July 23, 2020

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/qa-415/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:36] About Last Night’s Dinner

[00:03:40] News Flashes

[00:04:52] 13 Body Hacks, Evaluated

[00:18:00] Study About Sleep-Deprived Flies

[00:21:53] Four Articles on What Would Make Your High Cholesterol A BAD THING

[00:31:35] Special Announcements and Podcast Sponsors

[00:38:25] What to Do About Caffeine Sensitivities, Plus Alternatives to Coffee

[00:57:08] What Is Ben Greenfield's Current Daily Routine?

[01:29:57] Giveaways & Goodies

[01:32:02] End of Podcast

Ben:  In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. What is my current daily routine, 13 new body hacks, what to do about caffeine sensitivities and alternatives to coffee, and much more.

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Jay, I think I just punished 1,000 calories for breakfast, for sure.

Jay:  Oh, that's a lot of calories. What did you eat, an entire horse?

Ben:  You ever just wake up hungry? Like hungry hungry?

Jay:  Honestly, not often, but yes, sometimes. Yes, okay.

Ben:  Alright. Often, I'll wake up hungry if I have a pretty active day the day before and didn't eat enough for dinner. And, it was my wife's birthday yesterday, so I surprised her–

Jay:  Happy birthday.

Ben:  And, made a table reservation at a local restaurant that I will not name, because they were practicing and doing a very good job, pat them on the head, of social distancing. And, our whole crowd walked in.

Jay:  Do you, guys, close it down right now or something?

Ben:  Well, yeah. Governor Inslee in Washington has an order that you are required to wear masks and all tables cannot have anymore than, I think, four people at them and be six feet apart. And so, our party walks in, most of us not wearing masks. And, we have this giant room with tables that were six feet apart. And so, I kind of gave a nudge, nudge, wink, wink to the server and said, “If I move these tables, will you call the cops?” And she's like, “I didn't see anything.”

Jay:  Nice.

Ben:  So, I shoved all the tables together and made a huge long table for 14 people, and we had dinner. But, it's one of those restaurants that has pretty decent looking vegan options on the menu, and something caught my eye. So, for dinner, I ordered a cashew encrusted avocado, which kind of sounds good.

Jay:  It does.

Ben:  Like [00:02:12] _____ sesame noodles with red peppers. And, I got my avocado, which turned out to be half of an avocado, encrusted as promised, in cashews.

Jay:  Where is the 1,000 calories coming from half an avocado?

Ben:  Watched with envy as my wife punished a halibut, and the guy across from her a bit into a filet medallion. And, I had my little avocado. And, I went home, and I've been trying not to eat too close to bedtime, so I didn't go home and snack. I came home and went to bed, but I woke up pretty hungry. So this morning, I had 40 grams of collagen with kefir and colostrum, and I put some ketone esters in there, and a little bit of bone broth. I dumped some fish oil in there.

Jay:  Nice.

Ben:  I just went and ate nuts on the smoothie this morning. So, if I'm burping during this podcast episode, that's why.

Jay:  Hey, listen. I don't blame you. It sounded like you ordered off the kid's menu compared to what everybody else did. Half of an avocado, and it probably costs 40 bucks for the half of avocado.

Ben:  Yeah, it's like the kid's menu, give them a mini sliders and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich with, maybe, a couple of chicken skewers on the side, that kind of thing. Anyways, though, what do you think? Should we jump into today's news flashes?

Jay:  Let's get to them.

Ben:  Alright. Well, this is the part of the show where I give you research. This is that part of the show.

Jay:  Which just change your voice.

Ben:  Yeah. This is the part of the show where I change my voice. And, I spent a lot of time in the morning reading research articles and find some of the more interesting or compelling or sexy or head-turning ones. I tweet them, and I generally have some good comments and conversations on Twitter going on about this research. And then, I pick some of the better ones and talk about them on the podcasts. And, I'll link to all of the different articles and pieces of research that we're about to talk about, if you just go to shownotes, which are going to be at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/415. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/415.

I think, at some point over the past couple of weeks, we got confused and may have completely skipped altogether, what did we skip, 413 or 414?

Jay:  Yeah, we've skipped one of them.

Ben:  I don't know. I don't know. Not that anybody cares, but if you're a regular podcast listener, you might notice that we jumped from Episode 413 to 415, or something like that. But, today's episode, you got to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/415. There, that wasn't confusing enough.

And, speaking of numbers, I want to start with something fun. I don't know if you saw this article, Jay, but there was this article that came out about body hacks, “13 Body Hacks: What Science Says About the New Shortcuts to Health and Wellness.” And, I actually thought, “This is pretty interesting.” So, let's do a rapid-fire of this.

Body hack number one, looking at the color green can make you more creative. What do you think, true or false?

Jay:  I didn't even know this was a thing. I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm pretty sure I saw in neuroscience paper about this, and the answer is true.

Ben:  The answer is true. The color green can aid creative tasks. So, if you're in the area of creativity, paint the room green, wear green T-shirt or some green socks or green underwear. And, there's actually a wonderful book I read that gets more into the science of color, and it is called, “Drunk Tank Pink.” And, if you want to know how to really tweak color, like what shirt to wear if you want people to trust you, if you're a web designer, what color to make the button on your website to get people more likely to click “buy.” It's got everything in there. And, by the way, those two colors that I just alluded to are blue for trust and orange for the buy button on a website. But, that book's really good. It's called “Drunk Tank Pink.”

Jay:  I'm going to your website now and see if you've implemented those.

Ben:  Yeah. We'll see. Maybe, I'm [00:06:12] _____ officially buying stuff.

Jay:  You have, actually. I'm on your website now.

Ben:  Maybe, I want people to trust. Maybe, I want people to be creative on my website, so it's all green. You never know. Maybe, I want people to get depressed, so it's black.

Okay. So, number two, rubbing pressure points on your body can prevent migraines. What do you think?

Jay:  So, I would think that this sounds right. Maybe, I'm just gullible to all of it. So, let's say yes, true to that one, too.

Ben:  There are specific acupressure points that seem to, in some cases, alleviate the pain that people receive from migraines, particularly. However, they have also noted that if you place pressure anywhere in the body, it seems to induce a placebo-like effect as long as that person is told that that pressure on that part of the body is going to alleviate a headache. So, yes, acupressure seems to work, but also, a lot of it might be placebo effect.

However, for those of you who want to take a deeper dive into this, I interviewed a guy named, Ian Clark, sometime ago. And, you can go, and I'll put a link to that podcast in the shownotes. And, we did talk quite a bit about these things called Marma points, M-A-R-M-A points. They come out of Eastern Medicine. I, after interviewing him, purchased a book about Marma point therapy, and kind of experiment with different places you could touch for energy, for nausea, for headaches. And, I was able to, actually, find some spots that do give pretty good effect, like the nausea point between your thumb and your forefinger. There's a pretty good sleep point right around just a few finger-width steps above the wrist. And, there's a few cool points on the face. And, I've also found that rubbing your crotch seems to elicit some really interesting effects that I never would have expected. But, that's a really interesting takeaway.

Jay:  It is.

Ben:  Yeah, I'm joking. Most people know you can elicit an effect by rubbing one's crotch. So, that's definitely an acupressure point. So, there's that, my lame attempt at a dirty joke.

Okay. Number three is placebos and placebo effect. And, that was kind of a boring one, because it was just whether or not the placebo effect or the sugar pill works. Of course, we all know that. So, we'll skip over that one, not sexy.

How about this one? Bend over in a chair to get rid of the hiccups? What do you think?

Jay:  I've never heard of this one. It just sounds a little bit ridiculous, so I'm going to say false. But, my guess is that it's true, but I'm going to say false.

Ben:  They interviewed a professor of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical Center, and he said it is true. You sit down, you bend forward at the waist, you really been forward at the waist, then, you drink some fluid and you stay in that bent over position until you finish drinking the fluid. So you drink in that bent over position, hunched over in a chair, then, you slowly sit up. And, apparently, that overwhelms the spasm in the upper part of your digestive tract, allowing the muscles to relax, thus, getting rid of the hiccups.

Jay:  Huh? That's cool.

Ben:  There's that.

Jay:  I don't often get hiccups, but I'm going to try it the next time.

Ben:  Another one about whether or not you can burn more calories by walking faster. Duh? Of course, you can. Refresh quickly with a coffee nap. I get asked this one a lot because this gets bandied about quite a bit. If you drink a cup of coffee, then, you nap, then you wake up, and you have more energy because the cup of coffee clears out some of that sleep drive chemical called adenosine in your brain. And, it seems to work for some people, which I would imagine would probably be the slow coffee oxidizers who are going to take a little bit more time for that caffeine to hit their bloodstream.

I have found that, in many people, including myself, I'm a fast coffee oxidizer, that if I have coffee and get down for a nap, by the time I'm two minutes into that nap, I'm wide awake because the coffee has already hit my system.

Jay:  I'm the same way. That's exactly what I thought about when I read this. I'm like, “You give me a cup of coffee and then tell me to go take a nap, it's an impossibility. This is not going to happen.”

Ben:  Not going to happen, no. Okay. So, that depends. Improve your brainpower by chewing gum. Some research suggests that chewing gum affects cognitive abilities. And, this one is based on the idea that chewing gum sends more blood flow to the brain. And, it seems to make sense, but there are no actual studies that show that coffee is going to have that effect in terms of actual intelligence or brainpower, but it does seem to, in one study, improved test-taking abilities.

Jay:  And, you're talking about gum, right? I think you said coffee, but you meant gum.

Ben:  Did I say coffee?

Jay:  Yeah, you did.

Ben:  We know, coffee makes you smarter, for sure. So, yeah. But, there's always a bunch of confounding variables, like, maybe, chewing gum just distract you from the fact that you're stressed out about taking the test.

Jay:  Maybe.

Ben:  Or, we know that fidgeting can increase brain power a little bit, too. So, maybe, it's the movement of anybody part. But, either way, worth a try. Seems to do something. Maybe, if the gum has things like nicotine and caffeine in it, more like a little LSD blotter hidden inside the chewing gum, perhaps, that could have an effect, too.

Jay:  I could do it.

Ben:  It might be the ingredients within the gum.

Jay:  Alright.

Ben:  Study more effectively by taking a quick nap. And, this was based on a research study at Saarland University that had people take a brief nap after studying, like as one might do after a late-night cram session. And, the folks who basically did this quick power nap had memory performance that seemed pretty good, even compared to people who actually slept for a longer period of time without the cramming effect. And so, it seems to allow you to simulate a little bit of what you might get had you gone into a test well-rested, which I, again, for me, because I used to do a lot of all-nighters in college.

Jay:  Did you?

Ben:  For four years, I took 30 plus credits a semester in college and worked four jobs.

Jay:  I assume you finished in two years if you did that.

Ben:  I was a workaholic in college. I've intentioned to have a master's degree in five. And, when I would do a late-night cram session, I would always just have a Red Bull or a Monster or a copious amount of caffeine. Then, I go take the test. Because I found if I fell asleep, I was groggy. Even if just for 20 minutes, I was groggy during the test. So, I just push through and sucked down caffeine and went into the test is the way I always did it.

Jay:  [00:13:07] _____ healthy.

Ben:  But, apparently, for some people, that quick power nap after a late-night cram session seems to give you a quick surge of energy or, at least, allow you to still perform pretty well in a test. So, that was an interesting one.

See in the dark by keeping one eye closed. See in the dark by keeping one eye closed. And, that one was kind of a head-scratcher for me, but apparently, when you're in a dark room, your pupils expand. It capture a whole bunch of light. And then, when the lights turn on, your pupils contract. And, when you cover one eye, one pupil is contracted, but the other one, the open one, is dilated. And, then, by switching from the dilated pupil to the contracted pupil, apparently, it enhances your ability to be able to see in the dark. And, I don't quite understand how that works, aside from the fact that when one eye is closed, apparently, the pupil in the opposite eye, the eye that is open, dilates a little bit more than it would have, had the other eye been open.

Jay:  Yeah, I still don't understand how that improves eyesight, but again, I'm no eye doctor, so I don't know.

Ben:  But, I'm going to get an eye patch for a night. The next time I go hunting, bow hunting, and I want to get kind of a dusk shot in, I'm just going to wear an eye patch.

Jay:  Nice. So, pirate it out there.

Ben:  And, there's that, yeah. Clear a stuffy nose with this simple trick. Press your tongue to the roof of your mouth while pressing on the middle of your forehead. I'm going to say that again. Press your tongue to the roof of your mouth while pressing on the middle of your forehead. And, apparently, it moves a bone that I did not know existed, that kind of sounds like it could have potential for another dirty joke, called the vomer bone. Say that 10 times fast.

Jay:  Vomer bone.

Ben:  The vomer bone separates the left and right nasal cavities. And, when you press on that while you have your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth, apparently, your sinuses loosen and all that gunk gets released, and you're able to breathe clearly again.

Jay:  Huh? Weird. I'm pressing that vomer bone right now. It feels good.

Ben:  I don't get congested very much, yeah, but I'm going to be all over my vomer bone.

Use your right ear to hone in on conversations from far away.

Jay:  Huh? Just your right ear, not your left.

Ben:  Apparently, when sound enters your right ear, it's processed by the left side of your brain–

Jay:  True.

Ben:  Which is generally responsible for speech and language development. So, you technically have an easier time hearing through your right ear than through your left. And so, apparently, there is something to that. And, I don't know. Maybe, if you listen with your left ear instead of your right ear, you're just going to be more sensitive and weepy, because the left ear would, then, correspond to the right side of the brain.

Jay:  Start drawing pictures.

Ben:  Which we all know is the creative artsy-fartsy side. So, you could use this both ways. I think that's kind of interesting.

Jay:  That is interesting.

Ben:  Hold your breath longer by intentionally hyperventilating.

Jay:  Oh, yeah.

Ben:  I think most of our listeners know about Wim-Hof and hyperventilation. And, of course, that's why people die during hyperventilation in an underwater swimming because you blow off your CO2 and that's your body's signal to breathe. But, it does work to hold your breath for a very long period of time, and also, to get that little rush of DMT. Go listen to my podcast with James Nestor. We talked about that. And, he's an interesting cat. We had a fun time with that show. James Nestor wrote the book called, “Breath.” We'll link to that one as well at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/415. Probably, one of my favorite–

Jay:  Good, yes.

Ben: — episodes recorded in the past couple of months.

Jay:  I just read that book in a day or two, by the way. And, it was phenomenal.

Ben:  Yeah, it's good. So, anyways, the last one is banish the call of nature by scratching your leg. Banish the call of nature by scratching your leg. If you scratch or rub the back of your calf for a few moments really vigorously, man, there's a lot of body parts we got to remember how to rub.

Jay:  We do.

Ben:  Scratch or rub the back of your calf for a few moments really vigorously and you can interrupt the message from your bladder to your brain just long enough for you to make it to the toilet.

Jay:  I'm wondering if that's actually physiologically happening, or if that's just a distraction technique. Does it have to be the back of your calf?

Ben:  Kind of like the gum.

Jay:  Or, could it be somewhere else?

Ben:  It seems like it wouldn't matter where you rub, but I don't know. The next time I'm on an airplane and I see somebody rushing past me in the aisle rubbing the back of their calf kind of half limping half sprinting towards the back of the airplane, then, I know that they're our podcast listener.

Jay:  That's right.

Ben:  There's that. It's a super interesting article, and we'll link to that one in the shownotes, even though you probably don't even need to read it now. But, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/415, if you want to go dig into some of the studies and some of the interesting anecdotes from that one.

And then, the next one was interesting. This was super cruel, but what they did in a study is they sleep-deprived a bunch of flies. They sleep deprived a bunch of tiny, poor, little flies.

Jay:  Little fruit flies.

Ben:  Because, apparently, it's unethical to sleep deprive humans to the extent where they sleep-deprived these flies, which kind of says something in and of itself about sleep deprivation. We know that prolonged sleep deprivation can be fatal. We've known that since the '80s when they did a study in rats that show that they just basically die with sleep deprivation. And, yeah, rodents aren't tiny humans, but it does give us some clues that we might want to sleep if we don't want to die prematurely. And then, they just, this past June, did a study on the accumulation of reactive oxygen species in sleep-deprived fruit flies, which are much closer to humans than rodents are. Actually, I'm joking, but I'm kind of not.

Jay:  [00:18:57] _____.

Ben:  Flies are actually surprisingly similar to humans in terms of sleep and antioxidant biology. So, this is kind of interesting.

Jay:  It can be conditioned with humans, too.

Ben:  Yeah, anyways. So, they decided while they sleep-deprived flies they're generating a huge amount of reactive oxygen species, particularly in their digestive tract. And, they have observed similar mechanisms in humans who are sleep deprived in terms of actual gut oxidative damage. However, what they thought was, well, there are specific compounds. And, they tested a whole bunch of them that could actually limit the formation of reactive oxygen species in the gut in these sleep-deprived flies. And, they found a few that were particularly effective. And, I'll tell you what they were, because, of course, now, if you're sleep-deprived, these are some things that you may want to have on hand for your sleep-deprived toolkit. And, they are, drumroll, please.

You probably know most of these are. Melatonin, which is really cool because we know melatonin's a super potent antioxidant, anyways. And, I don't know if at the time, I believe that by the time this podcast comes out, I will have released my podcast episode with Dr. John Lieurance, in which amongst other things, we talked about high dose, like 100 to 200-milligram melatonin, and some of the interesting physiological benefits of that in terms of neuroprotection, also, clearance of inflammation, and even some anti-cancer effects. And so, melatonin is one.

And then, the other two that were the most effective were lipoic acid, like alpha-lipoic acid, which we know is a pretty good antioxidant. And, that's another one that seems to have a lot of other benefits, but lipoic acid and NAD, nicotinamide. So, it turns out if you're sleep-deprived and you're concerned about the oxidative damage from sleep deprivation, you do melatonin, lipoic acid, and NAD. Those were the three that seemed to be the most effective at helping out these poor little fruit flies. I thought that was kind of cool.

Jay:  That's what you needed in college when you're pulling all those all-nighters, just some melatonin, lipoic acid, and NAD.

Ben:  Yeah, and a lot of different sources for that. I like Thorne for lipoic acid. They have a good lipoic acid. NAD, there's a lot of different sources, but I think the company Alive by Nature, they do some good NAD nasal sprays. And, they also do a good little sublingual NMN tablet. And, Thorne has a good NAD, too, that, I think, they mix with resveratrol.

And then, for melatonin, there's a few good sources out there. Quicksilver does a little sublingual spray, or a sublingual squirt, of melatonin that, I think, works really well. And then, like I mentioned, for the higher dose stuff, that guy, John Lieurance, has the high dose melatonin suppositories. So, there you have it.

Jay:  Interesting.

Ben:  I thought that was kind of cool.

Jay:  #savethefruitflies.

Ben:  #savethefruitflies, that’s right. And then, four articles that came across, because I was kind of digging into cholesterol a little bit. We did that whole podcast on coffee and cholesterol and kind of why the cholesterol surge that you get from coffee isn't a bad thing, but also, how you can kind of tweak that in the way that you roast your coffee and grind your coffee, or filter or brew your coffee. And so, I believe that was Episode 412. But, if you guys just go to the shownotes, we'll link to that podcast we did where we geeked out about coffee and cholesterol. And, it kind of lead into a deeper discussion about why high cholesterol isn't bad in and of itself. It's necessary factor for atherosclerosis and heart disease. But, in and of itself, it has to be rendered atherosclerotic. And, there are many things that can cause cholesterol to become an issue, but I wanted to highlight four today. I wanted to highlight four things today. And, I'm going to link to each of the studies that are related to this.

But, one of the things that seems to really render, so, if you have high cholesterol and you're concerned, you have high LDL and you're concerned about it, this would be one reason that you want to be concerned about it. It turns out that the ratio of oleic acid to linoleic acid in your body is one thing that can affect the risk of high cholesterol.

Now, one of the best ways to have a poor ratio of oleic acid-linoleic acid would be to be eating a lot of polyunsaturated vegetable oils versus the monounsaturated Mediterranean fats. So, oleic acid, as the name implies, you can find out an extra virgin olive oil or an avocado oil, or a lot of these cold-water fish. So, you find oleic acid in a lot of these monounsaturated fat sources. You find linoleic acid in a lot of the vegetable oils: canola, sunflower, safflower. And, most people are aware that the former are superior to the latter, anyways. But, it turns out that particular of the cholesterol, but that combined with vitamin E deficiency. So, that factor of a diet high in vegetable oils but low in vitamin E appears to be one thing.

And so, I did a podcast about vitamin E and how a lot of the forms of vitamin E that are out there in the supplements industry, their alpha-tocopherol. They're not what you'd find in nature. In nature, you find vitamin E packaging in kind of eight different forms that are called mixed tocopherols and tocotrienols. And so, when it comes to vitamin E, if you aren't just going to get that from dietary sources, if you aren't going to get it from dietary sources, and do you know what some good dietary sources of vitamin E are, Jay? To put you on the spot.

Jay:  No, no. So, I don't. If you ask me vitamin C, it's in the list. But, vitamin E, no. Go for it, man. I've failed you with that one.

Ben:  Ironically, Padawan, vegetable oils can be a source of the fat-soluble vitamin, vitamin E. But, we've just established that would be like taking two steps forward and two steps back. So, you don't want to get them from vegetable oils, like sunflower, safflower, corn, even though that's often recommended.

Nuts can be a pretty decent source, like almonds or hazelnuts, which I don't call hazelnuts because it's so boring. I call them filberts.

Jay:  Filberts, what?

Ben:  Yeah, filbert. That's the sexy name for hazelnuts, filberts. You don't know that?

Jay:  No, I've never heard of that.

Ben:  Call them filberts, you're going to sound so much smarter at your Christmas party.

Jay:  I am, and be able to tell people how to get their vitamin E.

Ben:  Yeah, sunflower seeds, green leafy vegetables. Avocados are not bad. So, yay, because I love those, obviously, especially when they're encrusted in cashews and served to me at a dinner party. Squash is pretty good. Trout is actually a decent source of vitamin E. Broccoli isn't too bad. The folks who I interviewed in that vitamin E podcast, that was a guy, a researcher from Designs for Health. And, Designs for Health, they have a pretty good vitamin E form. A matter fact this guy I interviewed, he said there's one thing you take with desert island would be this supplement. It's called Annatto. So, if you have high cholesterol, arguably, that might be a good supplement to throw into the mix, along with just limiting PUFAs. That was one thing, was that.

And then, the next was something that I've discussed before. But, again, I'll link to some research. And, that is the levels of water called serum oxidized LDL, which would be the more atherosclerotic form of damaging LDL. It just goes through the roof. When fasting, plasma glucose and hemoglobin A1c are elevated. And, we're talking about blood sugar that frequently goes above 140, stays up there for more than two hours after a meal, fasted blood glucose. It's higher than 90 consistently just over and over and over again. We see that sustained hyperglycemia or chronic hyperglycemia leads the accumulation of these advanced glycation end products, and oxidative stress that renders LDL to be atherosclerotic.

So, that one, I think, I've mentioned many times before, but don't just limit vegetable oils and get vitamin E, limit your glycemic variability. And, I think anybody who's got high cholesterol or is even eating a high-fat diet in order to keep their cholesterol up from protective standpoint, because we know high cholesterol, in many cases, has an association with reduced cause of risk of mortality. But, I think anybody who's doing that, you ought to get a continuous blood glucose monitor, even if just for a couple months, and just kind of pay attention of your blood glucose, and make sure that LDL is not going to be an issue, because I think it's favorable in the absence of these risk factors and not so favorable in the case of others. So, that would be number two.

Number three is low exercise volume. It turns out that, in people who have high cholesterol, particularly, elevated LDL levels, and this was an interesting study that I'll link to, but three days of exercise per week for 60 minutes was highly protective in terms of the risk for developing cardiovascular disease in those who had high cholesterol. And, obviously, three 60-minute exercise sessions per week is not a lot. It was at a moderate intensity, about 70% intensity. And, compared to a control group who did not exercise but had similar cholesterol levels, pretty much across the board, everything from vascular cell adhesion molecules to myeloperoxidase, to all of the things that would indicate that cholesterol could be atherosclerotic, they were all far lower in the exercise group.

So, once again, don't be the ketogenic biohacker who's doing your 10-minute biohacked exercise session per week with blood flow restriction bands. You got to get out there and specifically do some cardio and some high-intensity interval training, and even some fasted aerobic workouts, those type of things. Especially, if you're going to be doing a high-fat low carb diet. Yes, Jay. I'm not lying. You can't get away with 10 minutes of exercise, no matter how many fancy biohacks you have.

Jay:  I got to get on it.

Ben:  Sometimes, you just need some volume.

And then, the last thing that was interesting was low omega-3 fatty acid status, meaning that extra virgin olive oil and fish oil supplementation particularly seems to keep oxidized LDL from becoming an issue in people who have high cholesterol. And, that's not only because of the alpha-tocopherols that you're going to get from those, very similar to the vitamin E that we just talked about, but the flavanols, the polyphenols, the omega-3 fatty acids.

So, if you have high cholesterol, no brainer, get really good extra virgin olive oil, supplement with some really good fish oil, and that's going to be protective. And, as a matter of fact, I can tell you that the daily intake that was really good for these people was much higher than what you would expect, 40 grams a day of extra virgin olive oil, which I think comes out to good three or four-shot glasses–

Jay:  That is.

Ben: — or more during the day. And then, 16 grams of fish oil. And when you consider most fish oil capsules are about one gram, it's pretty hefty handful. Maybe, take five fish oil capsules with breakfast, five with lunch, five with dinner. Or, maybe, just have five with breakfast but have some big old can of sardines in olive oil with lunch. But, you get the idea. Extra virgin olive oil and fish oil, good thing if you're going after all the benefits of high cholesterol and you want to keep it from being problematic. So, yeah, there you have it. I think we just saved a lot of lives. For all the sleep-deprived people with high cholesterol who are trying to pee and don't know how to keep from peeing and they're trying to make it to the toilet in time, just scratch your calf, and with one hand on a bottle of extra virgin olive oil with some melatonin shoved up your ass, and you're going to live through 150.

Jay:  It's an epic day right there. And, if I could write my daily routine out, which I know we'll talk about yours, I'm sure that it sounds just like your day. Hey, I was going to ask you because I'm curious. And, you may have mentioned this, so it may just be, again, the Padawan not paying attention. But, when we talked about high cholesterol, are we talking about those who have, yes, oxidized cholesterol? Or, are we talking also to just high serum cholesterol? So, any type of kind of high marked cholesterol.

Ben:  Yeah, high serum cholesterol, high LDL, particularly. Everything I just went over is if you have high LDL, yeah.

Jay:  Which might be actually a lot more people than what we think. They're, again, the ketogenic biohackers, they probably have high cholesterol.

Ben:  That's right.

Alright. Well, let's give away some cool discount codes, then, jump into this week's Q and A.

Jay:  Cool.

Ben:  So, the first thing that's interesting is that we have a Cold-Water Challenge. Did you hear about this at Kion?

Jay:  No, I haven't. I'm surprised you're doing a challenge, man.

Ben:  We're doing a big cold-water challenge, which is kind of cool. It's going to be kicking off close to the time when this podcast gets released. And, we're calling it the Kion Cold Thermo Challenge. So, we know that I personally do cold every day. I was out there this morning, just freezing away all those calories that I consumed from that half an avocado last night. And so, what we decided to do at Kion is, and this is really popular, the Cold Shower Challenge last year, this year it's just Cold Thermo Challenge, any form of cold. And, we walk people through all the best cold thermo gear, the best type of ice tubs, the temperature, the time length. And so, we've got all this content that we're building around the challenge to train everybody from a seasoned cold plunger to somebody who avoids cold water like the plague.

And, the challenge is going to start on August 2nd. So, you got a few days from the time this podcast comes out to get in on the challenge. But, it's going to be an amazing way, too, with a whole bunch of people and a bunch of accountability and a super fun community at Kion to do a cold thermogenesis challenge. So, here's where you go, GetKion.com/ColdThermo. That's GetK-i-o-n.com/ColdThermo. So, check that out because that's going to be fun.

Jay:  It should be fun.

Ben:  In a weird, masochistic way that is also highly beneficial for your body.

Jay:  Piss your ass off way.

Ben:  Yeah. And then, of course, conveniently enough, another sponsor for today's show is the complete opposite, is red light, which actually feels amazing after you've been doing some cold therapy.

Jay:  True.

Ben:  And, of course, that's because it will open up your blood vessels that have been vasoconstricting from that cold. It reduces joint pain and inflammation. We know it enhances sexual libido. It feels like you got the sunshine on your skin. And, this company, Joovv, they're sponsoring today's episode. I think Joovv makes the best red-light panels out there. I got four of them. I got the little Go. I got the Mini up in the bathroom for beauty stuff, when you're putting serum on your face, you shine a little red light on there, and it helps a lot with the skin collagen. I got two big ones in my office that I sandwich my naked body in between every morning into a full-body red light treatment. And, they're amazing.

And, Joovv is going to give everybody, every one of my podcast listeners, a free book, a free copy of my book, “Boundless,” if you get a Joovv light and you just go to Joovv.com/Ben. That's J-O-O-V-V.com/Ben. And, you'll be able to get a Joovv for yourself and start, as they say, Joovvin’.

Jay:  Beautiful.

Ben:  Yeah. And then, Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is sponsoring today's episode. My friend, Tero, the Finnish superstar who also, actually, happens to be an expert on Santa Claus, he knows more about Santa Claus [00:34:46] _____.

Jay:  What?

Ben:  I had dinner with them once. He talked about Santa for two hours, because he wrote this book, “Santa Sold Shrooms.” And, the whole book is about the origin of Christmas, possibly, being Santa and his little elves dealing hallucinogenic mushrooms. It's a hoot, the book is.

Jay:  I'm sold. I want to read this.

Ben:  Yeah, even if your flavor of Christmas is more baby Jesus in the manger with the wise men, shepherds, and Mary and Joseph, which is my version of Christmas, his book, actually, is pretty interesting. It's called “Santa Sold Shrooms.” But, Tero sell shrooms, too. And, he sells amazing shrooms. And, they're on his website, Four Sigmatic. And, they're all just these wild-harvested chaga and reishi and turkey tail. And, if you don't know what shroom to take, they've got the 10-mushroom blend, which is all your mushrooms all at once. And, that may or may not go quite well with a microdose of psilocybin. But, they don't sell psilocybin. But, if you take said psilocybin with their 10-mushroom blend or their lion's mane, whoo, really good pick me up for your brain.

Jay:  It's so nice.

Ben:  Yeah. And so, 15% off of everything from Four Sigmatic. And then, all you got to go do is go hunt down some mushrooms growing out of cow pies from your farmer friend and climb over his fence and mix that with your Four Sigmatic mushrooms, and you have yourself a mighty fine recipe for a highly productive day. And, I don't think Four Sigmatic is endorsing me saying that, but I'm saying it anyways. So, you go to FourSigmatic.com/BenGreenfield. That's F-O-U-RSigmatic.com/BenGreenfield, and your discount code there is just “BEN GREENFIELD.” And now, I'm feeling really narcissistic saying my name over and over again.

Jay:  Easy enough. You should.

Ben:  15%, yep. And then, the last sponsor for today, man, this one is cool. So, probably, one of the smartest people I've ever interviewed on my show when it comes to the gut, this guy named Raja. I met him three years ago in a pool party. And, we sat in the pool for two hours, talking about gut research. These are the kind of pool parties I go to.

Jay:  These are like your long conversation Santa Claus and gut research.

Ben:  Yeah. And, he was talking about shifting everything from neurotransmitters in the brain to healing constipation, to changing the biome on the skin, to heart health, to even different longevity compounds that specific forms of bacteria can produce. And, we talked about the problem with most of the probiotics not really surviving the acidic nature of the gut. And, he kind of cracked the code. He figured out how to develop a special probiotic strain that produces all these post biotics that are super beneficial. But then, he envelops it in an algae medium. And so, it's this dark green capsule. And then, it's got pomegranate seed extract in it which feeds these probiotics strains. Super cool formula. He just basically did everything you could do to a probiotic. And, he calls it a Synbiotic, S-Y-N, Synbiotic.

So, it's basically prebiotics and probiotics designed to cause a release of specific postbiotics. And, it's just called Seed. They got a good website, seed.com.

Jay:  Very educational.

Ben:  That website's got to be worth a little bit, seed.com. So, you go to seed.com/Ben, and use code, BEN15, and you'll save 15% off of this Seed Synbiotic. So, that's cool.

Jay:  It is.

Ben:  And, those are all of our sponsors, the Kion Cold Thermo Challenge, and your Joovv light, and your Four Sigmatic mushroom, and your Seed. And, we'll link all those, too, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/515.

Nate:  Hey, Ben. It's Nate here. I seem to have developed some caffeine sensitivity over the last few years. I used to love home-roasting my own coffees, exotic teas, nootropic supplements, but all of these seem way too powerful for me now. I had blood work done recently, and everything looks good, as far as I can tell. I've tried upping my magnesium, adding glycine, experimenting with adaptogens (even lowering the dose). Nothing seems to work. I just tried it again after a long break of over one year without caffeine, and the same symptoms come right back. I miss the productivity and the focus that it used to give me. And, I'm hoping you can help me understand the biochemistry, and maybe, some other things I can do to get it back. Thanks.

Ben:  You know what possibly could have happened here, Nate? And, also, Jay, because I know you're real coffee aficionados. Maybe, Nate was drinking our world-famous Kion Coffee and stopped. I'm guessing that. That was most likely with you.

Jay:  Obviously, that's a given.

Ben:  We only do a light to medium roast to limit the amount of caffeine and acrylamides. And, it's mold and microtoxin-free, so you're not getting the cell danger response. And, I'm just going to use this as a way to basically pimp out my product.

Jay:  Of course, you will.

Ben:  I think that's the whole issue. Just start drinking Kion Coffee, you'll be fine. This is actually, well, super interesting, because this doesn't just happen with coffee. You can develop these sensitivities, whatever, gluten, lactose, whole bunch of stuff. They just didn't have grown up, or didn't have for certain number of years, and the elephant in the room, the big one, is that we know that there are these peptides.

They're called corticotropin-releasing factors. And, they're responsible for coordinating your body's response to stress. We're calling them CRFs. And, they do have some pretty potent effects on the gut because they can increase gut permeability. They can contribute to what's called visceral hypersensitivity, perception to pain.

And, that's because these peptides, actually, affect what's called the HPA axis, your hypothalamic-pituitary axis. They stimulate secretion of cortisol from the adrenal glands. And, when that happens, you can change the physiological function of the gut. And, one of the things that happens is more inflammatory cytokine levels in the gut, and also, the disruption of the microbiota in your gut, which increases susceptibility to certain pathogens, and also, can cause this so-called leaky gut, a.k.a. gut permeability. Thus, allowing for proteins from foods, including those that you might not have been sensitive to in the past to, indeed, become an issue, particularly, triggering an autoimmune-like reaction.

That can include things like jitteriness and extreme sensitivity, etc., in someone who was, at one time, just fine eating certain foods, went through a period of stress, car accident, trauma, divorce, loss of job, change of career, had a baby, went through a period of sleep deprivation, whatever, and all of a sudden, the foods that you used to be able to eat you can't eat anymore. That happens. That's a thing.

And, of course, I'm not going to insult people's intelligence, but the way around that is you quit consuming the compounds that are causing the issues while, at the same time, embarking upon a gut healing protocol with. I think some of the better things to heal the gut when you have a leaky gut would be colostrum and glutamine, like L-Glutamine, colostrum, bone broth, or anything that has an appreciable amount of glycine in it. And then, the last one is a supplement called Restore. I really like that one. It's a lignite base supplement, made by Dr. Zach Bush. That also seems to have some really good effects for leaky gut.

So, those are a few of my favorites, are colostrum, bone broth, L-Glutamine, and this supplement called Restore. So, I would definitely consider that. And, kind of related to that, you can test for an antibody reaction to caffeine to the actual coffee bean itself. Think about, it's a bean, just like a chickpea or almond, or a legume, like a peanut. And, we know that allergies to beans are not uncommon. And, when you look at the coffee bean, you have proteins that you can have an intolerance to. And, there is a test. It's just basically like a food-specific IgE IgG test. And, I think it's one of the better, more sensitive tests out there, called Cyrex. And, they have a panel called the Cyrex Array 10. So, multiple food sensitivity screen, and one of the things that's on there is coffee. So, you can actually see if you are actually allergic to coffee. That does not mean you can't drink coffee for the rest of your life, but it does indicate, especially, if you could drink it for awhile and now you can't, that leaky gut is contributing to an antibody reaction to coffee bean. So, that's one of the first things that comes to mind for me. So, I'd look at that. I'd look at leaky gut and potential for food intolerance, specifically, an antibody response to caffeine.

So, the next thing I would look at would be magnesium. We know that changes in diet, changes in sweating, such as a regular sauna practice that you may have adopted, changes in supplementation habits, etc., can result in magnesium deficiency. It's not uncommon to have a magnesium deficiency. Well, magnesium and calcium will assist with heart muscle contracture and regulate the actual electrical activity of the heart. If you have a calcium-magnesium imbalance, not only do you have a risk for more arterial calcification, including calcium deposits that conform on heart muscle that can keep the heart from contracting properly, but then, magnesium can also, when it's out of balance with calcium, result in kind of that pitter-pattering of the heart, which results in kind of this jittery feeling after consuming coffee. And, in some cases, it can be as simple as a magnesium deficiency.

So, that's another thing to look at. And, there's, obviously, a lot of ways to replenish magnesium. And, a lot of magnesium supplements out there, they seem to be kind of making the rounds on the podcast circuit of late Matt Gallant and Wade Lightheart, who have been on the podcast before because they developed a form of magnesium that's got seven different forms of magnesium in. It's called Magnesium Breakthrough. And, I think that's a pretty good product. Also, the other magnesium form that I like is called MagSRT.

And, supplementation with magnesium might be another thing to look into. So, I'd look at an allergic response to the coffee bean, [00:45:23] _____ response. That's typically going to go hand in hand with leaky gut. I would look at magnesium deficiency. I would look at, again, like I briefly alluded to, of course, Dave Asprey has done a good job bringing this to the forefront of concern for a lot of people, the mold and mycotoxins content of a lot of coffees. And, a lot of people do have mold and mycotoxins sensitivity.

And, there's a really good book about this by Neal Nathan called Toxins. That could be called toxic. I don't remember, Toxins or “Toxic.” Anyways, he gets into the accelerated sympathetic nervous system response and this so-called cell danger response in folks who have mold and mycotoxins sensitivity, or who have mold mycotoxin biofilm buildup from exposure to mold in their environment or in their diet, who then, consume foods that also have mold in them. And, coffee is a notorious culprit for this that accelerate that cell danger response even more. And so, I would consider a mold test, like a mold and microtoxin test. And, if you go to the website, SurvivingMold.com, or you read Neal Nathan's book, “Toxic,” then, there's a lot of good resources on there for practitioners who can do a good job testing you for mold. That same company I mentioned earlier, Cyrex, they also have a really good mold panel. And so, I would not throw the possibility of mold out the window. And, of course, make sure, if you're not drinking a good organic coffee and it doesn't have mold mycotoxins in it, that you begin doing so once you're no longer sensitive to coffee.

Jay:  Go ahead. Provide your plug.

Ben:  Kion Coffee [00:47:01] _____ mycotoxins mold. I like to mix blue cheese with mine just because I like a little mold. Plus, it's tasty. So, I like my coffee to taste yeasty. It's amazing. So, the next thing would be the blood glucose response. And, we know that, when you consume coffee, anybody wears a continuous blood glucose monitors, had coffee and their blood glucose goes to the roof. It's a short, it's a transient spike in blood glucose. But, the cortisol that's accompanied by the coffee and the norepinephrine release can result in what's called glycogenolysis, breakdown of liver storage of glycogen, thus, resulting in a spike in blood sugar.

Well, if you have poor pancreatic cell function or poor insulin function, that might be accompanied by a hypoglycemic drop from a really accelerated blood sugar response. Or, it might also, if you, for example, are not producing enough insulin or have really poor insulin sensitivity, just a really long period of time that that glucose is staying in the system. And so, because of that, you may want to just do some blood glucose testing and some hemoglobin A1c testing and some insulin monitoring, to just make sure you haven't developed. Because this can happen later in life, like prediabetes or high blood glucose, or full-blown Type 2 diabetes. Those are all blood sugar related issues that, if you have a cup of coffee, could cause you to have these hyper hypoglycemic episodes that would result in what would seem to manifest as caffeine sensitivity.

And, when I'd say, “coffee,” here I'm painting with a broad range of caffeine, energy drinks, etc. So, that's another thing to think about.

And then, two last things to consider here. One is that, as you age, you tend to see a slowing in what are called your CYP enzymes, which are the enzymes that are responsible for metabolizing a lot of drugs, including coffee. And, this is related to the whole genetic testing and how some people are fast coffee oxidizers and somewhere slow coffee oxidizers. And, the fast coffee oxidizers tend to have faster CYP enzyme activity and breakdown the coffee more quickly. And, as you age, or if you're a slow coffee oxidizer, those enzymatic reactions slow. Thus, you become more sensitive to caffeine. So, it might just be, sorry, Nate, that you're getting old, because, obviously, if this had always happened to you, it just means you're a slow coffee oxidizer or could mean that. But, if it just happens to set in gradually, maybe, it's just age slowing down your CYP enzymes.

And, there are certain ways that you could speed up CYP. Grapefruit is notorious. I'll tell you not to consume grapefruit or grapefruit juice or grapefruit extract with some pharmaceuticals. And, that's because it can accelerate the breakdown of those so quickly. So, definitely, don't put grapefruit in your coffee. I don't recommend that, or mold.

Jay:  Blue cheese.

Ben:  Just have a little bit of slowing down of the CYP enzymes. And, sometimes, in a similar note, just liver and gall bladder function, if you test you have high liver enzymes. A lot of people just basically need to enhance the phase zero, one, two, and three pathways of liver detoxification, which can assist with restoration of proper enzymatic activity in the liver. And, this is why fasting is beneficial. This is why doing a yearly cleanse is beneficial, or even something like a quarterly fasting mimicking diet. Or. there are some really good Ayurvedic cleanses out there.

One that I like is called the Kaya Kalpa cleanse, K-A-Y-A K-A-L-P-A. That one's made by Dr. John Douillard in Boulder, Colorado. I use that with a lot of my clients, if they come to me and we're kind of kick starting their program and they've got some high liver enzymes that's a five-day cleanse.

The folks at Quicksilver Scientific have their Push Catch Liver Detox. And, that, also, is a really great formula that results in enhancing the detox pathways. But then, there are bunch of natural binders in them that catch toxins as they're released so that you eliminate them via stool and via sweat. And so, that was called the Push Catch Liver Detox. Or, alternatively, there's that Kaya Kalpa cleanse. I wouldn't do both. That's too much. You don't want to over-cleanse. But, you might just need to clean up shop from a liver and gall bladder standpoint. And, sometimes, that can help out quite a bit in a situation like this as well.

So, those are some ideas for you. And then, I'd be remiss not to mention the fact that there are some good alternatives to coffee in the meantime. I weave in myself. I'm just careful not to drink coffee every day. So, now, I'm doing the reverse plug of my products, Kion Coffee.

Jay:  Everybody just pulled it out of their cart.

Ben:  I don't drink it every day. Yeah.

Jay:  Actually, [00:52:02] _____ that you don't drink it every day, actually.

Ben:  No, I don't, for two reasons. A, I'm cognizant of just having a bunch of caffeine down the hatch every day. And, B, sometimes, I've got a hankering for something different. And, for example, sometimes, this is one of my favorite things to do, I'll make cacao tea and blend it with chaga. And, I think that's wonderful. It's a great little blend. I get this MiCacao, cacao nibs cacao shell powder. And, it comes in a bag. And, I put it in a French press, and I make cacao tea. And, I pour that over a couple of packets of Four Sigmatic Chaga. Sometimes, I like to mix in a little stevia and a little sea salt. But, sometimes, I'll have chaga cacao tea instead of coffee, which is kind of cool because you'll get a lot of dopamine release from the cacao and that feel-good effect, but little bit lower levels of caffeine. So, that's one cool alternative that I like.

The company Four Sigmatic we mentioned earlier, they make a coffee that's called an adaptogen coffee, meaning they made the coffee so that it wouldn't cause as many jitters. I'm not a huge fan that it comes pre-ground. I think you'll lose a lot of the freshness and the shelf stability of coffee that's pre-ground.

And, you do have a little bit more potential for some carcinogenic buildup, etc. But, they do use all organic fair-trade coffee. And, I think, as long as you don't leave it on the shelf for a long period of time, it's not that bad. But, they blend things in like ashwagandha and holy basil. And, they've also got some chaga in there as well. All things that kind of take the edge off the caffeine. So, I'm not opposed to that as an option, like this adaptogenic coffee like Four Sigmatic makes.

And then, one other that I've been kind of liking lately, kind of a new company, but they sent me a few bags of their stuff. And, what they do is they take, either, one of their [00:53:58] _____ has a little bit of coffee in it. But, most of it doesn't have coffee in it. But, they market it as an alternative to coffee, because it's kind of chicory root as the base, which a lot of people who don't drink coffee, they will drink chicory root bases. But then, they blend it with ginger and cayenne. And, they throw a lot of things in there, like maca and Schisandra. And, they have one that's a cacao flavor. They have one that they call the Dirty Flavor that has little caffeine in it. They have one they call their sex tonic, which is literally a bunch of nitric oxide precursors, aphrodisiac compounds, and then, a little bit of cayenne for a little kick.

Jay:  I like it.

Ben:  And, I've been throwing that in the French press. And, a lot of times, I'll blend it up with little stevia and a little sea salt. And, that one is called Rasa, R-A-S-A. They're a pretty new company, I think. I think they're out of Boulder, actually. And, I've actually liked some of their stuff, too, in the morning where I don't feel like making a cup of coffee. So, those are probably the three things. I don't do a lot of the Four Sigmatic adaptogenic coffee. Again, because I don't like my coffee pre-ground as much, but I have been doing a little bit more of that chaga cacao blend. And then, I've been drinking some of this Rasa, R-A-S-A adaptogenic coffee. So, those are some alternatives for you, if the whole old school green tea thing, how boring, or English tea? I don't like to have English tea for breakfast. It just always makes me feel like I need to crumpet and a scone and it needs to be raining.

Jay:  Australian.

Ben:  Was that Australian?

Jay:  That was Australian. [00:55:33] _____ Australian there, mate.

Ben:  Yeah, that's beer. That's beer knock off. So, anyways, Nate, I hope that's helpful. And, those are a few things that come to mind. So, yeah, there you have it, man.

Jay:  That was pretty extensive. I like it. What I will say, because I know it's in the shownotes and I don't believe you mentioned it, but it's something that I use all the time, is incorporating some L-Theanine with my coffee. That actually has been a game-changer for me, because I used to get a little bit of coffee jitters when I would drink, maybe, non-Kion based coffee. But, even with Kion Coffee or with anything that I'm drinking in the morning that's caffeinated, but, especially, coffee, about 200 milligrams of L-Theanine, and that does the trick for me every time.

Ben:  I agree. Theanine is amazing, too. Theanine is kind of cool for priestly. But, I always like to have a little Theanine around, just anything you take that might make you too jittery, whatever. You didn't cut your pure LSD blotter effectively. That's the second time I mentioned LSD.

Jay:  That is. What's on your mind, Ben?

Ben:  I guess. You know what? It's we're recording this during our psychedelics week at Ben Greenfield Fitness all week long on Instagram.

Jay:  That's right.

Ben:  And, I think this podcast will come out once Psychedelics week is over. But, I have been putting out a lot of information about microdosing and stuff like that. So, maybe, that's why.

Alright. Well, let's go on to the next question. And, this one might be a little bit of a meaty question, but let's do it. What do you think?

Jay:  Let's go.

Sana:  Hi, Ben. My name is Sana. My favorite part of your show was when you talked about the need for a daily routine for workouts, supplements, meditation, and things like that. I was wondering if you would mind sharing some of your own favorite workouts, routines, meditation practices in more detail. Thank you.

Jay:  Whoo.

Ben:  Well, I get this question a lot. And, by the way, I don't do this much. And, tell me if it's distracting. And, definitely, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/415 and let me know if I should not have done this. But, I just started walking on my treadmill.

Jay:  You did?

Ben:  Yeah. I don't walk a lot during this. I walk a lot during the day. I do a lot of my podcasts while I'm walking. I do a lot of my calls while I'm walking, but I don't walk a lot when I'm recording my own show. I don't know why. I don't know. I just don't. But, I'm walking now. So, if that's distracting to people, just let me know. I won't walk during my podcasts.

Gosh, I get asked this so much. “What's your morning routine? What's your afternoon routine?” But, it changes a lot, just like anything. And, especially, for me, because I'm kind of self-proclaimed immersive journalist, and I'm always trying out new things, whether it's the different coffee blends that we talked about, or it might be experimenting with alternatives, or somebody will send me some new fancy exercise device or biohacking device, or brain tweaking or sleep device to my house. And so, I'm always trying new things out.

And so, the reason I wanted to respond to this question was because I figured, why not give people an update as to what I found to be really helpful, what's working for me right now, and, what I'm experimenting with.

Jay:  Do it.

Ben:  So, I think this is an interesting question. And so, obviously, for me to go through my routine might take a little bit of time. But, we've got a little bit of time. So, what do you think? Should we do it? Just, maybe, start with the morning, I suppose.

Jay:  Yeah, I guess just walk us through your day. People probably want to hear the details. So, I'd say, if we got time, let's give it to them. Even though, I'm a little bit upset that they didn't ask about my routine. So, screw you.

Ben:  Maybe, we'll do Jay's later.

Jay:  It sounds good.

Ben:  Unless I have a flight to catch or an early morning meeting, which is really rare, because I protect my mornings quite a bit. I try not to schedule anything work-related until about 9:30 to 10:00-ish. And, the reason for that is I'm just a big fan of the morning routine and of optimizing the body in the brain for extreme productivity the rest of the day. And, I just do much better when I'm not getting out of bed and knowing that I have 20 minutes until I got to be on my first call. And so, it's pretty rare that I wake with an alarm. Simply, I will just wake naturally. And, for me, these days, and it seems to get earlier and earlier with each year, for me, that's usually about 5:00 a.m. or so that I wake naturally. And, that's typically with a 9:30 to 10:00 p.m.-ish bedtime.

Now, I do take a nap later on, typically, in the afternoon, a very quick 20 to 30-minute power nap. And, I'm just fine waking up that early with the power nap.

Jay:  Do you do it right after lunch, your nap?

Ben:  Yeah. We can get to that in a little bit when we get to lunch. But, I haven't been getting out of bed right when I wake. And, that was because, after I interviewed Jim Poole from NuCalm, he talked about how, for people who wake up super early and who can't get back to sleep, you can pretty much simulate one extra sleep cycle by playing one of these 20-50 minute-ish NuCalm tracks. And so, during the entire night of sleep, because I tend to be very sound sensitive while I sleep, I actually do have some noise playing. And, the way that I'm doing this right now is my phone is on airplane mode on my bedside, and I have this app called Sleepstream.

And, Sleepstream has the option to play white noise or brown noise, or middle meditation sounds. I've described in the past as like a DJ for sleep. And, based on research, of all the different forms of background noise that you can play to drown out birdsong or sirens blaring, or dogs barking, or cars, or I can often hear semi-trucks on the road in our house. We've got roosters. We've got goats. So, it does get kind of loud sometimes as early as 3:45 in the morning. So, I wear these sleeping headphones called SleepPhones. And, the SleepPhones, I'm a side sleeper, and so, they're super soft headphones that allow you to sleep on your side without earbuds digging into your ears, or anything like that.

So, I play this Sleepstream and I play the pink noise, because it appears that pink noise is the best form of noise for enhancing your sleep cycles and drowning out outside noise.

Jay:  Wait, what's the difference the pink noise and white noise?

Ben:  It's the frequency of the sound waves. So, subtle differences between brown and white and pink, but pink is the best. So, I play pink noise on this Sleepstream app through my SleepPhones. But, then, what I've been doing, and I felt kind of guilty about this at first, because I'm not that kind of guy. Usually, when I wake up, I'm get up, charge, attack the day. But, I've been actually staying in bed, and it will depend on how busy my day is, how long I'll stay in bed. But, I'll choose either a 20-minute or a 50-minute NuCalm track, and I lay there and I turn off the pink noise and I put on the NuCalm track. I'm almost like in this half-awake half-sleep state as the track plays, and it lulls you into this deep breathing cycle and deep meditative state. And, I just feel really, really good when I do that in the morning. So, I've actually been playing a NuCalm track while I'm laying in bed in the morning.

And, they also just added a new track to their app called Deep Recovery, and I'm really liking that one. You feel as though you've meditated for hours on end when you play that track. And, they actually found that it amps up your delta and theta brain waves through the roof.

Jay:  It's pretty awesome.

Ben:  So, I'm not getting out of bed right away in the morning.

Jay:  That's cool. And, Ben, do you want to hear a really funny short story about NuCalm in the morning that happened with me? Because I have actually been doing something similar.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jay:  Okay, real fast. So, actually, this is a couple of days ago. I had my NuCalm system on. It was about 5:00 a.m. I woke up a little bit early, but wanted to kind of extended out a little bit, get some more restorative sleep in through on, just kind of the power nap on my NuCalm, and ended up kind of lulling myself back to sleep when I was on my back. And, I usually don't sleep on my back. And, I went into one of the worst cases of sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations I've ever had. There were people that I saw in my room. It scared the ever-living shit out of me.

So, I was like, “Maybe, I should do this on my side from now often, because research indicates that it doesn't happen often on your side.” But, I just thought it was kind of cool. Don't know if that ever happened to you.

Ben:  Yeah, I've had some weird things happen with the NuCalm where you can go to another planet.

Jay:  Do you?

Ben:  And, I've never had that happen with any other kind of sleep app. And, you are correct. If you're laying on your back with one of those neck support pillows or back sleeping pillows, not to jump ahead to my afternoon nap, but that's actually how I tend to nap in the afternoon, is I'll play a quick 20-minute–NuCalm has two different power naps that is 20 minutes, but I do those laying on my back. And, yeah, you're off on another planet within two minutes.

Jay:  You so are.

Ben:  And, in both cases, for the nap and for that morning, when I wake, I have that little Apollo strap attached to my ankle. And, I always have that in airplane mode, too. But, you can press the two little buttons on it, and it doesn't even need to be controlled by your phone. And, I have it in either relax or sleep mode. And, when I do that at the same time as the NuCalm, either for a nap or for that morning kind of quick extra sleep cycle, it doubles the effect in terms of the relaxation. So, that thing is pretty cool, too.

And, I realized neither of those devices, the NuCalm or the Apollo are inexpensive. I'm just explaining to you what I do or what I'm doing right now.

Jay:  Yeah, give it to us.

Ben:  Yes, that works really well. And then, what I do, then, is I do some journaling for about five minutes before I get out of bed. Because if I wait and tell myself I'm going to do it later, I just don't. So, I do my journaling. And, for the longest time, up until about a month ago, I was just using the Christian Gratitude Journal. And, simply, you wake up, you read an inspirational Bible verse that's on each page and you write down, “What am I grateful for? Who can I pray for or serve today? And, what truth did I discover from today's Bible verse or today's reading?” And, behind the scenes, I don't think I've ever said this on a podcast before, I've decided to work on a new version of that journal.

Jay:  Cool.

Ben:  And, I'm changing the name of that journal. It's going to be the Spiritual Disciplines Journal. And, here is how it goes. And, again, I won't spend too much time on it, because, obviously, we could be here for an hour or more talking about the routine. But, I'll tell you in brief what it is. You wake up and you write down, “What am I grateful for?” So, you have gratitude. And then, you also write down, “Who can I help or pray for today?” So, you have gratitude and service worked into the morning journaling. So, those are the only two things that I'm doing the morning, what am I grateful for and who can I pray for or serve today? And then, I read the inspirational verse that's on the top page.

And then, in the evening, so the journal has two components, the morning and the evening. In the evening, you write down in a process of what's called self-examination, which is a very powerful spiritual discipline, what good have I done this day and what could I have done better? Where did I rise to the occasion? Where did I fail? And, I find that self-examination to be incredibly powerful at allowing you to realize where you fell short and how you can fix that in the future, and also, what you may have done that enabled you to do a really good job that day. And, I have found self-examination to be so powerful in my own life, what good have I done this day, and, what could I have done better that I decided that I wanted to change up the journal and shift it to a morning and evening journal, in which the evening involves responding to that question, that self-examination question. And then, the other question that I write the answer to, is how did I fulfill my life's purpose today?

Jay:  I like it.

Ben:  As part of the redo of this journal, I'm writing out a pretty extensive introduction on not only the science and the practice of gratitude, but also, the science and practice of service, the science and practice of self-examination, and how to find your purpose in life. And so, this new journaling habit basically integrates four variables: gratitude and service. And then, in the evening, self-examination and purpose. And, I have found this to be an amazing way to gratitude. It only takes me five minutes in the morning or in major journal, five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening.

And, it'll probably be another four or five months before I actually have this as a done-for-you journal, kind of like the Christian Gratitude Journal. But, that's why I'm journaling.

Jay:  That's cool. I like it.

Ben:  And, then, I get out of bed and I go take a pee, and I do two different things that are borrowed from Ayurvedic medicine for my oral microbiome and my oral health. I make little coconut oil molds and I typically put peppermint and oregano and some cinnamon. I get a little clove. And, I just melt down the coconut oil and I put all these essential oils in there. And then, I pour it into molds. And, I have a giant mason glass jar full of these coconut oil molds in my refrigerator.

And so, I get up, and it takes me about 10 seconds. I do tongue scraping or I use a copper tongue scraper. I use the one made by the company, Dirt. And, I just scrape my tongue from back to front, three to five times, to clean the tongue, because you get a lot of yeast, fungus, mold. All that can build upon your tongue overnight. So, I scraped the tongue. It's an Ayurvedic practice. And then, I pop one of those homemade coconut oil pulling molds, and I start to swish coconut oil around in my mouth. So, I'm doing that as I'm kind of walking around getting things ready for the day.

This is also from Ayurveda. And, I'm interviewing an Ayurvedic medical practitioner soon, because I've been really getting in this, especially, some of the morning practices one can glean from Ayurvedic wisdom. And so, the other thing that I do is a pretty good … I've got some really good face washing oils. I use this stuff from Alitura right now, their cleansing oil. And so, I wash my face with warm water and just scrub, scrub, scrub my face, and wash it.

And, once a week, I'll do one of these clay masks from Alitura in the morning and put that on my face when I get up. That's just once a week. Most mornings, I just do a really good facial cleansing wash, and then, follow that up with some of the Kion Skin Serum. I put that all over my face. I smear it over my hair as well. And then, go downstairs, get the coconut oil, and start walking around, getting ready for the day, while I'm switching the coconut oil in my mouth.

I put the hot water on for the coffee which is going to be, typically, French press Kion Coffee or that cacao chaga blend that I mentioned, or this Rasa stuff that I've been messing around with. And so, while the hot water is heating for the coffee, or for the tea, I do about 10 minutes of foam rolling and deep tissue work and stretching. And, I do have one of those BioCharger devices now. So, typically, I'll run a 10, 15-minute BioCharger session and do all my stretching and foam rolling and breath work while I am in front of that.

Sometimes, I'll go out in the sunshine and do it. Sometimes, I'll just be doing it in the living room floor. But, I always leave in about 10 to 15 minutes just bodywork and breathwork. And, that's while I'm coconut oil pulling, while the hot water is getting ready for the coffee or the tea.

Jay:  That's multitasking.

Ben:  Yeah, why not? And then, I spit out the coconut oil, rinse out my mouth with water. Then, I pour the hot water over the coffee or over the tea in the French press. And then, I go and fill a giant Mason glass jar full of really good water. So, I've got a hydrogen water generator. So, I've got really good hydrogen water. And then, I put a baking soda in that. I put vitamin C in that, a vitamin C powder. For baking soda, I'm just using Arm & Hammer. For the vitamin C powder, I'm using the stuff from Jigsaw Health. And then, the hydrogen is in there, too. And, I drink this giant mason glass jar full of baking soda and vitamin C and hydrogen, which is just a really wonderful tonic.

So, I drink that. Then, I go. And, by the way, while I am drinking that, because I don't just suck it all down at once, but while I'm drinking that, a lot of times, I'm just wandering around the kitchen prepping a few things, getting the smoothie ready for later on, making sure I have some stuff set aside for the work of day. And so, at that point, my coffee or my tea is ready. And so, I press down the French press, pour that into a giant mug. And then, I go downstairs to my office. And, for about 20 to 30 minutes, I read. I read research articles. I read different digestion journals that I subscribe to. And, the whole time, I'm sipping my coffee, and the whole time I'm doing red light therapy.

So, I just flip on the red lights, go in my office, drink my coffee or tea, and just jam and read, read, read. Because I'm a fast reader, I can usually get through about eight to 10 research articles while I'm sucking down my coffee in the morning. And, I don't like to, there's occasionally somebody's texting me who I really got to respond to, or somebody hit me up on Voxer, or there's something urgent I got to take care of. But, for the most part, I don't jump into emails or anything like that too intensively at that point. I'm just trying to fill my head with knowledge. I do a lot of reading, then. And then, the evening before bed, I tend to read quite a bit as well.

Jay:  Do you still read a book a day? I remember you're doing that for a while.

Ben:  No, I backed off on that. I found that I was going through books too quickly, we're feeling as though there were some really good books that I wanted to take more like a couple of weeks to read. And, by trying to identify myself with reading a book a day, I was starting to sacrifice quality over quantity.

Jay:  Yeah, it makes sense.

Ben:  So, I just take as long as it takes me to read a book. But, I typically read, usually, I'm in the range right now of about eight to 10 books a month, somewhere in that range.

Jay:  It's still heavy.

Ben:  And so, I finished drinking my coffee or my tea, I'm doing my red-light therapy. And then. I go and I use the restroom, and I kind of do a clay mask once a week. Once a week, I'll do a coffee enema. But, most days are not enema and mask days. That's one day a week where I'm just doing a little bit of extra. But, I go and use the restroom. And then, after I've used the restroom, I'll do about 20 to 30 minutes of something deeper restorative, like a sauna session with a little bit of a cold shower or cold soak afterwards. I've really been liking that super cold Morozko Forge in the morning. So, that's my done-for-you cold tub. I keep it at about 33 degrees right now. So, I'll do 25, sometimes, 30 minutes in the Clearlight infrared sauna. And then, I'll just go straight into the cold for two to five minutes. That's probably my favorite thing to do in the morning. Sometimes, I walk in the sunshine.

Jay:  At first, I thought you were going to say you did 25 minutes of the Morozko. It's like, you're insane, man.

Ben:  No, just two to five minutes. Sometimes, I'll walk in the sunshine. In the summer, sometimes, I'll just hop in the truck and I can get to the river in about eight to 10 minutes, and I'll just drop the paddleboard into the river, paddleboard for 20, 25 minutes and finish up a little cold water swim. But, my mornings are always something kind of restorative and not like a suffer-fest kind of workout most mornings, but just a deep restorative movement session.

Then, once I finished up that 20 to 30 minutes, typically, of something kind of deep and restorative and easy, by then, it's usually right around 9:15 or 9:30. And so, I whip myself up a smoothie. And, for me, 99% of the time, I'm just making a smoothie. And, it's not the same every morning, but it's usually almost always some semblance of my so-called anti-aging smoothie, which I give the recipe for in “Boundless.” It's also, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/antiagingsmoothie, I'll put a link to it in the show notes as well. It's just a bunch of different superfoods, all mixed into a blender, all over a ton of ice, some bone broth, some colostrum, etc. I mix it super thick, like a [01:17:29] _____ thick. So, I can eat it with a spoon.

And, typically, I've got my smoothie all made by about 9:30. And, between 9:30 and 10:00, I am replying to emails, I'm replying to Voxers, going through text messages. And, I kind of do all of that while I'm just slowly eating my smoothie with a spoon. And, I know I've said in the past, be careful with working while you're eating a meal, don't. But, I don't do a lot of super stressed out stuff. I'm just enjoying the hell out of my smoothie, eating with a spoon, going through all the emails and everything, just getting ready to start the actual workday.

We also have a big call for Kion every day at 9:45. We have what's called our team huddle. We get together. We meditate for three minutes. We all talk about our objectives for the day. Usually, have a fun question, like, whatever, what superhero would you want to be for today? Or, who do you want to give a shout out to today? Or, what are you grateful for today? Just simple things like that.

Jay:  You do that every day?

Ben:  Yeah, we do it every day.

Jay:  That's cool.

Ben:  Kion team huddle at 9:45 Pacific. And then, after the team huddle, for me, the next five hours are, typically, deep focus work. So, typically, I'll keep notifications off only from people who are super important people, like my assistant or people who I know need to get ahold of me.

Jay:  Me.

Ben:  The CEO of Kion, Angela, or yeah, you, Jay, or my wife. But, really, those five hours from, typically, 9:30, 10:00, until around 2:00, 2:30, I guess, it's four, four and a half hours, I'm writing. I'm doing podcasts or podcasts interviews. I'm producing. I'm not in reactive mode. I'm not on a bunch of phone calls or replying to a bunch of emails, but that's my deep, productive work time. That's the lion's share of the productivity for me during the day, is 10:00 to 2:00 or 2:30-ish. So, I work my ass off.

Jay:  No break?

Ben:  I take some breaks, like two, five-minute breaks. Sometimes, I will, because my office has a door that opens up to the outdoor. So, sometimes, after 30 minutes of work, I'll go outdoors, do 30 pushups, stretch my quads, then, go back inside and keep working. And, for the most part, I'm working on my standing workstation. So, I'm on my feet. Sometimes, I'll go, whatever, jump up and down in the mini trampoline for five minutes. But, usually, about every half hour so, I'm taking a short little break.

And then, now I eat lunch. And, lunch is typically, again, I'm a creature of habit. I find a bunch of wonderful vegetables from the garden or from the refrigerator, cucumber and tomato, or sauerkraut, kimchi, sprouts, greens, anything like that, just a bunch of wonderful nourishing plants and, typically, put a bunch of omega-3 fatty acids on a bunch of extra virgin olive oil and a can of sardines, a little handful of nuts. I just have an amazing salad for lunch.

Jay:  Yeah, but not your big ass salad, just a modified big ass salad.

Ben:  Yeah, I used to do a lot of raw greens. Now, it's more cucumbers, tomato, sometimes a little pumpkin mash. But, I don't do a lot of the super high dose greens, as much as some of the more, I guess, you'd come fruit, vegetables, like cucumbers and stuff. I find that agrees with my stomach more than a ton of kale and spinach. And, I'm also a big fan now, instead of the big mixed green kale spinach approach, smaller amounts of things like sprouts and micro-greens.

I even read a book by Doug Evans called “Sprouts.” And, I'm able to make a lot of that myself now, which is really nice. And, I also make a lot of my own yogurt. And, typically, after lunch, I'll have a little dollop of yogurt with a piece of dark chocolate in there. It's kind of my dessert after lunch.

Then, I take my nap. I do that quick 20-minute power nap. During lunch, I am pretty productive, kind of like when I have my smoothie. During lunch, I'm either watching little videos people have sent me that I need to go through, or I'm going through a few emails. I try to choose stressful activities, but I am pretty productive, both during my breakfast and during my lunch. I don't really stop working. I just do the less stressful work during those times. Sometimes, I read some blog posts, catch up on some more research, etc.

And then, my kids are at home all day long as well, because they're homeschooled/unschooled. People are like, “When do you see your kids?” Well, everything I've just described, whether I'm taking pomodoro breaks or stretching in the morning, or making the coffee and tea, or whatever, my kids are around, and I'm hugging and asking them about their day, hanging out with them. I'm doing a little stretch breaks going and checking in on them, telling them a joke, just kind of we're apart or we're together all day long.

And then, I wake up from my nap. And, after I wake up from my nap, I'll do something that kind of gets my body. Sometimes, I'll go jump in the cold pool. Sometimes, I'll jump up and down on the trampoline for five minutes. Sometimes, I'll do a second BioCharger session. And, they have some really good energetic amp you up type of sessions. But, usually, I do something that kind of gets my body back in work mode.

And then, from 3:00 until 5:00, or so, I'll do more emails. A lot of times, if I have phone calls to make, I'll do phone calls. But, I'll typically take those while walking outdoors. My afternoons are more chunked into reactive work time, reacting and replying to emails, jumping on phone calls, things like that, if that makes sense.

Jay:  Yeah.

Ben:  And then, I'm usually wrapped up with most of that by around 5:00 or 5:30. And, at 5:00 or 5:30, that's when I'll either do a hard workout, like kettlebell training, high-intensity interval training, the Vasper machine. I have got this heavy bag called Fight Camp out in my garage. So, I'll do some glove work, just anything that's kind of hard. That's when your body temperature peaks, your grip strength peaks, and your testosterone peaks. All the stuff that dictate a hard workout being pretty good for you, that happens late afternoon or early evening. Plus, it leaves me really insulin sensitive, because we like to have these big wonderful glorious family dinners together.

I just like to go in, be able to just eat what I want, because I've just done a really hard work. Typically, those workouts are 40 to 60 minutes in duration. So, I'm usually done with my workout around 6:15, 6:30, somewhere around there. And, sometimes, I skip it and just go play tennis as a family, or, we go on a hike as a family. If I just feel like I need some family time, I'll skip the hard work out and just go do something with the family.

And, sometimes, if I'm really efficient, I'll do both. I'll go do a 20-minute Vasper session, then, grab my kids and wife. We'll go hit the tennis balls for half-hour. Or, I'll go do a kettlebell high-intensity interval training workout, then, grab my boys and we go do breathwork in the sauna. So, sometimes, I'll mash it up. But, usually, I devote from 5:30 to 6:30-ish for something more physical, whether with the family or on my own.

For a long time, we're having dinner around 8:00, 8:30. And, we started to shift that close to 7:00, 7:30.

Jay:  [01:24:55] _____.

Ben:  Because I found that I actually feel better without those late-night feedings. Before, I used to do all my guitar practice and my devotions and my scripture reading and my meditation, all that jazz. I kind of wanted to get all that out of the way before dinner. And now, I'm doing any of that stuff after dinner. So, we have dinner around 7:00, 7:30. And, that's my real family time. We're talking hour, hour and a half long dinners. Card games, gratitude journals, catching up, telling jokes, listening to music. But, we literally just sit around the table for a really long time, just hanging out as a family.

Jay:  Cool.

Ben:  And, dinner widely varies. Sometimes, it's roast chicken. Sometimes, it's steak. Most of the time, I'll make the meat dish, because I really specialize in meat, and my wife will make a side, and my kids will help out, making a little dessert or making some risotto or doing this side salad. But, we all pitch in. We all do dinner together. And then, we all eat dinner together and play card games, and play board games, Scrabble, Quiddler, Hearts, Canasta, you name it.

And then, like I mentioned, after dinner, that's when I'll do a lot of the stuff that I used to do before there. So, after dinner, I'll practice guitar or play my kids some guitar songs. Sometimes, we'll sing songs together as a family. I've been popping on sometimes Instagram live concerts on my Instagram channel. A lot of times, I will go after I played guitar and everything, because my kids go to bed a little while before I do.

So, let's say it's 8:30 or 9:00 and I finished playing my guitar, then, I'll actually go down to the basement and I'll do a meditation session. I'll do echo meditation or some deep breathing. I'll usually pair that with scripture reading or devotions, or prayer. That's kind of my spiritual time. That's in addition to doing that self-examination and that answering of the purpose statement that I do when I'm laying in bed.

But, once I've done all that stuff, then, I make my whip to the bedroom. I recently did a blog post on the sleep stack I've been experimenting with, which is just five or six different nutrients from this company, Thorne. And, it's like L-Theanine and GABA. And, I found that to be pretty useful. So, I'll just do that sleep stacks, little CBD. Pop that about 20 minutes before bed, grab a book, go upstairs, typically, 9:30, 9:45. By then, I'm in bed, I'm reading. And, I'll read for 20, 30 minutes until that sleep stack starts to kind of kick in. And then, I just start to go into my deep breathing, flip my Apollo into sleep mode, put those SleepPhones on with the pink noise, and go to sleep.

And, depending on the night and what my wife and I have planned together on nights where we're going to make love or we want to connect a little, we want to talk a little bit more, usually, I'll just skip the meditation session and just free up 20, 30 minutes to just hang with my wife and do that instead.

Jay:  Amateur. Twenty minutes? Amateur.

Ben:  Oh, kid. We're going to make love. Sometimes, we are up until 10:30, 11:00, some nights. And, it is what it is, but, I think that's well worth it, obviously.

Jay:  [01:28:17] _____.

Ben:  And then, my wife and I pray together. We pray for all the people we want to pray for, and we talk about each other's day. And, usually, we fall asleep snuggling, and lull myself to sleep little deep breathing. And, I'll tell you, when that sleep stack hits my system, I'm like a light. And then, sleep until about 5:00 a.m. or so, and, rinse, wash, and repeat. And, that's the basics of how my days are looking these days.

Jay:  Nice. So, you don't spend three hours on Instagram, two hours on Facebook, five hours on Twitter. Nothing like that?

Ben:  No, no. If anything, when I'm doing my little stretch breaks during the day, sometimes, I'll pop in and look at those. Speaking of the kids, I have to admit that I just realized it's five minutes until noon, and every week, I have a big meeting with my kids and my wife, and all the little teachers and tutors who help us out with our homeschooling and our unschooling. So, that's coming up actually super, super quick. That's coming up in five minutes. So, even though there are a few little rabbit holes I could probably get into, and I probably forgot some stuff, what I would like is, if you're listening, you're curious about something I may have forgotten to mention, I don't know, like I didn't say what supplements I take in the morning, which is basically, creatine and fish oil and some Kion Aminos, stuff like that, but, maybe, a few little things I missed, but just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/415, and ask me about anything I missed that you're still curious about, and I'll pop in there, because, realistically, I'm out of time, and were out of time.

And so, that being said, we did not do a giveaway last time.

Jay:  Or, the time before.

Ben:  Would you want to do a giveaway?

Jay:  Yeah, let's do one.

Ben:  Let's do a giveaway. So, this is the time when, if you've gone and left us a nice little review on the site, we'll give you a cool Ben Greenfield Fitness gear pack with a beanie and a water bottle and a T-shirt. And so, if you hear your review read, you just email [email protected]. That's [email protected].

Let us know your T-shirt size, and we'll get a handy-dandy gear pack out to you. So, that all being said, Jay, you want to take it away and read this week's review.

Jay:  Let's do it. This one is from Beet The Heat. And, “Beet” is B-E-E-T, little vegetarian vegan action going here. But, it's “My Go-To Podcast,” is what they labeled this one. And, they said, “After hearing Ben through other podcasts, I dive deep into his content. I'm always finding what I'm looking for, exposed to even more around the topic, then, leaving with obtainable tips to put into action. Honestly, Ben is someone I find living the ideal life.” And, we know his life now, he told us all about it. “Ancestral living in harmony with nature with access to all the tools and powerful foods and a loving strong family, it is something I aspire to cultivate and provide as well in my life.” Good review, man, or lady.

Ben:  That give me more warm fuzzies inside.

Jay:  It should.

Ben:  I feel like I got to go rub back in my calf now to keep myself from pissing my pants from all these warm fuzzies.

Jay:  And, you've learned something today.

Ben:  I don't know the trick for that. Well, anyways. Gosh, that went by fast, but I hope that's been helpful for you, guys. And, we'll link to everything, the studies and the coffee alternatives, and stuff I mentioned for my daily routine. And, this is also where you can go leave your questions and your comments and your feedback at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/415. It's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/415, and until next time. Jay?

Jay:  Ben?

Ben:  Have an amazing day.

Jay:  Hey, you too, man.

Ben:  Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful, “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also, know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So, when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that they generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

 

 

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News Flashes – Follow Ben on Twitter for more…3:40

• 13 Body Hacks, Evaluated: What Science Says About Shortcuts To Health And Wellness
• Flies aren’t little people, I know… But it’s interesting that in sleep-deprived flies, melatonin, NAD, and alpha-lipoic acidprotect against the oxidation-induced damage in the gut from sleep deprivation. Read about the study here.
• What would make your high cholesterol a BAD THING? Four articles I read recently give us some clues (not an exhaustive list by any means!):
  1. Oxidation resistance, oxidation rate, and extent of oxidation of human low-density lipoprotein depend on the ratio of oleic acid content to linoleic acid content studies in vitamin E deficient subjects
     • Oleic acid (olive oil, avocado oil, cold-water fish)
     • BGF podcast with Dr. Barrie Tanabout Annatto-E (use code BEN15 to save 15%)
  2. Serum Oxidized LDL Levels in Type 2 Diabetic Patients with Retinopathy in Mthatha Region of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa
     • Blood glucose monitor
  3. Low exercise volume
  4. Low omega 3 fatty acid status– e.g., olive oil and fish oil

Resources mentioned:

• Ben's breakfast smoothie: Collagenwith kefir and colostrum, ketone esters (use code BEN for free shipping), bone broth, and fish oil
• Book: Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behaveby Adam Alter
• BGF podcast with Ian Clark
  • Book: Marma Points of Ayurvedaby Vasant Lad
• BGF podcast with James Nestor
  • Book: Breathby James Nestor
• BGF podcast with Dr. John Lieurance
  • High dose melatonin in the Sandman suppositories(use code BEN to get save 5%)
• BGF podcast Q&A 412(discussion on coffee roasting and prep and its relationship to cholesterol levels)

Special Announcements…31:35

Ben Greenfield's new book Boundless is now available! Click here to order your copy.

Check out Ben on Instagram for epic posts and photos about his morning, day, and evening routines, recipes, and much more!

Follow Ben on Twitter for daily news flashes and the latest health, fitness, and anti-aging research.

Join Ben's Facebook page for conversations with listeners and even more useful information, posts, and support!

This podcast is brought to you by:

–Kion: Join in the Kion Cold Thermo Challenge of 2020 beginning August 2! Click here for more information.

–JOOVV: After using the Joovv for close to 2 years, it's the only light therapy device I'd ever recommend. Give it a try: you won't be disappointed. Order using my link and receive my brand new book, Boundless absolutely free!

–Four Sigmatic: I’ve been using Four Sigmatic products for a while now and I’m impressed by the efficacies of their mushroom products. I use them. I like them. I support the mission! Receive 15% off your Four Sigmatic purchase when you use discount code BENGREENFIELD.

–Seed Daily Synbiotic: A formulation of 24 unique strains, each of which included at their clinically verified dose, to deliver systemic benefits in the body. Save 15% off your order when you use discount code BEN15.

Listener Q&A:

What To Do About Caffeine Sensitivities, Plus Alternatives To Coffee…38:25

Nate asks: I seem to have developed some caffeine sensitivity over the last few years. I used to love home-roasting my own coffees, exotic teas, nootropic supplements, but all of these seem way too powerful for me now. I had blood work done recently, and everything looks good. I've tried upping my magnesium, adding glycine, experimenting with adaptogens (even lowering the dose). Nothing seems to work. I just tried it again after a long break of over one year without caffeine, and the same symptoms come right back. I miss the productivity and focus it used to give me. I'm hoping you can help me understand the biochemistry of this and maybe some other things I can do to get it back.

In my response, I recommend:

• Rasa Adaptogenic Coffee
• MiCacao
• FourSigmatic Adaptogenic Coffee(use code BENGREENFIELD to save 15%)
• Omica Organic Stevia
• Thorne L-Theanine
• Colostrum
• Bone Broth
• L-Glutamine
• Restore(use code BENG1KC to save 15%)
• Magnesium Breakthrough(use code GREENFIELD10 to save 10%)
• MagSRT(use code GREENFIELD10 to save 10%)
• Cyrex Array 10(Multiple Food Sensitivity Screen) for antibody reaction
• Age slowing down CYP enzymes
• Kaya Kalpa cleanse kit by Dr. John Douillard's LifeSpa
• Push Catch Liver Detoxby Quicksilver Scientific
• Book: Toxicby Neal Nathan
• Surviving Mold
• Fasting-mimicking diet(use code BEN for a free gift)

What Is Ben Greenfield's Current Daily Routine?…57:05

Sana asks: Hi Ben, my favorite parts of your show are when you talk about the need for a daily routine for workouts, supplements, meditation, and things of that nature. I was wondering if you would mind sharing some of your own favorite workouts, routines, meditation practices in more detail? Thanks!

In my response, I recommend:

• BGF podcast with Jim Poole
• NuCalm(discount applied at checkout, 65% off your first month of any new monthly subscription)
• Play pink noise on Sleepstream appthru SleepPhones headphones
• Neck Nest– the neck pillow (use code GREENFIELD2019 for a free pillowcase)
• Apollo strap
• Christian Gratitude Journal
• Spiritual Disciplines Journal (coming soon)
• Oil pulling
• Tongue scraper
• Alitura cleansing oil & clay mask(use code GREENFIELD to save 20%)
• Kion skin serum
• Kion Coffee
• Foam rolling
• BioCharger
• Morning tonic mixed in a giant mason jar
  • Baking soda
  • Jigsaw Health Vitamin C powder
  • Hydrogen tablets
• Joovv
• Morozko Forge(use code BENFORGE for $150 off the retail price for any Forge)
• Ben's anti-aging smoothie
• Book: The Sprout Bookby Doug Evans
• Vasper
• Fight Camp(use code BEN10 to get a 10% discount)
• Kettlebells
• High-Intensity Interval Training
• Morning supplements:
  • Kion Aminos
  • Kion Creatine
  • Fish Oil
• Ben's sleep stack:
  • 200mg of Thorne Iso-Phos
  • 500 mg of MagSRT
  • 2 capsules of Thorne's Multi-Vitamin Elite
  • 250mg of Thorne PharmaGABA
  • 200mg of Thorne 5-Hydroxytryptophan
  • 4g of Thorne Glycine
  • 2 Thorne Hempsoftgels

Giveaways & Goodies

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