October 26, 2016
[0:00] Introduction
[4:33] News Flashes/Zevia
[7:07] Rosemary
[10:19] 12 Futuristic Products That Might Change Your Life
[13:49] Glycerol
[16:53] Ibuprofen
[19:16] Special Announcements/ Tough Mudder
[21:32] The Biohacker Summit in Helsinki, Finland
[22:11] Weston A. Price Conference
[25:34] Kimera Koffee
[26:51] Nuts.com
[30:27] Onnit MCT Oil Toothpaste
[32:20] Listener Q&A/ Best Way To Purify Your Water
[48:13] Natural Fixes for Adult ADD and Autism
[1:02:01] Diatomaceous Earth
[1:12:42] Fighting Food Cravings
[1:30:01] iTunes Review
[1:33:42] End of Podcast
Introduction: In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show: 12 Futuristic Inventions That Could Save Your Life, The Best Way To Purify Water, How To Fight Food Cravings, Natural Fixes For Adult ADD And Autism, How Diatomaceous Earth Works, and much more.
He’s an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America’s top personal trainer and one of the globe’s most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. “Power, speed, mobility, balance – whatever it is for you that’s the natural movement, get out there! When you look at all the studies done… studies that have shown the greatest efficacy…” All the information you need in one place, right here, right now, on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.
Ben: Rachel, word on the street is that you're leaving us.
Rachel: Yeah. I am. Just for 10 days though. I'm not going too far away.
Ben: For some strange fringe Buddhist — I don't know. What exactly are you doing?
Rachel: I am doing a Vipassana Meditation, which is a 10 day silent retreat where you can't talk to anyone, you can't have any technology, you're not allowed to write, you're not even to do yoga. Ten days, you meditate like an hour, three times a day, and you spend the rest of the time walking around.
Ben: You don't talk to anybody?
Rachel: No. I think you've got about half an hour a day just to debrief because I imagine you just go absolutely crazy in your mind. I've never done anything like this before. So a half an hour a day, the only time you can talk.
Ben: But isn't that the idea? That you wanna go crazy in your mind and have some kind of an amazing breakthrough?
Rachel: Exactly. Hopefully.
Ben: Now, who is making sure that you don't talk to someone else? Like are there actual little mustached Vipassana to police there wandering around in big knee-high boots ready to kick you out if you speak a word?
Rachel: Like a Vipassana totalitarian regime? No, I don't think so.
Ben: Kinda like Vipassana…
Rachel: Right. I don't think so. No. You share a room with someone, and I think everyone's just under the impression that no one's allowed talk to each other, but I'm thinking like how crazy is it gonna be when I wake up in the morning and I'm staring at somebody else but we can't talk to each other? Like all I'm gonna do is just like look at people. So it's gonna be strange, but super exciting. Can't wait to have a massive meltdown.
Ben: Yeah. Well, you might learn some kind of alternative communication technique to get along with others — like a blinking. Quick story before we delve into today's news flashes is I had a friend who went to a Vipassana meditation retreat, and he was telling me how he started to discover very weird things about his body 'cause he was sitting there for so long just with nothing to do that he was like discovering — the way that he described it was like little valves that he could activate in the back of his head that could move spinal fluid in and out of his brain.
And he was learning how to like consciously squeeze, and open, and contract these areas in like the occipital lobe, like traveling up near the C1 and C2 vertebrae in the back of his head. And he's describing this to me, I'm like, “You know what? If I was sitting silent for 10 days, I would probably begin to experiment with or find things about my body I didn't realize before.” For me though in particular, what comes to mind is the Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live Yoga episode.
Rachel: I haven't seen it! What does he do? Oh no.
Ben: You'll have to Google it.
Rachel: Okay.
Ben: It's not kid-friendly, and I know some people are probably driving their kids in their mini vans to school listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. I'm just saying if you wanted to, you could go Google Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live Yoga.
Rachel: I will. Your friend sounds like an overachiever because I'm just hoping that I'm not gonna have a massive meltdown and cry for 10 days straight.
Ben: He's also someone who's very into the use of plant-based medicine during things like this. So, who knows? He may have been, shall we say, trippin'.
News Flashes:
Ben: (slurping sound) Ahh! You know what that is that I'm sippin' on here, Rachel?
Rachel: What're you sipping on, Ben?
Ben: Eight boxes of this showed up at my house yesterday. I have no clue who sent 'em or anything, but I'm guessing it was probably Zevia 'cause we did a podcast with Zevia a while back where we talked about like healthy soda. Anyways, like oodles and oodles of Zevia Sparkling Water. I didn't know they made sparkling water. Showed up at my house a few days ago.
Rachel: Yum!
Ben: So I'm drinking mandarin orange sparkling water. It's got a gluten-free label, it's gluten free. It's vegan, that's good. It's probably organic. It's got carbonated water and stevia in it.
Rachel: That sounds delicious…
Ben: Actually, you know what's really delicious is that I — Jessa makes elderberry wine. We have an old elderberry tree on the edge of our property, and she harvested a bunch of elderberries and just makes this super potent pucker factor, extremely, almost like medicinal tasting elderberry wine, and elderberry's good for you. It's actually really good for white blood cell production and it's one of those things that I recommend to people as an immune booster doing like cold and flu season. But this stuff packs a frigging punch in terms of, I'm guessing, alcohol content.
Rachel: Oh, really? How long did it take her to make?
Ben: I think it was fermenting, so to speak, for almost a year.
Rachel: Oh, wow.
Ben: And so it's in a bunch of like old beer bottles now in our fridge in the cellar. But I do half elderberry, and this is at least what I did last night, it's my new drink invention, and then half Zevia Sparkling Water. I use mandarin orange flavor, and I poured that over ice, and it's actually pretty good.
Rachel: You made a fancy drink.
Ben: I did.
Rachel: Is it called the Greenfield?
Ben: I don't know what it's called yet. It's called the “pep-yourself-up-with-healthy-stuff drink” 'cause the carbonated water drives the alcohol into your system.
Rachel: Oh!
Ben: Yeah. I don't know if you knew that.
Rachel: Double whammy. I did not.
Ben: Yeah. It's a little trick. You can drop an effervescent electrolyte tablet in there too if you want to even further magnify the effects, and make yourself feel healthier because at least you're getting minerals as you kick your liver with elderberry. But speaking of strange things you can put into your body — and no, that's not a segue into a discussion about enemas…
Rachel: Yet.
Ben: Which it seems that phrase often segues into, there is an interesting article I wanted to talk about first for today's news flashes and it appeared in The New York Times, and it's an anti-aging article. I love anti-aging articles. I love 'em more the older I get, probably because I just wanna figure out how to be like these bad ass old guys who are living on the island of Krakows farming and you know walking…
Rachel: And still having tons of sex with their lovers.
Ben: Yeah. That's actually what this article gets into is this area called Acerola, Italy in which they have — this is considered one of those blue zones in which there's an extremely high number of what they call centenarians. And this article goes into a couple of things that I actually hadn't heard of before. For example, they found that there was one specific component that these people in Italy use crazy high amounts of, and this particular compound has been shown to aid in brain function. And these people have especially high concentrations of many of like the polyphenols, and the flavonols, and the terpenes, and the type of stuff that comes out of this herb in their system. And you know what it is?
Rachel: What?
Ben: Rosemary.
Rachel: Oh, wow! Did not expect that one.
Ben: They're eating boatloads of rosemary, which is very interesting because it actually is one of those things that protects you against like the carcinogenic effect of red meat, which is why Rosemary is recommended so much as a marinade or a rub. So rosemary consumption, very, very high amount of rosemary consumption was one defining characteristic. They also, you hinted at this, Rachael, the way that they describe it is they say these older adults demonstrate a robust sexual appetite. At 95, they have brains more like someone who is fifty. And at 50, you're still thinking a lot about sex.
Rachel: That's brilliant. There's nothing more I want for my life than to be 90 years old and still have a robust sexual appetite.
Ben: Yeah. It's really interesting because they have these very high levels of what's called adrenal medulin in their systems, which is a hormone that widens your blood vessels that allows for really, really good what's called microcirculation. And these people, it's almost like they have everything necessary for, or everything that would be produced like if you took a bunch of viagra, except for some reason they have this combination of extremely good circulation, high amount of rosemary intake, and lots of sex. They actually say the anthropologist who contributed to the article says that the sexual activity is “huge”.
Rachel: (laughs) I love the line above that where it says “he reported and attempted seduction by a woman pumping water”.
Ben: So the women are wandering around, seducing the old men. It sounds like a fantastic wonderful place to live. Plus it's Italy, so you can't go wrong.
Rachel: Great food, great wine.
Ben: So, check out the article. We'll link to it. Just go to the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/361. Here's another interesting one: “12 Futuristic Products That Might Change Your Life”. This one kinda of turned my head because one of the things listed in this article is something that I wear every day, which is my fancy self-quantification ring. The OURA Ring actually appears. It's a ring that that has like a built-in pulse oximeter, and built-in heart rate variability, sleep activity monitoring. Spits out a little message to you at the beginning of the day about what your readiness score is. But there's some other interesting products on here too. Did you get a chance to look at this one, Rachel?
Rachel: I did, like the chair made from old jeans, which I had to question whether that was really gonna to change my life. That's still a really interesting concept.
Ben: Some of these are pretty questionable about whether they'll actually change your life, but there are a few that are pretty interesting. For example, the instant washing machine. You simply drop this $150 cost pebble shaped nugget and some detergent into a sink, and via ultrasonic waves, it turns the sink into a washing machine. I could see that being quite handy for travel, for example.
Rachel: Right? Very handy. And not to have a couple of thousand Dollar washing machine.
Ben: Yeah. ‘Cause currently when I travel, my trick is I shower with my clothing, and then I spread one towel on the floor of the bathroom, take the wet clothing out, put the other towel on top of the wet clothing, and jump up and down on the clothing.
Rachel: (laughs) Is that true?
Ben: Yeah. I learned this from a cyclist who does a lot of traveling. Just needs to wash his spandex every night. Here's another one: the Naked 3D Fitness Tracker. It's a $499 product that consists of a mirror and a rotating scale that captures a 3D scan of your body, and then that data gets delivered to an app so you can track how your body is changing over time.
Rachel: That's brilliant.
Ben: I think that's kinda interesting for people who are orthorexic or obsessed with their, I guess the 3D shape of their body.
Rachel: What about the Dirty Air Soothsayer?
Ben: I didn't see this. What was this one?
Rachel: It monitors a room's temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, dust, and other unpleasant things, and it gives you an air quality rate. That's pretty cool.
Ben: Yeah. That's interesting.
Rachel: You seem way less enthused about that one, Ben.
Ben: Well, it seems like something that exists already. Doesn't it? ‘Cause I know Withings, for example, the company Withings makes a body fat measuring scale that also measures the humidity, and carbon dioxide, and temperature in the room that you're in so you can monitor not just your environment's health, but also how that might be affecting your propensity to have a muffin top.
Rachel: Withings is way better.
Ben: In case that's a correlation you wanna track. And then the final one I wanted to mention was the crapper composting toilet, a glamping toilet. And this is for $625. Only that. You can have for yourself a low tech, eco-friendly composting toilet that is waterless, odorless, and reduces waste volume.
Rachel: I feel like that's a game-changer. Although I'm not going to take that camping with me, but if I was going to a glamping place and they had a composting toilet like that, I'd be super stocked.
Ben: You don't have to be a glamper. It's a toilet that helps the world. You can just feel good about yourself as you're crapping. I mean that's great.
Rachel: I already feel good about myself when I'm crapping. (laughs)
Ben: (laughs) I do too. Alright, so check out that article in The New York Times. Now here's another interesting one. Glycerol. Glycerol is something that I actually used to use before it got banned by the World Anti-Doping Association first couple of years that I raced triathlon for management of heat. Specifically for what's called a hyper-hydration effect where you trick your body into maintaining a higher amount of plasma volume than it would normally or increasing body water before exercise, which is actually one way to keep your blood volume elevated, to keep yourself very cool especially during hot weather exercise, to increase blood volume, for example, during altitude performance. So glycerol, this compound that a lot of sports supplement companies used to sell, it got banned, it got prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Association, I wanna say back in 2008, something like that.
But they just did a study in The Journal of Strength Conditioning research in which they compared what are called sodium chloride tablets, sodium chloride tablets, which I should mention, and I'll link to this in the show notes, can be had for as little as 12 bucks a bottle on Amazon. These actually, it caused a hyper-hydration that rivaled what this banned glycerol substance would cause when it comes to increasing your ability to retain water prior to athletic performance. Of course, biggest takeaway here is that this stuff is not prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Association. It's not illegal, it's not doping, it's not blood doping. It's a completely acceptable substance. Sodium chloride tablets.
So if you're competing in hot weather, if you, I suppose are doing a whole bunch of hot yoga and you wanna hydrate yourself really well, if you are competing at elevation, et cetera, you should check out these little sodium chloride induced tablets. The dosage that they used in this study, just in case anyone is interested, is each of the participants consumed seven 1 gram tablets of sodium chloride with nearly a liter of water. So not only do you take a lot of sodium chloride, but you take a lot of water, and you retain a lot more water in a hyper-hydrating effect.
Rachel: And for $12 a bottle, that's an awesome little hack.
Ben: Yeah. Not bad. And considering it's legal, at least for now…
Rachel: Do you think that'll find a way to make that illegal?
Ben: Oh, yeah. Eventually. Just like the stuff that I use for extremely accelerated healing, this BPC-157 that you can inject into any joint subcutaneously around any area of injury, just a peptide that you can get from — I've got an article over at Ben Greenfield Fitness called “How To Use BPC-157”. It should be illegal. I mean your body heals so much faster when you use it that it should be illegal, but it's just not. It just that every single other peptide is banned by the World Anti-Doping Association, except this one.
Rachel: Wow.
Ben: There you go. One other thing that I wanted to mention, speaking of banned substances, something that I think should be banned: ibuprofen. I've talked before about how it causes everything from leaky gut syndrome to liver toxicity, and that especially occurs during exercise, and it especially, especially occurs during exercise in hot weather. Well, they have just finished another study on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, and they found that it contributes heavily to the risk of heart failure. Literally, it can cause a myocardial cell death when you are consuming ibuprofen. So yet another nail in the coffin of these COX-2 inhibitors that I'm not a huge fan of. I'm a much, much bigger fan of turmeric, and cuminoids, and all these other ways that we can shut down things like joint pain, for example.
Rachel: Yeah. That's just so crazy. (laughs)
Ben: Yeah. What's crazy is the number of people who are popping ibuprofen during exercise to allow them to be able to push through who don't realize how it's not only affecting the liver, and the gut health, and stomach lining, but now we know also the heart. So not only do I recommend that you check out this article if you're still on ibuprofen or you send it to somebody who is on ibuprofen if it's something that they're taking, that or Advil, or whatever, but I mean look into natural alternatives and take care of your heart.
I just had a fantastic interview that I'll be releasing, I believe next week, with a guy who wrote about why heart attacks really occur, how heart attacks actually aren't related to things like plaque buildup per se, and he's got a really interesting take on heart health. I'd definitely tune in to that one. It's an upcoming interview. But in the meantime, go check out this article on ibuprofen. And while you're at it, check out the 12 futuristic products that might change your life, better sex and the fountain of youth with rosemary, sodium chloride tablets, and a whole lot more. Right, Rachel?
Rachel: Yes. And you can get those by following Ben on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.
Ben: That's right. And we'll put links to all that stuff 'cause we're constantly pushing things out that you don't get anywhere else.
Special Announcements:
Ben: I'm stoked, Rachel. You know why?
Rachel: You're stoked, why?
Ben: Because this weekend is our big party in Vegas.
Rachel: It's a big party!
Ben: The Big Ben Greenfield Fitness party in Vegas.
Rachel: Yeah! You're doing a big meet-up, huh?
Ben: A big meet-up. So for those of you listening in, if you happen to be near Vegas this weekend, this would be October 29th, Saturday night, we're doing a Tough Mudder. So a whole bunch of Ben Greenfield Fitness fans, we're gonna get together and race the Tough Mudder on Saturday morning. So if you haven't registered for the Tough Mudder and never done one, go get in on that. But then, whether or not you're a Tough Mudder, maybe you're just, I don't know, a yogi or somebody who doesn't wanna go run around in the hills, jumping over giant clowns and getting electrocuted, you can meet up at this Tides Seafood and Sushi Bar Saturday night, 7 PM in Vegas. We'll put a link in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/361. But I'd recommend, if you're near Vegas, to come hang out. I suspects we'll be eating plenty of sushi drenched in — have you ever put MCT oil on sushi?
Rachel: On sushi? I haven't. No.
Ben: It's a flavor enhancer. It's amazing.
Rachel: Is it? Really?
Ben: Yeah. I took my boys to sushi over the weekend and we went there with a bottle of MCT oil as we do. I actually learned this trick from the MCT oil nerd himself, Dave Asprey. The first time I went out to be with him was at a sushi restaurant, and he pulled out a big bottle of MCT oil and started drenching the sushi. I thought it was some special way to get into ketosis, but…
Rachel: He just likes the taste. Lo and behold.
Ben: It's an actual flavor enhancer. It enhances the flavor of anything you put — I'll put it on like a tomatillo with a little bit of sea salt, and it's amazing. Fantastic.
Rachel: And here it is, the other cool thing about the meet up is that you can ask Ben directly any question you want instead of having to call it into the podcast and waiting for us to answer it. Ta-da!
Ben: Yeah. I don't recommend asking me too many detailed questions about like your grandma's strange nodule when I'm drinking sake. That can get dangerous. Anyways though, so a few other things that are upcoming. The Biohacker Summit in Helsinki, Finland, November 17th and 18th. We get a 40% discount on that. It is one of the best conferences, in my opinion, on the face of the planet, and there's still time to grab yourself a plane ticket to Helsinki. This thing is an amazing conference. We've got a science chemistry, kitchen chemistry, gene therapy, bionic arms, robotic assistance, virtual reality. Like it's just the most fun conference, and they've got an amazing closing party with some seriously talented DJs. Just the whole thing, start to finish, is amazing. So we'll put a link to that.
Rachel: In the show notes, yeah.
Ben: Just prior to that, in case you feel like staying in the States if you're already here, Alabama, I believe it's Alabama. Might be Georgia. I dunno. One of those Southern States.
Rachel: Montgomery, Alabama.
Ben: Montgomery? What is that? The Peach State?
Rachel: I don't know. I'm Australian.
Ben: I dunno. I think it's the Peach State. Anyways, the Weston A. Price Conference is November 11th through the 14th. So if you happen to be near Montgomery, I'll be speaking there. And then finally, the Unbeatable Mind Retreat is coming up in San Diego. That'll be a good one. If you like to go hang out with a bunch of Navy SEALs, like Navy SEAL Commander Mark Divine and his whole crew will be down there, and Jessa and I will be there. We're gonna be leading some workouts, giving some talks. So that's December 2nd. We'll put a link to all of these in the show notes if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/361. But I've also got a few other little things to tell you about. For example, Rachel, there is an article that actually appeared on the Harvard's website in the Harvard Gazette News Paper, Newsletter. I dunno what they call it.
Rachel: Whatever it is…
Ben: Just a gazette. I dunno. What is a gazette? I think it's just like a weekly newsletter type of thing.
Rachel: Just a fancy word for something.
Ben: Gets distributed around the campus. Remember the guy from Harvard who I had on the podcast who talked about how the philosopher, I believe it was — was it Dante?
Rachel: I'm gonna need more information.
Ben: Voltaire! Voltaire used to drink 60 plus cups of coffee a day, and this guy has…
Rachel: Oh! This is Dr. Chopra.
Ben: Yeah. An entire book about living better and living longer, and he's extremely into drinking copious amounts of coffee.
Rachel: Coffee! He's the man!
Ben: He's actually mentioned in this article, and the article gets into a lot of interesting things that we didn't even get into in the podcast about coffee. For example, a few of the things were that three cups of coffee a day gives you a 20% lower risk of skin cancer. There's some kind of drinkable anti-oxidant in coffee that's like coffee's drinkable sunscreen. Lower risk of prostate cancer, we know that. But there's actually no link between blood pressure and coffee, and they've actually found that coffee helps lower blood pressure contrary to popular belief. A lot of people…
Rachel: Contrary to how you feel after you drink five cups of coffee.
Ben: Yeah, exactly. You think your blood pressure's through the roof, but that's more the adrenal stimulation. And by the way, you get a lot of these benefits with decaf and with regular coffee. The reason that I bring all this up, and I'll put a link to this particular article in the show notes as well. Oh, the other thing that was interesting about it was they've just discovered six new genes related to coffee consumption. They've actually got fingerprints for how we metabolize coffee in the human genome related to not only how quickly we metabolize coffee, but now there's a few more related to coffee's psychoactive effects, and also how coffee affects your lipid levels and your blood glucose levels. So you can actually go and check out these genes in this article. And if you've done like a 23andMe genetic analysis, you can learn even more about how your body interacts with coffee.
Rachel: That is awesome.
Ben: Or maybe you just wanna drink good coffee. That's why I'm bringing all this up. This podcast is brought to you by Kimera Koffee.
Rachel: Best coffee on the planet.
Ben: It is really good because they put basically like natural herbal smart drugs into the coffee. Things like alpha-GPC and L-theanine, all sorts of goodies. And anybody who wants to drink this stuff gets a 10% discount. You just use code Ben at kimerakoffee.com, KIMERAKOFFEE.com.
Rachel: The other cool thing about Kimera, as well as the smart drugs, is that it just tastes really friggin' good. It's really good coffee.
Ben: There's probably people who are slapping us to the podcast for not differentiating between smart drugs and nootropics.
Rachel: Oh, sorry.
Ben: Technically a smart drug would be like modafinil, or adderall, or a synthetic pharmaceutical. And a nootropic would be a natural derivative of a plant or extract. Technically, Kimera Koffee isn't smart drug-infused coffee. It's nootropic-infused coffee, but to many people, when you use the word nootropic, sound like this. (weird sound)
Rachel: Think smart drug. Lucky it's the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, not the Rachel Brown Podcast.
Ben: Yeah. That's right. Who knows what would happen? Hey, so here's another interesting thing that I wanted to ask if you've tried. Paper shell pecans.
Rachel: Nope.
Ben: Paper shell pecans? Well, another sponsor of today's show is nuts.com. Nuts.com has just like teas, and powders, and of course, nuts, and seeds, and all sorts of goodies there. But they've got these paper shell pecans. This one caught my eye because pecans, they've got a lot of study behind pecans and specifically how the sterols in pecans can help to lower the level of LDL particle count in your body. So LDL cholesterol isn't bad, but when LDL cholesterol becomes very small, it can tend to weasel its way into endothelial cell walls a little bit more easily and contribute to atherosclerosis. So basically, pecans help to keep that from occurring and these paper shell pecans, they're like no pecan you've ever had. They're extremely sweet, and they're in this really thin shell, and compared to the hard shell of a normal pecan.
And what I like about nuts.com is they have all these fringe nuts that you can just try. And anybody listening in, the cool thing is that if you order, let's say you order something that you feel safe about, like dark chocolate, or they even got gummy bears, not that I endorse gummy bears, chia seeds, almond flour, you order any of this stuff from nuts.com, throw a few things in your cart because you get four free samples. You get to choose from over 50 different free samples. Try something you haven't tried before, like paper shell pecans. Who knows? You may discover something new.
Rachel: Who knows. Do you wanna hear a fun fact?
Ben: Well, first I have to give the code. I'll give the code, then I'll hear the fun fact. Nuts.com/fitness, the code is ‘Fitness’. That's our special code. Enter code ‘Fitness’ to get those four free samples with your orders. So you go to Nuts.com/fitness and you enter code ‘Fitness’. Alright.
Rachel: Alright. Fun fact. Australians pronounce pecan as pee-can.
Ben: Pee-can? They do that down south too.
Rachel: Do they? Pecan pie?
Ben: Yeah. They do that down south, speaking of Montgomery, Alabama. Pecan pie. Speaking of pecan pie, Thanksgiving is coming up. Do you have a favorite pie?
Rachel: Well first off, I gotta think about Halloween and my Halloween costume. But no, I don't have a favorite pie. I'm just getting used to eating the strange and bizarre world of American food that happens on Thanksgiving, like marshmallows and sweet potatoes mixed together. Just weird thing ever.
Ben: That's like turkey and cranberry. You ever had black-bottom pie?
Rachel: No.
Ben: Black-bottom pie is basically pie with a bottom layer of chocolate cream or custard. And then usually, the top layer's just like some kinda whipped cream or something like that. But if anybody's listening in, like go Google black-bottom pie. And as we know, I'm not paleo, but it seems like in these days just about any recipe you'd ever want, as long as you type in paleo before you type in the recipe, like paleo black-bottom, we should try this. Paleo black-bottom. There we go. It exists. Paleo black-bottom banana cream pie on againstallgrain.com. It exists, a healthy…
Rachel: Version.
Ben: Let's see what the ingredients are here. Alright, for those of you listening in — oh, yeah. The custard is vanilla extract, gelatin, coconut milk, egg yolks, raw honey, and bananas. And the ganache, which is the black-bottom part is chocolate powder, coconut milk, coconut oil, and more raw honey. Wow.
Rachel: Delicious!
Ben: I'm gonna have to make this. Amazing. Cool. Alright, so the last thing I wanted to mention is after you've had your pie, you should brush your teeth. And I've been using this brand new, it's called Cacao Mint MCT Oil Toothpaste, speaking of MCT oil. And this is a fluoride-free toothpaste that is made out of MCT oil and also bentonite clay, and something called theobromine. So the idea, and I'll read the ingredients in this toothpaste. Calcium bentonite, medium chain triglycerides, stevia, bee's wax, and an essential oil blend of peppermint and cacao. And it comes in a metal, like an old school. Remember how toothpaste used to come in a metal tube?
Rachel: I think that was before I was born.
Ben: Okay. Nevermind. Make me feel old. Metal tube, and it's just like this old school feeling when you take out this big thick rugged metal tube with this concentrated MCT oil paste, and these tubes are big. Like one tube will last you like five months, and it's only — what's it cost, it's like 20 bucks. When we're talking about five months’ worth of toothpaste for 20 bucks. It comes from Onnit, and anybody listening in, you can get 10% off of this toothpaste. You just go to onnit.com/bengreenfield, and you get 10% off any supplement, or functional food, or anything. I'm telling you. You have to try this toothpaste. The bentonite can actually help to remineralize your teeth as well. So it's got a lot of cool properties.
Rachel: It sounds like it tastes kinda good too.
Ben: It tastes amazing. I could just eat it as a meal. I could probably eat the entire tube as a meal, just in case. If I had it on an airplane and got really hungry, I could make that happen. So, check it out. Onnit.com/bengreenfield.
Listener Q & A:
Karissa: Hey, Ben. This is Karissa Schwartz. I had a question about your home water purification system. I wanted to know what brand it was or what type you use. Also, I love your show. Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into it and keep up the good work! Thanks.
Ben: Okay.
Rachel: Ooooh.
Ben: Sure. Here we go. Water. Well, I don't purify my water 'cause I just drink it straight out of my Zevia can. I should ask the people at Zevia. I don't know if this is a BPA-free can.
Rachel: You should.
Ben: I think he actually mentioned this when I interviewed him on the podcast. They use a special kind of can that doesn't leech as many metals into the water.
Rachel: When they say as many metals, what does that mean?
Ben: Honestly, if you're gonna drink water out of a vessel, you should drink it out of glass. Because not only does glass help to structure the water, if the water gets exposed to sunlight or if you happen to set it down on the surface of the planet, which I know sounds woo-woo. But it's true. Those are two of the ways that you can actually cause ions to not only go into the human body, which is why swimming and walking barefoot on the planet Earth is so good for you, but if you take like glass bottled water and you expose it to sunlight, or you set it down on the surface of the Earth, it actually causes a transfer of negative ions into the water, and these create what is called an exclusion zone in the water. An exclusion zone means that you have a positively charged area in the middle of the water, negatively charged area in the outside of the water, and that can actually increase the capability of water to enhance intracellular hydration.
Rachel: How long you have to set it down on the ground for?
Ben: And I should mention by the way, they've only shown this in blood vessel simulating tubes within a lab. They actually haven't figured out a way yet to go into the human body and see if it really truly causes increased intracellular hydration within the human body. So this is all kind of like blue sky and theoretical. I'll always tell you if there's no actual research behind the stuff that I spew out. But the idea is that structured water actually is charged in a way that's very, very natural. And you can recharge water, charge water by taking like glass bottled water, putting it on sunlight, or putting it on the Earth.
In terms of the amount of time, most earthing or grounding protocols are about 5 to 30 minutes for the human body. So I would imagine it's somewhat similar for something like water. And the same thing with the human body, like to get adequate amounts of vitamin D for the day, it's somewhere right around 20 to 30 minutes of exposure to sunlight during a time of good UVA/UVB production. Like between about 10 AM and 2 PM, somewhere in that timeframe. Kinda similar, I would imagine, for water.
So my own water purification system, mine's pretty interesting because I have a well. And contrary to popular belief, well water, not all well water is pristine. Granted it's not gonna have the birth control pills, and the fluoride, and the chlorine, and all the nasty stuff that a lot of municipal water has in it. But at the same time, I've got things like bacterial-based iron in my well water, and I've got manganese in my well water, and things that could be coming from, who knows, fertilizer runoff from local farms, or just the fact that water — when it's passing through underground springs — can sometimes hit areas that have very, very high mineral deposits of iron or manganese. And you actually don't want a lot of that building up in your body, 'cause frankly bacteria based iron can turn your insides into rust if you drink too much of it. I dunno about you, but I don't wanna get rusty.
So what I do is I use an iron filter and a manganese filter (bet you didn't see that coming) on my water. And then because the water, after it's taken out from the ground up through tubes, through an iron filter and through manganese filter, I lose a lot of that ionic structure. You lose a lot of the positive/negative ion separation that you would get when water is actually structured, or another word for this would be clustered. So the water, after it passes through those two filters, it passes through the series of glass beads. It's called a vortex. And what I use for that is what's called a hydroenergizer, which is a whole house structured water unit. You can take it, and no matter how you're filtering your water, you just take whatever water filtration system you're using. Like reverse osmosis, or carbon block, or whatever, and you put a structured water filter wherever the water is after it's passed through that other filter, and it restructures the water. It's really simple.
Rachel: Is that hard to do in a house that's already built?
Ben: No. Because you just take the pipe, you find your water filter, and even if the water filter doesn't exist yet, let's say you retrofit and you add a water filter, or maybe you just wanna structure your water and worry about filtering it later, you get one of these pipes and you just attach it in wherever water comes into your home. Like coming from the municipal water supply, you just put this pipe right there. Even if you rent, you can do it. But it's $199. It's called a whole house structured water unit. Now that's not going to filter the water per se, but it is something that I highly recommend that you include, especially if you're gonna be drinking the water that's in your house is this structured water filter.
Rachel: Are we starting with like best case scenario here? So structured water and water filter is like where we should strive towards?
Ben: Yeah. That's a really good one-two combo. And as far as the filter itself, I'll put a link to an article that I wrote about everything from treating your home for dirty electricity, to mold, to fungus, to which household cleaners you should use, and beyond. It's called “How to Detox Your Home”. But in that article I talk about what I would recommend in terms of a filter to come prior to that structured water filter, in addition to structured water filter. And really the gold standard would be a reverse osmosis filter that actually is able to remineralize.
So they make reverse osmosis filters that come with a built in remineralizer because reverse osmosis will do a really good job getting just about all unwanted substances, like chlorine, for example, and fluoride out of the water. But you also filter out a lot of good minerals, like calcium, and magnesium, and potassium. And not only is de-mineralized water lower in minerals that your body needs for normal metabolism, but it also tends to be more acidic. Minerals are alkalinic by nature. So when you add minerals back in, you get more alkalinic water as well, which can keep you from, for example, leeching minerals from your bones to replace the minerals that the water doesn't have in it.
Rachel: And when you remineralize water, what do you do that with? Sounds like a dumb question, but…
Ben: Yeah. It's almost like a salt stick that's built into the filter that the water passes through after it's been through the reverse osmosis that adds all the minerals back in.
Rachel: How do you trust that salt stick?
Ben: Because the engineers that make these reverse osmosis filters with remineralizers, you're keeping your fingers crossed, know what they were doing.
Rachel: Right.
Ben: You're gonna pay, for a whole house reverse osmosis filter with remineralization, anywhere from 250 to 500 bucks. You can order 'em off of Amazon, and you can have a plumber install them, or you can be your own plumber just like I talked about in last week's podcast, how I installed my own little toilet bidet to give myself a butt wash after I poo. You could pretty easily, if you could install a toilet bidet, you could install a reverse osmosis filter. And it's much better than the other option, which would be a carbon block because a carbon block, it's a charcoal filter and it doesn't do quite as good a job with removing the smaller minerals, like fluoride. But, yeah. That's the one-two combo, the reverse osmosis plus the structured water filter.
Now a couple of the things that I should mention. First of all, I think that you should test your water — just like I think you should test your body to know if maybe you don't need to be taking vitamin D 'cause your vitamin D levels are just fine, or maybe you don't necessarily need to be wasting your money on like a magnesium supplement 'cause your red blood cell magnesium levels look just fine, but maybe you are the type of person who should be on like a thyroid glandular because you've got really low levels of T3 and T4, or perhaps you need to be on some type of like a ginger or tumeric-based anti-inflammatory 'cause you have high levels of HSCRP which is an inflammatory marker. In the same way that you can kind of like laser target your supplementation protocol, you can laser target how you're treating your water. You can get home water test kits. For example, I'll link in the show notes, but you can get these off of Amazon where you can test the water that's in your home.
Now I don't think that's necessarily the best gold standard way to test water. Really, in an ideal scenario, you should a.) if you live in a municipal area, go to the EPA's website because they actually — at least in the US, they have the local municipality put yearly water reports up online because federal law requires that those reports be run on a regular basis, and you can actually look up the water report for whatever zip code that you happen to be in. I'll link to the specific page that allows you just type your zip code in, and see the exact levels of anything, like lead is a biggie for example. But they'll show you the part per billion or the parts per million of anything that's in your water. So that's one thing that you can do is you can actually see what's in your water. For example, where I live, in Spokane, they don't add fluoride to the water. So I don't have to be quite as careful about fluoride filtration if I were on the municipal water supply.
The other thing that you can do if you don't have a municipal water supply but you still wanna get your water tested, but you don't want to flirt with the inaccuracy that a lot of these home water test kits tend to err towards because the home water test kits will give you a ballpark, but they're not as good as getting tested by what's called a certified water testing laboratory. And again, the US Environmental Protection Agency, bless their hearts, the EPA, they actually do have a website where you can go and have your drinking water tested by contacting a laboratory that's certified for water testing in your state or your territory. And so, I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well because state-certified testing is actually a very good way to get your water laboratory certified tested if you really — I mean, think about it. You're showering in it, you're bathing in it, drinking it all the time. Unless you're like me and you just drink Zevia, I'm not showering in Zevia. Yet. Anyways though, yeah. So the EPA has some really good resources on their website for testing.
I also wanted to throw in something else that I've been playing around with quite a bit lately. I have one on my countertop, and recently they started working with Ben Greenfield Fitness to give all of our fans and listeners discounts, but it's this stuff called AquaTru, A-Q-U-A-T-R-U. And this is the first and only countertop reverse osmosis water purifier that doesn't require plumbing, that doesn't require insulation, but it filters out everything from carcinogens to perchlorate which is basically rocket fuel that we tend to find in water, to gasoline additives, to prescription drug residue like antidepressants and hormones from birth control that wind up in people's water. They've got what's called a four stage filtration that removes over 20 different contaminants from water, and they've compared it against all these different like fridge water filters and pitcher filters. And those fridge water filters and pitcher filters, those remove very simple chemicals like chlorine, but they still leave behind a pretty toxic chemical concoction in terms of all the stuff that remains in the water.
So the AquaTru has four stages. So basically Stage 1 is a pre-filter, and then it passes through reverse osmosis, then it passes through what's called a reverse osmosis membrane, then it passes through an activated charcoal carbon filter. So basically, it gets extremely pure. My caveat, my one complaint about this thing is it doesn't have remineralization. So you still need to like put a pinch of sea salt in your water, or use trace liquid minerals, or use effervescent electrolyte tablets. You're still getting minerals in your water. But as far as a very cool and very affordable way to get countertop reverse osmosis, especially if you rent and you don't wanna put like a whole system filter, somewhere like that. It's pretty affordable. They go for, I think the list price on those is 349. And our code, if you just go to their website, we'll put a link in the show notes. It's AquaTru Water (aquatruwater.com), but our code, you get a hundred bucks off and the discount code is just $100. Like $100. So you can get $100 off of an AquaTru countertop filtration. I've drank the water from it. It's really good. I think it's worth buying.
Rachel: Is there anything that it doesn't filter out?
Ben: Not that one. That one surprisingly gets everything. It's the first countertop filter I've ever seen that actually gets everything. Not to make this sound like some big commercial or something, but it's a good option. And you can even use it when you travel if you wanted to. Like if you've got like some kind of an airBNB you're gonna go to for a couple weeks, or say like you have an RV or a boat, you could put in a lot of different places and just literally like take water from a river and have that be reverse osmosis filtered and carbon block filtered.
Rachel: Wow. That's powerful.
Ben: Yeah. So that's the skinny on water. And then if you really wanna take things to the nth level, keep your water in glass bottles, get it exposed to sunlight. Or infrared light would also work, like infrared in your infrared, put your water in your sauna, put it on the ground, get it exposed to lots of good negative ions. Water's cool stuff. I drink a lot of water. I'm kind of obsessed with water. My dad is in the water filter business. He was the guy who kinda got me introduced to structured water filters. I mean it's a night and day difference in terms of the way that like everything from just like constipation, to hydration, to how often you need to drink during workouts, to how often you pee. It's amazing what drinking good water versus drinking crappy water can do for your body. So, there you have it.
Rachel: So the AquaTru, it's the cheap and easy way to go.
Ben: Yup. AquaTru is the cheap and easy way to go. Get your water tested either way. And if you really want gold standard reverse osmosis with remineralization plus structuring, and that will give you the gold standard stamp of approval from the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show water.
James: Hello, Ben and Rachel. I'm wondering if you have ever heard about the brain balance centers. While they are mostly geared toward children, I am wondering if there is any application of this sort of training towards adults. The center is based on the work of Dr. Robert Mellilo and his book “Disconnected Kids: The Groundbreaking Brain Balance Program for Children With Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Neurological Disorders”. Thanks! James, in San Francisco.
Ben: I've never been to a brain balance center. Have you, Rachel?
Rachel: I haven't been to a brain balance center. No.
Ben: I probably should.
Rachel: I feel like my brain is pretty balanced, but I can't see inside it, so I should probably go and check it out.
Ben: I don't think my brain is balanced. I think I'm kind of weird. I'm working on it. I'm doing all this like EMGs training. I'm still doing the EMG training. I've done 40 sessions now of brain training.
Rachel: You noticing a difference?
Ben: Oh, my gosh.
Rachel: This is cutting-edge stuff.
Ben: There's like five different protocols. Like I know which protocol now will help me with like early sleep onset. I've got one that I'll use for like pre-workout priming. I've got one that I use just to decrease distractibility the whole rest of the day. There's one I actually do while I'm writing that puts me into alpha brain wave state while I'm writing. It's really crazy. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I went down to LA, and I trained at this place called the Peak Brain Institute and they taught me for almost a week how to use these electrodes that you attach to your head that plugged into this software. It's called neurofeedback, and it detects or rewards you when you go into specific brain wave frequencies. Like if you've got it set in a setting where you wanna like increase alpha brain waves, and decrease stressful fast beta brain waves, you can actually do a 30-minute training protocol and just shove yourself into this enhanced focus that literally lasts for days. It's really interesting stuff. And it permanently can rewire your brain into things like decreased distractibility and like a shorter sleep latency, like how long it takes you to fall asleep. It's really interesting stuff.
Rachel: The only downside to it right now is just that it's particularly expensive, right?
Ben: Yeah. Like for you to go to LA and do the full training, and come like, then they send you home with all the gear, it depends. But it's like 3,500, $4,000, something like that which I think for permanently rewiring your brain, is a pretty good deal. I know there's a 40 Years of Zen-type of program where you achieve the equivalent of 40 years of monk meditation with a week of neurofeedback training. And this is kinda similar to that, except you're doing it in your own house with like an instructor on the other end who's looking at your protocols, and giving you feedback, and telling you like, whatever, “your beta brainwaves are too fast, we need to switch you to a different protocol for the next day”. But I don't think that this is what these brain balance sensors do 'cause I looked into this. These brain balance centers, it is based on this book called “Disconnected Kids: The Groundbreaking Brain Balance Program for Children With Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Neurological Disorders” And the book itself is described as a fully-customizable exercise program that targets physical, sensory, and academic performance, a behavior modification plan, a food plan, and then they follow a program to help ensure a lasting results.
So I went to their website, and it looks like it's kind of an integrated approach, but some concerns popped up right away for me. For example, when I clicked on their clean eating nutrition system, there were some phrases in there that right off the bat were red flags for me if I had a kid or if I, myself was dealing with something that tends to often be very immune system-related, and I'll get into that and why that is in a second like ADD, or ADHD, or autism. He's got recommendations for relatively hefty portions of legumes and grains, which are two things that I don't necessarily think are bad, but in many cases they can contribute to a lot of the immune system issues that magnify ADHD, and autism, et cetera symptoms. It talks a lot about like lean protein, when in fact high amounts of healthy fat intake for brain are crucial. And their little pie plate that shows the percentages of what they recommend for food, healthy fats is like this tiny-teeny sliver. It's like 5% of the pie chart.
And so, just the fact that the entire nutrition program appears relatively flawed gives me great pause to be able to say that this is something that I would recommend. That's not to say that there's not a specific nutrition approach that I would recommend, and there is one. But this would not be it. So when it comes to children or adults, for something like autism, for example, one of the best people in my opinion to turn to as a resource is a doctor named Natasha Campbell-McBride, and Natasha Campbell-McBride is an M.D., and she has a graduate degree in neurology. So she's worked as a neurologist and as a neurosurgeon. And the interesting thing is that she had a child who was diagnosed autistic at a very young age and she began to do a lot of research that kind of flew in the face of modern medicine because she realized that there were no really good answers in terms of what physicians are learning in medical school, or what modern medicine is using to treat ADD, and ADHD, and autism, and a lot of these issues that seem to be related to the immune system.
And what she discovered was that a lot of these autistic children, for example, they're born with perfectly normal brains, and perfectly normal sensory organs, and a perfectly normal nervous system. But then when she looked into their digestive system, that was a major source of the issues. So in many cases, these kids had like pathogenic microbes inside their digestive tract. They had leaky gut syndrome from very, very low levels of gut flora. For example, being born via C-section versus vaginal delivery, or low amounts of breast feeding and high amounts of like a soy protein, soy formula intake at birth. And what they found when she did some studies on these kids was that a lot of this toxicity would flow from the gut through the body and into the brain. So they were getting a lot of these lipopolysaccharides and a lot of these toxins of microbes flooding into the bloodstream of a child and getting into the brain of the child. And this can happen with adults too, and that was contributing to the conglomerate of symptoms of autism, and ADD, and ADHD, et cetera — like hyperactivity, and dyslexia, and obsessive compulsive disorder.
And so, her recommendation is you start by going after the child's, or the adult's in this case, gut flora. So when you look at that, her entire program, it's called the GAPS diet, G-A-P-S diet, and she's got a book. It's actually called “Gut and Psychology Syndrome” — that's what GAPS stands for. The book is called “Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, Dyspraxia, ADD, Dyslexia, ADHD, Depression, and Schizophrenia”. And this program is based off of a.) a high intake of fermented foods and probiotics. So you're rebuilding all the beneficial bacteria in your gut that can tend to control some of these pathogenic disease causing microbes, and bacteria, viruses, and fungi. It's based around a lot of breast feeding and very high intake of healthy fats, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, DHA, a lot of the things that help to restore health to the nervous system. So things like cod liver oil, and algae, and probiotic intake, and again very easily digestible foods too like leaving out a lot of the grains and the legumes in favor of a higher amount of more ancestral foods, and wild caught fish, and dark greens, and things like that.
And then it's also got a very intense detoxification type of protocol along with it to get rid of a lot of these microbes that build up within the system. So epsom salt baths, use of sea salt, the use of what's called seaweed powder, apple cider vinegar, baking soda, a lot of these things that naturally detox the body. If I were to recommend one book for folks who would want to learn how to naturally control a lot of this stuff, it would be her book, the GAPS diet book.
Rachel: I'm curious if there's been any research done that's actually drawn a correlation between the gut and ADD and ADHD.
Ben: Yeah. I know that in her book she goes into a whole bunch of it. There's another book by a Harvard neurologist who studied autism for a couple of decades, and she wrote a book called “The Autism Revolution”. “The Autism Revolution”. And in that book, she talks about how closely linked neurological function of patients with issues like ADD and autism, how closely linked that is to just basic toxin and cellular waste removal issues. So what we're talking about here are people who are like low in glutathione, low in vitamin C, low in vitamin E, people who have impaired what's called methylation which is involved in producing neurotransmitters, and managing gene expression, and creating, for example, like really functional healthy cell membranes.
And so what she found was very similar to Natasha Campbell-McBride, you need to both a.) build up the gut flora and build up the body's ability to produce its own neurotransmitters, et cetera, while b.) detoxifying the body with things like glutathione and binders, and then also intake of a lot of key nutrients like again, DHA, vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin K. So her book is actually really good too. That one's called “The Autism Revolution”. But it's really interesting. These aren't like fringe, like unibomber-style, hippies out in the woods saying that you need like eat chlorella to fix autism. These are actual like pediatric researchers who have found some pretty big links behind, specifically, the gut, toxins, and a lot of these symptoms.
Rachel: Did you get a chance to look at the brain stuff in the brain balance center? It sounds like James is wondering if there is an application for adults in terms of brain training.
Ben: Yeah. As far as the actual brain training, it doesn't look like they're doing — so they have one part of it called “Sensory Motor” in which they work on motor skills and sensory detection, like proprioception, joint mobility and flexibility exercises, balancing exercises, what's called Reflex training, gazing and eye-based exercises. I like that approach of treating the nervous system, but I feel like you've got to make sure that you're not treating a nervous system that's void of the nutrients necessary to build a healthy nervous system, or a nervous system that's overloaded with toxins and metals that needs to be adjusted because I think that improving motor skills and sensory detection is good, but you need to come at things from another standpoint as well. If I were gonna self-manage this myself and not go to one of these brain balance centers, I would grab the GAPS diet book, and then the other thing that I would use that's a really good integrated approach for sensory motor health, and I interviewed these folks, I can dig up the interview and put it in the show notes because they have really good programs that they send your house for training your entire nervous system, that one's Z-Health. Z-Health.
I recorded a podcast with this guy named Dr. Eric Cobb, the title of the podcast is “How To Make Your Nervous System Unstoppable, Eliminate Pain, and Build Your Brain”. And this entire Z-Health program — they've got a lot of different things. They've got like their gym vision program, which weans you off of ever needing classes again. They've got basically like balance programs for athletes, but they've got also programs that are designed just to make people functional again who may have become dysfunctional from things, like neurological disorders. So that's called Z-Health, and I'll link to that podcast. I'm making a note to myself right now. You go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/361, I'll link to the Z-Health stuff in the show notes. But I always look at these things like “if it were me, what would I do”, “if it were my kid, what would I do”, and I'd say your biggest wins of everything I just mentioned would be grabbing “The Gut and Psychology Syndrome” book, listening to that podcast on Z-Health, and really paying attention to the dietary and detoxification components.
AJ: Hello, Ben and Rachel. I was just thinking if you have any opinions or experience with diatomaceous earth. I'm taking it for intestinal parasites and I was wondering if it has any research behind it. Or if you've experimented with it, Ben, 'cause I know you were saying that you've intestinal parasites before. Or if there are any other benefits than those of controlling intestinal parasites. Thank you so much for all your amazing content. It's my favorite podcast and has been for years. Thank you!
Ben: So, Rachel, how would you pronounce diatomaceous as an Australian?
Rachel: Oh, you always do this! Just throwing me under the bus, Ben.
Ben: How do you guys say that word in Australia?
Rachel: Well I've phonetically pronounced it like I should, and it looks to me like it should be pronounced diatomaceous.
Ben: Diatomaceous. I like it. Diatomaceous. It's diatomaceous, I believe is how it's called. Diatomaceous. Diatomaceous Earth. It's also known as like edible earth clay, like detoxification clay, diatomaceous clay. But actually, it's really interesting. So the word itself, it's called that because diatomaceous earth is actually made up of the fossilized remains of a bunch of tiny little aquatic organisms called, ready for this, diatoms. Seriously.
Rachel: (laughs) Cool. Yeah, I know!
Ben: They're called diatoms. You could find pictures of them on the internet. They're what are called micro fossils. They're these tiny little aquatic microorganisms that you find in like plankton, and in like marine and freshwater sediments. They're really interesting, but you can actually collect their fossils and they form these giant rocks made almost entirely of these fossil diatoms. Diatoms!
Rachel: Do they have to like find this stuff to make diatomaceous earth? Or do they grow it?
Ben: Yeah! You harvest it from the ocean. Like you harvest it from rocks in the ocean.
Rachel: Really? Wow. That's kinda cool.
Ben: Kinda cool. Kinda sexy. D'you ever watch Marvin The Martian? Do you get that reference?
Rachel: No. I also that think that happened before I was born.
Ben: From the Looney Tunes?
Rachel: I remember the Looney Tunes.
Ben: Aw, dude. Marvin The Martian. Hello. No, that was Mr. Bean. Marvin The Martian — “My Illudium Q46 explosive space modulator. Mmmm. Excuse me. Do you have any diatoms? I'm hunting for diatom micro fossils.”
Rachel: Oh, never gets old.
Ben: Never. Never. Cartoons are great. By the way, I was watching, my children — if any of you don't read this website, if you ever want a cartoon fix, this is my favorite cartoon website on the face of the planet. Proceed with caution if you're easily offended. It's called The Oatmeal, theoatmeal.com. T-H-E-O-A-T-M-E-A-L, theoatmeal.com. My kids right now, because they discovered this website, and I'm a little concerned about that because it actually does have some things on there that are potentially offensive/disturbing, like I don't know, exploding weasels, fighting babies and stuff like that. He's developed two card games, one called “Exploding Kittens” and one called “Bears Versus Babies”. And then the topic of cartoons, my kids lately have been begging me to buy them those card games. So to get some healthy father-son time in, I might actually purchase my children “Exploding Kittens” so that I can play with them.
Rachel: (laughs) I don't know where to go with that one. I’m sorry.
Ben: It's no longer Legos, it's Exploding Kittens. Anyways though, so diatomaceous earth, you get it and it looks like a white powder. You may be familiar with this because, in many cases, products like dusts, and powders, and pressurized liquids that are used to like clean buildings, or used in agricultural setting sometimes, used in gardens, a lot of times like in pet foods, you'll find diatomaceous earth because they'll put it into things to, for example, naturally eliminate viruses or naturally eliminate parasites 'cause it breaks down the exoskeleton of any insect or bacteria, like bedbugs, for example. You could sprinkle it on a bed for bed bugs. And in the human body, it has some pretty cool effects too.
So diatomaceous earth, first of all, we were talking about detoxification, and it actually acts as a natural detoxifying agent, which is kind of cool 'cause it's inexpensive, you can buy it online. Now you need to make sure if you're going to ingest it, you wanna get what's called “food grade diatomaceous earth”. That's a search term you'd wanna use: “food grade diatomaceous earth”. I'll link to some of my favorites in the show notes. But the way that it works with detoxification is it has a silica in it, very high amounts of silica in it. And silica is an extremely high antioxidant compound. It's broken down in the body into what's called a colloidal form, and that colloidal form carries an extra electrical charge that attaches to free radicals. And it also attaches to toxins, binds them, and then removes them from the body via your sweat, and your urine, and your feces, so it can slow oxidative damage. And the other cool thing is it also binds aluminum. So it can be used for like heavy metal detoxification. So that's one cool thing that it can do.
You can use it to also, speak of the devil, purify water. So in many cases, they'll use diatomaceous earth in water filters to help to purify the water that's passing through the filter. And you can also add a little bit of diatomaceous earth to the water that you drink to help to kill viruses, and parasites, and things along those lines. But it can be used as a way to purify water. It can be used as a parasite cleanse. So the cool thing about diatomaceous earth, again, is it breaks down the exoskeleton, breaks down the wall of just about any insect, parasite, et cetera. And they've done some research on diatomaceous earth and what it does to parasites, and they found that it can drastically reduce the risk of parasitic and worm infection in both animals and humans. So that's another thing that's good for. Another thing that I'm most familiar with it for is people who get parasites or who do like a gut test, a stool test and have parasites, you can get it removed that way.
Rachel: And so is it a thick clay? Is it liquid? Or is it powder?
Ben: It's powder.
Rachel: Okay. And you just mix it with water?
Ben: Mhmm. Yup. And you can use it as an insecticide. So if you have like ants, and insects, or bed bugs, or anything like that in your house, you can use diatomaceous — you can sprinkle it wherever you're having insect issues, and like on contact, it kills insects. Because again, it literally just like goes straight through like a razor blade through the waxy outer coating of an insect's exoskeleton, and then basically the insect just dies.
Rachel: Very cool. What a diverse range of things.
Ben: Doesn't do that to humans though. Just so you know. You don't have to worry about it eating away your exoskeleton. It actually, interestingly, is very high in minerals. So it can assist with mineralization of bones as well. So when you consume in oral form, it can help with that. You can also like make your own toothpaste with it 'cause it works really well for cleaning the teeth. It can work as a skin exfoliator, for like an anti-aging effect, like a clay rub on the face. All sorts of cool things that you can use diatomaceous earth for. Excuse me. I'm burping up my Zevia. Wow. That was gross.
Rachel: And so, for intestinal parasites would that…
Ben: Hold on. I can like taste my green smoothie inside of my mouth. Wow. Nasty. What were you saying?
Rachel: Okay. For intestinal parasites, is that what you would recommend?
Ben: Yeah. Honestly. If I had parasites, that's the one thing I'd use. I mean there's other stuff that can speed up the process, like I produce at Greenfield Fitness Systems, I make a product called Nature Cleanse. It's called Nature Cleanse Detox and Gut Cleanser. I know I'm throwing around the word detox on today's podcast a lot, but it's a mix. It's got a colon blend in it, which is Turkey rhubarb root, and slippery elm bark, and marshmallow root, and fennel seed, and fenugreek which is really, really good cleansing and like therapeutic for your large intestine if you get like irritable bowel syndrome, or bloating, or gas, stuff like that. It's got a mineral blend in it to remineralize your body. The stuff moves through, so it's got like goat's mineral whey, fermented mineral whey powder, and then some organic beet juice concentrate — which is also very high in minerals. It's got what's called a botanical blend in it to help to heal and soothe your stomach, which is made out of hyssop, ginger, yucca, rosemary — speak of the devil — and turmeric. And then an activated fiber blend. So it's just basically flaxseed meal, a little bit of apple fiber, a little bit of rice bran, and a little bit of arabinogalactan.
You put all that together, and if you were to take that along with diatomaceous earth, it would help you to kinda move stuff through a little bit. So I would combine it with something like that, just like a gentle detox. But I swear by that Nature Cleanse stuff. It's not something I use on a daily basis, right? But if you travel a lot and you have a little bit of traveler's constipation you got to get rid of, or you're taking something like diatomaceous earth and you need to move some stuff through your system, it works really well. You wanna make sure you drink a ton of water when you use it, in my opinion. It works even better when you have a lot of water in your system. But that stuff's called Nature Cleanse. Nature Cleanse. So that would be something you could combine with diatomaceous earth for like a one-two combo for parasites. But, yeah. Absolutely. And you know what the sign is that you don't have parasites anymore?
Rachel: What?
Ben: Okay. So this is a nasty. Parasite hatch like when the moon is full, or when there's moon cycles, they hatch. And so like every two weeks at night, you get insomnia like clockwork. And in addition to having like some gut issues, you can always do like a stool test or whatever, but laying awake at night, like every couple of weeks like clockwork for like a weekend or so, it's a pretty good sign that you have parasites. Kinda nasty, huh?
Rachel: That is super nasty. I don't even like to think about that.
Ben: It's 'cause they're hatching. They're laying their little eggs inside of you at night. Isn't that gross?
Rachel: Thanks, Ben. It's like the stuff of my nightmares. I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight. But it's not gonna be because I have intestinal parasites.
Tobey: Hi, Ben. Tobey Stevenson, Seattle, Washington. I'm a firefighter over in this area, and was just wondering, I'm pretty good about fighting cravings on a normal day when I get sleep. But working 24, 48 hour shifts as a firefighter, my ability to fight those cravings is definitely less when I've been sleep deprived. Definitely more hungry and my willpower isn't as good. And also obviously from lack of sleep, my workouts aren't as good. And being in shape is important to the job, obviously, for injury prevention, and it could be potentially my life. Do you have any recommendations, biohacks, supplements, good nutritional factoids for us to be able to recover and fight those cravings and get a better workout the next day? Thanks. Really enjoy the podcast.
Ben: I had food cravings yesterday.
Rachel: What for?
Ben: I got up at 3:45 AM yesterday 'cause I just was excited to work. I had a bunch of stuff to do, I had a bunch of articles to write. I woke up at 3:45 and I was just like, “F it. I'm gonna get up and go work.” So I did. Worked really hard all day long. And I actually did, speaking of smart drugs, I did take — I took, not smart drugs, I took just like natural nootropics in the morning.
Rachel: Ooh! Did you just mix them up as well?
Ben: The big cup of coffee, and then I just worked hard the entire day and then collapse last night. But all day long, I had food cravings. And the reason for that is that what happens is you're more likely to reach for donuts, or pizza, or in my case, like almond butter and dark chocolate when you are low on sleep because not only do you produce more ghrelin, which is like your appetite-stimulating hormone, and less leptin, which is your appetite regulating hormone, when you're low on sleep, but what researchers have found, and they did a study at UC Berkeley with FMRI, with magnetic resonance imaging, and they found impaired activity in sleep deprived people in the brain's frontal lobe, which governs things like complex decision making, and also in the reward areas of the brain, like the areas of the brain that would normally cause, for example, release of dopamine when you consume a food to help make you feel full, and satiated, and happy. Like you don't produce as much of that when you're low on sleep. And so, you just walk around like craving food. And in my opinion, like exercise kinda sucks when you're low on sleep. As Tobey alluded to, his willpower isn't very good. He struggles to work out. So, yeah. It can be it can be tough after you've worked a 24 to 28 shift to actually control things like appetite and get a good workout in. So I definitely have a few little tips I would throw on Toby's way. My dad was a firefighter, by the way. So I'm not just talking out my ass here.
Rachel: Wasn't your brother, as well, a firefighter?
Ben: Mhmm. Yeah. Zack was a firefighter. My dad, Gary, was a firefighter.
Rachel: A whole family of them.
Ben: I was actually, I was a firefighter kind of. My dad was chief of the rural fire department down in Idaho, Lewiston, Idaho, and I would go around with him on the truck and just like — So my job, for example, if there be like big fires raging across the hills is I would just like run into people's yards, and like grab their garden hoses, and begin to like help dig fire ditches, and just like get all the water wet around the house. I wasn't one of those guys who was like a real firefighter. I didn't have like the mask and the ax, and get in the house. I wasn't a trained firefighter.
Rachel: And the hat, and the overalls.
Ben: But I kinda worked as a firefighter.
Rachel: That's awesome!
Ben: Enough to put it on my resume.
Rachel: Good job, Ben!
Ben: Thank you. Anyways though, so what do I do on a day like yesterday when I'm low on sleep? First of all, there are ways that you can make food taste better without dumping extra calories into your body and one of my favorite ways to do that — 'cause I do a lot of like, when I've got a busy day and I'm on the go, and just in general, I do a lot of like coconut milk-based smoothies and I do a lot of like protein powder mixes. I'm not necessarily walking around like eating, or drinking bone broth and eating chicken carcasses all day long. I do, I will admit, a decent amount of just like engineered food when I'm working because it's fast. So I'll do like coconut milk, mixed with like a rice protein powder, mixed with like some unsweetened coconut flakes, and a handful of raw almonds. And that'll be the meal. So in many cases, I've found that just having a really, really good bottle of dark chocolate stevia on hand…
Rachel: Mmm. Sounds yummy.
Ben: That's one thing that can help food to taste good without dumping a bunch of calories into your body. Some people claim that the sweet taste of anything causes what's called an increase in hormone release, or gastric hormone release that sparks your appetite later on after you've tasted that sweet thing. I don't find that to be the case. I like dressing things up with a little dark chocolate stevia. So that's one thing. Another thing that I use quite a bit when I know I need to keep appetite cravings at bay is just a boat load of sparkling water 'cause the bubbles and the carbonation keep you full. Again, I'll wait for my big fat check from Zevia 'cause I keep talkin' about them and they're not a sponsor of today's show. Isn't that horrible?
Rachel: Yeah.
Ben: I know. They're getting all this free PR. It's just good karma. No. Actually, I've got, I order Pelligrino from Amazon. Now I've get the Zevia stuff. My water is filtered, but then I have one of these like SodaStreams that can add carbonation water. Like 90% of the water I drink is bubbly. I don't like to drink flat water very much at all. And the bubbly water helps to keep you full, in my opinion. So that's another thing. I use natural gum. So I chew gum a lot, and that helps to keep appetite cravings at bay. The stuff I've been using lately, I kinda bounced around between brands because I found that the stuff with xylitol in it tended to like, I don't know if this is the case for everybody — but like chomping on xylitol day long kinda gives you the farts. Like that sugar alcohol, it's a fermentable sugar alcohol. Xylitol is. And so a lot of times, like if you have gas and can't figure out why, it could be related to the gum that you're chewing.
Rachel: The gum you're chewing.
Ben: Yeah. So now I've been using this stuff called Simply Gum. Simply Gum. They've got a bunch of different flavors. They've got cinnamon, and mint, and fennel, and coffee, and maple flavored gum. But it's extremely natural. They only use a few ingredients in the gum. There's a little bit of like a cane sugar in there, but it's extremely low amounts. Like we're talking just like a touch for flavor. So it actually doesn't have stevia, or xylitol, or anything in it. But it's called Simply Gum. Simply Gum. It's advertised as non-GMO, vegan gum. So mint, cinnamon, ginger, fennel, coffee, and maple. They've got like a sample pack. That's what I order and just keep in my bag. I love gum for controlling appetite cravings.
Another one that I do quite a bit of — I have one to two servings of this a day. So if I'm having like lunch, it's usually a quick fry up in like a cast-iron skillet. For dinner, in many cases, whatever Jessa makes, because I tend just like need, I can eat many if I'm not careful. So I like to get a lot of insoluble fiber into my system 'cause it mixes with water and kind of expands in your stomach. So like if Jessa makes, let's say, steak and salad. I will take the steak and salad that she makes, and I'll put it over a bed of this stuff, and it's called Miracle Noodles. Miracle Noodles. So they're made out of what's called like a Japanese yam. Extremely high in insoluble fiber. It's just like having something on a bed of pasta, but there's zero actual carbohydrates or calories. It's just all a bunch of insoluble fiber that expands in your stomach. So that's another one that I keep on hand. They're just like gluten-free noodles with zero net carbs made out of water soluble fiber. It's something called a Konjac plant that it's made from. Or Shiratake noodles is another name that it goes by. But they're zero carb noodles. So they call 'em Miracle Noodles. So that's another one that I would keep on hand, would be miracle noodles.
Another one, not little hack here, now we're getting into more of like the supplementation scenario, would be if you're not producing as much dopamine in response to food intake when you're low on sleep, why not just like add a little dopamine into the equation when you do eat. You can get dopamine supplements. There's this stuff called Mucuna dopa extract, and it's just a dopamine precursor. Like I have a little bottle of it upstairs. I have this stuff called Brain Food. It's made by — I forget, I think Natural Stacks is the company that makes this. It's called Dopamine Brain Foods. And as the name implies, it's just like dopamine precursors for your brain. And you can just take a few capsules of this stuff prior to eating, and it helps to replace a lot of dopamine that you might not be taking. So it's called Dopamine Brain Food. That'd be another one that I'd look into as like a supplement.
A few other things that kinda can quell your appetite: ketones. So I wrote a whole article called “How To Get Into Ketosis”, but there are these companies now making powders that are just what are called beta-Hydroxybutyrate salts — in many cases mixed with like powdered MCT. Pruvit is one good company. P-R-U-V-I-T. And they're just like ketones salts that you can add to teas, or coffees, or whatever, and being able to get into a state of ketosis, especially like on a long day where you're tired and you need to control appetite, that comes in very handy as well. Having some kind of ketones on hand to jack up your blood levels of ketones. Speaking of which, did you see the story that I did on Snapchat last week?
Rachel: I didn't.
Ben: Okay. So here's the deal, the US Department of Defense, or DARPA, they are working to develop some type of fuel that the military can use, like a liquid ketone fuel that the military can use to keep themselves in ketosis for very long periods of time in the absence of food intake to increase performance.
Rachel: How long's a very long period of time?
Ben: Like three to five days to just go, go, go with this little liquid shot. So I got my hands on the stuff that they've been trialing for these defense studies. It's the same stuff that I podcasted about when I spoke with Dr. Veech who's like the world's top ketone researcher. And he was talking about how there are all these funding issues with developing this particular ketone, and it costs like $30,000 to actually get a bottle. Well they sent me a bottle of it, and I Snapchatted the whole thing. I drank it, I did a workout — like my ketones, I tested within 10 minutes. For anybody who does ketosis, this will be meaningful to you. Within ten minutes, I'm sorry, it was 20 minutes. Within 10 minutes, my ketones jumped from about 0.9 up to 3.8. And then within 20 minutes, my ketones were up in the 5, that's like your millimolar levels of ketones, and they stayed that way as I was just hammering on my bicycle.
So they sent me another bottle, and this time they wanted me to see what would happen if I mix it with glucose. So basically you're jacking up your blood glucose and you're jacking up your blood ketones simultaneously, which is not that great for health necessarily to have the high blood glucose before performance. This combination of high blood ketones and high blood glucose is technically allowing you to tap into the best of both worlds, right. Extreme fat burning efficiency along with glycolysis. So the bottle gets here tomorrow, and I'm supposed to use it for that Toughest Mudder that I'm racing on Saturday. So I'm literally going to slam a bunch of glucose and exogenous ketones prior to that race and see what happens when you have both molecules in high concentration.
Rachel: It is gonna be like rocket fuel? You better win. No pressure.
Ben: I dunno. That or I'll have like diarrhea halfway through the race and I'll be crawling through the electroshock therapy with…
Rachel: Poo running down your leg.
Ben: Yeah. We'll see. Anyways, though. So ketones, I don't necessarily recommend using that approach, but ketones can keep the appetite stimulated. A few other things that I would recommend. I did a podcast with a really good researcher named Alex Ritson on how to maintain muscle even when you can't workout. And many of the things that we talk about in that show, you could use as passive fitness maintenance strategies when either decision making fatigue, or cognitive fatigue, or sleep-based fatigue is keeping you from getting your actual workout in. What I mean by that is let's say you can't workout, you could do, for example, hot/cold contrast therapy. Still get the lymph fluid, still get the blood flow. Barrel sauna, dry sauna, infrared sauna, whatever, and combine that with cold showers, and go back and forth, and still get a workout without you actually having to say like throw a 225 pound barbell on your back and struggle under that weight as you're sleep deprived.
Another example would be electrostimulation, where you're just outsourcing all the work that your brain would normally have to do to an external brain — in this case, an electrostimulation unit. Don't get me wrong. They're still uncomfortable. Like your muscles are still contracting, you're still building up a bunch of lactic acid, there's still fatigue that sets in. But when you have an electrostimulation unit doing a lot of the work for you, that also can be a good strategy for exercising when you are sleep deprived. So that would be another option, would be electrostimulation. So I like electrostimulation, I like hot cold contrast. Another one that actually works — so we talked about last week, as silly as it may seem, is rebounding like literally jumping up and down on the trampoline. Studies have shown that that causes cardiovascular blood flow and even oxygen utilization similar to running at a moderate pace with none of the pounding, but at a lower what's called rating of perceived exertion. Meaning you don't think you're working very hard. So you could literally, I mean if you're totally sleep deprived, you could just jump up and down on a trampoline while you're chewing your gum.
Rachel: Always a lot more fun.
Ben: Yeah. And then another one that I really like that I've found to almost wake me up when I'm sleep deprived, and I've got a few sessions. I had some custom sessions created for me. I interviewed the gal that does these, is kundalini yoga. There's something about the movement of energy through the seven chakras of your body. The focus on that third eye chakra, the swinging of the limbs, the deep breathing, and the visualization that all work together, in my opinion, to make kundalini yoga a really good decision on a day when you're sleep deprived or when you're too fatigued to go get like a formal WOD in or whatever else you're training for. Just basic kundalini yoga session.
And so, if I wake up and I'm just beat up, like I was yesterday, yesterday I did a sauna session, I did a cold soak, I did kundalini yoga, and I went on a very easy bike ride. So that's a typical day for me when I'm sleep deprived versus when I wake up and I know I'm ready and raring to go, I'll do something more difficult and maybe I'm not you know having to drink as much sparking water and chew as much gum to keep my appetite satiated, or take dopamine, or anything like that. But those are a few of my tips for fighting food cravings and also kinda like still getting some semblance of a workout in even when you're tired.
Rachel: Yeah. And Tobey, you should try all of these and let us know how you go in the comments section at bengreenfieldfitness.com/361.
Ben: Comments are always good. It's a good place to engage in healthy conversation. So yeah, I'll put a link to all those things I recommended from the Miracle Noodles, to the gum that I chew, everything, and also everything else that we talked about this week over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/361. But don't go yet!
Rachel: No.
Ben: A couple of other things. iTunes reviews. They immensely, like if there's one thing you could do for good karma, leave us a review in iTunes, and we always give away a gift pack at the end of this show to the review that we choose to read on the show. So we're gonna read a review that we got off of iTunes, and if you hear your review read, all you need to do is email gear, that's [email protected]. And when you e-mail [email protected], we will send a gift pack straight to your house. Just be sure to let us know your t-shirt size. So indicate small, medium, large, extra-large, or — I think those are only four sizes. Possibly. Women's or men's.
Rachel: Yes. And this week's review comes from D Moses. The title is “Chuck Norris protege!”, and it's five stars. And here we go.
“If you left your chihuahua with Ben Greenfield, you would get it back as a pitbull. Bears submit to him when he goes hunting. Jokes aside! You'll learn more about nutrition, supplementation, exercise, and a lot more! His guests are extremely interesting to listen to and a great way to diversify your skills, knowledge, and bookshelf (since most of them have written books). It is family friendly, and highly recommended. Stop listening to the same song over and over again and indoctrinate yourself instead with the teachings of Mr. Greenfield and his guests!”
Ben: Now, there is a flaw in that review.
Rachel: Oh no.
Ben: If you left your chihuahua with me, you would not get it back as a pitbull. You would actually never get your chihuahua back because it would be buried out in the forest somewhere because I can't stand — no, I would never raise a finger to harm a small dog, but I have to admit that chihuahuas drive me nuts. They really, really do.
Rachel: I think they're cute little things.
Ben: I don't like those little yappers. That's just me. I'm never gonna be a guy with a little man purse who has a chihuahua sticking up out of my purse. I'm never gonna have a little dog with a jeweled collar. I just — I dunno. I grew up in my grandparents', had like his little Pomeranian dog, and I just — ugh.
Rachel: Sounds like you're traumatized.
Ben: I like a big noble dog. Like I like a Mastiff, or a Labrador, or a Boxer, or we have like a Rhodesian ridgeback. Like I like those kind of dogs.
Rachel: Yeah. We got a ridgeback-lab mix.
Ben: Dogs that you look at and you're like, “Yeah. I see how you were related one time to a wolf.”
Rachel: To a wolf. Totally.
Ben: Yeah. Anyways, though. Alright. Well, we should wrap this thing up. So bengreenfieldfitness.com/361 is where you can go to everything from enter our Tough Mudder get-together in Vegas, to all the resources that we talked about on today's show, check out the Finland Biohacker’s Summit, or the Weston A. Price Conference, or The Unbeatable Mind Retreat. Lots more goodies there, so check all that out. Fantastic interview coming at you this weekend, so be sure to download this weekend's podcast. You're gonna love it. I'm just gonna keep it a mystery. It's a good one. And, Rachel, thanks for coming on and talking about water, autism, parasites, and more.
Rachel: Thank you, Ben.
Ben: Alright. Catch you guys later.
You’ve been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.
October 26, 2016 Podcast: 361: 12 Futuristic Inventions That Could Save Your Life, The Best Way To Purify Your Water, How To Fight Food Cravings & More!
NEW! Click here for the official BenGreenfieldFitness calendar of events.
Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right (or go to SpeakPipe), use the Contact button on the app, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, or use the “Ask Ben” form at the bottom of this page.
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News Flashes:
- Better sex, anti-aging and the Fountain Of Youth…with…Rosemary?
- 12 futuristic products that might change your life: (what’s cooler, the @Ouraring or a glamping toilet?).
- Glycerol got banned by WADA years ago for “hyperhydration”…but this legal, cheap trick works even better. (here are the sodium chloride tablets Ben mentions)
- This just in: ibuprofen kills your heart.
You can receive these News Flashes (and more) every single day, if you follow Ben on Twitter.com/BenGreenfield, Instagram.com/BenGreenfieldFitness, Facebook.com/BGFitness, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Snapchat and Google+.
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NEW! Click here for the official BenGreenfieldFitness calendar.
Nov 17-18, 2016: Ben is speaking at the Biohacker’s Summit in Helsinki, Finland.Discover the latest in wearables, internet of things, digital health, and mobile apps to increase performance, be healthier, stay fit, and get more done. Learn about taking food, preparation, cooking, and eating to the next level with the latest science and kitchen chemistry. Even delve into implanted chips, gene therapy, bionic arms, biometric shirts, robotic assistants, and virtual reality. Two days with an amazing crowd and a closing party with upgraded DJs to talk about. Click here to get in now at a 40% discount.
Nov 11-14, 2016: Ben is speaking at this year’s Weston A. Price Wise Traditions on real food to enhance physical and mental performance. If you’re an athlete, this is the talk for you! Click here to sign up.
Dec 2-4, 2016: Unbeatable Mind Retreat. Don’t miss this awesome opportunity to hang out with Navy Seals and Ben at the annual Unbeatable Mind Retreat in Carlsbad, California.
Did you miss the weekend podcast episode with Peter Shankman? It was a must-listen – “Why ADD and ADHD Are Good For You, (And Supplements, Foods, And Lifestyles to Help With ADD and ADHD) ”. Click here to listen now or download for later!
Grab this Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Gear package that comes with a tech shirt, a beanie and a water bottle.
And of course, this week’s top iTunes review – gets some BG Fitness swag straight from Ben – click here to leave your review for a chance to win some!
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Listener Q&A:
As compiled, deciphered, edited and sometimes read by Rachel Browne, the Podcast Sidekick.
The Best Way To Purify Your Water
Karissa says: Karissa has a question about your home water purification system – she wants to know what brand it is and what type you use? She loves the show and thank you so much for all the hard work you put into it!
In my response, I recommend:
–How To Detox Your Home article
–Home water test kit
–Public water supply reports from the EPA
–State certified laboratories for drinking water from the EPA
–Structured Water Filter: Hydro Energiser Whole House Structured Water Unit
–Aquatru countertop filtration (you can get a $100 discount by using code “$100”.)
Natural Fixes For Adult ADD & Autism
James says: He wants to know if you have ever heard about the brain balance centers? While they are mostly geared towards children, he’s wondering if there’s an application for this sort of training for adults? The center is based on the work of Dr. Robert Mololo and his book “Disconnected Kids – The Ground Breaking Brain Balance Program For Children With Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia And Other Neurological Disorders.”
-Book: Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, Dyspraxia, A.D.D., Dyslexia, A.D.H.D., Depression, Schizophrenia
-Book: The Autism Revolution: Whole-Body Strategies for Making Life All It Can Be
–My podcast with Peter Shankman on why ADD may be good
–Z-Health podcast
How Diatomaceous Earth Works
AJ says: She was wondering if you have opinion or experience with Diatomaceous Earth. She’s taking it for intestinal parasites and wondering if it has any research behind it, or if you have experimented with it Ben, because she knows you’ve had intestinal parasites before, or if there are any other benefits?
In my response, I recommend:
–Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth on Amazon
–NatureCleanse
How To Fight Food Cravings
Tobey says: He’s from Seattle and he’s a firefighter. He’s pretty good about fighting cravings on a normal day when he gets enough sleep, but after working a 24-28 hour shift, his willpower isn’t very good, he’s more hungry and he struggles to workout. Being in shape is important to the job, for injury prevention, and potentially for his life. Do you have any recommendations, biohacks, supplements, or nutritional facts to help him recover faster, fight those cravings and get a good workout in the next day?
In my response, I recommend:
–Dark chocolate stevia
–Good glass bottle sparkling water
–Natural gum
–Miracle Noodles
–Mucuna Dopa extract
–Dopamine Brainfood
–Ketones
–Electrostimulation (and other ways to maintain muscle when you can’t workout)
–Hot Cold Contrast
–Kundalini Yoga
Hey Ben! Getting the hydroZ soon but am curious who makes the iron/manganese filters you use? We on a well over here in CdA, so probably similar water..
Hi Ben,
Looking to replace my existing basic Carbon only based filters and install an RO with remineralization as well the Hydro Energiser Whole House Structured Water Unit.
What do you think of the following unit available on Amazon? I’m looking at maximizing Alkalyzing and remineralizing mainly.
Thanks!
It is hard for me to speak to every product out there… but here are some resources:
https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/08/how-to-d…
https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/01/224-what…
Plus– I am big fan of this product: https://greenfieldfitnesssystems.com/product/stru…
Thank you. That is the structured water product I plan to get thanks to your endorsement and discount.
For the water filtration I was looking for something with a similar endorsement, something that gets the best mineralization input along with alkalizing benefits. Thanks again I’ll read those links.
Love the podcast and content!
Hi Ben – I’m recently trying to get up to speed on water. I love the idea of the whole house structuring mechanism, both for the simplicity and increased application of the structured water (bathing, etc.), but I understood from your podcast that one should always filter BEFORE structuring as the filtering un-structures the water? If I understood this correctly, how does this concept work with the whole-house system? I have city water, so I almost certainly need to filter this stuff. Thanks!
Rose
Yep – filter before structuring the water. I cover that here"So what I do is I use an iron filter and a manganese filter (bet you didn’t see that coming) on my water. And then because the water, after it’s taken out from the ground up through tubes, through an iron filter and through manganese filter, I lose a lot of that ionic structure. You lose a lot of the positive/negative ion separation that you would get when water is actually structured, or another word for this would be clustered. So the water, after it passes through those two filters, it passes through the series of glass beads. It’s called a vortex. And what I use for that is what’s called a hydroenergizer, which is a whole house structured water unit. You can take it, and no matter how you’re filtering your water, you just take whatever water filtration system you’re using. Like reverse osmosis, or carbon block, or whatever, and you put a structured water filter wherever the water is after it’s passed through that other filter, and it restructures the water. It’s really simple"