← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Ben Greenfield's 5 Best Biohacks for Living Better & Longer (Replay)
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in today's episode of Health Theory with Ben Greenfield, we discuss his top biohacks for longevity microdosing with psychedelics, which salts you should use in your food, and the surprise benefits of injecting yourself with salts.
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Stem cells
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everybody. Welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Ben Greenfield. He's a New York Times best selling author and legendary biohacker who was named America's top personal trainer in 2008 and one of the world's top 100 most influential people in fitness in 2013 and 2014. He's also the founder and CEO of Keon, a former bodybuilder and an endurance athlete who in a single year completed the nine hardest Spartan races. To top it all off, he lives almost completely off the grid in Spokane, Washington and he writes one of the most incredible blogs around on health, fitness and nutrition. Now Ben, whenever I have somebody on the show that knows a lot about health and nutrition, I always want to talk about how can we at least make a real attempt at living forever.
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Forever, Forever. It is interesting, right? Because we live in a modern era in which people seem to be pretty infatuated with anti aging technology or supplements or medications that the headlines say they promise to extend life at a nickel a pop. But what's interesting is that people do not seem to be living much longer yet, despite these efforts, it looks like on paper that we are. But what's primarily measured with life expectancy is how long you're going to live from the time that you're born until the time that you die. And once you strip out the variables that we have managed to get a pretty good handle on in our modern health era, like reducing the amount of infant deaths and early deaths and you know, worldwide epidemics you know, and measles, mumps, polio, just, just all these things, you know, the bubonic plague, everything that would, that would have wiped out children and babies. And then you begin to look at the amount of time that we're living after say Social Security age or retirement. You know, kind of like that 65 to 67ish age. We're not living that much longer. We really aren't. I mean the, the past couple centuries have not produced a significant increase in lifespan once you, once you reduce or, or you elimina children, baby death component. So I think that if you look at a lot of these cultures where we find a high portion of centenarians, people who are living a disproportionately long period of time, these so called blue zones, that the, the lowest hanging fruit must start there, right. We know that there are certain characteristics that when you look at like a Venn diagram of, of Okinawa and Loma Linda and Ikaria and Sardinia, you know, all these different. There's a multitude of blue zones now we see things that overlap over and over again. No smoking, wild plant intake, legume intake, which throws a lot of westerners for a loop because we hear, you know, plants are bad and there's the whole paleo movement. You don't eat beans and you avoid a lot of these, these plants natural built in defense mechanisms. But we know that legumes and wild plants in general induce a xenohormetic effect. It causes the body to bounce back even stronger.
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So do you think then. So hormesis, I've heard you talk about it and certainly something that's been on my radar for a while, but just for the people that are listening. So hormesis being the something bad for you in small amounts gives a positive
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effect even though many of the things yes, that could, that could kill you. Exercise will kill you if you do too much of it or at least you'll get over training syndrome. And you know, you can generate some adrenal issues and some hypothalamic issues and you can do a number on yourself with over exercises. Many people who have dug themselves into that hole. No, it's horrible. The same thing with cold and cold thermogenesis, right? A small cold shower every day is fantastic for your nitric oxide and your fat burning capacity and the conversion of adipose tissue into metabolically active tissue and your vagus nerve tone. But if you were to do. And this is how they stress out rodents in laboratory models of stress, if you were to plunge yourself into cold Water for an hour a day, you would die a horrible early death or just feel, feel really miserable. The same thing can be said for heat, right? We know from these Finnish studies that saunas induce longevity. You know, four to five saunas for 20 to 30 minutes a week. And we see a four to five year lifespan increase in Finnish men. And I forget the percentage, but it's staggering. It's like a 40 to 60% decrease in Alzheimer's and dementia. Just from the sauna? Just from the sauna. Now, there are confounding variables, right? Like I've saunaed at the Finnish Men's Sauna Society and in many of these European countries, in the sauna you are, I mean, all sorts of things, right? You're not drinking a lot of alcohol, you're not sitting in front of the TV in a social situation, you're de stressing. There's a lot of confounding variables that go above and beyond the heat. But it seems pretty apparent that small amounts of heat are good for you and large amounts, of course, you could stay in the sauna for two hours a day and wind up mineral depleted and dehydrated. And again, so that's the idea of hormesis, that things that are bad for you in very large doses are good for you. You in small doses with probably calorie restriction and fasting being one of the most powerful and profound examples of that. If you don't eat, you'll eventually die, or again, just, just have a miserable existence and be libido less and cold and hungry. But if you engage in certain periods of caloric restriction or any type of modified fast as a frequent part of your life, you actually induce that hormetic effect of fasting. So we look at these blue zones and they're doing things like no smoking, wild plant intake, legume intake, a lot of these hormesis things, right? In Iceland, they have their babies sleep outside in the cold and folks are in Switzerland. You can look at these Swiss school children going outside in the cold weather in their underwear as a way to fight against the flu. And then of course, we see moderate amounts of alcohol intake. We see lots of time in social settings with friends, an emphasis on love life, family relationships. I'm a bigger fan of before you go after the I want to live forever and have my head cryogenically frozen and buy all the expensive injections and supplements and creams and lotions and, you know, do my, my photobiomodulation and my cryotherapy chambers to instead Go after this low hanging fruit. You can get outside barefoot or climb trees or climb rocks or you know, go out and do a spartan race and roll around on the ground. But that's, that's, that's known grounding and earthing. And of course there are modern corollaries to that, there are modern biohacks that allow you to concentrate that. There are grounding and earthing pads. I, I sleep on a mat all night that produces what is called a pulsed electromagnetic field, a PEMF mat. And this, this simulates exactly what I get if I were to go outside and ground or earth. And it's useful if I've been traveling and I don't think it matters.
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I don't. I've heard about grounding but.
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Right. It matters because the earth emits a natural magnetic field that is actually very therapeutic to the human body. But most of us aren't camping outdoors or sleeping outdoors and in a modern post industrial era walking outside barefoot. So we can charge our bodies and enhance the health of our mitochondria by using the natural electrical frequencies that the earth produces or that we can produce through modern technologies. So there are ways around this. How else can you charge the body? Good water and mineral intake. Right. We know that each of the cells is in basically like an aqueous solution that needs minerals and needs water. You can put Celtic sea salt in water. There are companies.
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What's the difference between Himalayan sea salt
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and Celtic sea salt or Celtic salt based on the spectral analysis that have been done by a variety of companies on salts at the top of the totem pole. From the data that I've seen is the Celtic salt. It's kind of like a grayish salt. You can find it at most grocery stor. That's about the best when it comes to salt. Himalayan tends to be higher in iron and other metals. For men especially who are concerned about, you know, men tend to be at a higher risk for what's called hemochromatosis or iron overload. I used to tell people, you know, kind of like, kind of like I used to use the, the term fruits and vegetables as one single word. And then you realize, well, fruit, I mean apples and pears are actually a very good way to spike your blood sugar for a long period of time. I don't want to vilify fructose because I think, you know, fruit is nature's dessert. It's fine in small amounts and I love know small, dark, rich berries that have a low glycemic index. But I don't lump fruits and vegetables into the same category like I used to and no longer do I tell people, oh, have a good salt like a Himalayan salt or a Celtic salt. No, I actually, I kind of think of those differently now based on, on the effect that different salts have on the body. But the big picture is that I don't think enough people based on soil depletion, based on, on water being stripped of minerals. If you're, you know, if you're paying attention to your health and filtering your water and using reverse osmosis or something like that, you're not getting a lot of min. So there are places you can purchase trace liquid minerals. You can buy Celtic salt, you can buy very. They taste like seawater, these solutions called hypertonic solutions. But you want to stay very adequately hydrated and have a lot of minerals and get outside and charge the body with the earth. And finally you want to charge the body with the other way that we can actually affect our electrochemical balance. And that's near and far infrared light which you can get from sunlight. Or if you're into the whole modern biohacking and technology movement. There are now, it's almost like an infatuation with this thing called photobiomodulation. You go to these anti aging clinics and they have these red light tables that you lay on and you can buy them for your home. But there are infrared saunas, but it's far infrared, near infrared and red light. And when you combine grounding or earthing or the use of pemf if you want a more advanced tactic, water, good clean, pure water, high amount of minerals and a lot of sun, or again, if you're going to biohack it, some type of photo biomodulation panel or bed or sauna, you're well on your way to optimizing mitochondrial health without a lot of these fringe injections and tactics. And I would say that that's closer to kind of simulating what the blue zones might do versus taking a deep dive into some of the, some of the more modern technologies and supplements before you've taken care of Just the basics.
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That's really interesting and something I'm going to play this back because so much of that I think is getting into mitochondrial health. And really thinking about that is something that I want to be obsessive about just from an energy perspective, having the energy to do the things that I want to do.
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Absolutely. And I'll tell you one other very interesting thing that I think confuses a lot of people when it comes to the mitochondria. And that's this idea of antioxidants. And these are actually marketed and sold in a lot of supplements, including a lot of so called anti aging or longevity supplements. Right, but the idea with antioxidants is that I think a lot of people take too many of them. Not only has research shown that high doses of vitamin C and vitamin E actually blunt the mitochondrial response to exercise, when you exercise, you produce new satellite cells and you get an increase in the production of mitochondria mitochondrial density. As soon as you dump a bunch of antioxidants into your body, you're quelling the body's natural hormetic response to exercise. You're actually shutting down hormesis, which is exactly what you were going after by exercising in the first place. So by going out after an exercise session and taking a bunch of antioxidants, or even taking a cold soak or a cold death, you're quelling the body's natural inflammatory response that you actually want to occur. Now when it comes to the mitochondria, the same thing can be said. The mitochondria produce free radicals. And free radicals are bad, right? Well, that's what we're led to believe they're not. Free radicals are signaling molecules. Free radicals are what are released by your mitochondria to let all the other mitochondria in that cell or in that area of tissue know how much energy to produce or not to produce. You need a certain amount of free radicals to actually signal your body to know, hey, I, I, I need to shuttle more electrons through the electron transport chain to produce more ATP or I don't. And when you completely quell that free radical response, you get decreased mitochondrial activity, decreased cell to cell signaling, and you lose a lot of that hormetic response that you're going after. So the trick is to find the sweet spot with antioxidants, preferably to get a lot of your antioxidants from wild plant intake and whole food intake. So that similar to the blue zones, you're also getting that hormetic effect of the wild plants. And then finally to be careful, pairing your antioxidant intake too close to an exercise session. So I'm a huge fan of fasting after exercise. Not only do you get a growth hormone response and a testosterone response that's greater than if you finish your exercise session with the suck down your, your fructose, your maltodextrin, your creatine, you know, whatever else is in your shake, you instead fast for a couple hours after exercise. That also allows the body to have to fight its own battle, right? It's got to create a lot of its own endogenous antioxidants. It has to engage in that free radical cell to cell signaling. It has to create new mitochondria or increase the health of the current mitochondria, has to repair and recover. And as soon as you try to do everything you can, all the biohacks and supplements you can, so that you recover as fast as possible, you actually quell a lot of that response. So it's very interesting how there's kind of like a sweet spot with a lot of these things, especially when you combine hormesis and mitochondria and exercise and wanting to live a long time.
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So speaking of exercise, what is the sweet spot I guess for if you're trying for longevity, a healthy lifespan, I'm guessing it isn't the ultra endurance races.
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What does it look like? Well, human beings are wired in a certain sense to go out and slay dragons, to climb our own personal Mount Everest, to get out and just to move. Living in a modern, post industrial, largely sedentary era, we no longer are scratching that itch with our jobs. Unless you're lucky enough to be a construction worker or a painter, or like my wife out there bringing alfalfa to the goats in the wheelbarrow and taking care of the chickens and pulling weeds out in the garden and just being out in the sunshine lifting heavy rocks every once in a while. Or maybe you're a hunter gatherer. If you don't fall into any of those categories, you get to the end of the workday or start the beginning of the workday. And you do have this ancestral itch to move. And hence we now live in an era of CrossFit boxes and pop up gyms and quick done for you, 45 minutes super brutal exercise sessions to replace what would have normally just been our day to day job 100 years ago. And you know, up until very recently, gyms and exercise and beating up and buffeting the body, that was the realm of athletes and gymnasts and warriors and knights and gladiators. And it wasn't something the average person really even felt the pressure to do. You know, you want to survive, you want to get through the day, you want to move. And this idea of intentionally starving yourself for fasting and also intentionally beating up the body with exercise like this is a relatively new phenomenon. In an area where we're sitting all day and surrounded by food, we've had to figure out a way to kind of fight that battle, right? So we fast and we exercise. But the idea with exercise is, of course, we don't see to return and kick this horse to death. Not many of the blue zones or longevity hotspots engaging in formal exercise sessions, right? They are moving, lifting heavy things every once in a while, occasionally sprinting or playing a game of soccer or tennis, or if you look at it in terms of an ancestral context, maybe running from a lion. But we're not doing a lot of those things now. And so we need to go to the gym. Now, what research has shown is that to respond more directly to your question about how much more than 60 minutes of intense exercise, let's say a CrossFit intensity, once you see about 60 minutes of that, which sounds ridiculous, but I know a lot of people who are literally pushing themselves with 2A or exercising hard, more than 60 minutes a day, you see a law of diminishing returns and an increased risk of mortality. And in the same way with aerobic exercise, let's say moderate aerobic exercise, right, where you're pretty aware that you're exercising, it's not like you're out picking weeds in your garden. Once you exceed about 90 minutes of that, you also see an increased risk of mortality, a decreased rate of return on your exercise. And we see things like cardiomegaly, like an enlarged left ventricle of the heart, we see increased risk for arterial stiffness. So it appears to be about 60 minutes of intense exercise and 90 minutes of aerobic exercise where you definitely see a law of diminishing returns. And so what I recommend that people do is a, you hack your environment so that you are somehow trying to simulate that all day long, low level physical activity type of scenario. You get a standing workstation, you get a treadmill workstation. You litter your office or your cubicle with things that allow you to do short movement spurts throughout the day, such as a kettlebell to stop and do some kettlebell swings or jumping jacks or, you know, I even have a hex bar in my office with some plates on it where I can lift heavy things every once in a while when I take a break. So I work hard for 25 minutes, take 5 minutes, move, change positions, walk, swing, kettlebell, do a few pull ups, lift the hex bar a few times, keep going. You know, I wait to take all my phone calls until the afternoon when I can go outside in the sunshine and walk and take my phone calls. So you figure out a way to get your body to be, to engage in low level physical activity during the entire day. The way I like to think of it is that exercise should be an option when you finished your day, not a necessity. Then when you do exercise, exercise with the minimum effective dose of exercise. Walking is one of my favorite modes of exercise, period. Because I can, I can talk on the phone while I'm doing it. I can be in the sunshine, very low barrier to entry. I can do it when I'm sleep deprived. I can go see a city when I'm in a city. It can be functional if I'm commuting. But walking speed, particularly walking at a slightly faster rate than what is comfortable for you, slightly faster than your stroll rate, and being kind of cognizant of your walking speed as you're walking, like pushing yourself to walk just a little bit faster than you want to walk. Walking speed is correlated with longevity as well. And I'll throw one other at you. This particular mode of exercise involves cold exposure, involves hypoxia. It involves some amount of sensory deprivation. You know, swimming.
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Just swimming.
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Just swimming.
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Interesting that you call that sensory deprivation.
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Oh, if you've, you know, this is one of the favorite things I like to do in the mornings when I travel is I'll get into a pool at the hotel and I go under the water, I hold my breath, I go under the water back and forth. And when I need to come up for a breath, I come up for a breath. And I train myself how to control the heart rate. And it's even better if the pool's alone. Little bit cold, right? So you're getting some of your cold therapy. And then as soon as I've recovered my breath, I go back under and it's peaceful and you can't hear much other than the little swish of your hands or the swish of your feet. Your heart rate's up, you're training your breath, you're a little bit cold and you're sensory deprived. So you almost get a very kind of meditative feeling from it. So swimming, swimming would be the one
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that's a very good one. Earlier you were, you mentioned a couple times, like everybody has their own personal Mount Everest. What is yours? Given the crazy that you do, like, what is your personal amount?
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Everest.
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Well, for me, it's no longer physical. That's interesting because I've been there and done that and I've done all the Spartan races and I've done 13 Ironman triathlons and the Navy SEAL training down in Encinitas and the Death race up in Vermont. And you get to a certain point where you know, where that combination of physical activity and kind of the mind aspect that they throw in as well, where a lot of these events, they don't tell you what's coming next and they want to beat you down and spit you out, you come out the other end a stronger person. And it's made me incredibly resilient in life. Not many things feel hard to me anymore. I've learned how to develop my purpose and my why, you know, very efficiently, which is what gets you through a lot of these events. But I think that one of the main reasons that I personally sought out and did so many of those things is not only for the reasons that I already elucidated, which is that modern post industrial itch that we have to just get out and move and come back with a battle scar and get down in the mud and you know, be outside and, and even compete against others in the, in the so called field of battle. But it's also because we really don't see rites of passage or coming of age ceremony or a vision quest or anything like that implemented with our youth these days. So for me growing up as a young man and never having that time when I officially became a man, I think that a big part of my drive was actually wanting to prove that I'd become a man. My twin boys, river and Taryn, and when they're 13, they will go through a rite of passage. They're 10 right now, so they do a lot of wilderness survival and I'm training them to bow hunt and start fires and plant forage and do everything that it would take to survive on one's own in the wilderness. Then when they're 13, they'll spend a week out in the wilderness by themselves. Together? No, not together on their own. When they finish, we'll have a cutting of the cord type of ceremony. They will most likely have their first plant medicine experience where expose them in a very healthy way to psilocybin or to marijuana. And I Doubt that my kids are going to come out of that experience and feel like they need to go do an iron man to, you know, to prove they're a man or something like that. So kind of a long answer. I didn't even answer your question yet about what my own personal Mount Everest is now. But for me, I would say it's the first time I've been asked that question. And there are things that I really enjoyed to do when I was a little boy that I don't feel I fully utilized in my adult life. Things that skills that I know I was born with, and I think everyone is born with a unique skill set. One of the best ways to know what your purpose is, what your passion is, is to think about what you enjoyed to do when you were young. I loved to read and to write. I like to collect and disseminate information and to teach. I do that now with my podcast and my books and my blogs. But I also absolutely loved music and I loved fantasy fiction when I was a kid. Music and I played the violin and I love to dance and sing and you know, all my family members have been in bands. But for me it's finishing my first five part fiction series by the time I'm 50 years old and also producing my first album, particularly in. In the the country folk realm.
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I didn't see that answer coming. I want to go back to this vision quest that you're doing with your kids. I think that is extraordinary. Have you read Joseph Campbell?
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I'm very aware of the Hero's Journey. I haven't read his book.
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When I read Joseph Campbell, probably in my early 20s, and he was talking, lamenting that there were no rites of passage, that he was saying that basically one of the reasons that he thinks the divorce rate is as high as it is is when you go through even a wedding ceremony, it's been really stripped of any sort of real ritualistic power. And after reading that, I was like, oh my God. Like, it really hit me hard. And so I said, right when I get married, I'm going to be ritualistically scarred. And my ceremony, because my wife is Greek, it was this Greek Orthodox thing. And it was like all in a language that I didn't understand. And it was very formal and there was waving of smoke and chanting and all this stuff. And I thought, whoa. Like, it was so intriguing. It just really had my attention. So you couple that with then the being going through a very painful experience that that left a permanent mark on my body. And I was like, I Am a different person the day after I got married than I was the day before I got married. But it's really intriguing to me that you said that even like the triathlons
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and stuff, if they could just ritualize it, right? So something, something stark and profound and memorable like that could almost be kind of, kind of gimmicky or cheesy to try to approximate, you know, with like a triathlon or Spartan or something of those along those lines. But. But yeah, I absolutely agree we're missing that. It's very interesting that you bring that up with marriage. I hadn't heard it framed in that context before, but you're right. If marriage were more liturgical or ritualistic, we'd probably see lower divorce rates. And if particularly, and this might sound stereotypical or sexist to say, but particularly if a man's coming of age were marked by something hard. Because when you think about it, a woman, when she has her first period, she kind of does have that identifiable moment when she has become a woman, right? That, that identifiable coming of age. I don't know that men go through something similar in terms of an actual identifiable rite of passage. You know, if we were circumcised in this day and age, many cases it was when we were a very small child or baby. We don't remember it at all. So you can't really depend upon that as being a marked rite of passage. But the other thing that I think about is, is the fact that it could be okay, and this is just a thought experiment to have multiple rites of passage as you age to occasionally. And I love this idea. It's really the only way I stay fit is I always have something on the calendar that scares me. You know, from, from a fitness or from a physical standpoint. Like right now I'm supposed to go up for a, for a two week hunt for grizzly and dull sheep caribou in the Arctic Circle. And I plan on taking no food with me. That will be a bow hunt. I will rely upon fish and plant foraging to get through that. And that's not until August of 2020. Like it's going to be a while before I go out and do that. But that means that during this upcoming year I'll need to work on my arctic survival skills. I'll need to work on my fire making skills. I'll need to work on my, on my hunting, on my fishing, on my plant forage identification for that region of the world. Like there's a lot that goes into
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C
preparing for something really clear. You're gonna bow hunt a grizzly bear?
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Yes. Yes. I am not opposed to people going out and occasionally doing hard things like that. I just think we need to strike a balance. You know, I. You know, like, you know, people feeling like they got to go out and do it, you know, an Ironman triathlon every month or something like that. I. You know, I think that. That that's a little excessive. Ultimately, though. Yeah, I mean, I think that a rite of passage is something that it's never too late to identify and go through, and that it's something that a lot more people should tap into.
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C
Dude, I want to talk more about your kids. The way that you raise your kids is really fascinating to me. So you were talking about how you really don't have rules at home and that you were like, if my kids want to try a bit of scotch, I can try scotch. I educate them about what it's doing to their deliver. That I'll be. That sounds crazy. Why isn't that crazy?
- [29:47]
A
Well, there's a book and a series of learnings on this called Love and Logic. That's the style of parenting that this is. And I'm no expert on that book or that curriculum per se, but the general idea is that rather than barking orders at your children or your babies or telling them, no, don't do that, Taking things away from them, having a host of forbidden fruit, from pornography to alcohol to drugs to the freaking hot stove that they're not supposed to touch, you instead, teach them the potential consequences of any decision that they might make in life, and then allow them to make that decision. With very few exceptions to that rule. If your child is about to step out in front of a train, I mean, for God's sake, tell them, no, shout at them, grab them, and then pull them back. Don't let them die. But at the same time, there are certain decisions that think a child should be far more equipped to make young in life so that as they get older, they're able to responsibly handle those decisions. My first experience with alcohol was when my father's friend bought him a really nice bottle of Scotch. And in our house, the children did not drink alcohol. Alcohol was forbidden. If the adults did have wine or beer or anything like that, which was seldom, the youth were not allowed to go near it and touch it. So my first experience with alcohol was stealing that bottle of scotch from my father's desk and taking it back to my room and getting drunk. So I think a far better approach is, you know, at our house, if we have some new fancy bottle of wine that someone sent, I'll open it up and say, oh, smell this boys, wine is fantastic. And pour a little bit in a shot glass and you swell it and you see how that tastes in your mouth. And you know, they can spit it out, they can swallow it. My children hate the taste of wine and beer and alcohol, but they have a very healthy relationship with it. The same could be said for smartphones, right? There's no smartphone rule in our house. There's no, you can't be on the phone for period of time or here's your minute allotment to be on the phone. No, my kids can take the phone or their own. They have an itouch, not a phone. They can be on that as much as they want. But they've been well educated about the effect of WI fi and Bluetooth on the increasing cell neuronal division in their brain and the effect that that can have on the sperm cells. If they like, so many children and adults do sit there with their phone in their lap. They know I'm very, very straightforward with my children. I tell them, you might actually mess up your sperm and you have later in life might be sick if you're holding your cell phone with WI fi on down by your tiny growing gonads, right? And so I'm very straightforward with them about that. And then they can go use the phone whenever they want. And they do go and use the phone, but when they use the phone they put it in airplane mode. They don't spend a lot of time on it because it's not like this forbidden thing that they, you know, they, I got dad's phone and it's time to use it as much as I can until he rips out of my hand. If it's night, they go up to the room and they get their little blue light blocking glasses and they have these little like anti radiation pads on their laptop and anti radiation cases and they always like pull those out and have those in their laps or use those. And they know about blue light and their sleep. And I don't tell them, go put your blue light blockers on. But I make an example and I put them on myself and I tell them why I'm wearing those at night when I'm looking at screens. And the same can be said for gluten. It's not like, oh, don't eat the cupcakes, don't eat the bread. When you go to the birthday party, you have to skip the cake. I tell them, well, Gluten will affect your brain. It can affect your performance in school the next day. It can do some harm to your gut. And I buy them these gluten digesting enzymes that they can take as a supplement, and then I just let them go out and make the decision. A lot of times they'll go to the birthday party and they'll come back and say, dad, those cupcakes looked really good. I didn't want to have too much gluten, so I had about half of the cupcake and it was really good. Or we'll go to the restaurant with the wonderful popovers that they love to eat with the lavender butter, and they'll get their popover and make their popover, and then they'll pull out their gluten guardian or their enzyme capsules, their dipeptidopeptidase, that's the name of the chemical that'll actually digest gluten. And so they'll take their gluten enzymes and do that. But there's no rule they could eat all the bread on the table, and they know that. But it's a combination of educating the children about the consequences of the decisions that they're going to make and then letting them make the decisions and pairing that with you being a very good example. If I'm not wearing blue light blocking glasses when I'm on screens at night, and if I'm just basically hoovering bread at the restaurant, I'm, you know, I'm not exercising, and then telling them, hey, boys, you got to go learn to do the kettlebells. If they don't see me in the garage doing Turkish getups with the kettlebell the day after I taught them how to do it and told them it'd be really good for them. It really doesn't. You know, kids can see right through that. So. So it's. It's two things. It's the consequences, and then it's also being a good example. Yeah.
- [34:44]
C
So listeners of my podcast know that I am. I'm intrigued by microdosing, but I've never done it, But I've recently come into possession of some psilocybin that I'm really interested in trying. And you said that at 13, that may be the time that your kids first have a plant medicine. I think those are the words you used.
- [35:08]
A
Right. A responsible plant medicine experience overseen in the proper set and setting.
- [35:16]
C
Right. And what do you hope that they'll take away from that? What can I expect to take away from that?
- [35:22]
A
Well, microdosing is different than Dosing, dosing with plant medicine. The merging of the left and right brain hemispheres. Your ability to set aside pre existing values and beliefs and notions and make yourself open and embracing of new ideas, new thought patterns, which allows you to make business breakthroughs and personal breakthroughs and leave emotional baggage behind and develop better, more meaningful relationships with those around you. These are all things that you would get from dosing with these things and more of what might be considered, considered a trip scenario. And then there's also the addiction component. People who are, who are addicted to other drugs such as whatever alcohol, heroin, cocaine, you name it. The use of psilocybin or ibogaine is another very common one. Has been successfully used to treat many of these addictions. But we're talking about overseeing trip doses where you're not useful in any sense. You're usually flat out on your back for hours. And it's a very different experience to something like a microdose. But in the case of a rite of passage, the reason to do something like that would indeed be after a young man, for example, has gone through something like that for them to be able to dissolve the ego, you go. I mean the best way I can describe it when you use a medicine in that way, in a higher dose is that you go completely blank slate and you just find yourself on your back open to anything that the world has to say to you at that moment. I am a Christian and I believe that, that God actually created a lot of these plants to allow him to be able to speak to us in a very deep and meaningful way when the time comes. Problem is they're used very hedonistically like a lot of people on their 38th ayahuasca trip. And before we talk about microdosing, I should name that. I am definitely a fan of a story stoic versus a hedonistic approach. I think anyone before they go out and do plant medicine should go and, and be in the wilderness or go camping for, for two days or three days or five days and do do a water fast out in the wilderness without your cell phone and maybe a journal and some kind of a spiritual book. And it's just you in nature. I feel a lot of people would, would quote, find themselves or get what they're looking for as far as ego disillusion and a deep spiritual experience. If they were to go that, that route stoically before they head off to Burning man with their friends to do DMT or ayahuasca, whatever. I think that in many cases it's Overdone. With the proper set and setting done, done in the right scenario with the right intention, I think it can be very powerful. Again for, let's say in the case of a young man, dissolving the ego and allowing them to venture forth into the next chapter of their life as a new person, having almost, almost kind of pushed the reboot button, so to speak, and started the next chapter of life in a very profound and meaningful way. Now microdosing, we're talking about far less, but it's still a perceptible difference that you experience in your cognition and your relationships and even things like sensory perception. In the case of something like psilocybin, microdosing with psilocybin, what you get is not only that merging of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, but a little bit of that ego dissolving effect and a little bit of a sensory enhancement effect. The veins on leaves begin to stick out just a little bit better. Flowers become brighter. You go outside and you feel the sunshine on your skin a little bit more and plants are brighter. A lot of people like to do things like use a microdose of psilocybin and then before the day of work begins, go for a walk outside in the sunshine to just kind of integrate everything that you're feeling. And then you get back in and you just charge into a day of work. Your relationships feel better, your interpersonal communication improves. I find that you become, become more empathetic to others feelings. I use it for hunting because you actually do get, you know, it almost has like this turn you into the ultimate predator type of effect where you can smell better, you can see farther, you can see tracks better, you can see trees and plants and leaves better. So it's useful in that type of scenario as well. And yeah, it's a very, very pleasant experience when you use these type of things in the right format and responsibly.
- [39:42]
C
Yeah, that's, I, I, I haven't done it historically because I'm a wuss. I want to be very clear about why I haven't done it. Not like I have some fear of not being in control. I have a real like pervasive fear in my life of brain damage. And so things that mess with the brain really just freak me out. But I've heard so many people talk about, I mean like you just did that. There's a potential really amazing impact of it. What is the craziest thing that you, you've tried?
- [40:09]
B
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- [40:40]
A
There. There's a. There's a lot of crazy stuff, but I guess the one I've. I've probably caught the most flack for was last year Men's Health magazine had me do like a three month immersive journalism story on everything a fella could do to enhance his sexual performance and testosterone. So they had me doing Gas Station Dick Pillow, which essentially turned out to be like a blend of sildenafil and ephedra, not any of the ancient rare Chinese herbs that they say are in them. Reduced ejaculation frequency where you have sex. But you do like what's called a power draw or you put your fingers down by your perineum or kind of do like a Kegel squeeze down there. Power draw would be very similar to what's taught in the book the Multi Orgasmic man, where you breathe energy from your crotch, your lower dantian, up your spine up to your head. So you're drawing the energy just as you're about to come back up into your body.
- [41:38]
C
Like for real.
- [41:39]
A
How do you do that? As you're learning how to do that, you're literally just breathing and imagining the flow of energy coming up the back of your spine, over the top of your head and back down. And it sounds strange, but you can try this. I mean, if you want to just try it on your own. You can masturbate and as you're getting close, you start to breathe and draw it back up. And you can also take two fingers and put them on your perineum, which is kind of the soft area between your asshole and your balls. You just kind of put pressure there and that can kind of keep you from ejaculating. And then you can practice that and do it during sex. It's called reverse ejaculation. It allows you to orgasm without ejaculating. But that was one thing that they wanted me to experiment with, to see what happened with testosterone. All that, you know, is as a married man who finds it difficult enough to step away and make the time for sex and, you know, find alone time with my wife as it is being able to have Sex and then not ejaculating mostly just leaves you kind of irritable and full of energy and laying awake in bed at night wanting to go bench press or hit the gym, but. But you can't. So I didn't, I didn't like that too much. But it was interesting. There, there was platelet rich plasma injections where they draw plasma from your body and they concentrate the growth factors and then re. Inject them into your genitals. They had me do acoustic sound wave therapy. They had me do this therapy that they use in men with erectile dysfunction where they literally take the equivalent of like a, like a jackhammer wand and they wave it around your genitals and it makes this like a shaking sound like you dick sandwiched in between two giant speakers. And supposedly it breaks open old blood vessels and builds new blood vessels. And I had to put numbing cream on for that one too, of course, and that protocol. So it seemed to work, as did the platelet rich plasma, as did despite the sweaty palms and no sleep, the gas station dick pills, it all seemed to work to a certain extent. But the stem cells, to answer your question about one of kind of like the craziest things I've done, I had the fat extracted from my back via what is essentially a liposuction procedure, which is a very common way to harvest fat for stem cells, and had it grown and cultured using an enzymatic process to isolate what are called the mscs, the, the mesenchymal stem cells. A lot of people will do that and then have those available as a systemic injection for anti aging, literally injecting the young you into the old you, which I did. And I was able to subtract 17 years off my biological age age based on telomere measurements by doing just that alone. That's something you do like once every five years or so.
- [44:16]
C
Whoa. So bank it as early as you can. I'm guessing.
- [44:20]
A
No, that is a myth that if you're 70 years old and you can't bank your stem cells, you're screwed. Now, the stem cell theory of aging is based on the fact that you tend to lose your endogenous availability of stem cells as you age. But that doesn't seem to accelerate. And it appears that when you inject stem cells, what's happening is the stem cells are calling on your own stem cells, your own growth factors, your own signaling molecules, and upregulating your body's own built in ability to be able to repair itself. Which means that it doesn't matter how old the stem cells are that you inject, because your body isn't using the stem cells that you are injecting to do the repair as much as it's using those to amp up the communication availability of the rest of the body. So if you're 70 years old and you harvested your STE cells and you had those injected, you'd still see a pretty good effect.
- [45:14]
C
Still see a good effect measured in the length of telomeres, right?
- [45:18]
A
Well, the length of telomeres or joint health or anything like that. So yeah, in the case of a genital injection, same thing, they're acting to call in the body's own growth factors to that area to bring new vascularization, new capillary delivery. And so as part of that protocol, what I did was I, I underwent full body sedation. I had the bone marrow extracted from my hips along with my own fat stem cells, along with things called exosomes, along with this platelet rich plasma derived from my own blood. And I had my toes, ankles, knees, hips, penis, three times, all up the spine, face, hair, everything done with stem cells at a clinic in Salt Lake City City, Utah. So it was called a full body stem cell makeover. And, and of all the things I did for that Men's Health article in terms of sexual enhancement, the one that I noticed the most, as far as, you know, just making it feel like a 16 year old boy, you wake up every morning with morning wood and your libido is high and everything works, you know, perfectly, was that stem cell protocol. But that was also the one that I, I caught the most flak for in terms of, you know, the article and some follow up stories that, you know, some, some French magazine pulled the story and, and their, their headline was man with small dick attempts to make dick larger. And then I turned into a couple us websites picked that up and so all of a sudden, you know, man attempts to make dick bigger with stem cells. And then one of the photos on, on one of the websites was me in my kitchen holding a needle, which was not stem cells, it was like a peptide injection or something like that. But they found the photo. So now it looks like I'm injecting my own dick with stem cells and I'm just a complete cowboy. So anyways, though it was in a medical setting, I found it profoundly helpful. My wife was so impressed with things like the length of my orgasms, improving, firmness, hardness, everything she went and she did her clitoris and vagina with stem cells. So she did the same protocol Banked her stem cells so she could do as I'm doing and do repeat injections like every five years for the anti aging effect. But ultimately, to answer your question, that was probably one of the crazier things I did was the stem cells into the dick.
- [47:33]
C
That is amazing. What other effects did you notice, if any.
- [47:37]
A
Recovery. Huge. Significantly increased recovery post workout. Meaning. You know, I have friends who use testosterone who say it's almost. It's weird. Like you got to be careful not to get injured because you just get out of bed the next day and you're just ready for the next workout. I noticed very similar effects with stem cells to where your body just repairs itself far more quickly after the workout. So that was one, one big one. My face. A lot of people said that after the, after the micro needling procedure, they thought my face looked younger, like less, less wrinkles, you know, so, so there, so there appears to be a pretty good effect on collagen or skin or wrinkles. The big one, though was just repair and recovery. You know, I've done a lot of. And just, just melting away a lot of the aches and pains and joints though. That was what I appreciated a lot. You know, I still get injured, knock on wood. But it's, it just, it subsides faster, you know, I, I clear things up from an inflammatory standpoint a lot faster.
- [48:35]
C
Well, dude, doing all that experimentation from the rest of us, thank you. It is. I'm never going to be the first
- [48:42]
A
one to inject my penis as a vessel for science, for the good of men everywhere. I don't, I don't plan on doing that much more. I think. Yeah, I don't want to be like the, like the dick guy especially. I don't want to be the small business IT guy. But I don't want to be known for crazy biohacks, crazy sexual biohacks. I mean, honestly, going forward in life, I think that there are things that bring you a lot more meaning and happiness than necessarily trying to grasp at even life and health at all costs. And again, coming full circle to some of these blue zones, they're incredibly happy because they have their ikigai. The reason for getting up early in the morning. It's the Japanese terms, the reason for living. A purpose. They have a purpose. I think everyone should be able to very clearly and succinctly name their purpose in life. What's yours, just in a single sentence. When you're under stress, when the bullets are flying at you, you need to be able to say my purpose. In life is to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. That's really yours. I, Ben Greenfield, live to empower people to live a adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. And that gets me out of bed in the morning. Surrounding yourself with positive relationships. We prioritize family dinner every night. We gather around and we share our gratitude journals and we play table topics and we laugh and we go upstairs and I play the boys songs on the guitar and we sing and we read and we say a prayer and we go to bed and we're all together as a family. Knowing your neighbor's name and being able to be there for your neighbor and the people in your local community. There are all these things that when we tend to myopically focus on ourselves and stem cell injections and peptides and sarms and mitochondria and all these things, they're good. And I think it's good. The reason that you want to live longer or even live forever is not so you can be the person who has the most car and makes the most money and fucks the most and has the most amazing, adventurous life the most. The reason that I think you should be trying to live a long time and feel really good doing it is so that you are as equipped as you possibly can be to best fulfill your purpose in life. To best be able to take the unique skill sets that you were born with. And if I can help people to go on adventures and have happiness and feel fulfilled until I'm 150 instead of until I'm 70. And if, especially after I'm 70, I'm not relegated to a wheelchair, but I'm doing this and up on stages when I'm 120, giving my talks and inspiring people. That's the reason that you want to live a long time. It's not just so you can. So you can sit at home watching Netflix and counting your gold bars, right? So I think that all this stuff needs to be framed in that mindset. And if that's the reason that you're going out and doing all this fringe shit and biohacking and spending all the money and reading all the books, as long as you have that in the back of your mind that ultimately it's all so that you can make this world a better place and leave this world a better place and there's going to be. It sounds like a horribly pessimistic way to view things, but you want as many people crying at your funeral as possible, right? If there's a Lot of people crying at your funeral, then you've probably done a pretty good job with that long life that you've strived for and hopefully been given.
- [52:18]
C
That's a damn good answer, man. Before I ask my last question, tell these guys where they can find you online.
- [52:24]
A
I have a boy blog. I have a podcast where you can find all my books and everything. That's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and then I have a company called Kion where it's my playground to develop supplements. And I wrote a gratitude journal that I have there, and all my books are over there. And anytime I discover a cool new molecule or herb or something, I want to create a supplement formulation over over there, I do it. I've got coffee and all sorts of stuff. Stuff. So I would say my company Kion, or my website@BenGreenfieldFitness.com are two good places.
- [52:58]
C
Love that.
- [52:58]
A
Yeah.
- [52:59]
C
All right, my last question. What's one change that people can make that would have the biggest impact on their health?
- [53:04]
A
Oh, okay. So we said going outside barefoot and we said sunshine and water and minerals. I take a cold shower at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, the beginning of the day gets the nitric oxide going about 2. 2 minutes. Yeah, yeah. I get bored once I go past two minutes, but I kind of turn around. I get the underarms where your vagus nerve travels and the throat and the back of the neck and the face. It's very important to get that wet. So I do kind of a full body, little cold shower at the beginning of the day, which gives you nitric oxide and increases the tone of your vagus nerve, increases cellular resilience. It deactivates the sympathetic nervous system. Once you're able to breathe your way through that stress and kind of suppress the mammalian diversity reflex. Right? That sharp intake of breath when you get in the cold. You want to train yourself to just be like a monk. You get in there and man, when you pair that with a grounding and earthing sunlight, water and minerals, I mean, you just do those five things. And I, I bet if we did that, that we would reduce the, whatever it is, the, the 900 plus billion dollar pharmaceutical industry, we'd at least make a dent in that if everybody started doing just those few things. Love that. Awesome.
- [54:11]
C
Ben, thank you so much for being on John.
- [54:13]
A
Thanks, Tom.
- [54:14]
C
Really fantastic.
- [54:14]
A
Fantastic. Thanks.
- [54:15]
C
All right, guys, this is somebody who I think is at the absolute cutting edge of all health, fitness, all of it, and is able to make it accessible to people. And like he was talking about there at the end with really finding your purpose and connecting to why you're doing all this stuff, I think is really interesting. And the fact that he writes fantasy fiction gives you an end to the humanity that's behind everything that he does, which is why I find him so interested in interesting. There are few people that really make me interested in the juxtaposition of the science of all this with the spirituality of it. One thing that we didn't talk about, which would be actually really fascinating, and I think you can feel sort of undergirding his work, is that he obviously being religious, which I am not, but seeing people who are deeply religious and that they have that connection, it adds a layer to their work, which I find really, really interesting. And you'll see it across everything that he does. I think that he's really sincere, easier about understanding human biomechanics. So even looking at some of the things that he's doing from what he's putting out from a nutrition and supplement perspective, I think is really interesting and I highly encourage you guys to look at that. And I think the way there at the end that he really broke down the five simple things that you could be doing that would have a massive impact on your health. I think that your lives would be revolutionized by making those changes. There's certainly things that he said that I'm going to implement into my daily life. So I encourage you guys not just to look into what he's doing, but to really experiment and see if it works, works for yourself. I think that you'll see some pretty extraordinary changes and just dive into his world. It is so much bigger than what we touched on today. The number of topics that he can go into, just even like the wild plants, which is a whole massive topic unto itself. He's written pretty profoundly about.
- [55:55]
A
So check all of that stuff out.
- [55:57]
C
All right. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, my friends. Be legendary.
- [56:01]
A
Take care.
- [56:03]
C
So hey my man. Thanks Matsona everybody. Thank you so much for listening. And if this content is delivering value to you, please go to itunes, go to Stitcher Rate and review us. That helps us build this community and that is what we are all about right now. Building this community as big as we can to help as many people as we can deliver as much value as possible. And you guys rating and reviewing really helps with that. Alright guys, thank you again so much. And until next time, my friends, be legendary.
- [56:31]
A
Take care.