5 Best Biohacks for Living Better & Longer | Ben Greenfield on Health Theory

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 Kion, 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? Forever? Forever. It's interesting, right? Because we live in in a modern era in which people seem to be pretty infatuated with anti-aging technology or or supplements or, you know, medications that you know, that that have lines, you know, say they promise to extend life at a 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 that you're born until the time that you die. And once you once you strip out the variables that we have managed to get a pretty good handle on in our modern health era, like like reducing the amount of infant deaths and early deaths and you know, worldwide epidemics, you know, and 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 67-ish age, we're not living that much longer. We really aren't. I mean, the the the past couple centuries have not produced a significant increase in lifespan once you once you reduce or or you eliminate that that 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, Right. 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 Icaria and Sardinia and and you know, all these different there's there's a multitude of blue zones now. We see things that 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 a whole paleo movement you don't eat beans and and you avoid a lot of these these plants' natural built-in defense mechanisms, but uh we we know that legumes and and wild plants in general induce a a xeno hormetic effect that causes the body to bounce back even stronger. you think then So, hormesis I've heard you talk about it and um 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 effect even though in the things, yes. That that could that could kill you. Exercise will kill you if you do too much of it or at least you'll get overtraining syndrome and you know, you you can you can generate some adrenal issues and and some hypothalamic issues and and you you can do a number on yourself with over exercise as as many people who have dug themselves into that hole know. It's it's horrible. The same thing with cold and cold thermogenesis, right? Uh a small cold shower every day is fantastic for your nitric oxide and your fat burning capacity and the the conversion of adipose tissue into metabolically active tissue and your your vagus nerve tone. But, if you were to do and and this this is how they stress out rodents in laboratory models of stress. If you were to to plunge yourself in the cold water for an hour a day, you would you would die a a horrible early death or just feel feel really miserable. Uh the same thing could be said for heat, right? We know that from these Finnish studies that 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 uh I forget the percentage, but it's staggering. It's like a 40 to 60% decrease in in Alzheimer's and dementia. Just from the sauna? Just from the sauna. Now, there are confounding variables, right? Like I've I've saunad at the Finnish Men's Sauna Society and and been in many of these European countries in the sauna. You are I mean, all sorts of things, right? You're you're not drinking a lot of alcohol, you're not sitting in front of the TV, you're in a social situation, you're de-stressing. There 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 and large amounts, of course, you could sit in the sauna for two hours a day and wind up mineral depleted and dehydrated. And again, yeah, so so so that's the idea of hormesis, that things that that are bad for you in very large doses are good for you in small doses with uh 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 a miserable existence and be libideless and cold and hungry. But, if you engage in certain periods of caloric restriction or any type of modified fasts as a frequent part of your life, you you actually induce that hormetic effect of fasting. So, we look at these blue zones and and they're doing things like no smoking, wild plant intake, legume intake, a lot of these hormesis things, right? The you know, in Iceland, they they have their babies sleep outside in the cold and you know, folks are you know, in Switzerland, and you can 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. Uh and then of course we see, you know, moderate amounts of of alcohol intake. We see uh lots of time in social settings with friends and 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 a Spartan race and roll around in the ground, but that's that's that's known as 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 I need to kind of I don't I've heard about grounding, but 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 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 So there are ways around this. Uh how else can you charge the body? Uh good water and mineral intake, right? We know that each of the cells is is in basically like an aqueous solution that needs minerals and needs water. You can put Celtic sea salt in water. There are companies between a good sea salt and Celtic sea salt or Celtic salt? Based on 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. You know, it's kind of like a grayish salt. You can find it at most grocery stores. That's about the best when it comes to salt. Himalayan tends to be higher in iron and other metals. Uh for men especially who are concerned about, you know, men 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 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. Uh 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 I love, you 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. I no longer do I tell people, "Oh, have a good salt like a Himalayan salt or a Celtic salt." No, actually I kind of think of those differently now based on on the effect the 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 minerals. So, there are there are places you can purchase trace liquid minerals. You can buy Celtic salt. You can buy a very they they taste like sea water, 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 uh we 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 if you're into whole, you know, the whole modern biohacking and technology movement, there are there are now it's almost like like a 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 you you're you know there are infrared saunas, right? But it's far infrared, near infrared, and red light. And when you combine grounding or earthing or the use of 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 photobiomodulation 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 the basics. That's really interesting. And something I'm going to play this back cuz so much of that I think is is getting into mitochondrial health and really thinking about that is something that I want to be obsessive about just from a an energy perspective having the energy to do the things that I want to do. Yeah, 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 of antioxidants. And the And these are actually marketed and sold in a lot of supplements including a lot of of you know 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 or even taking a you know, doing doing a cold soak or a cold bath, 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. Free radicals are 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 I'm a huge fan of fasting after exercise. Not only do you get a a growth hormone response and a testosterone response that's greater than if you finish your exercise session with the suck down, you know, your your fructose, your maltodextrin, your creatine, you know, whatever else is in your shake. Uh you instead fast for a couple hours after exercise. That also allows the body to have to fight its own battle, right? It's It's got to create a lot of its own endogenous antioxidants. it has to engage in that free radical cell-to-cell signaling, has to create new mitochondria or increase the health of the current mitochondria, has to has to repair and recover. And as soon as you try to do everything you can, you know, 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 it's very interesting how there's there's kind of like a sweet spot with a lot of these things, especially when you when you combine hormesis and mitochondria and exercise and and wanting to live a long time. So, speaking of exercise, what is the um the sweet spot, I guess, for if if you're trying for longevity, a healthy lifespan, um I'm guessing it isn't the ultra-endurance races. Um what does it look like? um you human beings are wired in a certain sense to go out and slay dragons, to climb our own personal Mount Everest, to to get out and and and just to move, right? 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, you know, like my wife out there, you know, 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 and lifting heavy rocks every once in a while uh or maybe, you know, you're you're a you're a hunter-gatherer. If you don't fall into any of those categories, you get to the end of the work day or or start the beginning of the work day 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-minute super brutal exercise sessions to replace what would have normally just been our day-to-day job 100 years ago. And, you know, uh up until very recently, gyms and exercise and beating up and buffeting the body. That was the realm of athletes and gymnasts and 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 you want to move and this idea of of intentionally starving yourself or fasting and also intentionally beating up the body with exercise like this is a relatively new phenomenon you know, in an era where we're we're sitting all day and surrounded by food. You know, we had to figure out a way to to kind of kind of fight that battle, right? So we fast and we exercise. But uh the idea with exercise is of course we don't see to and 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, you know, occasionally sprinting or playing game of soccer or tennis or you know, if you look at it in in terms of like an ancestral context, maybe running from a lion. But you know, we're doing a lot of those things now and so we need to to go to the gym. Now what research has shown is that you know, to respond more directly to your question about how much more than 60 minutes of intense exercise, let's you know, let's say like a CrossFit intensity. Once you exceed about 60 minutes of that, which sounds ridiculous, but I know a lot of people who are who are literally pushing themselves with two a days or 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 a cardiomegaly, like an enlarged left ventricle of the heart. We see the 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 time, keep going. You know, I 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 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 finish 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 cuz 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. You I can 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. Uh and I'll I'll throw one other at you. Uh this particular mode of exercise involves cold exposure. It involves hypoxia. It involves some amount of sensory deprivation. You know, swimming. Just swimming. Interesting that you call that sensory deprivation. Oh, if you've uh 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 a 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. That's a very good one. Um 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 Mount Everest? Well, if for me it's no longer physical. That's interesting. Uh because I've been there and done that. You know, and and you know, I've done the the you know, all the Spartan races and I've done 13 Ironman triathlons and the Navy SEAL training down in Encinitas and the the the Death Race up in Vermont and you know, 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 a stronger person and it's made me incredibly resilient in life. Not many things feel hard to me anymore. I've 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 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. Uh but it's also because we really don't see uh 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 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 to prove that I'd become a man. My my twin boys, River and Taran, when they're 13, they will go through a rite of passage. You know, they're they're 10 right now. So so they do a lot of wilderness survival and you know, I'm training them to bow hunt and and start fires and plant forage and and do everything that 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. Okay. On their own. When they finish, we'll have a you know, like a a cutting of the cord type of ceremony. They will most likely have their first plant medicine experience where they're where I'll I'll expose them in a very healthy way to 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 Ironman 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 I would say it's the first time I've been asked that question. And that there 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 you know, skills that I know I was born with. I think everyone is born with a unique skill set. One of the best ways to 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 to read and to write. I like to collect and disseminate information and to teach, right? 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 loved to dance and sing and you know, all of 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. Uh particularly in in the the country folk realm. I didn't see that answer coming. Um 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? Uh I I I'm very aware of the hero's journey. I haven't read his book. When I read Joseph Campbell, probably in my early 20s and he was talking he was 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 is when really stripped of any sort of real ritualistic power. Mm. 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 cuz 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'm 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 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 or cheesy to try to approximate, you know, with like a triathlon or Spartan or something in those along those lines. 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 if if marriage were more liturgical or ritualistic, we'd probably see lower divorce rates. And and if if particularly and this might sound stereotypical or sexist to say, but particularly if a if a man's coming of age remark by something hard because when you think about it, a woman when 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 right 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 mark and right of passage. But, the 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 rights of passage as you age to to to occasionally and I 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 a 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 doll sheep and 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 2019, 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 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 preparing for something like that. clear. You're going to bow hunt a grizzly bear? 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 feel like they got to go out and do it, you know, an Ironman triathlon every month or something like that. I you know, I I think that that's that's um this little excessive. So. Um ultimately though, uh yeah, I mean I I think that that a right of passage is something that it's never too late to identify and go through and that uh it's it's something that a lot more a lot more people should tap into. Mhm. Dude, I want to talk more about your kids. The way that you raise your kids is really fascinating to me. So, um 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, they can try scotch. I educate them about what it's doing to their liver." That I'll be on That sounds crazy. Yeah. Why isn't that crazy? Well, it's it's there's actually there's a book and 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 on that book or that curriculum per se, but the general idea is that rather than than barking orders at your children or your babies or telling them 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 if your child is about to step out in front of a train, I mean, for God's sake, tell tell them no, shout at them, grab them and then pull them back, you know, don't don't let them die. But at the same time, there are certain decisions that I 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 my father's friend bought him a really nice bottle of scotch and in our house, the children did not drink alcohol. Uh alcohol was forbidden. If the adults did have wine or beer or anything like that, which was seldom, you know, the youth were not allowed to 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. This wine is fantastic." And pour a little bit in a shot glass and smell it and you see how that tastes in your mouth and and you know, they they can spit it out. They can smell it. And my children hate the taste of wine and beer and alcohol, but they have a very healthy relationship with it. Uh the same could be said for uh for smartphones, right? There is no There's no smartphone rule in our house. There's no you can't be on the phone for X period of time or here here's your minute allotment to be on the phone. No, my kids can take the phone or their own They have an eye touch, 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 on the increasing uh cell you know, 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 in their lap, you know, they know I'm I'm very very straightforward. My children tell them, "Well, you might you might actually mess up your sperm and the children that 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 cuz 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." Um if it's night, they 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 you know, 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. Uh and you know, the same could be said for gluten, right? 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 you know, and and I 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 the restaurant with the wonderful popovers that they love to eat with the lavender butter and they'll they'll get their popover and they'll make their popover and then they'll they'll pull out their gluten guardian or their enzyme capsules, you know, their dipeptidyl peptidase. That's the name of the chemical that'll actually digest gluten and so they'll 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 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 hovering bread at the at the restaurant and and I'm you know, I'm not exercising and 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 get-ups 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 mean 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, 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 maybe the time that your kids first have a plant medicine. I think those are the words you used. Um a a responsible a responsible plant medicine experience overseen in the proper set and setting. Yes. Right. And what do you hope that they'll take away from that? What can I expect to take away from that? Well, microdosing is different than than dosing dosing with plant medicine. You know, what 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 from dosing with these things in more of what might be considered a trip scenario. And then there's also the addiction component. People who are who are addicted to other drugs such as you know, whatever alcohol, heroin, cocaine, you name it. The use of psilocybin uh or ibogaine is another very common one has been successfully used to treat many of these addictions. But we're talking about overseen trip doses where you're you're you're not useful in in any sense. You're usually, you know, flat out on your back for hours and you know, it's a very different experience to something like a microdose. But in the case of a right of passage, the reason to do something like that would indeed be after 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 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 very deep and meaningful way when the time comes. Problem is they're used very hedonistically like a lot of people are on their 38th ayahuasca trip and before we talk about microdosing, I should name that I am definitely a fan of a 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 and 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 route stoically before they head off to Burning Man with their friends to do DMT or ayahuasca. I 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 kind of 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 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 more empathetic to others' feelings. I use it for hunting because you actually do get you know it's I 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 you can see trees and plants and leaves better. So it's useful in that type of scenario as well. And yeah, it's it's very very pleasant experience when you use these type of things in the right format and responsibly. 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 would have some fear of not being in control. I have a real like pervasive fear in my life of brain damage. And so, if 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've tried? There There's a There's a lot of crazy stuff, but I guess the one I've I've probably caught the most flak for was um last year Men's Health magazine had me do like a 3-month immersive journalism story on everything a fella could do to enhance his sexual performance and testosterone. So, they had me doing uh gas station dick pills, 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. Uh reduced ejaculation frequency where you you have sex, but you do like what's called a power draw, or you you put your fingers down by your perineum. Uh or or kind of kind of do like a Kegel squeeze down there. Power draw would be very similar to what's taught in the book The The Multi-Orgasmic Man, where you breathe energy from your 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. Like, for real, how do you And then 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 And it And it sounds strange, but you you can try this. I mean, if you want to just try it on your own, you can you know, you can 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 on your perineum, which is kind of the soft area between your your [ __ ] and your balls, and you just kind of put pressure there, and that can kind of keep you from ejaculating. And then you you can practice that and do it during sex. It's called reverse ejaculation. It allows you to orgasm without ejaculating. Uh but that that was one thing that they wanted me to experiment with to to see what happened with testosterone. All that had you know is as a married man who who finds it difficult enough to step away and and make the time for sex and you'll 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 it was interesting. There there was a 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 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 ba ba ba ba ba ba like a shaking sound like you're having your dick sandwiched in between two giant speakers and supposedly breaks open old blood blood vessels and and builds new blood vessels and and I had to put numbing cream on for that one too of course. And uh and and that protocol also seemed to work as did the platelet-rich plasma uh as did despite the sweaty palms and and no sleep the gas station dick pills. Like like it all seemed to work to a certain extent. Uh but the stem cells to answer your question about one of one of kind of like the 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 using an enzymatic process to isolate what are called the MSCs the the mesenchymal stem cells. Uh 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 based on telomere measurements by doing just that alone. That's something you do like once every 5 years or so. Woah. So, bank it as early as you can, I'm guessing. No. You actually That's That is a myth. That if you're 70 years old and you can't bank your stem cells, you're screwed. Yeah. 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 aging. 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 stem cells and you had those injected, you'd still see a pretty good effect. Still see a a good effect measured in the length of telomeres. Right. The Well, the length of telomeres or or joint health or anything like that. So, That's really Yeah, that In in the case of like a like a like a genital injection, uh same thing that they're they're acting to call in the body's own growth factors to that area to to bring new vascularization, new capillary delivery. And so, as as part of that protocol, what I did was 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 in Salt Lake City, Utah. So, it was it was called a full body stem cell makeover. And 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 me feel like a 16-year-old boy. You wake up every morning with morning wood and your libido is high. Uh and just 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 have 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 photos. So now it looks like I'm injecting my own dick with stem cells. And I'm just a complete cowboy. Uh so anyways though, it was in a medical setting. I found it profoundly helpful. Uh my wife was so impressed with things like uh the length of my orgasms improving, um firmness, hardness, everything. She went She She did her her uh 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 and do repeat injections like every 5 years for the anti-aging effect. Uh but ultimately that to answer your question that that was probably one of the crazier things I did was the stem cells into the dick. That is amazing. What other effects did you notice if any? Recovery huge. Significantly increased recovery post workout. Meaning you know, I have friends who use testosterone who say it's almost it's 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 big one. Um my face. A lot of people said that after the after the microneedling procedure they thought my face looked younger, like less less wrinkles. Um you know, so so there's appears to be a pretty good effect on collagen or skin or wrinkles. Um 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. That was That was what I appreciated a a lot. Um you know, I still get injured knock on wood, but it's uh it just it subsides a lot faster, you know. Yeah, I I I clear things up from an inflammatory standpoint a lot faster. Well, dude, doing all that experimentation uh from the rest of us, thank you. It is I'm never going to be the first 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 I think uh yeah, I I did I don't want to be like the like the dick guy. I especially don't I don't want to be the small dick guy, but I I don't want to I don't want to be known for for crazy biohacks crazy sexual biohacks. I mean, honestly uh going forward in life, I think that there are things that bring you a lot more meaning and happiness than than necessarily trying to uh trying to grasp at and even even life and health at all costs, right? And again, coming full circle to some of these blue zones, they're incredibly happy because they have their ikigai, the reason for getting out of bed in the morning. It's the Japanese term. It's the the reason for living, the 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 you know, when the bullets are flying at you, you need to be able to say, you know, what my purpose in life is to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. That's really your I Ben Greenfield live to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. And that gets me out of bed in the morning. Surrounding yourself with with positive relationships. We prioritize family dinner every night. We gather around, we share our gratitude journals, and we play table topics, and we laugh, and we go upstairs, and I play the boys, you know, songs on the on the guitar, and and we we sing, and and we and we read, and we say a prayer, and we go to bed, and and we're we're all together as a family. Knowing your neighbor's name and being able to to be there for your neighbor in 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 I think it's good. Like you Like the reason that you want to live longer or even live forever is not so you can be the person who who has the most car and makes the most money and [ __ ] the most and has the most amazing adventurous life, right? 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 if I can help people to go on adventures and 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 I'm 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, you know, sit at home watching Netflix and counting your gold bars, right? So 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 [ __ ] 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's it sounds it sounds like a horribly pessimistic way to view things, but you want as many people crying at your funeral as possible, right? And if there's a lot of people crying at your funeral, then then you've probably done a a pretty good job with that long life that you've strived for and and hopefully been given. That's a damn good answer, man. Before I ask my last question, tell these guys where they can find you online. I have a blog. I have a podcast where you can find all my books and everything. That's at bengreenfieldfitness.com. Uh and then I have a company called Kion where uh it's it's my my playground to develop supplements and you know, I wrote a gratitude journal that I have there and all my 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 and uh all sorts of stuff. So, I would say my company Kion or or my website at bengreenfieldfitness.com or or two good places. Love that. Yeah. All right. My last question, what's one change that people can make that would have the biggest impact on their health? Uh okay, so we said we said going outside barefoot and uh we 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 minutes, yeah. Yeah, I get bored once I go past 2 minutes, but I kind of turn around, I get the the underarms where your vagus nerve travels and the 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, uh 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 dive 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 that it is that 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. Ben, thank you so much for being on the show, man. Thanks, Tom. It's really fantastic. Thanks. All right, guys. This is somebody who I think um 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 it's really interesting. And the fact that he writes fantasy fiction gives you an into the humanity that's behind everything that he does, which is why I find him so interesting. Um 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 um religious, which I am not, but seeing people who are deeply religious and that they have that connection, um it it adds a 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 about understanding um human biomechanics. So, even looking at some of the things that he's doing from what he's putting out from nutrition and supplement perspective, I think it's 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, um I think that your lives would be revolutionized by making those changes. They're certainly things that he said that I'm going to implement into my daily life. Um so, I encourage you guys not just to look into what he's doing, but to really experiment and see if it works for yourself. Um I think that you'll see some pretty extraordinary changes. And just dive in his world. It is so much bigger than what we touched on today. The number of topics that he can go into um just even like the wild plants, which is um a whole massive topic unto itself. Uh he's written pretty profoundly about, so check all of that stuff out. All right, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Sweet, my man. Thank you so much. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.