What’s The Blood Of Very Healthy Old People Look Like?, Time-Hacking Exercise, The Best Way To “Filter Your Blood” & More—Q&A 485

Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: In this episode of the Boundless Life podcast, what's the blood of very healthy old people look like? Time hacking your exercise, the best way to filter your blood, and a whole lot more.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:11]: Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:16]: I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist. And I'm passionate about helping you discover.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:21]: Unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:32]: Welcome to the show. Let's get the elephant out of the room right away. I did not just swallow a frog for breakfast. I've actually just moved to my brand new home in the sticks of North Idaho. And I'm sure during the process of moving, I was exposed to all sorts of fancy friendly new viruses and bacteria and the like. And I have a little bit of upper respiratory congestion going on. It's interesting, I'm often asked by people what I do when I get sick because I actually do tend to get over illnesses pretty quickly. And of course, I do those things that a lot of people know about.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:10]: I step up the vitamin D. I actually do what's called the vitamin D sledgehammer. I take about 50,000 international units of vitamin D. When I first start to feel a little bit of something going on, I take vitamin C and zinc in the form of a product called Kion Immune. I step back the exercise. I do some sauna and sweat things out. But here's a few interesting things that I do when I'm sick that seem to really, really help me out quite a bit. And these kind of fly under the radar.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:35]: They're kind of fringe. They're probably considered to be biohacks, but I'm gonna say them anyway. Anecdotally, as an n equals 1. I'm not a doctor. Don't misconstrue this as medical advice. One of the things I do is I really focus on lymph. So when I'm sick, I do a form of lymph drainage. I learned from a doctor named Perry Nichols.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:53]: You can find this online. It's called Perry Nichols Big Six. I'll link the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/485 but it involves rubbing and tapping each of the areas where there's a high concentration of lymph nodes in a certain sequence to allow for better lymph circulation. And the areas that you rub and tap are, first you start with the chest. You rub, rub, rub the chest area kind of underneath the clavicle. Then you tap. Then you move up to behind the neck, you rub and then you tap and you're rubbing for about 10 to 20 seconds.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:24]: Tapping for about 10 to 20 seconds. Then you move down to the area right in the front of the shoulder, rub and tap that. And then the stomach, you kind of rub and tap or slap the stomach. You move down to the groin and you rub and tap that area. Then you finish with the back of the knees. And what I do is after I finish rubbing and tapping each of those areas, I jump up and down on a mini trampoline for about five minutes. It actually really helps with kind of lymph stagnation. It also helps a ton with constipation if you tend to struggle with that.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:53]: And you can do that protocol anywhere if you're traveling. It's great for kind of keeping the immune system supported. So that's one thing. Is Perry Nichols, Big Six. He's a doc who I think he's a doctor. I don't want to stick my foot in my mouth, but I'm pretty sure he is who developed this protocol. And I've been doing that for a few years. Another thing that I do is I nebulize.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:11]: I use a nebulizer, which is a small mask that you wear over your nose that kind of turns via water based, almost like a humidification, turns things into small particles that you can breathe into your lungs and your nasal cavity. And I nebulize hydrogen peroxide. I use about a 1 part hydrogen peroxide, just a 3% hydrogen peroxide solution that you can get at CVS or Walgreens or the grocery store. And I mix that in 10 to 1 solution with water and I nebulize for about 8 to 10 minutes a day. Just while I'm getting some work done on my phone wearing the mask. The third thing that I do that's interesting and you gotta have a little bit of equipment to do this, but I have the whole home ozone package from a company called Simply O3. I interviewed their founder, Micah Lowe on a podcast which I'll also link to in the show notes. Fascinating podcast about how ozone is one of the best things you can have in your home first aid kit protocol. But their new kit comes with headphones that you put over your ears and it directs ozone directly into the sinus cavities and the eustachian tubes via the ears.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:19]: And that's specifically indicated or used at least this is the way I use it for upper respiratory tract infections. You can also drink ozone water. You can do ozone rectal insufflation everybody loves that. But the ozone ear headphones are absolute game changer. Very, very simple way to deliver ozone in through the ears. And then the last thing that is, I think very powerful that flies under the radar is there's a peptide, one of the best immune supporting peptides I know of. You inject it when you start to feel sick, you inject it when you are sick. It can lower the duration of the sickness and also really support the immune system.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:55]: It's called Thymosin Alpha 1. And I inject about 1 milligram a day during the time that I'm not feeling well. So despite my throat feeling like I've been punched repeatedly by an entire Hells Angels squad in my neck and simultaneously have some kind of a horrific virus, I actually feel pretty good. But those are a few of the things I do with the lymph circulation, the vitamin D sledgehammer, nebulizing hydrogen peroxide. I use ozone. And then I also do the thymosin alpha 1 peptide. So this is one of those shows where I don't have a guest. I just go over some of the most interesting things that I came across this week.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:37]: If you have a question that you want me to answer and I will answer a question as a part of this show, you can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com and ask a question there, or you can go to the show notes for this show at BenGreenfieldLife.com/485 read the show notes, which are always very helpful, but you can also leave a question there. And I always reply to one or two at least on these shows. But first I want to get into some of the latest news flashes and the interesting things that I've found around the Internet this week that I think will make your life better and hopefully make you a little bit healthier. So let's jump in. A study came out that actually looked at a bunch of centenarians, a 35 year follow up of what's called the Swedish AMORIS cohort. So what this means is from about 1985 through 1996 they followed these people, or starting during 1985 to 1986 they started following these people using blood based biomarkers in a Swedish registered data for 35 years. They looked at metabolism, inflammation, the liver, renal anemia, nutritional status. So what they specifically were analyzing was these people who lived at least up until their hundredth birthday and what these so called centenarians displayed in their blood and their biomarker values as things that really stood out that we saw them showing when they did blood tests. So the study analyzed 12 different blood biomarkers spanning metabolism, inflammation, liver function, kidney function, anemia, nutritional status, et cetera.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:09]: So they looked at total cholesterol, right? A measurement, all the cholesterol of your blood, the HDL, the LDL, et cetera. And the relevance there is that higher cholesterol levels in centenarians can actually indicate better lipid metabolism and cell membrane stability, Meaning they wouldn't actually look for lower cholesterol values. They would actually look at higher cholesterol values, which is interesting. Iron, a mineral that, of course, helps with hemoglobin carrying oxygen in the blood. And higher iron levels, even though they can be an issue if they're in excess or they're being absorbed improperly, can indicate better nutritional status and oxygen support. They looked at glucose, as you would probably not be surprised by lower glucose levels. And centenarians would typically suggest better blood sugar regulation, so reduced risk of diabetes, oxidation, complications, atherosclerosis related to high blood sugar, et cetera. They looked at creatinine, which is a waste product that's formed by metabolism, filtered out by the kidneys.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:08]: And, yeah, you are going to see higher creatinine levels if you use, say, creatine on a regular basis or you're exercising very hard. But painting with a broad brush, relatively low levels would reflect better kidney function and possibly reduced muscle breakdown. So they looked at uric acid, which is a waste product that forms when your body breaks down purines, which are something that you find in food and in cells. Lower levels of purines would indicate a reduced risk of gout and also reduced risk of oxidative stress. So they looked at that. They looked at liver enzymes, AST, ALP, and one called GGT. So we got aspartate aminotransferase, gamma glutamyltransferase, and alkaline phosphatase. There will be a quiz on this afterwards.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:49]: So AST, GGT, and ALP, Lower levels of these would reflect better liver function, less tissue damage. For the alkaline phosphatase, Lower levels could also indicate better bone health. So they looked at each of those. A few others, just a couple more here. Lactate dehydrogenase, that's an enzyme that involves energy production. It's released when cells are damaged. Lower levels of that could indicate reduced cell damage and better overall health. And then final, finally, total iron binding capacity.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:19]: TIBC. That's a measurement of your blood's capacity to bind and transport iron, lower levels of TIBC can reflect also more stable iron metabolism and potentially reduced inflammation. So those are the things that they measured and the reason that they measured those. So what they find? Well, no huge surprises here, centenarians. Well, maybe some surprises, especially the first one. Centenarians displayed favorable biomarker profiles from the time they started measuring them. About age 65 onward, up to and past 100 years old, these folks had higher total cholesterol. Now, that doesn't mean the cholesterol is atherosclerotic, right? Like, you could have high total cholesterol and have a really good lipid profile.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:57]: Low triglycerides, high HDL, low blood glucose, low APO-B, low LPA, low cholesterol particle size. And the total cholesterol being elevated in and of itself would not be an issue. And sure enough, these people had higher total cholesterol levels. I'm not saying there's no law of diminishing returns, but higher would mean in many cases, slightly above 200 or close to 200. So they also had higher iron levels. And again, you want to be careful with iron, more is not necessarily better, especially if you're seeing high iron levels along with high levels of inflammation and oxidation. But for the most part, iron as a way to help carry oxygen through the body and as an indicator of good nutritional status, that's another one that was up. What was low? Well, glucose was low, creatinine was low, Uric acid was low.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:47]: All those liver enzymes I mentioned, ast, GGT and ALP were low. Lactate dehydrogenase was low. And total iron binding capacity was actually low. And remember, lower TIBC reflects better iron metabolism and reduced inflammation. So this was really interesting because we could start to use biomarkers like this and do a panel like this. And, you know, many, many companies out there, whatever, you know, what are the big ones? Siphox Health, Function, I think more plates, more dates. Derek over there, he has a test Inside Tracker, Wellness FX. There's a lot of different companies.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:24]: I think Thorne actually took over Wellness FX. But not that hard to test these biomarkers from your own home, right? And so you can get a panel like this. And if you're really interested in longevity, you could actually go to the show notes, take that total list brand in your doc and say, hey, I want to test these twice a year and keep track of my values. And if you start to see one of those values, really airing is something you may want to pay attention to. Now that we have some big data that associates specific blood markers with Longevity. So understanding these biomarkers can provide, in my opinion, a really good roadmap for identifying actionable interventions to promote health and extend lifespan. Plus, who doesn't love to give blood? It's a blast. I hear it's good for you actually to donate blood.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:03]: It can lower the harmful iron levels if they're too high a little bit, especially if you're a guy. So there you have it. I thought that was very, very interesting. It's very helpful takeaways from that. So the next one that I came across that I think you'd find interesting was, you know, we're seeing seed oils right now kind of, you know, I guess thrown under the bus. I think in many cases for a good reason, especially those that are rancid, that have been oxidized, exposed to high levels of light, high levels of heat, fried over and over again. It doesn't mean all seed oils are bad though. I mean, I use avocado oil all the time.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:36]: Technically, I think avocado is a fruit olive oil. You could classify that as kind of a seed oil. But they're not. The processing of them is not, is not problematic. It doesn't result in a lot of the issues that we see with many of these other seed oils. But there was a recent investigation into one particularly popular seed oil, one that I like. It's very tasty and that was sesame oil. Sesame oil.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:00]: And it was very interesting what they actually found about sesame oil. So what they did was a meta analysis, a study of studies, and they looked at a whole bunch of studies and clinical trials on sesame oil and whether or not sesame oil is actually healthy for you. This was very interesting because the main findings of this systematic review and meta analysis were that fasting blood glucose was significantly reduced with regular consumption of sesame oil. Hemoglobin A1C, a long term marker of glycemic control, was also lowered with regular intake of sesame oil. It didn't seem to have a significant impact on insulin levels. There is a marker of lipid peroxidation and oxidative stress. It's a long one. It's called malon dialdehyde or MDA that was significantly reduced with regular consumption of sesame oil.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:50]: And when I say regular consumption in most of these, you're looking at the equivalent of about a half to a full shot glass, worse worth per day. I measure everything based on alcohol and cocktails, obviously, so not a ton. You know, you're not eating oodles of or drinking oodles of sesame oil. But using it you know, as a condiment in a way. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure were reduced with regular sesame oil consumption. Body weight was significantly lower, 0.62 kg lower, which is actually significantly lower body weight within a significant reduction in body mass index as well with regular consumption of sesame oil oil. So there's a lot of favorable effects of using this, I think very tasty cooking oil. I like it on rice, for example, I like it on a cold salad.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:32]: Oxidative stress, blood pressure, blood lipids, inflammation, they all seem to respond very favorably to sesame oil. So we can't throw all seed oils under the bus. And there's a lot of components of sesame oils. I mean, phenolic acids, tannins, phytosterols, saponins, flavonoids, alcohol, alkaloids, all sorts of helpful compounds in sesame oil that I think would, would cause it to have these type of effects. Now one thing that you should know is that sesame oil smoke point is not that high. It's about 350 degrees. So I actually don't ever use, I just kind of play it safe. I don't use sesame oil on high heat, cooking, baking, frying, et cetera at all.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:10]: I only use it in cold preparation. But sesame oil, let's, let's chalk one up to the benefits of it. And it's one of those seed oils that I don't think is going to be an issue or problematic if you're getting good sesame oil. I can't say that I'm super brand specific. As a matter of fact, I tend to consume whatever my wife happens to have purchased from the, from the grocery store. There's one company that makes a really, really good version called Activation Products that's owned by a friend of mine named Ian Clark. I know they have a really good sesame oil. That's not the one that I have on hand right now.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:44]: But I'll tell you what you want to look for cold pressed. If you get cold pressed oil of any variety, it's always going to be a little less prone to oxidation. So just a good cold pressed sesame oil would be a great thing to add in to make food taste healthier and not run away with your hands in the air screaming like a horror movie from all seed oils. All right, so let's get into another one that was interesting. I like to do single set to failure resistance training. I have a fancy, fancy machine in my office. Well, not in my office, in the room behind my office. Actually.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:17]: If you're watching the video version of this show. You can see two bicycles behind me. I have a vibrating bike called a Rev bike and a Carol bike. Those are like my office bikes for quick workouts. But then if I open that door behind me, I have a gym with all my biohacking equipment. It's a great gym. I got a vibration platform and a incline treadmill and Vasper and this ARX, single set Resistance training to failure. It's a great gym.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:42]: Fantastic gym. Sounds like Trump's describing my gym. It's the best gym. I walked in. It's the best gym in America. Home gym. Maybe my apologies for the Trump impersonation, But anyways, this ARX, it's a 2 horsepower engine and I'm fighting against this giant machine doing super slow training one single set to failure. You can do this if you're at a Nautilus machine lineup at a gym.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:05]: There's another little portable tool that's very nice. It's based on the concept of variable resistance training to failure. It's called an X3 bar. John Jaquish, who I've interviewed on my podcast, he invented that thing. So, based on my real interest in this idea of using single set resistance training to failure, this paper recently came out. It's called Muscular Adaptations in Single Set Resistance Training Performed to failure with the rip without repetitions in reserve. That means getting close to failure and having a certain number of repetitions left that you can still do well. The study really shows that there is a lot of potential for single set resistance training, right? So for me, for example, do one set of deadlift, one set of chest press, one set of pull down, one set of squat, one set of overhead press, and one set of row to failure.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:54]: Like nothing left in the gas tank after each of those sets. But I'm not doing multiple sets, right? And I can get through all that until 25, 30 minutes max, if you count the recovery time between each set. Because I'll take two to three minutes between each one, doing a little bit of core work, riding the bike, letting myself recover, and then coming back and hitting the next set. So it works. And it works fantastically for maintaining muscle growth and muscle strength with a very low amount of time required. And this article or this paper backs that up. But what's important is that you must train close to failure to get it done. You'll still get some benefits from sub maximal intensity, but whether you're going with a lightweight and doing a whole bunch of repetitions to failure, like dropping and doing, I don't know, like 50 or 100 push ups, right? And that's your set for push ups that one set to failure, or whether you're going very heavy, like you're putting a Nautilus machine on a really heavy stack, and you're doing 20 seconds up, 20 seconds down for six reps. Right?

Ben Greenfield [00:18:55]: So low load, high rep, high rep or high load, low rep, it doesn't seem to matter because muscle fiber activation is unaffected by the load or the repetition duration if you're performing resistance exercise to task failure. I'll say that again. Research indicates that muscle fiber activity activation is unaffected by the load that you're using, how much weight you're using, or the repetition duration. Right. How many reps you're doing or how much time that the set lasts, as long as you're going to failure. Because if you're going to failure, you're recruiting as many motor units as possible. You're activating a lot of slow twitch fibers and fast switch fibers. And this is based on something called Henneman Size Principle, right? That states that motor units are activated in an orderly manner from the smallest muscle fiber to the largest muscle fiber.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:48]: So when you're going to failure, what happens is initially, motor units have a high threshold fast twitch muscle fibers. These are type 2 muscle fibers. Those are activated to generate the necessary force to lift the load because they can provide a lot of force quickly and that's critical for lifting heavy weights. But as fatigue sets in, those high threshold muscles, motor units become exhausted. And then the motor units with a lower threshold or slow twitch muscle fibers with type 1 fibers, those get recruited to then sustain the necessary force. Those slow twitch muscle fibers kind of help until you get really, really close to that failure scene. And if you're getting close to the failure scene, then by the definition I just gave you, you're recruiting a large number of motor units and you're working all the different types of muscle fibers and maximizing the mechanical stress placed on muscles. And that's what's critical for developing not only muscle hypertrophy or size, but also muscle strength.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:45]: So if you're training with like let's say 0 reps in reserve or 0 RIR, that means you've reached complete failure by the end of the set. You can't perform another repetition. You are going to get a lot of benefit out of single set resistance training to failure. But they've even shown that you can get pretty decent results with this approach. If you're going hard, even with two RIR, like you get to 10 reps and you kind of feel like, you could crank out another couple, but you might throw out your shoulder. If you do, you can hold back a little bit, and you still get really, really impressive results with this whole single set approach. I think the mistake that I see people making very similar to the mistake that I see people making with high intensity interval training, is they don't go hard enough. And I'll be interviewing Mark Sisson soon about this new book that he wrote called Born to Walk.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:32]: He gets into this concept. I've talked about it in a lot of previous articles. High intensity interval training is not CrossFit or F45 or whatever it's called for an hour. Right. High intensity interval training would be basically like balls to the wall for 30 seconds, as hard as you can go, and then a full luxurious recovery of like four minutes. And then doing that again, not going at like a. A medium hard pace with lactic acid coming out your eyeballs, but you can sustain it for an hour. True.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:59]: High intensity interval training is like boom, boom, boom. Hard, hard, hard, long rest, and then it's done, right? So with resistance training to failure, or single set resistance training failure, the problem I see is people think they're going to failure, but they're trying to squeeze too much into the workout. They're not really going to failure, or else they're starting the set already exhausted from whatever they did before. But doing each set fresh, making sure the muscles are ready, you're warmed up, and then just going in hard and again, something like I do one deadlift, one chest press, one pull down or pull up, one squat, one overhead press, and one row, and I can get in and out super duper quick. And the nice part is, there's a great book called Body by Science by author Doug McGuff, is that you also get a really, really nice increase in blood pressure and a cardiovascular stimulus when you use this form of training. So I really like that paper because it kind of backed up a lot, a lot of the stuff that influences how I train. I think it's a great training method. All right, prepare for controversy.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:56]: I don't want to scare you guys off, but there was a recent study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. Now, I know microplastics are a big thing right now. A lot of people are concerned about them with right measure. Hopefully you aren't buying crappy coffee and drinking out of a Styrofoam cup from 7-11 anymore. But, I mean, gosh, receipts and toys and seems to be in everything. Well. Well, here's the latest new study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials suggests that we're actually exposed to quite a few microplastics and what are called nanoplastics via the saline solution used in IV treatments. Yes, it's true.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:30]: Plastic tubing attached to IV bags can serve as a pretty hefty exposure of microplastics, especially in the first 12 milliliters of fluid that passes through that fresh, never before used tubing when you get an IV, which is paradoxical because some of us aren't just getting IV because we're sick. We're getting IVs to enhance health, longevity, get more nutrients and vitamins into our bodies, manage travel, stress, et cetera. And because of the problem and the toxin load accumulated through repeated exposure to microplastics, this is concerning to me, and I think it's something that a lot more medical practitioners, even if you're listening in and you're one of those functional medicine docs or IV clinics who I know, as many of you listen to my show, this is something that you need to look into and be aware of, especially consider like DEHP, right? One of these forms of plastic DEHP is something that can be carcinogenic. And paradoxically, IV bags are used to deliver it. It promotes drug resistance. It interviews with chemotherapy's ability to fight cancer, making cancer cells less likely to die to autophage. And many people are getting IV bags and IV tubings to manage some of their cancer symptoms that contains a chemical that undermines the effectiveness of chemotherapy and could make the cancer worse or harder to fight. So they looked at a whole bunch of different IV bag manufacturers in this investigation.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:02]: Braun, Fresenius Kabi, ICU Medical and there are some that have a portfolio of lower plastic bags. B. Braun, Fresenius Kabi, ICU Medical. These were some that seem to be doing a good job with their bags. But if a practitioner isn't looking into more toxic microplastic free medical advice or devices, then the very, very best thing that you can do, listen to me, if you go get an IV, you want to ask them to do this past the first 12 milliliters of fluid or past 12 milliliters of fluid through the tubing before they start to put stuff into your bloodstream, that can be a very, very simple solution because most of the concerning plastics that they found were in those first 12 milliliters. So as long as you do something like that, it's at least going to help to protect you. And that's what I recommend doing. And I'm going to start asking people, give me an IV to do that as well. Like, hey, pass some fluids for this tube before you actually get it into whatever's cannulated into my vein.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:01]: And I wish more people knew about this and hopefully we can start to get more and more low plastic, low toxin IV bags and medical supplies out there because plastics are used a lot in medicine. And it's so paradoxical, isn't it? But it's a concern. It's one of those tinfoil hat issues that I think you got to look into. So speaking of IVs, I did get a doozy of a question today. Mike. Mike asked, is it healthy to donate plasma to get rid of junk proteins? Is it healthy to donate plasma to get rid of junk proteins? Well, this is something that's been a hot topic lately. Some of you may have seen Bryan Johnson, a former podcast guest of mine's recent documentary called Don't Die on Netflix. I watched it was fascinating.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:50]: Some of it seems, admittedly to me a little bit sad, a little bit hopeless. Kind of like this undying pun intended quest for immortality and never dying when whether you live to 75 or 90 or 120, you're going to be old and wrinkled up at the end of the day and I think more concerned about who you spent time with and who you loved and what your emotion was and whether you'd chosen to be happy and, and whose life you affected and whether you lived out the greater purpose in your life rather than how many days you spent huddled up in a hyperbaric chamber or cryotherapy unit grasping at straws to live as long as possible. And yeah, this is coming from a guy who I personally take maybe 60 supplements a day and I do a lot of stuff to increase longevity, but I try to be balanced in my approach and I do it just so I can feel really good and go play tennis like I am with my sons tonight and go on hikes and go hunting and, and do all those things that I love to do. I don't do it just because I want to win the live as long as possible Olympics. But a part of that documentary to get out of this rabbit hole involved Brian receiving young plasma from his son and Brian donating young plasma, his own plasma, to his father. And there are all sorts of different ways that you can kind of get a so called oil change for the body. There are three that I find myself recommending more and more often these days and I want to walk you through them. I'm going to rank them in, in What I think is the highest order of effectiveness, low to high order of effectiveness.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:16]: So the first is ozone plasmapheresis. So here's how this works. You extract the blood of a patient or client, you separate the plasma, and then you treat the plasma with ozone O3 gas via special ozone infusion unit before it goes back into your body. So the blood comes out in little bits, or even just a little bit of blood comes out, gets ozonated and goes back in. So ozone, that's an oxygen molecule, a triatomic oxygen molecule. So O3, triatomic, and that's a potent oxidizing agent. So when it's introduced into plasma, it helps to control oxidative stress, it stimulates the body's antioxidant defense responses, it modulates the immune response. And it's very interesting because ozone also can improve oxygen utilization.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:59]: It's bacteriacidal, it's virusidal, it's fungicidal. So if you have bacteria, viruses or fungicides, fungus, an ozone plasmapheresis protocol can help with all of those. And it reduces inflammation by sparking your body's own endogenous antioxidant production. So this is something that is not legal in all countries. It's legal in the us it's not hard to find. Many companies do it. One example of a place where I've had this done is my friend Dr. Matt Cook's office, BioReset Medical in San Jose.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:29]: You can find many practitioners who do this, but it's a fantastic way to clean up the blood. So ozone plasma phoresis, I'm a huge fan of that. But then we jump up to what I think is even more potentially effective. And that's what's called therapeutic plasma exchange, or TPE. My friend Dr. Darshan Shah at NextHealth, who does these, he first introduced me to TPE that takes out your plasma. And plasma is the part of your blood that can contain pathogenic substances like antibodies or what are called auto antibodies, immune complexes and inflammatory cytokines. So they take the plasma out and then they take healthy albumin or healthy donor plasma.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:08]: Right. And they replace your plasma with that substitute plasma and then it goes back into your body. Now they also give you special IVs afterwards to replace some of the minerals and other things that you might lose when you're doing that plasma dose donation. This is very effective in autoimmune disease management. Some people will even use it for lyme, mold, etc, toxin removal. You eliminate toxins, a lot of metabolic substances. It's very quick. Alleviation of symptoms in many cases, typically you got to do it like four or five times as far as the oil change goes.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:42]: But they'll use it for neurologic disorders. I've even seen it indicated for dementia, Alzheimer's, et cetera, renal disorder, blood disorders, infections, et cetera. And that one's called a therapeutic plasma exchange or tpe. As you can imagine, none of what I'm describing to you is very inexpensive like an ozone plasmapheresis. I believe the last time I checked you're paying anywhere from 1.5k forward for that. Therapeutic plasma exchange I think is 4k plus. And this last one, I'm going to tell you, this is a brand new kid on the block behind the scenes. A lot of biohackers and big names in health who you probably know have been slipping down to Tijuana to do this.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:21]: I did it also. I fly into San Diego, they pick you up from the airport, they shuttle you across the border to Tijuana because this isn't approved in the US yet. And this is basically a blood filter called a Seraph 100. It was developed to help remove spike proteins from the body, from the you know what virus and develop develops to control pathogenic organism buildup in the body. So it's what's called an brace yourself extracorporeal hemoperfusion device. So it's designed to remove pathogens directly from the bloodstream. So the way this Seraph filter works is it has these polymer beads and they're coated with something called heparin. Now heparin mimics the same thing that's lining your blood vessels, what's called the endothelial glycocalyx of your blood vessels.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:05]: So these pathogens that would normally bind to the endothelial epithelial glycocalyx, they come out in your blood, they bind to the heparin in the filter instead, these heparin coated beads in the filter and that effectively removes them from circulation. So pathogens usually would target what's called heparin sulfate on cell surfaces. Instead they're binding to these heparin coated beads in the filter and you're essentially just cleaning up your blood. This isn't just plasma, it's whole blood filtration. So broad spectrum pathogen or removal as the result. This thing's capable of absorbing bacteria, viruses, fungi, reducing bloodstream infections, people with long COVID vaccine damage, et cetera. They're seeing incredible results with this. It aids in decreasing pathogen load in septic patients.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:51]: And it is something that I will admit is not comfortable. You get a catheter right into the jugular vein and into the jugular in your neck and then the blood comes out that and this thing's in there. And you're laying in a hospital bed for five days and usually you're there for two or three days doing multiple treatments in a row. So it's not for the faint of heart. But I think compared to ozone plasmapheresis or therapeutic plasma exchange, this Seraph 100 blood filtration is some pretty next level stuff. Unfortunately, you're looking at around 25k per filtration and in many cases needing 2 to 3 filtration to completely clean everything up from the blood. So this is like a 75k trip to Mexico. And it's something to be very effective, but obviously not a lot of people are going to pay for that.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:37]: The company that I went through, who did it, they're called Lumati. L U M A T I. They're based out of San Diego. And you fly in there and then they bring you across the border from San Diego. I'm doing a podcast with a doctor, Dr. Mink Chawla, who's the physician, who's done a lot of investigations into this. And it is an incredible, intriguing protocol. And they're doing work with cancer patients as well, I believe. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say or how much I'm gonna get in trouble about saying, but I'm just reporting the news, folks.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:10]: I'm not a doctor. I'm not telling you to go to Tijuana and get your blood sucked out. But, Mike, whether it's healthy to donate plasma to get rid of junk proteins, I think it can be healthy. This isn't a donation of plasma. This is more of a filtration of plasma. You're donating it and basically getting it back. I suppose in the case of a therapeutic blood exchange, you're donating it and getting someone else's back. But either way, I think these can be very effective protocols as far as actual plasma donation.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:41]: I mean, people will use blood donation to lower, say like high levels of iron. And that's the one thing that I've seen the most effective is to limit hemochromatosis, especially in men, to get rid of that. As far as using it for pathogenic management, I haven't come across any good data showing that it would do that. But others may know if it actually straight up donating plasma rather than doing one of these oil filter changes can help to get, get rid of junk proteins. But you can always leave your questions, comments and feedback in the show notes. And a lot of doctors listen to the show, a lot of practitioners. So you guys might be also able to tell Mike about plasma donation and if there's other options besides those I've just mentioned that could be helpful. So so anyways, another one's a whirlwind tour.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:26]: The things that you can ask your doctor for to have your your blood tested for to see if you have good markers for longevity, why single set resistance training to failure is so helpful and such a great time hack for exercise, the best way to filter your blood, why sesame oil isn't all bad, and why you need to ask your doctor if you're getting an IV to pass 12 milliliters of fluid through the tubing before they start your IV. So I hopeful hopefully I've given you some useful information despite again sounding like I've been punched in the throat, but hopefully you were able to put up with that. So all the show notes for this medical mini little Q and A with me are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/485. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/ 485. Thank you so much for listening. Go to the show notes, leave your questions, your comments, your feedback. Give this show a thumbs up or a like wherever you're watching it. Until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield wishing you an incredible week to discover even.

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