How Ancestral Habits, Biohacks & Smart Movement Can Fix Your Energy, Focus & Hormones (Even In a Toxic Modern World) With Jimmy Rex

Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast, I almost 100% avoid fried foods. There's occasionally when I'm traveling, somebody's like, this is the best, like, fried chicken sandwich you're ever going to have in your life. I will take one for the team and occasionally have something like that, but it's very rare. Fried foods are one of the worst because the vegetable oil that is heated up can become very oxidized and rancid, and those oxidized compounds can stick around in your body for up to a couple of years. I tell people, if you were to walk up to me at the county fair and offer me, like, a stick of cotton candy or a corn dog, I have a stick of cotton candy 10 times out of 10, because that's just carbohydrate and sugar. And I can walk around, burn it off, and, you know, go to the gym later that day or whatever. But the vegetable oil and the corn dog, the friedness in the corn dog will stick around in my body for months and months and is what is used to comprise my cell membranes. I'm not black and white, all or nothing on everything, but fried foods would be like, 95% of the time.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:03]: I avoid them if I'm at a restaurant. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:08]: Your host, Ben Greenfield.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:10]: 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.

Jimmy Rex [00:02:02]: Ben, welcome to the podcast, my friend.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:04]: What's going on, Jimmy?

Jimmy Rex [00:02:05]: Dude, you're used to having the mic in front of you, that's for sure. I'm. I'm guessing.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:10]: Well, if I fall off this treadmill and knock myself unconscious on the mic, boom, then I will have proved you wrong. But, yeah, I have this thing stuffed in my face quite a bit.

Jimmy Rex [00:02:19]: So you're. You're. I mean, you are the expert on, you know, optimization, human longevity, all these different things. Health. That's one of the reasons, obviously, that I wanted to talk to you because I run a men's coaching group, and there's so many things with America and today, society and health in general with men, and. And you're one of the voices that I always look to when I'm trying to figure out what's coming up, what's going on, what's changing in the industry. And even as I'm talking to the podcast, I'm laughing because you're walking on some treadmill like this dude. Really Is like walks, the walk in life on, on health.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:51]: Yeah, yeah, the walking part's interesting. They've actually done studies on this and shown improvements in focus, improvements in what's called brain derived neurotrophic factor bdnf which is kind of like miracle growth for your brain. You know, improve blood flow obviously better blood glucose control, so better metabolism, more fat burning, all sorts of things happen if you can kind of like move during your workday. Which makes sense from an ancestral standpoint. Right. Like sometimes I miss those days in college when I painted all summer or you know, bailed hay or had very, had a very physical existence. And so now I gotta kind of like hack my office to mimic that ancestral hunting gathering type of movement that we would have experienced all the way up to the post industrial era. So I mean, yeah, I, I have a walking treadmill.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:40]: I've got clients who will have like you know, kettlebells on the floor of their office or a pull up bar in the door of the office. There's like one of those short high intensity interval bikes. You can't see it. It's behind that light panel. I guess you could see the handles of them. I have like this carol bike back behind me I can hop on and do a, a quick workout with. So you know, if I'm like in deep in book writing phase, my goal is to be able to just, you know, be locked in my office for eight hours and walk out and not feel like I need to go hit the gym.

Jimmy Rex [00:04:07]: Yeah, no, it's brilliant. I start my day with a walk every day at 7AM I have one of the guys I coach, same kind of principle. I tend to think I can get more out of it coaching while I'm walking with them. So we go for a walk as opposed to me just sitting behind a desk teaching them through zoom or something like that. And it's, I start every day with one of those walks. It's, it's been probably the smartest hack I've come up with in the last couple years.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:29]: Yeah, I think it's a, it's a little bit of a Catch-22 because in our day and age everybody wants to see your face, right. And so I'll a lot of times get on a consult to do a coaching call with somebody and they're like well I can't see it. And I'm like, well that's because I've got my phone in my pocket and I'm outside walking in the sunshine while I'm talking to you. And this Isn't exactly how I say it. I'm not a total asshole, but I'm like, right, you don't need to see my face to be getting the value out of this conversation. Conversation. And maybe I'm a little bit old school, right, Because I grew up in the era when, you know, you really did have a phone, you know, connected to the wall and you had a 10 foot long cable and, you know, people couldn't see it on. On video.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:11]: You know, like the old Jetsons cartoons, when you'd talk on the phone. And now it's. It's almost like expected that people can see you. And so sometimes if you are committed to walking while you're on the phone doing consults, et cetera, then people have to get used to that. But I'm okay with it. I'm okay with. And I'll literally tell people, I'm like, look, you can go for a walk while we're talking too. Let's both walk and talk.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:34]: We might not be able to be, you know, playing with our butts in a chair on Zoom, but it works out. And then obviously, like you and I are doing right now, we're on video, but I've got a walking treadmill in the office, so that works out sometimes too. Besides the fact that you just can't go outside.

Jimmy Rex [00:05:50]: Yeah. Well, I think in general, anything that's promoting positive health is so needed right now. I mean, maybe if you could speak about the state of the current state of the country or people in general of where their health is at, give a couple of just stats or figures that kind of show just how unhealthy we are as a society.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:06]: Ben, I have no clue. Stats memorizer. I can tell you if you got a Walmart or the mall or Barnes and Nobles or. Or, you know, go on, on an airplane or. Like, my sons and I just got back from Indianapolis where we're at a gaming convention, which might, since a lot of these people spend eight hours a day in their mom's basement playing Dungeons and Dragons being an accurate representation of society. It's like the amount of obesity and subsequent cardiovascular disease and diabetes, et cetera. It is pretty shocking. Interestingly, I think that despite the controversy behind it, a lot of these GLP-1 drugs have kind of been making a dent in that.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:47]: Obviously there's a bunch of other side effects, like, you know, depression and anxiety because you're missing out on the enjoyment that food was intended to provide and muscle loss and, you know, gut inflammation issues and some other stuff that can happen if you don't manage that correctly. But from what I understand, I don't know if you heard about this, Jimmy, but even airlines are adjusting their fuel estimation rates because of the drop in weight that's occurring as a result of people just popping the pill to lose a few pounds. So I don't know the exact stats. I mean, I don't think it's any secret to anybody listening in that there is an issue with health. And in a large part, it stems not only from the lack of physical activity that we have in our modern jobs, our post industrial jobs.

Jimmy Rex [00:07:40]: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:41]: Which is a blessing. Right. Because we're not out getting chased by lions and having to hunt down a white tail deer and build fences and rock walls all day. But at the same time, it kind of comes back to bite you when you are considering it in terms of what I've heard called the comfort crisis. Right. Being surrounded by hyper palatable foods at your beck and call, anywhere in the mini fridge or the fridge or the pantry or the, you know, the office or the cafeteria or whatever, combined with the ability to be able to make money and do your job while sitting down in a sedentary position much of the day. So, you know, that's one issue. And then you combine that with toxins, microplastics, metals, you know, bright fluorescent overhead lighting and light pollution, air pollution, electrical pollution, et cetera.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:32]: You know, anybody who's gone camping or hunting for a week or so knows that you come back feeling pretty refreshed from a circadian rhythmicity standpoint. And often your joints are more supple and you feel more energy and it's kind of like a wake up call that we are not living in the way that human beings lived for thousands of years. And to aggravate that issue even more, we are surrounded by artificial compounds, whether it's artificial light or artificial air or artificial electricity or artificial food additives that bring us even farther away from that natural setting that causes a human body to thrive when it comes to healthspan and lifespan. So it's a definite issue.

Jimmy Rex [00:09:18]: So where does one even start to, like, combat that? Because there's so many things that are, I think, not to our advantage, you know, in this day and age when it comes to all the things you just mentioned. So where do you even, where do you even start?

Ben Greenfield [00:09:30]: Oh, man, how much time you got? You want to dive in?

Jimmy Rex [00:09:33]: Well, that's the thing is like, I would say, like, read your books and listen to your podcast.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:37]: We can dive in. I can lay this out for you if you want to.

Jimmy Rex [00:09:39]: Yeah, I'd love to go into it because just, you know, from a basic standpoint for the person that's like, hey, I really want to optimize my health as much as I can. Really. If you can just go into what are the most important things you could teach them in here on this podcast.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:51]: Yeah. Interrupt me if you need to because I'll, I'll kind of.

Jimmy Rex [00:09:54]: Oh no, I know you're good on this one.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:57]: All right. So I don't think it's any secret that eating healthy whole food as close to nature as possible and moving your body helps when it comes to health span and lifespan. It's easy to say it's a little bit more difficult to systematize and apply that and have a plan for it. Right. I'm a big roadmap direction, you know, call to action type of guy. Like I, I want to finish a meeting or hear a podcast or watch an interview like this, walking away with actual action steps. So nutrition, where do you start? Well, if you look at pockets of the world where people live a disproportionately long period of time, such as the so called blue zones, or if you look at the diets of a lot of healthy long lived people, you don't see a consistency amongst like high carb, low fat, high fat, low carb, you know, vegan, paleo, carnivore, pagan, whatever. But you do see common dietary characteristics that anyone can follow no matter what kind of diet you're eating.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:00]: Now, a quick rabbit hole here. You might wonder, well, how do I know what kind of diet I should be eating? How do I know if I'm high fat, low carb, High carb, low fat, carnivore, whatever. That's where the blessing of living in an era of pretty affordable and accessible self quantification and blood testing comes in handy, right? Anybody who I coach, they get a salivary genetic panel, they get a blood panel, they do a stool panel, they do a urinary hormone panel and a food allergy panel, right? So even all those tests put together, you're still probably all in going to be like 1500-2000 dollars. But that's an investment that if you've tested your body pays dividends because then you know, right? Like that ketogenic diet that helped your neighbor lose 20 pounds is going to screw you over because you have something like familial hypercholesteremia, like high cholesterol or a poorly functioning liver or gallbladder that doesn't allow you to digest fats or a genetic issue like an apogene that dictates risk of Alzheimer's and dementia in response to a high intake of saturated fats, et cetera. So I think that the question of what diet do I follow is pretty easily solved via self quantification. And if you're literally unable at all to do any type of self testing to be able to see what your body is best primed for, then I would say painting with a very broad brush some semblance of a slightly lower carb. Mediterranean diet works really well for a wide variety of people. And I'm not just saying that.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:41]: That's backed up by epidemiological data. The Mediterranean diet, not the unlimited breadsticks, giant salad bowls dressed in canola oil Mediterranean diet, but like a diet rich in herbs and spices and colors and Omega-3 fatty acids from fish and olives and avocados, relatively low in added vegetable oils and added sugars, works well for a wide variety of people. I mean, you could go to Amazon and get like a low carb Mediterranean diet book or low carb Mediterranean cookbook or, you know, tooting my own horn. I've got cookbooks out there like Boundless Kitchen or Boundless Cookbook. But that's kind of like where to start if you haven't done any testing and you don't know what type of diet is good for you. But stepping back and looking at these common characteristics of really healthy people, you see a few things pop up. First of all, there is an intake of a wide variety of food matter, right? Huge variety of herbs and spices and vegetables and fermented foods. And it's interesting because especially in America and in westernized society, you know, the refrigerator, the salad section just always like lettuce, cucumber, tomato, you know, and you know, maybe a, you know, a little bit of lemon or something like that.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:02]: But if you look at the diets of a lot of long lived people, they're eating a huge variety of foods. That's why I'm a fan of, you know, visiting the farmer's market, shopping some of the weird stuff in the produce aisle at the grocery store, even joining what's called a csa. My wife and I did this for years where we signed up for a farmer's box from a local farm or collective of farms and foods would show up at our house like, you know, rutabaga and artichokes and kohlrabi and all that stuff. We had no clue how to cook. We were kind of like forced to expand our palate and learn how to prepare a wide variety of foods. So if your instacart order or, you know, your know, Rose ours or Albertsons or Safeway shopping cart, whatever, is the same week in, week out, you need to be introducing variety. And the magic of that is it also increases your microbiome diversity. And gut diversity is huge.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:53]: Not only when it comes to the health of the brain and the immune system, but the interesting and kind of paradoxical thing, Jimmy, is that if you have issues with gluten, with lectins, with gas, with bloating, if you have a so called princess gut, a lot of times you can stay super safe and say, well, I'm just going to go carnivore, or I'm just going to eliminate all these food groups and be like, I'll maybe paleo for the rest of my life. But the problem is the more you limit, the less diverse your microbiome becomes. The more of a princess gut you get, the more you increase dietary diversity. Introduce a wide variety of real whole foods you can recognize close to nature, not a wide variety of junk foods or processed foods. The more diverse your microbiome becomes, the more able you are to digest a wide variety of foods. This is why it was such a travesty. The myth that circulated for so long and still circulates that you're not supposed to give your kids peanuts and what they found. You know, long story short, there's actually a new book that tackles this myth.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:57]: I wish I could, might be able to find the name of it. It is Blind Spots. It's a book called Blind Spots by Marty. Marty, I'm looking at my shelf right now because I just read it. Marty Makary, he goes into this. Kids who are given trace amounts of peanuts early in life, and you can say the same thing about gluten, they grew up less prone to have allergies to peanuts and gluten. And an adult is no different. The more that you introduce a wide variety into your diet, the more you're able to handle the more of an iron gut that you make.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:26]: And there's often a adaptation period of like gas and bloating and things like that. When you start to introduce sauerkraut and kimchi and raw dairy and maybe some liver or heart or kidney and some microgreens and some sprouts and some new herbs and spices and ginger and turmeric and garlic and all these things. But ultimately, in the long run, it's really good for the gut and really good for the body. So that's one lesson that we can learn from long lived people.

Jimmy Rex [00:16:57]: Where, if you remind me asking Ben, what. What are the things to really stay away from? Where do people really have stuff fall apart from them because they're digesting or eating too much of it?

Ben Greenfield [00:17:06]: I would say the biggest culprits would be dairy that's been processed like pasteurized and homogenized dairy.

Jimmy Rex [00:17:15]: It's like that's dairy you get in the grocery store, right?

Ben Greenfield [00:17:18]: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes pasteurization is okay for kind of like cleaning up any risk of bacteria in the milk. But homogenization and high heat ultra pasteurization kill off the good bacteria in a dairy compound and separate the fat from the protein. And so when a protein is separated from the fat globule, that protein can wind up undigested, unbroken down in the bloodstream, and cause immune system reactions. That doesn't happen with raw dairy or fermented dairy like yogurt or kefir quite as much. So I'll be. One would be just buying plain old milk at the grocery store. Another would be when we look at the popularity of something like a carnivore or a paleo diet.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:01]: A lot of people embrace that because they've heard that plants have natural built in defense mechanisms because they don't have teeth or nails or hooves or claw and that can damage the human gut based on a survival mechanism that the plant has to avoid being eaten as much by a mammal or to have its seed pass undigested through the gut to be pooped out elsewhere. And it is true that plants have those natural built in defense mechanisms in them. But humans are smarter than plants. So my recommendation here is don't avoid plants, but prepare them properly. And this is related to the mistake you're asking about. A lot of people will, you know, eat quinoa and wheat and amaranth and millet and, and beans and lentils and legumes and all this stuff and not know that these foods are supposed to be soaked and sprouted and fermented and rinsed and overnight cooked and prepared in such a way that a lot of these problematic compounds are deactivated, right? So if you go buy quinoa from Costco because you heard quinoa was healthy and was like a high protein, nutrient dense grain, which it is, and you just like open up the pack or look at the back of the package and open it up and make it according to package instructions. You might have gas or you might wind up with like quinoa in your crap the next morning. And it's not because you're allergic to quinoa.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:26]: It's because it's lined with this soap like irritant called saponins that irritates the gut. And you're supposed to actually rinse the quinoa and soak it overnight and then rinse it again and prepare it the next day, right? Or another example would be something like wheat, right? Like if you were to walk out into a field of wheat. Like, I. I live out by the palouse and rolling fields of wheat everywhere. If I walk out there and just like, start chewing on a stalk of wheat, the gluten is so concentrated and other compounds like lectins in that wheat are so dense that it would cause gut distress. But if you take that same wheat and you slow ferment it into something like, say, sourdough bread, it's way more digestible. The sugar content is lower, the gluten content is lower because the wheat has been prepared in a much slower process. Way same thing with just like giant, you know, raw smoothies full of kale and spinach and mixed greens.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:26]: Like, a lot of these things should be boiled and mashed and parade and steamed and broken down to render them digestible and to unlock more nutrients. So that would be another one would just be not understanding how to prepare things like plants properly. So when. When you learn how to do this, it's. It's super easy. Like, if I want to have oatmeal for breakfast, I will take the oats and I'll rinse them, and I'll just put them in a mason glass jar and leave them overnight with a little bit of vinegar in there to break them down, wake up in the morning, rinse that, and then make my oatmeal. And I can't have oatmeal without having a little bit of digestive distress just straight off the shelf. But if I soak it overnight, like, overnight oats, I digest it just fine.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:12]: And, yeah, it takes a little bit more planning ahead for your meals. You know, marinating and soaking and sprouting and fermenting and doing all this stuff. But it's kind of cool because you develop a more intimate relationship with your food, and you also wind up unlocking a whole new variety of foods that you can eat.

Jimmy Rex [00:21:30]: Well, what about when you're eating out? You know, I think a lot of people, they're on the road. They have a lot of business lunches or, you know, dinners or they're on the road for different things. What's the best way to make sure you're eating as healthy as possible when you're, when you're out?

Ben Greenfield [00:21:42]: Yeah, it's a great question. So first of all, you know, let's look at this in like chronological order of when you arrive to the restaurant. First thing is drinks, right? So I don't avoid alcohol, but I choose my alcohol carefully. Like if it's a cocktail, for example, you can do bitters with lemon and soda water and a splash of whatever spirit that you want. And what's cool about that, about having something that's more bitters forward than sugar forward is that it also assists with the digestion of the meal that you have afterwards and lowers the glycemic index or the blood glucose raising potential of that meal. This is why things like, you know, digestifs are something you might often see in the menu in like a European restaurant is there are certain alcohols that are very bitter that, that can actually help you to digest food. So I'll usually go with a very bitters forward cocktail or in a pinch from not drinking just like lemon soda water and bitters and bitters themselves have small amounts of alcohol in them, but that can kind of give you a cocktail esque feel without drinking a lot of alcohol. Or let's say for wine in the US they're allowed to use over 70 different pesticides and herbicides on wine.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:58]: So unless it's certified organic and even then there's still a higher sugar content, ordering a US based like Big California Cab isn't as good an idea as ordering from a country or a wine produced in a country that uses a lot more old world biodynamic farming methods with lower amounts of water and irrigation which results in a higher antioxidant grape with lower sugar content. But they also use far less herbicides and pesticides in the growing process for the grapes. So the, the three countries that I look at that are usually pretty safe are France, Italy and New Zealand. So if I'm going to order wine, usually it's France, Italy or New Zealand. Next is you look at the carbohydrate content of the appetizer and also the fried content of the appetizer. So I almost 100% avoid fried foods. There's occasionally when I'm traveling somebody's like this is the best fried chicken sandwich you're ever going to have in your life. I will take one for the team and occasionally have something like that.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:02]: But it's very rare. Fried foods are one of the worst because the vegetable oil that is heated up can become very oxidized and rancid. And those oxidized compounds can stick around in your body for up to a couple of years. I mean, it's a lot like I tell people, if you were to walk up to me at the county fair and offer me like a stick of cotton candy or a corn dog, I have a stick of cotton candy 10 times out of 10 because that's just carbohydrate and sugar and I can walk around, burn it off and you know, go to the gym later that day or whatever. But the vegetable oil and the corn dog, the friedness in the corn dog will stick around in my body for months and months and is what is used to comprise my cell membranes, right? So it can cause a lot of damage. So fried foods are almost, you know, I'm not black and white, all or nothing on everything. But fried foods would be like 95 of the time. I avoid them if I'm at a restaurant and occasionally like, you know, somebody will have like a, like some beast or will have some big beautiful salad and it'll have, you know, beets and goat cheese and you know, kale and arugula and like fried artichokes or something like that.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:09]: Now, you know, I'll have the salad, but I'm not going to order like, let's say what would be an example like fried cheese, French fries or something bowls or french fries or something like that. And those tend to be really prevalent on the appetizers and the sides menu. So you look for fried foods and avoid those when you're, when you're doing the appetizer. And then the next thing you look for is the high carb, high sugar ones, you know, like big potato based appetizers or you know, or bread based appetizers like the. Why am I blanking on? On the one that is. Commonly you see the fancy restaurants, right? Like the toasted stuff with the, with the toppings on top.

Jimmy Rex [00:25:51]: Oh, I know you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:53]: Starts with a B, but you know, like, like toasted bread and crackers and stuff like that.

Jimmy Rex [00:25:58]: You get it on a charcuterie board almost like.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:00]: Yeah, yeah, exactly. The breadboard that comes out or the bread basket that comes out. I tend to avoid that stuff most of the time. And I'll go for the more vegetable or salad forward appetizers or more of like the meatball, beef tartare, carpaccio type of appetizers. Some more protein and vegetable forward on the appetizers. Then when you look at the entrees, typically the main things I look for again are I'll avoid anything that says fried and go for baked, grilled, steamed instead. The dressings and the sauces tend to be very high in the vegetable oils also. So I'll typically look at the dressing or sauce.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:37]: You know, if it's like a vinaigrette or a wine glaze or something like that, those are safer. But if you look for words like, you know, creamy or, you know, or the word dressing or, you know, certain oils, and you just want to be careful with the dressings and the sauces. And if I don't know, I'll often order the dressing or sauce on the side and then just use a lot less of it than what the restaurant would normally just like dump all over my food. So use a little bit of caution with the dressings and the sauces. And then as far as the protein goes, you know, usually I just think about, okay, what did what I'm eating eat? Because similar to the vegetable oils, you are what you eat ate. Right. And so if it's, let's say pork, like pork concentrates a huge amount of toxins in the fats in the pork. So if I don't see that the pork is like pastured pork, I'm pretty careful with ordering, you know, like, like the bone and pork chop.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:34]: For the beef, I'll look for grass fed, grass finished. For the fish, I'll look for something that's either sourced from clean waters or that isn't higher up in the food chain. Right. So like higher up in the food chain would be something like tuna or sea bass. Right. Versus a safer choice would be something like, you know, salmon or sardines or mackerel or anchovies or herring or something like that, or trout. And then the last thing I'll look for in the entree are the sides. And those are pretty easy to sub.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:03]: Right. Like if I see it's a huge side of mashed potatoes, which means starch oils, you know, more of the commercial dairy that I talked about. And then I look at another entree and it's got like, you know, grilled local vegetables and mushrooms, I'll just say, hey, could I do the, the, I'll do the trout, but instead of the mashed potatoes, I'll take the mushrooms and the vegetables that you guys are serving with the steak and then the sauce on the side. Right. So, you know, as, as you navigate the menu, you're looking for the source of the protein, how much fried stuff is in it, how much sauces and dressings. And then like, the real, especially you're trying to lose weight, the real starchy sides that could be subbed. As far as dessert goes, and I'm honestly not a big dessert guy. I'll usually skip dessert at restaurants, but at home, I've always got, like, some banging good yogurt, like a really good coconut yogurt that I love, or like Greek yogurt that's full fat.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:05]: Or, you know, we, my wife and I even make our own yogurt, which is not hard to do. I've always got, like, a few bars of dark chocolate and some frozen blueberries, right? So I'll get home from the restaurant, I'll do, like, cup of yogurt, dark chocolate, blueberries. As long as I know when I'm at the restaurant, I got something real healthy that I can have for dessert at home. I'll just usually skip out on dessert, you know, and, you know, it's. It's. It's not difficult to do. And a lot of times you'll find when I'm out with friends, a lot of them are, like, ready after the restaurant to head home anyways. Nobody really wants to stick around for dessert, but it comes out, and everybody assumes everybody else wants dessert.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:40]: And then, you know, and then we order dessert, and it's actually 20 minutes, and you, you know, you divvy up all the spoons. Everybody pretends like, you know, they're. They're loving it, when in fact, they're like, man, I'm going to have to stay at the gym for an extra 20 minutes tomorrow after this. So you just announced you could just be like, hey, I'm really not feeling dessert. Anybody with me? And most of the time, people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't need dessert.

Jimmy Rex [00:30:00]: Thanks for covering that because that's, you know, for me, I'm on the go a lot, and it's just. It's. It's a nice, healthy reminder of kind of how to do that in a healthy way, because I don't think it's so much about where you eat always as it is, is how you eat. And I think it makes a huge difference. So I want to kind of give a couple just different topics to have you kind of give a quick little. Just your take on. There's so many. By the way, guys, if you're listening to this, Ben has his own podcast.

Jimmy Rex [00:30:24]: Go listen to it. It's every episode. I used to go get body work done a lot. And the guy that I would go to every single day without fail, had your podcast. That's where I first heard of you. I. I did watch you on Rogan once or twice and I always thought you were kind of funny and interesting. You're willing to try about anything back then, I think especially.

Jimmy Rex [00:30:41]: But. But that podcast is where I really started to learn just how in depth all this health stuff was. Maybe right now if you could share a couple of your favorite current biohacks and then I want to get your take on psychedelics as well. I think it's a very popular topic right now. I know you've changed your mind or kind of done some different things with. With psychedelics. I'd love to maybe start there.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:02]: Yeah. And I guess maybe when I talk with you about biohacks, I'll cover some of the stuff that I made an attempt at answering your first question, but we kind of got rabbit holed on the nutrition stuff. But you know, it's gonna basically be, you ask about, you know, the major stuff to tackle. It's basically exercising consistently every day. Some of the nutrition tactics that I went into, and I unpacked those a lot more in my cookbooks so you guys can check those out. And then it's basically electricity, light and air, like those and water I'd throw in there too. But like paying attention to like your electrical environment, your air environment, your light environment, and the type of water you drink. Those are like four things that a lot of guys don't think about, but that add up pretty quick.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:43]: So many of my favorite biohacks would relate to that. Right? So I am a huge fan of basically keeping as much in the house hardwired as possible. As a matter of fact, like, like even my phone, right? Like this is an ethernet cable. So I have it plugged into the router. The wifi is off in my whole house and everything's hardwired. Like I just have ethernet cables everywhere. And this is an ethernet cable attached to. So I have an iPhone 15 and it's just attached to an adapter with a USB-C.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:16]: Right? So even when I'm in my office all day and I'm on calls and stuff, I'm hardwired instead of having my phone bouncing around a signal all the time as much in the house. That can be a stupid appliance with wifi disabled is a stupid appliance I've even had. And you can look up the field of building biology, but I've actually had this building biologist. I Went through this company called Shielded Healing. And the guy came to my home and walked through it with like five different meters, measuring a bunch of different, you know, appliances and electrical outlets in the home. And once we implemented his recommendations. Right, so unplug this, switch this out, put a dirty electricity filter in this room, install a converter for the solar panel, be careful with this in your bedroom, and move it to a different room, et cetera. My sleep got better, my energy got better, especially in my office, because everything's hardwired now.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:09]: Huge game changer. So that would be one, I guess you could call it a hack that makes a big difference. You just have to get used to asking yourself in just about every electrical scenario, could I hardwire this? And if I can't, does wifi and Bluetooth have to be on? Or is there anything that I can disable to make this healthier? So that's one. The second would be related to light pollution by modern led. Artificial light. The flicker it produces, the EMF it produces, it can cause a little bit of a brain drain by the end of the day. That's even why I'm wearing these glasses while I'm talking to you. Because even though I have all natural lighting in my office, when I do a podcast, I've got the slightly brighter lights that I turn on that are LED based to light things up.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:59]: And besides those, for my entire house, every single room has either incandescent or what's called OLED lighting, which is far friendlier to your circadian rhythm. And here's a cool hack. I haven't talked about this much before because these are kind of new, but there's two companies, one called Bon Charge and one called Block Blue Light, and they make light bulbs that you put into your light bulb can. And if you turn the switch on once, it'll go daytime mode, turn it off, turn it on again, it'll go evening mode, turn it off, turn it on again, it'll go full on sleep nighttime mode. So the brightness of the light bulb will adjust automatically based on the time of day, which is way more convenient than what I used to do, which is put red lights in the bedroom and slightly less bright lights in, like, the living room and the kitchen, and really bright lights in the gym and the office. And now all the light bulbs are the same and I can just flip them off and flip them on to get the type of light that I want. So cool.

Jimmy Rex [00:35:04]: Very cool.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:04]: Yeah, paying attention to light and light pollution, that would be another biohack that I'm really a fan of another recent one. I'm just going to give you some of the newest stuff is I have been always pretty aware of the importance of both indoor and outdoor air quality. You know, as far as, you know, microtoxins and volatile organic compounds and off gassing and stuff like that. But I recently kind of upgraded the air filtration system in my home because I interviewed this guy and I learned a ton from him. So I'm using these air filters called JASPRs. Have you heard of these before, Jimmy?

Jimmy Rex [00:35:40]: No.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:41]: So it, it has a readout on the screen. It's a really, really good like commercial grade HEPA air filtration unit that originally came out of the mold remediation industry and now they're selling consumer. And even though I have a good central HVAC system with a built in filtration, I put a bunch of these standalone JASPRs in my house and they have a readout on the screen that tells you the PM 2.5, which is a particulate matter that is less than 2.5 microns, which is the type of stuff that you breathe in and that could cause lung damage or buildup in the bloodstream. And this guy told me this on the podcast, but I didn't, I didn't swallow hook, line and sinker. He said when you cook a meal in your home that the indoor air quality can decrease by like hundreds of percentage points. So I noticed when I walked into my office the day after I interviewed him, my wife was making dinner upstairs. She was literally not even doing like high heat cooking. It was like baking.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:42]: And the readout on my screen had jumped from 3 up to 10.

Jimmy Rex [00:36:46]: Wow.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:47]: And then I got when I put it in the kitchen and the readout during cooking went from three up to like 40. So it turns out that the overhead fan when you're cooking doesn't do a great job because they're typically too far above the grill or the oven of reducing a lot of the toxins that build up in the home during cooking. So the next hack I'd say is put a HEPA air filter like a standalone unit in your kitchen. And automatically when I started paying attention to that, I noticed a huge difference in just like how fresh things smelled when people were cooking or after, after dinner, compared to not paying attention to indoor air quality, particularly during cooking. So that'd be another one to think about. And then the last one would be, I would say, related to water. You know, we all hear about water filtration and I do think it's a really good idea to have. Like, I.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:47]: I'm on a well, and I use a double carbon block. Reverse Osmosis is also really good, but the idea of adding hydrogen into your water is a pretty cool hack. It's one of the most powerful antioxidants, but it's a selective antioxidant. Meaning normally if you, say, take antioxidants after exercise, like vitamin C or vitamin E, they'll blunt your exercise response. Like, you won't build as much new mitochondria or as much new muscle if you take antioxidants right after exercise. And there's only two antioxidants I know of that help to quell inflammation without shutting down the response to exercise. One is hydrogen, and these are literally little tabs that you add to water, or you can drink it out of a hydrogen water bottle. And the other one is called Methylene Blue, which is a real dark blue substance a lot of people use for cognitive performance.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:40]: But it's also a selective antioxidant. So I've been using. I've just dug recently into a lot more of the research on hydrogen, and I've been doing a big glass of hydrogen water when I wake up and then again in the afternoon. And it's a. It's a very, very good antioxidant, but it's a selective antioxidant. So it's okay for people who exercise a lot to. To drink on a regular basis.

Jimmy Rex [00:39:02]: Oh, that's. That's a great hack. What about, like, tap water versus bottled waters in the gas station? Things like that?

Ben Greenfield [00:39:08]: I just always go glass. So I'm traveling, I go glass. I got a stainless steel. It's called a MOBOT Bottle, I think, and I like it because it's also double as a foam roller. It's one of those hard, big stainless steel bottles. Yeah. With some ridges on it. So I can foam roll my back and stuff.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:25]: You know, I'm in the gate waiting for the airplane or if my back's tight, when I get to my Airbnb or hotel. So I just saved myself a lot of money in the airport. I go a stainless steel water bottle, and I fill that up from the filtered stations at the airport when I'm traveling. And then typically what I do, especially because I stay in a lot of hotels and Airbnbs and I don't know the quality of the water, and the hotel will charge you, like, 10 bucks for a decent bottle of Fiji or whatever is. I just go ahead to Instacart or Amazon And I'll have just a crap ton of glass bottled water delivered to my room. And I just drink that when I'm traveling. So between that and the stainless steel bottle, I can pretty much avoid plastic and water, which I think is pretty important. Restaurants a little bit more difficult like restaurants you don't know.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:14]: So even though it's more expensive, I'll typically just order whatever the biggest glass bottle is for the table at the restaurant.

Jimmy Rex [00:40:21]: So I want to touch base on two other things here and appreciate this, man, this is, it's such a great overview and hopefully, you know, my audience listening, will this will entice them to want to just really start looking into their health even more. But one thing I want to ask you about is your opinion on psychedelics. I know it's changed a couple of times, so maybe start there. And the last thing I want to ask you before you got to go is I want to ask about how to boost your testosterone naturally and maybe your opinion on TRT.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:47]: Oh, well, I could answer both those questions at once because, you know, taking mega doses of Psilocybin boost testosterone and checks off the psychedelics box. So we're good to go. Let's grab this thing out there. Yeah, psychedelics, they're interesting because for the longest time these were relegated to the priesthood or the shamanic order, or individuals who had been very well trained and were highly versed in the use of say like ergo or fungus based compounds similar to LSD or Psilocybin, even marijuana in some cases, and Ibogaine and Ayahuasca and many of these other things that have become more recreational over the past couple of decades, even since the 60s. And the reason that they were so gated for so long is they're very powerful. I realized that a lot of people are probably aware of the research behind the power of these compounds for things like end of life therapy or solving PTSD or things like that. But now people are just using these compounds in high doses on a regular basis in many cases to just kind of find themselves and lay back slobbering while seeing visions and experiencing entities and asking what it is that the universe would reveal to them. And I think that can be dangerous.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:18]: And you know, I've even done this stuff before. I've probably tried every drug known to humankind. I spent about eight years really taking a deep dive into the psychedelics world. And I, I think I would have been way better served just like fasting in the wilderness with a journal or on my knees in prayer every morning, which is what I do now. Like, I haven't touched these things in a long time. Besides microdosing, which I think is an appropriate use for something like, you know, Psilocybin or LSD, it's just like anything, you know, even wine, you could drink two bottles of wine and be abusing it. And one glass is, you know, great for social function. So dose is the poison.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:53]: But the reason that, you know, they were gated for so long a period of time and the reason that if you're a Christian, even the Bible, you know, the definition of the word pharmakia in the Bible is using drugs to divine with the spirit world. And it's not that it's forbidden because it's not beneficial. It's forbidden because the risks can outweigh the benefits. Meaning when you are ripping open the portal to a spiritual world and also tweaking your brain chemistry in such a way that you are highly susceptible to the influence of anyone overseeing that protocol, say like a shaman or a priest or anyone else who is sitting for you, you're in a very vulnerable place spiritually. And for every nine people I've seen really transform themselves and their personality and, you know, become closer to God or anything else that you might get from a. From a trip or a therapy session or whatever you want to call it. There's like one person who develops things like schizophrenia or bipolar or gets a little weird or freaked out at least once a month. Because I do a lot of, like, health consults and phone calls with people.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:09]: I talk with someone who, pardon the expression, has got super up from psychedelics and I have to help them. And a lot of times it's a combination of neurochemistry and spiritual issues. And I won't lie. I realize a lot of people might laugh at this, but I think in some cases it is a literal possession by an entity that they experienced while in that other world that they were in spiritually. Because, again, like, crossing that spiritual portal is something that a high dose of Psilocybin or an Ayahuasca or Ibogaine experience allows you to do. And that's a very dangerous and vulnerable place for a lot of human beings to be in. Now I've kind of just scratched the surface on my general thoughts about the pros versus cons of psychedelics. And I have two kind of like monster mega articles I've written about this that delve deep into the history and use of them.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:04]: Where do we find [email protected] if you were to just search like or even just search my name plus the word plant medicines, you would find those articles. And basically the thrust of it is, is that you are playing with fire and there are other ways to deal with stress and trauma. Very similar to other ways to deal with obesity or overweight besides GLP-1 and popping a pill or as they say, getting dropped off by a helicopter on the top of Mount Everest versus climbing to the top of Mount Everest that I think we should be exploring. Options like fasting, meditation, breathwork, prayer, exercise, cold plunges, sauna, a lot of these things that take more work and are a little bit more of a stoic versus a drug based epicurean approach to people issues that we have. And it's safer, especially from a spiritual standpoint. We're just playing with fire with a lot of these compounds. And many people are not trained. Many times the integration is insufficient and in many cases the person is just not mentally or physically or spiritually prepared for that experience and they're not given as much respect as they should be given.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:26]: And furthermore, for me personally, because I am a professing Christian, once I did a deep dive into the history of this in Christianity and what the word pharmacia in the Bible actually means. Divination with the spirit world, using high amounts of drugs that shift your, your mental state. I realized that I could not in good conscience, without being a hypocrite, continue to do things like, you know, Psilocybin retreats or Ayahuasca or any of these other mind altering compounds without violating what is a law that, that God put in the Bible that I think is there for a very specific region because it's opening up the portal to a spiritual world at which, and, and that can, that can put you in a very vulnerable and dangerous spot.

Jimmy Rex [00:47:15]: Yeah, no, thanks for sharing that. One last twist I guess on all of this or one more topic to cover is the testosterone, how to naturally your testosterone and when men should consider using TRT.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:29]: Excuse me, that's a much easier question to answer. Jimmy, the other one, it's like, well, gosh, I wish I had like two hours to really. I know.

Jimmy Rex [00:47:36]: And that's like we could do a whole podcast on psychedelics. You know, I don't know if you have anybody that you do recommend that does all those kind of things, but.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:43]: I mean, honestly, if you were to read those articles and follow all the videos and audios and resources I have in those articles, you would. And I even have a book called Fit Soul and another one called Endure, where I delve into a lot of this stuff. Also, they're two of my more spiritually oriented books. So testosterone is interesting. I'm not against testosterone replacement therapy, but there are two things to consider. First, before considering the use of exogenous testosterone, you need to make sure you have your boxes checked from a natural, supportive standpoint. What does that mean? It means lifting heavy weights, particularly with the legs, where a large percentage of the androgen receptors reside. So you should be doing deadlifts, squats, leg press, etc.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:30]: As a part of a robust and consistent strength training routine. Adequate exposure to sunlight, fresh air, low stress lifestyle, good relationships, good sex, all that stuff makes a difference where like think like a caveman a little bit in that respect. Next, covering your bases from a nutrient and a mineral standpoint. Specifically, the main things you should get tested for or introduce prior to considering testosterone therapy are vitamin D, Creatine, Magnesium, minerals like electrolytes, fish oil, Boron and Zinc. You need to look at those because those are all going to be building blocks for testosterone. Next, you need to test, test, test. Blood test is okay, it's a snapshot. Salivary test is okay, but a urinary test, there's a test called the DUTCH test.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:29]: This is what I have most of my clients do. It's a dried urine test for hormones. Gives you a very accurate snapshot of not just what your levels of hormones are, but what the upstream and downstream metabolites of them are. And that's important because if you've got really low testosterone and really high cortisol, then I know that part of your low testosterone issues could be due to what's called a pregnenolone steel. Using a lot of the pregnenolone, an upstream hormone that would normally be used to build testosterone, and it's instead going to build cortisol because you're stressed out or you're not sleeping well or you're training too hard. But if I see low testosterone and low cortisol, that can be more of what's called an HPA axis issue, right? Like basically long term adrenal burnout and stress, long term calorie depletion, carbohydrate depletion, fatty acid depletion, et cetera, leading to low building blocks across the board for both cortisol and testosterone. So they're like subtle nuances that you need to look at. So I think that testing is important.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:38]: And so all of these things are things you should think about prior to something like testosterone replacement therapy. The reason I say that is because once you start on testosterone replacement therapy, a lot of times it can affect fertility. So you need to ask yourself if you're done having children. It can affect ball size if it's not managed properly. It can increase risk for cardiovascular issues, prostate issues, et cetera, which is a non issue if it's managed properly. But nobody should be on testosterone without doing robust testing about every three months to check in on estrogen, dht, cortisol, testosterone free testosterone, these are things that need to be managed medically. Then finally, before using something like testosterone replacement therapy, consider alternatives that are still medical but slightly less of a sledgehammer. An example of that would be enclomiphene, which is a variant of Clomid, what's called a selective estrogen receptor modulator.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:39]: It can help to increase testosterone without impacting fertility, ball size, et cetera. I would say enclomiphene would be towards the top of the totem pole of something that could be used prior to testosterone replacement therapy or used with TRT and allowing you to use lower amounts of the actual TRT. And then finally consider the dosing mechanism, meaning a large bolus of testosterone injected once or twice per week in no way mimics the natural diurnal variation of testosterone that a male experiences. So if you're getting a huge injection, let's say on a Tuesday and a Saturday, you're going to get a big surge in testosterone followed by a giant surge in estrogen, often arising dht, which can cause the male pattern baldness that's often associated with TRT, mood fluctuations, anger, irritability, et cetera. I think a much better approach would be either a nasal spray or a pellet which is slow release or even. I personally started doing this a couple of years ago, a small amount of testosterone cream applied scrotally in the morning and in the evening. So you're naturally mimicking what the body would produce on a daily basis anyways. And so I'm the biggest fan probably of the scrotal cream morning and evening.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:04]: The only risk with that is you to wash your hands well afterwards. You don't want your nine year old girl to start growing a mustache because you give her a hug at night after you've applied your testosterone. On the flip side, if you have a little bit and your, your wife applies it literally prior to sex, it can actually be a huge turn on for her. But even then you got to be careful. Like a female dosage is like 1/20 of a male dosage. So you just need to be careful with the amount, of course. But yeah, it's, it's. It can be useful, especially if you're over the age of 40.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:36]: I wouldn't, I wouldn't put a whole lot of consideration into it if you're younger than that. And I wouldn't put any consideration into it until you've covered your bases, Right? The creatine, zinc, boron, fish oil, magnesium, minerals, vitamin D. So you're lifting heavy weights with your legs. Low stress, good relationship, lots of sun, natural fresh air, considering something like enclomiphene prior to TRT, and then finally the end of the road. Consider TRT, but only when. When administered in a proper way that kind of mimics the. The natural way.

Jimmy Rex [00:54:10]: Awesome. No, Ben, you're such a wealth of knowledge, man. Thank you for your. Your time today and for covering such a broad range of topics for me and my audience. For people that want to follow you and learn more, where's the best place to send them?

Ben Greenfield [00:54:20]: Ben, I'm pretty easy to find. I mean, you just Google my name, but I'm on Ben Greenfield LIFE.com. got a podcast, Ben Greenfield Life Show. Got a bunch of books you can find on Amazon, but that's where it starts. A lot of stuff out there, but hopefully it points people in the right direction. Great questions, by the way, Jimmy. I mean, from psychedelics to testosterone to soaking your legumes.

Jimmy Rex [00:54:41]: Well, you know, this was the, This was the topics I wanted to cover selfishly. And I think a lot of the people that follow my podcast have the same questions and concerns and, you know, things like that. So thank you again, man. I appreciate you. I know how busy you are and we'll be in touch.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:54]: Yeah, and I'm just going to say one last thing, because I think a lot of people will walk away from a podcast that's as widely varying as this was. Like, well, what do I do now? I don't know what to do because I just learned like 20 new things. And I think what's important is to sit down with the information. This is what I'll do. A lot of times when I listen to a podcast like this is go use AI to generate the transcript or the show notes, go through, review it, and just highlight just a few of the hell yeses for you. Like, start with three. Like, well, okay, I do oatmeal. I'm gonna start soaking overnight.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:29]: I'm going to start into those six things Ben recommended for testosterone. And I'm going to switch out the light bulbs in my house. Right, so. So you start pretty small. It's like if you were to buy a giant book, you wouldn't read it all at once. Like, I typically max out at two chapters a day. So if you start small, it's kind of like a gateway drug. It opens a portal to kind of experiencing just a few things and then go from there.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:51]: But what gets measured, gets managed. What gets written down, gets implemented. So go back, get the transcript, print some notes, have AI, generate some bullet points for you, highlight the things that at first glance for you, gut sense are like, yes, I can do that. I can pull that off. This is not a huge lift for me this Saturday or Sunday to replace some cans and bulbs in my home, or to start on a few new supplements, or to change up my water filter and then just go from there. But don't think that you have to do it all at once. Just make for yourself a doable plan where you can knock off just a few things. And just like going to the gym and getting fit, right? It might start with stretching and treadmill and a few light dumbbells, and two months later you're, you know, you're crushing it with a more full, like, whatever, hybrid bodybuilding routine or whatever.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:39]: But just start with the manageable and don't feel like you're a failure or a loser because you implement like 10% of what Jimmy and I just talked about.

Jimmy Rex [00:56:47]: No, it's really helpful and I same thing. Like, I hope this podcast inspires you to want to start to take your health more serious. Start looking at these things, but like you said, have two or three takeaways. You can start with a couple of bullet points and go from there.

Ben Greenfield [00:57:00]: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I'm honored to have you on, Jimmy. Thanks, man.

Jimmy Rex [00:57:04]: You're the man. Thanks, Ben. Appreciate you.

Ben Greenfield [00:57:06]: To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks and content to become the most complete.

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