Microplastics In Glass Bottles & Lead In Salt? Cardio Before Strength Or Strength Before Cardio? Creatine Causes Hair Loss? & More: Solosode #492

Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: In this episode of the Boundless Life podcast, microplastics in glass bottles and lead in salt. Cardio before strength or strength before cardio. Does creatine cause hair loss? 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. Well, howdy ho. It's just me today, no guests.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:37]: I just got back from an incredible trip to Australia down under. It was winter down there and colder than I expected, but a chance to do kind of a tour and a bunch of workshops and private VIP events for this beautiful series of clubs located in Melbourne, in Sydney called Saint Haven. So absolutely fantastic time down there. Feel like I have zero jet lag. You know, I did. I practice what I preach, believe it or not. I use a whole bunch of bright light in the morning sunlight if I can. Or those little glasses that produce bright light or the boxes that you put on your desk that make a bunch of light.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:15]: I get rid of as much light at night. I use a mega dose of melatonin for two to three days when I get to where I'm going for two to three days when I get back. I make sure I time my exercise in the morning. I. I don't skip meals, but I also don't eat meals outside of the time zone of the destination that I am traveling to. I make sure I do something that gets me cold at night, something that gets me hot in the morning. And man, by using food and movement and temperature and light like that, plus some melatonin, I get over jet lags super quick, like, knock on wood. But I feel great.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:48]: I got back like two days ago, slept eight hours on the plane there, eight and a half hours on the plane back. So international travel doesn't have to be as hard. Follow some of the rules if I went over for that all way too fast. My new book, Boundless has like three full pages in the sleep chapter. That's just jet lag protocols. But that being said, I'm not here to talk to you all day today about Australia and jet lag. I want to get into some things that have come across my radar lately in these kind of, how do I say it? Lightning round news flashes that I get into on the show. Everything that you hear.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:25]: By the way, if you want to dive in more, you can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/492 that is BenGreenfieldLife.com/492 so here we go. Let's start here. Not to be a Debbie Downer, but brand new study shows that glass bottles leak potentially 50 times more microplastics than plastic bottles. Now, several podcast episodes ago I said that old Tapo Chico study that freaked out a bunch of people a couple of years ago did indeed find microplastics in the Topo Chico water. But it was at such a low rate, like 9 parts per billion, that, yeah, it had like twice or whatever the microplastics of the other glass bottles. But it's still such a small amount that it doesn't even really matter. However, if you look at some of these newer studies on the toxicological data, data on whether or not the amount of microplastic particles in these glass bottled soft drinks and lemonade and iced tea and beer, particularly being five to 50 times higher than you find in plastic bottles and cans, it actually is a pretty high amount. It's something to be concerned about.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:42]: So basically what they were looking into here was whether or not the paint used on the caps in a lot of these popularly consumed beverages could leach into the liquid that you're drinking. And the microplastics match the shape and the color and the composition of the cap paint, the microplastics that they found in the liquid. So that suggests that some kind of friction during the storage of these glass containers causes microscopic scratches, and that releases microplastic particles into the beverages. It's almost like you're drinking microplastic paint if you're consuming a high amount of these packaged, popularly processed beers or lemonades or glass bottled drinks. So beer was the highest. There were 60 microplastic particles per liter in beer. Lemonade had 40 particles. A lot of other soft drinks had 30 particles per liter.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:43]: Water, whether it was flat or sparkling, had significantly fewer microplastics when packaged in glass bottles. And that might be that they're just not like painting the caps of water bottles as much. So that's good wine, which is, you know, like wine that is the, I guess I should say like the cheapo stuff that has the cap. That's not the case all the time. Sometimes there's good wine with caps, but if those caps are painted, wine can contain microplastics. But with wine, it appears to have very minimal wine microplastic contamination. Maybe that's because the way that wine bottles are handled is a little bit less rigorous than what you might see in, like soda or beer or canned or glass bottled lemonade. But it is concerning.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:29]: I mean, this kind of reinforces the general idea that, yeah, if you want to be as healthy as possible, maybe you shouldn't be drinking out of a lot of packaged products anyways. You know, when I travel, I use a big stainless steel bottle I want to call the Mobot, which doubles as a foam roller, which is great. I have also just like one of those, like, glass. I forget who even makes it, but it's like, just like a glass cylinder water bottle. I kind of bounce back and forth between the two and I fill that up with like filtered water at the airport. Or I'm a total cheapo and won't pay like 799 for a Fiji if I'm at a hotel. So I'll go to the hotel and gym and use my key card and go into the hotel gym like three times a day when I'm staying somewhere and just fill it up with the filtered water in the gym. Because most gyms at hotels surprisingly have pretty good reverse osmosis water filtration systems, or they bring in the filtered water.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:24]: So that's the way that I do it. I know this whole microplastic thing is super concerning. There's not a perfect answer. I mean, yes, you can literally pay out the wazoo or get a doctor's order and possibly have insurance cover what's called therapeutic apheresis. It's kind of expensive. That's like a blood filtration protocol. You could also get something like a therapeutic plasma exchange, which is still going to set you back several thousand dollars and that won't be covered by insurance. You could go to Tijuana, Mexico and use a super fancy blood filtration protocol.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:54]: That's probably the best. It's called the marker filtration. One company called Lumati out of San Diego is one that I know that, that oversees that protocol. And you could do that type of filtration. But let's face it, like, you know, I would guess that 90% of the people listening to my show are not going to because they've been drinking beer or lemonade for the past few years. You know, pop $25,000 and fly to Mexico to do blood filtration. You know, just. That's just not realistic for most people.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:20]: Right? So I think that what you can do is you can sweat. I mean, microplastics are about anywhere from 100 to 1000 Daltons in size. And sweat pores are like, they'll pass 100 Daltons or so through. So you might sweat 1/10 of microplast, you get exposed to out breathing. Breathing is a natural detoxification process. You might breathe a little bit out regularly, having bowel movements and consuming foods that allow you to do so. And yes, zero research behind this, but I still do that whole coffee enema thing about once a week. I swear by that, just to kind of clean you out.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:57]: And potentially, again, no research behind this may spark your own endogenous glutathione production and amp up detoxification capabilities. But moving, sweating, breathing, pooping, all of these things help. And blood filtration protocols will make the biggest dent. But again, that's not realistic for a lot of people. But what will help the most is to just limit your sources. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you a bunch of stuff you could google about what has microplastics, like receipts or bottles or plastic food containers. A lot of it's kind of common sense. But I think the biggest takeaway from this study is just open your refrigerator, walk into your pantry, and ask yourself, okay, so how much during the day am I drinking out of bottles and cans, especially beer and lemonade, which were two of the biggest.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:45]: And how much am I just like using my own bottle and filling it up from the sink with a good water filtration system? I mean, let me put it this way. Like, if you're thinking about spending $25,000 to go do blood filtration in Mexico, you could get like five incredible water filtration systems for $25,000 at like $5,000 a pop, and just put them in every house or office or whatever that you own or maybe just get one. But yeah, beer, soda, lemonade. I mean, for the most part, I don't think those are the healthiest things to be drinking on a regular basis anyways. And this just backs it up that we need to be careful. And hopefully some companies see the light and maybe consider whether or not they really need to, I don't say paint the caps of these type of containers. So it is a toxicological problem. It's a modern inconvenience.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:37]: I would not trade the era that I live in for pretty much any previous era as far as all the smartphones and technology and transportation and hygiene and all the beautiful aspects of living in this modern era. But yeah, we do have some inconveniences related to the industrial revolution that we gotta deal with on a daily basis. So just drink smart, drink natural as much as you can. And yeah, you'll still find me sucking down the occasional Diet Coke here and there. That's my cheat drink. I haven't even checked to see if they paint the caps on those. But yeah, I think that 90% of the times try to just drink out of your own cup or glass or stainless steel container if you can. All right, so this was an interesting one, something I'm asked about a lot.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:22]: Which burns more fat, doing strength before cardio or cardio before strength? Well, for the longest time, exercise science has definitely proved that if your number one goal is strength and muscle mass, just not doing much cardio at all, lifting heavy weights and eating adequate amounts of calories, especially adequate amounts of protein, is the way to go. But when it comes to fat loss, this is something that often puzzles a lot of people. Do I go in and lift weights and then do cardio if I'm going to do it all at once, or does it work better for me to go in and warm up with cardio and then do strength? Well, it turns out that they did a 12 week randomized control trial recently looking at this in obese young males. And I realized that there's a difference in very overweight or obese young males and let's say like trained lean females or I don't know, sedentary el elderly population. You can't necessarily extrapolate this to everyone. But it is interesting that there were pretty significant differences when it comes to which one was done first over these 12 weeks and which was more effective at reducing body fat percentage. So long story short, to cut straight to the chase, the best way to do things if your number one goal is body composition, is to go to the gym. Warmup, preferably some kind of a dynamic warmup.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:46]: So you're swinging your arms, swinging your legs, moving through full range of motion, not a lot of static stretching like yoga. That's not great for warmup. It's okay for cool down, but not for warmup. And then you move on and you do your strength training and for weight loss in particular, avoiding these body part splits where you're just doing biceps and triceps one day or legs another day, or let's say back and chest another day, and instead doing full body movement every time, full body, full range motion. What are called like multi joint or more complex movements. It's a very good way to go and then you do your cardio. So if you want a few more details about what exactly that they were doing here, the resistance training was just how I just described, progressive overload, multi joint movements, kind of full body training. Now the Endurance training.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:38]: Even though this kind of varies from study to study. When you hear the term endurance training, that's different than doing high intensity intensity interval training. Endurance training usually means steady state cardio for anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes. So in a study like this, think about this, you'd go into the gym, you'd warm up, you'd do maybe squats, deadlifts, bench press, row and leg press, and maybe a little bit of core work. And then you'd go like walk uphill on the treadmill for 30 minutes or ride the bike at zone two cardio for 45 minutes. That's the type of session that these people were doing. I think you could make a case, just based on what we know from exercise physiology about how high intensity interval training can simulate a lot of what you get from cardio, that you could probably save time by, let's say, doing strength and then finishing up your strength with, let's say 10 hard 20 second efforts followed by 40 seconds of rest and kind of compressing that long endurance training into a slightly shorter session. There are certain aspects of that that I'm sure people who really understand exercise science might be screaming about, like, hey, doing the strength training plus high intensity interval training, maybe that's too much cortisol.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:49]: And too much cortisol could potentially send a message to your body that is too stressed and it might begin to retain calories, downregulate metabolic rate, et cetera. That might be the case. It might be the case that you just simply have to put the time in, do the strength training, and then just go steady state cardio for 30 to 60 minutes afterwards if your number one goal is body composition. Now, I don't necessarily use this strategy a lot with the clients who I coach for fat loss simply because a lot of people don't have the time to do a full strength training session and then finish that up and do endurance training. But there are some workarounds. One workaround, for example, is if you live close to the gym that you're training at, you can literally brisk walk to the gym while you're doing your emails, your phone calls, you're listening to your morning Bible reading or spiritual, what have you. Whatever you do in the morning, strength train when you get there and then brisk walk back while you catch up on emails, phone calls, finish that podcast, get ready for work, et cetera. So that's kind of one option.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:51]: And if the gym's farther away and you have a safe way to do it, another option is bicycling. The or rowing, perhaps. If you live in a body of water that will take you straight to the front door of the gym, you have your little canoe. The other thing, I just crack myself up when I'm recording. I have nobody to joke with, so I got to joke with myself. The other way that you can do it is, and I do this a lot with people, is I'll have folks get up in a fasted state. Not a lot of research behind this, but the mechanism of action makes sense and it works for a lot of people. I'll have them have a cup of coffee or tea, which kind of gives you some caffeine or EGCG and some other components that will increase the metabolic rate.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:33]: Increased fat oxidation particularly. I will then encourage people to do some steady state cardio for 20 to 30 minutes, walk the dog, go for a swim, ride the rowing machine, walk on the treadmill, where you're going through your emails, whatever, and then finish with about two to five minutes of cold, like a cold shower or cold soak or one of these cold tubs. And the reason I like that is the caffeine accelerates the fat loss, Then you have the steady state cardio, then you have the cold, and it's easy for people. There's a mental component. Most people can kind of do that 365 days a year. You're telling me all I got to do is get up and have my morning cup of coffee, go for a walk, and then hop in the cold shower for a couple of minutes. And then later on in the day or later on in the morning, then I encourage people to do their strength training session. Now, that's way different than this research which says do strength training and then finish that up and just go like walk on the treadmill for a half hour or whatever.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:25]: But I call that the strike, stroll, shiver strategy, where you're striking with the caffeine and strolling with a walk or whatever and then shivering. And that's a strategy that I use. It seems to work out pretty well. Now I'm veering far away from the research. I don't want to wind up making claims that this is a scientifically backed protocol, but it works for me. I do this a lot and stay pretty lean. A lot of my clients do it and. And it works pretty well.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:50]: So. But the ultimate answer here is strength before cardio or cardio before strength or fat loss. It is strength before cardio. All right. Another thing I get asked about a lot, does creatine cause hair loss? Often, you know, there's this claim basically, that creatine, you know, this widely used ergogenic aid for muscle strength, for lean mass, that's now being used in higher doses for staving off the effects of sleep deprivation or improving cognition, all of which there's pretty good research behind, may cause hair loss because it increases something called dihydrotestosterone or dht. So creatine can increase dht. And up till this point, there was really no direct evidence examining the relationship between creatine supplementation and your hair follicle health. So in this case, what they did was they took 45 males who lifted weights, right? Typical group of people who would use creatine.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:47]: They aged 18 to 40 years old, and they randomly assigned them to a group that was taking 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per day, which is a typical dose of creatine, or 5 grams of a placebo per day. For the placebo, they used maltodextrin. So then they monitored their diets, they monitored their training routines. They collected blood samples of total testosterone and free testosterone and dht. And then they used something called a trichogram test and a photo finder system to look at hair density, follicular unit count, and cumulative hair thickness. This is like a visual imaging system to look at whether or not you are losing hair or gaining hair. So long story short is what they found was the total testosterone increased and the free testosterone decreased over time, but that was relatively insignificant and independent of supplementation. And that's not something that's uncommon when you'd think that if people lifted weights that they would see an increase in total and free testosterone.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:53]: But sometimes the stress of starting a new exercise routine can not inhibit your ability to make testosterone, but can cause an increase in what's called sex hormone binding globulin, which can bind up a little bit of that testosterone. But this was insignificant. And what was also interesting was there was no significant differences in DHT levels. That's the one that might cause hair loss in DHT to testosterone ratios or, and this is important, any elements of hair growth parameters, right? So creatine didn't cause you to gain hair or improve follicular health. It didn't cause hair loss. No effect whatsoever. I take a lot of creatine. I took five grams.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:37]: I've probably taken five grams of creatine for. And I realize I'm an N equals one case study, I've taken 5 grams of creatine a day since I was probably 17 years old. I take almost 20 grams a day now. I'm also on testosterone replacement therapy for the past three and a half years. And I have a nice full head of hair. I also do derma rolling. I use a red light helmet thing for my hair. I do a lot of scalp massage when I'm in the shower.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:08]: I'm very cognitive of blood flow to the head and also using red light therapy and a little bit of derma rolling here and there. So maybe that helps out a little bit. But I don't necessarily think that you have to say that if you're using creatine or even if you're on testosterone, that that's going to create so much DHT that you that you're going to cause hair loss. And this study definitely shows that's not the case for creatine. So another myth busted. A, the myth that glass bottles don't contain any microplastics, and B, the myth that creatine could cause hair loss. All right, so I know a lot of people, including myself, are interested in low back pain. I technically, both I and my wife, based on MRI and X ray analysis, have degeneration of the spine.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:51]: For her and I, it's L4, L5. She also has cervical spine issues. My wife and I also do a ton of bridging, planking, both front planking and side planking, bird dog exercises and yoga, her actual yoga. Me like the bastardized version of yoga that I do in the infrared sauna a few times a week. Neither of us deal with much back pain. She gets a little bit of sciatica, particularly before her periods, you know, when, when the hips get a little bit tight and that can affect nerve pain a bit. But neither of us, because of our rigorous attempts at strengthening our core and kind of stabilizing, creating our own belt to support the spine and also just the large amount of stretching and mobility work that we do, struggle much with back pain, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that we have severe degeneration. She was a distance runner, I was a triathlete, hunched over on the bike a lot.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:49]: We both did sports that did a number on our backs. We take care of our backs. But a lot of people want to know what works. And is there evidence in terms of what actually works in terms of an exercise exercise intervention for low back pain, or is this just like what works for Ben and Jessa? So this study was published just a couple of months ago in a journal of musculoskeletal disorders, and they looked at six different exercise therapies for treating low back pain. One was Pilates, which is this low impact exercise method that has core strength and posture and flexibility and these weird machines called reformers that I would not know how to use if I had to save my life. I have never been on one. It's shocking. I've worked in the fitness industry for well over 20 years and I've never ever taken a Pilates class with a reformer.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:38]: I've taken Pilates, like mat based Pilates, but never equipment based Pilates. However, it does target the deep stabilizing muscles of the spine and the pelvis, and it's often championed as something for low back pain. They looked at Tai Chi, which is that mind body exercise that you see not to stereotype old Asian people doing in the park. It has an origin in Chinese martial arts. These slow flowing movements and typically deep breathing for balance and flexibility and muscle strength. Also used for low back pain. Sometimes core stabilization exercises. This would be like what I was just describing.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:11]: Planks, bridges, bird dog exercises where you're reaching forward with your right arm, left leg, left arm, right leg. Some of the exercises made very popular by a guy who I respect in the low back pain industry, Stu McGill. Dr. Stu McGill. I think he's at McMaster University, which I believe is in Canada. The McKenzie exercise, which is a special method that involves specific directional movements like extension and flexion exercises to restore pain or to reduce pain rather, and to restore function. So this would be like doing like a bunch of superman exercises or low back extensions for disc related pain. It's kind of based upon the idea that some back pain can be psychosomatic.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:55]: So if you move through a range of motion that's pain free, you might be able to reduce some of your low back pain that you might experience during daily activity. And then aerobic exercise, walking, cycling, swimming. And sometimes that's done not only to improve blood flow to the spine, but also to decompress and deload the spine with those movements. So the question, oh, and then yoga, and then yoga, of course, yoga, breathing, you know, sometimes meditation, flexibility, down dog, chaturanga, cobra warrior, warrior warrior, yada, yada yada. So what won out? Well, they looked at all six of them and all six of them were effective in alleviating low back pain. All six of them had significant results in relieving low back pain. But there was a clear winner, a clear most effective intervention between pilates, Tai chi, core stabilization exercises, McKenzie exercises, aerobic exercises, and yoga. And the clear winner was, was yoga.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:52]: So, you know, I think you could also say that yoga includes some elements of many of these other movements. Like, you're moving through a range of motion that's typically pain free. You're doing some deep core stabilization like you might in Pilates. You're doing some breathing like you might do in Tai Chi. Sometimes you're planking like you might in core stabilization exercises. And some of it can even be aerobic, especially if you're like me and you do in the heaty hot sauna. So there you have it. Yoga wins out.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:18]: So if you had to put all the bang for your buck into one thing for low back pain, looks like yoga is the way to go. All right, next up, I lied and lie. I was misled, like a lot of people were. And I tweeted about this and I later had to follow up with a series of clarifying tweets about this. And this concerned a lot of people because I have said, first of all, that I am a big fan of salt. Like, not sodium chloride, like what you'd find in table salt at the average restaurant, or what you'd find in high amounts of processed or ultra processed foods. I think isolated sodium chloride in high amounts is acidic. It's bad for blood pressure.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:59]: It causes a lot of the health issues that we associate with salt. But there are other forms of salt, like full spectrum salt with all the minerals that paradoxically have a great deal of research behind them for being good for blood pressure and for cardiovascular health and for even things like recovery from exercise and performance. If you want to learn more about this, read this book called the Salt Fix by Dr. James D. Nicolantonio. Fantastic kind of treatise on all things salt. I've interviewed him as well. I'll put a link to the interview in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/ 492 and I've said, if you want to find one of these really good salts and you don't have time to go shop online or whatever, most grocery stores have one that's pretty good.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:48]: Like low in toxins and metals, lead, arsenic, plastics, et cetera, and high in minerals. And it's this little bluish bag called Celtic Salt. Celtic salt. So whenever I've been unable to find a good salt, I've kind of just gone and grabbed some Celtic salt. Then lo and behold, two weeks ago, my heart drops based on this headline Class action lawsuit Claims Naturally, claims, Selina Naturally. That's the company that makes the Celtic Celtic sea salt. Selina Naturally Celtic sea salt contains significant levels of lead and arsenic.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:20]: According to a 33 page complaint, Laboratory testing has shown that fine ground Celtic sea salt and light gray Celtic sea salt contain significant levels of lead and arsenic, both of which have been linked to a host of adverse health effects. So a lawsuit occurred against Celtic Salt based on the fact that lab results revealed that their salt had 0.69 micrograms of lead per serving, which exceeds the maximum allowable daily dose of 0.5 micrograms established under California regulations. They also tested for 140 parts per billion of arsenic. The U.S. environmental Protection Agency claims that consuming arsenic at levels above 10 parts per billion may increase the risk of long term or chronic health problems. And so I tweeted out, well, I guess I can't recommend Celtic salt anymore. I don't think that's exactly what I said, but I basically said, hey folks, be careful with Celtic salt. Well, it turns out there's a little bit more to the story than that.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:22]: So the lawsuit that was circulating here was not about unsafe product. It was a false advertising claim filed in California. Celtic was not sued for having high lead content. That case was resolved. They weren't asked to change anything about their product or packaging by any court or regulatory body. Turns out that their lead content and I'll put a post, I'll put a link in the show notes to this post. This graphic. If you compare Celtic sea salt and then you look at the lead content and their lead content of 0.68 micrograms.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:54]: Shrimp is 0.69, spinach is 0.70, chocolate cake is 0.71, carrots are 0.80, grape juice is 1.06. Sweet potatoes are 1.68. Red wine is 1.91. So now we're getting up to more than double the amount of lead in red wine, sweet potatoes and baby foods, 2.94, water 3.56 and white wine, 4.68. Meaning you are getting way more lead from your average diet than you'd ever get in heaps of Celtic salt. And it turns out that Celtic salt, I reached out to them, they told me they test every single lot. Trace metals have always been present in the clay that generates the nutrients that that product is known for. And the trace amounts of lead, like I just said, are naturally occurring, just like what's found in vegetables and shrimp and wine and sweet potatoes.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:44]: It's not industrial contamination. The lead is present in really low amounts, is often bound in mineral forms. All naturally occurring salts have trace amounts of heavy metals, including lead. The lead at 0.68 micrograms per serving is, again, less than many whole foods and way below the 1000 parts per billion. That actually seems to be an issue unless you go to the state of California, which is crazy in terms of what they actually recommend based on what's called CA Prop 65. So the traceable amount in this salt is often undetectable, but for the few detectable loss, the average was 110 parts per billion, which is like 20% of what's actually allowed in California. Prop 65. And it's organic arsenic.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:29]: That's a technical term, which means it's different from inorganic arsenic and considered to be safe. So the long story short here is, as I've said on the podcast before, sometimes the headlines don't tell you everything. Yeah, and it's kind of like the Topo Chico story. Okay, yeah, Topo Chico has 9 parts per billion of microplastic. But that's such a low level. You probably have more in, like, your home tap water that you don't have to worry about it at all. But it really makes for juicy headlines to say, hey, Celtic salt has high amounts of lead and arsenic. Well, yes, it has lead and arsenic, but most of it is natural and most of it is at an amount, or all of it is at an amount that you don't even need to care about.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:08]: I'm going to keep using Celtic salt. I love it. I love the flavor. I like that I can get it anywhere. Like, if I'm traveling and I don't have access to good salt, I can just drop into a grocery store and get it. Or on Amazon, it can be at my doorstep or in my Airbnb or hotel the next day. So don't believe everything you read. This was not paid for by Celtic salt.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:28]: I just. I'm not going to stop using it. So there's a story on Celtic salt. And then finally, last big news flash of the day. I don't know if any of you like to snort white powder, but here's the other white powder that you can apparently snort. I have not done this one yet. I would love for someone to shoot a video of them doing this. I thought about bringing some creatine in here for the podcast and trying it out, but didn't make it happen.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:55]: I would love to see this happen, though. Intranasal creatine administration improves Barnes maze performance in rats. Okay, what the heck does that mean? So Barnes maze performance is simply a way to test performance of cognitive performance in rats. Okay, so skeletal muscle creatine levels in your body can be enhanced by exogenous by oral creatine supplementation. But brain creatine levels, sometimes getting a whole bunch into the brain could still be a challenge due to not that great of an effective transportation method of creatine through the blood brain barrier, hence intranasal administration, which can bypass the blood brain barrier and deliver drugs directly to the brain. So in this study, they wanted to look at the effect of intranasal administration of, you guessed it, creatine on brain creatine level and cognitive performance. And they had rats take creatine orally and they had a control group that didn't get creatine at all. And then they had a group that, yes, snorted creatine.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:00]: I don't know how you intranasally administer creatine in rats. I know if I had a razor blade and rolled up a piece of paper or glass table or anything else, I could probably figure out how to snort creatine. Pretty sure I could pull that off. And it turns out that intranasal administration of creatine increased the creatine levels in the rats brains and improved their performance. In this maize trial, they used creatine hydrochloride in the test, not creatine monohydrate. But the two are pretty molecularly similar. And I think it'd be okay to try it with creatine monohydrate again. I haven't tried it yet.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:34]: I don't even know how much it burns. If it does burn, I could see a whole bunch of bodybuilders pulling this off now. You know, you got your little canister of smelling salts and you got your canister of creatine. But if anybody decides to snort this stuff, I would love to hear your report. I read all the comments in the show notes whenever I record these episodes. So snort creatine and let me know how it goes for you. I mean, if you wind up, I don't know, blowing bloody chunks of brain matter out of your nose. There's your answer.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:01]: Maybe humans are not just giant rats, but the mechanism of action makes sense to me. I'm just saying I would snort creatine now before I drink lemonade out of a painted calf bottle. But anyways, let me know if you try it. BenGreenfieldLife.com fly 492 and leave your results there. I'll let you know if I try to. Maybe I'll shoot a video of me trying to pull this off. All right, folks, that's all I got for you. So again, the Notes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/ 492 if you like these rapid fire lightning fast news flashes, let me know.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:32]: I dig just jumping in and replying to your questions here and there and letting you know my thoughts on the latest research. So I hope this has been helpful. Until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield signing out from the Boundless Life Podcast. Have an incredible week to discover even more tips, tricks, hacks and content to become the most complete boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

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