Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast.

James Swanwick [00:00:04]: There are 400 million people in the world who are considered to have an alcohol use disorder. But yet there's only 80 million people in the world who have a drug use disorder that's separate from alcohol. So that's five times as many people experience an alcohol use disorder than any other drug. In March 2020, when the pandemic started, in the subsequent years, we saw a 23% increase in alcohol related deaths and 7,000 people die a day, they estimate, from alcohol related illnesses. I always say that alcohol can be death by a thousand cuts over a few days, weeks, months, even a year or so. We don't really notice that cumulative effect, but then over many years and decades, it can creep up on you and cause a lot of damage to your family, to yourself, and to society as a whole.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:53]: Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist. And I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:14]: Oh, man, it has been a while. I was just talking before we started recording with my guest, James Swanwick. He was on my show years ago in this whole episode about quitting alcohol and how he lost 30 pounds and made more money and attracted better friends and lovers and got a job hosting SportsCenter on ESPN. All thanks to him quitting alcohol. Which as you'll hear once you hear James rollicking accent is also odd because I believe your background James is Australian and I don't meet many Australians who don't drink.

James Swanwick [00:01:48]: That's right. I was a socially acceptable drinker in Australia, but when people think Australian drinker, they think, wow, he must have really been a drinker.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:56]: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So even more impressive. And you wrote this book, Clear. The only neuroscience based approach for high achievers to finally break free from alcohol without aa, rehab or willpower, which is obviously the subtitle for a lot of people, would be a hefty claim, but your publisher obviously let you do it.

James Swanwick [00:02:21]: Well, you know what? We have a scientific study which shows a 98% reduction in drinking. So that's helpful. Helpful when I'm making claims like that.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:29]: Yeah. Well, for people who didn't hear our first episode, because I want to hear about the neuroscience based approach, which is very interesting because I literally, I didn't tell you this two weeks ago, less than two weeks ago, and it just came out yesterday, released a podcast on using neuroscience to quit porn. And it was all about the use of neurofeedback and brain reprogramming and rewiring. So I would love to hear what you did with alcohol. But before we get to that, tell me for people who didn't hear our first podcast, what got you down this road in the first place in terms of quitting alcohol?

James Swanwick [00:03:02]: I was a socially acceptable drinker growing up in Australia in that I would have two, sometimes or often three drinks per night, most nights of the week on weekends. When I was in my 20's, certainly I got drunk on weekends, but I wouldn't say that I was what society would refer to as an alcoholic. I didn't get arrested, I didn't get a dui. I didn't wake up in a ditch. However, I started drinking when I was 16 and by the time I got to age 35, that's almost two decades of drinking experience in me at two or three drinks a night, sometimes a bottle of wine, etc, and you know what? It caught up with me. I was 35 years old, it was 2010. I was in Austin, Texas. I had two Bombay Sapphire gin and tonics at a South by Southwest festival party.

James Swanwick [00:03:50]: I went home to my. I went back to my hotel, rather outside of downtown Austin, went to sleep. And when I woke up the next morning and I looked in the mirror, I just looked and felt blah. And by blah, I mean average. I was 35 pounds overweight. I was tired, irritable, stressed, envious of people. I went next door to this IHOP, an International House of Pancakes. And I'm sitting in this IHOP when it dawned on me, what am I doing in an IHOP?

Ben Greenfield [00:04:16]: Not drinks, hopefully, because I'm pretty sure they don't serve alcohol there.

James Swanwick [00:04:19]: No, they don't serve alcohol there. No. There were all you can eat pancakes with whipped cream and maple syrup. And I was looking out of the booth that I was sitting in and then I was looking inside at all these kind of unhealthy looking people eating these pancakes. And I thought, time to make a change, James. And that was the moment. And I said, I'm going to stop drinking for 30 days just to see what would happen. And that's what I did.

James Swanwick [00:04:42]: And I didn't realize it'd be 15 years, but now in 2025, I'm now 15 years alcohol free.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:50]: That's pretty impressive. I'm 17 years drunk free. I'm not 17 years alcohol free. But your streak is more impressive than mine for sure. As far as the ramifications of that and how it became something that you're known for. Did you decide at some point along the way, I just want to teach this to other people. I want to write a book about it. Did you ever envision yourself kind of turning this into a career?

James Swanwick [00:05:18]: I did five years later. So five years after I quit. So in 2010, when I quit, I lost 13 pounds in 30 days. It just fell off me. I became clearer, felt healthier, looked better. I auditioned to become a sports center anchor on espn, and to my utter bewilderment, they gave me the job. And I really credit the clarity and focus that I got from being alcohol free to helping me get that job. I attracted a great romantic relationship.

James Swanwick [00:05:46]: When I wasn't working at espn, I found myself over in Los Angeles, California, and I would go to these Hollywood Hills parties, and I would kind of go on the party circuit. Golden Globes, Oscars, MTV Movie Awards after parties, being alcohol free, drinking soda water and lime and dancing on tables and having a wonderful time. And lots of people started to notice this, and they said, how are you not drinking and going to all these hedonistic parties, by the way?

Ben Greenfield [00:06:13]: Somebody were asked that. And nowadays, you know, I know about probably 50% of the people at parties would say they're on magic mushrooms.

James Swanwick [00:06:19]: That wasn't the case there. No. And that was when the idea hit me. You know, I'm starting to get asked this question repeatedly, how am I having fun living alcohol free? I remember actually, I was at the Playboy Mansion and people were asking me, how the heck are you up there dancing with these women? I was single at the time and not drunk and not, you know, jumping in the. In the grotto and getting drunk and stuff. And I'm like, I don't know, I'm just high on life. I'm just happy. I'm just clear and focused and energized.

James Swanwick [00:06:49]: That was when the idea hit me. Maybe I could create a business out of supporting people to stop drinking alcohol.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:56]: Yeah. Yeah. And the last time we talked, you were down that road. But the last time we talked, I don't think you'd gotten into the neuroscience of quitting or this study you mentioned. So tell me about that.

James Swanwick [00:07:07]: Yeah, I started to dig into this as I started to build this organization, which is called Alcohol Free Lifestyle. And today we support people who might identify as a high achiever to finally rewire their mindset around alcohol. And what I realized is that the traditional modalities for stopping drinking were terribly ineffective. So, for example, willpower is ineffective. And then there's a Lot of reports out that suggest that AA's actual success rate is less than 10%. And that was shocking to me. Then there's rehab, which a lot of people suggest is about a 5% success rate in terms of people getting long term power over alcohol. People return to rehab all the time.

James Swanwick [00:07:51]: And then there's all these other kind of ways that aren't particularly well known. And I just got fascinated by what drives human behavior, what is addiction, what makes humans behave the way they behave and what makes them get addicted to something and what helps them stop being addicted. So I just dived into neuroscience. What is it that I can do? How can I behave? What can I learn that will drive my behavior towards what I want, not away from what I don't want? And most people, and this is really one of the biggest fundamental kind of pillars of what I coach with neuroscience, most people are saying to themselves, I have to quit alcohol, don't drink, or I have to quit smoking, don't smoke. And so we're focusing on what not to do. There's a bundle of nerves in our brain called the reticular activating system, otherwise known as the RAs. And the RAs doesn't understand the negative command. It just hears alcohol, smoking.

James Swanwick [00:08:55]: So when you say don't drink, don't drink, don't drink, it just hears drinking.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:59]: Right, it's the pink elephant phenomenon.

James Swanwick [00:09:02]: Exactly. So if we just do what I call the flipperoonie, and the flipperooni says, instead of saying, don't do something, we say, do this. And in this case it's, I easily only drink soda water, ice with a piece of lime. I'm going to walk up to the bar tonight, straight up to the bartender and I'm going to say, I'd love a soda water. Give me a splash of cranberry, give me a little bit of pineapple. But what great mocktails do you have tonight? I'm going to drink alcohol free alternatives. And if we just say that to ourselves, then the study of neuroscience and human psychology and the way that the brain works, the RAs, those bundle of nerves in our brain, locks onto that and goes, okay, I'll do that for you. I'll use an analogy, Ben.

James Swanwick [00:09:43]: If we're going skiing down a mountain, sometimes the internal dialogue is, don't steer towards the trees, don't fall over. And then invariably we tend to steer towards the trees and fall over. It's the same thing here. So that's really one of the core pillars, is that instead of trying to remove away from alcohol let's move towards an alcohol free lifestyle. And the key word there is lifestyle. The name of my company is alcohol free lifestyle. And if we break down the third word there, lifestyle, it's a style of life. And so what we're doing with neuroscience is we're showing you a style of life with good nutrition, exercise, gratitude.

James Swanwick [00:10:18]: Incidentally, they've shown that a daily gratitude practice can reduce cravings for any drug by as much as 30%, which is fascinating. And living a life of appreciation instead of expectation, those things combined really drives human behavior in a very positive manner.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:35]: Yeah, the dopaminergic stimuli from something as simple as a gratitude practice has always been shocking to me when you look at the science of that and how it can actually replace similar potentially hedonistic dopaminergic cravings. And it's nuts. And people laugh at it and then they start to do it. For me, it's prayer every morning, just praying about all these different things I'm grateful for. And it actually works, oddly enough, to produce this feel good effect that obviously goes way beyond just dopamine. Yeah, it is very interesting how that works. And a lot of people think it's esoteric and woo. And it doesn't involve putting whatever, a shock collar on your wrist or something like that.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:11]: But it works way better than just trying to slap your hand away every time you say I'm not going to drink. I think the other thing that you mentioned to me in our last podcast, if I recall properly, is you don't say, I'm not having a drink right now. You literally say, I don't drink. Do I remember that properly?

James Swanwick [00:11:26]: Yeah, yeah. Verbiage is so important. What we say matters. And a lot of us are saying things like I have to and I need to, which comes across as very heavy and very kind of dark. Right. Which is I need to do something, I have to do something. If we just change it to I get to, I choose to, that gives us a very different feeling, which affects our thoughts, which affects our behaviors, which ultimately affects our outcome. So instead of saying, I have to quit drinking, it's like I get to live alcohol free instead of saying, oh, I have to drink soda water tonight, it's like, I get to drink soda water tonight, I choose to.

James Swanwick [00:12:03]: And it may seem ridiculously simple and it may seem even woo woo, but I'm telling you, this is the neuroscience, this is behavioral psychology. I have studied studies out of Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, mit, like all of these top universities, positive verbiage, gratitude practice, focusing on great Nutrition, human connection is something we could talk about. Have all been shown repeatedly to reduce and in many cases destroy cravings for any drug, including alcohol.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:37]: Yeah, it's very interesting. I drink, you know, I drink because you've ribbed me about it here and there. I think we even talked about it a little bit on the last podcast. I probably drink, oh, four to five nights a week of a glass of wine with dinner occasionally if I'm out and about, like a cocktail. And you know, very, very seldomly do I ever exceed a drink. Now, if I understand correctly, you think that even that or any amount of alcohol is just bad for you.

James Swanwick [00:13:13]: Yes, and here's why. There are repeated studies that show that even one seemingly innocent drink per night is enough to destroy some level of brain matter. There was a study actually in 2022 out of the UK of 36,000 British middle aged adults, they had them drink one drink a night, seven standard drinks a week, not much. And then they looked at the brains and they saw that it destroyed gray and white matter in the brain. Now that should be shocking. That's just one seemingly innocent drink per night.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:47]: This wasn't like a, like measuring people with some kind of a questionnaire like, do you drink often drinks. They literally had them in a lab.

James Swanwick [00:13:57]: Exactly.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:58]: And then right after drink it would show shrinkage in brain matter.

James Swanwick [00:14:01]: No, they would do it like on a weekly basis afterwards and they would look at the brain matter after like a drink a day, over a period of time. In fact, Andrew Huberman actually talked about this very study about two years ago on his podcast. And that was kind of one of, let's say the triggers that opened a lot of people's eyes to the actual potential negative consequences of drinking. So there was that study.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:26]: I thought that study was an observational study. I thought they had a whole bunch of UK Biobank data and then they took people from the UK Biobank data, had reported a certain amount of drinking, and then they scanned the brains and found a correlation, like an inverse correlation between amount of drinking and size of gray matter and white matter in the brain. They actually didn't know if these people had low gray matter and white matter and that predisposed them to drinking or the drinking caused the shrinkage in gray matter and white matter. That was a 2022 UK Biobank study that I saw, which I thought at the time Hooverman reported it, it was a little bit potentially misleading because it really is a correlative study. It's like an associative study, but doesn't really indicate causation. And of course, the other thing that's interesting is it didn't actually test cognitive function, dementia, Alzheimer's. Compare the study to some of the studies that show alcohol can actually reduce risk of dementia in some cases by up to 10%. I thought it was interesting, but one of those observational studies that suggests more data needed, and this is difficult to do.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:43]: You almost need a metabolic ward type of environment for this. But literally take people and you have a group drinking none, a group drinking one, group drinking two, and maybe a group drinking three. And over a period of time, you're doing a monthly FMRI on the brain to see if there's a change in gray and white matter. It's like a dose response to the alcohol intake. So I just don't think the study was strong. And perhaps more importantly, they didn't actually look at dementia, Alzheimer's or cognitive function or anything. They just looked at gray and white matter in the brain.

James Swanwick [00:16:18]: Well, let's just say that that was the case. Let's just give you the benefit of the doubt and say, okay, that seems a valid argument. Alcohol has been linked to at least seven types of cancers. It is a carcinogenic. So it's been shown to kill brain cells, restrict brain growth, lead to leaky gut. Obviously, there's all of the anecdotal stuff, like causes you to gain weight because you're drinking excess calories. Also, it disrupts your sleep. And when we have disruptive sleep, that can show up the next day with irritation, which can lead to eating more food that we might ordinarily to again trying to seek comfort or get a temporary sugar high by drinking alcohol and other things.

James Swanwick [00:17:01]: So there are increasing studies that are coming out which are linking alcohol now to negative consequences. Now, I know in your case that you drink modestly, like you just shared and I actually wrote about you in the book Clear. And I know that you were saying. I'm just looking actually at the part of the book here that you were saying that low levels of alcohol, which is like a stressor, can apparently boost adaptation and resilience. I think you said, yeah, I want to talk about.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:27]: I want to talk about the hormetic piece, but the cancer piece, you know, it is a little bit nuanced. Like, you're right. For esophageal cancer and breast cancer, there is a demonstrable increase, not as much as people would expect. In women, your risk of breast cancer goes from something like 11% to about 13.5%. If you are consuming more than one drink of alcohol per day versus not drinking at all. It's a bump for sure. I think not as much as what people would expect, but there were three. Who was the US Surgeon General? Vivek Murphy.

James Swanwick [00:18:04]: Vivek Murphy, thank you. Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:06]: Did a whole report on this. So that was the Surgeon General report. And then National Academies also dug into 15 years of data on alcohol intake and cancer. And then they had the. It's called the ICCPUD, the Interagency Coordinating Committee for the Prevention of Underage Drinking. So they mostly look at minors, but what they did was they also, in adults, looked at cancer, and they did find, again, pretty good correlation with breast cancer and esophageal cancer. But everything else was a very low confidence interval in terms of cancer risk without actually addressing any confounding variables. Let's say the unhealthy user bias.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:50]: You say the same thing for red meat. People say red meat is bad for you, but there's kind of like a pretty big sector of the population that already knows red meat is bad for you. At least they've been told that. And that's the same population who are smoking cigarettes, eating fast food, kind of defying health social norms whatsoever. And so it kind of skews the data in the case of alcohol because we're looking, again, at highly correlative, largely observational studies based on food intake questionnaires. It's very difficult to say that the people for whom a slight increase in cancer was reported were actually living a healthy lifestyle, and the people who didn't drink alcohol were actually living a healthy lifestyle. You actually can't differentiate between the two adequately with the data. And again, I think you can make a decent case, really for four diseases.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:47]: Esophageal cancer, breast cancer. There's an emphysema issue of the lungs that alcohol is heavily correlated with, causing issues for. And then, of course, liver psoriasis. Those four, for sure, have leapt out on these studies. But it's either a very small or a very foggy low confidence interval for the cancer risk in these studies. And they actually excluded, especially the underage drinking group. They excluded Mendelian randomization, which means that they can't really support causality like an observational study might be able to. And so it's kind of like, again, clues, I think, that require a greater amount of digging.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:31]: Because if you look at, like I was saying, like, the responsible nature of alcohol, there was a massive study, tens of thousands. I think it was like 80,000 men, Italian men, and they Looked at Mediterranean style drinking habits versus normal drinking habits. And Mediterranean style drinking habits means high intake of polyphenols, fruits, vegetables, extra virgin olive oil, clean meats, nuts, fresh dairy, and a very low amount of binge drinking and having alcohol only with a meal in a social setting. And they actually found that compared to the people who kind of like drink, I don't know, Westerners or the Australians who aren't James at the Playboy Mansion, that there was a very low rate, including risk of mortality from cancer in the people who were drinking, quote, responsibly. And pairing that with a generally healthy lifestyle, which might suggest why we see a lot of these blue zones, despite the records not being that great, displaying some amount of longevity, despite averaging more alcohol than what people who are on the no alcohol bandwagon are recommending. And so the last thing that I think is important to note is when you look at the context of the alcohol consumed in especially those three major reports that a lot of people citing the cancer risk are turning to, there is no differentiation. When they say like an average of a drink a day, so seven drinks a week, they actually never went in and differentiated between binge drinking versus moderate consistent drinking. What I mean by that is they didn't differentiate between is this person having seven drinks on a Saturday night on a bender and is a party animal, or is this, whatever, a father like me having a glass of organic wine at dinner with his family each night.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:35]: And the body responds far different. Maybe this would lead into what you were talking about as far as hormetic stressors. The body responds far differently to a hormetic stressor that's dosed in huge amounts all at once, versus that's evenly spread out in small amounts throughout a day, week, month or year. So what I mean by that is if I told you running is good for you because running creates massive amounts of oxidative stress similar to what you might get from a massive dose of alcohol. And you go out and run 30 miles on a Saturday morning, that's going to be received by your body, your physiology, your endocrine system, your inflammatory potential, far differently than you running, say 4 miles each morning of the week. So I think the timing and the dosing is also an important variable that sometimes people don't see or the studies neglect to report, if that makes sense.

James Swanwick [00:23:28]: Yeah. So I would submit that your style of drinking sounds like it anecdotally is absolutely fine for you. It doesn't seem like it compromises anything about your life. Right. You said four times a week I think you referenced four drinks per week, is that right, Ben?

Ben Greenfield [00:23:43]: Yeah, about four to five times a week. And not the California cab fishbowl sized glass of wine, usually organic biodynamic wine, rarely from the US because of the pesticides, the synthetics, the additives, the herbicides. All of the things that tend to be in alcohol or often accompanied with alcohol that I think are often worse than the alcohol itself or a very low sugar cocktail like club soda, lime, a shot of mezcal, tequila and a splash of bitters. So I'm very picky about no high fructose corn syrup, no synthetic additives, preservatives, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides. So always clean. And it's always when people drink with me, they're usually surprised, especially when I'm not at a party or restaurant, that I'm a one and done cocktail guy. The only time I would break that rule is I will sometimes go on a date with my wife. It's usually about twice a month.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:44]: I have a cocktail or a glass of wine as we're visiting before dinner. Then her and I split. We do a split pour of another glass of wine during dinner. And that for me is like my quote, heavy drinking day.

James Swanwick [00:24:59]: What is the enjoyment that you derive from drinking the alcohol, the tequila, actually in the first place. And by the way, the least bad alcohol is actually tequila.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:10]: Yeah. The fibers act potentially is a little bit of a microbiome feeding compound. And they also slow the glycemic response to the meal, similar to having your salad before you have your potatoes or something like that. So yeah, mezcal is up there.

James Swanwick [00:25:29]: Yeah. So what is the enjoyment that you derive from having that drink? Maybe a drink and a half the four times a week. What think do you you feel, what do you feel are the benefits of that?

Ben Greenfield [00:25:39]: I would say three things. Number one, and I know that you know this alcohol causes a release of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA, the binding of GABA to those receptor sites, and you get kind of this relaxed, socially lubricating type of effect. So a little bit of relaxation. The second would be the taste, particularly as a palate cleanser with an appetizer or a meal, something besides water to sit between bites that in my opinion, enhances the flavor. And then finally, for me, being the nerdy physiologist guy, the knowledge that I'm inducing a hormetic effect on my body, which you briefly mentioned. So this is the idea that in the plant kingdom we find xenohormetic compounds, compounds that in large doses would be poisonous or damaging to the body, many of which people have heard about. Gluten, lectin, alcohols, the aldehydes that you'll find in many fruits and vegetables that are actually the same toxic byproduct that alcohol is broken into. When your body is exposed to small doses of these, similar to say, heat stress, cold stress, exercise stress, you get a release of endogenous antioxidants such as superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, the same antioxidants you go to Whole Foods or shop on Amazon to put in your pantry to fight inflammation.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:17]: Your body actually turns into an antioxidant producing factory when it gets exposed to those mild amounts of stress. That's actually one underlying mechanism that people have hypothesized might be responsible for the seeming longevity inducing effects of folks in the blue zones having small amounts of alcohol on a regular basis. I think again, that's very associative data. There's no causative effect that's been studied. But what I'm getting at here is that it's a mild stressor to the body that induces cellular resilience and endogenous antioxidant production if it's not overdone and if it is indeed used as a small hormetic stressor. So long answer your question. But it's basically the relaxation taste and the health effects.

James Swanwick [00:28:06]: Yeah. The net effect, I would submit, is that you're still drinking poison.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:11]: It is poison. The definition of a xenohormetic compound is that it is a poison, it is a toxin, it's cytotoxic, and that is why it's healthy in small doses.

James Swanwick [00:28:20]: Yeah. So a lot of the work that I do is helping people to stop drinking as opposed to hack drinking. And it seems like you've absolutely found a very effective way for you to hack drinking and that you do seem to experience these positive effects. I can't argue that. What I can argue is that most people who are at least attracted to my methodology into my message can't just have that one drink a night. They can't even have half of a drink or a night because that leads into another one and another one. It's like the first drink. Even in this scenario, where you're doing it for the positive effects or the positive health effects.

James Swanwick [00:28:59]: Like a low level stressor is like a gateway drink to a second drink. And that's when the problems can start. You know, third drink bottle of wine, et cetera. Now, over a lifetime of doing that, like you referenced maybe, what did you say, four drinks a week. So that's still something. Like, what is it, 200 to 400 drinks a year?

Ben Greenfield [00:29:22]: Yeah, same like if you're doing four exercise sessions a week, you'd be in 200 to 400 exercise sessions a year. Yep.

James Swanwick [00:29:28]: So let's say 200 to 400 drinks per year over 10 years. That's 2,000 or 4,000 drinks in a decade. I would submit that still having an impact on your health.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:40]: I would say my daily sauna, cold exercise, alcohol, vegetable and fruit intake are daily poisonous impacts that cause my body to become stronger due to mild hormetic stress spread throughout the year and never dosed in too large of an intake.

James Swanwick [00:29:59]: Yeah, I would agree with that. And I would also suggest that having been to your home in Spokane, Washington, or your previous home, wow, it was a wonderful place. And you've got the infrared saunas, you've got the cold plungers, you've got the jacuzzi, you've got the theragun, you've got the. You're making sure that you're not connected to the wifi. I mean, it is just a shrine to health and I love it. But I would suggest you are the rarity, right? Like you are, you're a weapon. You are a health weapon in the sense that you are conscious. I would suggest almost every minute of every day about the air you breathe and the food you eat and what you put in your body and how you repair most people, 99% of people, maybe not 99% of the people who listen to this podcast, because they're all very health conscious, I'm sure.

James Swanwick [00:30:42]: But most people don't have those kind of things that you reference and they're not taking care of themselves as much as you are. So while one drink a day for you, no problems at all, because you've got all these things that can mitigate that. For most people who don't have all of those things, one drink a day, I would submit, can be harmful, especially over many years and decades.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:04]: Yeah, I agree. When I hang out with the average Westerner or UK or Australian or however we're going to define folks, most people drink in an unhealthy way, in the same way that most people do not move their bodies adequately, do not stay hydrated adequately. I think education can help that. But I do agree that in the case of alcohol, because of its status, is something that can be used as, oh, what do you call Something that you use to run away from your problems with the words on the tip of my tongue. A dissociative. It allows you to dissociate from your problems if you use it in high doses. And therefore you can't say the same thing about an apple. You might be able to say the same thing about lifting weights or going on a run, or for some people, a cold plunge.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:58]: But I do agree that there is inherent danger if someone is not approaching it responsibly. I don't think that makes alcohol intake of any amount bad, but I do think that it makes alcohol something that you need to be cautious around. And I should also note there's genetics.

James Swanwick [00:32:19]: At play here, neurotransmitters as well. It's like the genetics plays a big part. How well your neurotransmitters are firing has a huge part in whether you're crossing. Cravings are huge, like massive cravings, or whether they're quite small and modest.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:35]: Yeah. So a few examples. Back to the dementia piece. If you have the APOE4 gene, it has been demonstrably proved without a doubt, causative association between dementia, Alzheimer's and alcohol intake. But if you don't have the APOE4 gene, that completely disappears and goes out the window. Another example would be if you have a deficiency in niacin or thiamine, both, which could help you to detox acetaldehyde, the byproduct of alcohol breakdown. You would be able to handle far less alcohol. We're literally talking like 0.3 drinks on average or something like that if you had poor nutrient or micronutrient status.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:18]: Another example would be something like women versus men. Women actually produce lower levels. And I don't want to get racist here, but sometimes people joke about Asians getting all red faced and crazy when they drink and not being able to hold their alcohol. Well, Asians in many sectors fall into this population as well. Lower endogenous production of alcohol dehydrogenase. Women too, they just can't break down alcohol as well. So they have to drink far less than the average person might be able to get away with. And then the last thing would be vitamin A.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:56]: I mean, on the important and helpful side, alcohol is actually a vitamin A activator. Now that's important because vitamin A is important for testosterone, for immune function and for vision. But if you were also supplementing with vitamin A, taking huge doses of vitamin A, drinking alcohol on a regular basis, and not doing blood tests to look at your vitamin A status, you might actually Create liver issues. And so there's those genetic factors, sex factors, what region of the world you're from, factors. And then, like I mentioned earlier, total. No, no big X. If you have esophageal cancer, breast cancer, or I would even say a genetic risk for those, which is easy enough to test for nowadays. Liver psoriasis, obviously.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:43]: And then there's, I think it's called community acquired pneumonia. It's basically like a lung condition that would also be contraindicated for alcohol intake. So this might make smoke come out people's ears. They're like, well, how do I know if I should drink or not drink if I have decided that I'm okay with a small, healthy amount? And that just requires, in my opinion, if you're going to be as responsible as possible and you want to do this, get a genetic test, get a blood test, see where you're at, and then make a decision from there about whether you're going to have small doses of a hormetic stressor on a regular, responsible basis without overdoing it.

James Swanwick [00:35:20]: I think you mentioned a couple of things that were interesting. Most people aren't getting blood tests. Most people aren't checking their genes. They're not looking at these kind of things. So they're blissfully unaware. And so then they drink, thinking that, you know, this is great for me because I can just do one or two. But then they have this propensity for it to go very much south because they just. They're unaware.

James Swanwick [00:35:42]: I was going to ask you about neurotransmitter support, and I actually had a guest on my podcast a little while ago named Julia Ross, and she's the author of a book called the Craving Cure. And she suggests, she suggested five key supplements for neurotransmitter support, which can help people to reduce their cravings for alcohol or any drug. Let me just put it through the Ben Greenfield stress test. She said tyrosine, because it supports the neurotransmitters and enhances focus. She said GABA for as a stress relief. Stress relief. DPA and DLP, which helps retain natural endorphins and promotes feelings of joy and pain relief. Glutamine, which provides a supply of glucose to the brain, which supports the neurotransmitter functions.

James Swanwick [00:36:31]: And then tryptophan, which aids in serotonin production.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:35]: Yeah, yeah, that is a. It's interesting because that stack is very similar to a stack that I recommend for people who have become addicted to Kratom because it's such an opioid like addiction and makes you so dependent on the dopaminergic rush that you get from a kratom dose that that exact type of neurotransmitter support that you've just defined can be helpful for that. A couple of things that I would consider that are not on that list and then one interesting comment about that list. The first is mucuna dopa, which is basically something that if used in proper dosages and especially not overdosed with, can cause a natural surge of in dopamine that replaces what your craving might be giving you. And then the other two would be things that help to support the production of neurotransmitters and also support the fatty acid lining of the myelin sheath, which is wrapped around the nerve fiber and is the way with which nerve signals get propagated throughout the body. So, so neurotransmitters need amino acids. So good intake of protein, adequate protein and or supplementation with amino acids, that would be one and then two fats that a lot of people know about that help to support neurotransmitters, particularly by supporting that myelin sheath, are DHA. Right.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:06]: Dosahexaenoic acid, which you'd find in fish oil or algal oil, for example, and oleic acid, which comes from olive oil, as the name implies. So let's take a Mediterranean approach. High intake of fatty fish, decent amount of bioavailable protein, good amount of extra virgin olive oil. Some of these supplements that you've just listed, like the tyrosine, the L dopa, and I forget the full list.

James Swanwick [00:38:35]: You said tyrosine, GABA, DPA and DLPA, Glutamine and tryptophan.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:40]: Yeah, Glutamine, tryptophan, DPA, DLPA. Yeah, that's a good stack. The interesting thing is that alcohol actually causes a GABA release. And so the only thing you'd want to be careful with with that stack is don't, like, take it during a time you'd normally be drinking as a way to drink less, but still drink, because you might actually make yourself feel drunk with extra GABA around and inadvertently say, well, I'm not going to drink three glasses of wine, I'm going to have just one. But I'm going to take the supplement stack and you can actually have enough GABA to where you shouldn't operate heavy machinery or drive. And you're like, what's going on? All I had was one glass of wine.

James Swanwick [00:39:17]: There was someone else I interviewed on my podcast, Alcohol Free lifestyle. It was Dr. Brooke Scheller, she wrote how to eat to change how you drink, which is an interesting book and she essentially agreed with what you just shared, which is animal based foods. So grass fed beef, animal based proteins. So we get B12 and Omega-3's for the brain.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:42]: Creatine, by the way, also you get from those which has been shown increasingly to be at 10 milligrams or above. Amazing for cognitive function.

James Swanwick [00:39:50]: Yeah, I've been taking 10 milligrams and above now for a while. Eggs, nuts, some berries, functional foods like fish, sardines, the omega-3's we're talking about, the healthy fats like avocado, olive oil. You referenced walnuts and then liver support foods. She referenced beets, broccoli, cabbage, kale, getting enough fiber. All this stuff I think is so obvious, I think to folks like you and me because we've been studying this thing for such a long time. For me it's just grass fed beef, wild caught fish, healthy fats, some ghee, grass fed butter. I'm good. And then I supplement with some creatine.

James Swanwick [00:40:30]: Interesting note actually, Ben. I remember it must have been nine years ago. Ten years ago we were outside of Dave Asprey's Bulletproof conference in Pasadena and I stopped you and I said, give me one supplement that beats all. Like all this is nine years ago. And you know what your answer was?

Ben Greenfield [00:40:47]: I probably say creating it was creatine. Yeah. If you ask me nowadays, creatine would still be up there. Nad or some form of it is closely reaching the top of that list. And then some type of omega-3 fatty acid source. Again, whether it's algal fish based, I think the best is to just eat really good clean fish. But that's increasingly harder to find with the microplastics and metals issue in the ocean. So good, clean, omega or an eligible source.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:16]: Absolutely. There was one other thing I wanted to bring up since we're doing a podcast about alcohol that I think people misunderstand. And that's the sleep part. You would probably agree with me, James. There's a lot of talk out there about alcohol's ability to disrupt sleep.

James Swanwick [00:41:38]: Yes.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:41]: That information is definitely accurate to an extent. There's a for sure research proven associative link or causative link between alcohol intake and sleep disruption. You get what's called increased sleep latency, meaning you fall asleep faster. And this is why a lot of people will do it. But then the REM sleep, where emotional processing and memory consolidation takes place, suffers. In many cases there is a nighttime waking as that GABA wears off. And so it's absolutely problematic for sleep architecture. But I have scoured the studies on sleep and alcohol and I can't find a single one that's not giving people anywhere.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:27]: From one I found one that was up to six servings of alcohol 30 minutes to 60 minutes prior to bed. I don't know about you, but I have never endorsed, nor do I think it's a good idea to drink a bunch of alcohol or even have just a full glass of wine and then crawl into bed. So I think it needs to be nuanced. I think people who might be enjoying a glass of wine at dinner at 6pm should not guilt trip themselves into thinking it's going to mess with their sleep later on. People are having a couple of gin and tonics at 9pm and they're going to bed, I don't know, 10 or even 11. I think those people should be careful. But again, I think even the sleep discussion is nuanced. It depends on how close it is to bed and how much.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:14]: And I see these studies, the one where they gave people the equivalent of six shots of just pure alcohol, like spirits, and then sent them to bed and I'm like, well, no, duh, they're not going to sleep well. So I think some of these studies also just need to be a little bit more like the real world. Give people a glass of wine with food at 6pm and then go measure the effects on sleep architecture.

James Swanwick [00:43:35]: Well, I often say you're better off drinking alcohol for breakfast than you are anywhere close to bedtime, because at least then the body has 16 hours to try to get rid of the toxins that you've just consumed. And now you're suggesting 6PM might be okay, look, 6PM Is going to be better than 9PM but having alcohol at 9am over your cornflakes is probably going to be best, I would submit.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:58]: Although look at it this way too, James. Your liver does most of its antioxidant production in the evening. So you could actually make an argument that if you're looking for the endogenous antioxidant production and the sparking of things like glutathione released by the liver, that letting the liver process the alcohol overnight is better from a circadian rhythmicity standpoint than drinking in the morning.

James Swanwick [00:44:24]: Well, look, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to cite another study, but I'll cite you hundreds of anecdotal case studies from folks who've gone through our 90 day stop drinking program and stopped drinking, who have anecdotally shared that their sleep just got infinitely better as soon as they stopped drinking alcohol. I'll use one example. There's a gentleman called Evan Melcher, who's a financial services manager out of Atlanta, Georgia, and he actually was an OURA ring wearer. Still is. And in the year before he came and joined our project 90 Stop Drinking Process, he was tracking his heart rate variability with an aura ring. I'm actually wearing my OURA ring right here. And then he joined our program, he stopped drinking, and then he continued to track his heart rate over the course of the next 12 months. As an alcohol free gentleman, he estimated that he saved 5 million heartbeats over the course of one year.

James Swanwick [00:45:19]: Because his heart rate went from something like that might be a bit too fast. Let's just say it was.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:27]: He made his Energizer bunny last a little longer. Yeah.

James Swanwick [00:45:30]: But then the heart rate slowed down when he stopped drinking to more like.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:33]: Right. And the reason for that is usually not due to an influence of alcohol on the actual pacemaker cells of the heart. It's due to alcohol having a temperature increasing effect. I mean, technically, alcohol is a macronutrient. Right. It's broken down into acetate in the body, metabolized for energy, much like protein, fat and carbs. But it's seven calories per gram and it causes a body temperature increase. I think a lot of people who have found themselves sweating when drinking in an environment where they would normally not sweat have experienced that.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:03]: And how does the body cool? Well, it sends blood to the extremities and so there's less blood to go around, so the heart has to pump more times per minute. So, yeah, if you looked at his OURA ring data, he probably saw not just an increase in heart rate, but an increase in body temperature also.

James Swanwick [00:46:18]: It's possible. Yeah. I'd have to dig in a little further to that. The other interesting thing with that gentleman, he was on four prescription medications before he stopped drinking. He was on sleep drugs, he was on stress and anxiety, he had acid reflux and he had high blood pressure. And as he shares the story, he was on four different prescription medications. Then he stopped drinking alcohol, and within months he was off all of those prescription medications. So there's lots of anecdotal evidence to suggest that just by knocking over that one domino of stopping drinking, and in his case, it was, you know, considerable.

James Swanwick [00:46:54]: It was three or four drinks a night, maybe even more over, you know, every night for years. Just stopping that knocks over Another domino which knocks over another domino and before you know it, now you're actually taking more positive steps in your life. Now you're focused on how many steps you're taking in a day, what foods you're eating, food timing when you're going to sleep. Even the fact that he was wearing an aura ring and it was tracking his sleep, I would submit, helped him sleep better because now he's motivated to try and beat his scores and to monitor it.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:27]: Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. The idea of certain practices, I mean, you could even say this thing, thing for a plant based diet. To a certain extent, people do tend to get healthier because the process of making a significant dietary change or lifestyle habit, especially if someone associates that lifestyle habit with hedonism, like let's say red meat or alcohol or marijuana or something like that, induces momentum that causes that person to make a lot of other health switches. Well, I quit marijuana, so I'm also going to start exercising and I'm going to have more vegetables and salad at lunch and I'm going to start going to bed at a decent hour and maybe not blurring blue light from the screen at my eyes for two hours before bed while I sit there smoking, enjoying. So there's a cascading of effects that happen when you make the switch. And I think that that cascading of effects is highly positive. I think that for most people it is better not to drink than to drink if drinking causes any type of issues. In terms of, as you noted, James, a slippery slope slide towards excessive drinking beyond what I think would be healthy, which is around a little less than an average of one drink per day, which is why you wouldn't drink seven days of the week and why I limit myself to 4 to 5.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:54]: On the flip side, if you look at epidemiological data like these US Biobank studies and these larger three studies that I mentioned that were in the US Surgeon General's report, there is no mortality decreasing advantage to not drinking versus drinking. Drinking does not make you live longer, but it does not make you live shorter in if it is done responsibly. And considering the fact that you do tend to see, depending on which disease you look at, a decreased risk of heart disease, decreased risk of diabetes in some cases from a genetic standpoint, decreased risk of Alzheimer's and dementia, decreased risk of Parkinson's, kidney stones, venous thromboembolism, there's enough other health effects of having alcohol that you could make a case that there's no change in the amount of lifespan lived by drinking a little bit of alcohol on a regular basis. But the quality of life from a health standpoint, when it's consumed properly, might.

James Swanwick [00:50:00]: Actually go up when it's consumed properly. Like you said, four words there, if it's done responsibly. Most of my work is helping folks who are irresponsible, let's say, or they're not drinking responsibly. And that's where all of these damaging, compromising health challenges really kick in. So I don't think you and I are really debating that a small amount of alcohol, if done responsibly and appropriately, could be, I would submit, could be beneficial. So I agree with you there.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:35]: I agree with you that you have to check yourself and you have to do it responsibly. And many people simply can't do that, don't want to do that, don't have the tools to do that, and they'd be better off not drinking.

James Swanwick [00:50:47]: There's actually three studies I want to reference which puts irresponsible drinking, let's say, into real perspective here. 2012 study from Scotland, Scotland ranked 19 commonly used drugs on the relative harm of drug misuse to self and others. I'm reading directly from my book here. They reported that heroin, crack, cocaine, crystal method alcohol and cocaine were in the top five places for all categories of harm. Alcohol was ranked as the fourth most harmful substance, with alcohol, nicotine and volatile solvents being viewed as more harmful than some Class A drugs. In 2020, there was a study from Germany which corroborated those findings. But regarding overall harm, cocaine, including crack, methamphetamine, heroin and alcohol were ranked as being the most harmful. And then this is the most interesting one of all.

James Swanwick [00:51:42]: There's a 2021 study out of the UK which looked at 20 legal and illegal drugs against 16 different harm factors. It showed that alcohol to be the most harmful drug overall, the most harmful to others, and the fourth most harmful to users individually.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:02]: I think all three of those studies are spot on. I think that alcohol, because of its penetration into society as an acceptable numbing agent or dissociative agent and lack of education about how to use it properly, drives those effects, including the potentially addictive nature of the way that you feel if you are not using it responsibly. So we are definitely on the same page there. And of course, I don't want to guilt trip anybody into thinking that whatever, drinking their communion wine is something that would fit into any of those studies. But I think that again, the context is important, the person using it is an important consideration, and the way in which it's consumed is an important consideration. And James, I also appreciate you bringing awareness to this is not my intention for our chat here to tell people or whatever like James is wrong. Drink as much as you want, you're going to be fine. Instead, I would say that you are 95% right, except for the part where you say any amount of alcohol is bad for you.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:14]: That's where I would disagree with you.

James Swanwick [00:53:16]: Well, I appreciate your view on that. And I actually said that you and I have a friendly debate about this in my book Clear actually, which was fun. I should also actually just note just a couple of interesting statistics about alcohol use disorder. There are 400 million people in the world who are considered to have an alcohol use disorder, but yet there's only 80 million people in the world who have a drug use disorder that's separate from alcohol. So that's five times as many people experience an alcohol use disorder than any other drug. In March 2020, when the pandemic started, COVID 19, et cetera, in the subsequent years, we saw a 23% increase in alcohol related deaths.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:58]: It's a huge problem and it's cheap, it's widely available, and it's socially acceptable.

James Swanwick [00:54:03]: And 7,000 people die a day, they estimate, from alcohol related illnesses. 7,000 people a day die from alcohol related illnesses. So again, we're debating here small amounts, palatable amounts. But when that slippery slope gets you and one turns into two and two turns into three, and then that turns into years and decades, then it can really start to compromise many areas of your life which might not be immediately obvious in the moment. I always say that alcohol can be death by a thousand cuts over few days, weeks, months, even a year or so. We don't really notice that cumulative effect. But then over many years and decades, suddenly we're 30 pounds overweight. It's just crept up on us.

James Swanwick [00:54:52]: We're eating a little bit better, a little bit more food than we would ordinarily choose. We're a little bit more irritable, we're a bit more stressed. Can lead to some marital strain. The marital strain can lead to stress and anxiety, which leads us down a path of abandoning our health protocols, which affects our confidence, which then makes us crave a sugary food or a drink to try to numb the pain of ourselves. And over years and decades, it can creep up on you and cause a lot of damage to your family, to yourself, and to society as a whole.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:22]: I agree Mic drop. That's a perfect place to end. I have family dinner in about 15 minutes, during which I'll be sipping my glass of wine and thinking fondly of you.

James Swanwick [00:55:32]: I'll be sipping my soda water, ice and a piece of lime and thinking fondly of you, Ben.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:38]: In all seriousness though, folks, pay attention to the stats that James just dropped because I have looked at the research and Data and he's 100% right that it is something that we need to highly respect and modulate and so at least respect in terms of respecting the potential of it to inflict danger. So James, thank you so much you guys. If you want to comment, if you have questions, if you have feedback, I have created juicy show notes for you. Or at least I will. By the time this podcast will have been released, that will be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Alcohol Pod that's BenGreenfieldLife.com/AlcoholPod Feel free to go over there, chip in, add your own comments, your own tips, check out James's book as well as our first podcast where we got much deeper into James life story, which is just super entertaining, super inspiring. You can learn even more about how he got his job hosting Sports Center on ESPN and much more. So all that's going to [email protected]/AlcoholPod. James from Medellin, Colombia, right?

James Swanwick [00:56:42]: Yes, yes. I have a Colombian wife and Medellin, Colombia is home now.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:47]: Incredible. All right, man. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate what you're doing and how you're helping the world.

James Swanwick [00:56:53]: You're welcome. Thank you very much for having me, Ben. Appreciate you.

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