May 3, 2018
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/longevity-testosterone-coffee-airplane-biohacking/
[00:00] Introduction
[06:30] News Flashes: Fascinating Interview on Longevity
[13:28] “Young Blood” into your Body?
[18:50] Calorie Restriction Lowers your Metabolism
[22:51] Good Reason to Maintain a Bit of Muscle as You Age?
[29:08] Special Announcements
[42:45] Listener Q&A: Should you Drink Coffee on An Empty Stomach
[53:51] The Ultimate Airplane Biohacking Guide
[1:17:18] Natural Ways to Increase Testosterone
[1:29:36] Giveaways and Goodies
[1:35:21] End of Podcast
Introduction: In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show: The Latest On Longevity, Natural Ways To Increase Testosterone, Should You Drink Coffee On An Empty Stomach, Ultimate Airplane Biohacking Guide, and much more.
Brock: So I saw some alarming photos of your face on social media over the last few days. [laughs]
Ben: My face… photos of my face are always alarming, dude. I dunno what you’re talking about.
Brock: Well, a little bit. But these were extra alarming because they were bloody, a little bit puffy, a little swollen.
Ben: Yeah, I got hit by a car. I was at Paleo(f)x, I got hit by a car. People are asking me if I got in a fight down there with a vegan or poked in the eye with a cucumber.
Brock: [laughs]
Ben: Actually, you know what? My face feels pretty good.
Brock: Really?
Ben: It’s healing up really fast. I actually have… I called the US Stem Cell Clinic in Florida where my stem cells are stored, and because I got a concussion when the car hit me and I made love to the pavement, I figured…
Brock: That’s an odd combination of things to do.
Ben: Yes, I figured for neurogenesis that it would help me to have stem cells in my body, so I called them up and tomorrow morning, arriving in a little Styrofoam box of ice are two vials of stem cells that I will inject. I’ll mix them with mannitol which apparently allows them to cross the blood-brain barrier and affect neural tissue a little bit better, so… it’s illegal for a doctor to inject you with those but I can inject myself with them.
Brock: Mannitol is a sugar substitute, right? Like sugar alcohol?
Ben: Mmhmm, wonderful in energy bars. Also great with stem cells in your veins.
Brock: So you’re just mixing it with some yogurt and some mannitol, little berries on top, chia seeds?
Ben: Yeah. Of all the places for me to get hit by a car while riding my… I was actually riding one of those stand-up ElliptiGO bikes.
Brock: So they hit you on purpose coz you look like a dork. [laughs]
Ben: [laughs] I swerved, I had several extra feet that I fell. Anyways though, of all the places to get hit, being at Paleo(f)x was a great spot because they had like a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in the VIP room there for the speakers, and so I spent nearly two and a half hours laying in that. I laid in there with my phone and worked while I did hyperbaric.
Brock: Really good for TBIs.
Ben: Yes, I met with a couple of different chiros there who kind of adjusted… I had three ribs out of place so I could barely breathe and they popped those back into place along with my neck. People are basically farting ketones now at any of these health events, so…
Brock: Basically yes [laughs], hemorrhaging them.
Ben: I was able to be in ketosis… ketones are well indicated for brain injuries so I was able to get on those and there was a lot of DHA there that’s also very, very helpful if you get in a concussion or something like that. The one thing they didn’t have at Paleo(f)x, oddly enough because ancient man did not drink this apparently, was water.
Brock: [laughs]
Ben: Water, ancient man only drank coffee and ketones…
Brock: Yes.
Ben: So they didn’t have any water.
Brock: Very, very expensive coffee.
Ben: Yeah, I went to Whole Foods and I bought a bunch of Topo Chico, so I punished a ton of Topo Chico every day. And my only concern now is I’m going in for x-rays, actually after we record I’m hopping in my car and driving to my chiro to get x-rayed to see if my neck’s broken.
Brock: Oh.
Ben: Because all up and down my neck on the right side, all the scalenes and the paraspinatus and all that area, it’s all kinda locked up and adhesed, and no matter how much cold and magnesium and… I’ve been doing pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. I have a whole bunch of toys at home.
Brock: You got some stuff.
Ben: I got access to pretty much everything like a high-end physical therapy clinic I would have access to. I’ve been blessed with folks sending me a lot of cool things that I can use in my body, but it’s a very strange, kind of dull, achy sensation all up and down my cervical spine. So I wanna check and make sure that my neck is not broken coz I’m supposed to do a Spartan race this weekend, and I don’t wanna do a Spartan race with a broken neck.
Brock: No.
Ben: I don’t wanna be that guy who flips a tire and becomes a paraplegic.
Brock: That’s contraindicated, I believe.
Ben: Yeah, so I’ve had a rough week. How are you?
Brock: I’m great, I just got back from Bermuda. I was down there for an ITU Triathlon race.
Ben: No kidding? You did the ITU in Bermuda?
Brock: You know, I wish I could say I did. The idea, the plan was that I was supposed to go there and actually race, but I’ve been fighting with this stupid… I know I brought this up in the podcast before, the plantar fasciitis is still there but it’s also now it’s turned into like a… what’s the little calcaneus, right in between the ankle and the foot bone?
Ben: Mmhmm, yeah.
Brock: Is now all jacked and it’s just going on and on so my training was not…
Ben: Hmm, looks like you got a spur.
Brock: Maybe, I think that’s the next step is actually go get a… hey, actually we’ll be x-ray buddies. I’ll go get an x-ray too.
Ben: If you have a spur, you can at least ride a horse.
Brock: “Hiya!”
Ben: The built in spurs is useful.
Brock: Absolutely.
Ben: Well, between the two of us, I wonder if we’re just getting old, Brock? We’re the OGs of this fitness podcast. I think… how long have we been doing this, almost 10 years?
Brock: Uhh, yeah. It’s 8, maybe 6?
Ben: Maybe we’re just getting old, man. Maybe we need to start golfing, I dunno. Anyways though, speaking of getting old, shall we talk about longevity?
Brock: Why not?
News Flashes:
Ben: Alright, this is the part of the show where I talk about some of the cooler articles and research papers that have come across my plate recently.
Brock: I put “cooler” in quotation marks and replaced that with “nerdier” [laughs].
Ben: Well yeah, I spend a few hours every morning. You know what, that’s an over-exaggeration.
Brock: That’d be a lot.
Ben: Probably 45-60 minutes in the morning just boring through the latest research and articles and my blog feeds and everything else. And the thing that I found a lot of recently was some interesting papers and studies and articles on longevity, and this one was really great. The title of it, it’s on a website called Darwinian Medicine, and the article is called Do Traditional People Hold The Key To A Healthy Life. Now I’m gonna put a link to this over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/385, but it’s an interview with a researcher named Pedro Bastos, and he’s part of this group of scientists who have kind of spearheaded the research on what’s called evolutionary nutrition and health. And should you not believe in evolution and say we didn’t come from fish or monkeys or whatever…
Brock: Combination of the two. There’s still a…
Ben: A host of very intriguing information in this particular article. For example in the interview, and this won’t take you about 10-15 minutes to read, it’s kind of a longer article. One of the main reasons why traditional people and a lot of these ancestral cultures like the Kitavan Tribe is one that he talks quite a bit about, they don’t suffer from a lot of the chronic health problems that people in America suffer a lot with, people from western civilizations suffer a lot with like diabetes and cardiovascular disease and colon cancer. And he gets into a lot of the alterations that we tend to see in folks who live in more civilized societies compared to ancestral societies.
Brock: In some, I think westernized would be the more acceptable…
Ben: Yeah, westernized.
Brock: Civilized makes you sound like a colonial.
Ben: Yeah, civilized. Loss of muscle mass is one, so the allocation of what they call glutamine and glucose to the immune system is affected by this loss of muscle mass. Another one is higher insulin resistance in the liver and muscle and adipose tissue. We see increase coagulation, reduced levels of vitamin D, decrease testosterone. But he goes into detail in terms of how this actually affects us in civilized or westernized, as you say Brock, society from a health standpoint. Another really interesting one as he gets into the physical activity of a lot of these folks, the Hadza of Tanzania and the Inuits from Canada, the Semani horticulturists of Bolivia, the hunter-gatherers in Paraguay, and it’s really interesting that they have very high physical activity levels, like 150 minutes in many cases each day but it’s extremely low level. There’s no crossfit wods, there’s no hardcore exercise sessions, it’s just they’re moving all day. And I know a lot of this stuff I’m preaching to the choir and seems to make sense, but in the end, the big takeaways, if you don’t have a chance to read this article, I’m just gonna give you the big takeaways at the end because they’re very simple and they’ll take me just a second to tell to you, but they are as follows. An omnivorous diet, meaning not carnivorous, not vegan, omnivorous diet of whole foods.
Brock: Yeah, a bit of everything.
Ben: Regular sun exposure every day, not excessive but regular. Lots of time in nature, a more natural circadian rhythm, specifically a regular bedtime, like going to bed at the same time every night preferably based on circadian biology. By the way, that’s prior to 10:30, 99% of people, regular bedtime. Minimizing exposure to plastic and industrial chemicals, that’s a very interesting one, you don’t see a lot of plastic in these cultures. Adopting stress management techniques and that would include things like… a two-biggie that he brings up are meditation and sports which is interesting, like kicking a soccer ball around or playing hacky sack.
Brock: Yeah, more of that playtime than serious sports.
Ben: Yeah, playtime. Having a sense of purpose, and that can be religion, it can be belief in a higher power, that could be simply identifying why it is that you exist and what unique characteristics you possess that can help other people and living your life based on that stuff.
Brock: That’s a huge one, I think we overlook that way too often in our society. We go to work to make money, that’s our purpose.
Ben: Right. What’s your purpose, Brock?
Brock: [laughs]
Ben: No seriously, I’m putting you on the spot. What’s your purpose?
Brock: Uh, the reason I laughed is because it’s one of those that sounds really hippie-dippie. It’s to help people, the reason that we do all these podcasts for free and write blog posts for free and stuff is really to just help people understand things a little bit better, educate people.
Ben: Yeah. Mine, very succinctly defined, is to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. That’s my purpose, that’s why I get out of bed in the morning, to enable people or to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life.
Brock: See, I need to filter mine down to something I can write on a business card.
Ben: Yeah, and there’s no rule that it can’t change as you get to know yourself better and as you develop new skills or new ideas or perhaps you’re inspired by anything from plant medicine, ayahuasca, or a DMT trip or something like that. Or inspired by God or whatever it is, perhaps that sense of purpose may change, but ultimately having the ability to clearly define that sense of purpose is very important. And this article, in and of itself, I think is worth a read, so I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, but the buck doesn’t stop there. There’s a few very interesting additional articles on longevity that I found. One is…
Brock: Actually I think I interrupted you before you got to the last point which was the antibiotics and nonsteroidal, the NSAIDs and proton pump inhibitors and stuff that they avoid?
Ben: Oh, yes.
Brock: We’re you gonna start that one? That was the last point.
Ben: Was that in there?
Brock: Yup.
Ben: Yeah, okay. So don’t take ibuprofen.
Brock: Or antibiotics.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Overuse, he specifically says overuse.
Ben: Yeah, exactly, that’s another one. Here’s an interesting article, the Vampire Approach to Longevity – Young Blood Revives Muscle, Brain & More. This is yet another study on the young blood concept. You familiar with this one, Brock?
Brock: Yeah, I’m trying to think of what the real word is for it, there’s a fancy term for… and it’s not transfusion.
Ben: Plasma transfusion. There’s actually a few humans who have done this, it’s quite controversial. I believe I may be speaking incorrectly but I think Peter Diamandis may be one of the guys out there who has actually gotten his hands on blood of young people and been able to inject those into his body. There’s even a company, I think they’re a Berkley-based company. Are you familiar with this company that does blood transfusions? It’s like a $12,000 procedure, you can get blood from a healthy, young teenager and get it injected into your body somehow.
Brock: Did you ever watch that TV show, Silicon Valley?
Ben: No, what is it?
Brock: The guy who’s sort of the Steve Jobs/Bill Gates kind of guy in that show is… he sits around with this young strapping lad attached to him with an IV bag for a transfusion.
Ben: Yeah, it’s at Ambrosia by the way. Ambrosiaplasma.com is the company that will actually do this for you, and in mice they’ve seen a whole host of… they’ve seen regeneration of myelin sheaths, they’ve seen a reversal of age-related cognitive impairments, they’ve seen vascular rejuvenation, repair of the blood-brain barrier, enhanced immune system, a really interesting host of effects from the injection of blood of young mice into old mice. So perhaps, and maybe that’s what I should be doing instead of stem cells, maybe I just need to go find some healthy…
Brock: You do have two children.
Ben: I do, yes. Ahh geez.
Brock: Wouldn’t child services be at your door if you did that?
Ben: Definite ethical considerations here, but ultimately I suspect that we may wind up seeing this as a more and more common procedure. Maybe you can eventually waltz into Walgreens or CVS and have the young blood of a well-screened donor injected into your body in the same way that you can now hunt down fecal transplants from young healthy people with healthy guts and have those implanted into your body, so it’s very interesting.
Brock: That’s very interesting indeed.
Ben: And this article appeared on SuppVersity and they give the vampire approach to longevity, about how young blood revives muscle, brain and more. They also, in that same article, give six healthy alternatives which are as follows, they’re not very sexy. Maintain a normal body comp, do physical activity, eat a healthy diet, sleep, stress management, and limit your use of alcohol and tobacco.
Brock: Whatever.
Ben: Whatever, yeah. I wanna get some young blood.
Brock: Sheesh.
Ben: Give me my martini, my steak, slightly burnt and crusty on the outside, and some young blood, baby.
Brock: From what I remember from this study, the mice study in particular was that it didn’t last very long, which was the bummer. It’s not like you get injected once and you’re cured. It’s like you have to keep it up, gotta do this on a very regular basis.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: I’m trying to find the duration of this.
Ben: In this latest study, they grew human muscle cells in a petri dish, and they conditioned them with plasma from healthy male participants that were either younger or older, and they found that the muscle cells, again this was an in vitro, not an in vivo, study, right? So this is in a test tube.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: But they did find that on human muscle cells, there is a significantly enhanced effect of muscle growth and repair when those muscles were exposed to plasma from young people, in the 18-35 year old age range. So you have that at least. I don’t know how long the effects lasted, but either way you can just keep on coming back for more blood if you need to, so. I actually, I think I have a call later on this month with the folks from Ambrosia to talk a little bit more about it. I might wind up going down there and guinea pigging a procedure on myself, not that I would ever guinea pig anything on myself.
Brock: No, never. Actually, just like that Ambrosia company, it looks like you have to do it every… no, two day treatment every other week.
Ben: Hmm.
Brock: That’s $208,000!
Ben: No, $208,000?
Brock: Yeah, only every other week puts a $208,000-260,000 price tag on the treatment that is as of yet…
Ben: That would be per year, I would imagine.
Brock: Maybe, maybe.
Ben: I dunno.
Brock: It doesn’t… actually, it words really poorly but that’s the twice…
Ben: That’s a good business model, they only need nine or ten customers to make a buck.
Brock: Sure.
Ben: They need Richard Virgin and Peter Diamandis and I don’t know, who else?
Brock: Who’s the… oh, Richard Branson.
Ben: Yeah, wait, did I say Richard Virgin? I meant Richard Branson.
Brock: Oh, I thought that was somebody I didn’t know.
Ben: Yeah, that’s what I meant. So yeah, but there’s enough rich guys interested in living a long time.
Brock: Elon Musk.
Ben: Yeah, Elon Musk, there you go. Alright so here’s another interesting one, this was a calorie restriction trial in humans for longevity, and it’s pretty straight forward. They found that cutting calorie intake by 15% for two years, it was a pretty long study, but they restricted calories by 15% for two years, and they tracked these human beings and they published a study in cell metabolism that showed a significant decrease in what they call systemic oxidative stress which has been tied to age-related neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and a host of beneficial effects on reversal of or control of chronic disease risk factors. Now interestingly at the same time, the men and women who cut calories by 15% over two years, they saw a significant decrease in their oxidative stress, they also saw significant slowing of their metabolic rate. So a lot of people, it’s interesting, they don’t wanna slow down their metabolic rate, they don’t wanna get fat.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: But ultimately by slowing…
Brock: “Don’t slow down, then I have to eat less.”
Ben: Yeah, it’s the tortoise effect. You ever seen a tortoise at the zoo, 200 years old, they move at a snail’s pace and they look like maybe they could eat a blade of grass a day and not get fat?
Brock: But they live forever.
Ben: That’s the idea here is yeah, you decrease your metabolism. So to me, I wanna strike a sweet spot between having decent levels of insulin-like growth factor and growth hormone and libido and testosterone and the ability to be able to sprint and play football and just enjoy life and not be cold and hungry and skinny all the time, and also be able to live a decently long life. And it’s interesting how much these folks’ metabolism decreased, but 15% is not that much, right? 15% would mean that… I usually eat about I would say 3,000-4,000 calories a day, so I’d still be able to eat a decent 2,500-3,000 calories a day and see this decrease in oxidative stress. But this is where a lot of these newer diet like cyclic diets that involve fasting on certain days come in handy, or protein restriction on certain days or, and I like this approach, intermittent fast 12-16 hours every day, which is pretty simple.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: All that means is you don’t eat from 8pm to 8am. Number two, a 24-hour fast, one or two times a month, where you’re going from say Saturday dinner until Sunday dinner without eating. That also is pretty simple for most folks to do coz all you gotta skip is a Sunday breakfast and a Sunday lunch, then they go stuff face again on Sunday evening. And then the final one would be, and I like this idea too, you know the whole meatless Mondays concept where you don’t eat meat on Mondays, where you have like…
Brock: Is that a Catholic thing?
Ben: I dunno.
Brock: You think so?
Ben: I dunno. But anyways, the idea of having certain days, I talked about this with Naomi Whittel, the author of Glow15, a book on autophagy and cellular cleanup and cleaning up cellular junk in the body and we get into this idea of simply on the days you don’t exercise hard or tear up muscle, you eat a lower amount of protein. Like normally, I recommend 0.7-0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight, and on your lighter days or your easier days, let’s say maybe like a Wednesday or a Sunday where you’re not gonna do hard exercises or crossfit wod or something like that, then on those days you cut protein down to around 0.5 grams per pound. So this idea of some amount of protein restriction, daily intermittent fast, and a relatively regular 24 hour fast, I think that that allows one to tap into these benefits of calorie restriction for longevity without necessarily adjusting your entire life for every single day to be eating 15% less than you’re used to eating.
Brock: Sounds good, I can do that. Yeah, I can do that, I think.
Ben: So there was one other thing that I wanted to mention, that was a study on muscle mass. And this study actually looked at mortality in the U.S. and compared it to muscle mass and they concluded that muscle mass was inversely associated with the risk of death. And I actually don’t like this study, I don’t like this study because muscle mass, in the absence of any other considerations is actually something that I think is a reason that a lot of body builders we see dying young, we see them getting left ventricular hypertrophy and what’s called cardiomegaly because they have way too much muscle, especially in their heart, cardiac tissue. They have a lot of muscle to carry and cool, which is metabolically expensive, the more muscle you have, the more free radicals are generated from muscular activity so the more antioxidants you need. And I think that these studies that look at muscle mass in the absence of actual muscle quality are flawed, because there are a couple of studies that I’ve been able to find, and I’m working on a book right now on longevity, believe it or not. That’s maybe why…
Brock: What a surprise.
Ben: I’m so geeked out on longevity right now. It turns out that the insulin resistance of a muscle, the fast-twitch/slow-twitch muscle fiber capacity of a muscle meaning a muscle that’s more equipped with explosive fast-twitch fibers appears to confer longevity benefits more than the slow-twitch, endurance-based muscles. The ability of a muscle to have motor units that are recruited like the nervous system’s ability to be able to grab more muscle fibers and recruit them, the ability of a muscle to be able to burn fatty acids, the mitochondrial density of a muscle, essentially the quality of a muscle trumps the quantity of the muscle. And this returns way back to when I interviewed Paul Jaminet six years ago and we talked about these fascinating studies on guinea pigs and the antioxidant requirements of very large amounts of muscle in the guinea pigs versus small amounts of muscle, and it turns out bigger isn’t always better and that quality of the muscle trumps the quantity of the muscle, and that what you want is small, wirey, explosive muscle with a very high amount of power generation capability, not necessarily a large amount of muscle mass per se. and I think a lot of people read these studies on muscle mass being associated with longevity, and I think their goal is to just go do body building-style, what we call hypertrophy training to put on as much muscle as possible when in fact what I would recommend more would be an approach like Nick Curson from Speed of Sport recommends. You go to the gym, you lift as explosively and as quickly as possible. Or a guy like Jon Bruney from Neuro-Mass recommends where you do kind of like your slow, grinding movements but you always finish them up with these explosive, powerful movements.
I think there’s a time and a place for the super slow stuff, there’s a time and a place for the body building style workouts, but you really need to make sure that you’re also focusing on building muscle that’s wirey and that’s explosive and that you’re able to do things like powerlifting with and high force generation capabilities over a short period of time with. And it appears that the quality of the muscle in those situations is going to confer greater longevity benefits than the actual quantity of the muscle or your ability to, as science says, get swoll.
Brock: I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, I think you’re absolutely right but just like down out there in the trenches working with people who basically have little to no muscle mass right now, that’s probably overcomplicating things for people.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: I’m looking at a study here that says they defined low muscle mass as being 5.45kg to the body mass squared in women and 7.26 in men. So they’re not talking about… like that’s not much, they’re defining what I would say in low muscle mass is the general populace where you give them a 20lb weight and they’re gonna be crying for four days coz they just don’t have any strength.
Ben: Yeah, you’re right. It does depend on the starting point and I guess a lot of our podcast listeners, a lot of the folks who are buying supplements from Kion or who are listening to this show are either out of couch potato mode like our internal dialogue at Kion, for example is our customer avatar are those people who are already out kind of living an adventurous life out of couch potato mode, have already discovered sports that they love, signed up for some kind of a triathlon or a Spartan race or at least have though about that or are capable of doing something like that. And so yeah, it does depend, too. We’re not necessarily talking in many cases to McDonald’s enthusiasts.
Brock: I hate to again argue with you but being the guy who actually receives the emails from “I wanna be coached by a Kion coach”, there are a lot of people who have lost complete touch with physical fitness at all and are coming to Kion because they don’t know where to start. Like they don’t know how to get back into it, they never were into it, they’re worried about their longevity. It’s surprisingly just because we’re preaching this stuff, lot of people out there are listening to us but not necessarily doing everything.
Ben: It’s interesting. Yeah, that’s always been a tough from the opening of Kimono, figuring out who’s out there listening and the actual customer demographics, probably coz I’m a complete dummy when it comes to analytics and surveys and stuff like that.
Brock: I may be getting a skewed populace too because they’re writing to us because they want coaching and the people who are listening, they’ve got it nailed down and all they need to do is listen to the podcast or read the blog posts.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: So yeah, we’re sort of… I think there’s a lot of people out there that are, yeah, they’re all over the place, but… so you folks that are trying to get swoll, stop it. You people who aren’t lifting at all, start.
Ben: Yeah, that’s a good way to sum it up, Brock.
Brock: [laughs] That’s actionable, right?
Special Announcements:
Ben: Speaking of Kion, we just launched our coffee, make sure you go check it out. It’s the purest, most antioxidant-rich coffee on the face of the planet. We actually inspected the beans to make sure that they’re symmetrical and even so we get a perfect roast. Only 3% of the coffee in the world is organic, ours is organic. We tested it over 60 different coffees and it has the highest antioxidant content of any coffee that we tested. And we tested almost all of them from Folgers and Starbucks to most of the “healthy” coffee brands that you may or may not be familiar with. This coffee, not only in terms of flavor but also purity and most importantly health, trumps them all. So it is, and I know I’m jaded, but it is in my opinion the tastiest, healthiest coffee that exists and when I open the little nitrogen-flush bags that I’m getting in the mail, it literally fills up the entire kitchen with the aroma of the coffee. Even my kids have commented that the kitchen smells good in the morning and kind of like kids don’t like beer… so they like coffee or beer, but they’ve commented as to the aroma of these bags when I open them. So if you haven’t yet gotten on that Kion coffee bandwagon, you are missing out on an important component of life. So it’s getkion.com/coffee, it’s K-I-O-N, getkion.com/coffee.
Brock: I’m totally missing out right now, I’m drinking some coffee I brought back from Bermuda.
Ben: Yeah, I’m spoiled now because all other coffee now just doesn’t even taste as good, but now me being aware of the quadrupling of the antioxidants in this coffee based on the beans that we select and our roasting process, it’s night and day difference, so…
Brock: Should people be worried about drinking it after a workout now if it’s that high in antioxidants?
Ben: Uh, that’s a great question. Drinking coffee after a workout actually enhances the glycogen restoration if you are consuming a meal after the workout, and there’s been some very interesting research on that. Not only that, but the antioxidant profile of coffee is very similar to that of the green tea polyphenols and we know that green tea polyphenols do not blunt the hormetic response to exercise. And so even though… they haven’t actually ever run a study looking at any, what you’d actually look is the satellite cell response and the mitochondrial response to consumption of coffee in a post-exercise state versus not consuming the coffee and the antioxidants. If it’s similar to what we’d see in green tea, then as opposed to high amounts of vitamin C or high amounts of vitamin E, a more natural, whole food-based antioxidant seems to not blunt the hormetic response to exercise. So I can’t speak to research but I suspect that, especially based off what I’ve seen from green tea polyphenols, it’s not something folks need to worry about even though I personally don’t like to drink coffee after a workout. That’s not something I crave after workout.
Brock: But you work out in the afternoon, too.
Ben: Yeah, that’s true.
Brock: I’m a morning worker-outer so I have a cup before I work out and then I usually have another one in a couple of hours after.
Ben: I have a cup before the work out so I’m all caffeinated and so I take a giant dump before I go workout.
Brock: There’s that.
Ben: This podcast is brought to you by Purathrive. Speaking of vitamin C, Purathrive actually makes a vitamin C, it’s a liposomal vitamin C. I probably wouldn’t take it after workout for the reasons that I just described.
Brock: [laughs]
Ben: But they do an amazing curcumin, they do a vitamin C, I’ve interviewed the guy that makes this stuff, Thomas Delauer on the podcast a couple of times. Super smart guy, and they figured out how to make ginger more bioavailable, DHA more bioavailable, turmeric more bioavailable, and this stuff tastes amazing. It tastes like an orange creamsicle, and it’s called Purathrive. They added a 30-day 100% money back guarantee for anybody who wants to try their curcumin, anybody who wants to try their vitamin C, super nutrient dense stuff that tastes amazing and their delivery mechanism is something that Thomas studied quite a bit, and he’s the same guy I interviewed last week on how to mitigate the damaging effects of the alcohol, and he developed these Purathrive compounds and they’re pretty amazing. So 15% off for anybody listening in, you go to Purathrive.com/bengreenfield, that’s P-U-R-A, Purathrive.com/bengreenfield, that gets you 15% off the Curcumin Gold, the Radiant C, or any of their other amazing compounds.
This podcast is also brought to you by Thrive Market, and I can tell you right now that the number one thing that I order from Thrive Market right now is their coconut flakes cereal, which is just cereal made out of coconut meat. So I grew up on Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch and Coco Puffs, and would of course drink the peanut buttery or chocolatey milk after, sometimes adding extra cereal to that milk to enhance the density of the peanut buttery or chocolatey flavor of the milk. But now I can actually have this cereal made out of coconut meat. They also do coconut meat wraps, I’m incapable of eating a salad with a fork these days. I either wrap the salad in nori wraps or coconut wraps, Thrive has both.
Brock: Hmm.
Ben: And all you do is you join, so it’s like CostCo but it’s CostCo for healthy people. It’s not CostCo for people who want giant king-sized Snicker bars boxes and hotdogs as they exit the warehouse. They have non-GMO food, they have snacks, vitamins, supplements, personal care products, everything, and you get 25-50% off of traditional retail prices. 25-50% off so it’s pretty significant and they have this really cool search function, and on this search function you can filter things out… kind of like you can filter things out on Amazon but this is for health food. You can filter things out like gluten-free, paleo, vegan, kosher, ketogenic, anything. So it’s pretty impressive, this website. Thrive Market is what it’s called, and they are giving all of our listeners $60 off… or $60, not $60 off but $60 of free organic groceries plus free shipping and a 30-day trial. So their prices are already 50% off and they’re giving you an extra $60 in groceries. And it’s very, very simple, so you go to thrivemarket.com/ben, and the interesting thing is that 70% of their catalogue, some people say “why can’t I just order this off Amazon?” 70% of their stuff you can’t find off Amazon, you can’t get these coconut meat wraps or the coconut meat cereal for example on Amazon, period. And not only that, but you are supporting a company that really takes into account not just the health of people but the health of the planet. All their packaging and their boxes and their inserts, they’re made from recycled paper, 100 zero waste, they make it super-duper easy to order even if you haven’t ordered health food before online, what’s wrong with you?
Brock: [laughs] Come on, man!
Ben: Thrive Market. So it’s thrivemarket.com/ben, $60 of free groceries plus free shipping plus a 30-day trial of their entire membership, that’s like CostCo meets Whole Foods, except without the unhealthy food and without the dent in your paycheck, so it’s Thrive Market. Thrivemarket.com/ben, check it out.
Brock: You know what I’ve got in my cupboard right now from Thrive?
Ben: What?
Brock: I got their branded sprouted popcorn.
Ben: Ooh.
Brock: Yeah, I haven’t tried it yet but I’m dying to try it. It was waiting for me when I got back from Bermuda.
Ben: Add that to my shopping list.
Brock: What do you put on it? You put some ghee on top of popcorn? Damn.
Ben: My wife puts hot sauce on top of popcorn, but ghee sounds really good. Really good, yeah. I’m not a popcorn guy myself. I would eat stranger things while she eats popcorn like I’ll pop spirulina and chlorella, but yeah, she’s a popcorn fiend and yeah she puts hot sauce on popcorn. Hot sauce and sea salt.
Brock: Thrive Market Organic Sprouted Popcorn.
Ben: This podcast is also brought to you by Birdwell Beach Britches.
Brock: Birdwell Beach Britches.
Ben: These are actually amazing board shorts. So, they are originally produced, or were originally produced in 1961, when this surf mom named Carrie Birdwell Mann transformed her little California home into a sewing room and store, and created one of California’s first surf shops. What they did was they hand-cut and they sewed these shorts in California, but they used this almost unbreakable two-ply nylon fabric they call surf nil fabric. It was inspired by the sails of boats that were anchored at California’s Newport Beach. I would imagine the first britches that they made, they just snuck into those boats and they tore down the sails or maybe ripped apart a few or brought some of Carrie Birdwell Mann’s giant scissors up there, and they made themselves perhaps little [0:39:02] ______ or…
Brock: They were actually vandals.
Ben: Yes, they’re vandals. The original inventors of these shorts were vandals, they pillaged the boat. These surf shorts are amazing, they can survive rock scrapes and reef slashes and tons of wear. You really cannot destroy them, I’ve tried, I’ve literally tried to rip my shorts off and I can’t do it. They are the complete opposite of stripper pants, so they’re very amazing and they come with a lifetime guarantee. They’re that tough, they look great but they have a lifetime guarantee. You can go see what they look like or you can get some, 10% off your first Birdwell purchase with the lifetime guarantee and free shipping for any order over $99, so grab a few pairs. Go to Birdwell.com, just like it sounds, Birdwell, B-I-R-D-W-E-L-L, Birdwell.com and use discount code at the checkout, and that will automatically get you all those discounts and you can see why they’ve been an American icon since 1961. They don’t make shorts like that up in Canada, do they, Brock?
Brock: No, that’d be pointless. We never have summer here so why wear shorts?
Ben: Finally, there are a whole bunch of things on the calendar. Let me tell you about a couple, I haven’t announced before on the podcast. There’s a brand new biohacking conference, a big one in Toronto. They’re pulling out all the stops on this thing, it’s probably gonna be Canada’s big, major biohacking event of the year. They’re dialing in some amazing speakers except me, I’m gonna show up and destroy the whole thing. But they got Phinney and Volek and all these different researchers…
Brock: Yeah, that’s cool.
Ben: They’ve got Dr. Jason Fung and Ryan Laurey. It’s pretty cool, they’re covering psychedelics and cannabis, brain hacking, ketogenic low-carb diets, human microbiome, everything and it’s October… I believe it’s the 15th to the 17th.
Brock: 14th to the 16th.
Ben: 14th to the 16th? Okay, never mind. I spoke incorrectly, 14th through the 16th of October so you got some time to look into this thing. We’ll put a link in the show notes for this podcast over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/385.
Another one that you should definitely look into is the Ancestral Health Symposium taking place in Bozeman, Montana in July. I will be speaking over there and then there’s a few other events. AwesomenessFest in Sardinia, Italy, that thing’s not full yet and you can apply now to get invited. That’s an invite-only, kind of an exclusive event, that’s May 31st to June 3rd. I’ll be speaking there, I’ll also be speaking at Mindvalley U in Tallinn, Estonia. It’s where a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and their kids and families go and hang out for… you get to choose, one week up to a full month over at Estonia which is close to Finland, very cool neck of the woods of the world. And then finally this weekend, for those of you listening in, this weekend if you happen to be in Montana, if my neck’s not broken which I’ll find out in a couple of hours here, I’m gonna go do the Spartan race in Montana this weekend. So look for me at the Montana Spartan Race, and then I will also be racing down at the Big Bear Race in California towards the end of May, the SoCal Spartan. So check all those out, we’ll put a full official Ben Greenfield Fitness Calendar up over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/385.
Listener Q&A:
Prahkar: Hey Ben, I love you work. I just wanted to know if coffee is okay on an empty stomach. Somewhere I’ve heard that it’s not a good idea to drink it on an empty stomach and I fast for a long time so I just wanted to know if it’s okay if I drink it. Thank you.
Ben: Yeah with this whole Kion Coffee thing, we’ve been getting inundated with questions about coffee.
Brock: Mmhmm, what a surprise. People really wanna do their coffee right these days. I remember like even 10 years ago, I was gonna say 20 years ago, but even 10 years ago people are just like “coffee, drink it.”
Ben: Do I use a paper filter or a French press, do I lie on my left side or my right side when I’m doing my coffee enema?
Brock: Is this first wave, second wave, third wave coffee?
Ben: Exactly. Can I watercolor paint with coffee? You can, it turns out.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: You can actually watercolor paint with coffee. There’s some very cool YouTube videos of people watercolor painting with coffee. That’s actually something that’s on my list of things to do this month is I wanna… coz I paint watercolor, I’d drag out my canvas and everything at least once a week and paint coz it’s wonderful for meditation and relaxation and creativity and learning a new skill, neurogenesis. But I’ve never done it with coffee before so I’m gonna paint with coffee, it’s amazing. Anyways though, coffee on an empty stomach, well with the fasting deal, first of all let’s address that, does coffee break a fast?
Brock: Depends on who you are and who you ask.
Ben: Uhuh. Yeah, so the idea with coffee and fasting is that coffee does accelerate your ability to utilize fatty acids as a fuel so it’s gonna be perfect for things like ketosis and fat burning. We also know that coffee will improve your insulin sensitivity and your glucose tolerance, and so it enhances the effects of fasting. We also know that coffee enhances and actually induces cellular autophagy, the cleanup of cellular junk in the liver and in the muscle tissue and in the heart. So coffee is actually something that is extremely beneficial to drink during a fast. One other thing that it does is it triggers what’s called AMP-K, which is an enzyme that inhibits fat storage and promotes fat burning and activates antioxidant networks, and again triggers cellular autophagy and even promotes mitochondrial biogenesis. So drinking coffee when you’re fasted is actually a way to, I don’t wanna use this term too much but I’m gonna use it anyways, to biohack your fast.
Brock: Hmm.
Ben: So anyways though…
Brock: I was gonna say accelerate your fast.
Ben: Yes, to accelerate your fast.
Brock: It’s like kicking your fast in the ass.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. Here’s the deal: if you add butter or MCT oil or coconut oil to your coffee, that breaks your fast because it has calories in it.
Brock: Or sugar.
Ben: Okay? If you add sugar or whipping cream or heavy cream to your coffee, that breaks your fast. Now none of those things, aside from the sugar, will spike your glucose levels or be insulinogenic so it’s technically better than just about anything else that you could eat, but you’re still breaking a fast. Now there are things you can add to the coffee that might even enhance coffee’s ability to enhance your fasting. That’s enough of a cyclic statement. Anyways, like cinnamon, cinnamon reduces insulin resistance so adding cinnamon to a fasted cup of coffee would be just fine. Adding Stevia, stevia lowers your blood glucose and it lowers you insulin levels and actually adding some organic Stevia to a cream-free, sugar-free, fat-free, butter-free, coconut oil-free cup of coffee when you’re in a fasted state technically enhances the effects of coffee in a fasted state. Monk fruit extract has a very similar effect to Stevia in that respect, so that would be another one.
People ask about collagen, collagen is another one. Collagen or essential amino acids, those are technically not that big of a deal, they have a very small amount of calories in them. Much, much lower number of calories though than you might find in butter or MCT oil or coconut oil and so if you’re injured or trying to maintain muscle in a fasted state, for example, that would be about the most I would add to the coffee. So you can add a little collagen, little Stevia or monk fruit extract, a little cinnamon or nutmeg to coffee, but I’d just be careful with doing a lot more than that when it comes to coffee. But ultimately, I’m a huge fan for the insulin sensitivity, the fat burning and the cellular autophagy and this AMP-K enzyme upregulation of drinking coffee when you’re in a fasted state. So I’m actually a fan of that, but of course when you’re in a fasted state, unless you’ve somehow figured how to fast with a full stomach, which I think is technically impossible in our current universe…
Brock: I don’t think you can do that.
Ben: You are going to be drinking coffee on an empty stomach, and there is some research out there that has looked into what happens when you drink coffee on an empty stomach. For example, caffeine in coffee can stimulate your stomach cells to release more hydrochloric acid which is a digestive aid. But a large amount of stomach acid can actually promote a highly acidic environment, and for some people, especially people who have a weak mucosal layer, a weak protective barrier of the stomach, it can cause the risk of damage or ulcers. So if you have leaky gut issues, if you have a torn up gut, if you’ve been on an antibiotic regimen and you haven’t repaired your gut with things like glutamine or colostrum or bone broth or marshmallow extract or any of these things that can help to repair a leaky gut or a less than favorable mucosal lining of the gut, you may not wanna drink coffee on an empty stomach. If you’ve got a torn up gut, it’s one of those things where you need to repair your gut first before you begin to use coffee to enhance a fasted state. So that’s one thing. Another thing that coffee can do is it relaxes what’s called your esophageal sphincter, and that’s the gatekeeping muscle valve that allows food into your stomach and make sure that the food stays there, and if…
Brock: That’s supposed to be a one-way valve, not a two-way valve.
Ben: Exactly, and again if you have, and this typically happens to people who have poor bacterial balance, a lot of times they tend to have esophageal reflux or heartburn, and in many cases that can be fixed by restoring proper flora to the gut, taking probiotics, eating a wide variety of fermented foods, etc. If you’re one of those people who deals with heartburn and esophageal reflux, then the answer is not to take Prevacid or any other heartburn medication or proton pump inhibitor, but it is instead to restore the beneficial flora in your gut. And in many cases, that’s one of the best fixes for stomach acid issues, so once again, if you deal with acid reflux, I wouldn’t drink coffee on an empty stomach until you’ve restored the flora of your gut. Coffee can also, and we’ve seen it to be able to trigger an immune response that can result in bloating and cramping and gas and diarrhea and inflammation. And anybody who has a condition such as gastritis or irritable bowel disorder or colitis or Crohn’s disease, so because of that, if you have any of those issues, I really don’t think that, and I understand that this is shooting myself in the foot since I now own a coffee company to a certain extent, I wouldn’t go near the stuff if you have any of those issues until you’ve sorted them. I’m not saying don’t drink coffee for the rest of your life but I am saying get on, for example, a paleo autoimmune diet or a healing protocol such as the SCD diet, the specific carbohydrate diet. Or a low FODMAP diet combined with some of those things I mentioned earlier like glutamine and colostrum and bone broth and many of these gut nourishing compounds so that you fix the issues so that you can enjoy a nice cup of coffee in the morning.
There’s a few other things that the coffee has been shown to do, for example it can accelerate digestion, it can accelerate peristalsis, it can cause the stomach to release its contents into the small intestine and if you have eaten a very large meal, and this kind of goes outside the fasted state issue, but if you’ve eaten a very large meal, I don’t think that this post meal cup of coffee is such a good idea because it can inhibit the ability for that food to be fully digested. Once the coffee accelerates the emptying of food from the stomach into the small intestine before the food has had a chance to engage in the full digestion process or at least a part of the digestion process that occurs in the stomach such as the initiation of the breakdown of proteins, the release of some acids that can help to predigest that bolus of food that you’ve just ingested. So another time, in addition to if you have a lot of gut issues, you wouldn’t want to drink coffee in a fasted state, I wouldn’t have a big cup of coffee after a meal either. That’s why I’m a bigger fan of maybe a little bit of… a decaf black is something I’ll have after a meal often or a small shot of espresso, but I’ll be a little bit careful with a big cup of coffee after a meal as well. And then finally, coffee can, as I alluded to earlier, stimulate peristalsis or intestinal wave action, and that’s because the caffeine in coffee causes decrease of something called GABA, gamma aminobutyric acid, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So coffee can lead to overactive bowels, and if you drink coffee in a fasted state and you find that it just sends you rushing to the bathroom, which is actually why I like to drink coffee [laughs] in the morning…
Brock: Yeah, I was gonna say that’s part of it.
Ben: You may wanna back off or drink a little… if you happen to be in a situation where you gotta be at work and you don’t have a chance to use the restroom until lunch or something like that, that’s another situation where you’ll wanna at least be careful with how much coffee you drink because it does have that ability to be able to stimulate peristalsis and bowel movement pretty effectively. So that’s another area where if you’re drinking on an empty stomach, that effect is gonna be accelerated even more. Ultimately though, coffee enhances a fast unless you have gut issues, it’s fine on an empty stomach or unless you gotta just be sitting at work or walking into a meeting and you don’t want diaper pants going on, that’d be another situation where you’d wanna be careful if you’re very sensitive to that kind of peristalsis, but…
Brock: I believe we call that a poo-mergency, don’t we?
Both: Poo-mergency, poomergency.
Ben: Anyways though, coffee’s okay on an empty stomach in most situations, but hopefully that kinda clarifies and I think the pros outweigh the cons of a good, fasted, morning cup of coffee on an empty stomach.
Peter: Hi Ben, I’d really like your help with joint pain and flying. I just returned from a surf trip in El Salvador and once again, about halfway through the flight, I felt like I was about to fall apart. I’m doing all the right things, I’m fasting before and during the flight, taking activated charcoal, staying well hydrated, and I stand up periodically and walk down the aisle. My jet lag is fine, much better than it used to be, but mid-flight I feel like I have the flu all over my body. Now I have to say that I’ve broken a lot of bones in previous accidents and have quite a fair number of plates and screws in me. I’m wondering, is this due to the cabin pressure or the lack of oxygen? I understand some of the newest planes like the Boeing Dreamliner maintain cabin pressure at a much lower altitude than the industry standard. They don’t fly to most places, so I’d really appreciate your ideas here as you’ve always been a great, solid source of information. Thanks very much.
Ben: Well, this question is near and dear to my heart because I fly a heck of a lot.
Brock: I flew for 8 hours yesterday, and boy are my arms dead. [laughs]
Ben: Your lats, your lats are just super fatigued…
Brock: Just smashed.
Ben: All that winging action, flapping and flapping all the way back to Canada. Anyways though, yes, I have a very, I guess I would say thorough set of things that I do when I fly in an airplane that had allowed me to turn an airplane into a very relaxing and productive and less unhealthy experience. And I’ll tell you what that is in a moment, I’ll give you my ultimate airplane, I’m gonna use the word again, biohacking guide.
Brock: Hmm.
Ben: My ultimate airplane biohacking guide. But before I get into a lot of the geeky stuff that I do on the plane to give myself better sleep and a better feeling when I step off that plane, first of all there is a reason, Peter, that you get joint pain when you fly. There’s a reason a lot of stuff happens when you fly. So first of all, one thing that you need to know is that because of the low amount of moisture on a plane and the high cabin pressure, not only does that cause a little bit of a seep in some of the moisture from the actual joints but also seepage from the skin. So cabin pressure and this dry recirculated air, it saps moisture from your body. Now this is why you not only want to stay, of course, adequately hydrated on the plane, but you can take olive oil or sesame oil. You can line the interior of your nasal passages with a little bit of this oil, and it can actually help to keep things lubricated when you fly. Interestingly, there was a scientific review that found that pilots and flight attendants have more than twice the risk of developing melanoma compared to the general population. That might be because the plane windows don’t sufficiently block the harmful UV rays from coming in which is one reason that you kinda wanna close the window curtain on the… what do you call it, the little sliding window thing, Brock?
Brock: The window cover?
Ben: I dunno what they call that.
Brock: Shade?
Ben: Window shade, yeah. You wanna close that if you can, if you’re sitting next to the window, and that’ll help out a little bit. But ultimately, oil on the joints, like a balm on the joints, the knee joints, the elbow joints, et cetera. Also, some kind of serum, we have a serum at Kion, like a skin serum at Kion that would work, and then olive oil or a sesame oil or even a coconut oil would work up in the nasal passages. That’s one way that you can protect your skin from that dry recirculated air and the effect of cabin pressure. Now another thing that happens of course, on the airplane, blood collects in your legs and your feet coz you’re sitting for a long period of time. And when it leaves your veins for the surrounding tissue, you get this mid-flight foot swelling and can sometimes escalate into blood clots. For that or for joint pain, I’m a huge fan of compression gear: compression socks or compression shorts. I wear both when I’m flying. I wear both some really good compression shorts or compression socks, or I’ll wear just full length compression pants. That will not only help with your joints, it’ll help with the actual movement of blood to reduce the formation of a blood clot.
Brock: And in this case it’s important to have whole socks, right? Not those sleeves, coz you want the pressure on your feet as well.
Ben: Yeah, they call it graduated compression. It kinda start tight towards the bottom and milks up towards the top. There’s a few different companies that do it, Zensah, I think Beaker Concepts is another one. What you wanna do, if you go to Amazon for example, just search for graduated compression gear. Graduated compression gear is the best kind, [0:58:38] ______ is another company that does compression that I wear quite a bit, so if you see me wearing old man compression gear walking around, that’s usually an indication that I just gotten off of an airplane, but graduated is what you wanna look for.
Another thing that happens when you fly is on a plane, your taste buds go numb. Your taste buds go numb and they actually looked at this in studies, and they found that dry plane air, like I just told you about that evaporates your nasal mucus, the cabin pressurization can cause the membranes to swell in the nose, and both of those can prevent you from fully detecting food scents. And so you’re likely not enjoying meals to their fullest potential when you’re on a plane, and a lot of times your perception of sweet and saltiness drop. That’s why, first of all, airline food is so crappy coz it can be crappy coz you don’t taste it as much, it’s also sometimes why you crave foods on airplanes because whatever food that you eat doesn’t seem to satisfy you as much coz you don’t taste it as well so it’s very interesting. And being aware of that is good because you now know that something that you’re eating, you would want to not pay as much attention to whether or not you feel full or feel satisfied and just pay more attention to the quantity of what you’re eating. Coz some of your ability to be able to engage or get this dopaminergic response to food, it decreases when you’re flying, so that’s another one to pay attention to.
Brock: Crazy.
Ben: Yeah, and I’ll tell you some of the things that I fly with as far as food goes in a moment. Gas is another big one. The gas in your intestines expands in the plane, so any of you who have ever had that issue where you feel like you’ve crop dusted the entire flight as you walked down the aisle to the bathroom, or any of you who have been stuck in a window seat and something slips out and all of a sudden you look around as though you’re trying to figure out who farted and you hope, you keep your fingers crossed that there’s a child behind you that you can blame this on.
Brock: [laughs] You can point at.
Ben: Yes. And not getting rid of the gas just causes the pain or bloating or other horrible issues because that body gas just gets stuck from the plane rising and the cabin pressure dropping. And the gas fluctuations also affect your ears, right? So the tube that lets air in and out to maintain pressure doesn’t react quickly enough during a plane’s descent so air can’t pass through an pressurize your ear properly, and that’s why I always carry gum on the plane. I always carry gum on the plane, as well. Of course there are circadian rhythm issues as your body has to adjust to the daylight and the darkness, and then finally there is the issue with moisture. The air pumped into a plane cabin, like I mentioned, it’s incredibly dry and moisture wants to just from places of high concentration like your mouth and your respiratory tract to places of low concentration like the cabin that’s around you. And exhaling all that moist air gives you water loss, you become dehydrated, a lot of times you crave salty things, and so in many cases they pass by with that beverage cart, you want tomato juice or salty pretzels or you begin to crave something else. So I always travel with a really good salt and a lot of water on the plane as well.
Okay, so based off of all this, what do I do to not only try that I don’t get all this joint pain when flying but that I’m also able to sleep when I fly, that I’m able to keep my nasal passages lubricated, I’m able to keep minerals on board. I’m gonna give you my exact flight protocol, you ready for this?
Brock: You’re gonna drink a ton of apple juice, right?
Ben: Okay, so first…
Ben: Isn’t it weird? Why do people drink so much, and this is totally off topic except that I just marvel at this every time I’m on a plane, like adults ordering apple juice.
Ben: I dunno.
Brock: Why does that happen so much on the plane?
Ben: I don’t know, a normal sane adult on a plane suddenly craves apple juice. I’m not sure.
Brock: Yeah, so much apple juice going on. What the hell, people?
Ben: Yeah. When I was in Poland, a lot of people drink apple juice and apple cider mixed with vodka.
Brock: Well that I understand.
Ben: Yeah, I dunno, complete rabbit hole. I dunno, maybe somebody can leave a comment.
Brock: Alright, anyway.
Ben: Okay so I’ll put a list of all this…
Brock: Everybody… Ben’s Ultimate…
Ben: [1:02:44] ______ biohacking guide.
Brock: The ultimate plane biohacking guide.
Ben: I’ll put a list of all this stuff [laughs] over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/385. (A.) You get onto the plane wearing graduated compression gear: socks, pants, shorts, I even have compression gear for my upper body. And you can get that stuff, there’s a company called AlignMed, they actually make shirts that are compression gear and support for your upper body as well as your lower body. So graduated compression gear, plenty of water goes without saying, I’m not gonna kick that horse to death. I always buy a few bottles of water in the actual airport, I pay the $6.99 for the 16oz bottle of water, I take that on the plane. Now, what I do is I get sparkling water and I turn it into this amazing vanilla cream soda flavor and that allows me to not order sodas, cocktails, tomato juice, apple cider, etc. on the plane because I have this amazing cream soda-esque sparkling water. The way that I do that is I put a few drops of Omica Organics Vanilla Stevia into the sparkling water when I’m on the plane and it tastes freakin’ amazing. So that’s how I keep myself motivated to stay hydrated when the water gets boring.
Brock: You love your Stevia, don’t you? You just love the trippy stuff.
Ben: Yeah, the other thing that I carry on the plane that I mix into water are these electrolyte tablets. I get mine from Hammer Nutrition and they’re just there little electrolyte tablets with no artificial sweeteners or anything in them. I’ll typically have one of those an hour or so in a flight, and I’ll often put those in water or I’ll even just dissolve them in my mouth, and those help quite a bit with me being able to retain the water that I am drinking. And again it’s something that I can consume that keeps me from overeating on the plane and feeling as though that salt craving that I have needs to be satisfied via salty pretzels or big, old tomato juices or Bloody Marys or whatever. So that’s another one. The other thing that I do from a salt and a hydration standpoint is I have a big bag of this Colima white sea salt, and not only do I carry that when I’m travelling to just about any restaurant that I go to coz it’ll take any meal you ever have and make it pop, whether it’s a steakhouse or just a salad bar from Whole Foods or whatever. This Colima sea salt, it’s this coarse sea salt that just tastes amazing. I don’t use it on the airplane as much as I use it on a meal that I might have before or after a flight and that also helps me to retain a lot of the hydration, a lot of the water that I’m consuming, okay? So I’ve got my vanilla Stevia with my big bottles of water, my Hammer Nutrition electrolyte tablets, and then my Colima sea salt that I would use on a lot of meals.
So the next one is what do I eat on the plane. Well, one of the main things that I bring are these spirulina and chlorella tablets because they’ve got a whole bunch of amino acids and fatty acids in them. And they’re super nutrient dense, they quell your appetite but they’re very low in calories. Now they can dye your mouth green so you’ll want of course the water to swish around in your mouth.
Brock: Mmhmm.
Ben: Coz I don’t swallow them even though the company tells you to swallow them, I chew them. So I travel with these energy bits and these recovery bits, and what I do is I’ll always have some little packet of nuts, like macadamia nuts are the best with this. But if you’re at an airport, you can usually find just like basic raw almonds or cashews or any type of nut, sometimes even walnuts for example are another good one. And I’ll just take a handful of nuts and I’ll mix them with a handful of this spirulina or chlorella, and you can even put a pinch of the sea salt in there as well if you want to. But ultimately it’s a very satiating little handful of stuff, and just algae and fats, and that’s one of the only meals that I’ll eat when I’m on the airplane aside from all this water and Stevia and electrolyte tablets. And it keeps your blood sugar from spiking, again if you sprinkle a little bit of the salt in there, it kinda satisfies some of the salt cravings. That’s generally what I’ll eat on the plane, okay? The next thing that I do is I have a very… I sleep a lot on planes, I’m usually either sleeping or writing in planes.
Brock: Me too.
Ben: I have a very elaborate sleep setup, I can sleep like a baby on planes. I didn’t use to be able to sleep at all on a plane, and now I’m asleep in like two minutes, flat. I’ll sleep for sometimes 45-60 minutes at a time on a flight, so a two hour flight I’ll sleep half of it and I’ll write half of it. So the way that I do my sleep is (a.) I have one of these J-hook travel pillows, it’s an amazing pillow, you can get these off of Amazon, and your head just kinda rests on one side of it. It’s perfect if you’re a side sleeper and you have difficulty sleeping on your back as you would on the plane with the seat reclined, this fixes all of that. It’s called a J-hook travel pillow. Now I blow up this J-hook travel pillow, it’s inflatable, right, so it just fits in a very small, deck of cards-sized space, in my travel bag. And then I’ve got my noise blocking headphones, just the very simple Sony noise blocking headphones. I use the ones with a cable attached to them so I’m not getting a lot of Bluetooth up by my head, I just don’t like the Bluetooth going on, there’s a lot of radiation bouncing around the plane anyways. But I use the wired noise blocking headphones, and then I have a full wraparound sleep mask, right? So I have the headphones, I have the sleep mask around that, I’ve got my J-hook travel pillow, and those are kind of the three pieces of gear that I’ll use to sleep. But then the other thing that I’ll do prior to sleep is I’ll have two things: CBD oil because you can travel with that and it’s fine, you aren’t gonna get that confiscated by TSA or security or anything like that, it’s totally legal.
Brock: The DEA jumps onto the plane, guns blazing.
Ben: Exactly, two that I’ve been using lately. There’s a company called Element Health that does a really good CBD oil, there’s another company called Primal Hacker that has a new CBD oil. There’s a lot of different CBD oils out there but those are two that I like and I do a few dropper-fuls of that, you hold it in your mouth for about 60 seconds and then you swallow. In addition, the company Thorne just came out with a brand new hemp, and not only is it CBD with no THC in it, so again totally legal, but they blended it with beta caryophyllene, which is a form of a phytocannabinoid, and then they added some cloves and some black pepper in there to make it more bioavailable. They’ve increased the concentration of what’s called copaiba oil which also makes it more bioavailable, and they have a very, very good source of hemp. This stuff hits you pretty hard when it comes to sleep, and it’s brand new. It’s from Thorne, and Thorne does super high quality stuff anyways, anybody who listens to this podcast regularly knows that I use a lot of stuff from Thorne. So Thorne has a hemp oil, it’s basically in a capsule like a fish oil cap, and then I like the Elemental CBD oil or the Primal Hacker CBD oil. So I do the CBD and I blend that with reishi, with the Four Sigmatic reishi.
So I do two packets of Four Sigmatic reishi and I just dump it in my mouth, I chase it with the CBD oil, I let that whole tasty cocktail sit in my mouth for about 60 seconds and I’m just out like a light. But the cool thing is I’m not groggy when I wake up from the nap because usually when I wake up from my nap on the airplane, I’m gonna start writing or the plane’s landing and I gotta go off to a meeting or a conference. So the CBD, the reishi, the wraparound sleep mask, the noise blocking headphones, and the J-hook travel pillow, that’s how I sleep on the plane.
Brock: That is complicated.
Ben: It’s not that complicated. Once you get this stuff, just like anything, once you systematize it, super easy. So a couple other things that I do: (a.) I have activated charcoal capsules so if I get the bloating or the gas, I’ll take about 4-6 of those and it just soaks everything up. This is especially useful for international flights so you’re not that person who’s crop dusting the entire plane. That one’s pretty simple, charcoal expands to the friggin’ size of a football field in your gut, so that works really well. And again, that’s just something you can have in your bag, the only thing is that if you’re taking other supplements, know that the charcoal will soak up some of those other supplements so don’t take some expensive multivitamin and then chase it with charcoal. Try to separate the charcoal from the other things that you’re consuming on the plane if nutrient density is something that’s important to you.
Brock: By what, like 45 minutes?
Ben: I usually go for about an hour or two, so that means that for example, if I am travelling I’ll pop some activated charcoal at the airport or in security line or whatever, and then when I do the reishi and the CBD oil, that’s an hour, hour and a half later when I’m on the actual plane, so…
Brock: Alright.
Ben: A couple of other things that I would recommend: (a.) I have one of these Human Chargers in my bag that I can use to expose my body to a lot of light when it’s morning wherever I’m travelling to if I’m travelling across multiple time zones. A lot of people think that thing’s gimmicky but it actually works, it’s just a bright blue light in your ears for, it’s actually a white light, for about 12 minutes or so, and I swear by that thing, I like it coz it’s small and fits in my bag. I like to check bags in the belly of the airplane, I like to land where I’m going, just go and skip baggage carousel coz I wanna get to where I’m going, but that human charger fits really well. Now when I’ve finished a whole bunch of travel and I’ve come home, I use something slightly larger which are these Re-timer glasses, and they do the same thing as the Human Charger but for your eyes. And if you have enough space in your bag or if you wanna have this setup at home when you arrive home, you can use both at the same time. And then it’s very simple, you just use those when it’s morning of wherever you happen to be travelling, very, very simple concept. So the Re-timer and the Human Charger are those two, and by the way bengreenfieldfitness.com/385, I’ll give you guys a full list of all this stuff. I’m almost done, couple of other things that I do…
Brock: [laughs]
Ben: Movement for the joints, for the blood flow, very important. My protocol is as follows: anytime I go to the bathroom on the plane, I do twenty squats. Butt has to touch the toilet seat, it’s just my rule, if I’m fatigued, I’m groggy, if it’s an international flight, whatever, I do twenty squats with my pants on. Not pants off touching the toilet seat, but like…
Brock: Just don’t touch the toilet seat.
Ben: No dude, the lid is down, my pants are on, you know what I’m saying?
Brock: [laughs] Okay, I gotcha. You’re not putting your hands on the toilet seat.
Ben: Yes. The other things that I do is I’ve got a protocol where I do calf raises, shoulder shrugs, neck circles, I lunge back with each leg ten times which I can very easily do in the skinny aisle of the airplane especially at the back of the plane, and I raise my arms overhead as I lunge, and then I do this stretch called the coil. If you go listen to my interview with doctor, or not doctor… with Mr. David Weck, the inventor of the BOSU Ball, this coil’s like the best exercise for stretching out all the things that tend to get tight on the plane. It’s called the coil, you could also just do a YouTube search for the coil stretch and you’d see it, or you can go listen to my podcast with David Weck, and I’ll link to that one in the show notes to see the coil exercise, but that’s another one I can easily do in the airplane aisle. It’s very hard to describe on the podcast so just go listen to my podcast with David or just do a search online for the coil.
Brock: I just did a search, I got some kind of crazy machinery and a hairdo.
Ben: Yeah, I would imagine. Do like “the coil stretch” or “the coil David Weck”. So those are the majority of the biggest… a little review, I do the spirulina and chlorella with the macadamia nuts or walnuts or almonds as the food that I eat and sometimes I’ll sprinkle the Colima salt on top of that. I have the activated charcoal that I’ll have at a different time if I’m concerned about gas especially during a long flight. I’ve got the Stevia and the electrolyte tablets that I’ll mix with water, I have the CBD oil and the reishi that I use for sleep, and the gear for sleep is very basic. J-hook travel pillow, noise blocking headphones, wraparound sleep mask. I’ve got the compression gear, the AlignMed shirts, and then also graduated compression gear for the lower body. You’ve got your coil exercise with shoulder shrugs, lunging stretch, calf raises and then my twenty bathroom squats rule. And I think those are the biggies, is that everything? I think… I listed it.
Brock: That’s a lot.
Ben: Yeah, and I’ll list it on the show notes but I travel a lot and I keep my body pretty well put together when I travel, and I think some of this stuff is how I do it. So Peter, hopefully that helps you not only with the joint pain on the flight but also with just everything else you can do to keep yourself healthy when you’re flying on an airplane. Did I miss anything, Brock?
Brock: The only thing I’d add is when you arrive at your destination, getting out into nature and somehow…like this morning for example, I got out and luckily, I’m lucky enough to live really close to a beach, so I ran over to the ocean, to the beach, got barefoot, got some sun on my face, inhaled a lot of good negative ions from the crashing waves and grounded my feet. And I find that makes a huge difference just in terms of feeling like I’m ready to go again, especially if you’ve travelled, like I went four time zones yesterday, so it was a significant…
Ben: You’re just a big, loveable hippie.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: You should bring a plant with you on the airplane, that’s what we missed. The plant, so that you can get nature therapy, just bring a giant houseplant with you onto the plane.
Brock: You could just make a hat out of a plant.
Ben: There you go and it doesn’t use up one of your carry-ons.
Brock: Ohh.
Ben: Giant hat, it could be like one of those giant pineapple fruit cornucopia hats with a plant coming out of it.
Brock: Carmen Miranda style, I like it.
Ben: Yes, that is the next thing that we are gonna have available at Kion soon, the Kion Travel Hat for nature therapy.
Wendy: Hi Ben, this is Wendy Spies from Mountain View, California. I enjoy geeking out on your podcast. I am internationally competitive in a WADA regulated weight class sport, Olympic weightlifting. I listen to your podcast and do lots of research on my own in order to maximize muscle and strength building while keeping lean and very, very clean. I would love a rundown of all the natural ways I can, especially as a very lean woman, increase my growth hormone and testosterone in order to build and maximize my strength. Thanks a lot.
Ben: So Brock, we described Wendy then as a scrawny, white woman with poor testosterone. You think that would have been her?
Brock: I… I think she’d be okay with that.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: I think she’s down with that although she might not be white, you know? Leap of assumption there, leap of logic.
Ben: Yeah. Internationally competitive in a WADA regulated weight class sport of Olympic weightlifting, and she wants to increase her HGH and her testosterone in order to build and maximize her strength. We could definitely go for a long time with this one.
Brock: We could.
Ben: I know this podcast is getting a little long in the tooth, but let me go into a couple of things for you that are relevant and new. First of all, a study just hit the streets, so to speak, on protein gains for men versus women. It’s called the effects of high versus low protein intake on body composition and maximal strength in female physique athletes who were doing an 8-week resistance training program. So not like untrained females but folks like Wendy who are pretty well trained, and they looked at protein intake and protein requirements for females and actual muscle mass and muscle gain. And what they found was that female physique athletes for the actual muscle gain effect should be eating somewhere in the range of 2 ½ grams per kilogram of protein per day. Brock, while I’m chatting here, go ahead and look up and do the conversion real quick for grams per pound just so we make sure we get that out to folks. 2.5 grams per kilogram, now considering that most research suggest athletes get about 1.5 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of protein per day, that’s a very significant increase over what we’ve been led to believe before. And before, a lot of this research had been done in men but it turns out that women, to gain muscle, need a pretty freakin’ high amount of proteins. You know what it comes out to in grams per pound, Brock?
Brock: Hmm.
Ben: Mr. Canada?
Brock: No, I don’t think my conversion is correct here.
Ben: Well keep working on that.
Brock: It says 0.0025 pounds.
Ben: No, it’s higher than that. We should be seeing, I think that comes out closer to 0.8 to 0.9 grams per pound, possibly higher. 2.5 grams per kilogram, I think that’s an excess of one gram per pound, but you continue to do the math on that while I talk. Ultimately what it comes down to is Wendy, a lot of protein from either really good protein sources and maybe even consider supplementing with something like essential amino acids. Essential amino acids are a way you can get that much protein without a freakin’ boatload of calories coz that’s a lot of calories from protein, it’s a lot of nitrogenous waste. You want good amino acid bioavailability, so even consider doing something like an essential amino acid supplement to get… you can get 20-30 grams of what you’re taking in per day from something like that, so first of all, high protein intake.
Next is that there are a lot of kinda controversial hormone stacks out there for insulin-like growth factor and growth hormone, which a lot of women who are in heavy amounts of training tend to be low in. But before you turn to those kind of synthetic ways to increase IGF1 and growth hormone, there are things that you can do to naturally increase growth hormone. For example, drinking alcohol’s been shown to significantly blunt the effects of IGF, so I would be very careful with alcohol consumption. Getting 7-9 hours of sleep has been show to raise IGF and growth hormone, 30-60 minute sauna sessions have been shown also to raise IGF and growth hormone. Intake of whey protein, intake of colostrum, intake of a digestible milk, like I’m a fan of for example a goat milk or a goat milk powder, that’s another one that can increase IGF and growth hormone. And then colostrum, colostrum supplementation is another way that you can increase growth hormone, so a stack would be a really good goat-based protein powder or goat milk, essential amino acids, and then colostrum. And in addition to that, frequent sauna sessions and regular sleep and low alcohol intake but relatively high protein intake. Do we know how much protein intake yet, Brock? Mr. Calculator?
Brock: I now have 113,398 as my answer.
Ben: We’ve now established that Brock sucks at math. Alright, keep working on that.
Brock: So that’s not correct?
Ben: How much did you say?
Brock: 113,398?
Ben: No, this is grams per kilogram, dude. 2 ½ grams per kilogram, alright?
Brock: [laughs] I’m never gonna get this.
Ben: It’s around a gram per pound. I’m trying to talk and I can’t do math at the same time coz I want this to be good podcasting not silent calculator clicking podcasting, but ultimately, it’s a decent amount of protein. You can do, I think Wendy’s international anyway so I dunno why we’re doing a conversion for her, she’s probably very well versed in grams and kilograms. Okay, and then we get, when IGF1 and growth hormone are looked at from a supplementation standpoint, we also have these different stacks that are IGF injections and growth hormone injections. Now please know that there is of course a sweet spot with IGF and growth hormone, and we’ve seen multiple animal, rodent, fly, worm studies where high IGF1 and growth hormone are directly correlated to a decrease in longevity. So this next strategy…
Brock: I got it, I got it.
Ben: Would really fly in the face of longevity, put that thought on hold, Brock.
Brock: Okay.
Ben: But there is a stack that you can use, and I will link to an article that I wrote that really details this, how to use a growth hormone stack, if you want to use peptides to increase growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor. So the basic stack is you want something called ipamorelin, something called mod GRF, and then also IGF1 LR3, okay? Those are all peptides that can significantly enhance growth hormone and… essentially one is a growth hormone releasing hormone, one is what’s called a GHRP which will release a pulse of G8’s, and the other is what would be called an insulin-like growth factor protein. You stack those three together, and that’s very common, now most of this stuff is banned by WADA, it’s banned by USADA, it’s banned by most international governing bodies of sport so you should not use any of these compounds if you are competing in a sanctioned sport, which Olympic weightlifting last I checked, was. So if you’re somebody else listening in and you just wanna increase growth hormone or IGF, this would be one way to do it. I have a big article that I wrote on how to use growth hormone stacks and everything you need to know about using growth hormone stacks, so I would go and read that article. But ultimately you can use peptide injections as well, pretty efficaciously for significant increase in growth hormone, so that’s another one that you can look into.
Brock: And people are getting busted for the peptides use so it is something they are testing for and it’s apparently quite easy to detect.
Ben: Yeah, I have another article called Should You Use The Controversial Hormone Marketed as a Natural Fountain of Youth, and in that article I get into a lot of kind of the safer alternatives like colostrum, like amino acids, like a good, raw, organic goat’s milk, that type of thing, so I would definitely look into that as well, Wendy. And then when we turn to testosterone, I have so many articles out about everything from red light therapy to saunas to all these kinda fringe ways to increase testosterone. You’re already lifting heavy stuff and probably using long rest periods if you’re Olympic weightlifting which we know are two ways to increase testosterone. There’s one set of research studies that shows that forced reps can help you to generate more testosterone, so this would be something far different than the powerlifting that you’re doing, and would involve heavier lifting with a spotter to force yourself through the last few reps. Research has shown that those sets to failure can increase testosterone, that’s why I do single set to failure isometric training on this thing called the PeakFitPro. I do that once per week and I really do feel like a beast after I finish that. So that would be one way to do it would be single set to failure training. Another way to do it is sprinting, any type of high intensity interval training that involves the legs appears to cause a pretty significant increase in testosterone. So using your legs for sprinting specifically would be another one to add in.
Finally, I don’t know how much chronic cardio you’re doing but any long term cycling, long running, long swims, any of that has been shown to lower testosterone levels so you’d wanna avoid any form of chronic cardio, any cardio that you do should be high intensity interval training, preferably done with the legs, so we’re talking about sprinting, long rest periods, and you could also do cycling with long rest periods, aerosol bike, anything like that will also do the trick. So those are some of the biggies when it comes to increasing IGF, increasing growth hormone, increasing testosterone. I also have an article on how to use exercise to increase testosterone, I will link to that one where I get more into those exercise concepts that I just alluded to but that would be another strategy that you could use whether you’re Wendy or somebody else listening in. Probably Wendy’s current exercise protocol’s pretty supportive of testosterone if she’s Olympic weightlifting but some of these other things would be really helpful as well. And if you go to Ben Greenfield Fitness and you search for testosterone, I probably got, what Brock, like a dozen articles on testosterone as well there, so yeah.
Brock: At least. Now I know you used to use the red light, you actually pointed that at your gonads to stimulate testosterone. For somebody like Wendy, where would she point?
Ben: The Leydig cells in the testes of a male would be responsible for increasing testosterone. Females, I haven’t seen any evidence that females with infrared light exposure are gonna get the same effect, so this would be more of a strategy for males, unfortunately, Wendy. Unless you have balls that we don’t know about, so I wouldn’t use the red light therapy necessarily, but sometimes I like to throw in things to help the male listeners as well. I’ll link though, if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/385, to the two articles I wrote on growth hormone stacks, both the peptides as well as more natural stacks. I’ll link to some of my favorite sources for colostrum and for amino acids. And then also this study on protein intake so you can see the actual dosage requirements since Brock can’t do math.
Brock: No, I got it. It’s 5.51.
Ben: No, grams per pound?
Brock: Yeah, 2.5 grams per kilogram equals 5.5155655 grams per pound.
Ben: I think you did that backwards. It’s closer to 1-1.2 grams per pound, trust me on this.
Brock: This is what Google’s telling me.
Ben: You’re gonna kill her kidneys. Don’t do that Wendy. Don’t listen to Brock, Wendy. Okay, so let’s give something away. We do like to give stuff away on this show so we’re gonna give something away.
Brock: Mmhmm.
Ben: This is the part of the show where if you hear your review read on the show, then we will, if you send us your T-shirt size, send you a handy-dandy gear pack. You go to iTunes, you leave a review, preferably a 5 star one if you can find it in your heart to do so, and then simply email [email protected]. We need to change that URL since very shortly, Greenfield Fitness Systems is pretty much all gonna become Kion and all of that will go away.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: So note to self, soon we’ll need to change that to like [email protected] or something. But anyways…
Brock: But for now.
Ben: We have a review read from neurobot19. Wanna take this one away, Brock?
Brock: Yeah, it’s called “This podcast will save you tons of time and money.” Neurobot19 says “I’ve been listening to Ben’s podcast for three to four months now, and as a supplement and health food junkie, the Ben has saved me thousands of dollars on BS supplements.”
Ben: BS.
Brock: I like how you’re The Ben, I’m gonna start calling you The Ben from now on. “Also saved me money on the quality supplements not just the BS ones” [laughs] because you’ve got discount codes. “Lots of us are busy with our 9-5s and don’t have time to go down into the rabbit hole in every vitamin, mineral, on every vitamin and mineral, so Ben does that for us…”
Ben: Brock, did you just become dyslexic over the course of your trip?
Brock: I… perhaps.
Ben: [plays drum sounds] Okay, keep going.
Brock: And there’s a lot of dark and stormeys.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Anyway. So, “Ben does that for us. He’s a very educated, incredible source for all your health info. Even as a scientist, I learn a hundred and one new things everyday on his podcast.”
Ben: Scientist, of course with a name like neurobot, he’d be a scientist.
Brock: I’m guessing a neuroscientist.
Ben: I’m glad, thousands of dollars on BS supplements, that’s a lot. But I can tell you one thing, he said he saved money on the discount codes, I do dial on some pretty fat discount codes. People, a lot of times would give us discount codes for this podcast, like 10% on stuff, I come back to them, give us 15, give us 20, so you guys do get good deals on stuff on this show. I’m just saying, I go to bat for you coz I love you. Anyways though, that’s fantastic, neurobot. Thanks for the review, email [email protected], an email address we will soon change to [email protected] I’m guessing. But for now, just email [email protected], let us know your T-shirt size, we’ll send you a nice little Ben Greenfield gear package with a tech shirt and a beanie and a water bottle. And Brock, speaking of longevity, this has been a long podcast.
Brock: It has, we only answered three questions but we still managed friggin’ long.
Ben: We’re so long in the tooth, we’re so full of knowledge. So go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/385 for all the show notes, the studies and even that ultimate airplane biohacking guide, we’ll have it all there for you. Thank you for listening, until next time, have a healthy week.
Brock: Mmhmm.
Ben: A long week, and Brock, when I talk to you next time, hopefully I’m not paralyzed and I don’t have a broken neck.
Brock: Or wearing one of those halos?
Ben: Yes.
Brock: With the screws into your skull. That’s what I’m picturing.
Ben: No, I don’t want one of those or one of the dog cones after they’ve been to the vet. I don’t want either of those, please. Thank you. Alright Brock, I’ll talk to you later man.
Brock: If you do get one, Instagram the hell out of it.
Ben: I will.
May 3, 2018 podcast: 385 – Should You Drink Coffee On An Empty Stomach, The Ultimate Airplane Biohacking Guide, and Natural Ways To Increase Testosterone.
Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right (or go to SpeakPipe), use the Contact button on the app, or click the contact link in the footer..
News Flashes [00:06:30]
Fascinating interview on longevity…(warning: about a 10-minute read).
Would you put “young blood” into your body? Fascinating article.
Calorie restriction lowers your metabolism, but also helps you live longer…typical tradeoff
Good reason to maintain a bit of muscle as you age, eh?
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Listener Q&A
As compiled, deciphered, edited and sometimes read by Brock Armstrong, the Podcast Sidekick.
Should You Drink Coffee On An Empty Stomach? [00:42:53]
Prahkar says: I just wanted to know if coffee is ok on an empty stomach. Somewhere I read that it is not ok to have without food. I usually fast for a long time so I want to know if it is ok to have on a very empty stomach.
In my response, I recommend:
–How To Fix Your Gut, Boost Immunity & Improve Athletic Performance With Nature’s “First Food”
–Why Healthy People Get Broken Guts, And What You Can Do About It
The Ultimate Airplane Biohacking Guide [00:53:51]
Peter says: I’d really like your help with joint pain and flying. I just returned from a surfing trip in El Salvador and once again, about halfway through the flight, I felt like I was going to fall apart. I am doing all the right things like fasting before the flight, taking activated charcoal, staying well hydrated and I stand up periodically throughout the flight. Jet lag is fine but mid-flight I feel like I have the flu all over my body. I have many plates and screws in me from broken bones. Is this from cabin pressure? Or lack of Oxygen? I would appreciate your ideas here. Thanks!
In my response, I recommend:
–Sony wired noise blocking headphones
–Reishi mushroom from FourSigmatic
–Element Health CBD Oil or PrimalHacker CBD Oil (Code BEN10) or the new Thorne Hemp
-Book “Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life”
–Omica Organics Vanilla Stevia
Natural Ways To Increase Testosterone [01:17:18]
Wendy says: I am internationally competitive in a WADA regulated weight class sport, Olympic weightlifting. I listen to your podcast and do a lot of research on my own to maximize muscle and strength building while staying lean and very clean. I would love a rundown of all the natural ways that I can, especially as a very lean woman, increase my HGH and Testosterone in order to build and maximize my strength.
In my response, I recommend:
–Should You Use This Controversial Hormone Marketed As A Natural “Fountain Of Youth”?
–PeakFitPro for single set to failure – use code greenfield to get $200 off
–6 Ways to Increase Testosterone With Exercise
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