A Simple Trick To Make WALKING Build Muscle, An Easy-To-Find Supplement That Cools Your Body, Infrared Sauna *vs.* Red Light, Reversing Cognitive Decline & More! Solosode 478

Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: In this episode of Ben Greenfield Live Show, a simple trick to make walking build muscle an easy to find supplement that cools your body. Infrared sauna versus red light, reversing cognitive decline and much more. Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Live show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this. Welcome to the podcast. This is a solosode. Show notes are all at bengreenfieldlife.com/478 maybe I'll say that once, maybe twice.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:48]: Sometimes I tend to say it a dozen times because the show notes are juicy. This podcast is fueled by today. INHALE. It says Superoxygenated Water. I have so many cans out in my mini fridge, ketones and energy drinks and unicorn tears and the milk of a himalayan monkey. This stuff's super oxygenated water. Anyways, a former podcast guest of mine, Ian Mitchell, told me about this stuff. I think he formulates it.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:19]: It says, catch your breath four times faster, seven times more oxygen than regular water with 50 parts per million of oxygen. All right, name's great. INHALE. I could see them doing a lot of great creative marketing with that. Do you even inhale, bro? Anyway, so I suppose I'm going to be hyper oxygenated during today's show. These episodes are a chance for me to dig into the nitty gritty with you, just you and me, about all of the cool little news flashes that I've found during the week and what you can learn from them, as well as a few listeners' Q&As. You guys always have great questions, so I'll try and get into a few of those today as well. So what the heck, let's just jump right into the good stuff here.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:09]: I've talked a lot before on this show about blood flow restriction training, so called KAATSU training. If you go with the fancy japanese version, which involves basically tourniquetting, even though I know that annoys BFR researchers, because you're not really tourniquetting or cutting blood flow off to the muscle, you're just limiting the the blood flow out of the muscle to a certain extent. So metabolites stay trapped inside the muscle while you're working out. Way back in the day, back when I was a bodybuilder, shout out to the North Idaho Athletic Club in Moscow, Idaho. I used to bodybuild there. I managed that facility as a personal trainer, and me and my buddy, we used to tie towels around the upper part of our arms, like close to the shoulders and towels on the thighs, and then go train to maximize the burnt. We didn't quite know the science of what we were doing. All we knew was that we'd seen bodybuilders doing it before.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:08]: So we thought, what the heck, we'll try it out. And it does, of course, give you a pretty intense burn. Now, since then, research has flushed out a ton of additional benefits to this so-called blood flow restriction training. But the most recent one really turned my head. You know, I was down in Florida several months ago. I was visiting this guy, crazy cat, super Spartan in, in terms of a lot of alternative health concepts. And a friend of mine, Dr. Joe Mercola, he catches a lot of flack, I think, on the Internet because he's, he's ahead of his time in many cases, but also takes a deep dive in all things alternative health.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:50]: And he took me for a walk on the beach and he wore blood flow restriction bands the whole time. Now, I thought that was interesting because when I travel, I always throw a pair of blood flow restriction bands into my luggage because they're super light, way lighter than kettlebell. I can take them out, say, like in the morning if I'm in a hotel room and I actually put them on both my arms and my legs. They say, you're only supposed to put them on just the arms or just the legs for health reasons or safety reasons. I do it on both arms and legs because what can I say? I'm a masochist. Love my lactic acid. So anyways. And then I proceed to crank out body weight squats, body weight lunges, body weight push ups.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:32]: The only other very lightweight piece of equipment I tend to travel with is one of those suspension straps that you can put in the door frame of the hotel room or the Airbnb bathroom. Don't break any Georgia door jams, folks. That's not covered by the cleaning fee. And they'll do pull ups. I'll do some kind of, like a core exercise, like some planks. But often if I jam through all of that, like a lot of times I'll do an AMRAP, like as many rounds as possible of the push ups, the squats, lunges, the pull ups, the core exercise. If I've got a little time left over and I've got some phone calls to jam through, or I want to scroll through some emails on my phone or listen to a podcast, I will then go walk. And I'll walk around with these BFR bands on.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:14]: And it's actually surprisingly difficult to walk with BFR bands on. Not to mention for the lower body, you actually walk a little bit like a bow-legged cowboy because the things are kind of rubbing up against your thighs. And if you're a dude, well, be careful how high you put them up because some chafing can happen up there, too. So this most recent systematic review and meta analysis in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research came out, and it showed that if you do aerobic training with blood flow restriction, that you could get better muscle hypertrophy than doing aerobic training without blood flow restriction. Now, we don't often think of aerobic training as something that you would use to build muscle, but in fact, this showed an improvement in not just muscle hypertrophy, but muscle strength. When we apply this flexible cuff to the arms or the legs, that reduces blood flow to the muscles and restricts some of the metabolites from coming back out of the musculature area during exercise. So, anyways, I thought that was interesting. And then I also read another recent paper that looked in the blood flow restriction, walking and physical function in older adults, and that one also showed an improvement in overall functional capacity when walking with these blood flow restriction bands on.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:40]: I know these people are old, but I'm old. I'm 42. And so then there's a third feather in the cap of just going out for a walk with these bands on. I mean, if you're going to be walking anyways, takes two minutes to put the bands on. And I think it's. It's. It's actually kind of cool that you could maintain, strengthen, or build muscle by doing aerobic exercise with BFR bands on. Now, of course, you know, there's all sorts of things you do with BFR bands.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:08]: You know, I have an AirDyne bike. You know, one of those. I forget if it's an AirDyne or an Air Assault, whatever. The bike that, that has the arms and legs that both move stand up. Elliptical trainer would be similar. A rowing machine would be similar. Anytime you put BFR bands on your arms and your legs, then do aerobic exercise that involves both the arms and the legs, the metabolic stimuli is through the roof. But now it turns out that you can see an improvement in strengthen and hypertrophy.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:33]: The cool thing about BFR bands is, of course, you're doing this without being under a heavy load. So if you do have joint issues or you don't have access to a decent amount of weight, or you don't have a 60 pound weighted vest or rucksack to go for a walk with, these things can actually really turn up the dial on the efficacy of aerobic training. So, anyways, if you don't have BFR bands, you don't have to go to one of these fancy websites that sell, like the $1,000 plus controller that allows you to adjust the millimeters of mercury very precisely and operate that all through a handheld controller or through a phone app. Those are cool. And those are technically called KAATSU bands. K-a-a-t-s-u. I've done a whole podcast about the science behind those.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:22]: Yeah, they're better. You also, you know, get a pretty good dent in your wallet from those things. You can also get just like cheap BFR bands from Amazon or some of these other manufacturers that make BFR bands that aren't quite as fancy that you put on manually. But, man, they work. So I'll include links to some podcasts that I've done deep into the science of blood flow restriction training. But if you own some of these bands, or you get some of these bands and you throw them into a walk, I think that you're doing yourself a service, a walk, or any other form of aerobic exercise. So that's cool.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:55]: Speaking of cool, glycine is something that I've talked about before. You find this in a lot of sleep supplements. Turns out when you consume about 5 grams of glycine before you go to bed, it helps to relax you, but it also helps to cool the body. It has almost like this internal cooling effect. Now, when I used to compete in triathlon, I don't think it's still banned. It might be, but one of the banned agents in triathlon was glycerol. People would consume glycerol leading up to a race because glycerol causes your body to hold on to a bunch of extra water. And so the water helps to cool you, and you do gain a little bit of weight, so it affects your strength to power ratio a little bit in sports.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:40]: But if you're doing something like Ironman Hawaii or something like that, then I think the cooling effects trump any extra water weight effects. So glycine has always been something that I will have in my bag or my travel pack if I happen to have, let's say, taken the budget option on an Airbnb. Yeah, sometimes. If I can find something for $100 cheaper a night without AC, I'll go for it and I'll take a cool shower before bed. I'll turn on the fan if they have one there, and then I'll take glycine, about 5 grams before bed, because it cools the body well. Now, this newer study was done on taurine, whether taurine could keep you cool. In this case, it was the ability of taurine to keep you cool if you're exercising in hot conditions. So they measured all sorts of things.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:32]: The heart rate, the body fluid or plasma volume, the heat transfer, the heat storage, the Vo two max. And what they did was they had a group take taurine. They administered about 50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day. And if you don't have your pocket protector and calculator handy, that comes out to around. It's around 4 grams. Yeah, well, for me, like I'm 80 kg approximately. So for me it'd be about 4 grams. So we're talking about a similar dosage amount to glycine, which I mentioned was 5 grams.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:05]: And then they had them walk on a treadmill in a hot room for 45 minutes. And then after they walked in the hot room for 45 minutes to produce a certain amount of of heat, they then walked for an additional 60 minutes while they increased the humidity in the room for every five minutes. Hey, who's going to raise their hand and be a part of that study, right? You get to walk for an hour and 45 minutes as things get hotter and hotter and humider and humider. Anyways, not the cigar humider, more humid. I meant to say before my mom jumps in and tells me I was using improper grammar on my podcast yet again. So anyways, taurine improved sweating parameters. It improved what's called the breakpoint of compensability, or decrease the breakpoint of compensability. That's when the body temperature starts rising, right? It made it so that the body temperature started rising later.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:56]: It increased heat transfer, and it improved heat storage. Meaning by improved heat storage, it means it decreased heat storage. So it turns out that these results suggest that taking Taurine can help prevent overheating when exercising in hot conditions. Now, it is interesting in that they didn't study the effects of taurine on sleep, or on its ability to be able to manage heat in a non exercising condition. And yet, the fact that this is something that you could take if you've got, let's say, a pickleball mesh that's not in the shade at 100 degrees, or a triathlon or something like that, in hot weather, it's also something. And this is actually on my list, because this is just a study from this week that I came across. It's on my list of something actually tried before sleep to see if it helps to cool the body before sleep. Right? Because you, of course, you could buy an Eight Sleep mattress or a bed jet or a chili pad or any of these other things that people are using to keep themselves cool during sleep.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:55]: But let's face it, for any of us that travel, it's not like you're going to like, you know, throw a 20-pound bed cooling device into your suitcase when you travel. I don't even tend to even check any bags when I travel, so I go pretty light. But I could probably take a bottle of taurine with me, maybe compare that to glycine. But anyways, I thought that was interesting, that taurine can help to cool the body. As a matter of fact, when we talk about cooling the body, the other thing I should mention is that of course, we know that your gut permeability increases when you're exercising in hot weather. This is why it always annoys me when people say they pop an ibuprofen or some other nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drug because they have a joint that's kind of hurting. And they do this before they go out and exercise in the hot weather because the increase in gut permeability that occurs when exercising in hot conditions dictates increased damage to the liver and the kidneys. If you take ibuprofen prior to going out and exercising in hot weather, I'd much rather see someone take, yeah, it's not as powerful, you know, just something like curcumin, for example, to decrease the pain a little bit or help to manage, you know, some type of joint inflammation or something like curcumin.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:05]: But anyways, the thing that is important to understand about this whole leaky gut thing is that there are also certain compounds that can decrease leaky gut permeability during exercise in hot conditions. Colostrum has been well studied for that. You can put some colostrum powder in your mouth. I'm not a fan of colostrum capsules unless you break them open and dissolve them in your mouth, because it's actually the salivary enzymes in your mouth that help to activate some of those factors in colostrum. But taking colostrum prior to exercise in hot weather can help to stabilize the gut. There are newer peptides. Larazotide, I believe, is one. Pea, I believe, is another.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:49]: KPV is another. There's a few choice oral peptides are way more expensive than colostrum, but they can act similarly for helping with leaky gut issues, including in hot weather. If you want to know more about those orally bioavailable peptides. Go listen to my podcast episode with Kyle from LVLUP Health. We talked all about these orally bioavailable peptides. But back to the subject point here. Taurine. About 4, well, not 4 grams for me, 50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of taurine helps to keep you cool when you're exercising in hot weather, and I think that's pretty cool.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:26]: So next up, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep quality. I was just talking about staying cool during sleep. Here's an interesting one. This was a paper that came out that looked at what kind of exercise could help you sleep better. And what they did was a meta analysis of 27 different randomized controlled trials on all sorts of exercise interventions and how those impacted parameters like insomnia and sleep architecture. They looked at yoga, they looked at aerobic exercise, they looked at Qigong, they looked at pilates, all sorts of different forms of exercise. And it turns out that in these randomized control trials, and this isn't like something that you have to do right prior to bed. This is something that you've done at some point during the day.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:16]: You could actually make a case for not doing intensive exercise or anything for the reasons I was just talking about that would massively increase body temperature within about 3 hours prior to bedtime. Look, the best time day to exercise is when you're going to exercise. But if you can, try not to get your exercise session in close to bedtime, or at least get a cool shower. And as we've established, take some taurine or some glycine afterwards. You know, just exercise when you can exercise. But it turns out that pilates was the most effective exercise intervention for people who struggle with sleep. Now, I have no clue what the mechanism of action would be for this, whether it's the core stimulation, whether it's the fact that that crazy gravitron like machine that they used during pilates exercise sessions that I have no clue how to use. They call it a reformer.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:07]: Maybe it's, you know, fumbling around the reformer for long periods of time, trying to figure out how to make it work like I would be doing. Just exhaust your brain and gives you mental fatigue and makes you sleep better. Um, I'm joking. That's probably not why it helps you sleep better, but pilates. Now, of course, Pilates involves a lot of, I'm going to bastardize it, but it does involve a lot of core activation, a lot of core type of exercises, and maybe there's an improvement in digestion or blood flow, maybe it doesn't raise your body temperature quite as high, but if you're one of those people who struggles with sleep and you're just constantly trying everything, and you have cognitive behavioral therapy and yoga, nidra and non sleep, deep rest protocols, and high dose melatonin and melatonin up your butt, and all these things that people do, maybe you could try pilates, because this was a pretty big study. I mean, it looks over 2,100 people, and it did show a significant improvement in sleep quality when someone had pilates as a form of exercise in their life. So there you go. I just kept all the pilates instructors in business and also established the fact that I have no clue how to use a reformer.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:13]: All right, so this next one, I love studies like this because, you know, one of the things that I really, really love to look into is lifespan, health span, life quality, etcetera, you know, age reversal, anti-aging. So this was a great paper that looked into cognitive decline. It was a randomized controlled trial in older adults with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's disease. I think the lessons gleaned from this paper could be extended to a wide variety of individuals, not just those with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's disease. So what they did was, during a 20-week randomized control trial, they assigned people to what was called an intervention group or a control group. And the intervention group was the group that got all the goodies right. They did dietary modifications. They used a variety of different supplements, structured exercise routines, stress management, group support.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:10]: They were looking at all the things that could help to stave off cognitive decline or support cognitive function. So, for example, they got rid of ultra processed and processed foods, and people were having a lot of fruits and vegetables and legumes and natural soy products, whole grains, seeds, nuts, etcetera. I didn't see ribeye steaks on there. Those, I think, make me pretty smart, but nonetheless, they kind of had. It was actually basically an ad libenum, low fat vegan diet. And I realized that's a shocker to maybe a carnivore enthusiast who might be listening, but I think you can make a case for high amounts of saturated fat, processed meat, even red meat to a certain extent, etcetera, and the potential for some cognitive issues if those are not in proper balance and included with a great amount of dietary diversity. They use supplements, fish oil, curcumin, vitamin C, vitamin B, magnesium, Lion's Mane, probiotics, all the things that in other studies have been looked at for preventing cognitive decline, exercise. They had them walking for about 30 minutes, doing strength training three times per week.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:21]: Stress management with daily meditation and yoga and breathing exercises, you know, like breath work, you know, such as, you know, I use an app called Othership and another app called Breath Source. I'll sometimes just download breath work sessions from YouTube. Not hard to find breath work sessions. And then, like I mentioned, meditation, yoga, and then group support. 1 hour group meetings held three times per week to improve communication skills and occasionally do memory exercises. Well, as you can imagine, no big surprises here. The intervention group had scores on all of the cognitive tests that were better. They weren't like shockingly blow you out of the water better.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:07]: But when you combine this study with a lot of other studies that have looked into the potential of certain activities to attenuate cognitive decline, I think that we can take a few lessons from this and other studies. So if you don't want your brain to get older or get older as quickly as you age, resolving or preventing nutrient deficiencies this is the whole thrust of the first two chapters of my book, boundless solving neurotransmitter issues, solving blood brain barrier issues, and specifically, some of the compounds most often mentioned are antioxidants adequate protein, B vitamin complex, magnesium, and fish oil. Antioxidants adequate protein such as amino acids, collagen consuming digestive enzymes with other protein sources that you have, B vitamin complex, magnesium, and omega three fatty acids such as a fish or an algal oil. Regular exercise that includes both aerobic and resistance training. And again, if you want to learn a little bit more about why it's important to include both, you may want to listen to podcast Episode 477 where I talk about especially for an aging seniors, the combination of calisthenics and weight training results in better strength and functional improvements than either alone. Stress management, no surprises there. Yoga, mindfulness, meditation, emotional supports, groups. There's all sorts of ways to manage stress.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:33]: I have this podcast called the Raw Podcast. It's over at the Life Network, golifenetwork.com. You can check it out. Just insider glimpses into my day-to-day routine. And I was talking in the last podcast that I recorded about how I always carve out anywhere from from 30 to 60 minutes after lunch. A, to follow that whole ayurvedic principle of having a nice nutritious lunch, then using a siesta afterwards to give yourself kind of like two days in one. You know, break up the day in two. But then I also talked about how I use that time to test and try all these different meditative and relaxation devices that inevitably show up at the front door of my house uninvited, but yet still welcome for me to try out. And so yesterday I did one and I'm bringing this up because it.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:15]: I had a stressful morning and I forgot about my worries and about like two minutes flat with this thing. It's called a Vizr. V-i-z-r. I'll put a link in the show notes for it. It's basically like a light producing machine that feels kind of like a psychedelic journey, but it has settings on it for things like deep sleep, relaxation. And each session is eleven minutes long, so you can drop in and out pretty quickly. But the cool thing is you can also make playlists on it so you could take like, what I did was I did relaxation to stress relief, to deep sleep, back to relaxation. And then I finished with a blast off, right? So it was 5, 11 minutes sessions that I strung together in this playlist.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:04]: So all in. I actually was laying there for 55 minutes for my post lunch siesta yesterday and felt fantastic afterwards. That's an example of using biohacking to manage stress, whether it's that or a yoga nidra session, or meditation or yoga or whatever. Stress management, also important. Increasing social contact. I think that we all know the importance of that. Getting enough sleep and addressing sleep problems. Big one.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:32]: Regular completion of cognitively stimulating activities like reading, doing puzzles like crossword or sudoku, or playing games like chess came up in this study, and I think that that's underemphasized. I'm going to give you a very short, miniature TED talk here. I think too many of us get into cruise control and do the things that come easy and bring joy, but that don't necessarily challenge us cognitively. And when I say that, I mean like, you know, maybe your exercise session or a walk and, you know, you read some books, but most of them are in a certain sector related to your business or, you know, interests that you might have. And you haven't branched out beyond those. Maybe some games that you play with the family, like, let's say, you know, scrabble or monopoly or your usuals, etcetera. I have this rule in my life. Once per day, I have to do something that confuses my brain.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:27]: It can be learning a single arm overhead kettlebell snatch. It can be watching my son play the piano and walking over the piano, looking at the piece of music he just played a and seeing if I can figure out how to play my own really crappy, bastardized version of what he just played plunking on the piano. It can be doing. Every night, I do ten minutes of guitar practice right before dinner. I literally, I pour myself a glass of wine or a cocktail or a mocktail, and before dinner, before I gather the family through there, I do ten minutes of guitar practice. I tell myself, ten minutes. But as you guys know, usually it bleeds into fifteen.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:05]: These are the tricks, right? You tell yourself you're going to go to the gym and warm up for two minutes, even if you feel like crap, and half hour later, you're still working out. So I use this guy named Tony. It's Tony's Acoustic Challenge, Tony Polacastro. I'll put a link in the show notes. I like it because it's five days a week of guitar practice. It's about 10 to 15 minutes. By the end of the week, you've learned a song or a new skill. Like my skill this week is learning how to play with the right hand, only with the thumb.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:36]: And it's enjoyable, and it's hard. It's harder for me than just taking up my guitar and playing a G chord in a C chord and a D chord and strumming away on amazing grace or something like that. So another example would be, at least once every couple of weeks, my family purchases and learns a new game, a tabletop game, a card game, a board game, etcetera. Oh, my gosh. Logic, flow, conflict resolution. Rhetoric. Logic, math. You learn so much playing games, even the mere process of learning a new complex game is wonderful for the brain.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:13]: Right? So what I'm getting at here is you don't need to sit around doing the New York Times crossword puzzle by yourself every single morning. There's all sorts of ways that you can stimulate the brain through exercise, through music. Another example, we memorize as a family, one new Bible verse every night. And that's a lot of Bible verses, but it's taught me how to memorize things quickly and how to use things like my friend Jim Quick's memory palace technique, where I'm associating certain images with certain words, where we're memorizing, case in point, we always choose something that's practical for life. We just got done memorizing the Ten Commandments, but word for word, the Ten Commandments, not just the baby Sunday school version of them. Right now, we're memorizing the entire part of proverbs six that talks about how you should be cautious with excess sleep and sleeping in and being lazy. So, anyways, we memorize real practical pieces of scripture that also, of course, are beneficial for life in general.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:11]: So, anyways, doing things that make smoke come out your ears, that's my role. At least once a day, I have to do something that makes smoke come out my ears. I mean, heck, just the process. Look, I'm interviewing nine podcast guests this week. I have to read their books, research them, come up with questions, try to follow along with their super smart brains as I'm listening in and following and planning what my next question will be and interpreting what they're saying at the same time while I'm walking on a treadmill. So, anyways, you get the point. So, back to my summary of this study, which I'll link to. It turns out that probably some of the most important things that I would take away from this is a diet that has a lot of dietary diversity in it that's not myopic, targeted nutrient supplementation with things that help the brain.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:01]: I mean, uh, just read the first two chapters of my book, Boundless, that that's all. You know, it's not the only book out there about the brain, but it would help, uh, regular exercise, both aerobic and resistance training, community stress management, adequate sleep, and then doing stuff that makes smoke come out of your brain. So. And by smoke come out your brain, I do not mean inhaling and the smoke coming out your nose. I mean smoke coming out the actual brain, the ears, the ear holes. All right, so, moving on. And related to what I was just talking about, great, fun little article from one of the websites to lurk around on The Art of Manliness, published from the 1930s, something from the Cleveland Academy of Medicine, which I still think is highly relevant for us today.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:44]: The Cleveland Academy of Medicine held this contest in which they solicited submissions for the best set of rules for mental health. The winning set of rules was written by a psychiatrist. Name was Dr. Joseph Fetterman. So they published it, and here were the mental rules that were the winners in the 1930s, and I think are still the winners. Now, are you ready? Here we go. Number one: have a hobby. Acquire pursuits which absorb your interest.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:08]: Sports and nature are best. I agree with that. I can get behind pickleball and hiking, develop a philosophy. Adapt yourself to social and spiritual surroundings. Like, what's your worldview? What's your philosophy? What's your belief? What's something that you need to defend in terms of the way that you approach social life or your spiritual life? Like, what is your actual philosophy or your worldview? I can't say that I've taken a deep dive into resources for developing a philosophy. Maybe I got lucky in that I was born and brought up Christian. And so a lot of my philosophies and worldview revolve around the idea of forgiveness and not having to carry shame and guilt and fear and the idea of acceptance and love. So a lot of my philosophies are based on this idea of kind of like the gospel story, which is essentially, I'm not a perfect person.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:11]: I'm not able to be good of my own volition. I need help from an outside, powerful spiritual entity to be able to do that. And that by believing that I'm not perfect and that a perfect God came and took on the form of a human being on this planet and was crucified and died and was buried. All of a sudden, my fear and guilt and shame can be placed upon my belief in that. And that's my worldview, and that's my philosophy, and I find it incredibly uplifting. It's not like I don't have shame and guilt and fear. I have it the time I was telling my wife last night. My father passed six months ago, and I still have shame and guilt around that and confusion and fear and feelings that pop up every now and again.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:00]: But they don't live with me. They don't hang on me. There's a great book called Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. My favorite part of that book is when the heavy weight that the pilgrim Christian carries just rolls off his back at the foot of the cross and he doesn't have to carry it anymore. So it's not that you don't experience those feelings. It's that they don't weigh you down for your entire life because God takes care of them for you. And that's, of course, a very short summary of some of the bases of my worldview. But having a philosophy, just being able to sit down with somebody and share something like I just shared with you, that's important.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:38]: Share your thoughts. Cultivate companionship in thought and feeling. Confide, confess, console. I think basically what this is getting down to is the same thing you'll see in, like, the palliative care practitioner Bonnie Wari's book and viral article, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Well, one is that she says people wish they'd shown their true emotions more. Show your true emotions more. Don't be embarrassed about how you're feeling. Share it with others in a graceful way.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:04]: You don't have to be an asshole and tell someone their dress makes them look fat. But talk about your feelings. Talk about your feelings with others. Have friends and mentors and family members and people who allow you to not have to shove stuff deep down inside all the time. Face your fears. Analyze them. Daylight dismisses ghosts. Daylight dismisses ghosts.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:24]: Or as the way I like to think about this, don't run away from your fears. Run towards them and tackle them head on. And little things that you do each day can help out a lot with that. I've been getting an ice plunge. Right now I'm getting an ice plunge for two minutes every morning, and that's just a miniature facing my fear during the day. That makes facing the fear of some huge legal contract in an email that I have to dig through later on feel way more doable. But anytime you see something you're afraid of, run towards it. And many of you who have grown up near water experienced the first sensation that you felt when you were standing at the edge of a cliff wanting to jump in the water and all your friends had jumped off the diving board of the cliff and you were up there and your fingers are tingly.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:05]: Feels like your heart's pounding up your throat and you know that feeling of having the option to just step away from the cliff and walk away or to say three, two, one, and you jump. And for many people, once they've done that once, it's something they're no longer afraid of, right? Once you've learned how to swing a heavy kettlebell, you're not afraid of it. Once you've swam in open water and you realize the sharks aren't going to bite you, you're not afraid of it. Once you've jumped off a cliff, you're not afraid of it. Once you've opened up a difficult conversation with the family member, not because you want to chide them, but because you love them, you're not afraid of it. So face your fears. Balance fantasy with fact. Dream, but also do. Wish, but build. Imagine, but ever face reality.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:52]: Balance fantasy with fact. Dream, but also do. Wish, but not build. Imagine, but ever face reality. That obviously makes sense, right? We want to not just talk about what it is that we want to accomplish. We want to strap on our sword and put on our body armor and go out there and accomplish it. But I think that what comes to mind for me with this whole idea of balancing fantasy with fact is that we live in an information era where you could listen to podcasts like the one that you're listening to all day long. You could be a total content junkie. You could have all these things you have written down, dreams you want to do and things you want accomplish and places you've heard about that you want to go, but you have such an information flow coming at you and so many distractions coming at you, you never buckle down and actually do it.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:40]: So I could tell you that one subtle nuance of balancing fantasy with fact is it will take sacrifice and it will take eventually saying, hey, I just need to free up the time to do this thing I've been dreaming about and quit dreaming about it, or telling people on Facebook that I'm going to do it before I actually just go do it. Beware of alluring escapes, alcohol, opiates and barbitals. I guess that's what they called them in the 30s. May prove faithless friends. Enough said there. There's a time and a place for a glass of wine or valium on a 12-hour plane ride, or opiate during or after surgery. But yes, once they become escapes, as we all know, that's a huge issue. Exercise, he says. Walk, swim, golf.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:24]: Muscles need activity. Love. But love wisely. Sex is a flame which, uncontrolled, may scorch. Properly guided, it will light the torch of eternity. Sex is a flame which, uncontrolled, may scorch. Properly guided, it will light the torch of eternity. Hmm.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:41]: So I suppose where my mind goes with this one is just to, you know, I'll just come right out and say it. Following his other rule, I think that sometimes sex is cheapened, sex is degraded. Sex is not considered to be a sacred act in our society. And it's created a lot of problems with everything from unwanted pregnancies and fatherlessness to women who have been abused, to men who feel that in order to prove themselves, they must make a conquest of laying as many women as possible. And sex is just a thing that we don't respect. And I think that if it is controlled and it is considered sacred, and it is considered something that is respected and that we hold so dear, that we consider that being something that is for us and our partner for life, then it all of a sudden becomes that much more meaningful. So in other words, if we're equating sex with love, which I think you could make a case for, at least it's a very important part of Eros, erotic love. Don't throw it around like it's just cheap Coca-Cola.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:59]: Use it wisely and respect it. And I think that society would be done a great service if we all approach sex with a great deal more sacredness. Don't become engulfed in a whirlpool of worries. Call early for help. The doctor is ready for your rescue. Yes. Don't try to do it all yourself. I have been caught doing that many times.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:20]: I pride myself as being a man who could potentially do it all myself. And that's a fast track to being a poor leader, a poor delegator, and a very stressed out and anxious and overwhelmed person. And then finally, trust in time. Be patient and hopeful. Time is a great therapist. Time is a great therapist. Don't rush. Take your time.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:42]: Sleep on it, walk on it, pray on it. You do not make need to make decisions rapidly. If you make decisions rapidly, trust me, it's happened to me. They will come back and bite you in the butt. And that could be everything from a word that you're going to say to an email that you're going to write to a person that you're going to enter into a relationship, business, personal, romantic, etcetera or otherwise with, time is on your side. Don't be a procrastinator, but do be patient. Maybe I should write a book. Let's do a "patience, not procrastination."

Ben Greenfield [00:39:16]: That sounds like one that'll put you to bed fast. Put you to sleep fast. Alright, so ten mental rules from the 1930s. There they are. Go read them in detail on The Art of Manliness website. Last thing I noticed was AI. I don't know if anybody's noticed, but there's this AI thing rolling around right now. GPT-4o is the one I've been using.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:35]: It's pretty impressive. I was trying to figure out how to use a water filter out in my garage yesterday because I've got an elk hunt coming up and I have one of these life straws. But then I found one of these better, bigger water filters, but it looked like a bunch of pieces were missing. So I took a photo of it, I uploaded it to GPT-4o. I said, who makes this water filter? Where can I find the user manual and what pieces are missing? Had the answer within like a minute, right? So, I mean, it's incredible. But then I also asked it. I was at my mom's the other day and I asked it to write a bio of my mom, and it basically wrote a complete biography of pretty much the polar opposite of my mother. And she was roaring in laughter as it talked about her love for organic gardening and hiking mountains.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:19]: And she's the owner and operator of a beautiful coffee shop in Moscow, Idaho, and a wonderful person. But she doesn't really have any interest at all in organic gardening or hiking mountains. So be careful with AI. But this man, Sinat, published an article about AI and specifically people asking AI for things like health advice. So, for example, someone asks, how many rocks shall I eat? And AI said, according to geologists at UC Berkeley, you should eat at least one rock, one small rock per day. Rocks are a vital source of minerals and vitamins that are important for digestive health. Dr. Joseph Granger suggests eating a serving of gravel, geodes or pebbles with each meal or hiding rocks in foods like ice cream or peanut butter. You can't make this stuff up, folks.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:09]: Another one. Cheese not sticking to pizza. Cheese can slide off pizza for a number of reasons, including too much sauce, too much cheese or thickened sauce. Here are some things you can try. Let the pizza cool, mix the cheese into the sauce, or you can also add about 1/8 of a cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness. That's going to be in my next cookbook as soon as I find the organic gluten free glue. Another response to a question about how to pass kidney stones suggested drinking urine. You should aim to drink at least two quarts or two liters of urine every 2 hours in order to pass kidney stones more quickly and your urine should be light in color. I would imagine that the mere act of urinating two liters of your own fluid might actually be a little bit painful when you have a kidney stone.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:07]: Not to mention that I would not necessarily consider taking that advice. And then finally, one of my favorites, how to convert kilometers to tomatoes. What AI says is, well, 1,000 tomatoes is equal to one kilo tomato. You can also use the mnemonic five tomatoes to remember that there are 5,280 ft in a mile. Five tomatoes sounds like five to 80. You can also think of five tomatoes with large feet racing each other over a mile. I think I just made smoke come out my brain. I believe I just satisfied my brain confusion for the day.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:46]: In all seriousness, I know that a lot of people are talking about the enormous potential for AI to kick out health advice, but please proceed with caution. I find errors all the time. Now, that being said, if you go to bengreenfieldlife.com, I do have the brand new Ben Greenfield clone there. It's been trained on over a decade of my podcast, books and articles. You can go there and ask it any questions. And I must say, I have been asking it a lot of questions and the cloned me now at bengreenfieldlife.com is very accurate. Check it out.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:19]: Lower right hand corner. When you visit the website. It's probably going to put me out of business in terms of, you know, my coaching, my podcast, etcetera. You can go asking anything. What kind of magnesium should I take at night? How much taurine do I use to cool off my body? How many tomatoes is equal to a mile? Try that. See what I say to that one. I don't even know anyways, though. So check it out.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:43]: Bengreedfieldlife.com. The new clone lives. All right, so we are going to move on to a question from a listener who says: What is the main difference in red light therapy and infrared sauna? Meaning what are the pros and cons of each? Love this question because I'm asked it a lot, and I have an infrared sauna, and I also do red light therapy. All right, so let's go over the basics here. An infrared sauna. It's basically a type of sauna that uses infrared heaters to emit light in the infrared spectrum. Those get absorbed by your skin, those photons of light. Unlike a traditional dry sauna that would heat the air around you, an infrared sauna uses these infrared panels to warm your body directly.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:25]: The light waves penetrate your skin, usually about one and a half inches, and they promote internal heating. And you're usually going to see infrared sauna categorized in three different ways based on the wavelength of the infrared light used. Near-infrared or NIR, mid-infrared or MIR, and far-infrared or FIR. The near-infrared is the short wavelengths, okay, short wavelength, short. Near. Those primarily get absorbed by the upper layers of the skin. The mid-infrared penetrates a little bit deeper. Muscles, joints, etcetera.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:55]: The far-infrared penetrates pretty deep, like, as far as, like organ level. Okay, so and a lot of infrared saunas, you know, like full spectrum, they're using a wide variety of those infrared wavelengths. You look at the benefits that have been researched for infrared light, and you see a loss of things like metals, chemicals and other impurities, which gives you good reason to make sure you clean your infrared sauna if you use it frequently and you're sweating in it. Stress relief, lowering of cortisol, it, because it can penetrate a little bit more deeply. The light can help with conditions like arthritis or fibromyalgia. You get very good circulation, nitric oxide production, and cardiovascular health due to the heat, which of course, you would also get in a dry sauna. You get improved skin health because the light can actually help to promote collagen production. You don't see that as much in a dry sauna.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:50]: Although you do get increased blood circulation in the skin from a dry sauna, and that can help with complexion. And of course, similar to a dry sauna, you do see an increase in the heat shock proteins, which can induce stress, greater stress resilience, improvement in insulin sensitivity. Geez, I can't talk all of a sudden. Improvement in insulin sensitivity, impact in blood pressure, slight increase in calorie burn because the increased heart rate and metabolic rate. So that's what the infrared sauna has going for it. And there are studies to back up these type of things like cardiovascular health and pain relief. Now, red light therapy goes by a lot of different names. Low level laser therapy, photobiomodulation, cold laser therapy, sometimes if it's a real strong laser now that involves exposing the body to red or near-infrared light.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:45]: Red or near-infrared light. Now, as you already learned, near-infrared light, or NIR, doesn't penetrate the skin very deeply and doesn't produce much of a heating effect. Very mildred heating effect and red light, which typically uses wavelengths of about 600 to 660 nm. Off the top of my head, I think that's about what we're looking at for red light that can enhance the production of ATP, which is kind of like your energy currency. So when we look at the benefits of red light therapy, we get ATP production. And that can be beneficial for things like wound healing, muscle recovery, pre workout, warm up, reducing inflammation. We get an even greater stimulation in collagen and elastin production than we do from the wavelengths of light that we would find inside of an infrared sauna. You get also an effect on inflammation and pain.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:37]: It can trigger certain organs like it can improve the activity of certain endocrine glands like the thyroid. Or if shown near the gonads, it can improve the activity of the cells in the gonads to help to produce more testosterone, it can help to increase the formation of new capillaries, it can help with muscle recovery. And there's even some newer studies showing out that it may, when applied to the head, improve things like brain cell metabolism or reduction of neuroinflammation. So red light therapy is also something that has a lot of benefits that are different than what you would get from infrared. So the main difference is one would be mechanism of, right. The infrared sauna is using infrared light to generate heat that penetrates the body, that induces these physiological responses like sweating, heart rate, detoxification. Red light therapy uses red and near-infrared light without the far-infrared and mid-infrared spectrums. And that can enhance more of the cell function and healing and regeneration.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:38]: Okay, like I mentioned, infrared. You got near-infrared, mid-infrared, and far-infrared red light. You've got red light and near-infrared. As far as the wavelengths that are used, the primary benefits of an infrared sauna, in my opinion, would be detoxification, relaxation, pain relief, cardiovascular benefits, and heating. The red light therapy would be more targeted, tissue level healing, skin health, localized pain relief, like if it's one of those wearable devices, and it can be used for things like wound healing or skin rejuvenation or muscle recovery, or some of the endocrine stimulation that I talked about earlier. The infrared sauna, it's a big space that you get inside of. Sometimes they make little, like, beds or chambers or even mats that you can crawl inside, like a sleeping bag, like a red light wrap. Red light therapy, usually it's a handheld device or a panel or a bed, sometimes a laser that targets specific areas of the body.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:33]: So because both have separate benefits, I say, why not consider using both? For example, I have stand up red light panels in my office that I do red light therapy with. They're back behind me right now. I'm also a fan of those red light beds. However, those don't heat me up. Those don't make me sweat. Those don't detox. Those don't give me all the benefits of the heart rate and the increased metabolism of an infrared sauna. So I also, in the next room, have an infrared sauna.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:06]: So I use both. I do red light therapy typically in the morning when I wake up to kind of simulate sunrise and get my body going, typically anywhere from three to five times a week. I go in the sauna, I do some stretching, I do some yoga, I do some reading, I do some breath work, whatever, and just get a sweat on. The other thing you should know is if you want to hack things a little bit and just do both at once, you can put a red light into your infrared sauna. So then when you're in your infrared sauna, you've got far-infrared, mid-infrared, near-infrared, and red light. One company called Clearlight, they have one other companies might, but the one I know about is Clearlight. Because I have one in my sauna, I don't use it all the time. If I've already done red light therapy earlier that day or plan on doing it later that day, I don't turn on the red light in the sauna, but it's there and it's an option.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:53]: And the red light in the sauna is like a standalone panel that goes into my Clearlight sauna that they sell at the Clearlight website. And you can be in the sauna getting infrared and at the same time getting red light. So you can kind of get it both if that's helpful. So anyways, I hope that helps you to understand the differences in red light therapy and infrared. I think there's a time and a place for both. Ideally, you could use both, but just know if you're in an infrared sauna and you're not seeing like bright red lights that are being shown around you that are pretty bright red lights, you're probably not getting red light therapy. And I guarantee that if you're standing next to a standalone red light panel or laying in a red light bed, you're not getting the heat therapy right. So you kind of need to do both or combine the two to get the effects of both of them.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:44]: But both are good. What I'll do is if you go to bengreenfieldlife.com/478. I'll link to all the studies. I'll include lots of goodies, BFR bands that I talked about, I'll talk about or I'll link to some of the red light and infrared therapy type of things I dig. If I can find a link for this inhale stuff, I'll include that as well. So anyways, I hope this has been helpful for you. If you have a question, you can go to bengreenfieldlife.com and leave a question for the podcast.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:11]: Or just don't, because now you can ask my bot over there. Check out golifenetwork.com for my brand new membership based website where there's plenty more from me, including my weekly raw podcast where you get insider glimpses into my life that go way beyond what I just talked about here, and they get a little bit edgy and juicier. So bengreenfieldlife.com/478 is where you can access all those show notes. Until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield. Thanks for listening to me.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:39]: Do you want free access to comprehensive show notes? My Weekly Roundup newsletter, cutting edge research and articles, top recommendations from me for everything that you need to hack your life and a whole lot more. Check out bengreenfieldlife.com. it's all there. Bengreenfieldlife.com. See you over there.

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