Gut Health, Longevity & Detox Hacks: The Science of Healing with Ritesh Bawri

Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast, my own strategy and what I recommend is daily and weekly detoxification. Daily detoxification is very simple, right? Sweating, movement, some type of lymph flow, like jumping up and down on a trampoline or even going on a walk where you're swinging your arms, sweating, and breathing, right? Because two major detoxification organs are our lungs and our skin. Once per week, I do a little bit more of an intense detox. Specifically, what I do is I wake up and I take a binding agent. I like to use activated charcoal, and then I move my body, but I move it using G forces. Then moving lymph through the body is also important. So once per week, I rub and tap each of my major lymph flow areas. After that, I hit the sauna and sweat things out for 30, 40 minutes.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:54]: I like to use the infrared sauna just because you get a deeper sweat, because those photons of light hit the skin and kind of warm you from the inside out. And I do that once a week. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:05]: Your host, Ben Greenfield.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:07]: 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.

Introduction: [00:01:23]:

Ben was recently a guest on the Ritesh Bawri Show. He enjoyed the discussion and wanted to share it here with you on the Boundless Life podcast. A big thank you to Ritesh for allowing us to share the episode. Please find the show [email protected] retishbari R I T E S H B A W R I thanks and enjoy the episode. Hi, Ben. Welcome to the show. Really excited to have you here back in India. Welcome.

Ritesh Bawri [00:01:50]: Hi, Ben. Welcome to the show. Really excited to have you here back in India. Welcome.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:50]: Thanks. It's good to be back in India for the third time.

Ritesh Bawri [00:01:55]: Wonderful. So happy to have you here. So I want to jump straight in. There's a lot to unpack with you. You're literally one of those people I've learned everything I know from. So I'm just really excited to have you here. But let's just jump in straight away and talk about the gut. What is gut health? It's a very confusing topic.

Ritesh Bawri [00:02:11]: Lots of people say different kinds of things. In your understanding, w hat is it?

Ben Greenfield [00:02:15]: It's the one part of the body, arguably, that's inside of us, yet exposed to the environment all the time because it's the tube that is very simplistically described as a garden hose that goes from your mouth to your anus. And anything that you're consuming is exposed to that environment. It's a very single or a thin single cell layer that lies between the gut and the bloodstream. And there's also many nerves that interact between the gut and the brain. So in third grade, you might have thought that the gut was just for digesting your tater tots and your pop tarts. And now we know that the gut is responsible for a lot more than that. Neurotransmitter production and other elements related to the gut brain axis, which is why gut issues are so often related to issues like depression, anxiety, poor sleep, brain fog, et cetera. And interestingly, because of that gut brain axis, it can also occur in the opposite order, right? Anxiety, stress, relationship issues, et cetera can often manifest in issues that you've never had before in your life, but that all of a sudden pop up, like ulcers or autoimmune issues related to food intolerances or leaky gut issues where the lining of the gut becomes permeable.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:46]: And so the gut brain and the brain gut axis, something that we're learning more and more about, and it dictates a lot of how we're able to deal with our environment, our spiritual, our physical, our mental, our emotional environment. Many functional medicine practitioners, and I don't necessarily agree with this philosophy, but I think there is a lot to it, will begin all of their treatments by looking at the gut, by testing the gut. And that would mean doing a stool analysis for things like parasites and yeast and fungus. Even biome analyses of the gut are becoming more popular to look at what the actual genetic makeup of the bacteria in your gut actually are. I don't think that's as valuable as looking at parasites, yeast, fungus, bacterial balances, et cetera. But it is something that is allowing us to learn more and more about what someone should and should not eat. You look at the gut itself and why it tends to be problematic for a lot of people.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:48]: There's a thousand different things that could go wrong. You could get clostridium difficile. You could get a parasite. You could have a bacterial imbalance. You could even have anatomical or biomechanical abnormalities related to fascial adhesions. You might see this a lot in exercising populations who have very tight abs and tight hips. You can see things like prolapse and shifting of the organs with age. That can also affect digestion.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:20]: You can see bacterial imbalances from the small intestine all the way to the colon that affect things like acid reflux, et cetera. But I would say that the biggest issue that I see in people if I'm looking at someone's gut test, is typically some type of a permeability issue. Meaning that food that should normally pass through the digestive tract and be processed by the liver and allow for nutrients to be absorbed into the bloodstream actually results in undigested food particles and proteins passing into the bloodstream. And those can cause an autoimmune reaction. And one of the reasons for that is stress. I tell people that your body has a distinctly different response to some expensive superfood spirulina, cacao nib, bee pollen infused smoothie that you're consuming at home while you're reading the newspaper or visiting with your loved one or your child, versus sucking down that same superfood smoothie when you're driving 120km down the highway on the way to work. So it's eating in a stressed out state, eating in what we'd call like a sympathetically driven fight or flight state versus relaxing over food, breathing over food, meditation, prayer, gratitude, enjoying food with people. So I think one of the biggest issues that people have with their gut is they will treat food as a fuel that you just get into the body at some point, regardless of what type of state that your nervous system is in.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:49]: And that is not necessarily conducive to adequate production of digestive enzymes, of hormones that allow for satiety, or of the proper function of those gaps that would or would not allow undigested food particles and proteins to wind up in the bloodstream. And of course, we could talk about the gut until we're blue in the face. But I would say that the major thing, like if I could wave a magic wand and have people do one thing to help their gut, it would be to eat slowly. Chew your food 25 to 40 times, think about your food, be mindful, pray over your food, be grateful for your food, eat it slowly and mindfully, and assess whether or not you're actually eating in a sympathetically driven state. That alone can change a lot of people's gut issues.

Ritesh Bawri [00:07:31]: Sure. Wonderful. You've said so many different things and I want to unpack some of these. So it's obvious to me that you clearly believe that the gut is central to pretty much everything that's going on in the human body, mind and body for that matter. If that's true as a layperson, maybe someone who doesn't have the expertise. Where am I really starting this? How am I trying to diagnose myself? How can I understand what's really going on?

Ben Greenfield [00:07:55]: The gut is important. I'm not convinced it's responsible for every last ailment known to humankind. As, like I was saying, a lot of functional medicine practitioners do. I mean, there's so many other things that can cause issues. Anything from your blood brain barrier and having some type of a neurological issue that might affect your gut, to whatever, you know, a bunion in your big toe that's causing hip or knee or foot pain that has nothing whatsoever to do with your gut. But because the gut is so problematic for so many people, I think that if we were going to buckle down and focus upon one thing, it would be this idea of individual biochemistry or individual, I should say, more appropriately, biochemical individuality. Biochemical individuality basically implies that because everybody has different genetics, a different size of their stomach, their liver, their pancreas, their gallbladder, different bacterial composition in their gut, all influenced by genetics, by environment, by lifestyle. The problem that a lot of people face when it comes to their gut is that they've been led to believe or been told that there is a diet that they should follow, right? Or there's one perfect diet for all of humankind, and that diet does not work for that person.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:21]: And that becomes very frustrating. So people looking at something like a ketogenic low carb diet or carnivore plant restricted diet, and they'll think that that's finally the solution to their gut ailments, and you simply can't take one single diet and apply it to all of humankind. I mean, it is a, you know, dirty secret in the nutrition industry that if you write a book and you want to make a lot of money with the book, you say that there's one perfect diet for all of humankind, and you paint some villain like gluten or lectin, and maybe you sell a supplement off the back end to digest that villainous compound. And that is appealing to a lot of people who want to know, hey, what is the perfect diet for all of humankind? But the ketogenic diet that helped fix your friend's gut and help them lose 20 pounds might actually cause you a bunch of gut issues because you have poor bile production by your gallbladder and your liver and you can't break down fats. Well, or maybe you have an inflammatory response to a high amount of saturated fats based on a genetic issue, like an APOE issue. Or you might have familial hypercholesteremia, just naturally high cholesterol and subsequent inflammation in response to a high fat diet. And maybe you think, okay, well then the carnivore diet is the diet for me. But maybe you are from a genetic standpoint, what's called an overmethylator.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:51]: So you have way too many methyl groups and you're pouring even more of them on top of that with meat consumption. Or your biome is really dependent on adequate amounts of fiber or something like butyric acid for the colonic biome and flora and you're not getting that from meat. And so if you really want to know the type of diet that you should be eating, I think you can look at a couple of things. One, you can do a genetic test. Because a genetic test would allow you to see what it is that you're equipped to eat, what type of nutritional deficiencies you might have a risk for, what diseases you might have a risk for all based on your ancestry and your genetics. So you might find out, for example, that omega 3 fatty acids from fish oil don't do a good job raising your HDL and lowering your triglycerides. You might be someone who needs more of a plant based oil instead. Or you might find out that if you consume high amounts of folic acid from grains and cereals and breads and the like, that that actually winds up getting converted into an inflammatory compound called homocysteine because you are a poor methylator.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:05]: Or you might even find out that the average of coffee completely messes up your sleep, even if you have it in the morning because you're a slow oxidizer of coffee, which I'm obviously not. I can drink coffee at like 7pm and I sleep just fine.

Ritesh Bawri [00:12:19]: Same for me.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:19]: So a genetic test is one option. That's a very simple salivary test. Another option would be to actually get a gut test that's literally, and they're becoming increasingly easy to get now. It's literally a swab of stool, typically off of tissue paper or out of something that's supplied to you that you would use when you're having a bowel movement. You send that off to the lab and you can find out parasites, yeast, fungus, bacterial imbalances, all of the type of things that might require replenishment. It might indicate, for example, you don't produce digestive enzymes that efficiently, so you need to take a pancreatic enzyme supplement before you have a meal or you have a bacterial imbalance. You might really benefit from a probiotic. I'm very data driven when I can be, and I really encourage people who are able to do so, to actually get a test to see, hey, is that diet that works so well for somebody else, right, for you? Or should you tweak and customize based on some kind of a test? Now, that all being said, if we look at all of the blue zones, areas where there's people who live a disproportionately long period of time, people where there's a lot of centenarians, you do see common dietary characteristics conducive to not just gut health, but also longevity pop up over and over again.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:42]: Relatively low intake of processed and ultra processed foods, sure, because those require preservatives, they require added oils, often oils that can become rancid or oxidized if they're heated or pressurized or stored for a long period of time. You see added sugars and you typically see lower nutrient density or compounds that can cause gut distress. If you're constantly eating out of packages and containers and anything with a scannable label, you should be able to open your refrigerator and have it look like you were shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store where the produce and vegetables and the fruits and the meats and the eggs and the dairy, et cetera, are, versus up and down the aisles where you find a lot of packaged foods. Not that packaged foods shouldn't be a part of your diet at all, but they shouldn't be a major staple in your diet. You see a relatively high intake of a diverse amount of plants and herbs and spices. And this is interesting because when you strictly begin to eliminate certain food groups, as you might do in a carnivore diet or a keto diet, or even like a gluten free or lectin free low legume diet. Paradoxically, what happens is when you eat a wide variety of foods, you build bacteria in your gut that help you to digest those foods. So the bacteria in your gut become more and more diversified so you're able to handle a wider variety of foods, which is a little bit paradoxical because you hear a lot of people say, well, if you have gut issues, just eliminate as much as possible.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:14]: But that winds up coming back to bite you in the butt sometimes, both literally and figuratively, because you all of a sudden get a weaker and weaker biome. And this is why you see people who are eating a diet conducive to longevity and health, including a wide array of herbs and spices and vegetables and fruits. And maybe there is a time and place if they're coming off what we might call a standard westernized diet or a diet that's just rich in whatever fried foods and sugar and ultra processed ingredients. They might have to go through a period of time healing their gut, where they may need to go like 12 weeks eating low gluten diet without a lot of raw vegetables and raw fruits because their gut is a little bit torn up and scarred and not ready for that. But that's a short term stint. But the ultimate goal should be to diversify the diet as much as possible. Unless you literally have like full blown celiac disease or some food allergy or something like that, so that your gut becomes more and more able to handle a wide variety of foods. The surge in peanut allerries that we've seen around the world, a big part of that is because parents began to be advised in the past 20 years to not give their kids peanuts.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:27]: And so kids who don't get exposed to that peanut based protein early in life wind up developing an autoimmune reaction or allergy to it that makes them able to have a less diverse diet. And in many cases, you could say the same thing for the gluten free craze where parents are like, well, I don't want my kid to have any gluten. Turns out a kid grows up and they're unable to handle bread and pasta and the like, not because they have a gluten allergy or they have celiac disease, but because it was so limited in their diet early on in life. So we see dietary diversity as being important. We see low intake of processed and ultra processed foods being important. We see fasting as a big part of a lot of healthy cultures, whether it's a religious fast, whether it's some type of a cleansing or detoxification type of fast, or whether it's simply having certain periods of time during the day where you're going without eating. We live in an era in which we have 24/7 access to hyper palatable foods. So our guts don't get a break.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:21]: I mean, not just our guts, our cells themselves don't get a break. Because it's not just your gut that's having to process food. All those calories, all the extra glucose, for example, winds up needing to go through the cell and produce ATP. And the cells just don't get a break. They don't get to engage in cellular cleanup, also known as cellular autophagy, which is conducive to longevity. So I go every 24 hours for 12 to 16 hours without eating. If I finish dinner at 8pm, I won't eat again until 8am. Technically I don't eat until about 10am or so, so I've got around 14 hours a day where I'm just not putting a lot of food into my body. You don't have to do like a monthly five day water fast or something like that, but just starting with giving your body periods of time where it's not having to digest food is something that many people have lost touch with because we no longer live in a hunter, gatherer, indigenous tribe where there's feast, fast, famine cycles, and we can just open the refrigerator and eat whatever we want.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:22]: Eating in a parasympathetic state, right, we see that food is used as something that's celebratory, something that people gather around. Back to what we were talking about earlier, eating in a stressed state is not conducive to gut health. But eating in a relaxed state, and there's even studies that back this up, that when you eat and you are relaxed, when your nervous system is down regulated, your blood glucose response to a meal is lower, your inflammatory response to a meal is lower, you feel fuller, faster. And so thinking mindfully about when you eat and how you eat and not eating in a stressed out state is also important. And when we put all these things together right, low intake of processed foods, high amount of dietary diversity, as soon as your gut is able to do so, eating in a parasympathetic state, including some element of fasting, then you can take all of those concepts and apply them to the diet that seems to be the diet that your ancestry is most geared towards. And that can include something like a genetic test or a gut test to see what that is. So it takes a little bit of detective work, a little bit of sleuthing. If we were to just say, gosh, this is all too complex, I can't do all this testing, then I would say the best advice I can give you is that based on epidemiological studies of what kind of diet seems to be the best, primarily for cardiovascular disease.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:48]: That's where a lot of these bigger studies are done on. It's some semblance of a Mediterranean diet, which is basically just a diet rich in a wide variety of herbs and plants and spices, with a lot of omega 3 fatty acids and things like fish oils and eggs and things like that in it. Relatively low in process and ultra processed ingredients. Typically there's some semblance of fasting in that diet. And eating a diet like that seems to work really well for the widest variety of people. So those are just a few things to think about when it comes to diet. But again, if you're listening in right now and you have gut issues, sometimes you do have to fix some of those issues before you actually start to branch out into a more diverse diet. And when I say fix some of those issues, there are widely available supplements or compounds or strategies for healing up a leaky gut or down regulating inflammation in the gut.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:48]: Some examples of that would be L Glutamine. Very easy supplement to get. Taking about 5 grams of L glutamine with each meal for around 4 to 8 weeks can really help to heal up a leaky gut. Another example would be colostrum. Right? Babies, young mammals are born with a naturally leaky gut in the first part of mammal. Mother's milk is rich in colostrum. And one of the reasons it's rich in colostrum is not only because it has a lot of growth factors in it that are good for hormones and muscle development, but also because those growth factors can help to heal the lining of a leaky gut. You hear about teas like slippery elm bark and marshmallow root extract and these kind of like slimy teas.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:29]: Those can also help with mucan production in the gut, helping you to build up a layer that allows the gut to heal. There are even companies, and I'm not financially affiliated with one of these companies, for example, but there's a company out of Australia called Level Up Health and they've taken a bunch of peptides and things that are very efficacious for healing up a gut. And they have something called gut repair formula. I talk about that because it's literally back in my hotel right now because I travel with it. I don't take it all the time, but when you travel due to circadian rhythm disruption, your biome shifts. And it's useful to have something like that to help to control gut inflammation. And then the last thing to think about would be in many cases there's some type of mold, mycotoxin infection issue. And for something like that, sometimes you need to use a binding agent like before you go to bed at night.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:19]: Charcoal zeolite. Cholestyramine is an interest. Have you heard of that one before? Yeah, sure, of course. Is that something that you can get in India? Cholestyramine? Not easy, because some things you can buy over the counter over here, like sildenafil from Viagra, that you can't get in the US and then other things are harder to find. Cholestyramine is very powerful but chlorella would be another one. But some type of binding agent that helps you to begin to bind and remove toxins from the gut. That can also be very helpful.

Ritesh Bawri [00:22:47]: I want to push back on just one thing that you said. Of course. Thank you. This has been extremely useful because you've covered such a wide depth of topics related to the gut. One of the things we did was we looked at gut health and what we found was you needed a library to get to reference. So if you did a gut test on me, you needed a library to sort of figure out what was actually going on and what was the findings from my sort of stool sample and what did it actually indicate for our population, the Indian population? And I found the sample size was too small. So they had, if I remember correctly, only 10,000 samples. India is a very diverse country.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:23]: This was a study of the gut microbiome. Correct. So we're not talking about a test for bacteria, yeast, fungus, et cetera, but the actual biome composition, the genetic composition of the gut.

Ritesh Bawri [00:23:35]: Exactly. And so we found the sample size was too small just simply because India is too diverse with the number of people, billion plus people, many of whom are sort of regionally diverse. Our culture is diverse, food habits are diverse. So the sample size was not sufficient. Would you have any thoughts on that? Can you take what we found in the US just literally applied to India? You talked about, let's say, for example, a company out of Australia building something that can cure. Could you just apply that literally to India, or would you have to find something that was uniquely Indian?

Ben Greenfield [00:24:07]: When you look at companies, probably one of the more popular companies would be something like Viome, doing a test of the actual genetic composition of the gut. That is taking someone's microbiome, their genetic makeup, and then predicting what foods that person might be predisposed to have as like a superfood or a food to avoid, based on the notion, the guess that the certain bacterial composition in the gut is best equipped to digest or not be able to digest certain food. There's not a lot of data to back up the fact that if you switch your diet based on those factors, you're going to become healthier or live longer. That's not even a test that I frequently recommend. Basically right now, it's information. It'd be like if you did a whole genome analysis and paid a lot of money for that. We don't even know or have a lot of research because there's not a lot of data behind a ton of the SNPs that you'd have tested if you were to get a whole genome analysis.

Ritesh Bawri [00:25:16]: Correct.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:17]: So it's better to get a genome analysis for the ones that we actually know based on big data, and correlating that to actual blood work and actual epidemiological studies, what the effects of those genes have on people. So if you were gonna test your gut based on the reasons that you've just outlined and what I'm talking about, it's better to just do a stool test for bacteria, yeast, fungus, parasites, the stuff that actually shows what kind of critters are actually in your gut versus the genetic composition of the gut, which I don't think gives you much actionable data. Again, based on genetic diversity and based on lack of big data. If a company like Viome keeps on testing people for, let's say, like the next five years and gets a whole bunch of big data, and then they're actually able to develop proxies, because all of those people have also done blood tests. They've looked at how long they've lived, they've looked at symptomatic questionnaires, et cetera. You would eventually get to the point where you could take that big data and say, okay, we actually can make a pretty good guess. An example of that would be a company like, say, Truage Diagnostics. So there's this.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:28]: You probably heard of folks like Brian Johnson, for example, a big longevity guy in the US and one of his claims to fame is that he's one of the leaders on the leaderboard for the Rejuvenation Olympics, which is a test of how quickly you're aging. So the TrueAge test will basically, via a blood spot, give you your pace of aging, which, let's say your pace of aging is, I don't know, a good score might be 0.6 to 0.7, which means for every day you're only aging 0.65 of that day or whatever. That data is now something that they've matched up against several very large population studies of people who have high versus low vitamin D, people who tend to develop liver issues in response to alcohol versus those that don't, people who have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease from certain fat compositions. And now from that one blood spot test, you're able to match it to big data. And even if you don't get your vitamin D tested from that blood test, they can say, well, based on your results, you're low in vitamin D. And they have so much big data that they're able to do that, which means that we're slowly moving towards the point where there might be just one simple blood test that's highly affordable for the general population that you can get not only look at your pace of aging, but at your risk for a whole bunch of other stuff, including gut issues. But that's all big data that takes a long period of time, and we're not at that point yet with the gut biome data. Now with that company out of Australia, that's not necessarily a company that has developed a supplement that's based on the biome composition of your gut.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:09]: That's a supplement that has things in it that just help to heal the gut no matter who you are, like BPC157 peptide, or there's other peptides like KPV and lorazatide and other things in there that specifically are designed to help heal a leaky gut, no matter what your bacterial composition is.

Ritesh Bawri [00:28:28]: I want to really quickly switch to women. You know, they make up half our population. And I think they have unique problems that are, you know, sort of very specific to women.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:36]: Careful what you say. I think your wife's running or somewhere.

Ritesh Bawri [00:28:38]: Yeah, she is. She is here.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:40]: Women and all their problems.

Introduction: [00:28:41]:

Yeah, no, I don't mean problems as in a problem, but I just mean they have things that are very unique to them. And one of the things that we are starting to see a lot is actually what, what is labeled now perimenopause. Women in their late 30s and even early 40s starting to get a lot of the symptoms that would ultimately become menopause, something that could last even 10 years. And there's a fair amount of difficulty that they're going through. I wanted to get your thoughts on that. What do you think is going on? Why is it actually happening? We get girls who are like 7, 8, 9 starting to enter menarche and then women starting to enter perimenopause and menopause much earlier than.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:19]: It's almost like an acceleration. I mean, they're kind of two different issues, but they are related. If you look at pushing the accelerator on the development of female biology, estrogen is going to be a primary driver of that. And if a woman early in life is exposed to a lot of environmental estrogens, whether through commercial dairy or plastics or personal care products or household cleaning chemicals or anything else like that that has a lot of synthetic estrogens in it, you are going to see something, like you mentioned, early onset of menarche. You're going to see eventually early onset of menopause or perimenopause at an age that would be earlier than expected. I'm 43, by the way. For guys it's the opposite issue. It's andropause, right, drop in testosterone, but a lot of times that's also driven by estrogen and estrogen exposure in the environment.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:13]: My wife's 43. We've certainly talked about this quite a bit. The idea of this shift towards the beginning of what, if not managed properly, can cause brain fog and a drop in libido and night sweats, causing poor sleep and poor physical function and performance and irritability and mood issues, typically for managing something like that, the obvious answer, younger in life, is to simply ensure that you're limiting exposure to synthetic chemicals and estrogens as much as possible. That a child is not eating out of plastic containers and drinking out of plastic water bottles and using personal care products and household cleaning chemicals that are full of a lot of these synthetic estrogens or forever chemicals, et cetera. Or even using caution with if, for example, beef or dairy is being consumed, the actual hormones that the animals were exposed to prior to a young woman, preferably a young man, consuming those foods. With perimenopause or menopause, usually the best strategy is to begin to address it pretty early, like 10 years before menopause would even kick in. And to do that effectively, you actually have to, to test, you need to test hormones.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:35]: And getting blood work for hormones is going to give you a one time snapshot of what's going on. It's not the best way to test for hormones because they fluctuate during the day. Salivary test is a little bit better because typically you're doing a test multiple times during the day and seeing how estrogen, cortisol, testosterone, et cetera is fluctuating throughout the day. A urine test is the very, very best way to test for hormones. And it's a very similar type of thing as a saliva test. You're typically collecting urine at multiple points during the day to see what the values are at. The biggest issues that you tend to see when testing one, no surprise, is excess of estrogens. Another would be a drop in progesterone or a need for something called pregnenolone, which is an upstream precursor of a lot of hormones.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:26]: So many women who are entering into perimenopause will benefit from progesterone supplementation and or pregnenolone supplementation because of genetics and the way that the liver processes certain compounds. Some women feel really great with oral progesterone My wife feels like total crap on oral progesterone because her liver metabolizes it very quickly. So she gets this huge peak. She feels great with transdermal progesterone, just applied a little bit to a hairless area of the body. Testosterone is another one that a lot of women have deficiencies in. That goes hand in hand with a lot of the issues with perimenopause. Again, you have to test because even though a ton of women have low testosterone, my wife has tested and her testosterone levels are just fine, but she needs extra progesterone. So you have to be pretty data driven when you're approaching this.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:16]: But at a younger age, of course, just paying attention to environmental chemicals and exposure to synthetic estrogens or so called xenoestrogens is important. Later on in life, it becomes a matter of actually doing urinary testing, preferably on like an annual basis, and then adjusting the hormones as age progresses.

Ritesh Bawri [00:33:34]: Got it. But you know, the reality is that we will get exposed to these kinds of toxins, right? Plastic, for example, like even today, people drinking out of a plastic bottle. And that's just the practicality of our lives. Is there a way to detox yourself then? Like, imagine that I have been exposed for whatever, 15, 20, 30 years. What's the detox protocol then for this?

Ben Greenfield [00:33:54]: I'm not a huge fan of like waiting until January 1st and doing some kind of 30 day intense cleanse where you gotta be five feet from a toilet. And you know, you guys, even in Indian culture have some really great ayurvedic cleanses, like a panchakarma. But those are pretty intense. My own strategy and what I recommend is daily and weekly detoxification. Daily detoxification is very simple, right? Sweating, movement, some type of lymph flow, like jumping up and down on a trampoline, or even going on a walk where you're swinging your arms, sweating and breathing, right? Because two major detoxification organs are our lungs and our skin. Once per week, I do a little bit more of an intense detox. Specifically what I do is I wake up and I take a binding agent. I like to use activated charcoal.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:42]: I actually have a supplement. It's activated charcoal, but it's also got zeolite in it. The one I use is made by Designs for Health. And then I move my body, but I move it using G forces because G forces involve moving the cell in such a way that's a little bit different than what you get if you're just walking or exercising. So to increase G forces, if you're not an astronaut flying to the moon, it'd be jumping up and down on a trampoline or using a vibration platform. Right. So I wake up in the morning, and then I'll have a podcast or an audiobook on, and I'll jump up and down on a trampoline or stand on a vibration platform.

Ritesh Bawri [00:35:18]: Interesting.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:18]: And then moving lymph through the body is also important. So once per week, I rub and tap each of my major lymph flow areas. So I start here on the chest, and rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Then back behind the neck. Rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Then to the front of the shoulders, right where the clavicle kind of hits the shoulders. Rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap. Down the stomach.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:43]: Rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap. There's about 30 seconds per area. Then the groin. Rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap. Back of the knees. Rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap. Some people find they actually need to go have a bowel movement right after doing that, just because of the lymph circulation that that specific sequence causes. After that, I hit the sauna and sweat things out for 30, 40 minutes.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:02]: I like to use the infrared sauna just because you get a deeper sweat, because those photons of light hit the skin and kind of warm you from the inside out. And I do that once a week because I live in a modern environment. I travel all the time. I'm here in India for a couple weeks. I'm making sure that I sweat while I'm here. I hit the sauna a few times. But doing something like that on a regular basis, just moving and sweating every day. And then once a week, doing something where you're getting a little bit more intensive is important.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:28]: And even though this is uncomfortable and people laugh about it and think it's funny, I'm not opposed to the idea of an enema, also something like a coffee enema, to increase your endogenous glutathione production, to help to move things along, to spark bile production by the gallbladder, to clean out the digestive tract. So I do a coffee enema once a week, typically on that same day that I'm doing that detoxification protocol. And that sounds like a lot, right? But if you do the math, that whole detox protocol in the morning, that's like 45 minutes on a Wednesday morning. A lot of times I'm just, like, listening to a podcast or an audiobook or using audio as a university while I'm doing it. And then the coffee enema, I'm just laying on the bathroom floor going through some emails, reading a book. So it's not as though you're spending your whole life doing that. But yeah, we're fighting an uphill battle and so you almost have to go out of your way to do some of these things.

Ritesh Bawri [00:37:22]: Talk to me a little bit about the sauna. I think that's also something that's not as well understood. Like what's the right protocol? Is it longer duration, lower temperature, higher temperature, lower duration? What's the right protocol for this?

Ben Greenfield [00:37:34]: If you look at the majority of the studies showing that sauna is good for you coming out of Finland, Yeah, of course, going like four to five times a week for 20 to 45 minutes. Ish. And you see reduced all cause risk of mortality and lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer's and lower risk of cardiovascular disease. If you actually go to Finland, which I have, and gone and saunaed at the men's sauna society, where there's six different temperatures of sauna and people are sitting in there and stopping occasionally and going and having a beer and some fish soup and jumping in the Baltic Sea and getting back in. There's more than just the heat, right? There's the socializing aspect, there's the disconnection aspect, there's the cold part, right. Which the whole thermal stress is also important for cardiovascular health and blood flow and lymph flow. So I think there's a little bit more to it than just being in the sauna. But as far as the ideal time, length, temperature, et cetera, it depends on the sauna.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:32]: So the infrared auna is usually 150 to 175 degrees. Doesn't have to be that hot. But because those photons of light penetrate the skin, you tend to get a really deep sweat. And you also get a lot of the benefits of red light exposure, which is good for collagen, for elastin, helps your mitochondria make more ATP. So there's a lot of benefits to the red light. For a dry sauna, you're usually looking at 200. I've got one that goes up to 230. Right.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:58]: So dry sauna, you're not going to be in there as long. So dry sauna, even though in the Finnish studies they're going sometimes up to 40 minutes, most people tap out at like 15 to 20 minutes in a dry sauna. Steam sauna. Back to the whole toxin plastic thing, I'm not as big a fan of, because when you're breathing in the steam that's in the steam sauna, if you don't know if the water's been filtered, then you could be breathing in the same type of water that you've avoided drinking elsewhere, but it's just being infused into the sauna atmosphere that you're in. So steam sauna, I'm not as big a fan of unless I know where the water's actually come from. And then as far as whether you do rounds or go back and forth between the sauna and the cold, there's not a lot of good research showing any one thing that's best. I mean, what I like to do is do the heat first, because if you do the cold first, you're gonna spend your first 10 or 15 minutes in the heat just warming yourself up from the cold. So I get super hot in the sauna, and then I'll hit the cold for like two to five minutes.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:55]: Like really cold shower, cold, plunge, cold, soak and call it good. And then every once in a while, I'll do rounds where I'm going back and forth from the sauna to the cold to the sauna to the cold, which is incredible. And you feel great. It's good for muscle recovery and good for lymph and blood flow. But that takes more time. Right. So that would be on like a Sunday or a Saturday where I have more time. And sometimes I'll do that with my sons or with friends.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:20]: And it's fantastic for recovery.

Ritesh Bawri [00:40:22]: Sure. My son and I went to an onsense bar. Very similar look. So different temperatures. Hot, cold. I think there was 38, 40, 42, 44 round robin.. And the cold.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:32]: Cold. Yeah. Super fun.

Ritesh Bawri [00:40:32]: It was fun.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:33]: It was fun.

Ritesh Bawri [00:40:33]: I think if nothing else, the bonding was just fantastic.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:35]: Yeah, yeah. And you can even. There's like, certain. I don't know if you knew this. There's certain supplements that you can take that cause your body to heat up faster so you sweat more. I see detox more like Gains of Paradise pepper extract is one. Niacin is another one that can really heat the body up.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:50]: There's even, like topical creams that have capsaicin and things like that in them that really help you to sweat even more. So it's kind of cool. You can amplify.

Ritesh Bawri [00:40:58]: I think the bonding, just the bonding itself has so much fun that whatever else is happening, we didn't really care. But I want to stay on the topic of women. One of the things that we're also starting to see is as you age, the protective benefits of the estrogen starts to wear off. Right. Because of the woman actually starting to approach menopause. And we're starting to see a dramatic shift from low blood pressure to a high blood pressure condition. Is there anything specifically that women can do to deal with this?

Ben Greenfield [00:41:23]: Blood pressure is actually something that's near and dear to my heart because my wife's done genetic testing and hopefully this doesn't embarrass her that I'm talking about it on a podcast. But she has two major genetic risk factors. I see mine are colon cancer and type 2 diabetes. Those are my major genetic risk factors. I don't see that as a doom scroll. I see that as empowerment. So I can do certain things to help with colon health and be cognizant of sugar and glucose. And I wear a continuous glucose monitor, and I keep track of that because I have risks.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:58]: My wife's are osteoporosis and blood pressure. So one of the things that she does, based on my recommendation, is she's very cognizant of things that would be vasodilatory agents. Beets, watermelon, pumpkin seeds, extra virgin olive oil, beet powder extract, nitric oxide tablets, which are fantastic. There's companies like Calroy, they have a product called Vasconox that really helps with arterial health. And with that vasodilation. Exercise is, of course, important, de stressing and monitoring blood pressure to see if there's certain things that would be contributing to high blood pressure. Typically, it'd be stress, anxiety, poor sleep, some of the things that you might not be cognizant of. This is not something that's available very many places in the world right now besides Canada and the uk.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:49]: This is made by a company called Actea. This bracelet and this is a continuous blood pressure monitor that was developed by a team of cardiovascular physicians that correlates quite well to a cuff measurement. So I can now see my blood pressure in real time on a phone app. And I think that devices like this are gonna save a lot of lives, because rather than having to wait a week or a month to go to the doctor's office or have someone else do a blood pressure cuff measurement on you, similar to what we've done with continuous glucose monitors and step and HRV and sleep trackers, we can now do with blood pressure. I think the major thing for a woman to focus on would be not only cardiovascular health, exercise, stress, anxiety, sleep, but then a lot of these blood flow agents that essentially work like fire hoses for the arteries, these vasodilatory agents.

Ritesh Bawri [00:43:37]: Sure, if you don't mind. I just want to push back on the blood pressure monitor. Like, my little understanding is that your blood pressure can vary significantly between you having had water and not taking your pressure on both hands, feet on the ground, your hand in a particular place. So obviously you can get a very wide range of readings. Does that still work in that situation, or what are you learning?

Ben Greenfield [00:44:00]: Actually, similar to how if you're measuring your nervous system readiness, your HRV.

Ritesh Bawri [00:44:06]: Sure, we'll talk about that.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:07]: It really is only accurate if you're still. Which is why most monitors will do the majority of measurements when you're laying down. This only measures when based on the accelerometer. It detects that you're very still. And then once per month, you actually recalibrate it to a cuff measurement.

Ritesh Bawri [00:44:26]: Got it.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:26]: So it's not like it's measuring it all the time, because your values would be all over the place. So I've noticed since I started wearing it, it seems like about seven or eight different times during the day, and it's mostly at night. It's actually taking my blood pressure, but I'm still able to see if there's any patterning data. And like a lot of these measurements, like heart rate variability, for example, everybody's like, well, what should my perfect value be in the range?

Ritesh Bawri [00:44:49]: We'll talk about that.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:50]: 20 to 200, based on the algorithm that's being used. And it's similar to genetics. It's gonna vary so widely from person to person that what you're looking for is a pattern. Right. Is your nervous system readiness going up or down based on your subjective measurement, similar to blood glucose? Right. Some people are healthy at 70, 80, 90, my average blood glucose. And I'm an exercising fit individual who's cognizant of carbohydrate consumption. I'm pretty good between about 95 and 100.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:18]: Part of that is I restrict carbohydrates. And when you restrict carbohydrates, your body naturally will release extra glucose from the liver into the bloodstream. So, paradoxically, if you're on a low carb diet, your fasting blood glucose tends to be a little bit higher anyways. But what I pay more attention to is glycemic variability. Right. How much is my blood sugar fluctuating and spiking and going up and down during the day versus how much of it is a normal baseline analysis besides eating, at which point it's gonna spike Anyways, but the other thing I look at is after a meal does it return close to baseline values within two hours. So I'm more concerned about return to preprandial like pre feeding levels after I've eaten and then how much it's spiking up and down during the day.

Ritesh Bawri [00:46:02]: Interesting. So it's really a function of how you interpret the data as opposed to just like sort of collecting the data.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:07]: Just comparing the data to reference ranges, for example.

Ritesh Bawri [00:46:10]: I want to also quickly talk about another topic you raised with respect to your wife, osteoporosis, at least in my limited understanding and I'm very keen to hear your thoughts. Exercise actually plays a very vital role, especially if you strength train because the more you strength train you micro fracture your bones and then that builds stronger bones.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:25]: Strength training along the long axis of the bone. So meaning overhead presses, squats, anything that causes a compression along the long axis of the bone.

Ritesh Bawri [00:46:37]: So you'd advocate that for women as much as anyone else because somehow there's this notion, especially in India, I think it's changing now for to a great extent but that it's only men who should be exercising. And you build big muscles if you do, which frankly I think having done this for 10 years, it's not possible.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:52]: I mean if you look at a crossfitter female who's got eight pack abs and pretty big muscles, they're eating a lot of protein, they're eating a lot of calories, some of them are using exogenous hormones. You have to do a lot as a woman to just get absolutely buff and swole from weight training. If you're doing a smart whatever three times a week, full body weight training protocol, overall it's one of the best things you can do because muscle is not only a metabolic sink for glucose and carbohydrates and can help with metabolism, it's also something that helps you develop anti fragility, strength, bone density. There's one very popular doctor in the states right now, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who has coined the term muscle centric medicine and has a whole book about why strength training is so important, including for women. So women do not tend to bulk up from strength training and there are simple things that you can do if they are adjusting your set ranges, your rep ranges, et cetera. So yeah, it's not something that you need to be worried about. And you're absolutely right.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:55]: Not only is lack of loading of the bone going to be an osteoporotic risk, but so is low mineral intake. That's another big one. Eating a diet that's very acidic, very high in coffee and alcohol and sugar, which can leach a lot of minerals from the bones. Low intake of a wide variety of electrolytes and minerals. There's quite a bit when it comes to osteoporosis that a woman should be thinking about.

Ritesh Bawri [00:48:21]: My mother, 72, I managed to get her to start strength training. So she's been strength training now for five years. And just simply because the merits of actually strength training are so great and she feels strong, but she feels better.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:32]: You can start at any age.

Ritesh Bawri [00:48:33]: Any age, exactly.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:36]: Time to plant a tree is 20 years ago or today.

Ritesh Bawri [00:48:38]: Yeah, exactly. Let's change topics a little bit. I want to switch to neurological. In your book Boundless, you talked about doing a Dutch test that gave me a sense.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:46]: Yeah, dried urine test.

Ritesh Bawri [00:48:47]: Yes, exactly. So could you talk a little bit about that? How would I understand which sort of hormone I'm dominant in? And how can I understand that? And how can I use that to sort of understand where my mind is at?

Ben Greenfield [00:48:58]: It's a little bit different than neurotransmitters, the hormone piece. But when you look at the work of a guy like Dr. Eric Braverman, who I talk about in the book, he's developed a certain set of characteristics or tendencies that are associated with being dopamine dominant or acetylcholine dominant or serotonin dominant. And I even have quizzes in my book where you can determine what your profile actually is and adjust your lifestyle accordingly. For example, if you are dopamine dominant, in many cases, you tend to have a racing mind. You're one of those people who does really well developing some kind of an external brain, like a notebook that you carry around with you to write down ruminating thoughts or something you keep by your bedside that allows you to journal and get thoughts out of your mind and onto paper. If you're serotonin dominant, oftentimes you can get anxious in social situations, you can get butterflies in your gut.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:58]: You need to focus on meditation and anti anxiety practices and breath work, et cetera. And so there's a whole variety of different characteristics associated with each neurotransmitter dominance. But it's difficult to actually test the actual levels of neurotransmitters. You mentioned one test called the Dutch test. It's about the closest that we can get right now. It's looking at urinary excretion of metabolites related to neurotransmitters.

Ritesh Bawri [00:50:27]: I see.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:28]: So it's approximating or guessing at what the levels in the brain or the gut would actually be. But there's no good test right now to actually look at neurotransmitter dominance. Now, if you look at a genetic test, that can also tell you a little bit. There's one genetic snp, for example, called the COMT gene. And you can test your COMT gene and find out whether you clear dopamine quickly or whether you clear dopamine slowly. And if you clear dopamine quickly, you're like a thrill seeker who constantly needs to be going on adventures and heli skiing and getting dropped off mountains and playing extreme sports and doing things that actually keep you from going absolutely crazy, because you just like to live life at a fast pace. And other people who are slow dopamine processors, it'll just hang around for. For a longer period of time, and they need fewer of those hits.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:18]: So it's a fascinating science. I would say the best way to figure out your actual dominance would be to just take the test. Or it's not a test in my book, it's a test that's linked to from my book. You can get the Dutch test, even though I think that's more valuable for the type of hormone issues we were talking about earlier than it is for the neurotransmitter issues, even though it can give you some clues and then honestly, back to the gut, because so many of your neurotransmitters are made in your gut. Looking at whether you have gut inflammation, leaky gut, bacterial imbalances, et cetera, that can also help you with the neurotransmitter piece.

Ritesh Bawri [00:51:52]: When we talk about neurological issues, one of the things that constantly keeps coming up is memory. And like, I'm already a victim, I forget things. I forget, like, medical terms that I've spent the last 10 years sort of reading and learning about. What's going on? Why are we forgetting so much? And I saw this actually spike a lot after Covid. Is that just my imagination? Did we really sort of start losing memory because of whatever version of the COVID sort of effect you want to sort of think about?

Ben Greenfield [00:52:15]: There are blood brain flow scans. One's called the SPECT scan that's made popular by this doctor named Dr. Daniel Amen. And I've seen SPECT scans, and this is not based on research. This is all anecdotal of people who have a high load of spike protein from either vaccine injury or long Covid. And the blood flow to the brain is absolutely compromised. So that's because the spike protein affects your cardiovascular system. It acts on the vasculature in such a manner that you get reduced blood flow.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:43]: There's another reason why you'll hear stories about people who had a vaccine or had Covid wind up healthy people having a heart attack. You see things like that because of the cardiovascular implications with the memory piece. Absolutely paying attention to that. And unfortunately, there's not a lot of great ways to just detox spike protein out of the body. A lot of times you need more advanced medical filtration protocols like ozone plasmapheresis or blood exchange or, you know, things that'll actually pull stuff out of the body, which is, which is expensive. There is a doctor named Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum who probably has one of the better titles on long Covid or vaccine injuries. And he has a pretty good protocol that involves a more herbal approach.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:27]: But the spike protein aside for the memory and the neurological piece, yeah, blood flow is an issue. I think that even though it seems like it's common sense, it's something that not a lot of people do. And this is based on the idea of increasing the connectivity between neurons and the growth of the number of neurons themselves. One called neuroplasticity and one called neurogenesis. Simply the idea of learning new things or challenging yourself with uncomfortable things. Learning new things or challenging yourself with uncomfortable things. So learning new things, that can be Sudoku, crossword, learning a musical instrument, learning a new language. Travel is great for the brain.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:09]: For the other piece, it would be things like doing a workout that involves complex movements that you're unaccustomed to, taking an ice bath, staying in a sauna until you're uncomfortably hot, doing things that go beyond just your standard ho hum exercise protocol. So those are two things that I focus on quite a bit is have I made myself somewhat uncomfortable with something today physically? And have I made myself uncomfortable with something today mentally? And then from a nutrient standpoint, there are certain things that can increase. For example, levels of BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factor in the brain. A sauna would be a perfect example of that. Like a robust sauna practice, there are nutrients also that can increase BDNF. The herbal approach to something like memory would involve some commonly known compounds. Ginkgo biloba is one that seems to be very good for the memory.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:00]: There's another one called vimpocetine for blood flow. There's a lot of companies now that are creating almost like shotgun formulas for the brain and for memory and for blood flow. So you'll see, like Onnit has one called Alpha Brain. Qualia has one called Mind. There's another company called Wukio, another company called Nootopia, I would say. And it's kind of funny I'm bringing this company up again because, again, I'm not financially affiliated with them. But there's that same company out of Australia that has that gut repair formula I was talking about. They just came out with a formula called Neuroregenerate.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:33]: It's like 10 different peptides and compounds that specifically help with blood flow to the brain. Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. I have it back in my hotel room. Those are the two supplements from them that I actually have in my hotel room. So it's on my mind right now. I just break open a couple of capsules and put them in my coffee.

Ritesh Bawri [00:55:50]: My son and I compete playing Lumosity. And it's just incredible. He's 11, but he just beats me every single time. So I think, clearly age is a factor here. So I'll try and see if I.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:00]: Can follow some of the factors. Yeah, Lumosity, Brainscape. N Back.

Ritesh Bawri [00:56:03]: You talked about N back. Exactly.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:05]: Some people will say those games simply make better at playing the game, but newer research is showing that they don't. For me, it's instrumentation. Before I left here to come to India, I was taking drum lessons. So I've got a drum set. It's in front of a big screen on YouTube. So I pull up YouTube, do a drum lesson, and I love it. Hand, eye coordination, learning something new. So my favorite place to challenge my brain is in the music room of the house.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:27]: There's a guitar, a ukulele, a banjo, a drum set. So I've always got something I can try and. Because music makes me happy also. And there's even something to be said for the healing frequencies of sounds. It's a little bit. There's a lot more going on than just challenging the brain when it comes to music. Sure.

Ritesh Bawri [00:56:42]: So I'd like to change topics a little bit. Let's talk about stress. Stress is easily one of the biggest problems I think mankind suffers from today. Going back to what you were saying earlier about even eating in a stressed state, what I found was HRV is one of those indicators that gives you understanding of what is happening. Could you talk a little bit about that? And what is stress? What can you do? What are the best hacks for?

Ben Greenfield [00:57:02]: HRV? I mean, you have to have a wearable to measure it Oura ring works okay. There's wristbands. The most accurate way is via a chest strap. And it's just measuring the amount of time in between each beat of your heart. So you got heart rate, which is 50, 60, 70, depending on the person. And then you have heart rate variability, which is the amount of time in between each beat of the heart. And so if you have a high heart rate variability, that means that there is a good response to the nervous system's stimulation of the pacemaker cells of the heart.

Ben Greenfield [00:57:38]: So you might have your heart beat and there's 90 milliseconds, then your heart beats again is 95 milliseconds, and your heart beats again as 89 milliseconds. And that's an indicator of better nervous system management than if the heart rate variability is low and the amount of time in between each beat of the heart is constant. So. So it's kind of cool because you can measure that now, and it can be a pretty good indicator of your stress levels. And so if you tend to see a pattern towards high HRV, a lot of times it means that you're doing a good job managing stress. And usually you're doing a good job managing stress because you're not overworking. And maybe you're aware of and mindful of your breath patterns and you're engaged in gratitude practice or you're keeping a second brain like I was talking about earlier, and writing things down so you don't forget them and ruminate on them.

Ben Greenfield [00:58:28]: And if you have a low HRV, typically you're doing all the opposite things. So it's pretty cool because you can measure it. Nowadays, I would say that the biggest things that influence your HRV score would be anything related to your vagus nerve. So your vagus nerve is a cranial nerve that begins in your head and snakes through the entire body and innervates your gut and innervates the pacemaker cells of the heart. And if you have good, what is called vagal nerve tone, typically you'll have lower amounts of stress or better ability to be able to handle stress. Yoga, breathwork, meditation, chanting, humming, singing, gargling, thermal stress like sauna and cold exercise, all of these things can increase your HRV. And now there are even HRV stimulators. I have one back in my hotel room here in India.

Ben Greenfield [00:59:24]: It's a set of headphones. It's made by a company called Hool. And there's two electrodes that trigger your vagus nerve through the auricular area of your neck. And literally do an electrical stimulation that helps to increase HRV and lower stress. So there's all sorts of different things that you can do to manage. But, yeah, HRV will allow you to actually measure stress. And these devices are not that expensive now that allow you to do it.

Ritesh Bawri [00:59:50]: So now imagine I found that my scores are not so good. What's like, in your opinion, the best practices, breath work being one?

Ben Greenfield [00:59:56]: Yeah, a lot of the stuff that I just talked about, they help a ton. Obviously, in addition to those things, sleep, not over training, relationship management. Interestingly, good cardiovascular fitness is pretty highly correlated to a good HRV. And that means that even though the strength training that we were talking about is important, focusing on things like VO2 Max, or having an exercise session each week where you're breathless or pushing yourself cardiovascularly for a certain period of time, good tolerance to lactic acid, meaning that you also have maybe a certain type of weight training where you're resting for a shorter period of time in between sets so you feel the burn a little bit more. Or good mitochondrial health, which typically involves very short bursts of intense exercise or with long rest periods. If you're focusing on some form of a training session each week, that's increasing VO2 max, improving lactic acid tolerance and increasing the health of the mitochondria. All of those will increase cardiovascular fitness to the extent where you'll have a pretty good impact on HRV.

Ritesh Bawri [01:00:58]: There is this other concept called hormesis, where you're pushing yourself a little bit, which in some sense is making you stronger, better, and that then goes back to helping you deal with stress better. Could you talk a little bit about that as well?

Ben Greenfield [01:01:09]: Yeah. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Exactly, yeah. I mean, it's back. Back to what we're talking about with dietary diversity. A lot of these plant defense compounds that people are avoiding when they're following a carnivore or a paleo diet, they actually seem to induce cellular resilience and your own antioxidant production in small amounts. So rather than eliminating gluten and eliminating lectin and eliminating peanuts, by consuming small amounts of those, you actually develop a more diverse gut and better ability to be able to create the compounds that help you to digest those foods. Many people will say these days that you should limit oxalates for joint health and get rid of spinach and kale and cruciferous vegetables.

Ben Greenfield [01:01:50]: Interestingly, those same compounds, when fermenting in the colon, produce the actual postbiotics that help you to digest oxalate so the human body works pretty efficiently when it's not overloaded with a lot of these compounds. Sauna, if we did it in high amounts, would kill us due to dehydration and cardiac stress. But in small amounts seems to induce the production of heat shock proteins, which help your cells to become more resilient to stress. A long bout in a cold pool would result in a huge surge of adrenaline and epinephrine that stresses you way out. But in small amounts seems to induce the ability to deal well with that same surge of excitatory neurotransmitters. Weight training, if you were in the gym for two hours, would take a really long time to recover from about a half hour weight training session a day, and your muscles become stronger, not weaker, and overtrained. Small bits of running on a daily basis can help with cardiovascular fitness. But if you run 30 miles on a Saturday morning, your muscles would look like World War II.

Ben Greenfield [01:02:52]: Right. So a lot of these things, even alcohol, small amounts of alcohol on a regular basis, based on a lot of these studies done back to the blue zones and longevity hotspots, seems to induce an endogenous antioxidant response that induces cellular resilience when done in small doses on a regular basis. So not getting. Let's put it this way, there's a big difference between having seven drinks on a Saturday night as your average of seven drinks a week, and having a glass of wine with the family at dinner as your seven drinks a week. So, yeah, these small things that are hormetic stressors can actually make you stronger when they're consumed or dosed in moderate or low to moderate amounts throughout the week. So, yeah, I mean, the goal for longevity and health is not to live in a protective bubble, but to simply modulate the amount of stressors that you're exposed to.

Ritesh Bawri [01:03:44]: We'll talk about the bubble in a minute. Let's switch to a fascinating topic that I know you've been working on, and it's something that actually interests me. So, funny story. Our family history actually is in construction. We've made construction materials for the last 40 plus years, 60 plus years actually. So plywood, cement, et cetera, et cetera. And I know now you've worked on this new home that you've sort of almost made new, and you've put in all kinds of new things in that. But the thing that you're focused on is making it ecologically healthy for the human being.

Ritesh Bawri [01:04:14]: Could you talk a little bit about that? Like reducing the electricity, the dirty electricity, for example.

Ben Greenfield [01:04:18]: The field is actually called building biology. This idea of how do we create buildings that are biologically friendly to the human body? It's different than green building. Environmentally friendly building is good for the environment, but often some of the considerations for that aren't necessarily biological.

Ritesh Bawri [01:04:35]: Good for you. Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [01:04:36]: So when we talk about exercise and nutrition, these are variables that certainly move the dial for health. But you don't see whatever Men's Health magazine or Women's Fitness or popular media in fitness or nutrition talking a lot about some of what might be considered more invisible variables, namely electricity, light, air, water. I just finished building a home in North Idaho. The entire home, every floor of the house is shielded with a special kind of paint that restricts the amount of radio frequencies and EMFs that can come in from nearby cell phone towers or wifi signals. The floor is grounded so that anywhere you're walking in the house, you're actually pulling up the anti inflammatory negative ions on the surface of the planet. Because the floor actually has a conductive material that allows you to be grounded no matter where you're at in the house. There is no Wi fi because all of the rooms are wired with CAT 8 metal shielded ethernet cable. So even if I'm in my office, there's an ethernet cable and a USB C to Ethernet adapter and I can have my phone plugged into the ethernet rather than having a radio frequency running from my phone.

Ben Greenfield [01:05:52]: The Water is a 14 stage filtration process that completely cleanses the water and then remineralizes the water. So the water I'm showering in, I'm bathing in, I'm drinking, it's all super clean, pure. The H vac system has HEPA air filters in it to cleanse the air, along with monitors for controlling that system that do not run on WI fi or Alexa, but that instead are stupid home style little slider buttons that you use to adjust the heating in the home. So the idea is that but in the environment I focus on super clean air. I focus on very low amounts of man made unnatural electricity, but high amounts of natural frequencies and electricity. Really good clean pure water throughout the entire house. And then even the lighting. When you walk into a room, if you flip the light on once, it'll do daytime, you flip it again, it'll go twilight.

Ben Greenfield [01:06:46]: You flip it again, it will go red light. So the circadian rhythmicity of any room can be adjusted. So rather than bright overhead fluorescent lighting with lots of flicker and EMF that causes irritation or brain fog, every single room is adjusted for Ideal sleep, wake cycles, and elimination of a lot of the light pollution that can cause issues. So light pollution, air pollution, water pollution, electrical pollution, we don't think about those a lot in our personal environments. And you can exercise until you're blue in the face and eat a really healthy diet and still feel crappy. And sometimes the reason for that is because you're being bombarded with poor air, poor water, poor light, and poor electricity. So I've kind of built my own blue zone in a way to take into account a lot of those factors.

Ritesh Bawri [01:07:32]: What about the building materials themselves? Like, did you do some.

Ben Greenfield [01:07:35]: Oh, yeah. Low voc, low amounts of chemicals, plastics, et cetera. All natural materials. Absolutely.

Ritesh Bawri [01:07:42]: Interesting. I think that's a business right there. I think you should consult not just for.

Ben Greenfield [01:07:47]: I mean, not a lot of people are going to build a house like that from the ground up. And there are consultants in the U.S. there's people I've worked with, like Brian Hoyer has a company called Shielded Healing. He travels all over the world helping people with this. There's another guy called Brian Johnson from a company called Senergy360 in Phoenix, and he does that as well. And so, yeah, there are building biologists that are actually consultants. But if you wanted kind of like a book that I think is one of the. The better modern books that's kind of like a done for you manual for a lot of this.

Ben Greenfield [01:08:14]: There's a gal named Paula Laporte who has a book called A Prescription for a Healthy Home. And that one's just. You could literally take that and hand it to a home builder, an architect, and say, I want to take all this stuff into consideration. It'd be a pretty good start.

Ritesh Bawri [01:08:27]: Interesting. Okay, I'll switch topics again. I want to talk just two simple things in nutrition. Nutrition is one of those topics that everyone's talking about all the time. I wanted to ask you only two questions as far as nutrition is concerned. One is fueling a long run, and the second is protein when it comes to strength training specifically. I think both of these are misunderstood. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Ritesh Bawri [01:08:47]: So, fueling the long run.

Ben Greenfield [01:08:48]: Fueling the long run, well, the question becomes, why are you going on a long run in the first place? Because it's very biomechanically difficult on the body. I just interviewed a guy who wrote a book called Born to Walk about all the reasons that human beings weren't necessarily born to run. The leaky gut issues that we talked about earlier are very magnified. When you're trying to move and eat at the same time. I raced for years in Ironman triathlon and had gas, bloating and digestive issues using the common approach of energy gels and energy bars and fructose and maltodextrin and sugars. If I could go back and do it all over again, and I did this the last two years I was racing, I would use as easy to digest a fuel as possible with as low amount of sugar as is possible to get by on. And so what does that look like? If I were gonna go out for a long run now, let's say three hours. And I wanted enough fuel to take with me, but I didn't want a bunch of bloating and gastric distress.

Ben Greenfield [01:09:44]: I would take colostrum or glutamine beforehand like we talked about, to decrease the risk of getting leaky gut. I would use ketones, which are a drinkable fuel that serve as readily available non sugar based fuel for the liver, the heart, the diaphragm and the brain. And they're just magic for endurance. I would use amino acids which help to stave off the central nervous system fatigue that occurs as muscles break down and tryptophan enters the brain. And I would use very small amounts of a non fermentable starch, like a potato based starch, like a dextrin or a dextrose based starch. So I could have a water bottle or one of those flasks like a fuel belt. And in that flask would be a mix of ketones, amino acids, and an example of a dextrin based starch would be a company like Vitargo. They have a powder, but I'd use like one quarter of what you'd normally use per hour for something like that.

Ben Greenfield [01:10:38]: Because I've got the ketones and the amino acids on top of that. The only thing that's missing in a scenario like that, that's even more important if you're not consuming a lot of carbohydrates is minerals or electrolytes, right? So then you'd add minerals and electrolytes to that, like a packet of LMNT or some other electrolyte beverage. And then you're basically. And this would apply to long hiking, long biking, long running, et cetera. The mix is basically ketones, amino acids, electrolytes and some type of potato based starch or easy to digest starch. And that can keep you going for long periods of time without a lot of the gastric distress. Even though using something like colostrum or glutamine beforehand can help with some of the distress that's gonna occur either way if you're eating while simultaneously jostling and moving your body.

Ritesh Bawri [01:11:24]: So I didn't come from an athletic background. I found walking to be much better for me.

Ben Greenfield [01:11:28]: Yeah, I love it.

Ritesh Bawri [01:11:28]: Like even a two hour walk as opposed to like a two hour run.

Ben Greenfield [01:11:31]: Walking is totally my job.

Ritesh Bawri [01:11:32]: Yeah, exactly. I think that's much better. Okay. And as far as the strength training and the protein is concerned, before, during, after, how much, what is too much protein?

Ben Greenfield [01:11:41]: Protein. It varies quite a bit. There's some evidence amongst people who work out lift weight specifically a lot that they can get away with pretty high amounts of protein intake. We're talking like 1.2 grams per pound. Plus you do the translation to grams per kilogram. But in most cases the sweet spot for protein is around 0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound of protein. That would be in a day. Now the consumption of that around exercise, the main thing to bear in mind is that if you have a high pool of bioavailable amino acids during exercise, you're going to break down muscle less quickly and you're going to be in a little bit more of an anabolic muscle building state. The way that I do it is I consume 10 to 20 grams of essential amino acids, which is basically like pre digested protein kind of some like collagen for example.

Ben Greenfield [01:12:36]: Before I work out, I consume nothing during the actual workout simply because I don't like to be distracted by eating while I'm working out. And then when I finish I have about 30 grams of whey protein. So typically in most cases you can absorb anywhere from 20 to 40 grams of protein. And that would be in a post workout scenario if you wanted the best of the best and you didn't want to be digesting things during a workout, but you also wanted high levels of amino acids. So you build muscle as quickly as possible, but then you also wanted to get as much muscle building potential into your body afterwards. You would take 10 to 20 grams of essential amino acids before you work out. Not branch chain amino acids, which are only three of the amino acids, isoleucine, leucine and valine, but all nine of the amino acids from, from essential amino acids. Then you work out and then you have anywhere from 20 to 40 grams of a good bioavailable protein.

Ben Greenfield [01:13:28]: Either a mix if you're going vegan or vegetarian of like rice, pea, soy, some type of protein that's a blend. So you're getting all the amino acids or a fuller protein, like a whey or an egg protein, for example. And as far as the timing goes, there is some evidence that there's an anabolic post feeding window. It's not as short as a lot of people think.

Ritesh Bawri [01:13:51]: That's 45.

Ben Greenfield [01:13:52]: Some people are like, oh, I gotta drop the barbell and like go get into my bag right away to drink my pre mixed protein shake. It's about one to two hours.

Ritesh Bawri [01:13:59]: Okay.

Ben Greenfield [01:13:59]: So yeah, like for me I usually work out from about 8:15 to 9:15 in the morning and usually I have a smoothie around like 9:45.

Ritesh Bawri [01:14:06]: Got it. Let's just change topics again. I wanna talk a little bit about the future of health and I think one of the dramatic things that at least I see happening is the shift that's happening in the US where you have a new hopefully secretary or head of health. Robert Kennedy.

Ben Greenfield [01:14:21]: Yeah.

Ritesh Bawri [01:14:22]: Did he get confirmed by the way? I'm not sure, I don't think so.

Ben Greenfield [01:14:24]: He had his confirmation, but I don't know if he got confirmed yet.

Ritesh Bawri [01:14:27]: Right, okay, so imagine that he comes.

Ben Greenfield [01:14:29]: I've been reading many newspapers since I got over here.

Ritesh Bawri [01:14:31]: Yeah. Okay, so imagine he comes. Do you see the US changing and then as a function of that, do you see the world changing in direction?

Ben Greenfield [01:14:38]: It's almost like a little bit of a swing from the somewhat extreme left to the extreme right in a situation like that. RFK is obviously very anti vaccine. I think there are some situations in which a vaccine could be effective and recommended if you're traveling with a small child overseas and they have a weak immune system and you've made the decision that you're not gonna stay at home, they might actually need something like MMR or a minimal schedule of vaccines to actually protect them from the things they're going to get exposed to in a foreign country at a young age. Although you could also just give them a lot of natural things, just not travel with a young infant. It kind of depends on the situation. There's also new MRNA based vaccines that seem to be a little bit better, much lower in adjuvants, fewer issues. So I think that vaccine technology is not all or nothing. And I wouldn't want people to get the impression from RFK's confirmation, if that happens, that all vaccines should be avoided.

Ben Greenfield [01:15:39]: So I think that's a message some people might get. I'm a total libertarian capitalist. And even though a company like say Kellogg's might be using whatever red number three or some type of seed oil or McDonald's isn't using tallow in their fries. I don't want to live in a country where the government can tell a business what they can or cannot put in their food. I'd rather live in a country where there's proper consumer education and people know whether or not something is healthy because their parents or their school or their teacher taught them that. And then they're equipped with the decision about whether or not they're going to keep a certain company in business based on what that company is putting into the food. So what I don't want to see is excess restriction on companies, which I don't think is good for the economy. Nor does it set up a scenario that I think is favorable for the long term future.

Ben Greenfield [01:16:29]: Meaning the government being able to heavily regulate businesses versus allowing consumers to determine how successful that business is going to be because you have a savvy educated consumer. Right. So I'd like to see better public education, not necessarily way more restrictions placed upon businesses. Now, it is true that the FDA does have certain things in the US that are generally recognized as safe that probably should not be generally recognized as safe. So some of those things need to be revisited, such as red number three. So rather than telling a business that they need to remove red number three from their cereal or whatever, it should instead be something that's simply removed from the FDA's generally recognized as safe list. So a lot of different rabbit holes there. But I think that long term a shift towards people becoming aware of things like pharmaceutical lobbying, of subsidization of food via the grain, the corn or the dairy industry.

Ben Greenfield [01:17:28]: I think that as people learn more about these things that the long term effect is going to be an improvement in health. But what I don't want to see is a highly restrictive country in which the government is able to basically slap a lot of businesses on the wrist. I'd rather businesses be able to do what they want to do, but the consumer be well educated so they can decide whether or not they're going to give their money that business.

Ritesh Bawri [01:17:49]: Sure. No, I mean consumer education is carry the holy grail here. I mean if everyone was more aware and understood what was happening to them, I think the pushback to the company would be so instantaneous that the company.

Ben Greenfield [01:18:00]: Would think via podcasts like this long form education people are getting more.

Ritesh Bawri [01:18:05]: I think so. I think so. I think.

Ben Greenfield [01:18:06]: I don't know a lot of parents these days who are not concerned. And I don't just hang out with wealthy parents who have unrestricted access to buying $30 coconut yogurt from Whole Foods or something like that. Like parents who literally are making food decisions on a budget, who are actually paying attention to the ingredient label of foods that their kid is getting.

Ritesh Bawri [01:18:27]: Yeah. And making better choices. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let me wrap up with the final question I wanted to ask you, which is you come across as someone who's deeply spiritual. Where does this come from? Like, what's the thought behind this and what's the sort of ideology here? Why do you believe that so central to your existence?

Ben Greenfield [01:18:45]: I live in an era in which there's a great deal of arguably transhumanistic tendencies towards biohacking yourself to immortality and maintaining a body and brain that lasts as long as freaking possible, using as many strategies as possible to be able to do that. But at the end of the day, whether you die when you're 80 or 100 or 120 or 150, we're all just going to be old, wrinkled up, osteoporosis, sarcopenic, near corpses. And very few people, I think, are going to lay on their deathbed concerned about how much they exercised or how much time they spent in a hyperbaric chamber or how good their skin licked when they were 90 versus 100. I believe that the soul that exists in all of us will go on for eternity, for better or worse. And when you look at health and longevity, it's interesting because there'll be some gin chugging, cigarette smoking, 110, year old great grandmother in Sardinia, Italy, who doesn't do any of the biohacks or the healthy living protocols or laser lights up her nose or all these things that biohackers are doing. Yet she seems to live a long and fruitful and fulfilling life because of an emphasis placed on relationships, connection to people, spiritual disciplines, gratitude, prayer, belief in a higher power, all of these things that are deeply fulfilling that go beyond the physical. If you look at folks like Penses or St. Augustine or C.S.

Ben Greenfield [01:20:20]: lewis, many of these philosophers and authors and theologians have described us as having an eternal hole in our soul that, unless it is filled with something eternal, leaves us ultimately feeling unfulfilled. No matter how much money or cars or homes or success or sex or business or anything else I have put into that hole, including health, to feel fulfilled. I've been very healthy. I think I am still pretty healthy. But I've been times in my life extremely fit and on top of the mountain and winning triathlons and fitness competitions and checking all the boxes, yet not very happy because I was disconnected from my family, disconnected from My wife disconnected from my kids and disconnected from God. And now that I've placed emphasis first and foremost on things like prayer, reading scripture, connecting with my family, meeting with my wife and children on a regular basis, prioritizing family and my spiritual life over business and even over fitness, all the other things have become more fulfilling. And that's because my soul is actually filled with what the soul craves, which is relationships to the other souls on this planet and relationship with a higher power. So I think if we were going to focus on anything, getting down to the practical nitty gritty, it is how we treat our spirits.

Ben Greenfield [01:21:43]: What that looks like for me is when I get out of bed, the first thing that goes onto my phone is typically a very uplifting spiritual song or a sermon or an uplifting lecture that's all spiritual based, nothing health, nothing finances, nothing news. I listen to that while I'm stretching out. And then I drop to my knees at my bed and I pray. And it's not like hours and hours of prayer, but I have about a five to ten minute prayer that I recite that, that I'm doing on my knees at bed. And then I get on with the rest of my day. But I pray before my meals, I pray with my family at night. We meet for family devotions and reading scriptures and prayer in the morning. And it's something that's become woven into my life because the soul, the spirit is the most important thing to care for.

Ben Greenfield [01:22:32]: And ultimately, if you're caring for that, you're going to develop relationships with other people more fully because you understand that they also have a soul and a spirit and an eternal spark and a being that goes way beyond their body or their wealth or their health or anything else that you might judge themselves by based on outward appearances. And so you've got a better relationship with other people and you also have a relationship with a higher power. And there's a great deal of confidence and a great deal of direction in life and a much greater ability to be able to take the stress that we were talking, talking about and know that there's someone, something that you can pray to and speak to who's able to help you through those times of stress that goes beyond just you trying to do it all based on your own power and your own volition. So my spiritual life is incredibly important to me and it's an integral part of my existence and I think the most important part.

Ritesh Bawri [01:23:27]: Sure. So which actually in some sense is a great way to wrap up, which is that ultimately the whole objective of being healthy, living a long life is in some sense to have a fulfilled life, to have a happy life, to have life that has some sense of purpose. I think that's really what you're talking to, which I think is fascinating. There's that sense of balance, right. It's not just more reps or more weights or more whatever or more supplements or whatever.

Ben Greenfield [01:23:49]: That's at the end of the day, that's pretty unfulfilling and a pretty lonely way to live.

Ritesh Bawri [01:23:53]: Exactly.

Ben Greenfield [01:23:54]: Versus basically other people and God.

Ritesh Bawri [01:23:58]: Wonderful. On that note, thank you very much. I was absolutely delighted to have you.

Ben Greenfield [01:24:02]: Yeah. This is the darkest, blackest podcast I think that I've ever done, but I love the vibe.

Ritesh Bawri [01:24:06]: Thank you. Lovely having you. All right, thank you.

Ben Greenfield [01:24:09]: Thanks man.

Ben Greenfield [01:24:10]: To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks.

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