[Transcript] - Dirty Secrets Of The Supplement Industry, Lucid Dreaming, Smart Drugs, Hurricane Training & More: The Ryan Munsey Podcast. - Ben Greenfield Life

August 13, 2016

Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2016/08/the-ryan-munsey-podcast/

[0:04] Kimera Koffee

[1:19] Fitlife Organifi Green Juice

[2:34] Introduction

[4:07] About Ryan Munsey

[6:10] Why most people shouldn’t eat breakfast

[15:56] What would Ryan have for breakfast?

[20:50] Kellogg’s Cornflakes – What we didn’t know about it

[22:14] How to hack yourself into a state of lucid dreaming

[31:02] Resistance Bands to get strength breakthrough

[39:24] Hurricane training for a huge boost in cardiovascular fitness

[45:47] How Ryan stays lean when he can’t workout

[53:00] Ryan’ personal smart drug stack

[54:08] CILTEP works on different pathway than other nootropics would

[1:01:47] Why we need to be careful when we see the word “proprietary” on a supplement label

[1:11:25] End of Podcast

Ben: Hey, Ben Greenfield here. Quick fun quiz for you nerds out there. Do you know what Alpha GPC is? Alpha GPC. So pass this around at your next cocktail party. It’s alpha glycerophosphocholine and it’s what’s called a cholinergic compound, I mean it can be used for cognitive promoting properties. Cognitive promoting properties. Is that ironic that I can’t say that word? And it also has been shown in a ton of different research studies to enhance power output and to also support the function of cellular membranes and for those of you who are concerned about getting stupid to prevent cognitive decline. Now why am I telling you all these, because our first sponsor for today’s episode figured out how to put this stuff into coffee. And they’re named Kimera Koffee. K-i-m-e-r-a K-o-f-f-e-e. They stuff not just alpha GPC but a host of other safe, proven, natural nootropics, you like that word, into their coffee and then they just ship it to you, ground, ready to rumble. So it’s like coffee on steroids, but steroids in a good way. So you get 10% off at kimerakoffee.com it’s all with a K. You use code Ben. You use code Ben at kimerakoffee.com.

This podcast is also brought to you by green juice that has not had the crap kicked out of it. That’s right. This green juice has been gently dried, gently dried that means it didn’t like heat oxidize it, or spray a bunch of chemicals on it, or do what most of the green juice powder manufacturers do. Now instead it’s all organic, it’s organic wheat grass, spirulina, chlorella, matcha green tea, horseradish tree, you’d think that’d make it taste like complete crap but it doesn’t. Organic coconut water powder, ashwagandha extract, red beet and turmeric. So you’ve got what your Indian food, your Asian food and your Hawaiian food with the coconut all thrown in to one green powder. You’d think again that it’d taste bad but it doesn’t. It’s really good. I put a scoop into my morning smoothie every day. It’s called Organifi green juice and you get not 10, not 15 but 20% off of this stuff if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi. That’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi.

And now, on to today’s show with natural stacks guru, performance expert, ex-model, Ryan Munsey.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness show:

“Mark Sisson said it best, you know, you’re not going to lose your fitness in three days, if you have to travel, if you have to miss a few workouts, you’re just not gonna lose your fitness. So I use the same kind of philosophy with nutrition and with fitness. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to not suck. Anytime insulin is present whether we’re talking about the morning fasted state, or post workout or dinner, anytime we have insulin present we cannot oxidize stored value fat for fuel.”

He’s an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America’s top personal trainer and one of the globe’s most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. “Power, speed, mobility, balance – whatever it is for you that’s the natural movement, get out there! When you look at all the studies done… studies that have shown the greatest efficacy…” All the information you need in one place, right here, right now, on the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Ben: Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield and when it comes to a wide variety of topics including smart drugs, lucid dreaming, unconventional strength training or cardiovascular training techniques, and even dirty secrets in the supplements industry, my guest today is the guy who’s got the inside scoop on all these and a lot more.

His name is Ryan Munsey, and Ryan and I have had the chance to hang out at a few different health and fitness events. He is a former fitness model, which means that he’s way more good looking than I am and can probably build muscle a lot faster. He’s also a gym owner turned author, speaker and a self-professed bio-hacker, like most of us are these days, I think. And he has a degree. He has a degree on Food, Science and Human Nutrition from Clemson University. He’s a mental and physical performance coach and he’s also the chief optimizer, whatever that means, at a company called the Natural Stacks. I’ve actually been on their podcast before, and in the show notes to this episode I‘ll put a link to that podcast if you wanna go listen to it. Ryan has his own podcast through Natural Stacks it’s called the Optimal Performance Podcast. So you can check all that out and everything else that Ryan and I are going to wax about today if you got to bengreenfield fitness.com/ryan, and that’s spelled the way that normal people spell ryan, r-y-a-n. bengreenfieldfitness.com/ryan. So Ryan, welcome to the show, man.

Ryan: Ben, thanks for having me. Can’t wait to dig in and, like you said, wax about all these cool topics.

Ben: That’s right and we might as well start with the most important thing of the entire day and that would be breakfast. I guess, that’d be a great way for people to get to know you. I have heard rumor on the street that you think breakfast is the most important meal of the day to skip. Not the most important meal of the day as most people would say and as most nutritionists would say. So let’s start here Ryan, why the heck don’t you eat breakfast, dude?

Ryan: You know, I think it’s interesting the way you kind á intro that, I would say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day because you have the opportunity to capitalize or completely screw up what you’re trying to accomplish. So, I think one of the things that I wanna make sure people understand about my stance on anything is that I think you always have to ask yourself, why are you doing this? What are you trying to accomplish? What is your goal? So if I’m a sixteen year old high school athlete, I’m probably not going to be skipping breakfast because body composition is most likely not my number one priority.

Ben: Assuming you’re not a gymnast or a cross-country runner.

Ryan: Right. Right. So for most of the rest of us, I mean let’s face it, we’ve lived in America where 60-70% of the population is overweight or borderline obese depending on which study you look at. So, obviously we’re doing something that doesn’t fit with our biology. And if body composition is your main priority, meaning fat loss, if you are trying to optimize brain function whether that’s for entrepreneurship or you just wanna feel good at work. There are things that we can do in the morning that allow us to burn more body fat for fuel and keep our minds clear, sharp and focused for a hugely productive day.

A lot of this stems from a hormonal environment that we wake up to. If our hormones are functioning properly, cortisol peaks when we wake up, and this cortisol peak that actually helps us wake up and get out of bed. You may have discussed this on previous episodes of your show where you talked about hormones and the importance of cortisol and how it impacts sleep, because I know you’re big on sleep, I’ve seen your Snapchat where you talk to people about how to hack the hotel room and everything. So I’m sure that that’s something that you’ve covered. If it’s not then we could go in to that.

Ben: Oh no, no. I’m flattered that you actually stalk me on Snapchat. And yeah, we definitely are obsessed with sleep on this show. So yeah, I have mentioned before that cortisol peaks in the morning when you awake as you’re alluding to, but what does this have to do with breakfast?

Ryan: So one of the worst things that you can do when cortisol is at its peak is introduce insulin at the same time. Cortisol is a stress hormone and we’ve just kind of set the stage that peaks in the morning and it helps you up regulate blood pressure so that you don’t pass out when you stand up, and it kinda gives you that energy to get going and start your day and get out of bed which is why, side note, if a person have issues falling asleep or have issues waking up, that’s a clear sign that there’s a disruption in your cortisol rhythms.

So when you wake up, cortisol peaks the hormonal cascade that follows is one that as cortisol peaks then we have these other hormones that enable us to burn body fat for fuel. So I like to kinda consider this the perfect storm, very much like the movie, The Perfect Storm. So you have these hormones that absolutely set the stage to burn body fat for fuel. So cortisol peaks and then as it does, glucagon is released and it stimulates the release of glycogen from, if you have glycogen stored in your muscles, then you could burn stored glycogen or if you don’t, then your body would be burning body fat for fuel especially if you’re fat adapted person like a Mark Sisson or Ben Greenfield. A lot of the things that we talk about. You and I have very similar ways that we talk about, living very similar protocols and stuff.

So if you think about the average breakfast whether it’s oatmeal or even the (curse word) like cornflakes and orange juice and things like that, no matter how good the carbohydrate, it is always broken down into glucose that is the usable energy substrate, that’s the usable form, so whether you eat oatmeal or cornflakes, if you eat a carbohydrate in the morning it is broken down into glucose, when glucose hits your bloodstream, insulin will be released. When insulin and cortisol are both present, you are never going to burn fat for fuel. That’s the best case scenario. Worst case scenario, you are actually triggering your body to store body fat. So anytime insulin is present, fat oxidation does not occur.

Ben: And just to jump in here, you mentioned cornflakes, and the other obviously carbohydrate containing foods, but protein is insulinogenic too, is it not?

Ryan: It is. It is absolutely, which is why, and we can get into this you know, there are different variations of bulletproof coffee, some people put collagen or other types of protein in their coffee in the morning. I don’t do that. I actually do not have any protein until later in the day. So you’re absolutely right, protein can be insulinogenic. You want to introduce nothing into your system that will produce that insulin spike, so that is a very good point, if this is what you’re trying to follow, you know again its co-dependent. This may not be for everybody but I think it is something that works for most people.

Ben: Okay. So basically, where we at right now, just kinda catch the listeners up in case everyone’s head is spinning with the biochemistry, what you’re saying Ryan is that when you wake up you have a natural spike in cortisol, and if you pair that natural spike in cortisol with an increase in your insulin levels from say eating lots of glucose or carbohydrates or protein for that matter, that you would potentially shut down your body’s natural ability to burn fat in the morning by instead pairing the increase in insulin with the increase in blood glucose that cortisol is already gonna cause based off the fact that cortisol kinda mobilizes the storage glycogen into the blood stream?

Ryan: Yes. So I mean because cortisol is a catabolic hormone that means that it’s used to break things down, bigger things into smaller things for usable forms of energy that could either be glycogen into glucose which is a process called gluconeogenesis or if your fat adapted then it’s going to oxidize stored adipose tissue or fat that’s in your body that it could use to.

Ben: Okay. So I get it, what you’re saying is if we introduce some kind of like exogenous source of glucose for example, into the body that the free fatty acids that get released by cortisol wouldn’t necessarily get burnt and that the sugar would get burnt instead?

Ryan: Well, yeah. So anytime insulin’s present whether we’re talking about the morning fasted state or post workout or dinner, anytime we have insulin present we cannot oxidize stored body fat for fuel and this is on a bigger picture. What we wanna look at with like let’s say you followed, so I know one of the things that we’ve talked about before was kind of my overall view on how to eat and I guess maybe it’ll help now to kind of zoom out. I always like to tell people if the bulletproof diet and carb backloading had a child it would be the Munsey method and that’s how I eat.

So a lot of the science that we’re going over and we’re talking about right now is science that helped form the template that is the bulletproof diet and the template that is carb-backloading. Both of those diets are built on the premise that we are managing and manipulating insulin and other hormones to illicit the response that we want. And that’s really all, I mean that is the premise of biohacking right, its taking control of your body and doing things in a certain way to get the adaptation or the response that we want so that we perform, feel, look however we want.

Ben: Okay got it. So basically you were saying is if we look at something like the bulletproof diet which is encouraging you to be in a state of ketosis and to primarily consume for the most part like fats and caffeine when you wake up with this concept of carb backloading which would mean you save all your carbohydrates ‘till the end of the day when in a post workout state, your insulin sensitivity is gonna be high and you’re gonna shove carbohydrates in the muscle tissue or the liver tissue, that you’re approach to breakfast is kind of based around that. That you don’t want to get insulogenic in the morning, you don’t want to introduce a lot of carbohydrates in the morning, you don’t even want to introduce a lot of protein in the morning, so at the risk of destroying everybody’s infatuation with bacon and eggs or big green smoothies upon waking, what would you have for breakfast, would you just not have anything at all and just completely fast until lunch?

Ryan: So I practice a form of intermittent fasting. What works best for me is bulletproof coffee in the morning and then I have usually one large meal a day somewhere between twelve and 4pm. It just depends on the day. I don’t get caught up in exactly what time I had that meal. Lately, I have been experimenting with ketosis, so I’m not having any carbs, I’m playing with a few different exogenous ketones. You’ve just had a huge ketone ketosis podcast, we’re gonna do something similar on our show but before we recorded it I wanted to play with a few different types.

So I only mentioned that because last few months I had been taking in exogenous ketones first thing in the morning to see you what effect that has but I don’t eat breakfast, so I wake up, I do bulletproof coffee or the ketones and then later in the day I have one large meal.

Ben: Okay.

Ryan: If I were to eat breakfast it would be a low carb breakfast.

Ben: Low carb and low protein? Based off what you just described?

Ryan: I would say low to moderate protein. So like my favorite breakfast and for a lot of people that I work with, the best breakfast that I’ve seen is something like 3 to 5 whole eggs depending on the person because you get from 20 to 30 grams of protein and a decent amount of fat, add to that either you could do a greens shake or some type of greens. I’m a big fan of doing sauerkraut at that meal because it helps with digestion and that meal tends to actually be pretty light in my stomach and for a lot of other people, I know that kinda sounds counter intuitive of what you think about eggs and sauerkraut as being a light meal, but it is and it gives you enough fuel to kinda get going and it’s not incredibly insulinogenic.

Ben: Got it. Ok cool. So you know, a big part of this I guess comes down to waking up and being in that state where you’re not necessarily starved, you’re not doing a huge hard workout and you’re just basically having fats like a fatty cup of coffee for breakfast. That’s your strategy?

Ryan: That’s my strategy, right and whether people do a meal or intermittent fasting or bulletproof fasting or whatever it is. I think the take away here is don’t eat carbohydrates early in the day. You save them, if you’re ketogenic obviously you’re not eating carbohydrates at all. If you are eating carbohydrates again, like look at either the bulletproof diet or carb backloading. They’re putting the carbs later in the day because we know that our body actually responds to them better later in the day as opposed to early in the morning which is kind of what that grow science has always been or for the last 10 years it was like hey, wake up in your boat-load meal which we know from looking at the hormonal profile in our body that that’s not optimal.

Ben: Yeah, and I don’t necessarily personally follow any hard and fast rule, what I mean by that is most days and I’ve talked about this before in the podcast. I really don’t eat for 2 -3 hours when I get up. I’ve a cup of coffee and that’s it. I don’t even put anything in the coffee aside from occasionally like turmeric or vanilla, or something like that. I don’t put calories at all in my coffee and then like 10am or so, in the mid-morning, I put a bunch of vegetables in a blender with some coconut milk and some nut butter and I have a green smoothie with a bunch of fat. But there are some days where let’s say, I am travelling and I’m going to a conference and I know that I might be go, go, go and not have a chance to eat for a long time. Sometimes I will add something substantial for breakfast or sometimes I’ll be in a social situation where there’s a nice brunch at the hotel and I’m with my family, and we wanna go out for brunch at the hotel, and we’ll just go punish everything at brunch from that Japanese miso soup in one corner of the brunch to the (chuckles) bacon and eggs and another, so I think it kinda depends.

We don’t necessarily and I don’t wanna bore you, the listener thinking that we’re a couple of orthorexic guys who never get laid and who just sit here fretting over what we’re gonna have for breakfast or not have for breakfast each morning. But it’s interesting to get that perspective because I know you’ve written an article about this Ryan, and I will link to that article ‘coz you delve into like growth hormone release that occurs when you don’t eat breakfast and some other kind of fascinating things. So for those of you who want more of Ryan’s thoughts on breakfast and dieting, I will link to that article. But before we move into what I wanted to ask you about, Ryan, sounds like you we’re gonna throw something in.

Ryan: I do because you mentioned, we talked about cornflakes and one of the reasons that I always use that as the example, and it’s funny that you mentioned that we’re not dorks who don’t get laid. Cornflakes were manufactured by Kellogg and this is an interesting thing that you can link to in the show notes if you want and maybe your listeners may find this really fascinating.

Ben: I think I know what you’re gonna talk about (chuckles).

Ryan: So the original Kellogg’s place was a sanitarium and the brother of the guy who started the cereal company ran the sanitarium, but the cereal Kellogg’s cornflakes were actually invented as a way to reduce testosterone so that it would prevent masturbation.

Ben: Really? With the idea being that the carbohydrates from the cornflakes would reduce testosterone and thus lower your sex drive?

Ryan: Yes, that is the origin of cornflakes and if you today, if you go to the Kellogg office, they still have in their lobby like a shrine to the original sanitarium.

Ben: Good old Mr. Kellogg. Alright there you have it. If you yourself wanna go on your own anti-masturbation crusade, as you’re having cereal for breakfast. But Ryan, and hopefully this is not considered a segue for masturbation, but I also wanna talk about lucid dreaming ‘coz I know you’re into lucid dreaming, you’ve got an interesting article on lucid dreaming. Tell me about why you’re into lucid dreaming and what you personally do to hack yourself into having lucid dreams at night?

Ryan: So I think this is another area where you and I we’re kind of kindred spirits. We find these topics that we find interesting and it’s not enough to just read about or learn about it, we wanna experience it. And I actually had a guy named Bryan Hurd on our podcast and he is a sleep expert and he talked a lot about lucid dreaming, and when he started to talk about it and I started to research it before that podcast, and one of my questions to him was you know, this sounds like a lot like the movie Inception and you know, is this what it is? And he said, yeah as a matter of fact whoever directed or wrote that movie was a spot on, they were fascinated by it and that’s a really accurate depiction of what lucid dreaming is.

Ben: And what is Inception, coming from a guy who doesn’t really watch movies.

Ryan: So it was a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and basically they were trying to plant these seeds of an idea in someone’s head and they had to go into his dream and do it that way. So, maybe you can’t control other people’s dreams with lucid dreaming but the idea of lucid dreaming is that you can control your own dreams. I just thought that was cool. I’ve never thought about trying to control my own dreams and see what happens and where they go. So I was trying to press Ryan when he was in our show to give me some and our listeners some ideas on how we can do this and ,obviously there’s a couple of supplements that you can take that help but the number one thing that he suggested was to simply put a notebook next to your bed, pen and paper, don’t use your cellphone and the note because that’s too much blue light in the middle of the night, but if you do find yourself dreaming to just start to be aware of it. And that’s the first step to be aware that you are dreaming.

Ben: Yeah, but you’re asleep.

Ryan: Right. Right. It’s a very weird thing to start to work on, and that’s why the first step has to be to become aware of it. And once you can do that then you start journaling. You start writing down your dreams. So if you wake up, or in the morning if you don’t wake up at night then when you do wake up to write down what you do remember. It’s a process. Nobody is an expert at it that first time that you do it. So you kinda have to expect and anticipate that you’re gonna struggle with this, and that you have to work at it. But you can really start to have very vivid dreams, you can start to remember them and then the next phase of that is to actually start to be able to kind of control them. I have not gotten to that point yet, so I’m far from a lucid dreaming expert. I just know that that is something that you can do. I’ve actually stopped.

Ben: So you’re just keeping a notepad beside the bed and you are trying to remember to wake up out of your dream and write on that notepad what it is that you’re dreaming?

Ryan: Not necessarily trying to wake up but if you do, and when you do wake up to try to recall and write it down before you forget. So that’s kinda like for some people that might take a week, for other people that might take six weeks to master and whenever you master that then you move on to the next phase which would be when you are dreaming to be aware of it and then to start trying to manipulate your dream.

Ben: What about things that you can consume prior to bed, like I’ve heard people talk for example about the use of this resistant starch that some people use this like a diet prebiotics like green banana starch to help feed the probiotics in your gut. From what I heard consumption of those type of things prior to bed can also cause lucid dreaming. Is that true or are there other things that you found that you could eat or consume before bed to induce lucid dreaming?

Ryan: Yeah, so we actually at Natural Stacks one of our products is prebiotic and it’s a resistant starch complex. It really, really has a profound positive impact on sleep quality. So it’s definitely one of those things where some people have reported much more vivid dreams, other people just say, hey I slept like a rock.

Ben: Could you just eat a green banana like an unripe banana?

Ryan: You would not get all of the resistant starch that you want. Nah.

Ben: Okay. What about pills like are there specific, I’ve heard people talk about for example, alpha brain from Onnit being able to cause lucid dreaming. Or are there specific components in that or things like it that are actually causing lucid dreaming or increasing the chances that you’re going to lucid dream?

Ryan: You know, its interesting choline is a big part of alpha brain, alpha GPC is what’s in there. So choline can because it increases mental processing speed. It can provide a little bit more of a vivid dream. There’s probably you know, that’s a complex so there’s probably some other things in there that impact your dream state. The big supplement for lucid dreaming is actually galantamine or galantamin, and that’s one that I think if somebody wanted to really experiment with lucid dreaming, that’s the one that I would suggest looking into.

Ben: Galantamine is, sorry to interrupt, but that’s an interesting one because I know that it’s used as a prescription for dementia like you can also just buy that on Amazon for example. Correct?

Ryan: Yeah, and it’s actually called the lucid dreaming pill.

Ben: Really? Galantamine, do you know anything about dosage or anything along those lines?

Ryan: I know that Ryan talked a little bit about it on our show. It’s been quite a few episodes but it’s interesting it does work on that acetylcholine pathway. So again that could be why something like alpha brain has been used by some other people. You know, here’s the thing I found with trying to be a lucid dreamer. I thought I wasn’t waking up rested. I thought I was too active in my sleep and I was either not sleeping or if I was sleeping I wasn’t getting well rested because I was too worried about you dreaming and controlling the dream. So that experiment was kinda short lived for me.

Ben: Yeah, have you ever experimented with CBD or THC analogues for inducing lucid dreaming or strange dreams?

Ryan: You know I’ve taken CBD oil, I didn’t notice anything in terms of the dreams. I did notice that it would help me kinda unwind and relax, and actually get to sleep maybe after a stressful day, but on the dream part, no.

Ben: Yeah, one thing that I found and for those of you listening in who happen to be in places where this is legal because it’s a little bit different than CBD oil or cannabidiol oil which is derived from industrial hemp. This stuff is from marijuana, and so it has a lot of traces of THC in it.

This is Rick Simpson oil and it was originally designed for controlling pain, controlling some of the more unpleasant aspects of cancer and chemotherapy, etcetera, but it’s an extremely potent. Usually you get it like an oil, it’s called the Rick Simpson oil and I’ve put tiny drops of that on my fingertip before just kinda almost lick it off and let it dissolve sublingually. I have had some extremely, crazy slash fun nights of dreaming on that stuff and also it causes you to fall asleep for a very, very long period of time. Caution, you’ll have a 10 or 11 hour night of sleep with that stuff, but it’s called a Rick Simpson oil. You also wake up with a bit of a sleepy hangover the same as of you had taken too much melatonin or something like that. But that’s an interesting one. I’ll put a link on the show notes for those of you who want to kinda study up on CBD oil versus Rick Simpson oil but that’s something I found to definitely affect lucid dreaming states and I’ll put a link to the podcast that Ryan did on lucid dreaming as well.

Ryan, as an ex-fitness model, you’re obviously into training and I know that one of the things that you’ve talked about is the use of resistance bands to get strength breakthroughs or to increase muscle, etcetera. Can you go in to how you use resistance bands?

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So nothing that I’ll talk about here is my invention or my creation. There are a lot of really, really great strength coaches out there. I think Louie Simmons was probably one of the first to make the bands popular. A lot of what I learned came from Dave Tate, John Meadows, but when I was doing the fitness modelling and then got into being a strength coach, like you mentioned in the intro, I owned my own gym from 2012 until this last year when I sold it. And the resistance bands are really, really cool because you can use them in two ways. You can use them against the bar or you can use them with the bar. And either way, they matched the strength curve because we are all stronger, closer to lock out. So if you think about a squat, you’re stronger in the top quarter of the squat than you are in the bottom of the squat.

Ben: Right. You have a biomechanical advantage based off the length of your liver at that point.

Ryan: Right. And same thing for bench press, stronger lock out than we are at the chest. So if we use the bands like I said, they match the strength curve, if you use them against the barbell they will force you to use less weight on the bar and this is what they were, that’s kinda the original application, that’s what Louie Simmons and if people are familiar with the Westside method or a conjugate method, it’s what’s referred to as dynamic effort training and you perform, the way they do it is they have 2 upper body, 2 lower body days a week. One is dynamic effort and the other is max effort and in those dynamic effort days you’re using about 40 to60% of your one rep max on the bar plus bands and their bands that you use correspond to your absolute strength whatever your max is.

Ben: So you’re attaching these bands to the bar?

Ryan: So what you will do is if you’re using the bands against the bar, you would actually for a bench press, it gets doubled over the bar and then both of the loose ends come down towards the ground. If you’re in a power act, you can put them on a peg so that a lot of times if you see power acts now they’re made with pegs for bands or if you’re just on a bench press like at the gym just a regular bench press, you can put like a hundred pound dumbbells on either side and just use that as the anchor. So you actually have them doubled over and you’re pressing up against the bands or squatting up against the bands or deadlifting up against they make short bands for deadlifts, but the dynamic effort method there, you’re gonna do if it’s a deadlift you’re usually doing sets of one on the squat that usually prescribe sets of two on the bench press that’s usually sets of two or three, and you’re performing higher sets. So more sets with the lower reps and the intent there is to move the bars as fast as you can.

The bands force you to accelerate because the farther the bands stretches, the more resistance it provides. This really teaches rate of force production. So in the strength world this ROFT, rate of force production. So that’s a quality or an aspect of strength. So it’s not just how much force can you produce but how fast can you produce it. And this really helps elevate your absolute strength whether you’re power lifter or it can help you develop power of you’re an athlete. So it has applications to anybody who lifts.

And then there’s another way to use resistance bands where it’s actually called the perverse band method. And again it matches your strength curve because on this method what you do is you attach the bands to the top of the power ax, you choke them around the top, and then you’re left with the band hanging down, you can either put a barbell in there and do squats, then lifts again bench press, and on this one you still get the band gives you more help in the bottom. The band in this case instead of being against you is actually helping you. So you get more help out of the bottom of the lift and then less help at the top. So the weight is heavier, you have more of the weight at the top of the lift less of it at the bottom.

So this way you can actually use more weight, so you can overload your body, all your cells that hold your bodies, and tendons and ligaments get used to handling heavier weight which those are things that don’t really adapt as quickly as muscle tissue, so a lot of times if you see strength increases or maybe your body is. Our body is smarter than we realize and it won’t allow us to handle heavier and heavier weights if it’s not ready to. So it’s almost like, it’s kind of like tricking your body to taking off the emergency brake. So you’re allowing your body to feel this overload and it can adapt. So I think maybe the post that you found and that you’re gonna link to, there’s a four week cycle that we can use. And let’s say, we wanted to do bench press right, and the bar weight would stay the same for all four weeks.

Ben: Alright.

Ryan: In the first week of this cycle we would use the heaviest band, so maybe call it a strong band, and you would perform your sets and reps with let’s say, you put two twenty five on the bar and you have the help of a strong band. You do 5 sets of 5 and then in week 2, you do the same 5 sets of 5 with the same two 25 on the bar, and instead of using your strong band, you use an average band. And then in week 3, you do two 25, same bar weight, same sets and reps 5 sets of 5, you use a moderate band or something that has less help than the previous week, and or maybe that would be a light band. And then in week 4, if your recovery’s been on point, if all your training’s been on point, your food been on point, then hopefully we can get 5 sets of 5 straight bar and no help from the bands. That would be best case scenario most people are not gonna make that much progress unless maybe you are getting one or two reps with two 25 before you started that cycle. But that’s in theory, that’s kind of what you could do with that cycle.

Ben: Okay.

Ryan: So with reverse band you’re able to overload the body, overload the muscles. You get help in the stretched position so the bottom of the squat, the bottom of the bench press where you’re kind of the most susceptible to joint injuries or muscle tears you’re getting help. So those are two different way to use the bands to really kinda stimulate your muscles and your body in a different way and keep those adaptations moving forward.

Ben: And you can use bands if I’m not mistaken that you can attach them to like barbell handles, you can attach them to kettlebells, like you can use these bands in a big variety of ways, right?

Ryan: Uhm, yup.

Ben: Now do you like, the bands that I have or the monster fitness bands by Rogue. Do you have a specific brand of resistance band that you use or do you just kinda go with whatever the thickest is that you can find.

Ryan: I was introduced to bands by elitefts.com that’s Dave Tate’s company. So you know, I’m kinda partial to them because that’s where I learned about them. I’m sure that Westside and Louie Simmons has his own version. I know a friend of mine James Smith has, they have their bands. I’m not even sure what they’re called but he said Diesel Strength. Rogue has bands. Sorinex makes bands. I think at this point in the fitness world, I think everybody makes their own. (Inaudible)

Ben: Gotcha. Ok cool. Now another fitness technique, and by the way for those of you listening in who are scratching your head trying to visualize what Ryan was describing as far as like how those bands would attach when you’re doing a bench press, or when you’re doing a squat or when you’re doing a deadlift. I’ll link over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ryan to the article that he wrote on that. But you also from a cardiovascular standpoint, Ryan, I noticed that you were into this concept of hurricane training for very efficiently improving one’s cardiovascular fitness. Can you describe how one would do a hurricane workout?

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So Hurricane Training, the name actually came from Martin Rooney. He is the guy behind training for warriors and he’s a really, really great strength coach, smart guy. Originally, the way it was explained to me was that it was designed to help condition fighters or even athletes or anybody who needs to be able to perform in a fatigued state. It can also have applications for fat loss because there is such a metabolic disruption in the way that it’s set up, but basically what you do is 30 seconds of an all-out. You can do a 10 second sprint, you can do 30 seconds at kettlebell swings. But some sort of metabolic disruption for 10 to 30 seconds.

Ben: Okay.

Ryan: So what we’re looking at here, I’m sorry I probably should have started with this but it’s a circuit of three moves. So like one A.B,C or two A,B.C and that A movement is 30 seconds of metabolic disruption whether it’s mountain climbers, burpees, bike sprints, hill sprints, stadium sprints. You’re only limited by your imagination there, and then you follow it up with two strength movements and they’re usually done for sets of 8 to 12, right? And you get through this and you can do the number of times that you complete that circuit is up to you, and it depends on what the entire workout looks like. So I think in the article that we’re gonna link to, the example I listed has three different circuits, so each circuit was performed three times. If you wanted to cut it down to two circuits, you can do each circuit five times.

So let’s say you said, you did hill sprints and then you go to a park and this park has a hill or stadium and you can do chin ups, and then dips or push-ups, right? That would be a beautiful version of hurricane training where you sprint up the hill, say it takes you 10 or 15 seconds to get to the top of the hill or the top of the stadium, come back down, immediately bang out 8 to 12 chin ups, 8 to 12 dips, and then you’re right back on it. This is it’s great for cardio, it’s great for fat loss, it’s great for muscle building and it’s great for conditioning especially if you’re a fighter or an athlete. It’s a really, really cool concept. It kinda fits in with what we talked about with biohacking where you’re trying to get the maximum benefit in minimum time, right, so any training methodology and modality where we can reap multiple benefits from the same input or investment of time and energy. It’s just a great thing.

Ben: Okay. So the hurricane workout, an example would be, you would do like the original hurricane workout, you’d get on treadmill, you’d go as hard as you freaking can up an incline at maximum speed as you can for about 30 seconds, then you’d get off and you’d do two different body weight or two different exercises like a pull up and a push up, and then you’d get back on the treadmill, and you do that again and you continue for multiple sets, treadmill to back to back body weight exercises.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly.

Ben: And your version of that is instead of using a treadmill, you could like sprint and play so as you could do like mountain climbers and plays, or something like that for the maximum 30 second effort and then use whatever, kettlebell swings or rows or v-ups or whatever for your body weight exercises.

Ryan: Yeah. So in the article, at the time that I wrote the article was early on in promoting my gym. We didn’t have treadmills at my gym. When I first learned it, I was a trainer at a big box gym where we had treadmills. So the idea here is that you want the listeners to understand the template, and then once you understand the template, go hard for thirty seconds and then do strength moves. You can sub in an infinite number of variations or possibilities.

Ben: Yeah, and if I could throw in here real quick, when I was competing in triathlon, I was actually reading, ‘coz I like to kinda delve in to all sorts of different ways that one could engage in like cross training for something like Ironman, and I remember I read a book by author Martin Rooney and it was a book on cardio training, specifically cardio training for fighters right, and he had this hurricane workouts in there. And I actually prior to the half Ironman or it was actually called the Long Course World Championships in triathlon, I started implementing these hurricane workouts twice a week and I was doing the math as he wrote them on the book, like you get on the treadmill and you do, I think I wound up doing ten sets of thirty seconds on the treadmill.

Now the book by the way was called Warrior Cardio. Ten sets on the treadmill and this was like a key running workout for me, and each set on the treadmill would be interspersed with those two back to back body weight exercises. And I remember that particular long course triathlon I actually won gold medal for the US based on my run because I cranked out something like a 114 or 115 half marathon off the bike just using that type of over speed sprint strategy. Now granted I’ve had my genetics tested and I’m a power responder, right? So I respond really, really well to short fast efforts or true for especially run training, but it’s an incredibly efficient way to train like your turn over and your run power and a ton of run parameters all at once, and then also just blast the body with lactic acid with those body weight exercises in between.

Ryan: Yeah it’s a beautiful training protocol for many different applications whether you’re triathlon, fighter, or even basketball, football. Any type of athlete.

Ben: Now, you also have talked a little bit on your website about what you do when you can’t workout. Or when you don’t have access to like a formal workout at the gym. Can you go into some of your strategies that you do when you’re having difficulty actually squeezing a workout in?

Ryan: Yeah, so this is something that has kinda been an evolution for me in the days of being a fitness model living in New York City. There was definitely a time in my life when I had these elaborate spreadsheets for my diet, I weighed everything I ate, I measured everything like workouts had to be exactly this at exactly this time of day, and that’s just no way to live your life specially now that I’m no longer a fitness model. So for me what I do and the way I approach fitness is that it has to enhance the rest of my life. It can’t rule or dominate or dictate the rest my life. So my stance on fitness is a lot more relaxed than it ever was and like I said, that’s kind of been an evolution and a growth process from me.

Mark Sisson said it best, you’re not going to lose your fitness in 3 days. If you have to travel, if you have to miss a few workouts, you’re just not gonna lose your fitness. So I use the same kind of philosophy with nutrition and with fitness. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to not suck, so if you travel and you don’t eat exactly the way you did at home, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to not suck meaning you don’t go off the rails and eat at Burger King, and stuff your face with Pop Tarts and Pringles, right? Same thing with your workouts, there are so many ways to be active and move that don’t require going to a formal gym whether it’s a Crossfit gym or a Gold’s gym or anything like that, you can simply wake up, walk outside and walk. If there’s a pool, get in the pool and move. You can go in your hotel room and you can do mobility drills. You can pack, if you drive, it’s really easy to throw a kettlebell in your car. There’s a really cool fitness, I don’t know if you wanna call him an expert, a guru or coach whatever, I think his name is Ben Greenfield.

Ben: (laughs)

Ryan: He just drove across the country and what was it, every 50 miles you stopped?

Ben: Oh we did the 50, 50, 50, I posted this to Snapchat, but every 50 miles you stop.

Ryan: See I do stalk you.

Ben: Yeah, 50 burpees and 50 kettlebell swings. Great way to give yourself a blood clot during a road trip. But in terms of what you do when you can’t get your workout in, it sounds to me and it looks to me like kinda like going over your article here that not only are you into things like that, like bodyweight exercises or the use of a suspension trainer or these resistance bands that you talked about, but you eat as freaking clean as can be when you know you’re not gonna be able to exercise?

Ryan: Yeah, so you definitely have to account for the fact that you’re not blowing through as many calories and as much food. Your food needs will decrease if you go through 3 or 4 days of significantly increased sedentary lifestyle, right? So, you and I are both really active people, most of our listeners are really active people, so if you significantly reduce your activity for a few days, then your choloric demand, your nutrient demand is gonna be a little bit lower. So you definitely do wanna eat a little bit cleaner and just be aware of it, like hey, I’m not doing SteelFit style workouts or Train to Hunt style workouts, so my needs aren’t what they normally are.

Ben: Yeah.

Ryan: Definitely I’ll take that into account.

Ben: That’s very similar to my approach when I travel, when I’ve got like international travel or hop on across the pond, or whatever. One of the things that I’ll do is a) I’ll eat far less than I normally would, and in many cases I’ll even use like we had talked about ketosis for example, I don’t do a lot of strict ketosis because I like food so much. I like sweet potato fries and I like my starchy vegetables, and yeah, I like my wife’s cooking but when I travel I do tend to err more towards this whole idea of like strict ketosis, not only because you beat brain fog and you shut down a lot of like the oxidation that can occur when you’re flying at altitude, etcetera, but also because when you can’t workout and you want to stay lean, it is one of the better strategies and in my opinion that you can use as you just travel with ketones, you travel with like, I like a lot of these companies coming with like instant packets now. I don’t know if you’ve seen these, but they’ll have like your coconut oil powdered or MCT oil powdered with some kind of like a butter or a creamer, it’s all in a little packet that I can walk up to Starbucks, mix that with coffee and kinda be in that very low calorie yet energized day while I’m travelling. I think Bulletproof’s version is called Instacoffee?

Ryan: Instamix.

Ben: Instamix, that’s right. And do you guys at Natural Sacks do anything like that? Am I insulting you by bringing up a competitor or?

Ryan: No. Not at all. I mean, you know Bulletproof has always been a great partner for us. We were lucky enough to kinda launch our Nootropics CILTEP and Smart Caffeine on Dave’s podcast. We’ve always had a booth at the Bulletproof Conference. They are a partner of ours. CILTEP is the only non-Bulletproof product that Dave sells on his website. But kinda to answer your question, I think you said something that was really interesting, you know, when we travel, especially you and I, we’re usually doing it for business and we want to be at our best and for us that stems from eating very clean. We want our brains and our bodies to be performing at that high level. So you want premium fuel to go in so that your brain is clear and functioning properly, but also you alluded to the environmental toxins that you’re exposed to whether it’s on an airplane or in a hotel. So I think the more we get out of our routine it’s almost more important to be very conscious and aware of what goes into your body because it’s in those instances where you have a higher need to perform and be at your best but you also may be a little bit susceptible to external factors.

Ben: Yeah. Totally makes sense. Now speaking of Natural Stacks, I’m curious, obviously one of the things that you guys are known for is you make smart drugs or nootropics like CILTEP for example, and that was something that was popularized by Tim Ferriss and is something that your founder Abelard Lindsey developed. For you personally though Ryan, do you have a daily protocol in terms of like nootropics or smart drug stacks that you found to work pretty well. I know that you’re pretty intimately involved with studying up on smart drugs and nootropics so this would be cheating for our listeners if I didn’t actually ask you what your own personal protocol is on that.

Ryan: Yeah, so I mean full transparency I mean, I’ve worked for Natural Stacks, so I mean I’m going to be partial to the Natural Stacks product line. CILTEP is a beautiful nootropic that is non-stimulant and it doesn’t work on the neurotransmitter pathways that most nootropics do. So CILTEP is unique in that sense and I think that’s one of the reasons that you know,… go ahead.

Ben: Sorry to interrupt. Can you expound on that when you say that it works on a different pathway than other nootropics would?

Ryan: So there’s 4 basic neurotransmitters. There are a lot of other ones but there are 4 that are commonly manipulated in the smart drug world. They are dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine and gaba. So we already kind of alluded to acetylcholine or we talked about it a little bit earlier, but cetylcholine is responsible for mental processing speed, the ability to connect thoughts, think laterally, this kind of creativity and oneness. So, Dave Asprey has Choline Force, Onnit makes Alpha Brain, those are all on the choline pathway and like I said, that’s one of the 4 neurotransmitters.

Quickly, there is Gaba which is kind of like social bumper car, like everybody has felt significantly loser in a social setting after one or two alcoholic beverages and that’s because it’s working on that Gaba pathway kind of like I said, social bumper cars. Dopamine is your brain’s replay button. That’s what Michael Merzenich which was on our podcast, he’s the neuroplasticity guy and founder at Brain HQ. That was the way he described dopamine. So when you do something and you get a positive feedback or positive result then your brain secretes dopamine to say, hey, that was good. We got a good result. We should do more of that.

And then serotonin is responsible for mood, anxiety, and fear, and that’s kind of can help you with feelings of calm and relaxation, right. So, that’s kind of a really quick overview enough to get people kind of a basic understanding to say that CILTEP does not work on any of those neurotransmitter pathways. CILTEP has two main ingredients: artichoke extract and forskolin, and they act as an inhibitor for an enzyme called PDE4 and this enzyme down regulates cyclic AMP. So, maybe you’ve done some podcast where you talked about biochemistry and cyclic AMP, but when cyclic AMP is elevated it can potentiate long term memory. So that finding was part of the thread and the discussion on LongeCity which is the famous anti-aging and biohacking website and forum.

Ben: Yes. That I avoid so that I don’t get stuck into lengthy forum discussions, but I’ll link to it in the show notes for those of you who wanted to go down that rabbit hole.

Ryan: I can actually send you the link to the original CILTEP thread but that’s where the product CILTEP was actually created. It was created on that forum, Abelard and a whole bunch of other people we’re going through different iterations of it. He came up with the final formulation and that’s how Tim Ferriss knew about, that’s how Dave Asprey knew about and from there he got with our founders Ben and Roy who you’ve met at some of these other conferences, and that’s how Natural Stacks, the company was started and then Abelard went on Dave’s podcast and launch CILTEP and Natural Stacks. So, back to kind of the ways CILTEP works, when people take and use CILTEP, it’s very subtle and what you notice is that you have this increased engagement, there’s increased focus or desire to learn, to read, to kinda go down these rabbit holes and stay almost impervious to distraction but also because it potentiate long term memory, you are better able to store and recall the information consumed when you’re on CILTEP.

So, we’ve got everybody from rocket scientists to Hollywood actors and celebrities memorizing lines, Olympic athletes, the gamut of people using and benefiting from CILTEP is amazing.

Ben: Yeah, and I’ve used it and I like to experiment sorts of different smart drugs. And for example, I found different things worked for different situations when I have to go all day long and just need boundless energy because whatever I met up, let’s say a conference that I know is gonna start in the morning, go all day and then have parties afterwards. I’ll use like some of the racetams like aniracetam or piracetam or some of those things combined with choline and some of those other things you’ve mentioned earlier that kinda just like increase the overdrive function of the brain. And when I need for example access to word recall, right, like if I’m talking on stage for example, I’ll use something like alpha brain by Onnit. I found it to work well for something like that, but for memory and for learning, this CILTEP seems to work quite well for just like reading a book and trying to retain as much as possible in that book. It’s very interesting when it comes to learning and memory process. My kids are in Peter Pan Summer Theater this entire week memorizing their lines for a play at the end of the week. So I may try and break up a capsule and slip a little bit into their morning scrambled egg mess.

Ryan: So, there you go. Well, there’s…

Ben: Well, I’m not sure if it’s approve for children but it does work quite well for memory.

Ryan: That’s what I’m gonna say. It’s all natural, there’s no stimulants, so I don’t see why you couldn’t give it to a kid. But yeah, that would be a personal choice. I’m not on behalf of Natural Stack, I’m not saying that.

Ben: Well, I will link to your guys’ website in the show notes and I know that you would mention prior to us recording that you wanted to give folks a discount code if they wanted to try CILTEP or, we really didn’t even scratch the surface on the other stuff that you guys have like dopamine, brain food and all those other things, but I do have an article that I link to in the show notes where I talked about smart drugs and some of my favorite stacks, and you can read a little bit more but I know you’ve got that prebiotic starch for lucid dreaming, you’ve got that CILTEP, and some other things there. So, discount for folks listening in. Can you go to that?

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. Yes, 15% off and the code will be ben15, B-E-N-1-5, use all capitals on Ben, and like he said, we didn’t even scratch the surface on nootropics but I do wanna reiterate that because CILTEP doesn’t work on those neurotransmitter pathways, its stacks extremely well with nootropics that do work on those pathways, and that was the original, that’s part of the intent and the design. So, the company, Natural Stacks, we want people, that’s kind of our method is most products are design to be able to work either as a stand alone or in combination with others for that synergistic effect. So, we have the dopamine brain food if you need the extra motivation and you take that with CILTEP or if you need kinda of distress with focus, then you can take serotonin brain food with CILTEP. Just to give people some stacks and some applications there.

Ben: Got it. So speaking of supplements because I know I promise this to folks. The dirty secrets of a supplement industry, you’ve looked into this. I’m curious. Now, some of the stuff people know that some folks will use like cheap and inferior ingredients to for example save money, I don’t think that’s any secret out there but I have a few specific questions I wanna ask you ‘cause this stuff I see all the time.

First of all, when you turn over the label on a supplement and it say proprietary. One of the words that I really despise. I know it’s required in many cases so that you can have your, whatever your little patented blends that you don’t want let the other competitors in the industry know the exact amounts you’re using. Tell me about why we need to be careful when you see the word proprietary.

Ryan: So, let be back off and I don’t wanna say, correct you on that but I guess challenge somebody who would use proprietary because it’s patented. If your blend is protected by a patent, why do you need to hide it?

Ben: Yeah, but what if, I mean, I know in many cases s these blends are not patented however.

Ryan: Right. Right. And that’s so, for people listening in, that’s what proprietary means is it basically it allows supplement companies to hide the amount of each ingredient. So it’s like, we all know that when you bake a cake, our ingredients that go into baking that cake, if we just said like, hey, here’s Betty Crocker cake mix and it’s got a proprietary blend, you don’t know how much of that dry mix is wheat flour, how much is salt, how much is baking soda, and that’s very much the case with a lot of supplements where if you say, hey, I have this proprietary blend of creatine rhino blast pre-workout and the serving is 1,000 mgs and it’s my special proprietary blend, I could have 999 mgs of sand and 1 mg of creatine, and there’s my 1,000 mgs, and it’s protected under my proprietary blend and you think as a consumer that you’re getting a thousand milligrams of the good (curse word) but in reality you don’t know that.

Now, just ‘cause somebody says proprietary blend doesn’t mean they’re using 99% BS, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not telling you and if somebody… look, the world that we live in right now, if somebody is using organic and grass-fed beef or protein powder, that’s the first thing they tell you about their product, right. They can’t wait to tell you that. So, somebody is using a proprietary blend right now, you can almost be assured that they’re hiding something because if they weren’t they would be bragging about the quality of what is in there and they would be very forthright and almost trying to use that as a positive and as a strong point.

Ben: Yeah, yeah. One of the examples that you have on your website is like branched chain amino acids where it says there’s 3.7 grams of an amino acid “proprietary” blend on there. And when it says there’s 3.7 grams of that amino acid proprietary blend, you make a good point that they list all these amino acids but they could be like 3 point whatever, 6 grams of one thing listed there like the cheapest one and then bare trace amounts of everything else. But because it says “proprietary” and they’re not required to list the actual amount of each ingredient, you have no clue if you’re actually getting any amount of most of the, perhaps the expensive stuff there they’re actually looking to put into your body.

Ryan: Right. So here’s the thing like with that. Do you know there are 3 branch chains, right? The BCAAs have 3 branched chain amino acids, right? You know what they are.

Ben: Leucine, isoleucine, and valine. I even take CILTEP, so yeah. I just told that right out of my head.

Ryan: So then if I’m buying a BCAA product and in their 3.7 grams of that proprietary blend, it also consist of proline, glycine, lysine, threonine, arginine, alanine, all these other I think, those aren’t BCAAs. So I’m really not getting 3.7 grams of BCAAs. I’m getting 3.7 grams of amino acids.

Ben: Yeah.

Ryan: So it allows people to mislead and kinda misdirect consumers, and as a consumer you cannot be too careful. I always tell people don’t read the front of the package because it’s design to sell you. Always turn it over and read the supplement facts and ingredient label.

You mentioned this in the intro that my degree is Food Science and Human Nutrition, so I would be an RD – registered dietician, if I pursue that internship after college, but my original major was actually packaging science. So I learned all these laws about like what you’re allowed to say on packaging and all those stuff, and yeah, so that was kinda interesting and it’s crazy how it now is actually knowledge that I am able to use in what I do, but the front of the package is design to sell, that’s it.

Ben: Yeah. And your article is quite shocking when you go into the fact that for example, one protein shake product contained 12.2 grams of protein when the label said that it claimed 25 grams of protein or that the FDA discovered this one supplement that had 1,814% more sugar in it than what they actually claimed was in that protein powder. So yeah, the product is not meeting labeling claims to these issues with proprietary blends. You go into a lot of it in your article, and so it’s called The Supplement Industries Top 10 Hidden Secrets. I’ll link to this article in the show notes for those of you who wanna read about these top 10 hidden secrets, dirty secrets of the supplement industry along with everything else that Ryan and I have talked about in today’s show.

I wish we had more time opening the kimono on podcast recordings. I personally have another recording that I am 10 minutes late for now, and so I have to cut our discussion on dirty secrets of the supplement industry slightly short, but I will link to that article in the show notes for those of you who wanna listen in at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ryan, and also list like everything else we talked about like LongeCity forum and galantamine and the strange and shocking history of why cornflakes were invented, and much more. And also, the discount code that you guys can use to make yourself smart little cookies with CILTEP. The discount code BEN15 and anything from Natural Stacks.

Ryan, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Ryan: Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me. This has been a blast. I appreciate the opportunity and I do just wanna say one other thing with Natural Stacks and this supplement industry thing is we want to disrupt the supplement industry, we want to change the fact that these things we just talked about in this last segment are the industry norm that makes us sick. It makes you sick, our followers, your followers, people are tired to this and we’re trying to expose it and change it. So, we just want people to know that that’s what we’re up to and we wanna raise the bar.

Ben: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I love what you guys are doing over there, and love some of the unique formulations that you are inventing. So again, show notes are over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ryan, if you wanna learn more about Ryan or any of the other wide variety of things we talked about today. And Ryan, thanks so much for coming on the show, man.

Ryan: Ben, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, man.

Ben: Alright folks, so this is Ben Greenfield and Ryan Munsey from Natural Stacks signin’ out from bengreenfieldfitness.com, have a healthy week!

You’ve been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting-edge fitness and performance advice.

My guest on today’s podcast, Ryan Munsey, is a former fitness model and gym-owner-turned writer, speaker, and biohacker.

He’s a mental and physical performance specialist with a degree in Food Science & Human Nutrition from Clemson University, and a wealth of knowledge on topics such as smart drugs, lucid dreaming, unconventional strength training and cardiovascular training techniques, and dirty secrets in the supplement industry. Ryan is also the Chief Optimizer at Natural Stacks and host of the Optimal Performance Podcast.

During our discussion, you’ll discover:

-Why Ryan thinks most people shouldn’t eat breakfast…[6:10]

-The strange and shocking history of corn flakes…[20:50]

-How to “hack” yourself into a state of lucid dreaming…[22:20]

-How Ryan uses resistance bands to get strength breakthrough…[31:00]

-The concept of something called “Hurricane training” for a huge boost in cardiovascular fitness…[39:24]

-How Ryan stays lean when he can’t workout… [45:45]

-Ryan’s unique personal “smart drug” stack that he uses…[53:00]

-Why you should use caution when you see the word “proprietary” on a supplement label (and other dirty secrets of the supplements industry)…[62:10]

-And much more!

Resources from this episode:

–Ryan’s article on why he skips breakfastr