Shocking New Research on Smartphone Addiction (& How To COPE!), Is Aspirin A Wonder Drug?, Ben’s Thoughts On “Life Advice” & More! Solosode 490

Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: In this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast. Shocking new research on smartphone addiction and how to cope. Is aspirin the new wonder drug? My thoughts on life advice and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. All right, it's official. I'm coming to Melbourne, Australia. I'll be there for a couple weeks, but as a part of this tour, I will be hosting a fantastic public event, one epic night at Luminaire in South Melbourne with the team from Saint Haven Private Club. Whether you're into health, performance, longevity, fitness or any other element of life optimization, I will teach you how how to become boundless.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:58]: It's going to be an incredible evening. Here's what you need to know. It will be June 26, 6:30 to 8:30pm, and there will be an option for a VIP experience with me that includes a meet and greet and the book signing. You can get all the details and get your limited seat now at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Australia2025. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/Australia 2025. Welcome to the show. I am at my desk here. I actually have my phone next to me. My phone when I'm in my office is usually in airplane mode, you know, because I'm one of those tinfoil hat-wearing freaks.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:39]: But my secret is I've got a. What do I have? I don't. I have an iPhone 15 or iPhone 16, one of the two. I'm not quite sure. I lose track. They have this forced obsolescence thing or planned obsolescence, whatever they call it, where your coolest new piece of hardware within a year or less is no longer cool. And heck, with these tariffs, these things might cost 6,000 bucks within a few months. Who knows, maybe I should stock up.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:03]: But I digress. My phone to be in airplane mode in my office, yet still be functional. I have a USB-C to ethernet adapter and I just have it plugged into the router in my office so I don't have to have my phone on and it's hardwired. And the reason I am even beginning to geek out on this in the first place right off the bat, right here at the beginning of the show is because I'm going to talk a little bit about EMF. I'm not the world's leading expert on this by any means, but I pay attention to it. I think it's important. And before we jump in, I want to note something. I just need to share something that's been a real puzzler for me.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:44]: I stepped on the scale today and this has been a pattern for like the past two months. I'm almost 200 pounds. To put that in context for you. When I finished racing Ironman triathlon, I was 169 pounds. At the beginning of this year I was 180 pounds. And you know, three months, well, three months after being 182, what am I at? What month is it if I can keep track of the calendar here? May. Yeah, it's almost like the first week of May. I'm almost 200 pounds and a lot of people have asked me who I've shared that with.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:22]: Well, what are you doing that's new and honestly I'm not doing. There's a couple of modifications I've made that I'll share with you. And definitely listen to last week's episode, episode number 489 on techniques to build muscle quickly, safely and effectively. I am generally things change a little bit when I'm traveling, but when I'm at home, I kind of have a pretty standard routine. I do super slow strength training three times a week using the deadlift, the squat, the chest press, the overhead press, the pull down, and the row. I use a machine in my gym for this called the ARX. You can do it with three ways. You do it with a tonal, you can do it with Nautilus machines, whatever.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:03]: I like super slow training because it's very efficient. You're generally moving the weight very slow, spending about two minutes of time under tension for each set. But when you're done, you're done. You aren't doing multiple sets. So I do that three times a week. I do this Vasper exercise machine on those same days that I do the ARX. This is a blood flow restriction type of cardio apparatus. Again, you don't have to own one of those.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:26]: You could just put on blood flow restriction bands and do a 20-minute high intensity interval training session on say an Airdyne bike or an elliptical or whatever. And then a couple other days a week. So that's three days a week I have the Vasper with the super slow training and then two other days of the week I do core and that's typically with my sons. We're doing planks and some swings and Turkish getups and some kettlebell work and farmer's walks and almost like an athletic core type of workout. I walk on my treadmill during the day. I play some pickleball or tennis in the evenings. But I am just ballooning in muscle. I should note that my body fat percentage has stayed at 4% all year long.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:09]: So every shred of poundage I've gained has been muscle. So obviously training hasn't changed. I moved to Idaho. Maybe moving to Idaho just makes you more rugged and muscular. From a dietary standpoint, though, I do have to admit I have been really amping up both collagen and essential amino acids. Like those two have probably been the biggest changes. I just. I'll admit I was doing maybe 10 maximum 20 grams of essential amino acids on a daily basis.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:38]: I was doing maybe if I dipped into the collagen tub, 10, 20 grams of that. And I just started to build up a surplus of essential amino acids and collagen in my pantry and I started taking a lot more of it. I'm doing 30, 40 grams of essential amino acids from Kion every day. I'm doing collagen. I'm up to around 30 to 40 grams of collagen a day. So that's in addition to eating around a gram per pound of protein. Though I don't really track it because I think in some cases, unless you're trying to intensely lose weight or your bodybuilding or something, excessive tracking, relentless tracking, can suck a lot of the enjoyment out of the culinary experience. But I think that has to be what it is, right? Increase in essential amino acid intake and increase in collagen intake.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:27]: The only other thing I can think of is that I might have some kind of a giant tumor growing in my right calf and it's going to pop out on my skin one of these days, or an alien in my tummy, I don't know. But either way, I'm not complaining. I feel strong, I feel great and still feel like I've got my cardio. I'm not sucking wind when I walk up hills like you might expect when one has gained almost 20 pounds now. So I feel great. I'm not complaining. Anyways, I digress. So, like I mentioned, I want to talk a little bit in today's episode about this whole issue with EMFs.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:02]: And what got me thinking about this was a recent bit of research that came out. This was in the Journal Computers in Human Behavior. Computers in Human Behavior. I guess someday there's probably going to be a journal that's launched called Humans in Computer Behavior with where AI seems to be going. That journal might already exist. I don't know. But anyways, the title of this paper was the Effects of Smartphone Restriction on Cue-related Neural Activity. No, they were not playing pool.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:34]: I think we're talking about actual cues that they gave people. And I'll get into what they did in this study. So if you've ever felt like your cell phone is like glued to your hand, or you get that ghost vibration in your pockets, or you feel like if you pull out of your driveway and you realize you've forgotten your phone, it's a freak out moment, or a freak out two minutes until you run into the kitchen and find it on the counter and cradle it in your hands and tell it how much you missed it while you were pulling around the driveway and, and leaving without your phone, God forbid. Which nobody would have freaked out about 20 years ago. Anyways, though I'm sounding old. But back to this research. So they want to see what happens when you take a break from all this smartphone madness. So they asked 25 young adults to ditch their phones for 72 hours.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:19]: So basically a three-day cell phone fast. They got these 25 adults to skip their phones for 72 hours. Three days. No scrolling, no texting. And then before the three days, and after the three days, they scan their brains with the machine that shows brain activity. And while they scanned these participants brain, they showed them pictures, they showed them cell phones turned on. Pictures of cell phones turned on. They showed them pictures of cell phones turned off.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:52]: And they showed them neutral images like portrait landscapes. And they just wanted to see how your brain handles phone cues after being away from it. Right. So the images of the phone off and the images of the phone on were the phone cues and then the portrait images of landscape were kind of like the control images. Now what they discovered was after the three day cell phone break, parts of these participants brains tied to wanting things. These dopaminergic circuits got way more active when they saw pictures of the phone. It's as though their brain missed the phone and got super excited to see it. It's as though they got super duper, duper hungry, hungry, hungry after fasting from their phone.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:36]: So when we look at what's actually going on here from a slightly more scientific standpoint, they were investigating two key areas of the brain. Your pleasure center, if I can talk, and then the region of the brain that helps you decide what you're going to do next. I'm not going to bumble up this podcast with big long brain anatomical descriptions. Basically they were looking at the pleasure center and the anticipatory center of the brain. Now, your brain uses dopamine and serotonin as two of the primary chemicals used to control feelings and actions. And what they found was that the areas of the brain lit up in response to dopamine surges when these people saw pictures of their phones indicating that there was a true neurotransmitter, chemical addiction in the craving zones of the brain, thanks to these reward circuits and attention circuits. And this kind of explains why your phone can be so hard to ignore and so hard to put it away. You try this just like, put away your phone at dinner and then try putting away your phone for an entire evening, and then maybe try putting away your phone for a whole day, and you will be craving it and you will crave it more after taking a break.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:59]: Now, what I would like to see is a longer study where they investigate how long it takes for those dopamine centers to settle down. Right. Like what happens if you take a one week phone fast or a one month phone fast? Do you get to a certain point where you just quit craving technology as much? I know when I've been hunting or camping, for me, it seems like the magic mark is somewhere around four or five days where you're like, well, I got no cell ph, so I'm not gonna be able to use this thing anyways. I finally accept the fact that I'm just gonna get back to nature and not have this craving for the phone any longer. So maybe that's as little an amount of time as it takes to break the craving, like a four to five day fast. But I think this area is ripe for additional research, and it just really got me thinking about how addicted we are to our phones. Now, at the same time, there was another study that came out that kind of might seem a little bit paradoxical when we're talking about, I don't know, the damaging effects or the dopaminergic desensitization effects of having your phone constantly on or being addicted to your phone. And this was a study that found that smartphone use could reduce dementia risk in older adults.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:14]: Digital technology use was linked to a 58% lower risk of cognitive impairment. Now, this is interesting because there have been some hypotheses and claims that digital technology use, such as smartphones, could negatively impact cognitive abilities. But this research that was just conducted at Baylor University discovered the exact opposite. This was published in the Nature Human Behavior Journal. And this was a meta review in which researchers analyzed more than 136 studies that included over 400,000 adults with an average of six years of follow up data. And they found that the use of digital technology in older adults correlates with a 58% lower risk of cognitive impairment. And that's after adjusting for are you male or you're female? Age, education level. And they hypothesize, the authors of the paper hypothesize that this could be due to the cognitive challenges that older adults face when interacting with technology.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:20]: Not to stereotype, but it's kind of like I just downloaded Instagram too, my handy technology square and I'm trying to figure out how to open and what's this magnifying glass doing? Whoop dee doo. I just figured out how to post a story and maybe engaging in all of this uphill cognitive and mental struggles and battles with learning a new piece of technology helps to exercise the brain and keep it sharp. And that could indeed be the case. Maybe it's also due to the fact that when older adults are using technology because they didn't break out for these factors, they're doing a better job using technology to keep in touch with their family members or their friends to maintain social connections, which we know is a real great way to potentially decrease loneliness. Even though analog flesh and blood interactions are better than digital interactions. But digital interactions can at least allow an older person to feel like they're still connected to the people around them, particularly the younger people. Because being around younger people, interacting with younger people, and it appears now using interest bank and new technology that these younger people are using may actually result in a lower risk of cognitive impairment. Now the question of course for me becomes, and if you're a smart little biohacker, you might be asking this question as well.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:42]: Well, what's the trade off, right? Is there going to be an increase in brain cancer or cancer in general, or an effect on an older person's dopamine circuits, or maybe the health of their eyes and risk for myopia from staring at a small screen or an impact on sleep, for example, because of the blue light at night. We don't know the answers to a lot of those questions, but it was so funny because on the same day I read this paper, another study appeared on my feed. And this was looking at another way that you could reduce cognitive impairment in older adults of a very similar age as those they used in the smartphone study. And this was music therapy, which is totally the opposite. Now, music therapy is actually an evidence based healthcare practice. I'm not just making this up. It uses music and listening to music, singing as a group, playing instruments, composing music, like writing songs, moving on to even like, you know, dancing and learning music with a group. And, you know, music therapy is kind of like this holistic approach of social interaction and connectivity and learning based around music.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:58]: Now, there's actually a pretty impressive effect on adults with cognitive impairment who undergo music therapy. As a matter of fact, this paper used 16 interactive music therapy sessions delivered over five months and found a very positive impact on older adults who were already experiencing mild to moderate cognitive decline in terms of reversing that decline. Now, my take on this is there's all sorts of brain training apps out there that you could argue are smart use of digital technology to prevent cognitive impairment or improve cognition, memory, word recall, et cetera, such as brainscape, lumosity n back training, et cetera. I see the value of those. But I personally have a little bit more of an analog approach when it comes to cognitive function because I'm on devices all day. Even right now, I'm interacting with you with a camera and a computer and my phone's next to me. And so I would rather choose a technology-free form of helping out with my cognition at night. So for me, I do guitar lessons.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:11]: I typically shoot for 10 to 15 minutes each night. I don't have a live guitar instructor. I bounce around between programs. Right now I'm using a program by Paul Jacobs, which is kind of fun. You just download all these different tabs which allow you to follow along. And I'm learning some different scales right now. Sometimes I'll learn songs. And so that's one way that I do analog brain training at night.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:34]: Another thing I do is I memorize one verse from the Bible every single night. And I think there is something about whether it's the Bible or poetry or inspirational quotes or whatever else, there's something about memorizing from a book such as the Bible that helps to grow the brain and assist with memory retention, especially in the evening. And I like doing it in the evening too, because then you're kind of like programming your brain to think about these positive verses that you've memorized as you're sleeping at night. So I'm more of like a music and memorization guy in the evening. And then I think I've talked about this on the podcast before. At the Greenfield house, we are playing and learning games almost every single night. Like, we order new games all the time. One of my favorite websites is Exploding kittens dot com.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:19]: They have really great games. We'll sometimes just Go to Barnes and Noble and occasionally like Target and just browse the game section and find one that looks cool and buy it. And just learning to play the game is a real challenge. But then playing it, competing, there's rhetoric, there's logic, there's conflict resolution, there's memorization, there's anticipation. I'm a huge fan of, of gaming as well, like analog gaming. So I would say musical instruments and music, memorization and gaming are the three things that I've kind of turned to, to grow the brain. And you could also make the case for sports. I mean, there was a study that looked at which sports were best correlated with longevity, and it was racket sports like tennis, ping pong, pickleball, padel.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:05]: Any of those are fantastic. Swimming, probably because similar to racket sports, you get this left and right brain hemispheric coordination that's required when you're swimming, plus the cardiovascular stimulus and maybe even some of the effects of cold therapy, I don't know. And of course, with the racket sports, you also get the social interaction. I think chess was pretty high up there on the list too. But I don't really classify chess as a sport in the traditional sense of the word. I realize it's a mental sport. I realize they call chess players athletes, I believe. I don't do a whole lot of chess.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:38]: I was president of the chess club in high school and I probably burnt out on chess after that. But I haven't played chess in probably like six years. However, what I'm getting at here is that programming analog cognitive enhancing activities, especially into your evening, I think is a really smart idea and it gives you a fun break from digital technologies. And I can tell you I'm not craving the use of my phone or digital technologies at all when I'm A playing my guitar, B playing games with my family, or C memorizing the Bible at night. It's a total afterthought. So one other thing that I want to mention when it comes to this whole idea of the use of devices is that just a few months ago there was a term that appears to have just been coined called EMR syndrome. It stands for Electromagnetic Radiation syndrome. And sometimes this is described as the disease of the digital age.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:37]: But it's characterized by a wide range of symptoms linked to what people experience when they are around technologies like cell towers, smart meters, WI fi networks, Bluetooth devices and smartphones. Typically, what happens is anything from brain fog and irritability to more severe reactions, headaches, dizziness, fatigue, heart palpitations, Tinnitus, sleep disturbances, ADHD like tendencies. And there was a project that was launched called the One Name project last year to address this challenge. So this brought together people who actually report having EMR related disabilities and then medical professionals and scientists and what are called safe technology advocates. Yes, that's a thing now. And what they did was they just wanted to band together and study up on whether or not this actually exists. And the long story short is it seems to increasingly be an issue. And the website of this One Name project gives you a lot more information about so called electromagnetic radiation syndrome.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:39]: And it seems kind of silly and woo that the use of electronics like this would cause so many biological conditions. Or at least it's an inconvenient truth. But you can explain a lot of this from a biological standpoint. Now I would say there's a lack of clear causal evidence underlying the production of these so called electro hypersensitivity or EMR issues. But the prevailing theory, and I briefly mentioned this on a podcast before, is that non thermal microwave or low frequency EMFs will actually cause what's called voltage gated calcium channel activation in cells. And when this occurs, you see an influx of calcium into the cell and you see an increase in the positive charge of a cell that should normally be slightly negatively charged in the of the cell. And this can have widespread effects on the nervous system, on the musculoskeletal system, on neurotransmitter synthesis, or not neurotransmitter synthesis, but more neurotransmitter signaling, neuroendocrine hormone release. And that's kind of the theory about why this works.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:53]: You know, this calcium influx. And this is even why I think some people have suggested magnesium minerals, good hydration, things like that could actually help you out with with this type of exposure. But honestly I think the best thing to do is just go through your house and I'm going to link in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/490. The actual full home walkthrough that I did with a building biologist named Brian Hoyer, just super helpful about all the little things that you can do in terms of the cables and what to plug in and what to block and how dirty electricity filters work. And I could talk for hours on this podcast about it. That episode alone is about two hours long, but I would check it out. Especially if you feel like when you're around technologies things just don't seem to work quite as well as when you're away from Them, which is, I think, a common issue. And I think it is going to be either an issue that increases in severity and becomes an ever increasing problem, or it's going to decrease as we, I don't know, evolutionarily adapt to the use of technologies in our cells over a few generations, build up these protective mechanisms. I theorize that's probably not gonna happen.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:06]: And that's a better idea to shield, to protect yourself, and to educate yourself about responsible use. I feel like I'm talking about cigarettes or alcohol right now, but yeah, it is interesting. This EMR issue has been identified and it's a growing problem. All right, we're gonna move on. I'll give you some good news. Okay, so this has to do with aspirin. I've had my eyes on aspirin a lot, lot lately. And I think that based on the amount of data that's been coming out on aspirin, that it might be something to begin thinking about this idea of low dose aspirin.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:44]: So I was reading an article written by a guy named, I think his first name is Georgie Haydu. H-a-i-d-u-t dot m-e. And he has some pretty good scientific reviews of a variety of different supplements and so called anti-aging drugs. But there's a new study he reports on that provides evidence that aspirin may not only be a panacea for many chronic diseases, but also a great anti-aging tool. He had posted years ago about the active ingredient aspirin being able to increase maximum lifespan by approximately 400%. And that dosage was the equivalent to using less than 1 gram daily for a human human, which is not a whole lot of aspirin. Now there's a new study that demonstrates an anti-aging effect of aspirin in admittedly rodent, not human models using that same dosage. So this new study used aspirin, which is basically a little bit different than what previous studies had used, which was basically like a willow bark extract, which is very similar to aspirin.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:55]: And the human equivalent dose of what they used in these studies was about 8.5 milligrams per kilogram daily. Now that's much higher than like a baby aspirin a day. That's about 8 to 10 grams per day. That's normally what would be used to treat inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. But even at that dosage, there weren't a whole lot of side effects. And for people who might be concerned about bleeding risks, using a little bit of vitamin K daily might suffice to negate that risk, though, I don't want you to misconstrue this as medical advice. But what they found was that the way that aspirin seems to be working is that it decreases the expression, what's called inos. Now you may have heard of nitric oxide before, and there's two different enzymes in the body that produce nitric oxide.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:40]: There's one called inos and that stands for inducible nitric oxide synthase. I think that's what the S stands for. Synthase inducible nitric oxide synthase. Now that's primarily involved in the inflammatory response. It's expressed in immune cells like macrophages during inflammation. And your immune system upregulates eNOS activity as part of the immune response. It's typically induced by some type of inflammatory stimuli like cytokines, endotoxins, food poisoning, anything like that. And eNOS does play a role in killing pathogens.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:17]: But when eNOS is upregulated, it can contribute to tissue damage and vascular dysfunction. So you don't want too much eNOS hanging around. Now the other form of nitric oxide synthase enzyme is eNOS endothelial nitric oxide synthase. Now this is primarily expressed in your vascular endothelium. eNOS produces nitric oxide that dilates your blood vessels. It's kind of like produces that Viagra for your whole body type of effect. It regulates blood pressure, obviously because it can can allow for vasodilation of vascular tissue. And it plays a role in a lot of really great vascular functions.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:57]: So it is linked to when it's dysfunctional, it's linked to several conditions like atherosclerosis and hypertension and diabetes. So painting with a broad brush, the ideal scenario is you get a little bit of upregulation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase, eNOS, and a little bit of downregulation of inducible nitric oxide synthase, inos. Now what this study found was that aspirin can basically decrease eNOS expression. And since elevated eNOS expression occurs with aging, that might be the mechanism of action of how aspirin is actually exhibiting this anti-aging activity again in rat models. But it's very, very interesting. Now there are a lot of different anti ag strategies out there. You know, statins, metformin, rapalogs like rapamycin, when it comes to using off label drugs for something like anti-aging. But it's interesting that aspirin ranks pretty high on the list.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:09]: Now one of the things that they looked at in another study on aspirin was oxidative stress. Oxidative stress. Now, what you can use to measure oxidative stress is what's called malondialdehyde. Malondialdehyde. You may have heard of the toxic byproduct of alcohol, acetaldehyde. Well, malondialdehyde is another aldehyde. It's a byproduct of lipid peroxidation. Right. Fatty acid damage.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:33]: And that's a process where free radicals can damage your cell membranes. When you measure MDA, malondialdehyde, that can be a marker of oxidative stress and indicate that you have chronic inflammation going on. Now, what they found was that in aging rodents, and, and this, this is another study that they did in addition to the one on rats that I mentioned earlier, they found that the MDA level was higher in aging in mice that were aging more rapidly. What they found was that aspirin decreased MDA levels and that it inhibited an increase in MDA blood levels that could be caused by very high levels of low density lipoprotein. In other words, they actually injected LDL into these rodent models and then showed that aspirin protected against potential endothelial damage caused by LDL in a state of inflammation or oxidation. Aspirin was also shown to reduce hydrogen peroxide induced oxidative stress. And you also see hydrogen peroxide as something that is another indicator of lipid peroxidation in the body.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:49]: And that decrease is probably due to the ability of aspirin to block the metabolism of arachidonic acid into prostaglandins that would lead to a decrease in reactive oxygen species. So we're talking about aspirin acting as a mechanism to decrease inducible nitric oxide synthase to decrease oxidative stress and to decrease the buildup of lipid peroxides. Now, 8 to 10 grams per day is a pretty high dose of aspirin. But when you look at the use of a little bit of aspirin, a lot of doctors will use like a baby aspirin. And I think there's around 80 to 90 milligrams in baby aspirin. Of 80 to 90 milligrams of aspirin, that is close to the 1 gram dosage that seems to be inducing the increase in lifespan. It's not quite the huge dosage that they used in some of these later studies. But when you look at the risk potentially of bleeding with the high dosages, again, I'm not saying that could be the case.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:54]: If you're on vitamin K, it might not be the case. I think you can make a pretty good case for a baby aspirin a day to actually have some pretty good protective effects in the human body against lipid peroxidation and inducible nitric oxide synthase and inflammation. And I'm actually thinking about starting onto a baby aspirin protocol just to see how I look, feel and perform when trying it. If you have looked into baby aspirin, if you use like a baby aspirin a day or anything like that, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Just go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/490 and pitch in there in the shownotes if you have your own thoughts on baby aspirin. If you're a doctor who has used used baby aspirin or some other form of willow bark extract with your patients, I would actually love to keep this conversation going, but it's on my radar and I will probably start at some point in the next couple of months just experimenting with how the body feels on a low dose of baby aspirin. So one other very interesting article that I read this week and this one is called How to Live the Rest of Your Life. How to Live the Rest of Your Life.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:59]: Now there was this guy, his name is Neil Postman. Neil Postman is a prolific writer. He's authored a bunch of different books and essays and articles. He's given a bunch of different speeches and he has a keynote that he gives or gave during the 90s. I think it was like the late 80s, early 90s. I actually don't even know if Neil Postman is still alive. I probably should have looked that up. But anyways, I think he's still alive because I believe he's still right writing.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:28]: I could be wrong though. I feel like an idiot that I don't actually know this. But I'm going to share with you a little bit about Neil Postman because he would give this talk and this article that I'll link to in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/490, summarizes one of Postman's talks entitled how to live the rest of your life. I'm not going to read the entire article to you, but there are a few little tidbits or snippets in that article that if you have no time and you're like, ben, I'm not going to visit the show notes. I'm not going to download this article. Just tell me What I need to know. Here's a few things that I thought was interesting and as I talk with you about this, think of this in the context of him talking to people about things that you should think about doing as you get older especially.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:14]: So, for example, one is do not watch TV news shows or read any tabloid newspapers. Now that's a little bit outdated because I don't know a lot of people who are watching TV news shows now. It's YouTube, Instagram, your social media feed, et cetera. Tabloid newspapers are probably replaced by maybe a Twitter feed, but basically limit or modulate the amount of time that you spend on those platforms. The way I think about it is be more of a creator than you are a consumer. Be more of a maker than you are a manager. Right? I. I like to ask myself at the end of the day whether I have produced and helped and created more content using my unique brain than I have just sat around digesting other people's content.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:03]: Don't get me wrong, you need a certain amount of input in order to have a certain amount of output. So you have ideas in your head, right? Even as I'm talking to you right now, obviously I'm talking to you from articles and journals and papers that I've read. And if I hadn't read those, I probably wouldn't have much to talk to you about and we'd just sit here awkwardly listening to dead air or staring each other in the face. But you do need to make sure that when it comes to consumption, you modulate it. I had a great interview. It might be released by the time this podcast comes out with Sahil Bloom, where we talked about how in the use of your professional time, yes, you should have some time for making phone calls and reactive work, replying to zooms and slacks and asana and whatever else, and you should have time for creation and new ideas. But he said a lot of people don't bake in time for consumption and I think that is important, whether it's, you know, reading journals or articles or papers relevant to your industry, maybe consuming podcasts or audiobooks, or watching videos or reading information related to your industry. But I think you do need to modulate the input and make sure you're not just becoming a content consuming zombie 247 versus actually turning around and doing something with that content, creating your own stuff, teaching others, et cetera, Etc.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:17]: So what else? What are a few other little pieces of advice that he says? Do not become a jogger if you are one, stop immediately. I love this. He says you cannot run your way to happiness. It's impossible to keep both your mind and your body in good repair. You must choose one or the other. Now, I disagree with him there. He also says the Greeks are wrong. Plato the wrestler was also the first fascist philosopher.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:40]: Forget trying to beat gravity. Develop your mind and let your body go. I disagree with him on all points except one. One, the part where he says, don't become a jogger, meaning I believe you can build your body and your mind simultaneously. I plan on my body and my brain being kept in as close to what I can achieve as Ferrari shape and also my spirit for as long as possible. However, I agree with him that jogging is one of the worst things for your joints, for your body. It's not a great way to get fit, and it's generally a waste of time compared to brisk walking combined with high intensity interval training and weightlifting. If you want more on that, listen to my podcast with Mark Sisson or read his book and.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:22]: Or read his book, Born to Walk. If you're married, stay married. I agree with that. It can be a real pain. Even though I've never had to experience this. I've been happily married for 23 years. It can be a real pain to bring on a new partner and learn that new partner. And I agree that in general, you derive a great deal of happiness from just not dealing with the drama of flipping and switching partners and serial relationships throughout your life.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:51]: One relationship is way simpler, and I think some young people wonder at the back of their heads. But don't you get tired of that person living with them, having sex with them, going on dates with them, you know, whatever? And no, you actually don't. There's something magical about being married where you actually, in my opinion, my experience, enjoy that person more and more as the years progress. And that's certainly how I would define my relationship with Jess is like, we have the best dates and the best sex and the best time with each other, even better than we had when we were first married or any point in our marriage. And I think it's just because we've gotten to know each other so well. We're kind of like one cohesive, happy unit. Do we fight occasionally? Sure. But we also just manage arguments so much more efficiently and they're behind us so much more quickly just because we've committed and decided to stay married as long as possible, hopefully forever.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:39]: Till one of us kicks the can. He says, establish as many regular routines as possible. And again, there's like 20 different tips in this article, I'm just going to go through a few of them. Establish as many routines as possible, as many regular routines, he says. In order to position yourself well to cope with constant change, you should establish as many predictable structures and routines as possible. I agree with this idea that energy management and momentum for the day day is not necessarily achieved by a time wasting, elaborate six hour morning routine, but some semblance of routine and ritual baked into what are the three things do you do before you fall asleep at night that you can depend upon whether you're traveling or at home to help you sleep better? Whatever. Put in foam earplugs, pull on a silk sleeping mask and put binaural beats on your phone. I suppose in this case number three should have come before number two because it's hard to dick around on your phone while you're wearing a sleep mask, but you get the idea.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:39]: Morning routine right? Drink giant glass of water, stretch for 15 minutes, sip a coffee while you're journaling or reading the Bible, and then have an exercise session and start it to your day. The routines don't have to be elaborate. I know in the biohacking industry we're known for all sorts of crazy jumping on a trampoline, wearing an oxygen mask under red light type of morning routines, but the idea of having rituals set up up. I mean my entire day is pretty ritualized from what I do in the morning to what I eat for breakfast, to what I do after breakfast, to how I started into a podcast in terms of the sequence in which I flip on the lights in the podcasting studio, to what app I open first when I log into my MacBook to start the day's work and what I have for lunch, when I brush my teeth and which toothbrush and which toothpaste that I use and when I take a quick siesta and what I listen to during that siesta and what I do before dinner and when I play my guitar and how I start my sleep sleep ritual. So yeah, I think that having routine just makes it reduces the cognitive confusion and decision making fatigue that can occur when you get to 11am and you're like what do I do now versus what do I always do at 11am? It just makes it easier and you want to allow for a little bit of flow and unpredictability in that equation, such as, I don't know, your neighbor needs their car jumped and it's during the time at 9:15am when you'd normally be doing your 15 minute red light therapy. You don't want to necessarily be an asshole or a poor neighbor or not be able to love other people because you're so tied and attached to your routine and ritual. But for the most part, I would say at least 80% of the time, sticking with the routine and the ritual is a really good idea and just makes life flow so much better. He says avoid multiple and simultaneous challenges in your personal life.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:31]: Try not to take on a new job and new spouse, back to remaining married, a new apartment, new clothes, et cetera. At the same time, change is tremendously stressful, so control the amount of newness you must face. He goes on to talk about the importance of tradition and holding onto old things, but I think that again, there's something to be said very similar to how there's something to be said for the power of compound investing and saving and investing in small amounts, even dollar cost averaging throughout life life consistently without stopping. The same can apply to many aspects of your daily life. Not only sticking with the same partner. day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, but sticking with an exercise routine consistently, day after day, and not changing from whatever 75 hard to kettlebell lifting to super slow training. Basically having consistency baked in. I've been in the same sector coming at this from a little bit more more 40,000 foot overview career standpoint I've been in the same sector since I was 14. People ask, well, how are you successful in the health and fitness industry and how did you make a name for yourself? For me, there was no lucky moment.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:43]: There was no overnight success. There was no sexy wounded healer story. I started coaching tennis when I was 14 and then I went on and studied exercise physiology and biomechanics. Then I was a personal trainer for seven years. Then I started to write fitness books and started a podcast and then I started coaching and all the time I was competing in fitness and health and this is just like all I've ever done and it has allowed me to just have a great deal of focus and become a so called at least slightly bastardized version of this term expert in the industry. Simply because I consistently come back day after day, week after week, week, month after month. I've done so for now almost 30 years. Right? I'm 43 years old and started when I was 14 and I think that there's something to be said for just sticking to your guns and understanding that, in most cases, wealth is not created overnight, but just by getting up every single day and, in many cases, doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:42]: And yeah, it does create a little bit of a slow rolling snowball effect after time and it seems like they things exponentially begin to improve. But yeah, I mean it's just sticking. I even had somebody commented to me the other day about how it must be nice for me to be able to have some. I was showing off. Oh, it was an ozone sauna in my garage. I have this Hocatt ozone sauna in my garage. I think it's like a $30,000 ozone sauna. And I have a lot of expensive pieces of equipment at my house.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:13]: The only two things I really spend much money on are like fitness and biohacking technologies and then my home and maybe restaurants, but clothing, cars, anything ostentatious. I'm really not into anything like that. But this person commented that this was just completely unrelatable and out of reach and for rich guys like me or whatever. And I'm not telling people that they have to get nose on sauna or they're never going to have a great life life. But I would say this. I had a solid decade of my life where I literally slept four to five hours a night. Moonlighting multiple jobs. At one point I was working six different jobs.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:54]: For a large part of that 10 years. I was usually going to sleep around midnight and getting up at 4am or 5am every single day, riding my bike eight miles to the gym, riding my bike back home, training, competing in Ironman and continuing to work these jobs. So you look at something like, I don't know, my Instagram profile or whatever, it might look like overnight success, but dude, I put in the time hardcore. And my wife and I basically ate like rice and beans for almost 15 years and tuna fish out of a can to get to where I am now. And so hard work. But more specifically related to this tip, hard consistent work and avoiding multiple and simultaneous changes in your personal life. I think that's good advice. What else does he say? Carefully limit the information input you allow.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:44]: Right. This is back to what I was talking about earlier. Too little information is dangerous, but so is too much. As a general rule, you do not need to take in any more information after 7 or 8 o' clock at night. I'm not going to kick that horse to death. But again, this guy, you know, this older person who's a wise individual giving out advice to younger people for as they get older, basically he once again says just be careful with your consumption of media in general. What else? There's a couple of others on here that I wanted to read to you. Here's a good one.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:18]: Confine yourself whenever possible to music written prior to 1850. This will be a calming and ordering influence. Influence in your life. Look, I'm not listening to music written prior to 1850, but I think that there is something to be said for introducing varieties of music that are written in a way that gives you background noise that is full of order combined with complexity, but the absence of chaos and screaming and stupid lyrics. So what I'm getting at here is that yes, I play classical music quite a bit. Typically it's classical or old country like Johnny Cash type of stuff or newer people that sound like Johnny Cash, like say Colter Wall. And I am pretty selective. I'll play pop music when I'm playing pickleball or ping pong with my kids or occasionally if I really need to pick me up at the gym.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:16]: But for the most part part, I listen to old sappy music and I feel like it just keeps my brain a little bit more stabilized during the day. He says, take religion more seriously than you have. Religion is one of the few social institutions that have continuity and addresses the most interesting issues available to an intelligent human mind. For example, science asks how, but religion asks why. Now, related to this, I want to recommend you a book, a book that's so good I'm actually in the middle of reading it twice and I rarely read books twice. I have one shelf in my office that says books to come back to and this is one of those books that went on that shelf. I've got about, gosh, there's about maybe 15 books on that shelf right now. I'm going to bend back, I'll read you a few others.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:58]: The Road Less Stupid Happiness by Randy Alcorn. Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday. And now this book, Believe by Ross Douthat. Believe by Ross Douthat. And the subtitle is why Everyone Should Be Religious. It goes into an explanation of why it's totally reasonable to believe in mystical and supernatural qualities in our universe. How modern science has made religion more credible, not less credible. How an open minded religious quest should proceed in our current culture amidst diversity of religious faiths and why Ross, the author of the book, has has chosen or been chosen depending on your beliefs, for Christianity is the religion that he has chosen.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:47]: It's almost like, I don't know if You've heard of C.S. Lewis before, but it's almost like a mere Christianity, like a modern mere Christianity. And even if you're not a Christian, you're just interested in whether or not you might benefit from being from going beyond spiritual, not religious. I think it's a fantastic book. And by the way, if you go to Amazon and search for, well, you know, I'll put it in the show notes. I have a list of like 25 other books that are books that I come back to that are my formative books in life. So I'll link to that one in the Show Notes, my Amazon list of my recommended books for a better life. And I'll put that in the show notes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/490. And then finally, let's go with this one for the last one.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:28]: Keep your opinions to a minimum. It's not necessary for you to have an opinion on every public issue. Although you may be entitled to have an opinion in, you probably are not qualified to have an opinion on most matters. Although middle class America seems to require an opinion on everything, you will find it liberating to say the phrase I don't know enough about it to form an opinion. This is, I think, my version of being willing to say I don't know. I think the era of AI and Grok and GPT has actually made it a lot easier to say I don't know. Like I find myself at least once a week now saying I don't know. You should ask Grok.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:05]: And yes, sometimes that's my lazy fallback because I just don't feel like researching and explaining. And somebody asked me about some kind of like a social media whitelisting ad campaign tip thing. I really didn't know the answer to it. I probably could have found out the answer to it, but I literally told them like I don't know. You should ask Grok about that and whether it is keeping your opinions to a minimum or being willing to say I don't know. I think that precedes a curious willingness to explore life and also to learn and to not be too rigid in your opinion of your own opinions. Basically, you should be willing to accept the fact that you might be wrong about something, be very open minded while still adhering to any formative truths that comprise your worldview that you're not willing to bend on. And then beyond that, just basically accept the fact that you don't know it all and it's okay to not have an opinion on a matter.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:14]: Now the way that I look at this is for me, I've got my formative foundation of ethical principles for life. Namely, it's basically the Bible, right? The Ten Commandments, which can be summarized really down into two main things: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And if I can do that, everything else is just the icing on the cake and I'm willing to have an open mind about just about anything else. I don't want to tell you how many times, even on this podcast I've gone from saying multiple small meals per day, keep your metabolism elevated to oh well, brand new research has shown I was freaking wrong and you don't need to eat six small meals a day and pack your yogurt and your protein bar and your apple and your carrot sticks on your way to work. Or I was convinced for a long time that carbs were the devil and now I eat a cyclic carbohydrate diet where I refeed with around 250 to 300 grams of carbohydrates each evening and I sleep better and I have better workouts. I was convinced for the longest time that running was a great way to get in shape and that a ton of cardio was going to just be the best way to stay fit for life. And now most of my cardio is walking. I lift weights and swing kettlebells and do some high intensity interval training.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:28]: So just basically keep an open mind and don't become so rigid in your beliefs. And I think about it this way too. It's hard to argue someone out of an opinion that their paycheck depends on them having. I think it's a slightly altered version of the way that original piece of advice goes, but you get the idea. Always question yourself. Do I think this is right just because it's going to make it harder for me to make money if I'm wrong? Or do I think this is right because I truly have real convictions about this being right and it's part of my foundational moral principles and beliefs. So I realize that my thoughts on Neil Postman's advice on how to live better kind of ventured outside of the whole fitness and biohacking categories. But heck, the title of this podcast is Boundless Life and we can explore things that go beyond just just the body and the brain.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:16]: So anyways, I'm gonna end there. If you have your own thoughts, comments, opinions, feedback. If you've been trying baby aspirin and you have a thought on that, go to the show notes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/490. Pipe into the conversation there. Thanks so much for listening in. Be sure to leave this podcast a review or ranking if it's helpful. If it's changed your life in any way. Check out my new [email protected] and have an incredible week Week all right, it's official. I'm coming to Melbourne, Australia.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:45]: I'll be there for a couple weeks, but as a part of this tour I will be hosting a fantastic public event One Epic Night at Luminaire in South Melbourne with the team from Saint Haven Private Club. Whether you're into health, performance, longevity, fitness or any other element of life optimization, I will teach you how to become better Boundless it's going to be an incredible evening. Here's what you need to know. It will be June 26, 6:30 to 8:30pm and there will be an option for a VIP experience with me that includes a meet and greet, and the book signing. You can get all the details and get your limited seat now at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Australia2025. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/Australia2025. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks and content to become the most complete boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:51]: In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:44]: And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.