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Habits and Hustle
Episode 399: Ben Greenfield on Biohacking vs. Simplicity: The Future of Longevity for Body, Mind and Spirit
02:02:06
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- [00:02]
Ben Greenfield
Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins.
- [00:02]
Tony Robbins
You're listening to Habits and Hustle.
- [00:04]
Ben Greenfield
Crush it. All right, you guys, we have the one and only Ben Greenfeld on Feldfeld. Feld.
- [00:14]
Tony Robbins
I think Feld does sound pretty cool. I need to go buy that. Like a. Like a spy.
- [00:19]
Ben Greenfield
It's. I thought it was World War II.
- [00:21]
Tony Robbins
Going in to kill Hitler. Ben Greenfeld.
- [00:23]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah. But you don't even find your identity. No, that could be your, like, alter ego.
- [00:27]
Tony Robbins
We could just do a whole podcast about how we would assassinate Hitler.
- [00:31]
Ben Greenfield
I would love that. Well, he's not. He's.
- [00:33]
Tony Robbins
Well, you know, the whole theory about. There's, like, a butterfly effect, and if somebody had killed him, somebody worse might have come up in his stead, or, you know, because there's. There's a whole moral, philosophical argument of, like, is murder wrong? And would you. If. So, would you go back in time and if you had the opportunity, like, oh, yeah, kill Hitler when he was a baby? And there's a really weird way to start a podcast talking about how we would kill Hitler. But. But if my name was Greenfield. You have a lot of energy drinks here. I know a lot of just drinks in general.
- [01:00]
Ben Greenfield
Well, first of all, that's actually. I don't know where you got that one.
- [01:02]
Tony Robbins
From your refrigerator.
- [01:04]
Ben Greenfield
Oh, okay. I don't know what that is. We usually start this podcast with these magic mind shots, and I'm sure you've had a million of them before, have you not?
- [01:11]
Tony Robbins
I always look at the ingredient label.
- [01:13]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, look.
- [01:13]
Tony Robbins
Well, I got lots of stuff in front of me.
- [01:15]
Ben Greenfield
No, I mean, they're not. This is a protein drink. This is slate protein drinks. Have you not. You don't know about this?
- [01:22]
Tony Robbins
No.
- [01:22]
Ben Greenfield
I thought you knew about everything.
- [01:24]
Tony Robbins
No, I live in a cave. Slash, do have a lot of stuff in my mini fridge in the garage, but some of this stuff just slips me by. I always like to look at the ingredient label, though, like this one caramel latte, because a lot of people see the stuff that they're told to sell. Hopefully. I don't throw any of your sponsors under the bus talking about this.
- [01:43]
Ben Greenfield
No, you can't. Actually. This is one of these companies that I genuinely. I drink at least one a day, and I like it, but. So you tell me what you think.
- [01:50]
Tony Robbins
Okay, so this one, when you look at the ingredient label, it's brewed coffee, water and coffee. So the only thing I think about there when I'm looking at cans and ingredients is do they. Do they filter the water? Do they look at the aluminum Lining of the can have. They assist it for microplastics, et cetera.
- [02:05]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [02:06]
Tony Robbins
And sometimes that's not on the label. So you literally have to ask, like I interview, you know, a really popular company, Zevia.
- [02:12]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah, of course.
- [02:13]
Tony Robbins
Does the. It's not artificially sweetened stevia sweetened soda. I interviewed their CEO years ago and that was one of the first questions I asked was, do you guys pay attention to the cans?
- [02:24]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [02:24]
Tony Robbins
Because you can have a super healthy drink and then just screw it up by putting it in the wrong delivery mechanism. He was like, yeah, we go aluminum free and we test it for metals. And I thought that was cool, considering you can find it like Safeway or Rosars or whatever, which a lot of times means they would be cutting corners. So you don't know about the can.
- [02:41]
Ben Greenfield
But wait, what did he say? Did he. He said he was good with the clean.
- [02:44]
Tony Robbins
But.
- [02:44]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah, but it was. Is it an aluminum can?
- [02:46]
Tony Robbins
It is, but you can have some kind of like a liner inside the can that keeps the metals from leeching.
- [02:51]
Ben Greenfield
Could you actually prove that they do that though?
- [02:53]
Tony Robbins
You could do a third party independent test on the can itself if you wanted to.
- [02:57]
Ben Greenfield
Right. But you never did that.
- [02:58]
Tony Robbins
I didn't do it. I did take him at his word, but I think he's lying a podcast and say he's a lo. Because that could blow up in your face if somebody actually does. If actually someone did it, test it later on. So they've got brewed coffee, unfiltered skim milk. And when you look at this is one of the terms that I sometimes don't like in the health industry. Lean protein. Right. Cause you hear about eggs, for example, right. If you eat just egg whites, you get a huge dose of albumin, the protein in egg whites. And many people have an inflammatory response to just eating egg whites. When you look at eggs as nature's perfectly packaged protein that include the fat soluble vitamins, which also can help out with the vitamin absorption, with the protein absorption, et cetera, then you've got a little bit more of a cleaner profile. So there's the idea of like in the health industry, right. Eat lean chicken breast. I'm like, no, like you get a lot of the fat soluble vitamins and the good stuff and even more of the collagen from the, from the gristle, from the bones, from the skin. So like, if I make chicken, yeah, it's going to be more calories if you eat the skin and have the oils and everything on there. But you're arguably getting More nutrient density and better health long term versus separating the proteins from the fats. Right. So this.
- [04:13]
Ben Greenfield
Wait, hold on. So that again, this happened last time. So even. We haven't even started. I haven't.
- [04:18]
Tony Robbins
We're only two ingredients into the label of one drink. But I love this because we can rabbit hole as we go.
- [04:24]
Ben Greenfield
It's crazy. Okay, so you're saying let's get with. Stay with the egg. So then people, if they just eat the egg whites, they can have a bigger allergic reaction or an intolerance than if they have the egg whites and the yolk together. Because you need that extra fat and whatever, all the other minerals and nutrients to counterbalance the egg white.
- [04:44]
Tony Robbins
Yep.
- [04:44]
Ben Greenfield
Because I was going to say that I feel like I've g. I've gathered or my body, I've been eating eggs every single day for 25 years, that I now feel like I become allergic or I have an intolerance, but I do eat the yolk.
- [04:56]
Tony Robbins
Now, it is true that when you get one of these food allergy tests, a lot of times foods that are staples in your diet can end up giving almost like a false positive that you're allergic to them. And it's because your body is doing a really good job creating antibodies to certain proteins in those foods. So it flags as a high antibody response even though you're not actually allergic. So if I look at the results of somebody's food allergy test or food intolerance test and it says, hey, if like red on eggs, you must be allergic to eggs, I ask them, are you eating eggs every day? Because a lot of times that can cause it to be elevated. That doesn't mean that if you're eating eggs every day and you feel like crap or you're not sleeping well or you have gas or bloating or poor energy levels or whatever, and you cut the eggs out and those symptoms go away, maybe you actually were allergic to eggs. But anything that flags on a food allergy profile as an issue that is also a staple in your diet, first make sure that it's not just because you've been having a lot of it.
- [05:55]
Ben Greenfield
So, and then. So that. Does that mean you shouldn't be eating the same thing over and over and over again just because it can act as an intolerance or an allergic reaction.
- [06:03]
Tony Robbins
For you, that is something that would fall into the category of dietary diversity. Meaning that the more myopic you are about eating just a select group of foods, the less dietary diversity you will have. So the less diverse your microbiome becomes, which can create this vicious feedback loop. Because by eliminating foods constantly and going gluten free and lectin free and then low fiber and then low fodmap and beginning to get rid of all these foods, your biome becomes weaker and weaker and you paradoxically become less and less able to be able to digest a wide variety of foods. So the idea of eating the same thing day in and day out, if that also means that you've got low dietary diversity, and the answer is yes, that can create problems long term because you're essentially starving off your bacteria. But if you were, say, eating eggs every day and you were also, you know, like, you hear a lot of these blue zones doing, eating a lot of different herbs and spices and plants and, and fruits and a wide variety of meats, and eating seasonally, meaning there's certain periods of the year where you're not eating certain things, paying the jet fuel to fly the avocados and the coconuts in, in an environment where you normally wouldn't have access to that stuff, then that's where you can also create an issue, right? Low amount of seasonal eating, low amount of dietary diversity, eating the same things over and over again, which seems easy and convenient, but isn't great for keeping the biome healthy.
- [07:39]
Ben Greenfield
That's so true. So basically because, and in the fitness world, right, it's all about like, if you stay eating the same things, that will, that will optimize your chance of like, staying within a certain weight, you know, certain body composition, all the things, right? But it actually, it can actually work very much in reverse for your actual health and microbiome.
- [08:01]
Tony Robbins
It's true that if you have a predictable set of meals, yeah, I have my yogurt with my berries in the morning and I got my lean protein on my whole grain sandwich for lunch and I eat the same thing for dinner. If you're trying to count and control calories, that makes it very simple and also makes it more likely that you're going to have fewer types of foods around the house. Because one of the things that dietary diversity can cause is the more access to foods that you have, the more calories you're likely to eat. Like, if you walk up to like a superfood salad bar and there's like 20 different things, walnuts and pecans and avocados and salsa and mushrooms and two different kinds of all, you're going to load up the plate in many cases and wind up with way more food than you normally eat. You know, it's buffet Syndrome.
- [08:44]
Ben Greenfield
Exactly.
- [08:45]
Tony Robbins
On the flip side, if you're limiting your dietary diversity so that you do a good job following a diet, yes, it should be good for weight loss and calorie control. But that is not synonymous with good health and high micronutrient and vitamin and mineral intake. So I think a part of it does come down to like self control. If I'm going to have 20 different types of fermented foods and yogurts and superfoods and chlorella and bee pollen and dark chocolate and know, pastured eggs and three different kinds of meat and all this stuff in my pantry, in my fridge, which I do because I love the idea of dietary diversity. It also means you're either injecting a GLP1 so you're controlling your appetite, or you're actually just cognizant and aware, which isn't that like if you're writing it down anyways, you're using a, an app like Chronometer or some other calorie counting app to keep track, then it makes it a lot easier. So I think you can have your cake and eat it too. Cake, in this case being dietary diversity combined with moderating the amount of calories that you consume. But it does take more mindfulness.
- [09:46]
Ben Greenfield
It does.
- [09:47]
Tony Robbins
And I think mindfulness is good.
- [09:48]
Ben Greenfield
It is. And I think, but I do think self control is the most difficult thing in the world. Right? We can all know, I think most of us at this point in life, especially with all the information overload, we know what to do, we've heard it all. We just don't have the self control and the discipline to actually execute on it. That's where we get stuck.
- [10:07]
Tony Robbins
Hence Ozempic. But you could look at it like with exercise, right? So let's take a trendy workout right now like the, the 12, 3:30, right? Walk at a 12% incline on a treadmill and 3 miles per hour for 30 minutes and you're going to see huge, you know, drops in weight loss or increases in aerobic fitness, et cetera, which is kind of true. But if similar to the diet, your exercise program consists of you doing the same thing every day because it just makes it easy for you and that's what you're most likely to do. Yeah, it's better than nothing. But don't fool yourself into thinking that you're going to be more fit than the person who's like working with the trainer or doing their own research to switch things up. You know, every week and one week you're doing kettlebells and maybe the 12, 3, 30 and the next week you're doing a, you know, a high intensity interval training set on that air dying and super slow training. And the next week you're traveling. So you're doing like BFR training and cold plunges. And the more you can mix it up, the more you throw at your body, the harder it becomes to kill.
- [11:05]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [11:05]
Tony Robbins
Or the more fitness you see. So you see the better microbial fitness or gut fitness by throwing a lot of different foods at your body. And if you look at things like an increase in the surge of gluten intolerance or so called gluten allergies or peanut intolerance, a lot of that is due to heavy restriction of those compounds, especially to kids at an early age. So they don't build up the ability, the microbiome based ability to produce the enzymes that can help to digest those foods. So this is why if you go gluten free for a really long time and then you have gluten, it's way worse than having gluten back when you weren't gluten free. Or when you feed a kid who's never been exposed to peanuts at 2 years old a bunch of peanuts or peanut butter and they have this anaphylactic reaction. It's far less likely that they would've had that if they would've had mild exposure to peanuts.
- [11:57]
Ben Greenfield
Totally agree. That makes per. And by the way, I know we're only two ingredients in and we're not eating.
- [12:02]
Tony Robbins
Oh, we'll get there.
- [12:02]
Ben Greenfield
I know it's gonna be a long.
- [12:04]
Tony Robbins
I won't forget.
- [12:04]
Ben Greenfield
I know you won't. So what, what do you think about the fact of when you do high intens workouts and exercise? I, when I do it anyway, my appetite goes through the roof. I eat five times the amount of calories because I'm ravenous and hungry. So isn't it a better strategy than to do like the 12, 3. 3 that we just said or any kind of lower impact or lower intensity exercise? Because then you're app. You're able to control your appetite just on a, on a weight loss, fat loss level. Let's not talk about all the other things, but just on that because that's what I find. I find cardio at a high intensity, you end up gaining weight because you're starving.
- [12:43]
Tony Robbins
There is what's called a compensatory mechanism that kicks in post exercise. That compensatory mechanism is of exercise and I'm hungrier. There's two reasons that that could happen. So there's two different things we need to consider here. The first is pretty straightforward. I've burnt more calories, I've been more glycolytic because I'm doing high intensity interval training or weight training, not just a walk on the beach. So I've subtracted more carbohydrates from my muscles or my live. So my body's naturally going to tell me that those need to be refilled because carbohydrates are good for brain fuel and for thyroid activity and for the joints and for the endocrine system. There's all sorts of messages your body begins to tell you that are crave like messages when you've depleted a bunch of carbohydrates from your body. For good reason. Right. This is why a strict ketogenic diet could be good for managing say like epilepsy or Alzheimer's. But long term can cause some issues, you know, to your, your testosterone, your estrogen, your thyroid, your joints, et cetera. Cuz there's just not enough glucose around and it can't make glucose out of fats. So when you finish a hard workout and you're getting these cravings to eat because a, you've burnt through a lot of calories and your body needs more calories, or you've burnt through a lot of carbohydrates and your body needs to refill those or both, that's a natural urge and you shouldn't necessarily resist that urgency because in my opinion it's healthier to be strong and fast and have a high VO2 max and good grip strength and good lactic acid tolerance and lots of mitochondria and be eating more food to fuel all that goodness versus doing the same thing day in, day out because it doesn't make you hungry and eating less food, right. I'd rather be strong and fast and fit and also eat more calories than do the same thing day in, day out and just restrict my calories.
- [14:32]
Ben Greenfield
Right. But like say, let's say like running versus walking, like running versus, you know, incline walking. Do you think that the walk, the would you say that you. It's a good to do a combination of both or that doing the incline walk is better because you're maintaining muscle mass, you're not breaking it down and.
- [14:50]
Tony Robbins
All those things, the one or the other, the idea of fitness does need to be considered in the terms of kind of like a blueprint for the body. I'll explain what I mean by that, but before I do, I didn't address the second reason that you might get hungry after you do a hard workout, to me, that's the more concerning reason. It is the train to eat, eat to train type of phenomenon, where either A, you're exercising so that you can stuff your face later, not so that you can get fitter. So the only goal of exercise is to burn as many calories as possible so you can Enjoy your whatever pizza 25 smoothie or pizza or whatever it is that makes you happy because you're addicted to food. And the only way that you can be addicted to food without becoming morbidly obese or having some metabolic disease is to exercise your butt off, right? And so then we get into the whole realm of like, exercise anorexia, which is the thing, the huge thing. And in a similar vein, we also will finish a hard workout many times and feel like we need a reward, right? And that reward is not necessarily due to the calorie burn, because some people will just go face stuff on a huge breakfast after doing 50 burpees. I did the 50, and the 50 burpees doesn't burn a ton of calories. You have to walk like an hour to even burn, you know, a cookie.
- [16:01]
Ben Greenfield
No.
- [16:02]
Tony Robbins
But people will say, hey, I did the hard thing. I'm going to reward myself with food. So using food as a reward or as something that allows you to get that dopaminergic rush and not as something that you'd be using to refill the body and restore nutrients and vitamins and minerals, that can be an issue. And that's a more concerning issue. And that's where we get into the willpower, self control component. And in my opinion, the best way to manage that is what gets measured, gets managed, right? That's where you take photos of your food and upload them to the new GPT image recognition technology, like GPT4.0, where it'll just tell you, you know, on, on your own notes app or whatever, how many calories that you're eating based on image recognition of that food or using an app or a website like a chronometer or macro factors to actually keep track. And some of my clients who I work with, they won't follow the diet adequately that I have written down for them based on their labs and their blood work and their activity levels and everything. Unless they know I'm gonna be looking at their diet at the end of the week, and if they write it down, then they're that diet and they're less likely to do that. Second compensatory mechanism from Exercise, which is just like eat a bunch of food just because you're rewarding yourself for having exercised and not necessarily considering the calorie intake versus the actual calorie burn.
- [17:22]
Ben Greenfield
Right. So that GPT thing that you. Well, not the g. What did you say that thing was that people can use to. Because I've been using or people I know. The. The best one I've heard of is Fitness Pal to do all that stuff. Is this one better in terms of like. Like it's.
- [17:35]
Tony Robbins
Is it easier using GPT to. To count your calories or to tell you what it is that you're eating? Is not a diet or calorie accounting app per se. It's just you literally going into Jeep. So you. If you want to get super fancy, you could use something like Fitness Pal or something.
- [17:52]
Ben Greenfield
Okay.
- [17:53]
Tony Robbins
Some of them have image recognition technology built into them now to where you can photograph your food rather than. Because it is a pain to write it all down sometimes. And that's a good.
- [18:02]
Ben Greenfield
And go into the things like I had three ounces, I had six ounces. It's so frightening. Eventually it's just like to do all the little nuance things. Those are annoying. So you're saying going to GPT now you can actually scan your food in the chat GPT.
- [18:15]
Tony Robbins
GPT4O is the new version that has image recognition capabilities. Meaning. And same thing with the Google notebook that like you were doing an Instagram story before we started recording. I told people, hey, use the new Google Notebook LM to take your notes. So a couple of cool things. Like I was out hunting about three weeks ago and before I went out, I found one of my water filters that I was going to take out there with me and there were pieces missing. I'd tell there were pieces missing because there was like a tube that was supposed to come out of it and then a clamp on the end of that. So I took a picture of it and I uploaded it to GPT4. Oh. I said, tell me what is missing from this water filter. Tell me the brand, tell me where I can go download the manual and tell me where I can get the missing pieces. And I know people who are even doing things like working on their car engine and taking photographs using their phone and then uploading that to 4.0and it's telling them what needs fixing or where they can get certain parts, which is pretty cool. So you could literally take a picture breakfast, lunch and dinner and you could say like, hey, I want a protein carb fat ratio of 30% 40%, 30%. And I want to know if this meal is hitting that and I want to know what my total calorie count the rest of this day is going to be based on this photo I just sent you of the breakfast that I just ate. And it will tell you all of that stuff. The other one, the Notebook, what that will do is you can feed any PDF, any text, any. You know, I've even fed things like legal contracts into it. And here's an example. Let's say you have a big sticky legal contract or scientific document and you just don't have the time to take the deep dive into it and roll up your sleeves and interpret it all and have smoke coming out your ears trying to read through this thing. You can upload the document into Notebook LM and not only can you tell it to create like a user guide or a study summary or anything else that's super palatable for you based on what you uploaded, but there's even an audio function and I can upload. And I did this a couple of weeks ago. I uploaded a DNA test that one of my clients got and I told it to generate a discussion between two people about that person and what it is that they saw on that DNA test that could help that person improve. And it created like a mini podcast of two AI people who sounded very much like humans having a nice friendly chat about my client's gene results. And so if I'm going for a walk and I've got, let's say, a consultation call coming up with that client, I can listen to the AI talking about my client filling me in on what was going on in a way that could be way easier to understand than digging through the whole gene test. And that's all just based on PDF or image recognition technology is pretty cool.
- [20:44]
Ben Greenfield
Wow.
- [20:45]
Tony Robbins
We are living in convenient times. And I mean, don't get me wrong, you still got to double check and make sure AI didn't make mistakes because occasionally we'll still do things wrong. But it's still. It's pretty convenient.
- [20:56]
Ben Greenfield
That's amazing. So, like, what's your. You fascinate me. I tell you this. I don't. I keep on repeating myself. I know I sound like a broker record, but you do. Like, I. You meet a lot of people in this world, in this business, but you always have fascinated me from the minute I even, like, knew who you were because of all the, like, because you're not a doctor, you're not like, you're just, like, you're just some guy who has an insane amount of memory and the ability to take information and retain literally everything that you've ever seen, like saw, read. Like your brain is like, it's like, it's like a computer. Like, how do you even. I don't think it is that information in there.
- [21:33]
Tony Robbins
I don't think it is like a computer. I think it's more like the Arthur Conan Doyle character, Sherlock Holmes, who says to Watson at one point early in the book when they first meet, he says something like, after Watson tells him his name, Watson's name, he says, oh, I'm going to forget that. And Watson says, why? And he says, because the more things I have rolling around and clunking inside my head, the less I'm likely to be able to do a good job being a detective and sleuthing. Because I just want a clear mind. So I don't like to have my head jumbled around with facts. So there's two things that I do. The first is I keep a very clear head, meaning I will tend to ruminate on things, think about things. Wake up at 2am, I have notes, apps all over my phone with all of the little notes that I take right away to get them off of my plate and out of my head. So it's basically the idea of an ever living journal that goes along with you wherever you go. For me, all through college, it was like little paper journals that I keep in my pocket. Now it's just the notes app on my phone. So I'm constantly keeping a clear head so I'm not sitting here during this podcast trying to remember those three things that I promised, you know, three other people that I do later on today.
- [22:41]
Ben Greenfield
You put it right down.
- [22:42]
Tony Robbins
All those little things start to gum up the subconscious. So I put, I write everything down. So I keep very good notes on everything. And then second, I focus a lot on my category, right, which is health, fitness, longevity, biohacking, nutrition, whatever. And because I've been in this sector for like 20 years now, a big part of it too is just once you start seeing the same things over and over again, reading the same things over and over again, it's like grooving that part of your brain to where you asked me about politics or crypto or anything like that, I'm going to be a complete idiot. But because I spend a lot of time immersed in health and fitness, it's almost like osmosis, you know, long term osmosis. So there's something to be said for like if you're, you know, a Young person getting a career or something, like really rolling up your sleeves and telling yourself, hey, I'm going to be a pro in like 20 years and I'm just going to stick at this every day and learn as much as I can. If you really want to become like an expert in your field. So a big part of just not jumping around too much, but.
- [23:38]
Ben Greenfield
And you've been like, but it kind of, I feel like it's evolved. Like what did you start when you first started 20 years ago? What were you doing? Were you a trainer? Like a, like a personal trainer? Were you like a physical trainer? Is that what you did? What was the first thing you did?
- [23:50]
Tony Robbins
So. And I realize I still owe you an answer about the exercise blueprint piece, but I'll come back to that.
- [23:54]
Ben Greenfield
Did you write it down in your Google notebook or.
- [23:56]
Tony Robbins
No, I've got it in my head. Just don't let too many things.
- [23:59]
Ben Greenfield
Okay.
- [24:00]
Tony Robbins
Train wreck in my head. And I'll.
- [24:01]
Ben Greenfield
I have a few other things.
- [24:02]
Tony Robbins
You've got the exercise blueprint. We still got to finish these drinks.
- [24:05]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah. The ingredients.
- [24:06]
Tony Robbins
But I'll tell you how I got into this. First, I was not interested in exercise or fitness or physical sciences at all for the early majority of my life. I was homeschooled in North Idaho K through 12. Had very strict parents, didn't get out much, played violin for 13 years. I was president of the chess club. I like, would sit in my room and read fantasy fiction and write tales about princesses and orcs and dragons. I was a total nerd. I got into tennis when I was 14 and I, for some reason I was just really good with a racket in my hand and wound up playing for the local high school teams, playing for the usta, the United States Tennis Association. Got really good, got a really high ranking. Wound up walking onto the college tennis team.
- [24:54]
Ben Greenfield
Wow.
- [24:55]
Tony Robbins
And I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to major in at the time.
- [24:58]
Ben Greenfield
Which college by the way?
- [24:59]
Tony Robbins
Lcsc, Lewis Clark State College, NIA College in Lewiston, Idaho. And I transferred up to University of Idaho. I had started like eating healthy after being on a standard American diet most of my childhood. Like fast food hamburgers and take and bake pizza and macaroni and cheese and you know, just Standard American diet.
- [25:15]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [25:15]
Tony Robbins
And I had gotten interested in fitness like running up and down the hills behind my house and I got my first little pair of 10 pound dumbbells from the sporting goods place down the road. So I'd also started training and paying more attention to my diet So I was getting somewhat interested in this whole realm. And then, like, you know, three quarters of the student athletes at college, they were kinesiology or exercise science majors. So I was like, what the heck? I'll. I'll declare this as a major. And even though I got very little exposure to that during my largely classical Christian homeschooling education that didn't really have much of a focus in the physical sciences at all, I fell in love with all that stuff. Anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, biomechanics, organic chemistry, all of the science, like the hard science stuff. I loved it. And that surprise me. But I wound up getting so in love with that that I went premed. I took the MCATs. I actually did get accepted to six different medical schools and opted not to go to medical school. But all during college, I worked as a personal trainer. I worked as a nutritionist. I helped to manage the wellness center at University of Idaho. So I was immersed in this all through college. And then I got a job in hip and knee surgical sales after I got my master's degree in exercise physiology and biomechanics.
- [26:33]
Ben Greenfield
Oh, so you have a master's in it? So you have an education backing. It wasn't just like a human. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
- [26:38]
Tony Robbins
A pretty. Pretty. Pretty large amount of education in this as a background. But the reason that I took that job in hip and knee surgical sales was there were two MD PhD programs, one at Duke and one at UPenn, that I did not get into, that I really wanted to get into. So I thought, well, I'm gonna go work in the private sector for a while and see if I can have a better resume for applying to medical school, because my MCAT scores were good. But I just, you know, I don't want to. I don't say anything offensive, but I guess, is it, like a young white male at the time? I had kind of an uphill battle to get into some of the schools that I really wanted. That's not the only reason.
- [27:12]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [27:12]
Tony Robbins
That I. That does play a role.
- [27:14]
Ben Greenfield
So you didn't get into the school that you wanted, so you went. Yeah, that's why. And what school did you want? Duke. Which one?
- [27:19]
Tony Robbins
I was like Duke or UPenn? Yeah, I was super interested in both of those because I wanted to do medicine and research. And I got nine months into that job in hip and knee surgical sales, and I hated it. I hated being in hospitals. None of the doctors seemed to enjoy their lives or their existence. Nobody told me it would be a good idea for me to go to Medical school. I missed fitness, I missed nutrition. I didn't like standing there with the laser pointer showing how an orthopedic surgeon had to like put $40,000 overpriced knee and hip implants and the people who would have been better served through exercise and dietary interventions. And one day I just quit. And I walked into the gym across the street from the condo I was living in in Liberty Lake, Washington, and asked for a job at the Liberty Lake Athletic Club. And I got hired as the fitness manager there. And I had a good resume at the time just because, you know, I was loaded up with everything I'd done in college. And long story short is a year into that and managing their fitness center, I met up with a doctor who was interested in creating a one stop shop for sports medicine where we have like chiropractors and massage therapists and physical therapists. And I was going to be the director of sports performance, which I was super excited about. And so we opened this center and I operated that for five years. And during that time, I got voted as America's top personal trainer. This was in 2008.
- [28:38]
Ben Greenfield
You did, was there even a. Who even did that?
- [28:40]
Tony Robbins
The National Strength Conditioning association, which is the, the creme de la creme. Personal training search.
- [28:45]
Ben Greenfield
What's it called?
- [28:46]
Tony Robbins
The nsca.
- [28:47]
Ben Greenfield
So how did they even know? How did they even know you were.
- [28:50]
Tony Robbins
Nominated by a bunch of the local physicians? Because of the work we were doing with the government's Exercises Medicine initiative. So we were taking a lot of the patients and transforming them in our facility because we had like the best of the best stuff. We were doing blood analysis, calorimetry analysis, VO2 max analysis, high speed video cameras, blood work, nutrition coaching, testing. Like I had a, like this was way before all these fancy biohacking facilities, but I was kind of like early adopter of a lot of that stuff. And so that's what kind of thrust me into the limelight, that 2008 nomination. And that's when I started doing more podcasting and writing and more online coaching and advising and investing and a lot of what I do now. But that's kind of like, long story short, my journey of, you know, nerded out homeschooler in the backwoods of Idaho to really, you know, starting a, a big health and fitness business.
- [29:42]
Ben Greenfield
So then, so basically 2008, when things started to really take off for you, when did Instagram start? When did social media become something? What year?
- [29:50]
Tony Robbins
No clue.
- [29:50]
Ben Greenfield
2008.
- [29:51]
Tony Robbins
I mean, when I started my podcast, there was maybe a Hundred podcast tops and like five into the health and fitness category. There's like, you had to like code your RSS feed and submit it to Apple and wait two weeks and if it was over like 100 megabytes or something like that, it would break. And it was, it was wild, wild west of podcasting.
- [30:07]
Ben Greenfield
That's crazy. And then now, okay, are you shocked? Like, in the area of biohack, I feel like you're most known for the biohacking stuff. Right? Like, are you shocked at, like how popular you've become, you became in that world or you're not really shocked?
- [30:22]
Tony Robbins
The majority of my following for years was the triathlon and endurance sports world. I raced iron.
- [30:27]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [30:27]
Tony Robbins
And I did the world championships in Hawaii six times. I coached, I had, you know, clients all over the world. I, you know, was repped by or I repped a wetsuit company and a shoe company and a bike company and race for Team Timex. So I was actually kind of like a big name in the triathlon world.
- [30:44]
Ben Greenfield
And like endurance and like high performance.
- [30:46]
Tony Robbins
So I. Marathoning manuals and a lot of my early books were about triathlon training. And when I got out of triathlon, just because I, I got burnt out on that sport, I kind of just started to shift into what got me out of triathlon in the first place. Right. Like, burnt out, working out the wrong way, healthy on the outside, but not healthy on the inside. Started doing blood work and biomarker evaluations and realized, hey, there's a lot more to being healthy and living a long time than just like exercising your butt off and.
- [31:15]
Ben Greenfield
Right.
- [31:15]
Tony Robbins
Eating lean protein and egg whites.
- [31:17]
Ben Greenfield
Right, Exactly.
- [31:18]
Tony Robbins
So that's what kind of like got me down the road of like looking into what functional medicine is and naturopathic medicine and biohacking and recovery modalities and self quantification and all the things that I think now, if you piece them all together, can allow you to be a really well functioning person without just, you know, taking the exercise and the nutrition box.
- [31:37]
Ben Greenfield
Right. So basically how it now I understand more. So you kind of were really into the high performance fitness world. And then as you kind of got older and as your career kind of evolved, you kind of then got into more of the longevity stuff or like from. No, because actually went from high performance, how to train really hard, had to train really how to perfect the training. Then you got into like a lot of the crazy stuff. Like that's when I kind of recognized who you were. You were like trying out all sorts of wackadoo things.
- [32:07]
Tony Robbins
Methylating blue and laser lights and coffee enemas.
- [32:10]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah, all the things.
- [32:11]
Tony Robbins
And part of it too is like you just learn and you try. My podcast for the longest time was strictly a Q and A podcast. So I went from answering questions about like how do I bench press or how do I run a 5k to well, I've already answered those questions in episode number 82 or 80, so I'm going to answer this question about which side do you lay on when you do a coffee enema? And I've never done one, so I better go do these and figure out and reply to the question because it's almost like my audience kept me evolving by asking all these weird questions.
- [32:40]
Ben Greenfield
That makes sense.
- [32:40]
Tony Robbins
As podcasts got bigger and bigger and the information era blew in, now there's all these different biohackers and fitness enthusiasts and I still would get and do get asked. What do you think of this? What do you think of that? So it's like a constant evolution of not really trying to be weird or attention grabbing, but almost winding up doing that organically by replying to a bunch of weird questions, viral questions like the 12, 3:30 treadmill workout or whatever.
- [33:08]
Ben Greenfield
And it's fine though. But then I feel like you kind of like hit like you were doing a lot of that for a while and then like you kind of like leveled out. And now talking to you, even recently, you seem much more. And don't, don't be offended by this. I mean, this isn't a nice way, but more normal. Like you're more of a normal guy who does normal like you or really fit. But you're not like as intensely crazy about all the extreme extreme as you were maybe three or four years ago. Is that accurate?
- [33:34]
Tony Robbins
Well, it depends on your definition of extreme. I mean, I'm definitely not like is I. I was racing Spartan races and doing Ironmans, the bodybuilding.
- [33:40]
Ben Greenfield
That's true.
- [33:40]
Tony Robbins
That's kind of all that crazy extreme stuff. That wasn't what I'm talking about, do that anymore. I think probably though, you know, because I still get, you know, hired to shoot videos for people or, you know, to whatever, you know, do methylene blue tongue sticking out shots or whatever. And so there is a certain extent where, like, if you're an influencer, if you're in social media or if you're trying to be a pattern interrupt, you do have to step outside the box a little bit. Not totally like a talking head.
- [34:07]
Ben Greenfield
Totally. And you do all that. But what I mean is, like there was not A time. There was a big chunk of time where, like, I would scroll and see. Like, you would never be just like, I don't. It would always be something and like, unusual. And then I think. I think I met you really in. At the biohacking conference in London. Do you remember when that one. And I remember, like, when. When you weren't talking to people, I was like, oh, where's Ben? I wanted to ask you a question. You were like behind the stage, you had your legs up, you had this thing on your head. You remember, like, you were like getting into like, everything. Like, I felt like every second of your day was accounted for doing something that would be beneficial to your.
- [34:46]
Tony Robbins
I don't like to waste time. Yeah, I like, like that Oliver Berkman book, 4,000 weeks. Like you have 4,000 weeks to live.
- [34:51]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [34:52]
Tony Robbins
Like, I don't grasp at straws. Like, I mean, I just told you I'm a Christian. Like, I believe I'm going to live forever in eternity. And so I'm not trying to like, do it all in this life.
- [35:00]
Ben Greenfield
But.
- [35:01]
Tony Robbins
But I also don't like to waste time.
- [35:02]
Ben Greenfield
No.
- [35:02]
Tony Robbins
Like, But I can't even sit through a movie.
- [35:05]
Ben Greenfield
Right. Like, you're not interested in, like, small talk. You're like, what? Like, it's. Everything with you is like, every moment is accounted for.
- [35:10]
Tony Robbins
Like, like when even right now, like, I'm self conscious that like I just opening the kimono, like two minutes ago, I started thinking, have I told the audience anything? Like in the past five minutes be talking about myself? And so I'll start thinking that way because I'm like, I don't want to waste their time. You're not hearing and talk about sitting in his bed in Idaho reading fantasy fiction.
- [35:30]
Ben Greenfield
No, but I actually don't think it's. I think people would be curious, like, how. How you became so intensely, like, just knowledgeable to like such a crazy level. Like, I know if I ask you there's nothing really under the sun of health or fitness, you may not. You'll always give an answer that is way more detailed than anybody I've ever talked to in my life. Ever. It's. I. That's why I. And you may be. It's maybe your opinion, but people don't agree with you. But at least, like, there's like, I know that it was. There's something that you either read about it, thought about it, tried, like, you have experience with it.
- [36:05]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [36:06]
Ben Greenfield
So like. And by the way, you've given everybody. I'm still taking my notes. Okay. So now I understand how the evolution is. These guys came to give us an iv, by the way, so let them, like, put us into, like.
- [36:15]
Tony Robbins
Have you ever gotten hooked up to an IV while you're recording podcasts?
- [36:18]
Ben Greenfield
No.
- [36:19]
Tony Robbins
Try to keep conversation flow going.
- [36:20]
Ben Greenfield
No, this will be. This should be interesting.
- [36:22]
Tony Robbins
I've done it before. The only part that that sucks is if they miss a vein or something and then they start poking you, and.
- [36:27]
Ben Greenfield
That'Ll be really uncomfortable.
- [36:28]
Tony Robbins
Let's hope they're good. Should we usher them in?
- [36:31]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah, let's try. I mean, this is because of you. By the. We're going to be getting the. I think we're getting the NR N iv, which is by True Nagen. Have you had it before?
- [36:40]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. Long story short is you and I were both at an event for founders and executives, and it's called Founder Land, and they were doing IVs there, and I met one of the doctors at the after party and.
- [36:55]
Ben Greenfield
Oh, that's how.
- [36:56]
Tony Robbins
At some point we were doing this podcast and I said, we should get an iv.
- [36:58]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [36:59]
Tony Robbins
During the show. And then it just happened.
- [37:01]
Ben Greenfield
And next thing you know. Well, I've actually, I think I. Well, I got this IV one time before. It's like the NAD iv, but it's.
- [37:07]
Tony Robbins
Like nad, but easier. It's nicotinamide riboside to get less of, like, a flushing reaction and your gut doesn't flip, and it's better absorption and it's shorter with arguably very similar effects on things like sleep deprivation and energy and mitochondrial health. So.
- [37:22]
Ben Greenfield
Wow. You should be a spokesperson. I know. How long does it. How long does it actually last in your body, though, to get an nr?
- [37:30]
Tony Robbins
I don't know what the half life is.
- [37:32]
Ben Greenfield
Do you believe in, like. Do you get a lot of IVs? Are you. Are you like an IV person? Are they coming in or. Okay, cool.
- [37:39]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, I got a stem cell IV yesterday.
- [37:41]
Ben Greenfield
Yesterday?
- [37:42]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [37:42]
Ben Greenfield
Where at?
- [37:43]
Tony Robbins
Here at Joy Kong's office up in Malibu.
- [37:46]
Ben Greenfield
Really? Are you able to get this many IVs and be okay?
- [37:49]
Tony Robbins
We'll find out if any. If any veins bust open.
- [37:52]
Ben Greenfield
Oh, my God.
- [37:53]
Tony Robbins
I think I'll be okay. What kind of excess IVs can cause scarring of the vasculature if the needles are repeatedly placed in the same location over and over again. But the idea of, like, if you're using a different delivery portal, there's no reason that you can't get, like, stem cells one day and NAD one day in a multivitamin cocktail the next day.
- [38:12]
Ben Greenfield
So isn't also aren't these IVs really good for brain like cognition and focus and brain fog?
- [38:18]
Tony Robbins
NR ones?
- [38:19]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah, yeah, like, and also for the mitochondrial health.
- [38:22]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. As a matter of fact, my favorite stack for sleep deprivation is nr, nad, or nmn, which are all just like NAD precursors and creatine. Because when you're sleep deprived, two things happen. You get less ATP in the brain and the creatine, the phosphagen and creatine can help to replenish that. And then the NAD assists with the cellular repair mechanisms that should have occurred when you were sleep deprived. And so, yeah, I mean, coffee and energy drinks and all that stuff and kind of band aid. Sleep deprivation.
- [38:48]
Ben Greenfield
Right.
- [38:48]
Tony Robbins
Using about 10. Higher. Higher than what you'd use for strength and power, like 10 to 20 grams of creatine a day. And that will give you disaster pants if you take it all at once. So you could do like 4 or 5 gram portions spread throughout the day if you're sleep deprived. I wouldn't. You don't need to do this every day. And then nad, IV patch, oral.
- [39:04]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, wait, so that's a good, that's actually a good clip.
- [39:07]
Tony Robbins
Fantastic for sleep deprivation.
- [39:09]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, so say that one more time because I want to, I want to make sure people get that. So if you are sleep deprived, here is a cocktail that you should do that's very effective. Go ahead. Yeah, say it again.
- [39:19]
Tony Robbins
The nr if you're sleep deprived, then coffee, five hour energy, green tea with like all these central nervous system stimulus can kind of like short term jackie up. But NAD combined with creatine, that stack is incredible because it helps to simulate a lot of what you would have gotten during sleep ATP restoration in the brain and cellular repair mechanisms.
- [39:42]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, this is my question. Can you take NAD if I just took like a true Niagen supplement and a creatine. Creatine scoop? Yeah, that would work.
- [39:52]
Tony Robbins
Couple capsules. Although I recommend more than you'd usually take. So you take like four capsules of like the true Niagen and then you do 20 grams of the creatine, but you split that into four or five gram portions throughout the day.
- [40:03]
Ben Greenfield
Can't that bloat you to take that much creatine?
- [40:05]
Tony Robbins
That's why you wouldn't want to do it every day. But you also shouldn't be sleep deprived every day.
- [40:09]
Ben Greenfield
That's true.
- [40:10]
Tony Robbins
Deeper issues to address.
- [40:11]
Ben Greenfield
Are you not wearing any trackers anymore? Because of all the EMFs?
- [40:16]
Tony Robbins
I wear this ring.
- [40:16]
Ben Greenfield
Oh, you do?
- [40:17]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, I wear a ring. Rings don't produce an appreciable amount of EMF. Like a Class 3 Bluetooth signal is not a big like maybe if you had it next to your head like airpod inside your ear all the time. Some people say it affects red blood cell flow and can cause clumping or, you know, heating of tissue. But Bluetooth is way less of important of a fish to fry compared to like wifi and radio frequencies from phones, et cetera. So I use a cheapo. I actually just replaced it. My last one pooped out after six years. But I use a cheapo like $30 Timex watch and a ring and a blood glucose monitor.
- [40:51]
Ben Greenfield
Oh, so you do wear the blood.
- [40:52]
Tony Robbins
I do wear a blood glucose monitor. Why not? Because I don't know by this point after using one for two years what does and does not spike my blood glucose. But just because what gets measured gets managed. I'm less likely to like blow through a bunch of dark chocolate trail mix on an airplane if I know I gotta look at the levels later on.
- [41:08]
Ben Greenfield
I love that line, by the way.
- [41:09]
Tony Robbins
Or drink a 100 calorie cane sugar infused caramel latte. High protein iced coffee.
- [41:14]
Ben Greenfield
This one made me let me slay's.
- [41:15]
Tony Robbins
Gonna hate me with false advertising on the front of it.
- [41:18]
Ben Greenfield
Why?
- [41:18]
Tony Robbins
It says lactose free energy, but it's got skim milk in it. However, they added lactase enzymes so the lactase enzymes digest the skim milk.
- [41:25]
Ben Greenfield
Oh my God, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get fired. Just kidding.
- [41:28]
Tony Robbins
It's, it's not that bad of a. Like that good that they put lactase in there along with the skim milk. I would rather like if I.
- [41:35]
Ben Greenfield
This one look, if I wave a.
- [41:37]
Tony Robbins
Magic wand, I'd rather they be using regular milk because all the studies on the benefits of dairy tend to be much stronger with full fat dairy compared to low fat or fat free dairy.
- [41:47]
Ben Greenfield
Right.
- [41:48]
Tony Robbins
Full fat free dairy, especially for the metabolic function, for the satiety, for brain function and for bone health. If you go with full fat instead of low fat or fat free. So it's kind of like back to eggs. I'd rather you eat eggs with the egg yolk rather than egg whites. I'd rather you have chicken with the chicken skin and the gristle and the bone than have just pure skim milk. It's, it's more than just calories. And obviously if we're talking about calories, yeah, it's skim milk. But there is a hundred calories in this and they do use artifact or they do use low calorie sweeteners looks like stevia and. Yeah, so. So if I'm looking at ingredient label, I do like to see stevia or allulose or D. Ribose or erythritol. If people's guts can handle a sugar alcohol, then like acosulfamine, potassium or sucralose. But when I'm looking at an ingredient label, this is actually pretty clean. I would give this like a, like an 8 on a 1 to 10 scale. But I would say if you're concerned about like fat free milk and isolating the proteins from the fats, you know, like a, like a, either a nut milk, like an almond milk or a coconut milk or an oat milk without the cane sugar added or just like using whole milk would be a little bit better.
- [42:57]
Ben Greenfield
But isn't that better than having. So by the way, slate, Ben said 8 out of 10, so that's very good.
- [43:03]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, it is. It is good.
- [43:04]
Ben Greenfield
And for the average Joe, who's not Ben, who is a fitness fanatic, not health, you know, health phenom, it's a really good thing to have because at least it's getting 20 grams of protein into somebody who otherwise would not be having that.
- [43:19]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [43:19]
Ben Greenfield
And it's better than having, you know, a milkshake at McDonald's.
- [43:22]
Tony Robbins
Right. I would drink this, honestly, if I weren't myself a little bit lactose intolerant. And I know what if I can have dairy if it's fermented. And this is the case for many people. If you ferment the dairy, if you do like a good fermented yogurt or a kefir or those really be the two primary delivery mechanisms for, for fermented yogurt. You can do better if you're lactose intolerant. You can also do better on milks that have lower amounts of lactose sugar, like goat milk, camel milk, et cetera. But it's. What did you say goat milk? Like a lot of. I raise goats, so I. We do have goat milk.
- [43:55]
Ben Greenfield
And how about camel? You said camel milk.
- [43:58]
Tony Robbins
It's a thing. You can find it. Yeah.
- [44:00]
Ben Greenfield
Stop it.
- [44:01]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [44:02]
Ben Greenfield
Okay. Okay.
- [44:03]
Tony Robbins
Yak milk.
- [44:04]
Ben Greenfield
Where do you buy camel milk?
- [44:06]
Tony Robbins
The camel milk company out of California is where I've gotten it in the past.
- [44:10]
Ben Greenfield
From a camel?
- [44:11]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. It's from a camel. Yeah. Surprising. Do you drink it comes from a camel? I have, but it's also really expensive.
- [44:19]
Ben Greenfield
I wouldn't. How much is a. How much is a liter of camel?
- [44:22]
Tony Robbins
No, because I don't really buy anymore. But it is Better for the body. Why cow's milk? Because of a few reasons. Lower amounts of lactose, a smaller protein that's more bioavailable than the larger protein found in cow's milk. And also, a lot of cows are bred now for a 1 protein instead of a 2 protein. So when you see at the grocery store that you can buy a 2 milk, that is milk that tends to produce a little bit less of an immune response in the body. And camel's milk and goat's milk are naturally more like an A2. They have less of the A1 based.
- [44:53]
Ben Greenfield
Protein because goats milk. Goat milk. I see all the time. So are you suggesting to people that they should maybe switch from maybe even their almond milk or their oat milk to a goat milk? Would that be helpful?
- [45:04]
Tony Robbins
The nice thing about nut milks, again, if you are adding a bunch of, you know, cane sugar to them and thickeners and fillers, is that a lot of people who just don't do well with milk in general do better with that. And they're lower calorie. In most cases. There's some that are higher calorie. Like, I think macadamia nut milk is the highest.
- [45:22]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [45:22]
Tony Robbins
But one issue is, if you want to be careful with your calorie count, a nut milk is a better substitute compared to a dairy milk.
- [45:30]
Ben Greenfield
But how about the carragenes in them and all that stuff like that?
- [45:33]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, yeah. And you. You can see on this, on this. Can they say no carrageenan. Right. That is a filler that can upset a lot of people's stomachs. So. Yeah. And it says lactose free, sucralose free, erythritol free. But I. I don't want to throw them under the bus when I said false advertising. It's technically, they have an enzyme in their lactase that allows you to digest the lactose. So it's not lactose free.
- [45:55]
Ben Greenfield
Right.
- [45:55]
Tony Robbins
But it's more like they have the carrier agent in there that helps digest lactose. So. So technically, by the time it gets into your stomach, it is lactose free.
- [46:03]
Ben Greenfield
Okay. That. Okay.
- [46:04]
Tony Robbins
Theoretically.
- [46:05]
Ben Greenfield
Thank you. They're gonna. They're gonna hate me now for even bringing on this podcast that I don't care about. But here, this one is about.
- [46:11]
Tony Robbins
But this one has erythritol in it, which can be a little bit like, if people have, like, small intestine bacterial.
- [46:16]
Ben Greenfield
Overgrowth from my fridge. I don't know.
- [46:17]
Tony Robbins
I don't know. It's not bad, though. It's oxygenated. Yeah.
- [46:20]
Ben Greenfield
Okay. This is the next one. This is magic mind.
- [46:22]
Tony Robbins
I love hydrogen infused water.
- [46:23]
Ben Greenfield
That's good, that's good. I got that for you. Okay. And then these magic minds. I want you. I. I'm blind so I can't even read the ingredients. I do know there's amazing stuff.
- [46:32]
Tony Robbins
My carrots. Let me see it.
- [46:33]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, good. See?
- [46:34]
Tony Robbins
All right. All your pretty small so magic mine, New Lixer Matcha green tea agave. And it's a very small bottle. So a lot of people see agave and they'll be like, oh, that's just a hundred percent for a sweetener. And agave does have a higher amount of fructose in it. The thing with fructose, fruit juices, fruit sugars, et cetera is a lot of people have vilified them. You know the idea that fructose is a poison, I think Dr. Robert Lustig introduced that concept in his book about calories.
- [47:03]
Ben Greenfield
Do you believe that though?
- [47:04]
Tony Robbins
So it is true that fructose can elevate triglycerides and contribute to non alcoholic fatty liver disease, but only in a case in which the liver and muscle glycogen stores are already topped off. That's at which point fructose starts to spill over and cause issues. So if I'm burning 2,000 calories a day and I'm drinking 2,000 calories a day of coke and that's all that I'm drinking, I would theoretically not elevate my triglycerides or get a lot of the issues associated with fructose because I'm at a net calorie balance. I wouldn't advise it because you're also going to be like, you know, you're going to have low nutrient density and you're not getting enough protein, etc. If you're just drinking coke. But if people see agave or fructose or you know, high fructose corn syrup, sometimes there's, there's some harsh chemicals and things like that used to make that. So that, that's, that's an a whole separate side issue. But the idea of fructose in general is that if you're a physically active person and you're not overeating and you're having, you know, fruit juices, you know, fruit in a blender, agave in a drink or whatever, it's usually not an issue unless you're eating too many calories, at which point fructose can become an issue.
- [48:07]
Ben Greenfield
Right. I mean, this is the whole conversation about like people are like, fruit does not get you Fat, please. I mean, this nonsense of fruit's not going to get you fat. Yeah, if you eat nine. If you eat, like everything else, plus you eat nine pounds of grapes, like maybe I do sometimes. That can be not the greatest.
- [48:22]
Tony Robbins
Right. And if the fruit is sweet and has a high glycemic index, which grapes do, long term, you're getting so many insulin surges due to that high sugar content that you could create a long term state of insulin insensitivity. And then you get some appetite control issues, you get some metabolic issues that long term could cause problems. Even if you're not overeating the grapes or fruit, you're just eating enough to spike your blood sugar repeatedly throughout the day.
- [48:49]
Ben Greenfield
So how long did the stem cell one take yesterday?
- [48:52]
Tony Robbins
Like an hour.
- [48:53]
Ben Greenfield
And what kind of stem cells?
- [48:54]
Tony Robbins
Well, they. The first thing she did was remove a bunch of my blood and ozonate it and then inject that ozonated blood back into my body.
- [49:01]
Ben Greenfield
What?
- [49:02]
Tony Robbins
Which is kind of like an antiviral, antibacterial, oxygen, acid blood. Then she did laser lights, which sounds kind of funky and weird.
- [49:11]
Ben Greenfield
I was telling you that light helps.
- [49:13]
Tony Robbins
To direct the stem cells or activate the stem cells using photonic absorption of the light. So they're more efficacious. Then after all that and a few other little things like hydrogen water and some peptides, et cetera, then she did the stem cells as the icing on the cake.
- [49:29]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, so how was that different than our friend Dr. Khan's stem cells back home? Back in.
- [49:36]
Tony Robbins
Well, if you get stem cells in the US they're usually not expanded, so that means that they haven't grown them to increase the amount of mesenchymal stem cells, which are the active stem cells that would theoretically be rejuvenative or have some type of anti aging qualities. And if you go MUSE stem cells, I don't know if those fall into the category of expanded cells, but that's a brand new form of stem cells that not a lot of people know about. It's a multilinear lineage. Undifferentiated stem cell extract is what I believe MUSE stands for. Multilineage undifferentiated stem cell extract. And the reason that that's interesting is because normally stem cells called ISPC stem cells have a high mesenchymal stem cell count, but they also have very low histocompatibility, meaning a lot of people have an inflammatory or an immune response that can be unhealthy or dangerous or very uncomfortable for people. And the MUSE cells do have a High amount of histocompatibility, meaning if you were to get an infusion with them or an injection into a joint, there's a very low likelihood that you're going to feel crappy afterwards. But they have a very high amount of healing capacity. Issue is, you do have to travel internationally and they're expensive. However, from what I understand, they require fewer expansions than a normal expanded stem cell. And every time you expand the stem cell lineage, you run the risk of mutations, you run the risk of impurities, and you run the risk of them causing issues in patient in which they're injected. So if you get stem cells in the US they're unexpanded, but they're also arguably a little bit safer, unless you're getting something like, let's say, immune cell.
- [51:27]
Ben Greenfield
You mean you're talking about it's safer.
- [51:29]
Tony Robbins
Internationally or safer domestically if you're concerned about histocompatibility. Because the FDA is pretty strict about how stem cells are regulated. Actually, I don't think they're technically regulated by the fda, but they're. They're considered to be almost like a pharmaceutical drug or they're treated a little bit like one. They're not quite classified as a drug, even though they're trying to classify them as a drug. But there's so much regulation in the US that you do have a lower risk of side effect issues, but also a lower stem cell count. You're getting less of the good stuff, arguably. The question is how much less of the good stuff for it to be an issue. Now, what I did was simply a stem cell infusion. This is an anti aging or longevity or brain health play, right? Stem cells straight into the bloodstream. They go throughout the body. It's like a shotgun approach. If you were to go to, let's say, Dr. Like you just mentioned, Dr. Khan, like, he has clinics in Cabo and Dubai and Toronto. He will do stem cell infusions, but he also does injections into different joints using ultrasound guided imaging. And this is something you can do for like back treatment or a knee treatment or shoulder treatment. And even though you can also do that in the US the idea of regenerative medicine using safe expanded stem cells overseas is a good idea, but it's going to be a lot more expensive and inconvenient than doing it in the US So there's benefits to both. And I bounce back and forth. I've done international stem cell treatments, I've done domestic. If you're literally just in it for anti aging and you want to do like, you know, like the doctor I was with yesterday, Dr. Joy Kong, she's like 53 years old and she looks like she's 40. And she's been doing quarterly stem cell infusions, so every three months for like eight years or something like that. And that's, you know, that's not something out of the reach of someone who just wanted to go to a clinic and get a stem cell infusion every quarter.
- [53:16]
Ben Greenfield
How much is it?
- [53:17]
Tony Robbins
I don't know.
- [53:18]
Ben Greenfield
Of course not.
- [53:19]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, yeah. But I know if you were to go overseas and do the full meal deal, like the super duper fancy stuff, and you were to get like gene therapy and T cell therapy and stem cell therapy, that's the whole anti aging package that a deal does. And I think that's 50k.
- [53:32]
Ben Greenfield
But it gets these IVs though, right? You get the IVs with that.
- [53:36]
Tony Robbins
If you're doing stem cells, you want them to go into a really stress free, low inflammation environment. So everything from like eating a really clean diet, avoiding alcohol, you know, grounding and earthing and exercise, but not too much, and you know, avoiding toxins in your food and you know, they're like really babying your body before and after is better because essentially, if you think about it, you just injected a whole bunch of fragile new baby cells into your body. And so you don't want to go like, have a couple old fashions afterwards or something like that.
- [54:04]
Ben Greenfield
Right. So basically you can't drink. But you said also like easy exercise, you don't want to stress your body is basically your point, right?
- [54:11]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. And you know, th. This, this kind of hearkens back to the idea of like the Goldilocks zone of exercise. Right. There's a researcher named Dr. James O'Keefe and he's identified that if you exceed about 75 minutes per week of vigorous intensity exercise, 150 per week of moderate intensity exercise, the potential for plaque accumulation, atherosclerosis and inflammation begins to exceed the benefits of the exercise. And there's a lot of people, like people who are doing CrossFit every day or training for an Ironman or a marathon or whatever who are definitely exceeding those numbers. So you wouldn't want to be over training, you would want to be over drinking, you wouldn't want to have tons of exposure to like, you know, EMF and WI fi and stress and, you know, all these unhealthy things, especially if you're focusing on stem cell therapy.
- [54:55]
Ben Greenfield
So do you, have you seen any kind of benefit by you Doing this. How often are you doing these types of. This is not stem cells. This is not. It's an NR Niagen.
- [55:03]
Tony Robbins
I can pretend they're stem cells just to be.
- [55:05]
Ben Greenfield
Just be cool. Yeah. How often have you done the stem cells and do you see any benefit? Have you seen any benefit?
- [55:13]
Tony Robbins
I have probably done like 20 stem cell therapies, everything from joints to infusions. And I don't know what 42 year old Ben would be like not having done those. So I don't really have a good comparison.
- [55:28]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [55:29]
Tony Robbins
But I can tell you that I feel really good. I don't have a lot of like the aging issues that it seems like a lot of my friends are having to deal with. I feel like I've maintained a great amount of youthfulness and I would attribute some of that to the stem cells. I've been able to fix some worn and torn joints, like a knee with stem cells. And I mean, I feel like I'm 18 years old. So I feel pretty good.
- [55:49]
Ben Greenfield
You know, it's funny, I would. I'm going to say that you look younger now than you did when I first met you even.
- [55:54]
Tony Robbins
There you go.
- [55:54]
Ben Greenfield
But I don't know why that is. It's like, I think it's a everything or maybe it's just genetics.
- [55:59]
Tony Robbins
I think a lot of this stuff just like anything in the biohacking or the health, it stacks. Right. Like I go in the sunshine, but not too much UVA and I put on good clean sunscreen. If I'm going to do that. I use red light therapy. I do if I'm going to have a high UVA exposure. And now I recently did a podcast about this. Toxins, poor air, bright overhead lights, airline radiation, sunlight coming in through a window or it's blocking some of the uvb. All of these things dictate that a small amount of low SPF sunscreen is not a bad idea a lot of the time, especially for fragile thin skin like the face. So I've been using. I have sunscreen on right now. Like I've been using a lot more of it. And I use the Young Goose products basically every two months. I use their anti aging package. It's like six different bottles plus sunscreen. So it's like a cleanser, moisturizer, serum. And those are all based on peptides. They've got a bunch of transdermally bioavailable peptides. And that's probably, I would say the. It's made the biggest impact on my skin health is when I started Using those products.
- [56:56]
Ben Greenfield
Well, you look really good.
- [56:57]
Tony Robbins
Thanks.
- [56:58]
Ben Greenfield
So, like, what, hey, what other things would you say is good for your overall youthfulness? Skin?
- [57:04]
Tony Robbins
Well, I do.
- [57:05]
Ben Greenfield
Or how about this is your brother. Do you mean brothers and sisters?
- [57:07]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. Do they look like two brothers and two sisters?
- [57:10]
Ben Greenfield
Do they have your skin?
- [57:11]
Tony Robbins
I would say I'm self conscious, like comparing myself to my brothers and sisters. I think my skin has aged less than theirs possibly, but I don't know.
- [57:21]
Ben Greenfield
Have you gotten stem cells in your skin?
- [57:22]
Tony Robbins
Thorough analysis of side by side analysis.
- [57:24]
Ben Greenfield
Well, maybe you should.
- [57:25]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, I have had my skin treated with stem cells also. Yeah.
- [57:29]
Ben Greenfield
Has that worked?
- [57:30]
Tony Robbins
I think it does make a difference. I think that if you're looking at beauty using good, clean skincare products and taking advantage of the newer developments and things like peptide absorption for skin health is a good idea. So I like that. The company, for example, Young Goose, is one that I use. Although I found out from Joy Kong last night that she's now making skin cream. I've got a couple in my backpack that she puts umbilical stem cells and peptides into. I even ask her how much it costs. It's probably like the world's most expensive skin cream.
- [57:57]
Ben Greenfield
Can I have one of them?
- [57:58]
Tony Robbins
But it, but I have it and she's just up the road. I would give it to you, but she told me that I'm supposed to do like a before, after and use the two different bottles for a month and then.
- [58:08]
Ben Greenfield
Well, you can't look any younger. Now your name could actually be Benjamin Button because you literally look like you're like 22.
- [58:14]
Tony Robbins
Benjamin Greenfeld or Benjamin Button.
- [58:16]
Ben Greenfield
Yes.
- [58:16]
Tony Robbins
And then a clay mask once a week combined with red light therapy daily. I think red light therapy for collagen and elastin for the face is fantastic. The clay mask helps to draw out toxins, moisturizes. I do a derma roller before I do the clay mask. So I'm getting some of that dermal abrasion. I think if I were to go to a beauty clinic and do a microneedling protocol, that would be better than derma rolling. But I don't really have the time or the desire to do that. So.
- [58:39]
Ben Greenfield
Wait, hold on. You're way too fast. God, I gotta get my back. Okay, so you're telling me you do a clay mask. How often?
- [58:46]
Tony Robbins
Once a week.
- [58:47]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, which brand are you using that?
- [58:48]
Tony Robbins
Alitora? All the way down to like, it's got like six day old baby goat derived colostrum in it. Like you read the ingredient label and you're like, you kidding me? Like just crazy stuff, colostrum and all these different like antioxidants and nutrients. Like face food. So I put that on my face. I don't know, I think it's probably like around 50 bucks for a, like a little.
- [59:09]
Ben Greenfield
Think of it.
- [59:10]
Tony Robbins
Can of it. Yeah.
- [59:10]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, so wait, you put the clay mask on and then you put the red light on top for how long?
- [59:16]
Tony Robbins
20 minutes.
- [59:17]
Ben Greenfield
Okay.
- [59:17]
Tony Robbins
And then I actually walk around for a little while longer and just let the clay dry. Just so I'm doing my thing and I go shower it off.
- [59:22]
Ben Greenfield
And that's one's okay?
- [59:23]
Tony Robbins
Yep.
- [59:24]
Ben Greenfield
Okay. Give me some other stuff you do.
- [59:25]
Tony Robbins
For your skin in addition to the clay mask. I do a scrub once a week. So twice per week my skin is getting abrased. Once with the derma roller plus the clay mask, once with the scrub. You wouldn't want to get skin turnover all the time because then you're just going to wear away the skin layers too quickly and have a very, very fragile face. But scrub once a week, clay mask, once a week with the derma roller, Young Goose products, the moisturizer, toner serum, their whole suite. Once in the morning, once in the evening. And then I probably had stem cells on my face three times.
- [59:55]
Ben Greenfield
Three times. Did Dr. Khan do it?
- [59:57]
Tony Robbins
Everything I'm saying is nowhere near what you know, there's like biohackers like freaking Brian Johnson who are doing the full laser resurfacing. Crazy.
- [60:03]
Ben Greenfield
I was going to ask you about him though.
- [60:05]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [60:05]
Ben Greenfield
Because finish what you're going to say, then I'm going to ask you about him. So then did you do with Dr. Kahn the stem cells on your face?
- [60:11]
Tony Robbins
No, I did that with Dr. Adelson. I did Dr. Adelson's full body stem cell procedure. I've done that twice in Park City, Utah. And they go toe to head. They, they do literally hair, skin, nails, genitals, every joint up and down the back. And I mean you're like, you're literally under anesthetic induced surgery for like four hours and they do everything.
- [60:32]
Ben Greenfield
I remember you were Talking to that Dr. Adelson at the biohacking conference in London about this whole stem cell. That was like in nine. That was in 2020 or something. You did that, right?
- [60:43]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [60:44]
Ben Greenfield
And you did that again?
- [60:45]
Tony Robbins
I've done it twice, yep.
- [60:47]
Ben Greenfield
Why? Why, why do you need to do it twice?
- [60:49]
Tony Robbins
Well, as you age, you do decrease your bioavailable stem cell pool. The first time that I did it, he used my own stem cells he tapped my hips and used my own bone marrow and made like a bone marrow soup with stem cells and then injected that into all my joints, skin, everything. And then he came out with a new protocol in which he uses umbilical stem cells. And because of the reasons I was talking about earlier, you get a little bit less of like an immune response cytokine inflammatory response to those who faster. And I wanted to see what that second protocol that he does was like. So I went down there and did it again. Both times that I've done it, like you feel kind of like you got hit by a truck for a few days because you're kind of sore and you got everything injected and then within a couple of weeks you start to feel like Superman. You recover faster, your erections are better, your skin looks better. Like your hair, skin, nails, everything grows faster. So it definitely turns back clock.
- [61:42]
Ben Greenfield
And how much is that?
- [61:43]
Tony Robbins
Like if you're getting full, that's 70,000 to do. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a pretty big procedure.
- [61:49]
Ben Greenfield
And how long does it last? I know you did it twice, but how long does it do you have?
- [61:53]
Tony Robbins
I mean, theoretically the benefits would last for your life, but I would say, you know, if you doing this a full on anti aging play, this would be something you could do like every four or five years. You don't have to do it. I mean, if you did it just once, you'd see huge benefits in turning back the clock.
- [62:07]
Ben Greenfield
So how long apart did you do Both treatment?
- [62:09]
Tony Robbins
About five years.
- [62:10]
Ben Greenfield
Five years?
- [62:11]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. Yeah.
- [62:12]
Ben Greenfield
Does Dr. Khan do that one too?
- [62:13]
Tony Robbins
He doesn't do the full body one. Dr. Allison's one of the only guys I know of in the world who specializes in because it's a pretty intensive procedure and there's two doctors working on you at the same time. And it's kind of, it's kind of one of those things where, hey, let's just shotgun everything. And not a lot of doctors will do that, but Dr. Khan is very good at joints. He's very good at back. He also does, like I said, gene therapy. T killer cell therapy.
- [62:35]
Ben Greenfield
What is gene therapy really?
- [62:36]
Tony Robbins
Does like a vagal nerve block where he resets your nervous system within a injection into the vagus nerve. Like he has some cool tricks up his sleeve that you can't do in the States so you can travel internationally and get.
- [62:46]
Ben Greenfield
What does that do though, what you just said?
- [62:49]
Tony Robbins
Which one?
- [62:50]
Ben Greenfield
The one where you like the vagus nerve.
- [62:52]
Tony Robbins
The vagus nerve is the nerve that kind of snakes through your Whole body innervates the pacemaker cells of your heart. It helps you to manage stress. If it's well toned, there are things like chanting, singing, humming, gargling, cold water, face dunks, even electrical vagus nerve stimulators you can hold up to your neck. All of work to specifically increase your heart rate variability. Like lower stress by, by toning the vagus nerve and increasing your ability to have good balance between your, your fight or flight nervous system and your rest or digest nervous system. That's basically how addressing your vagus nerve can have benefit. Lower stress improves digestion, improves cardiovascular function, improves focus, et cetera, like that. That's the benefits of the vagus nerve. The more stress that you're under, the more likely it is that you have poor vagal nerve tone or poor nervous system balance. Now, if you wanted to just say, okay, I'm going to roll up my sleeves and use the big guns on this thing, that's where you could literally go to a doctor. And this would be normally something for like extreme PTSD or trauma or just stress that someone cannot manage at all, that won't go away. That you would do this. You wouldn't normally just like wander into a doctor and have them jam a needle right behind your carotid artery.
- [64:00]
Ben Greenfield
Right.
- [64:01]
Tony Robbins
Because it's a delicate procedure and often because there's some throat swelling involved, you do one side one day, then you wait a couple days or at least a day to do the other side. But you're supposed to do both sides.
- [64:10]
Ben Greenfield
Is it dangerous?
- [64:11]
Tony Robbins
It's also known as a stellate ganglion nerve block. It could be dangerous if the person doing it. It's kind of like if you would get a brain surgery, you'd preferably want the surgeon who's done like thousands of them versus the person who every once in a while does them. Adil does a lot of them. Um, another doctor, Dr. Matt Cook in San Jose, he does them. Dr. Avi Her Herskovich in, also in. He's in San Francisco. He does them. So there's a few people you can go to to get them done. And you sit up after having had the injection and you feel like you've like smoked a joint and had a glass of wine all at once and your stress levels just melt away. And it feels like that for at least a couple of weeks.
- [64:45]
Ben Greenfield
Just a couple of weeks.
- [64:46]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. But think about this. If you open that window, it's almost like ketamine therapy for addiction. Right? Like if you do ketamine therapy and you realize after ketamine therapy, you've got a window for a few days where if you avoid that thing that you were addicted to, which is easier to do after the ketamine therapy, then you can break that addictive cycle. And it's kind of like with stress. If you do a procedure like that and your body suddenly receives the message that it's safe and downregulates the sympathetic nervous system, it's going to allow you to be able to be less stressed even after the acute effects wear off. Does that make sense?
- [65:21]
Ben Greenfield
It does. But eventually it comes back though. Unless it's managed.
- [65:25]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, you're not get like anything. It's not gonna be a band aid.
- [65:27]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah. Like it sounds like all of these things are just like they're short lived, they're short term.
- [65:32]
Tony Robbins
Like if you get on Ozempic and you're gonna control your calories and you're gonna lose weight, but once you get off it, if you haven't developed healthy eating patterns during that time or use the Ozempic as training wheels to do so, say, oh, this is what it feels like to not be hungry. This is what it feels like to sit down and not eat all the food. Or this is what it feels like to have one plate at the buffet. Because I don't feel like I need more than. If you were to wean off a drug like that. You would theoretically, if you, if you built the mindfulness during, get to the point where you'd use it as training wheels and then you don't need it anymore. You know, it's like even like my wife and I did freaking like MDMA couples therapy. Right. And that was the training wheels that it took for us to like really have long, deep, meaningful, honest, transparent discussions which we now have without drugs. Yeah. And it's like sometimes I don't think every couple, you know, for the rest of all time needs to go out and do MDMA therapy to have honest discussions. But my wife and I were at the point where we just developed, you know, almost like a barrier to doing that. And now we can have great dates and sit in bed and talk for a long time. We don't have to like go use MDMA beforehand.
- [66:35]
Ben Greenfield
Right. It was like a lot of these.
- [66:37]
Tony Robbins
Things, like training wheels.
- [66:38]
Ben Greenfield
No, it makes perfect sense. That's actually a really true point. I know a lot of people, a lot of people, my friends, who swear by that in terms of, for couples therapy, because it gives you an opportunity to like open up or it loses your inhibitions that you would otherwise have after so many years of doing the same thing over and over again. Exactly when did you guys do that? Like how long ago?
- [66:59]
Tony Robbins
We did it six times over the course of three years. Last time we did it was six years ago.
- [67:06]
Ben Greenfield
Really?
- [67:06]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [67:07]
Ben Greenfield
And it made a big difference.
- [67:08]
Tony Robbins
Pretty big difference. And I'm cautious saying that because I don't want a bunch of couples who are having issues feel like they need to go do drugs or plant medicines together to get over that barrier. If I could. It was very difficult. Kind of like what would I look like with stem cells versus without? It's very difficult to rewind the clock. But I think we could have made an even more concerted effort to just, you know, talk through our problems and have honest discussions without that. But that's just the way that things panned out. But I don't, like, I'm. I have twin 16 year old sons, right. Like I will be coaching them and training them and talking with them many times once they do get engaged and they're preparing for the months leading up to marriage to talk with them about how to have honest, open discussions with their significant other and how to have, you know, evening prayer meetings like my wife and I have now, and how to do quarterly retreats like my wife and I do now. So that.
- [67:59]
Ben Greenfield
What do you mean? What are you doing?
- [68:00]
Tony Robbins
So that hopefully they and their wife don't get, you know, like what? Like we did like 14 years into our relationship and realize, oh, we have a lot between us because I mean, I don't know about you, but my parents didn't like train me that much to be married. A lot of this stuff I just had to figure out on my own. So for me, I want to do a better job training my sons on what to expect during marriage and how to navigate discussions and living with another person, hopefully for the rest of your life.
- [68:26]
Ben Greenfield
Did you date a lot? Because you said you were very much like you were homeschooled until all these years. Did you, did you have a big chunk of time that you dated people before you got married or did you wife one of your.
- [68:37]
Tony Robbins
I probably dated less than the average normal traditional public school kid just because there weren't a lot of girls around.
- [68:45]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah, I was going to say prom.
- [68:46]
Tony Robbins
Prom was very lonely.
- [68:47]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [68:47]
Tony Robbins
Dancing with myself.
- [68:48]
Ben Greenfield
Did you go to prom even?
- [68:49]
Tony Robbins
I probably had like eight girlfriends before I. Well, I met my wife in second grade Sunday school, so I have known her for a really long time. But I didn't start like going out with her until senior, junior year of college and up till that point, we'd, you know, been hanging out for a couple of years and been best friends before we even fell in love and started to, to go out together. And she went to like a local classical Christian school called Logos. And also by the nature of going to a classical Christian school, also, you know, fooled around less, didn't have a lot of boyfriends, et cetera. So we, we relatives through the general population probably had fewer partners than, than the average person. And we didn't have sex at all until we got married.
- [69:31]
Ben Greenfield
You didn't?
- [69:32]
Tony Robbins
No, no, that, that was just something that we committed to each other. And I promised to her parents when I asked them if I could marry her. And I wanted to stay true to my word, so.
- [69:44]
Ben Greenfield
Really?
- [69:45]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. Which was really hard.
- [69:47]
Ben Greenfield
Oh my God. I can't believe.
- [69:49]
Tony Robbins
Like a year and a half of torture.
- [69:50]
Ben Greenfield
But wait, so you dated for payoff was great. Yeah. I was going to ask you, did it turn out okay?
- [69:56]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [69:57]
Ben Greenfield
Oh, so for a year and a half you guys dated. Then did you guys do anything? Like how does it work when you have no sex? Are you doing nothing else? Are you kissing even? Like, what are you doing? Everything. But like, what do you do?
- [70:08]
Tony Robbins
We got maybe to second base, so.
- [70:11]
Ben Greenfield
And then you guys got married?
- [70:13]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [70:14]
Ben Greenfield
By the way, that's become a big thing now. Have you heard about this whole celeb. This, this whole celibacy trend that's become hot right now? Have you heard about this?
- [70:23]
Tony Robbins
No. What is it?
- [70:24]
Ben Greenfield
I don't know. Like, my friend Emily told me about it. I don't know what it is.
- [70:27]
Tony Robbins
You mean like guys going into monk mode and just like living in their basement and working out?
- [70:30]
Ben Greenfield
I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to ask her again. It was like something that became like trendy for like a hot minute. I don't know if it's still happening.
- [70:38]
Tony Robbins
To be honest, but celibacy, like waiting until you're married to have sex, like that definition of celibacy.
- [70:42]
Ben Greenfield
I don't, I don't know if it was a way into. I don't know if it was waiting until you got married or if it was. It was a trend where people just weren't having sex. Yeah, I got to find out.
- [70:50]
Tony Robbins
I mean, the reason I think it's a good idea is the same reason that I think just like, think serially dating or treating sex as a casual event is potentially risky for long term relationship and societal stability. I think that if you set up sex as something sacred and you set up marriage as something sacred. And you don't get into marriage having developed the habit of as soon as something a partner does annoys you, you can ditch them and move on to the next person or try on some new flavors. Then you're going to be more likely to commit to a long term relationship, to have children, to build legacy, to build generational wealth, to set the foundation for what made this country great. And I think that even though it sounds kind of trite, if you have a bunch of young people sleeping around and not treating sex as sacred, getting in a marriage, not understanding what a sacred committed relationship, even when the other person that you're with is not perfect actually feels like and looks like, then you can create a lot of long term societal and familial instability. And so I think the idea of celibacy lends itself better to the foundations of a great society than the opposite.
- [71:51]
Ben Greenfield
You know, it's funny that that is if you, I'm sure you've noticed that we're living in a society now where people are not getting married anymore. There's no real like rel. People aren't even dating properly people, men are just like watching porn. Women are like, there's no men to even be date, like for women to even date because apps and everything else has now ruined how people even socialize. They don't even know how to socialize, they don't know how to date and they're not interested in relationships because everything is just about like a swipe to the next person, right? Like, it's actually really sad how like we've evolved into this strange place where people aren't even having, they're not getting married, they're not having children. You know what I mean?
- [72:30]
Tony Robbins
Honestly, like, I, I hate to say it's almost like the lesser of two evils, but I'd rather, let's say like young men who right now are spending a disproportionate amount of time on social media playing video games in mom's basement, whatever. Not to stereotype too much. I'd rather them be going out and doing dangerous things, jumping off cliffs, partying, drinking, et cetera, than I would a generation of young men who live in their parents basements and don't get married till they're 40. And like, I'd, I'd almost rather see young people doing dangerous things than I would them doing nothing at all.
- [73:02]
Ben Greenfield
Absolutely, of course. And if you've seen the decline of what's happened since people were born after 1995, actually, what was HAP is happening is 83% of the things that we used to do, we don't do anymore, like go out and date. Like, get in trouble, like jump off cliffs, bike ride. Just basics. Right. Because people are now stuck on their screens.
- [73:21]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. My son's graduated high school two months ago, and I kicked him out of the house.
- [73:25]
Ben Greenfield
Really?
- [73:25]
Tony Robbins
They're in. They're in. I think they made it to Arizona so far. They got a used car. They don't get a dime from me, and they're just off driving around the country for. Well, they're supposed to be home by Thanksgiving. They got a tent for the top of their car. They're, like, parking by the side of the road and camping and getting water from springs and eating oatmeal and beef jerky and just learning how life works and getting out of the house for a little while to just go explore, which I think is a great idea.
- [73:48]
Ben Greenfield
That's so amazing.
- [73:49]
Tony Robbins
They're ready for it. So.
- [73:50]
Ben Greenfield
So you basically said to them, you're leaving the house. Come back around Thanksgiving and go fend for yourself.
- [73:56]
Tony Robbins
They knew it was coming, and it wasn't just like, they. They graduated, and I said, leave. We have a whole Greenfield family constitution, meaning there's rites of passages. There's everything in there. What we do for Easter, what we do for Thanksgiving, what we do for Christmas, what time we meet for meditation in the morning, what time we have dinner at night. Everybody's all the way down. Like, everybody's end of life and memorial services plan and what we would want at our funeral in terms of, like, songs sung and the dress code, all the way back to what each family's power animal is and symbol and hex color and font and what the family crest looks like and what each element of the family logo represents. And the family logo is on the flags outside our front door and our throw pillows and the hoodies and hats that we wear out to dinner and everything. But in that Greenfield family constitution, which, by the way, having a constitution like this is a great way to back to building generational wealth, building a sense of pride in the family name, building a legacy that can be passed on to my sons and then improved upon in their families. So there's a lot of benefits to having this idea of almost branding your family like your brand, a business. But in that constitution are rites of passage, particularly for young Greenfield men, meaning when they turn 13, they have a rite of passage into adolescence. Three days out in the wilderness, backpack, blanket, knife. They have a wilderness survival instructor who they've worked with since they were 6, and he oversaw that rite of passage. When they come out, there's a ceremony, there's a fire, there's a feast with friends and family, and that marks that they are now adolescents and they're given more responsibility and chores at home. They're treated less like kids, they pitch in more with family dinners, and they're just expected to be a greater contributory member to the family at that point. When they are 16 again, this is baked into the Constitution. So they've known this was coming since they were eight years old. They have to leave the house for three months. It could be an international trip, it could be a domestic trip, it could be whatever. But they just can't be under mom and dad's roof for three months. They just have to go out and fly the nest.
- [76:00]
Ben Greenfield
And do you give them money or no money?
- [76:01]
Tony Robbins
No money, no. But they've had time to think about this and save up and budget and they know how much they can spend every day to be able to not drain their bank accounts. So they do all of that. And then age 17 is the final rite of passage into adulthood, at which point they'll be like, stamped, hopefully as ready to be contributory adults to society and ready to go off and marry and start their own families or whatever it is they want to do. So age 17 is a 10 day vision quest that's solo in the wilderness. No food, no water, unless they can collect it themselves while they're out there. Again, backpack, wool, blanket, knife, you know, in a full on, you know, facing your own fears for 10 days and being alone and. And, you know, doing almost like a Native American style vision quest.
- [76:44]
Ben Greenfield
Who. Who put this whole thing together? Your. Your dad or.
- [76:48]
Tony Robbins
I did. And I did after, you know, some of my podcasts and some of my interest has been in the realm of parenting education, raising responsible adults. I've learned a lot from different people who I've interviewed about legacy, about rights of passage, and I wove all of this in the Constitution together, just based off of years of learning from people who have done similar things with their children and just kind of like borrowing from the best of the best.
- [77:14]
Ben Greenfield
This is amazing.
- [77:14]
Tony Robbins
I wrote a whole book about this, by the way.
- [77:16]
Ben Greenfield
You did?
- [77:16]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, it's called boundless parenting. It's like the boundless. It's like you have the blueprint for biohacking in your lap. I also have the blueprint for parenting that's like the tools of titans for parents. I interviewed like 32 of the top Parents that I know, these super successful entrepreneurs with super impactful children who are already out changing the world in politics and business and tech. And so I asked every parent the same set of 32 questions. My wife has like 50 pages in there. I have 70 pages of advice. Then there's all these. So it's 700 pages of just like deep in the trenches parenting advice.
- [77:50]
Ben Greenfield
What was the top three pieces of advice that really stuck with you that would help build mentally strong children?
- [77:59]
Tony Robbins
There's one page in the book that's like common threads, right? Things that would pop up over and over again consistently from parent to parent. The biggest one was more is caught than taught. More is caught than taught, meaning no matter how much you tell your kids that they need to eat healthy food and that they need to get outside and move more and that they shouldn't have their devices at the table, if they see you like sneaking in Ben and Jerry's, you know, multiple nights per week and sitting inside at your desk all day without taking a break and having eight hours of sedentary time during the day and whipping out your phone like five times during dinner to check on that one last important email, they're going to catch way more onto that than they are onto what you told them, right? So children see by example. They don't, they don't learn by word. They see by example. So you have to be the person who you want your children to be when it comes to the positive habits that you want them to develop. So that's number one is anything you tell them. Understand that you better be willing and ready and already doing that thing yourself. Another one would be caution with forbidden fruits. It's all parenting approach that formerly is known as love and logic. Meaning the more that you just have hard nos or hard yeses in your home. Like, no, we don't talk about porn. It's not a discussion you don't learn about porn is just like you're going to eventually find that out at a friend slumber party or, you know, wherever else. And, and that's just, you know, it's off limits. We don't talk about that. Or no, you don't, you don't get alcohol, you don't taste alcohol. That's off limits. If it's forbidden fruit, that's for adults. Stay away. You know, weed, drugs, porn, any, any vice. If it's a hard no, you're creating forbidden fruit in your house. So for, for us, I've had very frank discussions with my sons about porn. Here's what it is. Here's what it does to your brain. Here's what it does to society. Here's what it does to the way that you think about women when you're interacting with them. Here's what it does to, you know, your objectification of the opposite sex. Here are the issues that it can even create in countries with things like sex slavery and sex abuse. And you're not banned from viewing or watching porn, but here's everything that it can do. Now you go out and make the decision, not, you can't have a cupcake at your friend's birthday party because gluten is the devil. But rather, hey, if you have too much gluten, it can cause neural inflammation. It could cause some protein inflammatory issues, it may cause some gut issues. You make the decision about whether or not you're gonna have gluten. Alcohol, right? My first experience with alcohol was stealing a bottle of scotch from my dad's office and getting drunk in my bedroom. Because for me, alcohol was like the totally off limits thing that just the parents did at the dinner table or whatever. We do like to drive Farm wines quarterly organic wine delivery service to our house every month. And when it comes, I open up the little brochure and we taste the wine and we have a little shot glass and the boys get a sip. Like they're never gonna go take a bottle of wine from our pantry and go get drunk in their bedroom because it was just forbidden for them. So using and this takes more time and attention and presence for you as a parent. But instead of having a hard no or hard yes, you explain to your child the consequences of any decision that they're going to make. And then you let them deal with the consequences of that decision. With some exceptions, like a one year old toddling towards a hot stove. Don't say no, it's going to burn. You, like actually pull them away and you know, if you need to slap their hands so that, you know, the. This mild sting of a slap is a lot less damage than whatever degree burn from a stove. Right, right. I would say the last one was I was shocked at the number of people who didn't necessarily like homeschool or private school, but who had really good frank discussions with whatever school that their children were going to. And many of them would just like pull their kids out of public school at random times to go on a trip. Or one family, like sent their kids to school an hour late every day so they could just have amazing family breakfasts every morning before their kids went off to school. And so people who, like, gamed the system almost and would not necessarily not send their kids to public school or private school, but who almost adopted a hybrid model of, you know, homeschooling, travel, more time at home, et cetera, while still being able to use the learning environment accordingly that their kids were in. So there's, there's so much in the book, though, against like 700 that's such.
- [82:11]
Ben Greenfield
An interesting one that you just said. So who would tell you to do a hybrid model? So you're not homeschooling the child and you're not putting this, you're not, you're not putting the kid in the regular school system. So you would kind of modify what's out there already and make it work to your advantage.
- [82:29]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, they'd, like, go and talk to the teachers and just be like, hey, we're. We know it's not summer break, but we're leaving for a week to go travel with the kids. And they'd get their homework and they'd make sure they did their assignments. And they basically would think outside the box when it comes to education in general, you know, which is kind of like Seth Godin's philosophy that if your kids are going to go to school, your number one job when they walk in the door from school is to start unschooling them or teaching them about how life really works versus just like the rote memorization and pure adherence that they were getting at school.
- [82:58]
Ben Greenfield
That's amazing. That book sounds. I didn't know you wrote that book.
- [83:02]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, and I. And I self published it because you won't. If you're a health and fitness author, you're not going to get a deal in the parenting and education category. So it was kind of an uphill battle.
- [83:10]
Ben Greenfield
And even though you've sold so many books, they wouldn't give you a shot.
- [83:14]
Tony Robbins
It does. If you've sold a bunch of books in one category, it doesn't transfer over into a publishing deal in a different category. If anything, it makes a publisher a little bit reticent to publish you in a different category, which I didn't know until I tried to do it.
- [83:25]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah, no, I mean, that's. But that's actually. And that's. Is it as big as this book?
- [83:30]
Tony Robbins
As big or bigger?
- [83:31]
Ben Greenfield
Who did you, who did you go to for your, like, for your experts.
- [83:36]
Tony Robbins
Or for your amazing parents who I personally knew and whose children I'd interacted with. And it just. I probably asked a hundred different parents, and I had about, I think, 30 32. Somewhere in that range in the final, final book.
- [83:50]
Ben Greenfield
So that's amazing.
- [83:52]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [83:52]
Ben Greenfield
And how did you get. Are you and your wife just naturally on board with the same stuff?
- [83:57]
Tony Robbins
We are pretty much on board with a lot of the same stuff when it comes to education and parenting, just because of how much we talk about it.
- [84:08]
Ben Greenfield
But wait, did you homeschool your kids?
- [84:10]
Tony Robbins
Kind of. We did private schooling for a little while, and then when we realized that they were just getting a bunch of homework and memorization and that private school just seemed like a glorified version of public school, and they didn't have a lot of time to pursue their passions and their interests and their desires. In fifth grade, we pulled them from that and we started not homeschooling, but, like, unschooling, meaning not a lot of books, not a lot of curriculum. A lot of time spent just being outdoors, visiting museums, going on trips, cooking, taking care of animals, exercising with dad, you know, just basically this, this idea of learning through experience. Right. So, like, for their, their sixth grade math, they built a tree fort all summer, you know, learning geometry and woodworking in angles rather than doing a math book. So unschooling is focused a lot more on experiences in life than it is on rote curriculum or hefty memorization.
- [84:59]
Ben Greenfield
I love that. Unschooling is what you call it.
- [85:01]
Tony Robbins
Unschooling is what it's called. Yeah. There's a good, good book called Unschooling to University, which kind of like decodes how to K through 12. And still, if your kid wants to go to college, go to college while in schooling.
- [85:12]
Ben Greenfield
I'm getting more and more interested in this. I just did a TED Talk, actually. Why I'm asking that. I did a TED Talk last week in Miami about how to raise mentally strong kids in a coddling world. And yeah, and I, I, I did a ton of research on it. I also, like, I tend to try to speak to the best of the best in the world, experts, whatever, like, of how to do this. Because what I've found is, what's happening is we really are raising very soft kids, which is not good for our future generation. Right. Like, I'm sure you saw the studies on how, like, 20% of kids now, kids are now taking their parents to job interviews. Did you see this whole thing?
- [85:51]
Tony Robbins
They're taking, taking their parents, they're taking.
- [85:52]
Ben Greenfield
Their parents to job interviews because they don't feel mentally strong enough to go on their own.
- [85:58]
Tony Robbins
Oh, geez.
- [85:59]
Ben Greenfield
So the coping mechanisms and coping skills have been very diminished since you know, over the last. Over many, many years of the helicoptering parents and the.
- [86:09]
Tony Robbins
Everyone's got to take your parent to a job interview, but you don't have to take your parent to have your sex changed.
- [86:16]
Ben Greenfield
Isn't that the phenomenon? Isn't that. But this is where we're living now. Isn't that just crazy? Yeah, so I find. So that's why when I'm asking you, I would have loved to have read the book. Interesting. What happened is it was in Miami, it was basically hurricane season, and all the power went off all on the entire block. And so I had to sit there in the dark for two hours. And so when I went up to finally get do my talk, the sound was off. So I have to now rerecord it. So I may want to read that book and see if there's anything in there that I can include.
- [86:47]
Tony Robbins
Long book. Should I shoot this thing, by the way? This. This magic formula.
- [86:50]
Ben Greenfield
Yes, by the way. Can't believe you still haven't done. This is magic, Mike.
- [86:53]
Tony Robbins
Okay, See, I was saying I sand the agave. So, by the way, all the other ingredients in this look great, and I'm sure the agave is such a small amount that it's not a big deal in there. That balances out the. Yeah, this looks like a good. Yeah, the fruit thing, you know, to unpack that glycemic index part. It is interesting because I used to think that if you drank fruit juice or if you blended fruit, it would make it way more sugary and cause a higher glycemic index and like more of a spiking of the blood sugar. And it turns out research has since shown that fruit juices don't spike your blood sugar anymore than eating the whole fruit itself.
- [87:27]
Ben Greenfield
Really?
- [87:27]
Tony Robbins
And when you blend fruit, you actually get a lowering of the glycemic index and less of a blood sugar response, because something about blending helps to take a lot of the. Like the fibers and the seeds and the antioxidants and concentrate them in such a way that your blood sugar response is lower.
- [87:43]
Ben Greenfield
It's really funny you should say that.
- [87:45]
Tony Robbins
Versus eating whole fruit.
- [87:46]
Ben Greenfield
Well, take the shot and then I'm going to tell you why. All right, Tell me if you like it, and I want to see if you're more energized and focused, like right away.
- [87:53]
Tony Robbins
Like on the two seconds.
- [87:54]
Ben Greenfield
No, it'll take you like a few minutes.
- [87:55]
Tony Robbins
Placebo effects. I mean, I can tell you I've tried a lot of the ingredients in here before, like bacopa for memory and cognizant for function. Yeah, it looks pretty good.
- [88:03]
Ben Greenfield
Well, I'm going to send you some. There's still. It's called Magic Mind, and they're delicious, and I like the taste of them because most of these other things taste like crap. Yeah, but these are good. But what? I wanted to say something that you just said. What were you just saying? You said something about.
- [88:16]
Tony Robbins
I was talking about the blending of fruit or the juicing of it.
- [88:21]
Ben Greenfield
I was going to say I had this guy, I had Gary Breck on this podcast a while ago, and he.
- [88:25]
Tony Robbins
Said that the ultimate human.
- [88:27]
Ben Greenfield
The ultimate human. Yeah. And he did this thing, and we talked about how he said that when you blend in, when people have had these smoothies and you're blending all the fruit and in the blender, blah, blah, blah, it skyrockets your glycemic.
- [88:43]
Tony Robbins
Well, Gary, I love you, but you're wrong.
- [88:45]
Ben Greenfield
Right. First of all, that clip was shared I don't know how many times. It was insane.
- [88:50]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [88:51]
Ben Greenfield
Because people were, like, just railing on him that it was wrong. Like, all those people that normally do it. Like, all the regular suspects who, like, you know, look at these things and like. Yeah, and like.
- [89:02]
Tony Robbins
Like Lane Norton.
- [89:03]
Ben Greenfield
Yes.
- [89:03]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [89:03]
Ben Greenfield
And like, who's that other guy? He's, like, from South Africa or South America.
- [89:07]
Tony Robbins
Like reaction videos.
- [89:08]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah. Well, no, no, not reaction. He's a guy who's like a dog doctor, and he, like, goes and, like, finds.
- [89:12]
Tony Robbins
Oh, geez. Anyway, I don't remember.
- [89:13]
Ben Greenfield
It was, like, unbelievable.
- [89:15]
Tony Robbins
I have no clue how I've escaped having anybody done those.
- [89:18]
Ben Greenfield
Nobody's ever done that to you?
- [89:20]
Tony Robbins
Nobody's ever done anything like that to me. I have no clue. Why? Because I've said some pretty crazy things and nobody. I haven't done it wrong. Things that I know of, but I've said crazy things.
- [89:28]
Ben Greenfield
Well, what do you think of all these people? Do you like. Do you like. Do you watch and follow these people that, like, are other biohackers or other people who are really very popular in the wellness and health space who have a really big audience?
- [89:41]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, I mean, I. Most of them are my friends.
- [89:43]
Ben Greenfield
And so do you.
- [89:44]
Tony Robbins
Gary Brecker, Andrew Huberman. I wouldn't say Brian Johnson is a friend, but, you know, we talk.
- [89:49]
Ben Greenfield
That's different.
- [89:49]
Tony Robbins
Podcasts.
- [89:50]
Ben Greenfield
He's more of a. Like, he's hacking his whole biohacking his entire. What do you think of all the stuff that he's done?
- [89:56]
Tony Robbins
It's pretty impressive, but it requires you to have a highly systematized and regimented existence when you're eating back to the same thing, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner and going to bed at. I don't. Just starting to get ready to go to bed at some ungodly early hour, like, I don't know what time it is.
- [90:12]
Ben Greenfield
You don't do those things pretty early. What has he done that you have not done?
- [90:16]
Tony Robbins
Well, let me think. I don't think there's much that he has not. There's much that he does that I've not done. If you want to count some of the less sexy stuff, like eating the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, yes, I've done that on some days. But it's not something.
- [90:30]
Ben Greenfield
Okay.
- [90:30]
Tony Robbins
That's not due or going to bed early or eating a super early dinner so you can sleep better. I've done that. But because we enjoy our big, fun family dinners, I don't do that. I would say of the things that he's done that I know of, the only thing he's done that I haven't done is laser resurfacing of the face, which is a pretty intensive protocol and makes you look like a zombie for, like, four weeks, but has incredible results. My friend up in Spokane, Cameron Chestnut, he's an incredible cosmetic surgeon, and he does those procedures. And he did one on my wife, and I got home from a trip, and she opened the door and it looked like a zombie movie. So she couldn't leave the house for like, two weeks. And then within like, four weeks, she started to look younger. And so she's 42. And I would estimate that it probably took a good, like eight to 10 years off her face. It's crazy. And he does the hands and the neck so that the hands and the neck don't look old in correlation to the face I've never seen because I've seen a lot of. But living with someone and actually seeing that happen nearly overnight from run procedure was pretty nuts.
- [91:38]
Ben Greenfield
What does he do?
- [91:39]
Tony Robbins
So my wife's done that and Brian Johnson has done that, but I haven't done that.
- [91:42]
Ben Greenfield
Okay. What? Okay, why haven't you done it?
- [91:45]
Tony Robbins
Honestly, even though I. I like the idea of maintaining youthfulness and vigor and, you know, that's good for confidence, and obviously it's on brand for me. I am, like, speaking so much video cameras in front of my face so much, doing podcasts so much. I don't know of a period of time that I could go for, like, four weeks without having to camera on my face, and I suppose I could just do it with my face all bloody and stripped and swollen and stuff. But I mean. I mean, I think Brian Johnson just did it like in the past couple of weeks. Cause it popped up on my feed and he looks like shit right now. And it'll look better later, but I just don't. I mean, even the full body stem cell procedure, I'm kind of like out of commission for maybe five days tops. But yeah, I mean, if someone were to offer me that laser resurfacing on a silver platter and you know, were to do it to me, I would. It would. For me, it would just be a matter of where do I find the time to take off to have.
- [92:39]
Ben Greenfield
Is it really a month?
- [92:40]
Tony Robbins
It's a long time. Yeah, yeah, really, it's. Look it up. Laser resurfacing. It's pretty intensive.
- [92:47]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, I'm gonna look. I think, my friend.
- [92:48]
Tony Robbins
Because what they do is first they do like stem cells that take the fat out of your butt and inject it into your face and. But then the finisher is a laser resurfacing. And that's what makes it look like your face got run over by a truck.
- [93:01]
Ben Greenfield
And that sounds scary though too.
- [93:03]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. I was a little scared when I saw my wife.
- [93:05]
Ben Greenfield
You didn't know she was getting it done?
- [93:06]
Tony Robbins
I knew she was getting it done, but I wasn't prepared for it to look like that. I mean, she would like be throwing up from the pain meds and her eyes bleeding. And it's.
- [93:15]
Ben Greenfield
Her eyes were bleeding.
- [93:16]
Tony Robbins
Oh, yeah. She's bleeding out her eyes. Yeah. But this is something like. A lot of celebrities do it, or like, I know people who fly to Cameron's office up in Spokane to get it done. So it's not like people don't do this, but most people, after they do it, just stay totally hidden for like a month so you don't see them. And then they come out looking super young and, you know, how much is it? Apparently they were just juicing vegetables. Really?
- [93:39]
Ben Greenfield
Well, apparently. Yeah.
- [93:42]
Tony Robbins
It's more than a hundred thousand dollars.
- [93:44]
Ben Greenfield
Did your wife spend that or did she get a discount at least?
- [93:46]
Tony Robbins
She got discounted just because he's one of my buddies. Yeah, he gave her a good deal.
- [93:50]
Ben Greenfield
But what kind of deal? Could I get one done? Is it worth it?
- [93:53]
Tony Robbins
I don't remember exactly what it was that she got it for, but it's. I mean, if you wanted like what the top of the top thing that apparently all the celebrities are doing is. Is the best thing for reversing age. I mean, I can tell you like? She looks incredible after this. She looked crappy before, but I was surprised. Like, it definitely.
- [94:11]
Ben Greenfield
Can you show me a picture before and after.
- [94:13]
Tony Robbins
I'm trying to think. He has. He has one. Cameron does on his Instagram. He has a ton of before and afters on his Instagram.
- [94:20]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, Cam, what's his last name?
- [94:21]
Tony Robbins
Cameron Chestnut.
- [94:22]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, Name me something else.
- [94:23]
Tony Robbins
You're an interesting guy for you to interview.
- [94:24]
Ben Greenfield
Actually, I was going to say he's super in touch with him.
- [94:27]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. Yeah, he's really interesting.
- [94:28]
Ben Greenfield
Name is something else that you haven't done that you're like, interested in doing or the. And I want you to tell me the one thing that you have done that. That yielded the most amazing results that. That you were shocked about.
- [94:42]
Tony Robbins
Okay, let's start with that second question.
- [94:47]
Ben Greenfield
Okay.
- [94:47]
Tony Robbins
Because we've covered a lot of the sexy stuff where like stem cells, peptides. You know, a lot of the things that I think would be super sexy or fringe that move the dial a lot we've talked about. But I would say one thing I've been doing recently that has absolutely transformed, particularly my mornings and just my general enjoyment of the rest of the day, is combining sound, light, electricity, and vibration for meditation. So this is kind of fringe, but it's totally doable. Anybody could do it. So I have this chair now. It's called a shift wave chair. You sit in it and you wear a little fingertip monitor and it monitors your heart rate and your heart rate variability and then vibrates in correspondence to the beats of your heart and comes with audio tracks that you can listen to that coach you through breath work sessions while the whole chair vibrates your body. Which in and of itself is pretty cool. I sat on it at the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine conference and it was so cool. I got one and I used it for. I probably got it like six months ago. And I used it for a while, but then I also got my hands on a light sound machine. And these are machines that you lay underneath that blasts you through closed eyes. You can barely. Well, not barely, but you can detect the light, but your eyes are closed. And it's almost like you've taken six grams of psilocybin without actually taking any drugs or anything. It automatically just shifts your brain into a whole different state using light stimulation. And in the past, I've used headset versions of that like this one called the Brain Tap. Yeah, there's called the Neurovisor that I actually like. I have my bag upstairs, the Neurovisor. Because I still travel with it.
- [96:36]
Ben Greenfield
What does it do though?
- [96:37]
Tony Robbins
It's shifts your brain into the same state that you'd be looking for from let's say like ketamine, lsd, psilocybin, any of these, you know, entheogens or psychedelics people use for brainwave shifting. But it does so using light instead. Light and sound stimulation. So I figured out how to take an AV cable from the light and connect it to the chair. So now I've got the light, the sound and the vibration all going at the same time. And then Nikola Tesla said, if you want to understand the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. So I've got the light frequencies and the sound frequencies and the vibration. But then I was looking for a way I could incorporate electrical energy into that. So then I outfitted that whole setup with a PEMF coil. PEMF is Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy.
- [97:23]
Ben Greenfield
Wow.
- [97:23]
Tony Robbins
And there's one called a Halo H A E L O. And I put it in my lap during one of those sessions and that can be set for like meditation, inflammation, digestion, whatever. So now if you go into my downstairs living room, in the room beside my office in the corner, there's a chair and the chair is the shift wave and above that is the Roxiva lamp. And next to that is the Halo PMF coil. And then I will just like pull on a gravity blanket or one of those infrared sauna blankets. Yeah, and I do this usually at about 4:30 in the morning. So I literally get out of bed early and go downstairs and I do like anywhere from a 30 to a 60 minute session. And it is just the coolest thing ever.
- [98:02]
Ben Greenfield
What does it do for you though?
- [98:03]
Tony Robbins
Total checkout at better creativity, better focus. Even though I'm getting up early feeling like more energy than I've ever had. It's one of the things I miss the most besides my family when I travel now is my vibrating light sound therapy chair. I don't have to take any drugs, even though I feel like I used to feel when I like I used to experiment with plant medicine and journey and I don't do any of that stuff now. But it's a similar feeling of just like relaxation, forgetting all your worries, meditation all at once. Using technology rather than drugs to shift you into that state. And the cool part is you sit up from it and you're just like ready to tackle the world, but you're not simultaneously metabolizing a bunch of drugs out of your system. And for example, there's one session on There. It's probably my favorite session. It's called Rebirth. And the session starts with fetal heartbeat, you know, whooshing of. Of mom's womb. Darkness, occasional flashes of light. And then as the session goes on, it progresses to, like, a whole birthing experience where you're going down the birth canal and there's light and, like heroic epic music. And I've never done that and not sat up, A, crying and B, just like, ready to tackle the world, like, literally feeling almost like, reborn.
- [99:11]
Ben Greenfield
But you do that every day just.
- [99:13]
Tony Robbins
With light and sound stimulation. I've probably done that 10 times, like, in the past two months.
- [99:17]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, but wait. But people have to buy one of these machines, though.
- [99:20]
Tony Robbins
Everything I just described to you, if you were to put everything in your living room, you'd probably spend about $20,000.
- [99:27]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah. That's a lot. For the average person, that's a lot of money. Okay, so let's go back to people who are like, less than a car, but. Okay, less than a car, but for the person who's listening to this and, like, now they're, like, familiar with the.
- [99:38]
Tony Robbins
Cheap travel hack version.
- [99:40]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah. What's the scrap? What's. What's the Neuro.
- [99:42]
Tony Robbins
The Neurov. Don't even think that's a thousand dollars. And it's like wearable glasses that do light sound stimulation. And then there's a vibrating wristband called the Apollo. And so that's what I travel with, is I'll wear the wristband around my wrist or my ankle that does the vibration, and then I lay back and I put the. The glasses on, and those connect to headphones.
- [100:03]
Ben Greenfield
But what does the vibration do on its own?
- [100:05]
Tony Robbins
Vibrating, or so called haptic sensations can shift your brain into a certain state based on the frequency of the vibration. It's like the Apollo can be set for calm, for stress, for.
- [100:17]
Ben Greenfield
But how often do you wear it?
- [100:18]
Tony Robbins
Focus. They should take this needle out of my arms soon.
- [100:22]
Ben Greenfield
I know.
- [100:22]
Tony Robbins
Starting. Starting to hurt. To feel. Yeah. You can feel, like, when it's dark. Yeah. So you know how, like some animals when they've been chased. I think Robert Sapolsky talks about this in his book Zebras don't get ulcers. They'll kind of like shake it off to shake off the stress. Or sometimes, like, if you've been really stressed, you just shake it off. So vibrating does that similar function. It's almost like a. Like a mild moving sensation.
- [100:50]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [100:50]
Tony Robbins
That causes your brain to just like, shift into a state of calm or focus or creativity or whatever it is. You're looking for. And then the chair that I was talking about is basically neurofeedback, because it's detecting based on your heart rate, where you're at and adjusting it as you're breathing.
- [101:05]
Ben Greenfield
Is it similar to what we did at the Founder Land when we. You're like, oh, go to this thing.
- [101:10]
Tony Robbins
There's like a pod in there. It's a new device. I forget what it's called, but a little bit similar to that.
- [101:13]
Ben Greenfield
I don't remember.
- [101:14]
Tony Robbins
Pod that you lay in that vibrates, that plays sounds that.
- [101:17]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah. What if you just have like. Did you go to the Therassage one when they had the pod and it was like a vibrational sound and then they had the red light around it?
- [101:25]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [101:25]
Ben Greenfield
Did you try that?
- [101:26]
Tony Robbins
All these things, they're very like. They're all kind of going after the same thing, right? Like using electricity, light, sound, frequency vibration, et cetera, to shift your brain into a certain state and to preferably do it without hefty supplementation or drug use.
- [101:41]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, what's the other thing that you were going to tell me?
- [101:44]
Tony Robbins
Other thing that was the thing that.
- [101:46]
Ben Greenfield
You'Ve been using that you think of. Oh, yeah. But wait, what if you had to say what that thing has done for you, what has it done for you in like two sentences or less?
- [101:54]
Tony Robbins
Made me feel way more rested.
- [101:56]
Ben Greenfield
Okay.
- [101:56]
Tony Robbins
Throughout the entire day. I'm getting out of bed a little bit earlier. Better creativity, better focus, lower stress, higher on average, heart rate variability. So it's affecting my nervous system. And it is very enjoyable. Like, you get this big dopamine rush. You feel incredible when you finish it, and we'll see.
- [102:15]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, now, what's the other thing that you said that it was? The two questions I asked you was the thing that you've done, the thing.
- [102:21]
Tony Robbins
That I've done and the thing that I want to do.
- [102:23]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [102:24]
Tony Robbins
Laser resurfacing.
- [102:25]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [102:26]
Tony Robbins
I would say there is an idea of an oil change for your body. And there are some medical clinics that will do things like ozone therapy where they'll pull the blood out of one arm and ozonate it and it goes into a machine that ozonates it, then it goes back into the other arm. There are other therapies like ozone plasmapheresis, where they're doing that, but it's passing through like a filter. It's also called extracorporeal blood ozonation and oxygenation, where the blood comes out, it gets filtered, goes back in. It's almost like kidney dialysis for your blood okay, well, there's a new company called Lumati L U M A T I and they've developed two different filtration systems over a three day process of four to six hours per day. It filters out glyphosate, microplastics, Covid spike protein, Lyme, Epstein Barr. Pretty much gives you completely new blood, completely filtered blood. You fly into Encinitas, they shuttle you across the border every day to Tijuana to do the treatment, bring you back, you stay in like a luxury hotel, eat great food and you go back the next day and do it again. You do that for three days in a row, completely detoxifies the entire system. This is something that just got developed and approved like in the past couple of months and I think it would be incredible to do.
- [103:45]
Ben Greenfield
Are you going to do that next?
- [103:46]
Tony Robbins
I'm going to do it in like three weeks.
- [103:48]
Ben Greenfield
Are you? See, you know what's price? Super.
- [103:49]
Tony Robbins
I just got signed up for it last week.
- [103:51]
Ben Greenfield
Really?
- [103:51]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [103:52]
Ben Greenfield
See you get to try and I.
- [103:53]
Tony Robbins
Don'T have any of those things that I know of like Epstein Barr or lime, whatever, but I think it is an incredible technology.
- [104:00]
Ben Greenfield
See, I think it's super cool because you get to try all these things and like what? Okay, how do you spend your time though? Like now do you do mostly podcasting? Do you like do a lot of speaking gigs? Like how do you like, what do you do with your day besides exercise and all that?
- [104:14]
Tony Robbins
I spend 10 to 15 hours a week talking to people on the phone about their health problems. Do you coach people? I do lab work, I do blood work, I do coaching where some people pay a monthly fee for me to monitor their training and their nutrition and they just have access to text me or email me or interact with me throughout the month. And then other people will just like purchase a one off phone call with me where they'll usually be sending me their labs and stuff like that beforehand. I'm not a doctor, I don't practice medicine, but we just talk about issues that they're having and I tell them basically what I would do if I were in their shoes. So I can't again, I can't prescribe medications or prescribe labs, but often they're coming to me with labs they've gotten from their doctor or problems they've had that other people haven't been able to figure out. Yeah, and so that's like 10 to 15 hours a week, just literally helping people.
- [104:59]
Ben Greenfield
So you do that. So wait, so you have co distance training? So you do like you take, you have. Because you kept, you said a few times on the podcast. Clients.
- [105:06]
Tony Robbins
Clients, yeah.
- [105:07]
Ben Greenfield
So you do have clients?
- [105:09]
Tony Robbins
I do, yeah. I mean, I used to coach like 40 people a month. Now I coach eight.
- [105:13]
Ben Greenfield
And so how do you do, how much they pay you for this?
- [105:15]
Tony Robbins
$5,000 a month.
- [105:16]
Ben Greenfield
And then you basically are like giving them a program of some, Some kind of protocol.
- [105:21]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [105:21]
Ben Greenfield
And then they just have to do it. And then they can.
- [105:24]
Tony Robbins
I just do everything for them. They just wake up in the morning and do what it is that I wrote down, keep their logs, I monitor their hrv, their sleep, and just basically, you know, everything from actors getting ready for movie roles to executives to athletes. Like it's, it's just basically like one on one coaching. And then I also just do random calls with other people. Aren't necessarily like paying a monthly fee, but just doing consults with me. So I do that. I do the podcast twice a week. So you.
- [105:49]
Ben Greenfield
Twice a week?
- [105:50]
Tony Robbins
17 years. Twice a week. Haven't missed a session?
- [105:52]
Ben Greenfield
Never?
- [105:53]
Tony Robbins
Never.
- [105:53]
Ben Greenfield
Amazing.
- [105:54]
Tony Robbins
No. And sometimes I won't record any in a week because I'm traveling, but then I'll get back and record like 7. So good for you.
- [106:00]
Ben Greenfield
So the podcast, but alone ever or just guests or both. You do some?
- [106:04]
Tony Robbins
Both. Both. I have solo sodes where I'm answering listener questions and reporting on the latest research and then guests. So I just get. That's a huge part of my education, just getting to talk to super smart people, way smarter than me, who would normally never give me the time of day, who are like talking to me for an hour and a half and I just get to feed through the fire hose from some author whose book I've just read or some scientists who just released some new technology. That's probably the favorite part of my job.
- [106:27]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah.
- [106:27]
Tony Robbins
Talk to people. And then I do article and book writing. And that's usually. I'm usually writing for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes a day or just working on a new book, working on an article, or working on copy for something. And then I do advising and also investing. So I advise a bunch of companies in the health and nutrition and fitness space and then invest in companies too. And then I own a supplements company called Kion. And even though I don't do a lot with that company anymore, there's still a little bit of management, some calls and things related to that. And then trying to think if I have any other jobs. I think, I think those are my main jobs. And then besides that, I just hang out with the Family and work out in the morning and play a little tennis and pickleball and go on walks and hikes.
- [107:13]
Ben Greenfield
And you seem so much more like. Again, take this the right way. You seem so much more calm and like, chill than like when I first met you.
- [107:21]
Tony Robbins
I don't remember where I was when you first. In London. Yeah, well, I was also, like, traveling, getting rid of so much people.
- [107:25]
Ben Greenfield
I know, but you seem much of people sweeter now. You seem so calm, kind and nice. Like.
- [107:29]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [107:30]
Ben Greenfield
You look like you're 18.
- [107:31]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, I don't know, maybe just caught me on a bad day.
- [107:34]
Ben Greenfield
No, no, you were really nice then too. But I'm saying, like, you seem like you're at a different place in life and I don't know what it is like.
- [107:40]
Tony Robbins
I think so. Obviously life is a constant evolution. We're always transforming and always becoming the people God has called us to become or becoming a better version of ourselves or hopefully engaging in things that help us to just become more grounded, more dialed, more authentic, more the people we are rather than who we think that the world expects us to be. And I think probably the thing that if you asked me that I've most doubled down on in the past couple of years, it would have been my own personal spiritual time, particularly when I travel. I neglected it a lot when I travel and that'd be pretty good at home. But now, I mean, I was walking to SunLife Organics this morning, just memorizing James 5 in the Bible and listening to a sermon and taking care of my spiritual health before I focus on physical health or work or business or anything else. And I would say similarly, the at home attention paid to prayer time with the family, meditation with the family, reading the Bible as a family. I mean, if you fill yourself up with good, positive things, then it's likely that good, positive things are already going to come out. Or like my mom used to say, like, if somebody bumps you and you're full of honey, sweet things will come out and then they bump you and you're full of vinegar, then bitter things will come out. And I think that just like intentionally and systematically focusing on making sure that my, my intake at the beginning and the end of the day and my work is specifically focused on spiritual health. I think that that manifests itself physically and emotionally and from a character standpoint. So I'd say that's. That's probably the biggest thing.
- [109:18]
Ben Greenfield
That's a big one, though.
- [109:19]
Tony Robbins
Yeah. Yeah.
- [109:19]
Ben Greenfield
So you, so you pray. What other modality has helped you with your spiritual or spirituality to be more grounded and be more happy.
- [109:29]
Tony Robbins
I used to read a lot of positive self help books and devotionals and books related to spirituality. And now I mostly just read the Bible. I, I just read the Bible and I have an amazing study Bible where I can read the notes and unpack stuff and go back and forth between chapters. So I, I don't follow a reading plan per se, but right now I'm just reading the whole book of John. And then every morning or every evening I memorize a verse from the Bible. And so that is also not like through the whole Bible. Typically I'll pick a section that's really spoken to me lately. I have had some health issues in the family in the past few months. And so right now again, I'm memorizing James 5 just because it's about, it's. It's a section of it called the Prayer of Faith. It's about healing through prayer. And so I'll choose something that really speaks to me in the moment. Before that it was Psalm 23 about, you know, how God helps you during trials and tribulations and tough times. So that was another one that I needed at the time. Before that it was Proverbs 3 because that's whole bunch of, it's filled with a whole bunch of wisdom for young men. And I was preparing my sons to go and leave on this trip. So we were memorizing that together. So just kind of like cutting out all the distractions and kind of just like super old school and simple, just opening up the Bible and reading the Bible. That's one thing that I've kind of changed recently versus reading a whole bunch of books written by other people about the Bible, versus just opening the one book that I feel not to get too woo, almost kind of has magical powers in and of itself and is the only book that when you're reading it, you can turn around, talk to the author right afterwards. So, so I'd say that and then also really doubling down on how I end the day, meaning, you know, Not Instagram or YouTube or devices or kind of like coddling myself with social media or whatever. I'll just turn off the brain at the end of the day, but instead just praying. So me and my wife end every day, you know, before my mouth tape goes on and my head hits the pillow. We just pray and we pour out our hearts to God together. You know, it's, it's like a spiritual sacred thing you can do together. And yeah, we just, we talked to God and we poured our hearts and we start our day like that, too, but just like starting and ending the day with a real focus on the spirit and on speaking with God and learning from God. To me, it's just. It's so fulfilling. More fulfilling than a workout in a smoothie and, you know, and, you know, a good day of work or anything else.
- [112:00]
Ben Greenfield
Wow. How long is.
- [112:01]
Tony Robbins
Probably because it's eternal, right? It's like for spirits or for better or worse, the one thing, one part of us that goes on to exist for eternity.
- [112:07]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah. And each prayer sec. Like every. How long is the prayer practice? Is it a few minutes? Is it 10 minutes, 15 minutes?
- [112:14]
Tony Robbins
I pray in the morning for about five to 10 minutes. I pray before all my meals and just occasionally throughout the day when I have a decision to make. And then my wife and I pray for five to 10 minutes in the evening. So it's not crazy. I mean, it's not like an hour of, you know, like, you know, dancing and speaking in tongues and.
- [112:28]
Ben Greenfield
No, no, no.
- [112:28]
Tony Robbins
You just candles and incense. It's just.
- [112:30]
Ben Greenfield
It keeps you grounded, though.
- [112:31]
Tony Robbins
Yeah, yeah. It's more like a habit. Like a consistent habit. It's like running a marathon every week is not as palatable as running two miles a day, Right?
- [112:39]
Ben Greenfield
Absolutely. And then the other. The last question is social media and all that doesn't strike. You don't strike me as somebody, even though you are a social media person, that you would spend a lot of time on social media, do you?
- [112:51]
Tony Robbins
That's kind of a funny question. So my sons have social media accounts because they're starting a tabletop gaming company. And I told them the same thing that I kind of do myself. Like, don't. You don't have to have all the apps and spend all your time reading the comments and posting yourself. Like, get a social media manager. It's well worth it because then you just don't get sucked in and you have somebody else who's posting your content and you focus on the content. You know, the manager, you're the maker, you know the consumer, you're the creator. Right. So that's what I coach them to do. And I have a very similar mindset for myself. I'm on TikTok, but I don't know how to access TikTok. I don't have the username or the password or anything. Like, I have a social media manager who posts that stuff. If I do a video, I'll send it off to them and they cut it and post it and figure out when they're going to time It. There is such a thing as what's called organic posting, and I literally have a calendar on my phone and it'll say, like, don't post anything on Instagram today, Ben. Because my social media team knows when stuff is supposed to get posted and when. I don't fully understand, but all I know is I'm not supposed to mess stuff up. So I don't ever scroll on social media. I never got it. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Yeah, I follow people. And you know, when you first open it, whatever you see there is the first post that you see, which is so weird because I opened Instagram on the way here and you and I hadn't even talked today, and the first post was from you.
- [114:09]
Ben Greenfield
Really.
- [114:09]
Tony Robbins
So it's almost like they knew where Uber was taking me or so I don't know. But.
- [114:13]
Ben Greenfield
Are you serious?
- [114:14]
Tony Robbins
I'm serious. You know that phones have.
- [114:17]
Ben Greenfield
How weird, though.
- [114:18]
Tony Robbins
I don't know. Maybe. Maybe it literally. I mean, because it does say in my calendar on my phone, I have an appointment with Jen today. So maybe it has calendar access. I don't know. But.
- [114:27]
Ben Greenfield
Crazy.
- [114:28]
Tony Robbins
But I don't actually do the scrolling scrolling thing. Like, I have just never gotten that. And I know that it's engineered to keep me scrolling if I start doing it, but. So I'm on social media, but I use it as a producer and a creator, not a consumer or a manager. I don't go into the comment section, I don't scroll through feeds. There's occasional times when. I'll give you an example, when Iran recently attacked Israel, I clicked on that section on Twitter and read through the post to catch up on the news. But I. That's pretty rare that I do something like that. If there's some current event that I just want to catch, whatever's trending on it pretty fast, I'll do that. But I. Not only am I kind of a Luddite when it comes to social media, but I've purposefully kept myself a Luddite with a lot of that stuff.
- [115:13]
Ben Greenfield
Good for you.
- [115:14]
Tony Robbins
I don't even know how to log into my own website anymore. I don't know my. I. If I did get locked out of social media, I wouldn't know how to get back in. It's just not a big part of what I do, even.
- [115:23]
Ben Greenfield
And that's why you're so. I think this is part of why you're a. You're so productive. Like, you're the kind of person where you're not saying, it's like you said like if I'm not saying something that's meaningful or I'm not spending every minute kind of accounted for, you feel like you're wasting your time. And that's probably why, because social media is just a huge time suck.
- [115:41]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [115:41]
Ben Greenfield
You know, and you've like, like, by the way, I know we have to wrap this up because what time is this? It's been like forever.
- [115:48]
Tony Robbins
Oh yeah, it's been like two and.
- [115:50]
Ben Greenfield
A half hours Again, I do have.
- [115:52]
Tony Robbins
To wrap pretty soon.
- [115:54]
Ben Greenfield
Okay. So do you wear shoes? Did you come here without shoes, by the way?
- [115:57]
Tony Robbins
They're outside.
- [115:58]
Ben Greenfield
Oh, okay. So you do wear shoes.
- [115:59]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [116:00]
Ben Greenfield
Okay, one more question and then I'm gonna, I'll fly and wrap this up. What's the one thing that people ask you about the most?
- [116:06]
Tony Robbins
What supplements should I take?
- [116:08]
Ben Greenfield
And what would you say it's different.
- [116:10]
Tony Robbins
From person to person? Go test your body. There are a few that seem to have broad applicability across a wide range of individuals, namely creatine, fish oil, a multivitamin, and increasingly I'm saying NAD or some variant of it, but everything else. We live in an era where you can go test it and find out if you need vitamin D, or if taking vitamin D would give you vitamin D toxicity, or if you need XYZ probiotic, or your microbiome is balanced just fine, thank you very much. Because you need a diet rich in fermented compounds or you do you need a fish oil or is your omega index at 8% or above? Like all this stuff now is testable. So I tell people, hey, here's a few base ones that work. But besides that, go test your body cuz it's not that expensive or difficult to do now. And then you, you did ask me one question. I didn't answer which one. You asked me if it was better to walk on the treadmill or do the science.
- [117:00]
Ben Greenfield
That's so true. That's right.
- [117:02]
Tony Robbins
And the answer is it I'll. I'll see if I can spit this out in 60 seconds. Your cardiovascular fitness is split into four different categories. Your fat burning capacity, your VO2 max, your mitochondrial density, and your ability to be able to tolerate lactic acid, AKA the burn. If you are just walking or just sprinting, you're not going to hit all those variables. For VO2 max, once every one to two weeks you do a hard, maximum sustainable pace effort like a 4 by 4 minutes on a bike with 4 minutes of recovery after each. For lactic acid tolerance you go hard and then you recover, but not for Very long. This would be like the classic Tabata set. 20 seconds hard, 10 seconds easy, eight times through four minutes, boom, done. That could be a couple times a week. For mitochondrial density, you go really hard, then you recover for a long period of time. This would be like five 30 second sprints with two to four minutes of recovery after each one. The sprints are really hard, the recoveries are really easy. And then for fat burning capacity, you could do like a 12, 3:30 or go out for a long hike or, or whatever. But you need to be aware that cardio fitness is not just cardio. Cardio is technically four different things. So if you hit those four VO2 max mitochondrial density, lactate tolerance and fat burning capacity, and those are kind of like woven throughout your week, then you're going to get all of them. Now if you're lucky enough to be a soccer player or a tennis player or lacrosse or one of these sports that has a lot of start, stop and endurance baked in, you're kind of getting all those from your sport. But if not, you kind of have to intentionally program them in if you want the most bang for your buck.
- [118:26]
Ben Greenfield
Aerobically speaking, someone in their 40s, what's the best exercise to do?
- [118:30]
Tony Robbins
It depends. I knew that my wife with the high risk of bone density weight training, if you're morbidly obese, endomorphic with a lot of fat sores, long, slow, fat, burning walks, if you're getting ready for a triathlon, high intensity interval trans.
- [118:46]
Ben Greenfield
The reason why I'm asking is because I think a lot of times as you get older anyway, for me especially, you get injured much more easily. Your bodies are a wear and tear. They of course it's about like building strength training and doing cardio and all those things. However, if you had to pick one exercise, if someone's not an exercise person, what would you suggest?
- [119:05]
Tony Robbins
Something that involves axial loading of the spine, the arms and the legs. So it would probably be something very much like a squat to overhead press, building arms, legs, functional training the core and there is loading across the entire spine, the arms and the legs. And I mean it can be a little bit of a difficult exercise to learn best. Most biomechanically friendly way to start off with something like that would be with a med ball. 20 to 50 pound med ball. Hold it to your chest, squat down, stand, press it overhead.
- [119:34]
Ben Greenfield
You'd be a great trainer. You should be a trainer again.
- [119:37]
Tony Robbins
Used to do that.
- [119:37]
Ben Greenfield
I know. You should do it again. You should do it again.
- [119:39]
Tony Robbins
Another life. Yeah.
- [119:40]
Ben Greenfield
I'm telling You. Me? I don't. I. I would hire you. Okay, Ben, when can we do part three?
- [119:46]
Tony Robbins
Next time down here, let's do it.
- [119:47]
Ben Greenfield
When you back?
- [119:48]
Tony Robbins
I don't know.
- [119:49]
Ben Greenfield
You don't come. You come around.
- [119:50]
Tony Robbins
I avoid la, but I sometimes come down here and just batch a whole bunch of stuff. I'll probably back here before the end of the year.
- [119:55]
Ben Greenfield
I hope so, because every time I'm like, listen, I have like a whole other. I didn't even any of the questions from your other book, if you can believe it.
- [120:03]
Tony Robbins
Oh, geez.
- [120:04]
Ben Greenfield
I have a million questions.
- [120:05]
Tony Robbins
Got another one.
- [120:07]
Ben Greenfield
You're going to be like a co host.
- [120:08]
Tony Robbins
All right.
- [120:10]
Ben Greenfield
Hilarious. Okay. Ben, I love having you on, as you know. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for spending two hours with me or however long it's been. God knows.
- [120:18]
Tony Robbins
Thanks for doing an IV with me.
- [120:20]
Ben Greenfield
Thank you for. Thank you for inviting me along on your IV experience. By the way, I will say again, those NRB IVs are really good for me and great for everybody and some. I'm actually very fortunate that we got one, so thank you for making that happen.
- [120:33]
Tony Robbins
Yeah.
- [120:33]
Ben Greenfield
All right, so if anyone wants to know more about Ben, check him out. He also does coaching. He has Kion, his supplement company. And just. Just check him out on Instagram, because even just looking at his clips and you learn so much. What else can I say about you?
- [120:49]
Tony Robbins
Comment. I might not see it, but I might.
- [120:51]
Ben Greenfield
Yeah, he probably won't see it, but you can still comment. And there you go. Thank you, Ben.
- [120:55]
Tony Robbins
Thanks, Jen.