what we do at Viome not only we see every strain of every bacteria 100%.  We see every virus and the three types of virus is they could be DNA virus, they could be RNA virus, or they could be feces.  And these feces are Ben, as you may know only in fats.  Bacteria feces are only in fat bacteria and not the humans.  And they’re really important because they are not controlling these bacteria through these viruses.  And then we look at the yeast, and the fungus, and the mold and as you already know the mycobiota which is the fungal community is just as important as the bacteria.  And in fact what we are finding…

Ben:  The microbiota that would be more…

Naveen:  Myco.  M-y-c.

Ben:  Mycobiota would be the fungus.

Naveen:  Fungal communities.  And they are just as important as our bacteria.  In fact many of these fungal communities are so good for our health because they actually survive for a long time.

The other thing that’s really interesting is viruses.  Many of these viruses are actually key to our health.  The more we are finding these RNA viruses for example, gluten sensitivity.  When the research came out about a month ago the virus called reovirus is an RNA virus when it is active and when you eat gluten, the body clears the antibodies.  If the virus is not active or not there, then you can eat the gluten all day.

Ben:  So you could test your gut.  You could send a poop sample into like Viome and you could actually see whether or not you possess that gluten sensitivity.

Naveen:  Yeah.  In fact we can also look at your microbiome and actually predict how much workout you’re doing by looking at the TC.

Ben:  No, tell me how this is going to work.  You can predict how much I want to work out? You can predict how much I’m actually working out?

Naveen:  How much you’re working out.

Ben:  I didn’t see this on my results.  Tell me about that.  I want to know.  Have you seen my results, by the way?

Naveen:  I have (chuckles).

Ben:  Okay, fill me in on this.  Fill me in on how this works.

Naveen:  So this is something we didn’t tell you because we are still actually evaluating all the functional analysis part of what these microbes are doing, and we looked at this [0:46:26.9] ______ which is extremely active in people who are doing a lot of aerobic exercise.  So just in case you’re wondering, of all the people that we have tested you were in the 96 percentile (laughs).

Ben:  That is on aerobic.

Naveen:  On aerobic (chuckles).

Ben:  Interesting.  And what are you looking at again to see that?

Naveen:  That if a function of the TCA level.  The TCA part who is how active.

Ben:  What are you saying, the TCA level?

Naveen:  Yeah.

Ben:  Interesting.  Well, TCA being a part of the kreb cycle.  Wow, you can actually test that via the poop.  Amazing.

Naveen:  Yeah, and guess what.  I was in three percentile just in case you’re wondering.

Ben:  Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me.  It doesn’t surprise me.  We’ll have to get you out to yoga tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow morning me and your wife are going to go do the sculpting yoga.  With dumbbells and all.

Naveen:  I’m going to go there.

Ben:  She’s talked me into putting my tights pants on and go and do yoga with dumbbells.

Naveen:  I’m going to do a 12 pack ab, baby (chuckles).

Ben:  Gwyneth Paltrow style, baby.  Okay, so I want to talk about another couple of things when it comes to the gut ‘cause we talked about diabetes, and we talked a little bit before we even started recording about arthritis ‘cause we had that question come in via Facebook.  You were showing me a study last time about anxiety and stress like a brand new study that came out yesterday.

Naveen:  Yeah, so it’s very interesting is that how microbiome is actually using the same chemical biochemical language and hijacking the micro RNA.  So in fact they did this study on animals where they looked at the communication between amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.  So as you know, the amygdala is the center of really looking for the fear of what could be going on, and prefrontal cortex is looking really logically in the executive decision making, right? The communication between the two is done through micro RNA and this micro RNA are actually modulated and controlled by our microbiome.  And that was very fascinating is that when they took in the rats they removed the microbiome and this micro RNA just disappeared.  The micro RNA are only effective in communication when you actually have the good microbiome.

Ben:  So they immunize these rats with a specific vaccination that removed the bacteria responsible for producing anxiety and stress, and just think if you could do it to a soldier on the field of battle, right? You could actually give them a specific strain that would render them unsusceptible to stress or anxiety.

Naveen:  There are lot of things we’re going to learn and in fact it’s becoming very clear.

Ben:  Not that I endorse using soldiers as guinea pigs but I’m just throwing that out there.

Naveen:  What we are actually finding is that you’ll be able to genetically modify your microbiome and marginally almost every single disease.

Ben:  Wait, how could you genetically modify your microbiome?

Naveen:  So basically, the…

Ben:  ‘Cause that’s way different than just taking a specific probiotic strain.

Naveen:  So one of the things when I said genetically modify the microbiome I don’t mean the individual microbes.  What I mean is combining the right set of ecosystem that means increasing the volume and activities of some microbes and reducing the activities of other microbes.

Ben:  How do you do that?

Naveen:  So this is another thing that we are currently working on.  You know the [0:49:32.1] ______ technology came out of Los Alamos National Lab where they had designed it for the National Security.  The Los Alamos National Lab has been working on this technology for 10 years.  Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on understanding what is going on inside people.  Now you wonder, why would they be spending all this money to understand your gut? And you can imagine Los Alamos National Lab is famous for developing.

Ben:  Aliens.

Naveen:  Atomic bomb.

Ben:  Atomic bomb that’s right.  I was close.

Naveen:  Close enough, right? Atomic bomb is pretty alien.

Ben:  Yeah.

Naveen:  Now they were looking at the next set of security things in the bio weapons and they needed to know if a bad actor were to get hold of something how would they know what is going on.  And that’s why they double up this amazing technology so they can very quickly understand what is going on inside the human body.  And we at Viome got the exclusive worldwide license to bring that technology to the market directly to the consumers.

Ben:  Will you just like buy that from Los Alamos?  With all your big moon money?

Naveen:  We licensed the technology and we spend close to $21 million already.  So we raised $21 million from Viome.

Ben:  That’s why you guys are so far ahead of the curve is ‘cause you’ve been able to spend all this money on this technology.

Naveen:  And this technology is so far ahead of any…

Ben:  Plus you read Twitter a lot.

Naveen:  I mean seriously, this technology is so far ahead of anything in the market place.  We are at least five years ahead of anybody in understanding what is going on.  So to answer your question they also have another technology that allows you to come up with a cocktail of these microorganisms that feed on each other, and you can package them together because they go symbiotically together and they form a symbiotic relationship with everything else in the gut.  And they can be antagonistic to some things so you can reduce them and symbiotic to others so they can increase them.  And then using the right cycle of diet to essentially increase the prebiotic, to increase the activity of the ones that you already have.  So for example, this bacteria called acremencia.  Acremencia is an amazingly great thing.  It is essentially people who are thin and people who are well, not diabetic, have very high activity of acremencia.

Ben:  Okay.  Acremencia would be a good one?

Naveen:  Good one.  So I have acremencia but my activity of acremencia is only 0.11%.

Ben:  Slacker.

Naveen:  Slacker, right?  So now I change my diet and I’m going to be testing it next week again.

Ben:  So you change your diet based on, so when I log in to my Viome results on the app or on the website I can see the foods I’m supposed to eat and the foods I’m not supposed to eat based on microbiome.  You did the same thing in all you did was…

Naveen:  And except that for acremencia the specific thing like the wheat brown and you can buy the wheat brown at any of the, like Amazon I bought Bob’s unprocessed wheat brown.  And when you eat the wheat brown it feeds this acremencia and it makes them really active.  So when they researched that was on Twitter I saw about a month ago.  I said, “Ow, I got that acremencia.  I want to increase it.”  And I started eating.

Ben:  What about taking a probiotic strain that is specific to the bacteria that you’re deficient in because that’s something I saw, and again like if you guys go to bengreenfieltfitness.com/naveen n-a-v-e-e-n, you’ll see this video of my results and there’s like bacteria.  It’s kind of crazy, like you see one strain that I shouldn’t have inside me, right? Like this is a strain you only get in these crazy hot tropical climates.   You know, I raced for 10 years in triathlon all over the globe swimming in all these crazy fresh water…

Naveen:  That’s where you got them.

Ben:  And coming back with these strange parasites.  I had some kind of a bacteria in my stomach that you don’t see in Western people at all.  But then I had other things that were deficient and I actually brought my results to a person who’s working on me on my gut and they helped me choose specific probiotic strains to replace the strains that were deficient or that were missing in my diet.  So can you do that? Can you actually? I want to get your thoughts on that like could you just take your Viome results and select like a customized probiotic regimen for you?

Naveen:  First of all, today there are only 15 strains of bacteria that all probiotics have.  To a large extent there is not much of a diversity because everyone is selling the same sets of streams of bacteria.  I would say some probiotics are good but I would say majority of them are absolutely useless because by the time they get in your stomach, most bacteria opens up and they die in your stomach.  So by the time they get to the colon, the large intestine, they’re all dead.

Ben:  But some of them are heat stable or spore forming, right?

Naveen:  Well some of them are, that’s my point, some good probiotics may actually survive but the number that survives…

Ben:  Right, not the ones you get at Walmart.

Naveen:  And even the one survivor is substantially lower number than what you would normally.  So if you take billions of these strains, you’re not going to get billions of strains actually surviving, right? The thing that’s very interesting is I’m surprised that not many people are doing it.  Wrapping up these things in a fiber because fiber cannot be digested by the human stomach and the acid.  The fiber goes directly to the large intestine and the microbe seed is fiber.

Ben:  Wrapping up in a fiber.  How would you do that?

Naveen:  Yeah, essentially they’re taking this stuff and have the outside of the probiotic capsule be fiber.

Ben:  Okay, like a cellulose or inulin or something like that? Interesting.

Naveen:  Yes, and you keep them there and as soon as the microbes start to eat the fiber the pillow opens up and you’re right there.

Ben:  Oh, wow.

Naveen:  So it essentially becomes a delivery mechanism for delivering the…

Ben:  And those exists now?

Naveen:  I don’t know.  I haven’t seen them and honestly I’ve been thinking of filing the patent on it myself because I really think somebody should do it.

Ben:  I’m going to do it.  I’m going to beat you to do it.

Naveen:  Yeah, go do it.  You have to remember that my philosophy is I want the problem solved.  It doesn’t have to be me.  And we need every one of us too come together to make chronic illness an option.  So my request here is everyone who’s listening to it, you can naturally help yourself become healthy.  That artificial intelligence needs about a million people to be able to understand what causes the diabetes.  What causes the obesity? What causes the arthritis or anxiety or depression or eczema or Parkinson’s or Alzheimer? We need a million people and I can’t do it myself.  I need as many people to go out and really be an ambassador.  If you believe a cause of removing the chronic illness from the face of this earth is a worthwhile cause, I want everyone listening to it to talk to their neighbors. Post and share it.  Everyone to know.  It is possible if we all come together and get a million people to contribute the information to the AI.  We will find exactly what needs to be done so that humanity will one day will not have any chronic diseases.  Imagine what if anyone suffering from cancer or Parkinson’s or Alzheimer or obesity or diabetes.  That’s not something anyone wants.

Ben:  One way to do that is we got to take Monsanto out of business because of glyphosate.  I know you were in the GMO Revealed Documentary.  By the way, if you guys haven’t seen that, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/gmo.  It will blow your mind.  This glyphosate documentary and GMO documentary.  You were in that documentary, right?  I think the video…

Naveen:  Patrick Gentempo and Jeff Hays did an amazing job of bringing that into the…

Ben:  Yeah, Patrick Gentempo and Jeff Hays two buddies of mine.  They make these amazing documentaries.  And you were in video number nine?

Naveen:  No, I’m in video number three.

Ben:  Video number of three of GMO’s Revealed.  What did you talk about?

Naveen:  So I talked about actually is that how that glyphosate is killing the microbiome. So just like they kill the organism like he surround the [57:37] ______ he kills everything.  It’s killing the microbiome and when you kill the microbiome and change the diversity of your gut, it essentially changes the body.  So when you’re eating all of these junk, the GMO junk, it fundamentally changes the ecosystem of your body.  So just remember.  You are not alone.  You are more microbial with a little bit of human RNA mixed into it.  But from the nature’s perspective we all are a beautiful container for these microbes.

Ben:  So that’s one reason that I was telling you about last night at dinner my kids take this stuff called Restores like [0:58:16.2] ______ made by this super smart triple board certified physician Dr. Zach Bush who I had in the show.

Naveen:  But he is smart guy.  Really smart guy.

Ben:  I don’t tell my kids which supplements to take but I have a shelf in the refrigerator.  I tell them, “Hey, Vitamin D and Vitamin K make your bone and your teeth stronger and help you to grow and help you to maintain bone density as you age.”

Naveen:  You need them together.

Ben:  Yeah, you got to take Vitamin D and Vitamin K together and magnesium and Vitamin A all the same time.  And so I keep the little dropper bottle of the Thorne Vitamin D Vitamin K blend in the bottom of the refrigerator and they have the option to take that, and they do every day before they brush their teeth.  Same thing with this stuff that protects their stomachs against glyphosate.  We don’t eat a lot of GMO-based food but his glyphosate it’s…

Naveeen:  Everywhere. 

Ben:  As you see it’s in the documentary, it’s everywhere.  Even if you have an organic vegetable garden it’ll spread to that.

Naveen:  This weekend, it’s free to watch all nine episodes.  Free to watch this weekend.

Ben:  Yeah, if you’re watching the Facebook live right now, you can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/gmo and watch this whole thing.  I actually have, thanks to you Naveen, a treadmill back in my hotel room and I’m going to be watching it this afternoon while I’m working out.

Naveen:  Watch episode three after 141 and you’ll be watching me for 45 minutes.

Ben:  Yeah.  Okay.  Cool.  That was nuts, by the way.  You know I’m going to exercise because you booked me a hotel here and when I walked in there’s a treadmill and an exercise ball instead of dumbbells.  Just sitting there next to my bed.

Anyways though, so my kids take this shot like before every meal.  They take just one shot of this stuff to protect their stomachs against glyphosate because that’s something that you have to realize.  You could be doing the probiotic or even the probiotic with the fiber and the cellulose or you’re doing your yoga or your kimchi and your sauerkraut, a lot of that is for naught.

Naveen:  And don’t forget kombucha.

Ben:  Yeah, and your kombucha, of course.  Make sure you get the stuff chock full of sugar from Whole Foods.

Naveen:  (chuckles).  Make it at home.

Ben:  So yeah, derail us just slightly. 

Naveen:  Do you make it at home?

Ben:  Well, we make our own kombucha.  And that’s like one of the few cocktails that I have at home is I take kombucha and I put a little bit of ice, a little bit of vodka and a little bit of sea salt in there and have that as a cocktail.  But then I also from travelling I want like a cocktail in my hotel room or whatever, not to make myself sound like an alcoholic.  I mix sake and kombucha.  Half and half sake and kombucha and it’s amazing.

Naveen:  Sake’s not bad.  Sake is [1:00:28.1] ______ ferment.

Ben:  Yeah, too much alcohol can actually kill your gut bacteria but a little bit, yeah.  It’s got a nice little fermented effect.  So anyways though, the deal is if you’re eating all these fermented foods, if you’re getting glyphosate at the same time you’re going to negate a lot of the effects.  So it’s something important to realize.  So pay attention to that.  Listen to that podcast that I did with Zach Bush and also watch that GMO Revealed documentary.

Naveen, you’ve got your finger on the pulse of the next big thing in healthcare and the next big thing in technology.  So with all these different magazines you’re following on Twitter and all these books that you’re reading whether it’s the next step in the human gut and the microbiome or whether there’s something else.  What are the next things coming down the pipeline or the next thing coming down the pipeline?

Naveen:  So I will tell you, I mean obviously the two things that I believe are going to be the next two biggest thing in terms of technology.  One is going to be crisper.  The genetic editing in vivo that means you’ll be able to modify your own genes right up in vivo.

Ben:  Yeah, they’re doing that in China.  Speaking of alcohol, they’re actually you know, ‘cause Asians can make alcohol dehydrogenize very well.  So they’re using crisper technology.  Some of these parents to allow, the way that this article I read last week quoted it said, “to allow their sons to be able to drink more alcohol.  Using crisper technology on embryos to basically alter that gene in the oven to produce alcohol dehydrogenize.”

Naveen:  Well, you know of all the things I could do that’s probably won’t be one of them.  It’s not a great application.

Ben:  It’s the one that was sexy for the news headlines though.

Naveen:  But my point is that is going to be one of the most disruptive technology of our time.  The second biggest thing is going to be really the humanity becoming the multi planetary society.  That means in our lifetime you will find that people will be living on the moon, Mars and [1:02:18.6] ______ and beyond.  And that will fundamentally change the humanity as we know it because for the first time, you will find that not all of us are in fact confined to a single spacecraft called planet earth and if something were to happen that we all will die, right?  We’ll all become dinosaurs and if you can really listen to the dinosaurs ruling in their graves, they’re all probably thinking if they had one good entrepreneur dinosaur they’ll still be roaming in the Mars and the moon and beyond, right?  So fact is we have a chance to protect this humanity from getting destroyed either by large asteroid, like what happened to dinosaurs or we humans are partly capable of destroying it ourselves.  So let’s at least find that humans could live on other places so we don’t as a humanity, as a species completely die down.

Ben:  That’s crazy.  You think we’ll do that before we do things like live under water in the ocean ‘cause a lot of people say why the hell are going to the moon and to the Mars when we have all this undiscovered territory right here on the planet earth.

Naveen:  And here’s why.  If something were to happen to the space craft.  It doesn’t matter where you are in this space craft.  This space craft is gone, right?  So you want to be getting off this space craft and be on multiple space crafts, right? That’s one and second thing is, this abundance of land.  This abundance of water.  This abundance of energy.  In space you look up, you see nothing but abundance.  We are a tiny pale blue dot just in our own galaxy.  There are billions of galaxies in our universe and there are billions of universes in this multi worlds.  So where is the scarcity of land? And we fight to our land.  We fight to our water.  We fight to our energy.  Imagine by becoming a multi planetary society we could bring world peace.

Ben:  It’s amazing.  Amazing.  Alright.

Naveen:  And then I would say the education would be next by using the artificial intelligence and by using the personal [1:04:12.4] ______, same thing what we’re doing with healthcare.  One day we will be able to in fact, not only augment the human brain.  We actually will be connected.  Our brains would be connected to the cloud and people say, “I will never allow that.”  But it’s happening so slowly already.

Ben:  It is.  Man, that book I was telling you about at dinner last night, “Beyond Human” by Eve Herold?  She talks of that in the book brain transplantations, brain pacemakers and uploading your brain to the cloud.

Naveen:  But it’s already happening right now.  So people talk about uploading brain to the cloud.  And said that, “We will never do that.”  But guess what you’re already doing it, Ben.  I used to remember the phone numbers.  You know where my phone numbers are?  On the cloud.  And we use the iPhone to get to them.  Information.  I don’t remember when Abraham Lincoln was born.  I don’t have to.  Every fact.  Every information.  You know where it resides? On the cloud and I access it through the iPhone.  Guess what happened?  That was the first part was a memory augmentation.  Now imagine what we’re doing.  We’re starting to give up our pre frontal cortex with the decision making and the executive decision making is all gone.  Have you ever used a Google maps?        

Ben:  Oh, yeah.

Naveen:  Guess what happens when it tells you turn left in the next and even though you know where you should be going, you say, “Goggle tells me I’m going to go left based on traffic I’m going left.”

Ben:  That’s why the New York cab drivers have enlarged [1:05:32.4] ______ in areas of their brain responsible for direction finding.

Naveen:  But guess what’s happening? Now we’ve given up the decision making.  We simply trust the AI.

Ben:  But that does free us up to enlarge our brains and to learn on other areas.

Naveen:  But that’s my point is that now we are already augmenting our decision making.  And soon we’ll be augmenting our new cortex and saying, you know.  So think about what happened to me as a homo sapiens.  We’d level up the tiny but more new cortex.  A prefrontal cortex.  As in chimps that’s really the biggest difference why we got this additional prefrontal and new cortex.  That gave us the tremendous advantage to become on the top of the food chain.  Imagine, if we can extend our neo cortex substantially more by using the cloud and the people who are the first few ones to be able to have that new cortex, how would we treat other humans? Would that be seen as how we treat other animals?

Ben:  It’s crazy.  It’s crazy, dude. Uploading your brains to the cloud.  You’re not really played to you out that way but it’s so true.

Naveen:  It is going to happen.  I mean it is, so you were asking me where things are going to be headed.  People able to in using instead of using the language to communicate.  What if our brains could communicate? What if that we could be teleported? And that’s already happening the teleportation to some extent.  Today you’re able to sequence a virus or a bacteria in one end, send it over the email and you can do a DNA synthesis on the other end.  And you can now have a life that was exactly on this side being produced on the other side.

Ben:  By simply sending the sequence for the RNA and DNA electronically you can reproduce that DNA.  You can even like print it out or like a 3D printers of [1:07:18.1] ______.  Nuts.

Naveen:  I’m not kidding you.  And by the way, other things that I’m really absolutely sure will happen in the next 10-15 years, us able to print our own organs using our own stem cells.  Whether coming from our skin, so you can turn over the skin cell into the IPS cells and IPS cells can be converted into any organs.  So we’ll be…

Ben:  That’s already happening to some extent.  They’re printing kidneys, printing ears.

Naveen:  But not quite yet but they’re going to be doing the heart.  So imagine your heart.  You have nano buds in your body that are supplying oxygen and they’re constantly monitoring every part of your body and repairing you.  So you basically see constant maintenance that’s happening in your body.  It finds your heart suddenly stops working.

Ben:  Dude, you’ve got to read the book Silo by Hugh Howey ‘cause the whole world gets wiped out by nano buds.

Naveen:  No, so you call your doc or it calls a doc and say, “Hey Doc, Ben’s heart has stopped working, he’s taking a shower right now.  Can you start printing his heart? He’ll be there in a couple of hours.”  Right? And you go there, you get a new heart and you’re good to go.  Or in fact the nano buds itself may be starting to collect the stem cells and start printing the heart inside (chuckles) and repairing the heart.

Ben:  This is going to freak out a lot of people.  But I think it’s pretty cool stuff.  You could start.  So what we’re you going to say?

Naveen:  What I was going to say was that if you are interested I wrote an ebook called “Moon Shots” and if you could just Goggle Naveen Jain Moon Shots it’s on…

Ben:  I’ll link to it.  I’ll pull it up here and I’ll put in the show notes.

Naveen:  And it talks about what the life is going to be in 2050 and it talks about disrupting your own mind set.  How are you going to create a mind set of abundance? How do you as a non-expert start to disrupt everything.  And it’s a free ebook and I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Ben:  Where do get it?

Naveen:  It’s a Teknica.

Ben:  Okay, we got Moon Shots: The Next Gen, what is this, The Next Gen of Life?

Naveen:  Click on this.

Ben:  Oh that one.  Okay, cool.  Alright.  I see it.  I see it.  Published [1:09:14.9] ______.  Okay cool.  I’ll find it and I’ll link to it on the show notes.

Naveen:  No, not this one.  That’s wrong.

Ben:  He’s going to pull it up here real quick.  For those of you listening in, we’re doing a little bit of a search here for you.  Okay, Moon Shots with Naveen Jain.

Naveen:  Teknica Curiosa.

Ben:  Teknica Curiosa is the website.  Okay.

Naveen:  And if you scroll down this article.  This.

Ben:  Oh, perfect.  There it is.  Okay.  Sweet.

Naveen:  Download.

Ben:  You can download.  Oh totally free.  Awesome.

Naveen:  So download and put it in your website.

Ben:  Amazing.

Naveen:  So you can download that thing and put it on your website for people to see it.

Ben:  Okay cool.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/naveen and I’ll download this.  Now I know a lot of you guys want to get tested.  You guys have a big waitlist for Viome right now, I know ‘cause you’ve been all over the freaking place.  You’ve been on like every podcast, well not on every podcast.  I’m going to help you get on to some more podcast. This is an important stuff.  But the deal is, here’s the value for you guys by listening to this podcast what do you get? So there’s a big waitlist actually to get tested because there’s a certain amount of scalability to this actual testing that you guys were able to do.  So we’ve got a code that you can use.  You just enter this in.  It’s in the code section when you go to the…

Naveen:  Priority.  It’s called priority code.

Ben:  Okay priority codes.  You go to viome.com just like it sounds v-i-o-m dot com.

Naveen:  V-i-o-m-e

Ben:  Sorry, I’m still waking up, I guess. V-i-o-m-e dot com and you use the code.  Here’s the code: fitness.  So use the code: fitness, that will get you moved to the front of the wait list so that Naveen can look at your poop sooner rather than later.

Naveen:  And by the way, you can do viome.com/fitness also.

Ben:  Okay or just go to viome.com/fitness.  Either one works.  It’ll tell you what food you’re supposed to eat.  It’ll tell you what bacteria you have.  What bacteria you don’t have.  How much you work out.  Pretty much everything you’d ever want to know.  And the cool thing is A) you can have your repeat testing or just one time testing.  B) Everything you guys build out in the future from customized probiotic supplements to anything else, you guys get access to in that app.  So it’s constantly updating.  I keep logging in the app and there’s new stuff in there every time I log in.

Naveen:  Every time, yeah.

Ben:  So it’s super cool viome.com/fitness.  Just go to viome.com and use the code: fitness when you get in.  How much does it cost to get your entire microbiome sequence?

Naveen:  So not only just the complete metatransciptome, complete metabolic flexibilities.  So we have a gut intelligence test and we have a metabolic intelligence test.  Any AI driven coach as in A app.  So you have iPhone or Android you get the app that’s constantly working with you every time.  We charge $595 for two tests.  So think about it.  Under $300 per test.  And we test you every six months.  $595 per year and you get tested two times per year.  So $300 per test.

Ben:  Perfect.  Cool.  So I want to check the Facebook page here to make sure we don’t have any other little questions.  Look like we got the most of them.  Sweet.  Good job.

Naveen:  Thanks, Ben.

Ben:  Awesome.  Naveen, dude you’re brilliant, you’re interesting, you’re fascinating.  Thanks for coming on the show, man.

Naveen:  Thanks a lot, Ben.  I really appreciate it.

Ben:  Alright, folks.  I’m Ben Greenfield along with Naveen Jain.

Naveen:  I’m Naveen Jain (chuckles).

Ben:  Naveen Jain bengreenfieldfitness.com/naveen n-a-v-e-e-n is where the show notes reside.  Go grab them.  Go get your microbiome sequenced.  It’s going to be one of the most fascinating test you’ve ever done.  Thanks for listening.

 

 

Naveen K. Jain is one of the most interesting guys I have ever met.

Naveen Jain is an entrepreneur and philanthropist driven to solve the world’s biggest challenges through innovation. He is the founder of several successful companies including Moon Express, Viome (you can click here to get moved to the front of the waitlist right away with code “FITNESS”.), Bluedot, TalentWise, Intelius and InfoSpace.

Moon Express is the only company to have permission from the US government to leave earth's orbit and land on the moon. They are developing technologies to harvest planetary resources on the moon and developing infrastructure to make humanity a multi-planetary society.

Naveen Jain is a trustee of the board at the X PRIZE Foundation where he is focused on finding entrepreneurial solutions to address the global challenges in health, education, women empowerment, agriculture, and energy. He recently launched a million-dollar Women Safety XPRIZE to empower the women around the world.

Naveen Jain is on the board of Singularity University, an interdisciplinary university with the mission to educate and inspire leaders to address humanity’s grand challenges through innovative technologies.

Naveen Jain has been awarded many honors for his entrepreneurial successes and leadership skills including “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year”, “Albert Einstein Technology Medal ”for pioneers in technology, “Humanitarian Innovation Award” at the United Nations, “ Distinguished Global Thinker Award” by IILM, “Most inspiring Entrepreneur” by Andaaz TV, “Most admired Serial Entrepreneur” by Silicon India, “Top 20 Entrepreneurs” and “Lifetime Achievement Award” for the leadership in the technology industry and support of other entrepreneurs by Red Herring.

Naveen's latest project is called “Viome”, a cutting-edge gut and microbiome analysis company I first revealed in the must-see video “What Is Viome? How Gut Metatranscriptome & Microbiome Analysis Can Change Your Health.“. Viome is focused on disrupting healthcare with the goal of “making illness elective”. They have developed technologies to analyze the biochemistry and ecosystem of our body that consists of millions of metabolites and trillions of micro-organisms. Their plan is to identify biomarkers that are predictive of chronic diseases and prevent them through personalized diet & nutrition.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-How Naveen got permission to land on the moon and built the largest moon rock collection…[10:15]

-Naveen's unique system for learning new things…[12:20]

-Why Naveen became so interested in the microbiome…[22:35]

-How the “poop” from young creatures can make older creatures more sprightly and young…[31:50]

-Why Naveen thinks most microbiome evaluations are complete snake oil…[39:40]

-The reason you must test your gut fungus in addition to your gut bacteria…[44:20]

-The fascinating way that a gut test can tell you how much you are actually working out…[45:55]

-How Naveen licensed $21 million gut sequencing technology from Los Alamos laboratory…[49:20]

-Whether you can create a customized probiotic strain specific to you…[52:50]

-How glyphosate is killing your microbiome…[56:55]

-Naveen's shocking prediction about the next big thing in health care…[61:15]

-And much more…

Resources from this episode:

–The Facebook Live version of this podcast

-Get moved to the front of the list if you use code “fitness” at Viome.com.

Take the hassle out of health with my complete nutrition guide, exact daily routines, and 12-week detox program. Sign up now for instant access!

Email*

I'm interested in…*

-What Is Viome? How Gut Metatranscriptome & Microbiome Analysis Can Change Your Health.

–Naveen's “Moonshots” book

-The GMO Revealed Documentary

–Ben's podcast about glyphosate and the Restore supplement his kids take every day

–The book “Beyond Human” by Eve Herold

-Eran Segal's Wiezmann institute lab in Israel

-Modifying the Gut Microbiome Could Lead to Treatments of Chronic, Anxiety, and Stress-Related Disorders

-Young guts make elderly fish sprightly

-Obesity, metabolic syndrome and gastrointestinal disease are all influenced by our gut microbiome.

-Our microbiome controls our immune system more than we realize.

-What we eat alters our microbiome faster than expected.

-Our microbiome is associated with both type II diabetes and the complications that come with it.

-Our gut microbiome has been shown to influence depression, cognition, behavior, and neural development.

-Gut microbiota have been linked to Parkinson’s disease and its motor symptoms.

-Certain bacteria have been linked to atherosclerosis, an all-too-common heart condition.

-Microbes are involved in the development of Alzheimer’s pathology.

-Shifts in the makeup of our gut microbiome are associated with colorectal cancer.

Show Sponsors:

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-Thorne – Go to GreenfieldFitnessSystems.com/Thorne to check out pure, high quality supplements.

-Human Charger – Go to HumanCharger.com/Ben and use the code BFITNESS for 20% off.

-Bark Box – For a FREE EXTRA MONTH of BarkBox, visit BarkBox.com/ben when you subscribe to 6 or 12 month plan!

Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Naveen or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply! As an update, Viome used to have $595 for two tests per year but based on customer feedback, they now have now gone to $399 per year for one test and any additional tests during the year are $199. So two tests per year are still less than $599 and you can do 4 tests per year for under $999. You can click here to get moved to the front of the waitlist right away.