Episode #451 – Full Transcript

Affiliate Disclosure

Transcripts

from podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/qa-451/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:35] Podcast Sponsors

[00:03:53] Upcoming Thanksgiving Chat

[00:09:32] Body Recomposition: Can Trained Individuals Build Muscle and Lose Fat at the Same Time?

[00:16:47] The Impact of Dietary Factors on the Sleep of Athletically Trained Populations: A Systematic Review

[00:27:00] The Truth About Natural Flavors in Sparkling Water

[00:34:46] Podcast Sponsors

[00:40:53] Do antioxidants really blunt hypertrophy? 

[00:46:50] The total antioxidant content of more than 3100 foods, beverages, spices, herbs and supplements used worldwide

[00:54:00] Q&A

[00:55:14] Q: What can you do to re-boot your body and brain after a few days of holiday eating?

[01:08:28] Q: What are the best ways to reduce stress and improve sleep?

[01:22:55] End of Podcast

Ben:  In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life show. How to build muscle and lose fat. At the same time, the truth about natural flavors in your soda, the antioxidants really blunt your post-exercise gains and much, much more.

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

Organifi Gold is this superfood hot chocolate that literally gives you all of that feel good comfort food-esque sipping chocolate feel with none of the sugar on the nasty stuff you get in most hot chocolates for pennies on the dollar, what you'd pay at the average coffee shop for a fancy, fancy hifalutin coffee drink. The average hot chocolate has 200 calories, 6 grams of fat, and 25 grams of sugar. Organifi Gold Chocolate's got 23 calories, not 200, less than 2 grams of fat compared to 6, and 1 gram of sugar. Plus, it's got a bunch of gently dried herbs and ayurvedic roots like turmeric and ginger and powerhouse mushrooms like reishi. No blood sugar spiking, a lot of other hot chocolate alternate have. They got turmeric. They got ginger for the immune system and then reishi mushroom and ginger to support rest and relaxation and recovery and repair. They've even got lemon balm in there and turkey tail, which is an amazing medicinal mushroom in its own right. So basically, it's hot chocolate on steroids with none of the deleterious effects.

So, to get this stuff, you go to Organifi.com/Ben for 20% off. That's Organifi with an i.com/Ben. That'll get you 20% off and the stuff you want to look for is the Organifi Gold Chocolate.

I've been drinking this stuff at lunch. Usually, I have bone broth with lunch, but I switched to this stuff. Super interesting. It's called Haelan. Haelan is spelled H-A-E-L-A-N. It might be Haelan. I don't know, Haelan, whatever, it tastes good. I think it's Haelan. Anyways, it's called Haelan 951. This is basically soy. And, I know all of you like soy. You're not supposed to consume that.

Now, understandably, there's lots of conflicting information out there. The short answer is yes, you should be consuming soy, but only if it's the right kind, which is pretty rare because genetic engineering and poor soil, and improper harvesting means most modern-day soy has some serious issues. And, try and save modern-day soy 10 times fast. I dare you.

I did a podcast with Dr. William Li from the Angiogenesis Foundation. We usually talk all about soy benefits, but this Haelan stuff, get this. It's a concentrated nitrogen-fermented beverage made from organic soybeans grown in the mountains of Mongolia. They have proven the species to be anti-angiogenic, meaning it doesn't feed cancer, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, and anticarcinogenic, enormously rich in vitamins and minerals, and a complete protein source. All your essential amino acids. People use this stuff now for energy, for better sleep, for detox, for longevity, for meal replacement, really great anti-cancer benefits as well. Now, it's fermented and it's soy and so it doesn't taste that good. I'll just come around and tell you. But, what they do is they ship out this mint powder that you mix with it that makes it actually taste really good. I just drink it on ice with this mint powder with lunch and it's really, really amazing stuff and I feel really good on it. But, I have a peace of mind that I'm drinking anti-cancer every day with lunch.

So, you get a special discounted package over there and free shipping on a bunch of bottles of this stuff. Here's how. Remember this for spelling because it's a little difficult. Haelan 951, H-A-E-L-A-N-9-5-1.com/Ben. I'm going to say that again. Ready? H-A-E-L-A-N-9-5-1.com/Ben.

Alright, Jay, we're quickly approaching what my son told me yesterday is according to statistics the most favorite of all American holidays at the time this is being recorded at least, do what that is?

Jay:  Wait, you've got to be kidding me. You're telling me that Thanksgiving is the most favorite holiday?

Ben:  No, Boxing Day, Boxing Day.

Jay:  No, of course. Yeah, that makes complete sense.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. It's actually Thanksgiving, apparently. I don't know who they pulled on that, but it begs the question, do you actually celebrate Thanksgiving, Jay? And, if so, what are you bringing to the table? What wizardry are you cooking up in the kitchen on your end?

Jay:  So, I do celebrate Thanksgiving with the family. Normally, we do, I guess more a family potluck where my wife's family is pretty large, my family's a little bit more on the smaller side, and we'll do lunch time with my family, and then dinner with my wife —

Ben:  No, no, no, no, no, no, I want to know what you're making. 

Jay:  Yeah. No, I was getting there.

Ben:  What are you making?

Jay:  No, I was getting there.

Ben:  Oh, you are getting there. Okay, okay, go ahead.

Jay:  What I was going to say is normally we make dishes for a potluck and we bring it, but this year, we are not. But, my wife and I are bringing two things. Number one, she's bringing some beets and she's also bringing some mandarin oranges, which is super simple but these go with salad that we're making as well. And then, we're bringing some Dry Farm Wine because that is how we are going to celebrate this year. We normally make a much larger dish, but my mom and dad, my wife's mom and dad decided they wanted to just do everything. So, we can just show up with a couple of sides that are super simple, some wine and we're good to go. So, it's going to be a super stress-free Thanksgiving from us.

Ben: Mandarin oranges and beets and wine. You're going to severely disappoint all the carnivore enthusiasts come into your celebration at least if they're eating your food.

Jay:  Watch out.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, I got up early this morning to do the classic brine. I'm the turkey guy at our house, so I got a big old 20-pounder. Actually, it's from our friends at US Wellness Meats. Shoutout to them. And basically, the brine, of course, is using the power of osmosis where you get that sodium in the brine. So, my brine has salt, it's got brown sugar, it's got bay leaves, it's got garlic, peppercorns, apple cider vinegar, water, you heat all that up then you let it cool, and then you put turkey in it, submerge the turkey in it and just let it sit for about 20 and 24 hours overnight and then it'll go on a smoker on the grill. And, I do think that brining is a good tactic. I mean, if I do fried chicken, I'll soak it for 24 hours in buttermilk. With turkey, when you soak it in that salt water solution, it draws the water into itself and it winds up a little bit more juicy and moist and the brining, I guess the non-brining enthusiasts would say that it's a fake juiciness that it's not real juice, it's just whatever got soaked in. 

But, all I can tell you is that, man, when you brine and then what I do is I stuff all the skin with butter and so it gets nice and crispy on the outside. I don't really notice any wateriness on the inside. But, some people will do a dry brining where they'll just pre-salt it. And, I don't think that works quite as well. But basically, they say that the salt helps to move the fluids into the turkey but I just don't even get how a dry brine would actually work without the turkey being submerged. So, I've always just gone full-on brine. And so, that's what the turkey's up to on the front porch right now. The dogs aren't eating it.

Jay:  Do I completely lose my man or maybe we'll say even human card and letting you and all of our listeners know that I've never cooked the turkey? I've always been afraid of doing it so I've never done it. Look at me a little coward.

Ben:  No. Yeah. I mean, it's manly to admit that. It's still pretty unmanly to never have done it, but it is manly to admit it. So, you've taken the first step towards a more courageous Thanksgiving in the future. Just do it, dude. I mean, you can always have a backup, you can always have some cans of sardines as a backup. Honestly, I think carving the turkey is a more high-pressure scenario than cooking the turkey because when you're carving, everybody is standing there, they're hungry, your knife goes in, you're about to find out if it's overcooked, if it's undercooked and then basically the first few times you do it if you haven't carved up a nice bird like that have to sort of pretend like you know what you're doing. And so, it's one of those deals where, what is it called it, like these electric knives, electric saw blades, those things come in pretty handy for carving up a turkey fast.

Jay:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. Yeah, that's the way to go.

Jay: My grandfather used to have one of those things.

Ben:  That is the way to go.

Jay:  Yeah, yeah. Okay. The next three years, I have my goals. Next year, I'll buy the turkey. And then, the following year, I'll cook the turkey. And then, on the third year, I'll get up the courage to actually carve the turkey. So, it'll be a three-year process, Ben, but that's faster than what the process has been lately, which has been I just don't do any of it. I'll let everybody else do it.

Ben:  That's reasonable. They say slow food is good for you.

Jay:  That's right.

Ben:  Alright. Well, folks, we've got a whole bunch of news flashes that we want to dive into today and then we'll jump into live questions and answers from well actually, you know what, you guys will ask questions, we'll provide the answers here on the Ben Greenfield Life podcast. Everything that we talk about you can find it for today's Q&A 451 at BenGreenfieldLife.com/451. So, let's jump right in.

Alright. So, let's talk body recomposition. This is actually a paper that is not super new, this is actually about 2020 that this came out in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, but it's this idea of body recomposition, particularly in trained people, which is important. If you just started exercising, you're going to be able to put on muscle and lose fat at a pretty rapid pace that often depresses you a little bit later on when that pace slows significantly and you got to start pulling out all these other stops to either build muscle or lose fat or do both at the same time. But, the adaptive phenomenon of muscle mass being gained and fat mass being lost, there's actually a term for that in exercise science. You know what it is, Jay, by any chance?

Jay:  It's not coming to me. I mean, I just always call it a recomp.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, you nailed it. It's a body recomp. That's the same turn, it's just bro, say recomp, and scientists say body recomposition but it's the same thing. So, the thing is that there are certain things that come up in this paper that I thought were some pretty good takeaways for folks who want to who are already trained and maybe they've plateaued a little bit but they still want to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. And, they were actually surprising probably the two biggest things that left out in this study for accelerating body recomposition and trained individuals. There are two things. Maybe I'll just keep quizzing you, Jay. You want to take a stab at what the two items were?

Jay:  Okay. So, I would say that if we're thinking about it for maybe more of an energetics perspective, it's maybe including cardiovascular exercise with resistance exercise, and then maybe something nutritionally would be upping protein intake or reducing depending on if it's conventional wisdom, maybe reducing fat, something like that.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, first of all, you nailed it on the protein intake, but what's interesting was the amount of protein intake that you need to eat to actually build muscle and lose fat at the same time if you're a trained individual. And, the classification of a trained individual varies. This was actually a meta-analysis looking at a whole bunch of different studies but generally, folks who are working out just about every day, let's say, and lifting weights multiple days of the week. Well, in the past, I've recommended that your minimum protein intake on any given day for just general longevity and maintenance of muscle mass is about I'm going to go with the American terms here, scroll the kilogram numbers. We're Americans. Obviously, we've already established that with our Thanksgiving chat. So, 0.55 grams of protein per pound of body weight would be the minimum per day. Okay, 0.55 grams of protein per pound of body weight.

Now, in the past, and this is why I wanted to bring this up because it flies in the face of stuff that I've said in the past but yet the data doesn't lie, 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body, it would be the top end. So, let's round that up just a little bit just for simplicity's sake say 0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight for protein and you're probably going to do alright. Now, what this study actually found was that the folks who are most successful in gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time were eating closer to 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per pound of body weight, 1.2 to 1.6. So, we're talking about somewhat significantly higher amount of protein than I've even recommended in the past. And, this is not something where you just eat it and you build muscle like you're eating this protein, you're training multiple days per week, but 1.2 to 1.6 is actually a decent amount of protein. Let's say it was 1.5 and somebody weighs let's say 200 pounds, we're looking at what, 350, I'm sorry, 250 grams of protein, which is a pretty significant amount of protein. So, yeah. So, that's the first one is a crapola of protein intake or at least more than I previously recommended.

Now, the second one is more of a lifestyle thing, okay? Because remember, there are two things. Now, there is a certain lifestyle practice that if neglected is associated with a whole bunch of negative hormonal adaptations primarily through what's called your HPA axis, your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. Now, these negative hormonal adaptations that occur as a result of this lifestyle practice lead to an increase in cortisol, an increase in blood glucose, a decrease in insulin sensitivity, decrease in testosterone, which is going to affect muscle mass decrease in adiponectin, which is a hormone related to fat burning that is going to deleteriously impact your rate of fat loss and a decreasing growth hormone, which is going to affect your recovery and then also theoretically your ability to be able to gain muscle. That whole dysregulation from an endocrine standpoint would truly be an anti-body recomposition environment.

Now, the other thing that this lifestyle scenario can cause if neglected is massive rises in the hormone ghrelin, the so-called hunger hormone and significant decreases in the hormone leptin, which is a hormone responsible for amongst other things, appetite satiety. So, I've given you a few clues here, Jay. What do you think this lifestyle practice is that when tended to and achieved allowed folks to, especially when combined with adequate protein intake build muscle and lose fat at the same time?

Jay:  Yeah. I think there's two sides of this coin would be my guess. One would just be general stress management. I think that that's kind of the larger umbrella, but I would say if it was an actual behavior, if that's not the specific behavior you're looking for, I would contend that someone who's getting really poor sleep would have a dysregulation of everything you just mentioned.

Ben:  You nailed it. You nailed it. So basically, long story short is if you want to build muscle and lose fat and you're already trained, you need to be lifting, eating more protein than you probably are right now, and prioritizing sleep. And, I think that's simple to say, but a lot of people don't think about that and they burn the candle on both ends and they maybe restrict calories and do a whole bunch of, I don't know, cold thermogenesis and electrical muscle stimulation, all the biohack. But, it basically is like eat protein, lift heavy shit, and sleep.

Jay:  Yeah. I mean, solid advice. But, to your point, I think a lot of people do neglect that because if you're a hard charger and let's say you do a couple things, you “forget” to eat so therefore you're not getting enough protein, you “forget,” and I put that in huge quotes both times, forget to sleep, well then, yeah, there you go, you're going to miss out on both of those things and therefore you're leaving a lot on the table in regards to muscle gain.

Ben:  Yup. Yeah.

Well, it's kind of related when it comes to sleep to another one that I thought was really interesting. And, this is a more recent paper called “The Impact of Dietary Factors on the Sleep of Athletically Trained Populations.” So again, we're talking not necessarily to the sedentary or the morbidly obese, I absolutely hate that term it just sounds so dark and dreary, morbidly obese.

Jay: It is very dark true.

Ben:  Yeah. But, talking about trained people probably the type of people honestly that listen to the show, people who already like to work out, they're interested in health, they've taken that first step and probably a lot of steps beyond that. And so, they don't necessarily need to hear that they need to get off their butt and not go to McDonald's but they're looking for that extra edge. 

So, what this looked at was the impact of dietary factors on sleep and it found a few interesting things. We've established the importance of sleep, especially for something body recomping, bro. But, eating at nights, how do you eat at night? What type of things would help with sleep? And, this was pretty straightforward. They looked at 35 different studies on sleep and dietary intake in primarily athletic populations and what they showed was, first, no surprises here, late in the day caffeine ruined sleep. And, a lot of people don't realize how much is still circulating in your bloodstream. Interestingly, I've gotten onto this new thing I've talked about a few times on previous shows called paraxanthine, which is a metabolite that's broken down from say coffee. When you have coffee, it gets broken down to theobromine, theophylline I think is another one, caffeine, and then paraxanthine.

Paraxanthine is like the euphoric-inducing focus enhancing kind of even confidence-inducing type of molecule that is almost like the anti-narcoleptic drug modafinil, more commonly known as Provigil, that folks should use to stay for 24 hours in a really good hyper-productive state. But, this not only has a shorter half-life, it seems to last about four to six hours max but people will report, and there's been no huge studies on this but I've talked to a lot of people who will use this as a caffeine substitute when they normally be having their caffeine later in the day, let's say, I don't know, 4:00 p.m. slump, something like that. No issues with sleep and in fact better sleep architecture when using it, which is interesting. So, that's just something to know if you're already on caffeine. There's obviously a lot of things you could use to wean yourself off of caffeine. Cocaine, nicotine, heroin, or paraxanthine like I mentioned. I'm joking. Really? Crickets. Okay.

Jay:  I was thinking so, but I was like, “You never know.” I mean, some people, that's what they go to, the cocaine. 

Ben:  I heard it on the show. So, in addition to caffeine though, what they showed was and I've said this for a while so it was good to see this backed up, evening consumption of high glycemic index carbohydrates. So, all in that spirit of not eating a lot of carbohydrates throughout the day, staying in fat-burning mode, doing what's called cyclic ketosis, and then getting out of that towards the end of the day and doing your big carbohydrate feeding at night, of course, allows for the carbohydrates that amplify serotonin release, which then gets producing melatonin. And, you've got a nice little scenario for having your cake and eating it too. And, that's what I do is I have evening carbohydrates. Now, I still am doing some type of movement protocol later in the day or taking blood glucose disposal agents like bitter melon or berberine or something like that to enhance the glucose disposal or even doing something like walk outside in the cold or a quick cold soak just to make sure I stay pretty insulin sensitive in the evening because you are less insulin sensitive in the evening than the morning. But, I eat most of my carbs at dinner when I don't do that or if I find myself frequently having midnight to 2:00 a.m.-ish awakenings, it's usually a sign I didn't have enough carbohydrates with dinner.

So, that's the first is saving a lot of your carbs till dinner. Now, I say saving a lot of your carbs, I should note these studies weren't necessarily looking at people who were saving a lot of their carbs for dinner, they're just looking at how many carbs they had for dinner regardless of what they had earlier in the day. I'm a fan, however saving your carbs for dinner for the reasons I mentioned earlier I like staying in fat-burning mode all day long but I should note that if you are a true athlete, a two-a-day athlete, three-a-day athlete, maybe a couple workouts, scrimmage, et cetera, data actually shows that you should replenish carbon hydrates post-workout if you have another workout coming up in the next eight hours or so. So, understand that when I say save all your carbohydrates for the evening, that would be with the caveat that if you're somebody who's training multiple times per day, having carbohydrates post-workout earlier in the day is something that I would not avoid if you want to really be in it for the long game from an endocrine system and a thyroid standpoint and just an overall performance standpoint. That being said though, more carbs in the evening. And then, the other one was proteins that are high in the amino acid that is so commonly talked about this time of year and that would be, drum roll, please?

Jay:  There's the drum roll. I mean, I can answer you too.

Ben:  Yeah, go ahead.

Jay:  Tryptophan.

Ben:  Tryptophan, yup. Tryptophan such as you would find milk in fish, particularly tuna. Tuna is a really good source of tryptophan. Oats have it. Cheese, nuts, seeds, your classic charcuterie board with dinner folks, it's got a lot of tryptophan in it. And then, of course, poultry: turkey and chicken, have a crapola of tryptophan and in my opinion, are much more satiating than doubting a giant glass of milk before bed unless you're a football player trying to put on 20 pounds of muscle in which case please proceed so much of that level of milk as you can.

Jay:  Or, Santa Claus.

Ben:  Yeah, it's right, or Santa Claus. So, Santa Claus must sleep really well because he's getting both milk and cookies.

Jay:  And, he's putting in a lot of hours, man.

Ben:  I would love to see his Oura Ring sleep scores. So anyways, both those don't necessarily improve sleep architecture. What they do is they reduce sleep latency. Okay. So, high glycemic index carbs and proteins high in tryptophan are going to reduce sleep latency, the amount of time that it takes for you to fall asleep.

Now, they also found promising results from although somewhat inconclusive on three other items that could be used to assist with athletes who are experiencing sleep difficulty. That would be probiotics, and that's interesting because we know especially based on the fact that when you look at jet-lagged rodent models, their gut biome more specifically is just totally ruined. So, probiotics can assist with sleep. And, if you're interested in the type of probiotic that I think is best, go listen to my podcast with Dr. William Davis or google Dr. William Davis yogurt recipe because that has largely, for me, replaced ice cream or anything like that at night. I have a giant batch of it in the fridge. Every week, I get a new fresh batch made, I add gelatin to it to thicken it up. And then, what I do is right before we have our family dinner, I take that jar that's in the fridge and I toss it in the freezer so it's kind of like cold and creamy. And then, I'll just sprinkle some gluten-free granola or some cacao nibs or something kind of crunchy on there, spirulina tablets, you name it, and just have this little superfood yogurt bowl for dessert. But, the oxytocin that causes you to release and also the unique strain of probiotic called L-reuteri seems to really help with sleep.

So, probiotics would be one. Cherry juice is another. And, that's interesting because tart cherry juice has also been shown to have some implications for assisting with recovery. So, that's a good one to know. And then, you'll love this, Jay, because it goes along with the oranges and the wine that you're bringing to your vegan Thanksgiving dinner. And, that would be beet, beetroot juice, yeah.

Jay:  Interesting.

Ben:  Yeah. A lot of people forget about that one, but it's of course amazing for performance at altitude. Like, when I used to race Spartan and not that I was watching the other athletes pee, this was anecdotal and unreported, but almost all the top athletes were basically pissing red after the race not because they had rhabdomyolysis but because almost all of them knew the secret to performance in the mountains was crap tons of beet juice or beet juice powder before you'd compete. And, it's literally just liquid Viagra for the whole body.

Jay: Yeah, it's interesting.

Ben:  Yeah. Same thing for bodybuilders, they know the vascularity that you get from that with that little surge of carbohydrates, it's pretty impressive. So, you know what I need to do is I need to figure out a recipe to make my yogurt beet and cherry flavored and kind of kill three birds with one stone because then I got probiotics, the cherry juice, and the beetroot juice.

Jay:  Just add a little bit of the cherry juice and beetroot juice, right? I mean, mix it in, maybe add a little bit more gelatin to thicken it up after you liquidize it and there you go.

Ben:  I was thinking maybe something more like what if you make the yogurt and have those bags like organics, frozen cherries you can grab from the grocery store, keep some of those in the freezer. And, a lot of these companies make a beetroot juice powder, a powdered beet juice, I think Organifi has one actually. You'd want to check to make sure there's not other ingredients in there that are more stimulating. But basically, what I'm thinking is you make the yogurt and you take that out for dessert and you stir some beet powder into it, so you got this nice red rich creamy yogurt and then you top it with frozen cherries. I think that should be in the “Boundless Cookbook.” Yeah. You guys [00:26:31] _____ come to life on the show. Yup, yup. Okay. So, that'll be in the “Boundless Cookbook.” I'm going to take a note to myself right now. Of course, I'll try the heck out of it first and see if it actually works. But yeah, maybe that'll be the new nighttime ice cream substitute. Hey, anybody is in the ice cream business out there, that's an idea for you, beet cherry flavored ice cream with added probiotics and market it as something like sleep cream. Yeah.

Jay:  There we go. The next unicorn company about to happen.

Ben:  There we go. I want a royalty check. Alright. So, that's an interesting one.

Now, we're going to talk about something that is not quite as fun when it comes to nutrition but something folks should know about because it was an article that hit the internets recently and was written by a gal named Dr. Cate, Dr. Cate. She has a website where she kind of goes nuts on a bunch of different nutrition principles. And, you might actually be familiar with Dr. Cate because her last name is Shanahan. She's been a guest on my show before. And, a lot of times when I see articles come out that seem like they're vilifying certain nutritional ingredients or being orthorexic or myopic, I'm like, “Oh, there's another kind of like food babe type of thing” where maybe we're concerned about what she have the article about how subway sandwiches contain the same ingredient that's found in yoga mats. And, it turns out that it's just basically metabolized to water in your body and isn't an issue.

Jay:  Alright, yeah.

Ben:  However, Dr. Cate is super smart, and she's well-researched, and her books are fantastic and chock full of really good science. And so, when I saw her writing about natural flavors, I thought, “Okay. Well, I should go read what she has to say.” So, what she had reported was, and I'll link to this one at BenGreenfieldLife.com/451 for people who want to take a deep dive into the actual article, but she was getting headaches after drinking a can of the LaCroix, the LaCroix soda water, sparkling water the natural flavors on the back of it. And so, she decided she'd investigate what these natural flavors in LaCroix actually were. I'm probably about to lose any potential of this podcast ever being sponsored by LaCroix, but I'm going to proceed nonetheless.

Jay:  And, they've got the money to do it, man.

Ben:  Yeah. Apparently, in 2018, LaCroix was sued because they had a substance called Linalool, L-I-N-A-L-O-O-L in their water. So, this is a class action lawsuit against their parent company called National Beverage Corporation for including non-natural flavorings and synthetic compounds in their “natural” soda. They found ethyl butanoate limonene linalool and linalool propionate and apparently linalool is problematic because it's a cockroach insecticide ingredient, a cockroach insecticide. And so, I'm not saying that just because something has a cockroach insecticide ingredient it's bad for you, but at the same time, it does make at least one of my eyebrows go up that if something is used to kill insects that it might be something I should at least consider when it comes to something I'm drinking on a regular basis.

And so, Cate dug in and she did the research and it turns out that linalool is an ingredient that's added to some pesticides but yet the food industry basically said what was kind of going through my head was that just because linolool is an insecticide ingredient, it's like saying orange juice is just as dangerous as drinking paint remover because both orange juice and paint remover have citric acid in them. It doesn't necessarily mean because it's in roach killer that it's bad for you, it just means that happens to be an ingredient roach killer. It might not even be the active ingredient that's killing the roaches. 

But then, she did a little bit more digging because it turns out that she wanted to know whether all these chemicals were added purely for flavor. Now, what she then found was an industry website that advertise flavorings and related products. And, the term natural flavors also includes another category a lot of people aren't aware of called flavors with modifying properties, okay, FMPs. And, those compounds have sensory-enhancing effects. Okay, FMPs that are added to an ingredient would be the type of things that would make the sensory enhancing properties or they're added to a compound would be the things that would make the sensory enhancing properties, the ingredient add to that compound potentially make that compound something people would want to drink more of.

Jay:  To make it more addictive.

Ben:  Exactly. So, it modifies the properties. Basically, if you add linalool to something, it's almost like you're doing a little bit of mind-altering and sensory enhancement to the extent to where people want to come back and eat more of it. So, these ingredients could go beyond just flavoring agents because they have what's called partial NMDA antagonist activity. That's the same thing that things like marijuana and caffeine have. I can't say I know of anybody who's addicted to cannabis or coffee, but I'm just saying they seem to have this effect on people that make them keep wanting to come back for more. Linalool seems to have that as well. And, that's actually one of the ways that it works in the insecticide is it inhibits the effects of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine and it acts on the nervous system and it turns out that it affects our neurotransmitters as well. So, when you're reaching for that can of LaCroix, it might not just be the fact that you're thirsty or the can is shiny or it's cold or there's some other association that you have with it, it might be that there are actual alterations occurring in sensory input and mood and thinking processes that could also be responsible for the headaches that Cate was experiencing when she was drinking LaCroix. These drugs like linalool work very similar to Ritalin or ketamine or phencyclidine.

And so, it's something to think about when you see natural flavors. I know it can be super intimidating to know what those natural flavors are a little bit of digging on a food manufacturer's website will usually reveal that. And again, not all natural flavors are bad, but in this case, linalool added to soda water is something that especially if you're getting headaches or you feel some kind of an addiction or attachment to the soda water that you're drinking may make you want to reconsider that soda. And, as Dr. Cate reports at the end of the article, just stick with something like Pellegrino or Gerolsteiner or something like that. So, yeah.

Jay:  Yeah. Well, good thing I don't LaCroix. Confession time. Actually, it's my least favorite of the flavored mineral. It's not a mineral water. I'm more of a Topo Chico/San Pellegrino guy. But, what I will say and I was looking this up while we were chatting here is that my favorite flavor of Topo Chico is the grapefruit flavor. I love it. I typically don't drink it as much, I just get the regular unflavored one, but I do love it and it is natural grapefruit flavor. So, I tried to see if linalool was anywhere on their website or if anybody's written about it, I can't find anything. So, I don't know if that is a part of their natural flavor composite, but yeah, interesting nonetheless because I could see how addicting that stuff is, man.

Ben:  Yeah. I mean, you could always get a built-in home mass spectrometer in your basement just start to test it all out, but it's difficult to know, it's difficult to know. But yeah, National Beverage Corp was sued over this stuff and I wouldn't be surprised if other beverage manufacturers were using some of these things like linalool oxide and piperonal acetate and other oils and things like that. So, interesting. That's the story behind the recall of LaCroix and possibly some other issues with the water that you're drinking. So, just know just because it's sold at your local health food store and is in a shiny can does not mean it's good for you. So, there you have it.

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 in 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 is called 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 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 the Quinton and the H2 Tablets. Enjoy.

I'm pretty stoked because this is now something I can do when I'm on the go and it's based on this idea that the human body being mostly water. But, what you probably don't know is everything else in your body is 50% amino acids. That means basically water and amino acids are two of the most important things that you can have in your body. And, some amino acids are essential. You have to get them from food, from breaking down steak and chicken and eggs and everything else. But, this stuff called Kion Aminos is a plant-based full essential amino acids profile backed by over 20 years of clinical research with the highest quality ingredients; no fillers, no junk, rigorous quality testing, taste amazing with all-natural flavors. I got on the amino acids bandwagon way back when I was racing Ironman triathlon. Started with branch chain amino acids, realized those were wasted time, switched over to essential amino acids and it has been a game changer ever since.

Now, what did I mean when I said travel? Well, these Kion Aminos, which are the essential amino acids that I take, they have for the watermelon flavor, the lemon-lime flavor, the berry flavor, and the mango flavor, they got stick packs now, so you can take them on the go. I honestly have a couple packs in my fanny pack now. I can dump them in water when I'm at a restaurant, have that instead of a bread basket that comes out or a cocktail. They satiate the appetite. They accelerate recovery. They're amazing pre-workout or during a workout. The list goes on and on. Fact is if you haven't tried essential amino acid, you're miss now.

And, you can save 20% now on any monthly deliveries and 10% on any one-time purchases if you go to getKION.com/Ben. That's getK-I-O-N.com/Ben to get my fundamental supplement for fitness. Kion Aminos, getK-I-O-N.com/Ben.

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.

I got to talk a little bit about antioxidants too, Jay, because this is kind of like the protein thing something I should come back to because I'm constantly reading and as ready as I can be to admit when I've been wrong about something. And, one of the things that I've said a lot before is to be careful with antioxidant consumption after you work out, the same reason you be careful with extreme low temperature, long exposure to cold thermogenesis after you work out. It's such a powerful anti-inflammatory that it may blunt the body's own natural inflammatory response to a workout session, which theoretically is what would cause you to make new mitochondria or target satellite cells for muscle cell hypertrophy or anything else that would be related to the effects that you want to get out of the exercise session. It's kind of like you're blunting the hormetic stress that you were going after in the first place and you're going to burn calories and get stronger or whatever ever, but you might not build muscle or build mitochondria or have the same the same beneficial effects of the exercise if you do high-dose antioxidant supplementation post-workout.

Well, there's a couple of guys who run a website called Stronger by Science, which I really like. They come out with some really good articles every now and again. And, they decided to dig into this idea that antioxidant supplementation would blunt muscle hypertrophy in this case, the ability to be able to build muscle. And, when they dug into the data, first of all, they did find what didn't surprise me and that is the initial studies that got this whole discussion going in the first place were done on high doses of vitamin C and vitamin E, particularly post-workout. It appears that even though the results aren't super consistent, there's at least enough evidence pointing towards a modest impairment of training adaptations that anything that has a high amount of vitamin C or vitamin E in it is something to be careful with. 

However, when you look at some of the other polyphenols and phytonutrients with antioxidant properties, not only does it appear that those really don't have much of a body of literature around them for decreasing the effectiveness of a workout session but they actually appear to potentially enhance the effects of a workout session in people who are training with a great deal of volume and intensity which comes as no surprise. The harder you train, the more likely it is that you could use a little bit of a nudge of antioxidants. And, because you've got so much oxidation going on, those antioxidants may actually be something that quell excessive inflammation but don't quell the inflammation so much that you don't get a response to the workout session.

So, what I mean by that is a high-dose antioxidant beverage consumed by someone who's riding a bicycle for 20 minutes three times a week at the gym is probably something that's going to affect the body a lot differently than say a Crossfitter doing a two a day or an Ironman triathlete with a sick amount of volume. And so, you need to understand that if you're a trained or athletic population while staying away from synthetic vitamin C and vitamin E still seems to be a good idea, all these other natural polyphenol antioxidant plant-based blends for quelling inflammation or having an antioxidant effect may actually be beneficial for you. 

And furthermore, there's a pathway via which they can cause the nitric oxide to hang around in your bloodstream much longer. Okay. So, when you look at a black currant powder or cocoa powder or there's another one called Pycnogenol, which is found in a lot of antioxidant blends, well, it turns out that this improves capillary density and red blood cell velocity and also enhances the effects of nitric oxide namely by inhibiting some of the enzymes that will cause nitric oxide to be broken down to the extent to where your pump and your blood flow and the oxygenation of the muscle could actually be improved with the acute use of antioxidants after workout. 

And so, whereas in the past, because a lot of times I'll work out in the morning around 8:30 or so. And, by 9:30, 9:45, I'm usually having some kind of a smoothie and I've kind of at the back of my mind been careful not to put too many antioxidants in the smoothie or swing by a cold pressure juicery and grab a big polyphenol flavonol pack juice. Now, I'm like, “Yeah.” I think I was probably taking all that data on vitamin C and vitamin E and some of the weak data about other antioxidants. And also, combining that with the fact that a lot of these studies weren't done in people who were training too hard. Especially after reading this article, which I'll link to in the shownotes, which goes into all the different studies that have been done to date, I think I'm pretty okay with taking an antioxidant supplement after workout as long as it doesn't have a lot of vitamin C and vitamin E in it. Does that make sense?

Jay:  Yeah. I know it makes sense. I was curious about this though. So, for you, does that mean you don't change your routine or maybe you're just less strict and harsh on not intaking any additional antioxidants?

Ben:  Yeah.

Jay:  Or, maybe the better question of this is that, are you going to now raise the amount of antioxidants that you intake after workout?

Ben:  Yeah. I haven't crossed that bridge yet, but at this point, my philosophy is, yeah, I'm going to worry a lot less about how many antioxidants I'm consuming after a workout and just leave it that for now. I don't know if I'm going to, I don't know, develop some antioxidant-rich smoothie powder to add to my smoothie in the morning or whatever. But yeah, I think it's probably something that people are worrying about too much that they don't really need to worry about that much.

Jay:  That makes sense.

Ben:  Yeah, yup.

And so, that being said, I should note, and I'll link to this. It's super helpful. I just came across this. It was actually from 2010, but it's one of the most helpful papers. I don't know if it's called a paper. I guess, it's a report in the nutrition journal on the total antioxidant content more than 3,100 foods, beverage, spices, herbs, and supplements used worldwide. So, they went in and did antioxidant measurements over a period of eight years from 2000 to 2008 and found some really good data on the antioxidant content of a whole host of foods and supplements and herbs, et cetera. And so, I thought it'd be fun to highlight some of the foods that actually do contain a pretty potent amount of antioxidants if folks are interested in getting a little bit more into the diet. 

So, with beverages, with beverages, some of the big wins were espresso off the charts for antioxidants. I mean, espresso is seven times more than coffee, which doesn't come as a surprise because it's obviously more concentrated volume-wise. But, espresso was really, really high amongst the beverages. Red wine was also way up there. No surprises. And then, I think third in line was green tea. So, if you're doing the morning green tea or coffee, one of the reasons you hear why that's so good for you, it's got a lot of antioxidants.

Now, with seeds and nuts, what nut, I'm quizzy again Jay, I feel like I'm putting you to school in today's show, but what nut, if you had to guess, what nut do you think is the highest antioxidants? And, I'll even give you a win if you get any of the top three in your guess of which one's the highest.

Jay:  Okay. So, for me, I will tell you the one that I want to have the highest content of antioxidants simply because it's the one I like the most, but it might be something obscure. But, here we go. I'm going to guess that the number one is the macadamia nut.

Ben:  Macadamia nuts were not the highest. No, no. They weren't even top three. No.

Jay:  Oh, dang.

Ben:  Matter of fact, I don't think they appear on the chart, which makes me wonder if they were even tested. You could be right and they weren't tested. So, some fringe like those Barukas nuts, which I love. Those things are freaking crack. Yeah, I doubt they studied those. Or, maybe tiger nuts and some of these or pili nuts. So, there's some that they probably didn't even test. But, of the common nuts, walnuts were the highest. 

Jay:  That was going to be my second guess, Ben.

Ben:  Yeah, I'm sure it was. And, pecans and chestnuts were a close second. Alright, so walnuts, pecans, and chestnuts. Thumbs up on those. Those are also a little bit lower in the omega-6 profile too. And, if you're getting the raw version and they're not roasted with a bunch of canola oil and stuff, not bad. Walnuts and pecans, chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

Now, the fruits that of course would come as no surprise. There's a whole bunch of them that are super-duper high, but of the fruits, I was pretty happy to see what the highest one was because it's something that I actually include in my diet occasionally and I'll give you a clue. There's an Indian ayurvedic herb that is often used for people who have constipation or just who need a little bit of a cleanse effects. And, it contains three different ayurvedic compounds and this is one of them.

Jay:  oh, geez.

Ben:  And, it's named after a bird.

Jay:  Huh, it's named after a bird. Now, I feel even more confused, the parrot berry.

Ben:  The gooseberry.

Jay:  Gooseberry.

Ben:  The gooseberry. So, if you look at the Indian ayurvedic herb, triphala, T-R-A-P-H-A-L-A, I believe that triphala has a pretty ample amount of amla. Harataki is another one that's in triphala, which is also an active ingredient in our joint support compound at Kion, Kion Flex. But then, amla is probably one of the reasons that triphala is so potent in terms of its detoxification and cleansing abilities. And, amla just blows away any of the other berries out there. But obviously, a lot of people don't have amla or gooseberry in their pantry. It's not that hard to find. You can buy it. You can have dried alma or fresh alma. 

But, if we were going to go with something that people might have a little bit more access to, there's one called moringa. I think Organifi uses that in their green juice. That's pretty high up there. There's another one hip, like dried hip. That's one that the folks at Four Sigmatic use a lot in their mushroom extracts. That one is really high. And then, bilberries. Bilberries are wonderful. I've done some plant foraging in Finland and these little bilberries that grow all over the ground, little dark blueberries, and even though the blueberries are pretty high, bilberries were just off the charts when it came to antioxidants. So, if you want a few new antioxidants in your diet that are super high, it would be rose hip and then bilberry and this Indian gooseberry, honk, honk. So, those are the berries.

Jay:  There you go. But, the more common berries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, all still pretty good choices?

Ben:  They're all decent but nowhere near these ones I just listed. So, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay:  Makes sense.

Ben:  Yeah. And then, for spices and herbs, highest antioxidants, this is one that will make a lot of people happy because it's being used a lot this time of year. It's not nutmeg even though nutmeg pretty high, it was in my turkey brine this morning, clove. Clove.

Jay:  Clove. Oh, interesting.

Ben:  Clove is off the charts. If you don't cook with clove or have clove, I think clove is a fantastic meat rub too, by the way. I'll a lot of times, like that dried coffee rub and a little bit of clove to a clove gives a nice flavor profile to a meat rub. And, obviously, because of its off-the-charts antioxidant content is also pretty good for some of the carcinogens that would build up during the meat roasting or grilling or cooking process. So, clove is really up there. Mint is also incredibly high. In this case, they just use dried mint leaves, but yeah, if you have access to mint, that's another good one. And then, allspice. Allspice is way up there as well. So, a few things to think about as far as —

Jay:  Oh, with mints, I can —

Ben:  Go ahead.

Jay:  Yeah. Let's say with the mint, I mean, I can just have my excuse to drink my Mojitos now with the dried mint leaves. I'm going to get a ton of antioxidants in them, so it's good.

Ben:  Yeah. And, where my mind goes is, gosh, let's take this yogurt that we decided we're going to add a little beet juice powder and frozen tart cherries too and maybe we sprinkle that with a little bit of allspice or mint, toss in maybe some dried gooseberries and a handful of walnuts. We've got this antioxidant dessert. There we go. That'll be Ben Greenfield Life dessert of the week. So, there you have it.

What do you think? Should we take some questions from listeners? We've been going for a little while. Alright.

Jay:  Yeah. Let's hear it from them.

Ben:  Alright. So, this is the time of the show when I will bring you up, you can ask your questions. And so anybody who raises your hand, what I'll do is I'll activate you and you can come on and ask your question live. So, I'm looking at the screen here and I'll just bringing on the first person who raises their hand or makes a request. Who wants to come on? Looks like once again Elon Musk is not here. Disappointing.

Jay:  Is he doing his own Twitter feed right now? I don't think so. 

Ben:  Yeah. Alright, folks, who wants to come on? Who's got a question? I see a lot of folks in here. You just got to raise your hand or make a request to speak. And, if you're on the Twitter Spaces right now and you raise your hand or you make a request to speak, we will bring you on and we'll take your question right here live. So, who's got one?

By the way, while we're waiting, you guys, Jay and I did an Instagram live last night and that's still on my Instagram channel and his at Hanu Health. So, you guys can go watch that. We covered some stress-related items. We got Gonzalo. Gonzalo has made a request. I'm going to bring Gonzalo on. And, what you got for us, Gonzalo?

Gonzalo:  Ben, how you doing? Giving you a shout-out from New York City. I'm actually heading out to Portland later today with my wife and I'm thinking I'm going to be eating a lot of possibly some donuts, some other stuff that we might encounter out there. What is your recommendation when somebody goes a little bit off the rails for a three or five-day trip, especially Thanksgiving, to try to reboot the body and/or the brain starting next week to really get back on track. What's the best way to go about that?

Ben:  Okay, cool. That's a great question, especially this time of year. So, acutely post-cheat meal, massive feeding, et cetera, you got to sop up some of the vegetable oils in a lot of the rancid fats that a lot of times your cells are getting exposed to in a scenario like that: donuts, fried chicken, French fries, just kind of doing the thing and not worrying quite as much and just living a little when it comes to the nutritional profile of foods you're consuming. Spirulina and glycine, okay, around 5 to 6 grams of spirulina or 5 to 6 grams of glycine or both help to protect the cells from the damaging effects of high consumption of vegetable oil. Okay. So, that's kind of your first aid pack. If you can't access spirulina or glycine, activated charcoal is also pretty good, and also activated charcoal is pretty good if you're consuming meats of which the source is questionable. You don't know how much metal was in the fish, you don't know what the cattle or the pigs were fed. So, activated charcoal does a pretty good job sopping up some of that damage, okay? So acutely, you would look at spirulina, add glycine and activated charcoal.

One of the best ways for the body to clean itself up via cellular autophagy and the turnover of cells, killing off some cells, and restoration with new cells is achieved, of course, via fasting, which I always like. I have Thanksgiving meal tomorrow at 2:30 p.m., so I'll finish my meal depending on how many plates I go back for, 4:00, 4:30 or whatever. Typically, I'll do a 16- to 24-hour fast after the Thanksgiving meal because that's just a really good way to give the gut a break and allow things to turn over. So, a fast or a modified fast such as a bone broth fast or vegetable juice fast, that's another good idea.

And then, as far as a longer-term cleanse, let's say we're coming up on January and you want to kick off the year with some kind of a cleanse, I think that ayurvedic medicine has some of the best cleanses out there. The two that I would point you to for the slightly more faint of heart would be a Kitchari Cleanse. Okay. That's kind of the easier version of a traditional ayurvedic cleanse. And, a Kitchari Cleanse basically involves eating a certain meal called Kitchari multiple times per day as your main meal of the day for typically anywhere from three to ten days in a row. Kitchari is a mix of rice and mung beans. Mung beans being a bean that actually enhances some of the liver detoxification pathways. Sometimes, I'll throw in lentils and some other whole grains even though I to keep a Kitchari cleanse relatively grain free. And then, in many cases, you'll eat some easy-to-digest well-cooked vegetables along with it like mashed-up steamed carrots, et cetera. Again, lentils are sometimes in there as well. Many people are throwing a little bit of olive oil and/or a little bit of ghee. And also, to up-regulate the liver detox pathways a little bit of grapefruit juice.

And, the reason I that cleanse is Kitchari, you can make a giant pot of it. And, I just like to turn the brain off them doing some kind of a cleanse. And, if it's not a full-on fast, which is obviously super simple, just don't eat the Kitchari if you make a giant pot of it. And, there's a whole bunch of good Kitchari recipes online. You can just have it in the fridge and available as you just do a little bowl of it like seems you would do with oatmeal in the morning or if you're going to fast and skip breakfast for lunch and then again for dinner. And, you just do that for five days in a row.

I think one of the better-formulated Kitchari-like cleanses out there is the one formulated by Dr. John Douillard at I think it's this place called Life Spa or something that in Boulder, Colorado. But, he even goes so far as to package up all the Kitchari ingredients and send them to you almost kind of a dried food blend where you can just rehydrate with water. And, it's a pretty well-formulated cleanse and comes a little eBook with instructions and stuff like that. So, I like John's version, John Douillard, D-O-U-I-L-L-A-R-D. 

His recipe for Kitchari is the one that I've used in the past. I really like it. I haven't ordered his freeze-dried style. I don't know if it's freeze-dried or whatever, but I haven't ordered the one that he has but it's this spice blend that you add to the Kitchari and then the Kitchari ingredients and this pre-mixed organic Kitchari packet that includes all the things you need plus the spices. So, if you wanted just a done for you version, that's pretty good. If you wanted to go a little bit longer, he actually has a whole 14-day lymph and digestive detox program called The Colorado Cleanse. And, I've had a lot of people do that as well who want to kick off their new year or some kind of a cleanse. And, that Colorado Cleanse by Dr. John Douillard, it's just a shorter three- to ten-day kitchen cleanse is a good one.

Now, I mentioned that that would be for the faint of heart. I'm joking because obviously it takes some fortitude and discipline. Possibly almost more than it would take to cook your own turkey, Jay, to do the Kitchari Cleanse. But, the next level up would be the Pancha Karma. Now, I interviewed a guy named Stephen Cabral on my show a few years ago and he described to me the Pancha Karma Cleanse, which is designed again from an ayurvedic medicine standpoint to purify the entire body. And, it is a doozy. We went into the details of what a Pancho Karma cleanse is on the show with Stephen, but there's basically five different steps that go into the protocol and they all have these weird ayurvedic Indian names like Purva, and Pradhan, and Pashyat, and stuff that I can't really pronounce that well. 

But basically, what you're consuming are these different herbs and ghees that open up the lymph pathways, and then you move on to things that cause emesis, which is literally induction of vomiting, and certain oil-based enemas that cleanse the colon. So, you're basically just essentially cleansing yourself from both the upper tube and the lower tube. And, that part of it is pretty intense. And sometimes, you'll want to make sure that you hook up with a local ayurvedic practitioner who could actually walk you through the entire cleanse. And then, you're adding some different bitter greens and different radishes, cloves, cilantro.

It's a pretty intense protocol. I have never done it. I guess I just haven't had the balls to actually do a full-on Pancha Karma Cleanse. I've done a few of the Kitchari cleanses, which I mean I've probably done a half-assy Pancha Karma Cleanse, but yeah. I mean, it involves diarrhea and vomiting. And so, it's a little bit more intense, but the people who do it and I'll typically do it for anywhere from 10 up to 21 days, they swear by it. And, I can link to my interview with Stephen Cabral on the Pancha Karma Cleanse, but you're going to be drinking a lot of ghee on a regular basis. You're probably going to be using a lot of that triphala powder, that laxative powder that I mentioned earlier. You drink a lot of different teas, but a good ayurvedic practitioner will actually test what's called your dosha, your dominant dosha, and they'll give you teas that are like ginger or cumin or coriander if you're vata or if you're pitta, there'll be different things there like fennel, if you're kapha, there'll be like ginger and cinnamon and clove. And then, you're also doing a lot of abdominal massage with oils like olive oil, for example. And so, you're basically having all these herbs and teas and oils. And then, also, like I mentioned, there's some things that make you throw up and some things that make you have some pretty hefty poops, and that is the Pancha Karma Cleanse.

So, I would say if you're going to do it, go check out some of the resources that Stephen Cabral has. Again, it's C-A-B-R-A-L, but that would be the more intense version. So, if you're going to choose anything, obviously there's a ton of cleanses and fats out there; bone broth and vegetable juice and the fasting-mimicking diet, and the ProLon diet, but I think just a basic Kitchari Cleanse works for most folks. And, if you want to kind of take things to the next level, you could also try a Pancha Karma Cleanse.

What's your favorite way to throw up and have diarrhea, Jay?

Jay:  Yeah, man, just two fingers down the throat. No, I'm kidding. So, yeah. Well, the thing that I would say for Gonzalo and for a lot of people is also just not forgetting those acute things in the moment that we know that can help with aiding in digestion and reducing glycemic variability. I mean, I can't believe you didn't mention Ben in the moment taking some Kion Lean or some dihydroberberine prior to the meal getting a walk after your meal is done, a step away from the family for 20 minutes or have them go along with you. Maybe knowing for six minutes. We've talked about even shorter timeframe of walking. I think it's taking some digestive enzymes can also be helpful. And then, for me, I'm kind of up my sauna intake after a really chaotic meal day. It's like the next day, I'll just get in a really nice extra-long sauna where I just sweat that out if you will.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jay:  And, I like doing that. The other thing too that I mentioned I found, I did this last year and I actually did it again this year or I'm going to do it, I'm going to put it on tonight, is I'll actually put a CGM on during the holiday season. Because I find that if —

Ben:  A continuous glucose monitor for people who don't know what that is.

Jay:  That's right, that's right, a continuous glucose monitor. It's like Levels or Signos, NutriSense, any of those companies make really good platforms. But, I'll put one of those on basically as a level of accountability. So, it's like, “Okay, listen, I want to live it up and have a good time.” But, I also just want something there that will remind me like, “Hey, yeah, this actually does impact you at a certain level.” So, don't go too crazy. Allow yourself to have fun, you're going to see some things that maybe you wouldn't like to see in an everyday basis but it's an exception because it's the weekend. But, I found that the things like dihydroberberine and Kion Lean digestive enzymes can really help in helping to stabilize blood sugar during the acute phases of eating a lot more, processed carbs, and a little bit more vegetable oils and stuff. So yeah, those are the things that I would just add on there kind of more of the acute strategies.

Ben:  Yeah. You made me think about a couple of things. First of all, times two on the sauna, wonderful, especially the infrared sauna because the light photons even though it's not as traditional as a dry sauna. And, I know all of you Finnish folks out there might consider this to be a bastardization of sauna culture, you do get a little bit of a deeper cleansing sweat with the addition of the infrared. So yes, on the sauna. And then, even though you mention a lot of other things there, Jay, like taking berberine or bitter melon or Kion Lean or things like that before the meal to lower your postprandial blood glucose and doing things like post-meal walks, things along those lines, I think that there's one other thing that flies under the radar from a liver standpoint that's like the hangover pill that barely anybody talks about that works amazingly effectively. It's dihydromyricetin, dihydromyricetin. You should be able to find it, abbreviated as DHM. That's not a brand, it's the actual molecule. It's called dihydromyricetin. I mean, if you look at the studies on it for anti-alcohol intoxication and liver cleansing, it's crazy. And, you can take this stuff. And again, it's just a cheap-looking bottle on Amazon, horrible marketing. Somebody needs to take it. As a matter of fact, I think you know Jordan Peterson?

Jay:  Yeah.

Ben:  I believe I heard his daughter, Mikhaila Peterson talking about how she's going to start up a supplements brand and start off with a hangover pill. And, that's basically what it is, it's dihydromyricetin, DHM. And so, you can get this. I always have a bottle on hand not because I drink heavily, but because occasionally well case in point, I had a stem cell injection several days ago and the knee swelled up and got painful. And so, there was one night where I needed to take a little bit of oxycontin and I absolutely the next day popped a bunch of DHM to cleanse out my liver. So, if I have to take a pharmaceutical or if I've got elevated liver enzymes, anything like that, that dihydromyricetin, that's another one like having your back pocket, especially over the holidays. I almost forgot about that one, but that's a good one too.

Jay:  Nice.

Ben:  So, we'll toss some links and some resources in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/451. I've got Jim coming on. Go ahead, Jim.

Jim:  Great show. I have two things. One, you were talking about flavoring your yogurt. Have you tried Cardio Miracle? I've used that a couple of times, a flavor my yogurt.

Ben:  No, but I'll look into it. Cardio Miracle?

Jim:  Yeah.

Ben:  Okay, thanks. Alright.

Jim:  Second, you were talking about sleep. I've heard on other podcasts what you're thinking about stress. I've heard more and more that stress levels are through the roof nowadays and that could be causing more health effects than lack of sleep.

Ben:  Well, we happen to have Dr. Jay Wiles on and he's just so happens to be an expert in stress and stress management. And look, obviously we could make a little bit of an echo chamber here. I don't think it's news flash thing, but that stress is bad for you and might even be as bad for you as a lack of sleep. But, are you asking Jim, is stress bad for you? What exactly are you asking?

Jim:  No. I guess how do you reduce it, I guess. One of the podcasts, one of the doctors I was listening to is saying that take 40, 60 milligrams of melatonin to help you sleep and reduce the stress at night.

Ben:  Okay. Alright, cool. You make this one fun because obviously, Jay, correct me if I'm wrong, we have talked about stress and stress mitigation strategies until we're blue in the face. And so, I'm going to turn this question just a little bit, just a little bit, and I'm going to ask you this, Jay, and then you can put me on the spot and ask me the same thing. 

But, when it comes to stress mitigation strategies, our meditation, and yoga, and sleep, and HRV tracking, and blah, blah, blah, what is one stress mitigation strategy that you think flies under the radar or that you've found to be super-duper surprisingly effective for you that you wish more people knew about or that you wish was being talked about more right now? And, I'm fully aware that you own a company that specializes in devices sold for stress management, et cetera. And, I don't want to turn this into a fox guarding the hen house type of scenario, but pick from anything. Again, if you were to just say, “Hey, more people should know about this period. This is going to super surprise you.” What would it be for a little-known stress management but highly potent stress management tactic that of or use?

Jay:  Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Okay. So, that is such a difficult question for me to answer because I have a thousand things. And so, the thing that I would mention here, I don't know if necessarily it's flying underneath the radar, I would say it is absolutely flying underneath the radar with the common individual kind of the common day person, not the health optimizer or peak performer like I'm going to mention what I'm about to mention and it's going to be like, “Yes, we understand this.” But, I think though that it bears repeating. And so, I'm just going to throw this out there because, again, I don't think it's a news flash to anybody where maybe when people hear me say this, they're going to be like, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense that he's going to say that.” 

But me, it is 100% learning how to self-regulate. It is learning how you in the moment without any other type of technology, without any other type of self-quantification or biometric tracking, it's with no type of indication from anything else just learning how to tune in to what the body is telling you in that moment and then regulate it in the moment so that you can condition a different response than what you might normally condition or might normally engage in when you experience stress.

So, for me, the single greatest thing that we have access to at any given time is changing the mechanics, it's changing the chemistry, and it's changing the cadence of breathing. So again, it kind of comes down to breathwork but not necessarily dedicated breathwork. I think that is really important to have a dedicated time, but I think that informal practice is just as important. So, recognizing when the body is really kind of relieving itself of that break and getting more revved up from a sympathetic nervous system standpoint and just simply telling it to do something different than what you would normally do, which is dialing down that stress response with breathing and changing your cadence. That's it.

Ben:  Okay. Yeah. So, for you, it's like awareness and then change of the cadence.

Jay:  That's it.

Ben:  Okay. For me, I'm going to list three. I'm going to cheat. I'm going to list three.

Jay:  Why cheat? You only gave me one, the stress expert, you son of a gun.

Ben:  It's good to be the king of the podcast. Okay. I make up the rules. It's like Kelvin Ball. Okay. So, the first is apnea while working I think is very common and it's something that I recognized in myself holding my breath a lot while checking emails and doing tasks. And, I haven't used your device, Jay, the Hanu device worn as a chess monitor to realize how low my HRV could get in situations like that. And so, I found this little timer, it's called a Resonance Breathing timer that will go off every five and a half seconds because they've found that heart rate variability in almost every human being on the planet goes up and stress goes down at a frequency of about five and a half seconds in and five and a half seconds out. And, there's a variety of apps out there like there's one called Resony, R-E-S-O-N-Y, there's a book called “Resonance Breathing,” and that one actually had a downloadable audio in it that I literally just put on my computer as an MP3 and I played it for a month every time I was working. And, it was literally just every five and a half seconds, ding, ding. And so, all I knew was, okay, when it goes off I breathe in. And, when it goes off again, I breathe out, and so on and so forth.

And so, that's one is work apnea. The second is there's another app called Othership. It's like a breathwork app and they have really long session like 60 minutes or whatever, but they also have really short two to five-minute sessions that you can just step away, you put the headphones in. And, two to five minutes doesn't sound like much but it just freaking works. And, I wish more people knew like, “Oh, you only need two or five minutes.” You don't have to sit down and get your organic meditation cushion and snort ketamine and then have your ice bath prepped and do 45 minutes of breath work. No, there's like two to five minutes super quick touching.

And then, the last is I wish more people knew how much low-level anxiety exists when you are in any type of relationship issue or there's something that is wrong between you and somebody else in your life and it just ticks away at the back your mind sometimes without you even realizing it. And, I think that for many people, that is typically someone you live with, a spouse, loved one, a child, a parent, et cetera. And, I was even thinking about this last night like my wife and I since we started doing this, I could probably and we've been doing this for three years, we've probably only ever had maybe three disagreements that I would consider to be stressful or mildly anxiety-inducing. We just don't fight at all since we started doing this. We pray every night before we go to bed. And yeah, I mean, God helps people and He helps infuse more love and peace into a scenario when you pray to God, et cetera, but I think even more than that when two people come together in a spiritual space, it's very hard for them to do that with a clean conscience when they have issues that exist between them; little lies, little shortcomings, little bickerings that occurred earlier in the day. 

But, my wife and I, we pray every night. We automatically know if there's anything going on because it's kind of this resistance to pray and then we're just like, “Oh, hey, do we need to talk about this or do we need to talk about that? Or hey, what came up early in the day?” And, it almost gives us this touch point every single day. And obviously, if you're working at a business with your co-workers and they're who stresses you out, I don't necessarily expect you to gather on the water cooler and pray even though that would be amazing probably, but identifying relationships where there's an underlying low level of stress and anxiety being produced and then actively and systematically addressing that, I would say that with a loved one, it's definitely a prayer, it's magic. And, when I say magic, I actually mean it's the proper use of the term magic. It's like there's something invisible spiritual going on that just takes away all the relationship stress.

And then, the other one would be, and this is again a little bit more of a spiritual approach, this idea there's a verse in the Bible that says “Love covers a multitude of sins.” And, we have this saying in our house in the Greenfield house that “Love covers all.” You're going to fight, love covers all. You have a disagreement, love covers all. And, love means forgiveness, love means saying to that person “I love you.” Love means no matter what doing something nice for that person. Love means stepping back from the scenario and looking at it and asking yourself not how can I be right? What can I do to fix this right away? What's that person done wrong that I need to gather up and talk to them about and bring them all my griefs against them about? But instead, how can I love this person? Literally almost that same concept of love your enemies, it's the same to love any situation in which stress and anxiety is being produced and just watch what happens. That also can be magical. You're just like, “Hey, I'm going to figure out how to pour as much love into this scenario as possible.” 

And so, what I mean by that is if I have let's say a co-worker who I disagree with on a certain business aspects, I will often just say, “Hey, I'm going to send this person something super nice and uplifting. I'm going to do something nice for them. I'm going to check in on them and see how their day has been going. I'm going to just basically go out of my way to smother this entire situation with love.” And, it works. So, long response, but that's what I'm going to say.

Jay:  No, I like what you said, Ben, maybe because I think the Corbett comes back to who we are inherently, which is relational beings. We're communal beings. We're meant and designed to be within the context of relationships. And, I think a lot of times when we're anxious or we're stressed, a lot of people want to isolate because they think that I just don't need to be around anybody. I can kind of carry this and do this on my own. But, what we find is that open communication, good quality time spent with individuals, this can significantly help people in so many ways both psychologically, relationally, spiritually. And, we see this manifest in studies where people who have really good relationships tend to have higher heart rate variability, lower resting heart rates. Obviously, subjective quality of life is way higher. So, I think that it's an underrated one that social isolation isn't kind of the best route for people to go. Maybe you need a small period of time but then you should always re-seek engagement with your community whoever that may be. So, I really like that one.

Oh, and by the way, Ben, not to do this little shameless plug for Hanu, but the resonance breathing stuff, we do have that built into the app. So, you can engage in resonance breathing even if you don't have your device on that helps to do biofeedback. But yeah, it's there, and you can take the Resonant Frequency Assessment to find out what is your optimal breathing rate for your optimizing heart rate variability. So yeah, there's my plug. I'll be done with that now but it was reasonable.

Ben:  Awesome. I love it. Well, I didn't know that was in there but that's good to know, threw your softball on that one.

Okay. And, by the way, the 80-year recent Harvard longevity study did show again relationships trumps everything.

Jay:  Yup.

[01:20:49] Giveaway!

Ben:  Everything, including gooseberries. So, we do like to give things away to people who leave this podcast a nice review or ranking. And, this is the time on the show when Jay reads a nice review. And, if you hear your review read, you just email me, [email protected]. That's [email protected] with your T-shirt size and we will send you a really cool package with a gift box with a T-shirt and a cool Ben Greenfield Life water bottle and a beanie and all sorts of fun stuff. So, Jay, you want to take this next review away.

Jay:  Yeah. We have a fresh one today. This one actually was either written or published today or maybe both. But, this one came from Skye, S-K-Y-E, Emily and they titled this review, “You need to listen to this podcast.” So, Skye Emily says, “Ben, I have been listening to your podcast for about three years now and I have learned so much about health, fitness, and longevity. I love sharing your podcast with my friends and family realistic advice that truly works.” Followed by three thumb signed emoticons.

Ben:  Realistic advice that truly works. I like it.

Jay:  That's right.

Ben:  Versus realistic advice that falsely works or unrealistic advice that truly works. Yeah. I like it. Well, go ahead and email, what was the name again?

Jay:  Skye Emily.

Ben:  Skye Emily. Email [email protected]. We'll hook you up.

For the rest of you, thanks so much for joining us on Twitter Spaces a couple of times on Wednesdays each month we do this. So, if you want to know when we go live, just subscribe to the free newsletter at BenGreenfieldLife.com. To those of you who are listening to this episode, I suppose it would be close to Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to those who listen after. I'm sorry, you probably messed up your turkey brine because you didn't listen to this. But, if you're Jay, that doesn't matter because you're just doing some oranges, some small oranges and beets, and a thimble of wine just like the pilgrims.

Alright, folks. I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Jay T. Wiles signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com. Have an amazing week.

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.

 

bengreenfieldlife.com/451

Have a question you'd like Ben to answer on the podcast?

Click here, or use the ‘contact' button in the free Ben Greenfield Life app.

Before asking your question, search in the upper right-hand corner of this website for the keywords associated with your question. Many of the questions we receive have already been answered here at Ben Greenfield Life!

News Flashes – Follow Ben on Twitter for more…

Resources mentioned:

Upcoming Events:

  • Six Senses Retreat: February 27, 2023 – March 3, 2023Join me for my “Boundless Retreat” at Six Senses from February 27th, 2023 to March 3rd, 2023, where you get to improve on your functional fitness, nutrition, longevity, and the delicate balance between productivity and wellness. Complete with a healthy farmhouse breakfast, yoga spa sessions, and sound healing, you get to learn how to live a boundless life just like me, and I'd love to see you there. Learn more here.
  • Keep up on Ben's LIVE appearances by following bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar!

Special Announcements…

Endure: Check out Ben's latest book. 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.

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!

Also, you can now find Ben on Gettr and TikTok!

Listener Q&A:

Q: What can you do to re-boot your body and brain after a few days of holiday eating?…55:14

Ben and Jay Recommend:

Q: What are the best ways to reduce stress and improve sleep?…68:28

Ben and Jay Recommend:

Episode sponsors:

Organifi Gold Chocolate: A superfood hot chocolate healthy enough to drink everyday. It was formulated to deliver the same amazing benefits as Gold, but with a delicious chocolate flavor to help curb those holiday cravings. Go to organifi.com/Ben for 20% off your order.

Haelan 951: Haelan 951 is a concentrated, nitrogen-fermented beverage made from organic soybeans grown in the mountains of Mongolia. Go to haelan951.com/BEN and use the promo code BEN to get free shipping.

Timeline Nutrition: Timeline is offering 10% off your first order of Mitopure. Go to timelinenutrition.com/ben and use code BEN to get 10% off your order.

Water & Wellness: Use code GREENFIELD to save 10% on all orders. Go to WaterAndWellness.com/Greenfield.

Kion Aminos: Building blocks for muscle recovery, reduced cravings, better cognition, immunity, and more. Go to getkion.com/bengreenfield to receive 20% off monthly deliveries and 10% on one-time purchases.

Ben Greenfield Coaching: Personally vetted and trained by Ben Greenfield, these coaches will personalize your diet and lifestyle, and get you looking and feeling your best. Head over to BenGreenfieldCoaching.com to learn more today.

 

Ask Ben a Podcast Question

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *