November 24, 2022

From podcast : BenGreenfieldLife.com/450 

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:34] Podcast Sponsors

[00:04:54] Live on Twitter

[00:09:11] Recreational use of cannabis can cause lower levels of testosterone and poorer levels of sperm morphology

[00:15:51] The more you chew your food and eat foods with hard textures, the less likely you are to overeat

[00:26:31] Podcast Sponsors

[00:31:58] Although it is true that 150 minutes of exercise per week at low intensity is associated with benefit for many adults, this may not be true for a substantial portion of the population who need to go HARDER to see similar results

[00:41:59] Newsflashes Quick Summary

[00:45:00] Q: Does Ben still take C60 supplements and has his perspectives evolved on C60 supplementation?

[00:55:53] Q: Is Tom Brady's TB12 Method an effective workout?

[01:03:03] Ben and Jay's thoughts on taurine

[01:08:5] Q: Is there a danger in stopping a supplement, for example, taurine or caffeine?

[01:18:17] Elements of Vitality 

[01:21:56] End of Podcast

Ben:  In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

Cannabis and testosterone, the foods that fill you up the fastest, non-responders to exercise, and a whole lot more.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Alright. Today, I want to talk about organ meats. Most of you know I'm a pretty big advocate of eating organ meats on the daily as they say. They're nature's multivitamins. As matter of fact, organ meats especially those from grass-fed, grass-finished cattle are among the most nutrient-rich foods on the planet. Nothing else actually even comes close. I'm talking about organs like liver and heart and kidney and spleen. And, I know you're thinking, “Ew.”

So, how could you get them in your diet every day if you didn't want to cook them fresh and you can't stand the taste or something like that? You get the encapsulated version. Super easy. I mean, I like the taste. I get the capsules and I actually chew on them. I'm not kidding. I chew on them like popcorn. I like them that much. But, the ones I have are these Heart & Soil supplements. It's grass-fed/grass-finished, were generally farmed beef organs in supplement form. So, they're totally primal. You don't have to soak liver and figure out how to cook it and make it taste good. That guy Paul Saladino, Dr. Paul Saladino has been on my podcast before, the Carnivore MD, he founded company. He's pretty committed to quality. And, they're also going to give all of us a 10% discount, which is great. So, you go to HeartandSoil.co and use code BEN10 that's HeartandSoil.co and code BEN10 for your Heart & Soil organ meat goodness.

Alright, here's the deal whether you run or ride or hike or swim or work out, you understand what it means to have this deep desire to push harder and reach farther and go the extra mile. And, believe it or not, the fuel for that drive can be in your blood. It can be in your blood. And, if you're not tracking your blood, then you're missing out on what you might need to actually know how to build endurance, boost energy, and optimize your health, and eat the right way, and supplement the way, and know if you're going to get sick or if you're not going to get sick, or if you need certain nutrients or don't need other nutrients. 

There's this company called Inside Tracker. They not only do your blood but your DNA and your fitness tracking data too. They identify where you're optimized and where you're not. And, these scientists that work for the company, they're in aging, they're in genetics, they're in biometrics, they work together to give you a daily action plan on Inside Tracker with personalized guidance on the right exercise and nutrition and supplementation for your body. So, when you connect it with, let's say, your Fitbit or your Garmin, you get to unlock real-time recovery pro tips after you complete your workout. So, it's like having a personal trainer, and a nutritionist, and a blood work person, whatever you call those all in your own pocket. And, they're going to give 20% to all my listeners if you just go to InsideTracker.com/Ben. That's InsideTracker.com/Ben. You don't need a code, go to InsideTracker.com/Ben and you're off to the blood work and biomarker races.

Let's talk about magnesium. So, magnesium is an essential mineral responsible for 300 vital functions in your body, yet 60% of us are deficient. Now, I started working with this company to actually get you magnesium in a very tasty manner. There are these wellness ingestibles from a company called HigherDOSE, and I helped them develop three different products: Detox Drops, High-Dration Powder, and Chill Chews. They're all designed to pair with the HigherDOSE Infrared Red Light and PEMF devices like their Sauna Blanket and their Infrared Face Mask and their mat. You take this stuff, you pair it with their products and you enhance the detox, enhance the effects. You can add the Detox Drops to your water before workout or a sauna session. Bunch of hyper-clean ingredients binds to toxins, nice minty flavor. I love that one. I had it in my coffee this morning actually. 

Then, they have the High-Dration Powder. That's an electrolyte-rich formula. It's got magnesium, a potent blend of B vitamins, a bunch of other goodies in there specifically to support a sauna session, so you just shoot this stuff back before you go into sauna. Then, they have Chill Chews. These are magnesium gummies. You eat them at night, they help to balance your body and relax your mind. They're super good. They're low-sugar. I'll just got a handful of them. I don't know how I'm supposed to eat. The bottle probably says, “Grab a handful of them and go to bed,” and it's amazing and they taste really good.

So anyways, this company HigherDOSE done some great stuff and I've consulted with them and helped them out with their menu so to speak, so this stuff is huge thumbs up for me because I hope to help them with it. So, you go to HigherDOSE.com/Ben to get 15% off of any of their stuff today, HigherDOSE.com/Ben, or you can just use promo code BEN and that will get you 15% off.

Jay, this is the live Twitter Spaces Q&A. And, you just informed me before we begin recording that we're competing with a billionaire?

Jay:  We are competing with not only a billionaire but the billionaire who now owns Twitter. So, the odds aren't in our favor in terms of if people are looking to hear something interesting, they may have to choose. Is it in health and wellness or is it in just chaos randomness AI whatever health neural link Twitter?

Ben:  Yeah, we could just pretend we're Elon Musk-like.

Jay: Yeah, because I know so much about artificial intelligence. I could speak days about that. No, not really.

Ben:  Didn't he smoke a joint on The Joe Rogan show? We could just smoke a joint if that's close enough.

Jay:  It's still illegal here for me to do that, so I'd have to be breaking the law, Ben. You want me to do that?

Ben:  I don't know. I can't swing a dead cat by the tail without hitting a dispensary up here in Washington state. So, I'm safe on my end.

It's interesting though because the former guy who owned Twitter, Jack Dorsey, he came onto my podcast a couple of years ago and admitted that he had an eating disorder called intermittent fasting and caught a lot of flak for that. So, maybe I just need to get Musk on the show so that we can find out what's wrong with him from a health standpoint. Does he actually exercise and eat healthy? I don't know that much about Elon Musk and his focus on his body. I mean, obviously, he could probably just snap his fingers and become a cyborg if he wanted to.

Jay:  I think he already is. I think it's already been well-established that he's a cyborg. But no, I don't know about his health and wellness practices. I just know that when he smoked weed on Rogan's podcast, his investors of his companies were not very happy with that. And so, he received a lot of flak.

Ben:  Really?

Jay:  Yeah. It was pretty bad. Like, Tesla's stock ended up sinking pretty bad. It rose rather quickly afterwards, but it was a huge hit. It was really interesting. He just took one hit. That was all it was and it was a little tricky.

Ben:  Wow, that's surprising. No, I just looked on my phone here to see if there's actual healthy habits that he has. And, since he used to work a hundred hours a week, now he's down to 80 to 90 hours per week between Tesla and Space. Oh, wait. No, that's like seven years ago. Interesting.

Jay:  Yeah. The last I heard it was 120 hours that he was working sleeping within Tesla's factory and plants. And, yeah, now that he owns Twitter, I mean, I can't imagine that the workload's going down any. So, you have him on. Let's get him on to the Ben Greenfield Life podcast because I want to hear about this guy's health practices and daily routine.

Ben:  I'll text him after our show. The thing is though, I think, he does a little bit of running and lifting weights but he also likes jiu-jitsu, which I suppose would go well with smoking cannabis. So, we could get him on show to talk jiu-jitsu and weed.

Jay:  Yeah. I think everybody in Austin has to have a black belt in jiu-jitsu where you're not allowed to live there as a male I heard. At least that's just the word on the street.

Ben:  Yeah, it seems. But, the thing is that we need to talk about this guy's testosterone too because in today's news flashes, I've learned a little bit about cannabis and testosterone. So, you think we just jump right in?

Jay:  Let's jump into that, man.

Ben:  Alright.

Okay. So, first of all, if you're listening live, we do answer questions here. If we have any live listeners since we've established the fact that the owner of Twitter has decided to compete with us, I think he just realized we were doing Spaces and wanted to get some of the wealth on his end. But, either way, if you're here live listening in, we do these a couple of times a month on Wednesdays. You can actually ask your questions, we'll bring it on, I don't know what you call them, Twitter Spaces on stage, whatever and we'll answer your questions all 3.5 of you in the room.

So, that being said, before we do that, I like to jump into a few news flashes, a few interesting things that I came across as far as studies that kind of piqued my interest.

And, this one was actually on recreational cannabis. I get this question a lot about whether or not people think that smoking weed or eating edibles or doing whatever else one would do with the marijuana plant would cause things like infertility or lower testosterone. And, there was an actual study that came out pretty recently just last month. It was a retrospective cross-sectional study. And, the long story short is it found that male participants who recreationally used cannabis tended to have lower levels of total testosterone and poor measures of what's called sperm morphology than those who didn't recreational use cannabis. So, the way they did this was they had about 2,000, a little over 2,000 White European men. And, they analyzed them for normal testosterone levels, low testosterone levels that were what's called secondary hypogonadal. That means low testosterone levels have an involvement with the dysfunction of pituitary or hypothalamus in the brain. Okay. So, that means the brain isn't sending the testes the right signal to keep testosterone levels elevated. And then, there's also primary hypogonadism, which unlike secondary hypogonadism is associated with an actual dysfunction of the testicles, usually, some kind of testicle failure or Leydig cells in the testes aren't working properly, whatever.

And so, what they did was they asked all these people about their cannabis use during their lifetime. And, all the people who reported recreationally using cannabis, not all of them, but a significant portion of them tended to have lower total testosterone users that are levels than the non-users of cannabis. Now, there's some things to bear in mind because they found that the cannabis-using participants were also more likely to consume alcohol. They're more likely to smoke cigarettes. Who knows because a lot of people there's so-called unhealthy user bias. A lot of people who smoke weed and who think that weed might not be good for them are the same type of people who might also be, I don't know, eating burgers and fries and I suppose in the case of weed, Doritos and Cheetos and other things that could have a negative impact on either sperm or on fertility. 

So, what they found interestingly was that the cannabis didn't seem to affect what are called FSH or LH levels. And, that means that it's likely that whatever was going on as far as the drop in testosterone was more occurring on the primary hypogonadal level like dysfunction of the testes more than something going in the brain, which is kind of surprising to me because I've always associated cannabis with being a little bit of an effeminizing plant. It's known to have these yin qualities and settles people down, people use it for creativity, people rely upon it for many elements that one might associate with more, I suppose, effeminate characteristics. You don't see a lot of power lifters smoking weed before they step up on the platform, but we've established that in jiu-jitsu, at the same time, people do use cannabis.

So, the long story short though is that based on the results of this study, if your testosterone is low or you're trying to maintain fertility, it doesn't appear that recreational frequent cannabis use is that great of an idea. What do you think, Jay?

Jay:  Yeah. Yeah, I have my own thoughts just from simply a mental health standpoint. I don't think the data are really great even from a recreational standpoint. And, in using it from a mental health standpoint and managing things like stress and because a lot of people say they use it for stress but actually the more long-term data do not point to it being an effective mechanism for it, maybe acutely. But afterwards, a lot of times the heightened paranoia, increased anxiety causes people to use more.

Ben:  You're talking cannabis with THC, right?

Jay:  That's right, yeah. That's right.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jay:  And so, for here, I think it only makes sense though from a recreational standpoint especially if you're battling with infertility issues. If you want better gains in the gym, all these things seem to point to either reducing it especially if you're using it frequently as a recreational drug, or just maybe not using it and finding something else as a replacement. But, I'm a little bit more bullish on not using as opposed to using. That's just the personal thing and from my own research.

Ben:  And, on the flip side, it could save you some money on a vasectomy, smoke a joint every night.

Jay:  Good point. We've got a bunch of men who are going to piss off their wives now.

Ben:  I think that probably a big part of this is that the dose is the poison too because if you're toking up every night or regularly consuming an edible to sleep or something like that, I think that chronic long-term use seems to be what the people in this study who had the infertility of the low testosterone were engaged in. I suppose that maybe if every once in a while you were going to use a little bit of cannabis to relax at the end of a stressful day or maybe engage in a creative, I don't know, songwriting or art project or something like that, I could see some use cases where if you weren't using it chronically, recreationally, it probably wouldn't have as big of an impact. But, I think that the majority of people who tend to have low testosterone and infertility seem to be using cannabis on a pretty frequent basis all year long based on what I'm seeing in this study.

Jay:  Yeah. Well, now especially since it's so easy to get your hands on it, and becoming relatively inexpensive compared to what it used to be. Yeah, for sure.

Ben:  Yeah, alright. So, we've established that if you want to keep your testosterone levels elevated or be fertile, regular recreational frequent use of cannabis probably isn't a good idea unless you're a billionaire designing electronic vehicles. Because from what I understand, Elon Musk actually has a lot of children spread around the world.

Jay:  Yeah. I think that's true. No, I do think that's true. Again, another thing when you have them on to talk about.

Ben:  I'm not worried at all because he can't hear us right now because he's running his own Twitter Spaces.

Jay:  Yeah, that's true.

Ben:  Alright. So, by the way, all the shownotes I'll link to at BenGreenfieldLife.com/450. If people want to actually jump in and check out any of these studies that we're talking about.

But, the next thing that kind of piqued my interest was, I guess, a little bit of a duh study but I'm going to talk about it anyways. And, this was looking at foods that fill you up the fastest and what type of things would not fill you up the fastest. There's this concept in nutrition called the satiety index. And, there's this whole satiety index of common foods. It was developed back in the mid-'90s. And, it's an interesting index. We find that the highest satiety was actually produced by well, I'll let you guess, Jay. We got rib eye steaks, we got liver, we got kale, we got blueberries, we've got goji berries, we've got sauerkraut, you name it. But, what do you think is the most satiating food? Literally seven times higher than the least satiating food at least in this pretty big study of the validated satiety index of common foods.

Jay:  Yeah. So, my initial thoughts, and again I do not know the answer to this, but my initial thought is that it's going to be something that's minimally processed. It's going to be. So therefore, a whole food, the very first thing you mentioned was steak, you came and followed it up right with liver and organ meat. And so, I was like, “Oh, maybe that's it.” But, my initial thought was a steak. It's a pretty heavily dense food, minimally processed. That's what I'll go with.

Ben:  Okay. The answer is actually the potato, boiled potato.

Jay:  Interesting.

Ben:  Boiled potato. It has the highest satiety index of any food that's been looked at including meat. I think probably the reason for that is that, well, the density of let's say a boiled potato on a steak might be somewhat similar. You got to chew them a decent amount and they take up some space in your stomach, et cetera. I think the problem is that the steak is too palatable.

Jay:  Yeah, it makes sense.

Ben:  You don't you get a lot of people sitting down to a giant plate of boiled potatoes with no salt and no butter and no bacon bits, no sour cream with a big smile on their face because they're about to punish a giant bowl of boiled potatoes, bro. But, most people will eat a hefty steak and even overeat a hefty steak because it just tastes so darn good.

Jay:  That makes sense.

Ben:  Yeah. So, that's a surprise. Now, you know what had the lowest satiety index, like the food that was the least likely to fill you up?

Jay:  So, I would imagine two things. It probably doesn't count this as a food, so I'll say this and then I'll say my next guess. My guess would be some type of the calorie-rich, sugar-rich drink like a soda or something that people could just like. But, again —

Ben:  I don't think they looked at drinks though. This was food, it wasn't drinks. You can't count that.

Jay:  So, food-wise, I'm going to go with something that's just really overly processed and is not a whole food and is really palatable and fat and sugar. So, a donut is coming to mind. I feel if I wanted to sit down here for 12 donuts like Krispy Kreme hot and ready donuts, if I wanted to, I could do it and I would be full afterwards but I could do it.

Ben:  You're pretty close. It was actually croissant.

Jay:  Oh, okay. Yeah, I could see that, man, those flaky croissant. Oh, yeah, I could see that.

Ben:  Yeah, the baked goods are actually pretty easy to overeat. Now, that being said, there is a guy I interviewed some time back who lost a lot of weight following what he called the croissant diet. You remember this guy?

Jay:  No, what happened there?

Ben:  Well, he basically used an older French recipe for croissants that used a lot of what's called steric enhanced butter oil, which is this long chain saturated fat that can actually fill you up quite a bit. And then, what he did was he eliminated all the vegetable oils, anything that might create a lot of inflammation. And, he essentially was eating a ketogenic version of a croissant, which actually if you look at a traditional croissant recipe, it actually is pretty high in saturated fats and you'd think it had a lot of carbs but it's mostly just some of the flaky buttery carbohydrates in there. And, if you cook a croissant the way that he does, and I'll link to the to the shownotes with him. Gosh, I'm embarrassed now because I'm blanking on his name. He's got a company called Firebrand Meats. He sells pork and pork lard and croissant diet. He also has the wine diet that he lost a lot of weight on, but it's all about eliminating vegetable oils and increasing the amount of stearic acid that you eat. And gosh, darn, I'm forgetting the guy's name. We talked for two hours. Brad. It was Brad somebody.

Jay:  Brad Marshall.

Ben:  Yeah, Brad Marshall. Yup, exactly. So, if folks go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/450, which is where the shownotes are, I'll link to that podcast with him. But, that's not the type of croissant that was looked at in this study on the effects of various foods in the satiety index. I think they were just using the classic, whatever, Starbucks or coffee shop croissant. So, I think it depends on the croissant. But ultimately, the potatoes were the most filling.

But, the reason I wanted to get at this was that there was a more recent study that came out that was a randomized crossover trial in which they had people consume four foods that were typical of the Mediterranean diet, hummus or as we say hummus, bread, gazpacho, which is the chilled soup made of tomatoes typically sometimes some other vegetables, and then what's called ajo blanco, which is a cold soup with water and bread and garlic and crushed almonds and olive oil and salt and sometimes a little bit of vinegar in there. And so, they matched all these meals for calories between the hummus, the bread, the gazpacho, and the ajo blanco. And then, they have participants report their hunger and satiety one and then two, and then three hours after eating the meal. Now then, at the three-hour mark, they were offered a test meal of pizza and given the opportunity to eat as much pizza as they want. In science, that's called ad libitum consumption. Okay.

So, the idea is you eat this meal, we ask you how full you are one hour, two-hour, and then three hours later. And, at three-hour mark, you get to have another meal, and let's see how much of that other meal that you eat. So, what they found was that the people who ate the most pizza three hours later were the people who had bread. So, apparently having a bunch of carbs doesn't make you not want to have a bunch of carbs three hours later.

The next one was the ajo blanco, which is the liquid soupy stuff. The next least one was the hummus. And, the people who ate the least amount of pizza was actually the people who had the gazpacho, the chilled soup made of tomatoes and vegetables, which is really interesting. Now, the possible reason why this occurred is that the gazpacho probably didn't result in a big blood sugar spike followed by what would be called a post-perennial drop in blood glucose resulting in you having the munchies later on. So, the interesting thing here is, they weren't testing engineered foods that I think might have offered a superiority when it comes to satiety like ketone esters or essential amino acids or things that would really be a diet hack, a cheat so to speak to keep your satiety up. But, they were just looking at some common foods in the Mediterranean diet.

So, long story short is if you want to not cheat on meals later on, having some kind of vegetable-rich soupy type of compound that doesn't spike the blood sugar actually seems, according to science, a pretty good idea. And, in addition to that, if you're eating a meal and you want that meal to fill you up quickly without you risking overeating, then including some type of starchy potato with the meal would probably be a good idea. Now, you know the trick for potatoes though to make sure they don't spike your blood sugar too much?

Jay:  Get them cold.

Ben:  Yeah, you get them cold. You cook the potato, then you get it cold and then you take it back out and you reheat it. It increases the amount of resistant starch. It's basically this idea if you cool some foods after cooking, you increase the resistant starch content. The resistant starch is just a long chain of glucose. Normal starches get broken down into glucose and absorb. But, resistant starch, as the name implies, is resistant to digestion. And so, when you cook the potato, then you cool it, then you take it back out cold. You got to reheat it, reheat it, cold, it's got a higher amount of the resistant starch because the resistant starch gets formed when foods are cooled after you cook them. It's called starch retrogradation. And, what that means is that the starches —

Jay:  Yeah, that's a fancy word there.

Ben:  Yeah, I know. The starch is basically form a new structure, and that structure is resistant to digestion. Now, anything that's resistance digestion though like say sugar, alcohols, artificial sweeteners, things like that, they can also give you gas, so you got to be a little bit careful not to overeat them. Yeah.

Jay:  Yeah. Have you ever just drink straight-up resistant starch? I did that a few years ago. A horrible idea. 

Ben:  I destroyed my gut when I was racing Ironman when a couple years I got into, you don't have to throw them under the bus just didn't work for me, this you can super starch stuff which is a really popular super slow release fuel but it ferments like heck in the stomach. And, it was not a good scenario. I mean, we're talking about a bowling ball baby in my gut while I was out riding the bike and just farts for hours afterwards. And, I swear I think I did a real number on my gut with that stuff. 

But, nonetheless, the idea is that I think if you want to stay full and you don't have access to a lot of expensive engineered foods, cooked and cooled potatoes and then some type of vegetable soup, this sounds like the post-holiday diet that some people might need to go on, I mean, we can hypothesize all day long. Oh, it's ribeye steak. Oh, it's liver, it's kale, it's salads, whatever. But, based on what the study shows, just vegetable soup and potatoes. Simple enough.

Jay:  That's it. Watch out for the bread, man. I can relate to that. If I eat any bread, I just want more bread. Like bread begets bread for me.

Ben:  Well, bread appears to beget pizza too. So, yeah, that's another good point, Jay, is make sure that you're not consuming bread with any meal if you don't want to overeat then or later on. So, there you have it.

Alright, so I used to spend a lot of mocha bucks, moolah money at juicery places where you fork over 13, 15, 17, whatever dollars, 55 cents for the tiny, tiny little red bottle of superfoods so-called superfoods jam-packed with a little bit of spinach, a little bit of moringa, and 18 apples and four bananas like diabetes in a bottle. A lot of the juice bars they do a good job, but let's say you want to make this stuff for pennies on the dollar in your own home with all the highest quality plant-based ingredients, full organic with less than 3 grams of sugar per serving without all that fruit packed into them but they still taste amazing. 

Enter the superfood powders from Organifi spelled with an I, Organifi. For less than 3 bucks a day, you can be juicing all day long, but none of the mess, none of the cleanup because these are just powders, you add them to water, cold water for most of their stuff, although their golden milk lattes are fantastic with frothy coconut milk.

Anyways, fantastic superfood blends and you get 20% off. Organifi.com/Ben. Organifi with an i.com/Ben is where you can be off to the races with your Organifi superfruit powder.

Alright, so in the morning I wake up, stumble downstairs after I brush my teeth and done my coconut oil pulling, my tongue scraping, and all my silly ayurvedic stuff in the bathroom. I pour myself a giant Mason glass full of water and I put into that water vitamin C and baking soda, but then these two other ingredients that are an amazing source of both electrolytes and hydrogen. The former being extremely dense minerals super clean, harvested from phytoplankton blooms in the ocean. The second one being one of the best selective antioxidants known to humankind with so much research behind it for making you feel well and battling inflammation throughout the day without quelling healthy inflammatory processes. So, the first one Quinton Minerals, the second one is called Active H2 Hydrogen tablets. Okay, so that's the giant mason glass of water, baking soda, vitamin C, Quinton, and hydrogen tablets.

You feel so good, you don't cramp during the day, you have high energy levels, you're not as sore. I do this again in the mid-afternoon to kind of recharge my day. You have a great bowel movement about an hour later. It's so good. I've done podcasts with the water researcher named Robert Slovak, who I think is one of the smartest water guys out there, besides my dad, Gary Greenfield, who's also pretty smart. And, Robert Slovak, he has basically the best website ever for biohacking and upgrading your water using all sorts of cool things like Quinton, Active H2, and a whole lot more.

So, you go to WaterAndWellness.com/Greenfield. And, if you use code GREENFIELD over there, it'll give you 10% off of everything. WaterAndWellness.com/Greenfield and use code GREENFIELD for 10% off of everything. I recommend you start with a Quinton and the H2 tablets. Enjoy.

Look, you may or may not be aware of this, but I spend countless hours each week, knee-deep in the latest research on everything from performance, to digestion, and gut issues, to hormone optimization, anti-aging, fat loss, mental performance, hyper-productivity, nootropics, smart drugs and a whole lot more. And then, for the very small select number of VIP clients who I work with on a weekly basis, I take all that knowledge in over 20 years of experience optimizing the human body. And, I supply each of my clients with the exact fitness, nutrition, supplementation, biohacking, and lifestyle plans that they need for full optimization. I'm incredibly thorough. I dig through every last shred of your data, from blood work and biomarkers to DNA saliva, to stool and urine. I walk you through the whole process. I even track daily metrics like sleep rhythms and heart rate variability. 

In other words, I'm the CEO of your health and my number one goal is for you to be a high operator. Basically, like the Navy SEAL or whatever industry you happen to be in, whether you're a hard-charging executive, elite athlete, or a father, a mother who just wants to get the most out of life and wants a no-guesswork program that allows you to wake up in the morning and know exactly what to do, and also know that somebody's watching your back and taking care of everything for you 24/7. I do all that for you.

Not only that, but I've trained a team of elite coaches, so even if you can't work with me because it's outside your budget or because there's no openings to work with me, you have full access to a well-trained team who have learned all my knowledge and who meet with me on a monthly basis for office hours to continue to learn more and to talk about how we can deliver to you the most benefit using a very unique combination of ancient wisdom and cutting edge modern science that's constantly developing based on everything that we learn and then apply to you.

So, if this sounds like it's up your alley and you want to join the ranks of those who have access to every last shred of knowledge and experience that I've gained over the years, then you can go to BenGreenfieldCoaching.com to get started. It's BenGreenfieldCoaching.com. Fill out the form there. Someone will be in touch with you within 24 hours to get you fully dialed in because it's time for you to start looking, feeling, and performing the way that you deserve. So, go to BenGreenfieldCoaching.com, select any option that works for you from a monthly phone call with me to VIP upgraded work where I'm taking care of everything for you 24/7. It's all there at BenGreenfieldCoaching.com. See you there.

Alright. So then, there was there was another super, super interesting couple of studies that I highlighted, and I actually somewhere on my desk here, let me find it, this is great podcasting me searching around my desk for it.

Jay:  I feel like you did this last time we were here.

Ben:  Did I?

Jay:  Yeah, I think so.

Ben:  Yeah, I've got all sorts of — you ought to see my office, it's not a mess, but I know where everything is.

Jay:  You're like that crazy professor that you go into their office and you're like, “Have you just been living in here for years?”

Ben:  Crazy professor. Oh, here it is. Okay.

So, I kind of got sucked into a couple of studies that I found on people being non-responders to exercise. It's really interesting. So, there's this whole idea called A, an exercise non-responder. Meaning, certain people who adhere to the general recommendations these days for exercise, which is about 150 minutes a week. Okay, 150 minutes of some type of low-intensity exercise per week is supposed to be the amount of exercise to engage in if you want to stave off the risk of a lot of chronic diseases, overweight, obesity, et cetera. Well, yeah. And, the abbreviation CRF means cardio respiratory fitness. Okay. So, basically, if you want a response from a cardio-respiratory fitness standpoint, we're not talking about muscle gain, we're just talking about metabolic adaptations to be healthier and live a longer time. 150 minutes is generally bandied about as the sweet spot, but there are a couple of studies that came across my radar, and I'll link to them in the shownotes, that show that there's a pretty significant amount of the population like up to 20% of the population that are non-responders to that type of exercise or that that volume of exercise.

And, the first study that I looked at basically found that if you increase the exercise intensity, it totally abolishes any of those non-responders in people who are engaging in this type of exercise. And, what the hypothesis is that there are certain people that need to have what are called peripheral adaptations and skeletal muscle, more mitochondrial mass, increased vascular structure, and increased VO2 max to be able to respond to exercise. So, what they found was that there are two ways to go about doing this. Either A, they totally eliminated the non-response to exercise by doubling from 150 minutes a week to 300 minutes a week. We're talking low-intensity exercise though like walking, riding a bike, swimming, things like that. But then, the other strategy that they used was they simply increase the exercise intensity, which is obviously a little bit of a time hack. And, they found that when they increase the exercise intensity in addition to the other option increasing the amount to the exercise, it's substantially decreased the rate of non-responders to exercise.

So, basically, people who are following that standard 150 minutes per week for exercise who aren't getting results, you either, A, have to get close to doubling that amount up to 300 minutes per week or incorporating high-intensity interval training and other things that trigger VO2 max and mitochondrial adaptations. And so, it was interesting to me how many people just don't respond though.

Jay:  Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, when you say when people are not getting results, you're talking about increasing their overall cardio respiratory fitness or increasing overall VO2 max like when they don't see that occurring.

Ben:  Well, no, no, I'm talking about reduction in cardiovascular disease risk.

Jay:  Oh, got it. Okay, missed that point which is another really interesting point.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then, the other study kind of found the same thing but what they did was they did a high-intensity exercise and they did 60 minutes of high-intensity exercise for six weeks in a row and totally got rid of that non-responder type of scenario. And, they basically hypothesized that it was due to increased levels of circulating red blood cells and oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood along with better what's called skeletal muscle capillarization, which is just basically feeding more blood into muscles.

And so, when I'm looking over this, basically the takeaway message, the reason I want to highlight this is that when you see recommendations for x amount of exercise or this many sets or this many reps or this amount of time on a treadmill or hiking outside or whatever, you need to understand that that's just a parabolic curve. There's a great deal of people who fall outside of that curve who are either going to respond to smaller amounts of exercise or in this case, large amounts of exercise or increased intensity. So, there are a lot of trainers who will just throw the same workouts at people or people will read about how many minutes per week. They're supposed to exercise and just roll with that, but there are a lot of people who seem to be non-responders to this whole 150 minutes per week type of scenario who need up to 300 minutes or an increase in intensity.

So, what the second study that I looked at suggested was that we may want to consider raising the minimum level of exercise dose in physical activity guidelines for healthy adults based on how many people do not respond to that 150 minutes per week. Which kind of makes sense because if you look at human beings from an ancestral standpoint, I mean being outside all day long farming, hunting, gathering, forging, et cetera, you'd often be moving at that low-intensity exercise scenario for five, six, seven, eight hours per day and 150 minutes per week. I'm not that great at math, but what is that? Three and a half hours per week when —

Jay:  150? Yeah, two and a half.

Ben:  I'm sorry, two and a half, two and a half. Yes, see I told you I'm not good at math. So, two and a half hours per week versus multiple, multiple hours per day. It does make sense that we might be falling short a little bit in terms of what people are given the impression of as far as how much they're supposed to exercise versus how much they actually should be moving. I think that our podcast listeners are probably more active than the average person. And, for a lot of folks, 150 minutes per week is a drop in the hat once they actually add up all the amount of time that they're, whatever, playing tennis, playing golf, walking, playing other sports, lifting weights, doing high intensity exercise, yoga, sauna, et cetera. But, for the average person, it turns out that what we're currently told for exercise especially at low intensity is not true for a substantial portion of the population who actually need to go harder or up to double that amount of time to actually see the type of reduction in primarily cardiovascular disease risk that people would be exercising to achieve.

Jay:  There was an interesting article that I was reading. I think it was in the New York Times, maybe another news outlet. But, they were saying that if they did shift the recommended time of exercise let's say from 150 to 300, they think that it could actually be quite beneficial because a lot of individuals who have the recommended 150 minutes per week, a lot of them set that as the goal but then they only make half of that goal where if we get them to set a goal of 300 and they meet half of that goal, well, they're still meeting 150, which is a lot better than 75. So, I think there's the mental game that we could play by establishing these set guidelines at a little higher rate but to your point also like the research and the evidence is pretty clear that for many individuals, they actually truly do need that 300 minutes of exercise a week or up their intensity and do a lot more hit or a lot more zone five level of cardio or workouts. So, yeah, I think it's kind of an interesting thing in terms of guidelines. I'd love to see some movement in what we provide is kind of the guideline.

Ben:  Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to have her on the podcast, but I've been paying a little bit of attention to this, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon who practices what she calls muscle-centric medicine, L-Y-O-N, Gabrielle Lyon. And, I'm really on the same page as her. And, I even commented on this at a recent event I was speaking out in Mexico a few days ago where I was talking about how beneficial it is to engage in walking and to have a treadmill workstation, take phone calls outside, just basically try and achieve that 10,000 steps a day. But, that's not enough for long-term health and ultimate longevity because muscle is a glycogen sink, muscle allows for an increase in mitochondrial content, muscle can allow for those peripheral adaptations and skeletal muscle capillarization that we're looking for. So, I tell people, yeah, walk 10,000 steps a day, but if you're really serious about longevity, you need to lift heavy stuff multiple times per week. And, I think that that's what a lot of these recommendations leave out that 150 minutes of low-intensity exercise per week is I would much, much rather see people just lifting heavy weights. I think that it's so neglected. And again, I'm probably preaching to the choir with our audience, but I think that this concept of what Gabrielle calls muscle-centric medicine is really sound.

I think she's writing a book.

Jay:  I think so.

Ben:  I had heard her on a podcast somewhere and I was kind of nodding my head and agreeing. And, I would imagine maybe I don't know if this will get down to her at some point. But, if she does wind up publishing a book on this concept of muscle-centric medicine, I'll probably read it and I'll probably have her on the podcast at some point to dive into that a little bit more.

Jay:  Yeah, I think it's probably well worth your time. She seems a pretty interesting individual in terms of perspective. So, yeah.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. So, in summary, but before we turn to our audience to take a few questions, A, careful with long-term frequent use of cannabis if you're serious about fertility and testosterone. I'm not saying you need to completely avoid it, I think there could be a time and a place, but just be careful if you really want to keep your T levels up and your fertility up. The second would be that if you want to stay satiated, try to stay away from bread and don't be afraid of a cooked and cooled potato and vegetable soup is two really good ways to fill you up fast. Although we didn't even get into biohacks, I think that throwing ketone esters and essential amino acids particularly into the mix can be amazing for satiation and then any dopaminergic compounds. That guy I interviewed from the company Nootopia, Mark Effinger, he talked about this one product they make called Dopa Drops, which just basically make you not want to eat and keep you highly motivated because the dopamine you'd be seeking for in food is already satisfied via a supplement.

Another example be Mucuna Dopa, which is a dopamine precursor or there are even wakefulness agents like probably the most popular would be modafinil AKA Provigil as this thing that just floods the receptors with dopamine, but the problem is that'll keep you awake for 24 hours. I think the better compound that I'm into now that only lasts about four to six hours in the bloodstream is called paraxanthine, P-A-R-A-X-A-N-T-H-I-N-E. That's a fantastic one. I've been drinking these drinks called Update Energy drinks. I'll usually have it about 4 o'clock or so in the afternoon. It gives you this nice clean bleed of energy for about four to six hours then you sleep well later on. And, that was actually designed by a guy who's been a podcast guest before, Shawn Wells. And so, I think this paraxanthine compound is really good to get that dopamine surge too.

So, if you don't want to go for the boiled potatoes cooked and cooled and vegetable soup approach, ketone esters, essential amino acids, and some type of dopaminergic agent like paraxanthine or Dopa Drops or in a pinch, you could even take a modafinil tablet and cut it in quarters or something like that. Those are also really, really good kind of more modern newfangled ways to just keep your appetite at bay or to just crush through a really productive day without having to think about food as much.

Jay:  That's it, man. That's the rundown.

Ben:  Oh, and the last summary, of course, is lift weights. And, that whole 150 minutes of exercise per week thing probably isn't enough for most people. So, there you have it.

Alright. Well, what do you think? Should we go ahead and start to take some questions from our beautiful listening audience here on Twitter? At least the folks aren't obsessed with Elon.

Jay:  Well, a lot more people have found their way in. Maybe Elon is done, so yeah we should start taking them before he starts up another Twitter Spaces in the next five minutes.

Ben:  Alright, let's do it. So, looks like we have Daniel, has requested to come on. Alright, Daniel, we can hear you. Go ahead.

Daniel: Ben, how are you doing? Quick question. I was curious, are you still taking any C60 supplements? I didn't know if you were into C60 still or had any evolved perspectives on that.

Ben:  Yeah, C60. I interviewed Ian Mitchell, a really nice guy. One of the things we talked about was C60 not only for its longevity-enhancing properties but also he even has some anecdotal data about using it in hair to keep hair from excessively graying or to even stimulate hair growth or stave off hair loss. And, it's basically a pretty critical antioxidant. We look at things like glutathione and superoxide dismutase and coenzyme Q10 all really being crucial to the energy production of cells. And, C60 actually helps to replace all those critical antioxidants. It's also known as Buckminsterfullerene. If you look at the shape of it, it's this real unique soccer ball-like shape. And, that shape allows it to absorb free radicals and keep them from contaminating cells. And, studies have shown that it actually has a pretty significant impact on longevity, particularly in rodent models, and then applied topically in wrinkles and for hair growth and people suffering from hair loss. And typically, if you're not using it topically, it's consumed orally as a liquid.

Now, Ian had a product that he introduced me to during that show that he said had nearly reversed dementia and Alzheimer's in some people who he had worked with when they went through a 12-week protocol of this stuff. And, it's called neuro — gosh, I'm going to link to it in the shownotes because we talked about, it's Neural RX, Neural RX. So basically, he had left about six bottles of this stuff at my house and it's C60 mixed with caprylic acid. Caprylic acid is something that was made popular by biohacker Dave Asprey. He called it Brain Octane. And, it's kind of like MCT oil but it's just the isolated components of MCT oil namely the caprylic acid component that crosses the blood-brain barrier and really results in this unique cognitive high as well. So, what Ian did was he blended the C60 with caprylic acid and it's this really, really nice blend for cognitive function.

So, since he left those bottles at my house, what I've been doing is when I make my morning smoothie, just based on the fact that I figured it's great for the brain seems to support cognitive function, seems like a well-formulated product, is I've been putting about a couple tablespoons of that in my morning smoothie. And, I do think that C60 based on everything I've seen on it is a pretty, pretty good idea if you've got access to. It's not cheap. I don't know how much a bottle at Neural RX cost. I'm going to hazard a guess. It's probably somewhere in the range of, I don't know, 50 to 60 bucks or something like that. It might be more. I don't know.

Jay:  144 bucks.

Ben:  Oh, gosh. Yeah, $144. Oh, wow. That was nice of him. He left me almost a thousand dollars' worth of those bottles, I suppose. So, I got to have him over to the house more. But anyway, so yeah, that's the form of C60 I've been using. He has some other products that we talked about on the show that he uses C60. And, one particularly is just pure C60, which is just the pure stuff if you didn't want the Neural RX. But, the Neural RX, N-E-U-R-A-L-R-X is what I've been using. And, I had a friend who actually had pretty late-stage Alzheimer's who I gave one bottle to. This might seem an insensitive comment, but I think he forgot to take it much for obvious reasons. So, I don't know —

Jay:  I don't want to laugh there.

Ben:  Yeah. I don't know anybody who has actually reversed Alzheimer's or dementia with it, but Ian says that it has been something he's seen. So, there might be something to that as well. He said he had to take it for about 12 weeks in a row though and consume a serving every day. So, yeah, I think if the only damage would be to your pocketbook, I suppose, because the stuff isn't inexpensive, but yeah, do you use C60 at all, Jay?

Jay:  No. I remember you having this podcast and talking about it and I never pulled the trigger on it because I was looking at this stuff. Yeah, I mean 144 bucks. I mean, you got to commit to it because that's what 24 servings that I'm seeing here. But, I mean, if it's effective, I mean that's pretty cool. I don't know, again, how substantiated the claims are for helping out with people who have late-stage or early-stage dementia or Alzheimer's, but if that is the case and it truly could be an effective strategy, then 144 bucks in the end would be nothing compared to other forms of Alzheimer's treatment.

Ben:  Yeah. And, Daniel you asked the question, Daniel, are you taking at all?

Daniel:  Yeah. So, that's kind of the reason I asked. So, back when I called you for a consultation last year a couple years of issues which turned out to be mold poisoning and potentially some tick-borne illness left me with some significant cognitive issues, balance, equilibrium, visual processing, and I ended up talking a good amount to Ian Mitchell one-on-one and he actually just sent me another bottle today. And, it really had a massive change in some of those neurological issues. I'm talking about three years of the same issues and then within two months, probably an 80% improvement in some of those cognitive issues. And, I also gave it to my grandpa who's got some Alzheimer's and definitely has improved some of his day-to-day.

Ben:  Oh, really?

Daniel:  We haven't done a full reversal, but he's like, “Hey, can you order me another one of those bottles? It's definitely helping me through my days.” I can't say it's full reversal yet, but he's also got some other habits that I think could be preventing improvements. So, I couldn't say one way or the other but definitely at least a daily improvement. And, for me, a major improvement in my issues. So, I was just curious if you were still into the C60 thing and the Olympic RX is just amazing as well.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. And, speaking of cognitive enhancements, this is kind of the total aside but when I was in Mexico, I went out to dinner with a guy who designed a product that I featured in our holiday gift guide that I just published. So, if you're listening to this, close to the time this podcast comes out, it should be on the front page of BenGreenfieldLife.com. Otherwise, you can just search for Ben Greenfield 2022 holiday gift guide or something like that. but, it's these red lights like a laser LED red light that you're probably familiar with that type of stuff with the big Joovv panels. This device, it's made by a company called Reviiv, R-E-V-I-I-V, and it's called a Kineon. I'm holding it in my hands right now and it kind of looks like a headlamp but it's got three different lamps on it, kind of in this configuration that can be placed around joints, knees, elbows, things like that, real, real powerful targeted LED and laser red light. We know that these red lights can be very, very good for upregulating mitochondrial activity and some of the cytochrome pathways in the mitochondria that allow for things like increased alertness, some antioxidant activity, and what many people report as a pick-me-up cognitively.

And, I've talked about in the past how, and I discussed this with Dr. John Lieurance, when you combine red light with methylene blue like actually taking methylene blue orally or John makes a methylene blue suppositories that'd be another way to do it if you're okay with annoying your partner by turning the toilet bowl in every house blue every time you go to the bathroom. This red light seems to work really, really well with the methylene blue. So anyways, I went out to dinner with the guy who designed this when I was in Mexico and he said, “Dude, what you should try doing is wrapping it around your neck, so the red light shining over the carotid arteries and irradiating all the blood as it passes through the neck.” And so, I got home from Mexico three days ago and so yesterday morning and also this morning, I took methylene blue when I woke up in the morning just with my cup of coffee. And then, when I got down my office, about a half hour later, I wrapped this red light device. It's called the Kineon. And again, we've got some kind of a discount on it. It was in the gift guide, so I'll put it in the shownotes as well. And man, I felt my brain just instantly turned on like a light bulb.

And so, that's kind of another interesting hack when we're on the topic of cognitive enhancement and some of the cool new things out there for it is this light. Because I these Joovv lamps but they're full body, this thing just concentrates it over any area of the body. Really, really powerful and it's kind of cool. It only stays on for five minutes. I've been leaving out for 10, so I'll press it. It sounds like this. I got it my hands right now. So, yeah, press it, turns on, and then it'll stay on for five minutes and then it turns off. But then, I'll press it again. I've been doing for about 10 minutes and kind of a cool device. So, a new thing I'm doing while I'm standing at my desk in the morning working during the day. Yeah.

Jay:  That's pretty cool. Dude, you should track your heart rate variability when you do that.

Ben:  Oh, yeah.

Jay:  Because if it's an increased production of nitric oxide, if you're shining it over the carotid sinus, we know that that's where one of your high baroreflex response is located right in that area. So, you can actually influence heart rate variability by influencing the homeostatic blood pressure mechanisms that are located in that area.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jay:  So, dude, you should run a little test where you track HRV right in that time and see if you see any really cool fluctuations because that'd be a really cool thing to talk about.

Ben:  Well, from what I understand to target the vagus nerve, which is really the main nerve responsible for nervous system tone, you can actually shine lights on the back of the neck like near the occipital bone, the back of the neck. So, this device has got three lights on it. So, the way I do it is two of the lights are over the right and the left side of my neck like kind of over the carotid but then the back lights right back up against my occipital bone. So, that's a good point. I probably would see an impact on heart rate variability. So, I'll try that. The device, I got to remember how much it cost. I don't think it's prohibitively expensive because the Joovv pounds thousands and thousands of dollars. I think this thing is under 500 bucks and then you add our discount. I don't know what it is, but I'll put it in the shownotes. You could probably save even more. And plus, it travels. So anyways, cool little hack.

Alright. Well, let's bring somebody else up on. We've got Reed. Reed has made a request, so Reed go ahead.

Reed:  Hi, Ben. Thanks for bringing me up. I was just wondering what you thought of Tom Brady, the TB12 Method. Do you think that's an effective workout or exercise with the bands and stuff?

Ben:  Something's obviously working for him. I can't say that I've looked too hard into the exact TB12 exercise protocol. I mean, he's got a whole bunch of stuff. He has a real multi-modal approach to his athletic longevity. For example, he avoids nightshades, which I don't think everybody has to do. But, if you're serious and you want every last little bit and go from good to great for your joints, yeah, avoiding tomatoes, at least seeds and the skins, eggplants, nightshades, high amounts of seeds and nuts, things like that might be a good idea. 

But, I know he does a lot of infrared, he focuses a lot on brain exercises and on recovery, focuses a lot on hydration. But, the actual, and I know he even has a vibrating foam roller which I really like, a lot of the fascial work and a lot of kind of the haptic sensation around the joints by using the vibrating type of foam rollers, vibrating platforms, things like that. I'm a fan of, but are you familiar Reed with his actual workout program as far as what it looks like?

Reed:  Not his professional one but just the TB12 stuff that they promote. So, it's more the bands and all that, like resistance bands.

Ben:  Jay, have you ever seen a sample TB12 workout?

Jay:  No, I haven't. I've known it's around but I actually have no clue what the actual workout is. And, before today, I didn't even know there were bands included.

Ben:  Let's see. Let's see if we can find it here.

Okay. So, TB12 resistance bands, so uses resistance bands looks like his trainer Alex Guerrero designs this nine-exercise workout for him during the season. And, he has three types of bands: the bands with handles, the bands with long loops that come in different thicknesses, and then the shorter bands that you loop around your ankles in your knees, which I would imagine you could use monster walks and things like that. It says that they do a pre-workout with the vibrating foam roller, which is a good idea. I like to use the vibration platform to turn on some extra motor units pre-workout. That was actually my workout this morning was I did a quick Vasper cardio routine, then I did some push-ups and squats on the vibration platform and then finished with some kettlebell work, Turkish get-ups, and kettlebell swings. And, when you do the vibration prior to the main work, it does really seem to activate a lot more muscles. I had a fantastic interview with the folks from Powerplate about this that I'll link to in the shownotes if anybody wants to listen in. I learned a ton about vibration from that particular interview.

But then, it looks like they do a standing row. They do a banded push-up. They do a banded core rotation, banded deadlift, banded bicep curl, a banded tricep extension, banded lunge, banded shoulder press, and banded X squat. I mean, this looks the type of thing that'll be fantastic for travel workout, hotel room, minimal equipment type of routine. I got to tell you, I would be surprised if Tom Brady weren't also, or at least had not also at some point in his career done more traditional weight lifting using barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, chains, things like that, the type of things you would see in a typical NFL strength conditioning facility versus just bands frankly because it's difficult to induce things like hypertrophy and muscle mass and muscle gain with just bands. 

But, as far as athleticism and as far as a good portable way to work out, I mean you can get a lot out of bands. I mean, I travel with some Blood Flow Restriction bands, a few elastic bands, and then typically some type of a suspension strap that I can hang from a doorway in a hotel room for things like push-ups, et cetera. I mean, this workout, it looks okay for a go-to minimalist quick 20-minute high-intensity workout that would get you strength and cardio at the same time, but I don't think it's necessarily implementing all the tools you would need if you wanted to get after things like muscle mass, muscle hypertrophy, and perhaps some of the enhanced athleticism that you get from lifting heavier weights. I think that some people who are mesomorphic which naturally athletic muscular people which probably defines 80% of the folks in the NFL likely including Tom Brady looking at his body type that these bands would allow you to maintain a lot of functional fitness if you're somebody who's already got a decent amount of muscle. I'd say this would be the type of thing that would be more like a travel workout or the type of workout that you do on days in between more traditional strength training though. But, I mean it looks like a pretty solid program. I mean, grab your resistance bands and swear off nightshades and maybe you too will be a 43-year-old NFL quarterback?

Jay:  Yeah, yeah, you'll be a old man in the NFL. Yeah. And, he's doing alright. Not the greatest season from this season, but I mean, hey, listen, we all have a hard season once in a while back in my NFL career.

Ben:  Yeah. He can always fall back on his days as a supermodel too if he needs to. So, I'm not too worried about Tom Brady's success.

Alright. Well, cool. Yeah, great question. One thing I should emphasize though, and I talked with Joel Greene about this when I interviewed him is this whole idea of young muscles, the post-workout or pre-workout pliability to activate blood flow to tissues, to reduce cross-linking and adhesions and fiber. I swear by my 15-minute foam roller session every single morning is something that just keeps me put together. I mean, I have very few aches and pains. I'm able to just wake up a lot of muscles in the body. My philosophy is that if I wake up in the morning, I do 15 minutes of movement, mobility, foam rolling, et cetera. When I actually do work out during the day, I don't have to warm up barely at all. I might hit an AirDyne bike for three or four minutes and do some arm and leg swings and I'm ready to jump in because I just basically start every morning with what many would consider a traditional pre-workout warm-up. But, this idea of maintaining young pliable muscles via the use of pretty regular foam rolling and deep tissue work and then adding the vibratory component into that, I got the vibrating balls, the vibrating roller, the vibrating plate. I think that vibration is a fantastic way to kind of upgrade a mobility protocol.

Jay:  Yeah, yeah, I love it. I don't have to worry about it, man. I'm not an old man, I'm a young gun, so I don't deal with all that old people stuff.

Ben:  I forgot. How old are you, Jay?

Jay:  34.

Ben:  Okay. Oh, yeah, you're a young buck. Yeah. See, I'm 40, so yeah.

Jay:  Yeah, old man.

Ben:  I'm a masters. Alright, let's go ahead and take somebody else up here. It looks like Elon has — no, I'm just kidding. Elon isn't here.

Jay:  Elon, come on up to ask your cannabis question.

Ben:  Let's go ahead and go over to the text-based questions and see what we got there.

Jay:  Let's do it.

Ben:  Okay, thoughts on taurine. Thoughts on taurine. What do you think? You use taurine, Jay?

Jay:  Yup. Yeah, yeah. I was trying to think the last time I've used it, but yeah, I mean, I've used it before just as a pre-workout supplement. But yeah, it's been a while.

Ben:  Okay. Well, taurine is amino acid. It's an amino acid that it actually does have a decent amount of research on it. So basically, you'll find it all over the place in tissue that is electrically excitable. Okay, so like the heart, the brain, muscle, the eyes. And, the reason for that is because it's a soul for containing amino acid that really allows some of these areas to maintain a proper charge. And, it's considered to be an essential nutrient. Meaning it can be produced in your body but the average person doesn't actually produce a huge amount of it. And, low levels of taurine are associated primarily with cardiovascular disease and diabetes. You can get it from meat like poultry, beef, dark meat, shellfish, a lot of vegans and vegetarians definitely should be supplementing with taurine. 

But, there's a lot of benefits to it. Like I mentioned, because of its effect on electrical excitability in cells, it seems to really help with cardiac output and stroke volume and cardiovascular performance. It also can reduce blood pressure and may even reduce total cholesterol and triglyceride levels. So, it seems to have an impact on lipids too. They put it in a lot of energy drinks particularly combined with caffeine because that one-two combo of caffeine and taurine seems to have a complementary effect in terms of a pickup in energy, which is why Red Bull gives you, what do they say Red Bull gives you wings, something like that.

Jay:  Wings?

Ben:  Yeah. So basically, when taurine is working in addition to the electrical excitability, it's also an antioxidant and this is how it acts on blood pressure. It reduces our blood. I said blood pressure right now, blood volume. Sometimes I say something.

Jay:  You say blood pressure.

Ben:  Okay, I said blood pressure. Alright, so it enhances vasodilation, which is relaxation of blood vessels, increase in blood flow, and it helps to reduce production of angiotensin, which is a vasoconstrictor. And, that can also in addition help with blood pressure. And so, it is basically allowing for better blood flow is better electrical excitability and it may also increase the use of fat for fuel, which would have a carbohydrate-sparing effect. Most studies are around 1 and 1/2 grams, 2 grams a day. A lot of folks will combine that into multiple little bouts throughout the day. For me, it's kind of like creatine. Technically, creatine, it's 5 grams a day and your ideal use out of it is splitting that into multiple doses like 1 and 1/2 to 2 grams three times a day. Taurine is kind of like that. It's very similar to creatine in that respect and a lot of these amino acids. It's about 0.5 grams three times a day if you want to get the ultimate effects from taurine. 

But, it's not a bad supplement, I question if you're already eating a decent amount of meat whether it's that necessary because you're getting it from the metabolism of cystine in the meat and also the direct taurine that's right there in the meat itself. But, especially if you're vegan or vegetarian plant-based, I think taurine could be a pretty good addition. I suspect it's probably in a couple of the supplements I take without me even being aware of it. Sometimes there's certain things you'll get a little bit like, “Oh, I already am taking that.”

But yeah, taurine is not bad. I don't think it's got any detrimental effects aside from if you're consuming it in the form of an energy drink with all the added sugars, et cetera. But ultimately, yeah, I'd go thumbs up on taurine, so yeah.

Jay:  The interesting thing about taurine being found in energy drinks, I was just thinking about this and this is just me kind of word vomiting here, but you're putting in an amino acid that's a vasodilator with a heavy dose of vasoconstriction with the caffeine. So, is the intention behind these individuals that make these products to maybe offset the deleterious vasoconstricting effects of high caffeine with something that helps to offset it with vasodilation?

Ben:  Yeah. That's a good point. Maybe that's why it combines really well with caffeine because caffeine has that vasoconstrictive effect on the blood vessels although as anybody who enhances their morning poo with a cup of coffee knows that it also relaxes some of the digestive muscles and can give you a better poo. So, I think that in the case of adding it to an energy drink in combination with taurine, there probably is a pretty good crossover effect as far as it kind of battling a little bit of the vasoconstrictive effects of the caffeine. So, that's a good point. Yeah.

Jay:  Yeah, yeah.

Ben:  It's a match made in heaven. Yeah. But, you know what I should do is try combining it with this paraxanthine stuff that I've been using and see what those effects are. That'd be a good one to try with paraxanthine.

Jay:  It's true.

Ben:  Alright, let's see. We got time for one more question. People want to hop on. Going once, twice, three times, maybe four or five times. If you have a question, it's your last chance. We'll bring you up on stage and you too can be a part of the Ben Greenfield Life show. If not, we're just going to move on to our review of the day and get some stuff away. But, I'll give people a few more seconds here.

Jay:  That's right. Oh, we got one.

Ben:  Alright, here we go. Alright, it's like fishing. 

Jay:  Yeah, that's alright.

Ben:  Alright, Jin, go ahead.

Jin:  Hi, guys. Quick question. This is maybe for Dr. Jay. Just heard the band talking about supplements like taurine, for example. Isn't there a danger of when you take supplements that if these substances are produced by the body, then isn't there a danger that if you intake them then your body will produce less of them? And then, when you stop supplementing, then your body has to deal with the shock of not having enough like for example with caffeine.

Ben:  What you're asking about is, are there supplements that would downregulate your natural production?

Jin:  Correct. I mean, taurine, for example, because you talked about it.

Ben:  Yeah, it depends. It depends. There are certain supplements that are going to via a negative feedback loop cause your brain to quit sending the signal for your body to make it because there's a detection that is coming from an exogenous source with testosterone probably being the most popular example of something like that. Like, you take it and technically your body starts producing less and so you're kind of stuck taking testosterone for a while. Something like caffeine, it's not like your body is producing caffeine and then when you drink coffee regularly, your body quits producing caffeine, instead what happens is caffeine competes for a different relaxing molecule called adenosine on the cell receptor surface. And so, what that results in is you needing more and more adenosine in order to feel sleepy. And, the only trick for that is just knock off your caffeine habit for a while, and then the adenosine receptor sensitivity kind of restores. 

And then, there are other supplements like melatonin where the research goes back and forth on whether or not it could slightly decrease the body's natural production. Although I think the evidence is weak on that. So, it kind of depends on the actual supplement.

One thing that I'm kind of intrigued by is the idea that we produce natural into cannabinoids for stress, for relaxation, for pain killing, et cetera. And, what I've wondered and I haven't seen data on this, somebody out there might know and you could always add it as a comment to the shownotes whether frequent use of CBD or cannabis-containing compounds could actually decrease the body's ability to naturally combat stress or naturally produce relaxation or naturally produce pain killing compounds in the absence of cannabis if you've been a frequent user. 

And, I haven't seen a lot of data behind that, but ultimately, the answer to your question, long story short, is it depends on the actual supplement that we're talking about. And so, in many cases, you can use a good research-based website for a lot of different compounds. I like Examine.com for this, for example. Examine is one good place to go and get really, really good peer-reviewed research or clinical research on a wide variety of compounds from taurine to caffeine to melatonin to testosterone, you name it. And, I've actually worked in conjunction with a lot of different folks in the supplement industry to help them with formulations or advice over how much of this and that to put in supplements. And, Examine is one of the websites that I'll actually use to advise me or at least get me started on some of the research behind some of these things not only in terms of the dosage but also as far as any deleterious effects, side effects, activation of negative feedback loops, et cetera.

So, long story is or short story is it depends, but yeah, there are certain things like testosterone that would definitely reduce your body's own natural production and certain things like melatonin where it's unclear and certain things that your body isn't producing anyways much of caffeine say where it's more of you just becoming desensitized to it. Is there anything you'd add, Jay?

Jay:  No. Yeah, I agree 100%. I think the one thing that's just my general rule of thumb is that if I'm developing any level of tolerance to something, which is just about everything that you take on a repeated basis, you develop some level of physiological tolerance is just to take a period of time off. And, the worst for me is caffeine because it is always the most difficult one for me to give up because I won't use the word “addiction” because I don't want to use that word too lightly, but man, it is probably one of the things that I'm most physiologically addicted to in terms of compounds or substances. And, when I go off of it, it's great for a period of time and then absence makes the heart grow fonder, so I love it when I get it. But, for me, it's like the telltale signs that I need more of it to wake up and boost the body or I've gotten these weird ectopic heartbeats where basically there's a beat of the heart outside of the hearts chamber and so, therefore, it feels like a skipped beat. And, that's my immediate like, “Oop, I've taken in too much caffeine, I need a break for a week or two weeks.” Mainly a week, two weeks is kind of difficult for me.

Ben:  Yeah. And, last thing I'd throw in there just kind of a little hack. I guess this would be relevant to people who travel a lot is I like to go pretty minimalist when I travel. I don't like to travel a lot of bottles and supplements, et cetera. So, I'll just grab my base supplements when I travel. Mostly some of the Kion stuff like the aminos and the creatine and typically I'll grab a bottle of some liver supplements just because I don't have a lot of organ meats when I travel. And so, I'll go as minimalist as possible just to basically push the reboot button on my supplements when I travel. 

And so, that means every month, I'm going for a period of five to seven days where a lot of the stuff I normally take I just don't have with me. And, it's a very rough hypothesis, pretty non-scientific, but it's just this idea that, yeah, if you cut it out, it just ensures that it's Anthony DeMello, so elegantly notes in his book, “Awareness,” that you're not attached to anything in life for your happiness and that you are able to say goodbye to certain things and push the reboot button on any dependency that you might have. And so, that's kind of one thing. Because obviously, if you don't take a certain supplement that you suspect you might be attached to when you travel, the only option is you either can't take it or you got to go buy it. And, in most cases, you aren't going to get to where you travel and crave something you left at home so much you're going to go to Whole Foods and spend 75 bucks on it. So, that's just my cheap hack for making sure. Just checking myself when it comes to supplement use.

[01:15:14] Giveaway

Alright. Well, I think we should wrap it up there. I think we covered a lot. And, all the shownotes, and you guys can go leave more of your questions, your comments, and your feedback. Those are going to be a BenGreenfieldLife.com/450. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/450. And, do you have any testimonials picked out for today at all, Jay? We want to read a testimonial on the show. 

Jay:  Man, I've got one. Oh, yeah.

Ben:  Okay. Because if you listen to the same podcast player and you leave us a review or a rating and you say something kind which really helps to support the show anyways, we'll read your review on the show and then we'll send you a little surprise gift pack straight to your front doorstep and all you got to do is email [email protected]. That's [email protected] with your T-shirt size and we'll send you out a goodie. So, what's the testimony for this week, Jay?

Jay:  So, this one comes from Luke Hawk 9999, so four 9s. And, Luke says, “Great info and entertaining. This podcast has interesting experts on many different health and fitness topics. Not only is it fascinating, Ben has a great sense of humor and is very entertaining. Love this podcast.”

Ben:  Well, thank you.

Jay:  So sweet.

Ben:  Yeah. So, Mr. 9999 email [email protected] with your T-shirt size and we'll hook you up.

I should note by the way, speaking of sense of humor, I actually just posted this to Instagram as well, there's a podcast at the time that this podcast comes out a couple of weeks ago was a panel at this fantastic event called RUNGA and I made a joke on the panel. We were all just hanging out, drinking wine, kind of a party-type environment, and I made a comment about vaginas that in retrospect was actually a pretty insensitive and misogynistic comment. And, I think it upset some people. I can't obviously just call everybody upset up on the phone, but I can at least paint with a broad brush in a podcast like this tell folks, hey, I'm sorry about that comment. It was insensitive and I shouldn't have made it. And, I'm constantly learning. Every day I'm learning about how to become a better human being. But, in that case, it was something that I definitely should not have said. So, my apologies. I don't fancy myself as a crass comedian podcast or something like that where you'd expect that type of stuff on the show. I like to stay somewhat more fine than that. So, if you heard that podcast, you were upset by it, please know that's not the type of person I'm trying to be. So, not to end this podcast on a Debbie Downer, but if anybody heard my vagina comment during the RUNGA podcast, I'm sorry for making that comment. So, please forgive me. And, if you're graceful enough, keep listening, I promise I will not do stuff like that in the future.

Jay:  I forgive you, Ben.

Ben:  Thank you, Jay. Thank you. Well, I think that's a nice place to end, forgiveness, love covers a multitude of sins, and then forgiveness is right up there with love. So, alright, that all being said, all the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/450. Thanks everybody for listening in. And Jay, go to your red lights or your caffeine, your testosterone, or whatever else this show has inspired you to do.

Jay:  Headed right there, man.

Ben:  Alright, later everybody.

This is cool, but you want to pay attention because it's coming up right around the corner on Friday, December 2nd. You're going to get a chance to join me and some really powerful healing physicians down in Sarasota, Florida. This is a live event. It goes from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. I'll be there, my friend, and a brilliant former podcast guest, The Doctor Strange of Medicine, Dr. John Lieurance is going to be there, HBOT USA, Dr. Jason and Melissa Sonners are going to be there with their Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, Brian Richards of SaunaSpace, Harry Paul, one of John's friends who I recently met who's also an amazing healer for an event that's super unique. It's all based around the elements: earth, fire, air, and water, with a ton of treatments and technologies and modalities, and very unique biohacks that you're going to get exposed to during the entire event.

Basically, what I mean by that is when it comes to air, you're going to learn about hyperbaric oxygen, and ozone, and air filtration, everything you need to know to upgrade your air. When it comes to earth, pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, earthing, grounding, a host of other ways that you can use the power of the planet to enhance your health, your sleep, your recovery, your muscle gain, your fat loss, a lot more water. You'll learn about proper water filtration, how to upgrade your water, hydrogenated water, structured water, basically soup to nuts, everything you need to know about water and how to apply it in your home and your office and your life. And then, finally fire, is a fun one. Lots of cryotherapy, a little bit of ice too, breathwork, inner fire practices, a ton of stuff when it comes to introducing the element of fire into your life.

So, this event is super unique. John and I have been working on it behind the scenes and it has come together amazingly. There's even a VIP experience. If you sign up for the VIP experience, you could come two days early or stay a few days after the event, and basically, you will get all the medical protocols customized by Dr. John and his staff if you claim one of those 10 VIP spots. That'll include IV methylene blue, laser treatments, John's really unique bliss release, which is basically an endonasal adjustment, which is essentially a chiropractic adjustment through your nose for your entire skull, which if you've had TBI or concussion or allergies or things like that in the past, it totally reboots that entire system. There's going to also be ozone treatments, Myers' IV cocktails, exosome treatments, IV laser, access to a CVAC machine. And, John's entire facility is going to be at your beck and call if you got one of the VIP tickets.

And then, we're also probably going to have a little bit of a party later on in the evening after this event. The whole thing is going to be a pinch-me-I'm-dreaming full-on cutting-edge of biohacking experience. And, I'm just now letting the world know about it so spots are going to fill up pretty fast. Space is limited, but if you want to get in now, here's how. You go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Elements-Event. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/Elements-Event. It's in Sarasota, Florida. Again, it's all-day Friday, December 2nd. I would come in early and stay after. If you just want to try out all the crazy modalities there. I don't know how fast those VIP tickets are going to sell out, but either way, this thing is going to be absolutely amazing. I just can't wait, like I'm pinching myself, can't wait to be on the plane to head down there and do this. So, check it out, BenGreenfieldLife/Elements-Event. And, I'll see you there, I hope.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh entertaining, well-informed, and often outside-the-box approach to discovering the health, and happiness, and hope that we all crave. So, I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And, if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel wherever that might be and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. It means a lot.

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Upcoming Events:

• Elements Of Vitality with Dr. John Lieurance, Ben Greenfield & Friends: December 2, 2022, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM EST.

Dr. John Lieurance & Ben Greenfield offer a rare experience to explore the elements of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water with unique treatments, technologies, modalities, and biohacks to represent the healing powers of each element individually. Learn more here.

• Keep up on Ben's LIVE appearances by following bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar!

Special Announcements…

Endure: A sequel to the wildly popular book Fit Soul, Endure is written and inspired by the author Ben Greenfield’s personal temptations, struggles, and failures, and informed by what he’s studied and learned along the way, will serve as a key resource and guide for that very preparation.

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Listener Q&A:

Q: Does Ben still take C60 supplements and has his perspectives evolved on C60 supplementation?…45:00

Ben and Jay Recommend:

Q: Is Tom Brady's TB12 Method an effective workout?…55:53

Ben and Jay Recommend:

Q: Ben and Jay's thoughts on taurine supplementation?…63:04

Ben and Jay Recommend:

Q: Is there danger in stopping a supplement, for example, taurine or caffeine?…68:25

Ben and Jay Recommend:

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Elements of Vitality Event: Join me in Sarasota, Florida, with Dr. John Lieurance on Friday, Dec 2nd from 8:00 am-5:00 pm for a rare experience exploring the elements of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water with unique treatments, technologies, modalities, and biohacks to represent the healing powers of each element individually. Claim your spot today at bengreenfieldlife.com/elements-event.