January 21, 2023

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/adam-wenguer/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:44] Podcast Sponsors

[00:05:21] About Adam Wenguer

[00:11:28] Hunting

[00:17:23] Meat-Cooking Techniques

[00:23:42] Continuing with Alligator Hunting

[00:25:37] Fighting Infertility

[00:38:31] Podcast Sponsors

[00:41:59] Use of Cannabinoids and Production of CBD products

[00:53:27] In-Vitro Fertilization

[01:02:56] Opioid Addiction & Meditation

[01:13:47] Martial Arts

[01:25:30] Final Thoughts

[01:28:04] End of Podcast

Ben:  My name is Ben Greenfield. And, on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

Adam:  People have to find out what's right for them in terms of what's going to improve their fertility. Some people have to trust the medical establishment, which I get but I really encourage people to do their own research, realize that CBD and a lot of other natural compounds can really contribute to improving your fertility, men and women.

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

I don't think it's any secret that I am and have been for quite some time a fan of this anti-aging strategy of using NAD to protect the cells and to enhance the health of the mitochondria. There was a form of NAD that was mentioned when I interviewed Tony Robbins called NAD3. We talked about it. I was intrigued about it. I didn't know anybody was actually making it, but that along with two other ingredients. One called spermidine and one called resveratrol also came up in that interview and are also kind of like the darlings of the anti-aging industry right now: Spermidine, resveratrol, and NAD. Well, what we talked about in that podcast was how there's this very unique new form of NAD called NAD3. It's a licensed NAD ingredient, huge amount of bioavailability. And, when combined with spermidine and resveratrol, this is like an unrivaled formula for anybody who wants to enhance aging using NAD and using a very unique bioabsorbable form of it.

So, this company called BioStack Labs formulated this stuff. It's called NAD Regen. It's not NAD, it's NAD3. Totally different. And, you just take two capsules a day. That gives you the total effective dose, the research back dose of each ingredient; the spermidine, the resveratrol and the niacinamide, which is the NAD3. And, they're cutting us all a deal. Basically, two bottles of this stuff costs about $134. And, what happens is if you order, they're going to give you another free bottle, so that extra free bottles were $67, pretty good deal. You go to BioStackLabs.com/Ben. BioStackLabs.com/Ben. I do about five days on, two days off, any week where I might happen to get some kind of NAD patch or NAD IV. I don't take extra NAD, but man for an oral formula, this one's pretty unrivaled in the industry. Brand new. You can get your hands on now. So, BioStackLabs.com/Ben.

Let's talk nicotine, shall we? Everybody knows it's great for focus. I mean, you don't have to get it from cigarettes, but it is actually a pretty potent nootropic. I mean, it occurs naturally out of plants, most obviously the tobacco plant. You can get it without all the carcinogens. And, the way that you can get it and get it naturally from a company that makes natural products for people who want to use nicotine to relax or focus or unwind after a long day or boost the energy in the evening without keeping you up all night. It's this company called Lucy. They're modern oral nicotine company and they make gum and lozenges and pouches that are super tasty for any adults who are looking for the best most responsible way to consume their nicotine. And, it's a new year, so why not start it out by switching to a new nicotine product you can actually feel good about?

What you do is you go to Lucy.co. You can use promo code BEN20. I recommend their pomegranate, 2 or 4-milligram gum. That's the one I dig. I chew a couple pieces a day right now and it's amazing. Lucy.co and use promo code BEN20 at checkout. That's Lucy.co, use code BEN20 at checkout. Warning this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical, so be careful, my friends. Lucy.co and use promo code BEN20. Be mindful, be careful, but enjoy that little higher than nicotine can give you because it's quite nice.

BON CHARGE. BON CHARGE is a holistic wellness brand. They have this huge range of evidence-based products that optimize your life in every way. So, all this stuff you hear all the biohackers talking about, blue light glasses and red light therapy, and EMF mitigation, and circadian friendly lighting, BON CHARGE, they basically have all that; anti-radiation and EMF protection products like low blue lighting and blue blocking lighting and full spectrum lighting that has zero Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or harmful EMF and is totally flicker-free so you don't get those headaches in the mid-afternoon. They have ice rollers for lymphatic drainage, cold and hot therapy massage guns, ice roller massage balls, air tubes for EMF protection for your phone, EMF hats and beanies and phone stickers and laptop mats. I mean, anything you'd need for personal protection, they've got it. It's called BON CHARGE, BON CHARGE. So, B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E, BON CHARGE, boncharge.com/Greenfield. You can use coupon code GREENFIELD to save 10%, boncharge.com/Greenfield and use coupon code GREENFIELD to save 10%.

Well, I've got a great podcast for you today. It's with my friend Adam Wenguer who's been on the show before. And, this dude is a wealth of information and inspiration. Adam was a strength and conditioning and health coach at a big five-star wellness and training facility. And, that's where I met him originally five years ago and we've gotten to know each other over the years. He is the guy who I rely upon for my CBD products. He has a company called Element Health, which I'll link to in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/AdamWenguer, Wenguer, A-D-A-M W-E-N-G-U-E-R. 

But, beyond CBD, I mean, the guy is a man who hunts deer and wild boar and alligator on his property in Florida. He's a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He has really cracked the code on natural little-known ways to increase fertility and successfully manage to have a son despite having zero sperm count, which we'll talk about in this podcast. He overcame an oxycontin and drug addiction, again, naturally using techniques like meditation and visualization. And, we just had a really fun chat. This one was recorded outdoors at this outdoor studio setup that we had. There were some birds overhead, so hopefully, they're not too distracting for you, you don't feel like you're an Alfred Hitchcock's film, “The Birds.” I felt like that, but hopefully, you don't. And again, this is just a fantastic show, I'll link to everything we talk about at BenGreenfieldLife.com/AdamWenguer along with the previous show that Adam and I did on all the ins and outs and sciences of the endocannabinoid system.

So, this one is a fun one. I hope you enjoy and here we go.

I was telling my podcast guest today, Adam Wenguer, Wenguer–I'm always mispronouncing your name. You corrected me though. I think I've been doing it wrong for four years. It's W-E-N-G-E-U-R.

Adam:  G-U-E-R.

Ben:  G-U-E-R, you say Wenguer.

Adam:  Wenguer.

Ben:  Wenguer?

Adam:  Yup.

Ben:  Well, the other reason I'm telling folks this is I'm actually going to put the shownotes for everything Adam and I talk about at BenGreenfieldLife.com/AdamWenguer. And, that's A-D-A-M W-E-N-G-U-E-R. So, if you're up for running or working out or walking right now, you're just going to have to make a mental note to yourself and go visit the shownotes because I always put some interesting stuff in there. And, I'll include a link to the previous show that Adam and I did where we talked a lot about CBD. Obviously, Adam is the owner of his CBD company. You're a real expert in the endocannabinoid system and all sorts of different medicines in general, but your CBD has really taken off. People seem to like it quite a bit. You've got the gummies now. You got the oils. And so, we could talk about some of the interesting experiences you've had with CBD particularly really fertility and stuff, which I thought was a little bit mind-blowing the last time we chatted. 

But, to just give any of you listening who didn't hear my previous podcasts with Adam a little bit of a background, Adam, you and I met at a gym down in Miami, the Canyon Ranch, which I think is now called Carrillo, right?

Adam:  Yeah, Carillon.

Ben:  Yeah, Carillon. Carillon, that was close. And, there was another doctor there who's with–what's the doctor's name?

Adam:  Dr. Karim Dinani from Toronto–

Ben:  Yeah, Dr. Karim Dinani. Yeah. And, you were training him and we all hooked up at the facility down there and you brought us through this crazy workout where we're going up and down a rock climbing wall and–

Adam:  Yeah, rowing ergometer.

Ben:  And rowing ergometer. It was pretty fun.

Adam:  You got on a boat too and started doing kettlebell swings.

Ben:  That's right. Yeah.

Adam:  We're going next level with it.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I don't like to sit around too much at the gym. But, it was a cool workout. But then, man, we've connected on so many levels since then. And now, here we are sitting outside. I'm a little bit guilty because my whole family is back in snowpocalypse right now in Washington State and here I am in the sunshine. But, this is a cool setting. We've got some goats in the background. We've got some horses. We've got, I don't know what is this, like a ranch?

Adam:  Yeah, it's a friend of mine's farm.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  He films podcasts and my farm is a bit out of the way a little more off the grid. And, this is just the perfect setting I thought for a podcast.

Ben:  You weren't living in a farm when you and I first connected to Miami four years ago, were you?

Adam:  No, I was in Miami Beach. I always lived in this one general area called Surfside in Bay Harbor.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  It's laid back, it's great. But then, when I knew I was going to have a son right before, I guess, the whole pandemic thing because you know what, it's time to get out of the city.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, as you do, you live in a beautiful place in Washington. I mean, a lot of people are taking notice of how important it is to live on the land.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  So, we started looking and I found something and jumped on it right before the housing market went crazy.

Ben:  So, did you buy land and then build or you found a home?

Adam:  The plan was to build but we found the most amazing home. We call it the Bali Treehouse.

Ben:  Bali Treehouse.

Adam:  Yeah. I mean, it doesn't look it's in Florida and it's on about 13 acres. And, when you see it, you're like, “This has to be somewhere in Bali or Costa Rica.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I mean, it's mind-blowing. We'll get you out there soon. And there, we do everything from hunting hogs and deer to growing our own food, all sorts of good stuff.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  Perfect place to raise a son.

Ben:  And, what are you doing out on the farm as far as livestock or agriculture or gardening or anything like that?

Adam:  Yeah. So, my wife began gardening. We have a bunch of cows there. They just had a bunch of calves. They're not ours. We don't own them, but there's some big ranchers. Florida is known for beef cattle, for citrus, and we actually rent the land to a bunch of our neighbors that are serious beef and cattle farmers. And, it's just nice to have them. We love having animals around.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Yeah, I end up not hunting my property because I just like seeing the animals.

Ben:  Yeah, it's like hunting pets. That's what I'm a little careful with, the whitetail deer on our property. Yeah, it's almost like too easy.

Adam:  Yeah. My wife pointed out the first time and they're just gorgeous.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I want to keep seeing them.

Ben:  Yeah. If I was starving, I'd go out and harvest them, but yeah, it's kind of different when you have the pets just rolling around your house. You don't necessarily want to shoot them from the front porch. 

Adam:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. So, for you I think you were telling me on our last podcast possibly about how you're not only hunting hog and deer but alligator also?

Adam:  Yeah, I've hunted a bunch of alligators.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I got into–

Ben:  What an alligator hunt like?

Adam:  It's quite intense. I liked hunting with rifle. I never actually got into bow, I've practiced, but I wanted to hunt by hand. I thought I'd have a greater connection to the animal aside from looking through a scope, seeing it happen. Because hunting for me is a very emotional experience, very deeply spiritual experience. I have such a profound love for a0nimals. I have a lot of pets, but I want to be able to feed my family and also be prepared in case someone can't go to a grocery store. And, I find the meat to be more nutritious than even grass-fed beef and well-kept animals.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  So, I started with a wild boar, which is pretty wild. I mean, for me, it's not really a big deal, I've been doing it for a while now. But, when I tell people, they're like, “You actually grab them with your hands?” And, I said, “That's how you do it.” We bring dogs to track.

Ben:  Really?

Adam:  Yeah, yeah. That's why I wanted to bring you.

Ben:  How do you actually catch a boar with your hands?

Adam:  So, a lot of times they'll bring four or five dogs. I don't really think that's fair. We usually bring one or two. One is–

Ben:  These are your dogs that you train for hunting or?

Adam:  No, I can't train my dog. I have too much going on to spend time to train them.

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  But, I've friends that this is what they primarily do. There are these Florida Curr dogs. No one's even heard of them. They look like–

Ben:  A curr dog?

Adam:  That's what they're called.

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  C-U-R-R. And, these people think pit bulls are gay, man. These animals can do anything for you on a farm from rounding up cattle to protecting your home. They're great with kids. And, you see them and they just look like skinny emaciated dogs. It's very weird. They're 30 pounds and they have so much energy. You can't feed them enough food, but all they want to do is find boar and find animals. 

Ben:  Really?

Adam:  Yeah, it's an incredible thing. It's a wormhole you can–

Ben:  So, almost like a Rhodesian Ridgeback. We used to have Ridgebacks. And, originally in Africa, they were used to hunt lions in packs. So, these dogs have been bred to be able to hunt things like boar?

Adam:  Exactly. And, usually, there's one or people bring out a bunch to track them because they have great scent.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  You have a GPS tracker on them and shields in case, so they don't get injured too badly.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  And, you track the GPS, you start hearing them barking. And, the next thing you know there's a wild boar that's trying to get away from them or kill them. And, this is probably why I don't use my own dogs. So, the two dogs will find the boar, and then you have to time it really well because you can get severely injured.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I've seen people with their faces ripped open, their legs, and the bacteria from a boar is just horrible. You can't just sew it up.

Ben:  They're scary. When I've hunted wild pig in Hawaii, I had one shot where I had to track it into this big thicket of trees. And, this was at 2:00 a.m. and all you could hear around you were little snorts like the. And, of course, all I have is my bow. At that time, I didn't even have a handgun or anything on me and I was nervous as heck that I was just going to get charged by something while I was digging around in there in the trees for the one that I shot.

Adam:  They're unpredictable.

Ben:  Yeah, it's like what, “Old Yeller,” the old “Old Yeller” movie where they–

Adam:  Yeah, old school.

Ben:  I think it's, is it the dog that gets beat up by the boars or the kid or? I don't remember, but they're–

Adam:  I can't remember either.

Ben:  They're scary animals.

So, back to the hunting by hand thing, once the dogs are on them, what do you do next?

Adam:  So, typically the dogs that we use, they don't attack them, they just find them and then kind of disorient them a little bit with the barking.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  A lot of people train one to be called a catch dog where they'll jump on the boar on its ear or neck to keep it really preoccupied. So, the ones we use are primarily bay dog, they'll distract them. And then, I come up at the ideal time. You don't want to do it head-on. It's always got to be from the back and grab it by its legs and put it on the side. Once it's on its side, if you can control the legs, that's when people start hog-tying–

Ben:  Do you have to sprint to run up and grab by the legs?

Adam:  Oh, yeah, it's super primal intense.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  And, once you grab it, and you have to have some strength there, you got to pick them up with your whole body, put it on its side. And, if you let go at the wrong time, they'll get up and just hammer you. I mean, they have these 2-inch, we call them, cutters or tusks and they just rip through anything. And, once you get it on its side, you don't want it to suffer, so we don't want it to be down too long. You get a really big blade. We have 9-inch blades. And, you put it through the armpits. They have a big shield on their back and shoulders. You can take a knife and go like this and it won't go through. 

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Sharpest blade you've ever seen. So, you go–

Ben:  Yeah, I've shot boar before with a bow and arrow. And, unless that arrow is just perfectly into the vitals, their skin is like freaking Kevlar.

Adam:  Exactly.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  So, really quickly, you put the blade in through their armpit, you twist as much as you can to hit vital organs: heart, lungs. Usually, there's a spray, but you want to put it down as quick as possible. And, I just found that that's more realistic for me. I could use a rifle. You get a gut shot. You never know. So, this way, it's so quick and it goes down really quickly. Of course, there's a little bit of nervous energy you feel from it afterwards, but it does very quickly as humane as possible. Much more humane than factory farming.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And then, you have a big hog and you don't know. I've had ones right before my wedding that were 300 pounds and I served it at my wedding.

Ben:  I was going to ask you if you're actually eating these things.

Adam:  Oh, yeah.

Ben:  How's the meat?

Adam:  It's delicious. And, people say–so, there's hogs that they call boar hogs, those are the ones that still have their testicles. And, they say because of the testosterone, it makes the meat taste more gamey.

Ben:  Yeah, it's what I've heard.

Adam:  I've never found that. I give it to my wife. She's an amazing chef and she'll put it in a slow cooker with pineapple, onion, all sorts of stuff, and you think you're eating the most delicious small pork from a restaurant. It's incredible.

Ben:  Yeah, that's what I found wild game the long slow cook times. Like the other day, at a party, it was a pickleball party, a bunch of our friends got together local pickleball facility called Selkirk up in Post Falls. And, I had some axis deer and some sheep mutton. Two meats that if you just take them out and whatever, put them on the grill, are going to be gamey.

Adam:  Axis is great though.

Ben:  Yeah, axis is good, but the trick is, and you can look like an expert chef even though it doesn't take much at all, I just get a big roasting pan and pour a whole bottle of wine into the roasting pan, throw some carrots, onions, herbs, spices, whatever, and then you just cover that and slip it in the oven at 250 degrees. Leave it in there for six hours, pull it out, drench it in barbecue sauce and it melts in your mouth amazing. Everybody thinks you're a great chef really. It's just like wine roasting pan, walk away, pull it out six hours later–

Adam:  So, that's your slow cooking. So, you're not using pressure cookers.

Ben:  I've used pressure cookers. I've used the sous vide, the sous vide water bath is great for, let's say, pork belly, for example. Anybody who hasn't used a sous vide, you want to use the bags that don't leach a lot of plastic into the meat.

Adam:  So cautious with the plastic.

Ben:  Yeah. So, there's one called Stasher bags, which are pretty heat-resistant plastic. And–

Adam:  Are they plastic?

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, it's a plastic compound. I could be wrong, but it's plastic-like.

Adam:  Okay.

Ben:  What would you say silicone?

Adam:  Silicone, I thought so.

Ben:  Yeah, they might they might be silicone.

Anyways, though, for a pork belly, you can literally just take your giant slab of pork belly, put it in there like 5:00 a.m., walk away, and leave at about a 100–I think pork belly is 155 degrees. And then, 12 hours later, you just take it out, you give it a quick sear on either side or you can just blowtorch and it's just melt in your mouth, good perfect consistency. And, there's a few chefs who think this is a bastardization of cooking meat whether you do, like I had a 60-hour brisket once in the sous vide, which was amazing. Best brisket I've ever had in my life, better than any Texas brisket I've had. And, I was telling a pit master this and he's like, “Oh, you miss out on”–

Adam:  It's blasphemy.

Ben:  He said, “You missed out on the torar and the flavor.”

Adam:  What's torar?

Ben:  The torar would be similar to wine, how wine takes on certain characteristics.

Adam:  Oh, okay, got you.

Ben:  Depending on soil that it's grown in and the rocks and the dirt and the probiotics in the soil all influence the flavor of the wine. Well, a lot of traditional barbecue masters say that, “Well, if you just put in a water bath and walk away, you're missing out on all the smoking and the tending and the variations in temperature.” I tell you what, as far as ease goes, the sous vide is amazing.

Adam:  Yeah.

Ben:  You mentioned the pressure cooker, which is a good time hack. You can do ribs that would normally take six hours like competition-style ribs that just come off the bone so easily. You can put them in the pressure cooker and that's 40 minutes; wine, bone broth, again, your herbs and spices, and you impress your friends because you pull it out and it tastes like you've spent six hours tending this stuff. And, the thing with the pressure cooker, very similar to like searing the meat, after you finish the sous vide, with the pressure cooker, you just take it out of the pressure cooker, put it in a pan, toss in the oven for five minutes on broil, a little bit of barbecue sauce on there, so you get that fine little caramelization of flavor.

Adam:  Is this in your cookbook?

Ben:  Yeah, I've got some pressure cooker in there, some sous vide in there, some smoking, like on the Traeger Grill in there.

Adam:  It's like a lifesaver, man.

Ben:  Few crockpot methods. Yeah. Like a lot of people they just–I think if they discovered the cool tools that are out there that aren't that difficult to learn how to use, there's so much you can do in the kitchen with so many varieties of meat.

Adam:  You taught my method for a rib eye. Everyone's got a rib-eye method.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I tried it all, but you had one where it was so simple. And, I think I was using–

Ben:  Reverse sear.

Adam:  Reverse sear with rosemary. And, I never thought to put rosemary in a steak, but preventing carcinogen formation. And, I still use rosemary on everything now, on the Traeger and whatnot. But, those steaks with the crispy outside, now I've graduated more to a Traeger, but the flavor is incredible.

Ben:  Yeah, that's the thing. If you're able to smoke the steak beforehand for an hour or so, if you have a Traeg or smoke, it's not a necessary process but the reverse sear method basically you grill it for a little bit on either side but then you have a really, really hot pan like a cast iron pan that you've heated, put some butter in that pan and you finish it after you've grilled it on either side for three or four minutes in the butter. It's pretty amazing. You mentioned rosemary and thyme. And, there was a recent study that listed the antioxidant oxidant content of huge variety of herbs and spices and plants. And, what I started cooking with, two compounds I started cooking with to avoid the carcinogenic potential to meat that are some of the highest antioxidant-containing herbs and spices you can use when cooking, they both start with a C. One is one of the most popular drugs known to humankind.

Adam:  Don't tell me like coffee?

Ben:  Coffee.

Adam:  Okay.

Ben:  Yup. So, you can do a coffee rub and that's amazing.

Adam: Super popular now too.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly.

Adam: We're putting coffee on pizza, coffee grinds.

Ben:  Yeah. And, if you make coffee anyways, you can save the grinds. You can dry them in a food dehydra and you can have a Mason glass jar full of coffee rub, put a little cayenne, a little sea salt, a little paprika in there. That's a good rub, but 10 times higher than coffee is clove. This is a recent one I started cooking with. Yeah, it gives the meat this really nice flavor. You can mix a little allspice, which is also very high in antioxidants, a little bit of nutmeg and you almost get this nice fall pumpkin spicy flavor on the meat. Do that with a little bit of raw honey for the caramelization.

Adam:  I'm always concerned with too much smoking. The Traeg is so convenient, so I try to minimize the carcinogenic effects–

Ben:  There's always going to be. But, I'd rather have cancer when I'm 85 from eating good meat, die of natural causes when I'm 86 than miss out on all the fantastic barbecue my whole life.

So, the other question before we leave the topic of hunting that I didn't close a loop on this but the alligator.

Adam:  Oh, right, right.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  So, yeah, some people like to shoot them. I never got into that. So, we use a thing called the snatch hook, which is basically fishing. So, you're fishing and you reel them in and then once I get them on land, it's dangerous. Just like a boar, once we pull it in, I use an ax or a hatchet. And, I get on its back and you try to do a real quick cut just below the skull.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, it dies very quickly and you get a lot of meat. And, what's cool is you can use all the skin. I don't even think it's called skin, but I've made purses for my wife.

Ben:  The hide.

Adam:  From my mother-in-law. Exactly. And, you can get them colored different things. Shoes–

Ben:  You have to treat the skin or?

Adam:  I don't do it personally. I bring it to a taxidermist.

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  And, the meat's great.

Ben:  Really? What's it taste like? I've had an alligator jerky before but–

Adam:  Oh, really? [00:24:35] _____ one is alligator nuggets especially here in Florida.

Ben:  Don't tell me it's the testicle of the alligator.

Adam:  No, no, they just fry it. So, it'd be like a chicken nugget. We would use avocado–

Ben:  You fry the meat?

Adam:  Right, right, right.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  But, I found that you could put it on the grill, it does have a chicken taste to a different consistency.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Just another form of protein. I try all the animals I can.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  But now, with the everglades and Burmese pythons running rampant, they're eating alligators, they're eating deer, I kind of want to preserve alligators as much as possible.

Ben:  You never eat a python, would you?

Adam:  I probably would. I haven't had the opportunity. Would you?

Ben:  I would eat anything once. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just about anything.

Adam:  A lot of invasive species down here. I've learned that living on the farm–

Ben:  And, I know where the name Benjamin Greenfield, I'm supposed to be Jewish and avoid all the pork and the shellfish and the alligator and everything, but I'm too much of a foodie. I'll try it.

Adam:  I do it and I was raised Jewish. I look like the opposite of that.

Ben:  Yeah, but we've also established you're not vegan.

Adam:  Oh, exactly. I'm allergic to it, man.

Ben:  Yeah. So, we had a little bit of a of a discussion last time about your journey into becoming a father. It was very interesting, we were talking a little bit about your son before we started podcasting and how you and your wife thought for a very long time that you weren't going to be able to have kids at all. Tell me about what happened.

Adam:  So, in college, I didn't really think too far ahead. I said I don't really want kids. I was a bit of a savage. And, I just thought I really enjoyed bodybuilding at the time and I was also still doing MMA and I was using a good amount of steroids, different types to try to just maximize my performance.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Because when you're young biohacking, you don't really worry about the long-term consequences as much as when you're in your 30s. So, I knew we had some sort of detrimental effect, but I didn't really overthink it. I figured technology 10, 20 years down the road I'll be fine.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  But then, I got married, decided we wanted to have kids and I was on a testosterone replacement because when you use steroids for an extended period of time, especially for bodybuilding and those type of doses, there's just a host of effects of your endocrine system.

Ben:  Yeah, the liver.

Adam:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Your hypothalamus, pituitary, testicular axis is affected and you just don't produce as much sperm. And, we tried for about a year or two without success and I think I was 36 at the time and I thought like, “Let me go to a professional. Let me go to one of the medical professionals.” And, we sought out a doctor. You've mentioned him before. I'm not going to mention who he is. And, I went to his office and he was renowned in Florida for improving fertility. So, I get there and there were so many people in the waiting room.

Ben:  And, had you tested before that point you're using one of these test kits like your sperm and fertility?

Adam:  I did. And, they can change day to day a bit.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, they said I was on the very, very low end. So, I started getting tested more frequently, and with this doctor and it turned out I had zero sperm. They said zero.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Not like low. You have no swimmers that are even immobile. They're like, “We haven't really seen that too frequently.” We're seeing people with reduced sperm counts because of everything environmental these days, lower testosterone levels, lower sperm counts that's been going on for 20, 30 years now. But, this one was very specific. I mean, I can relate to other people that are going through infertility issues just simply because environmental factors or choices or even their lack of spirituality. I think that plays a huge part, but that's a totally different thing. And, they told me zero. So, they said we have a protocol for you. We want you to stop using testosterone. We're going to give you this form of nasal testosterone. It's very short-acting, so it won't affect your endocrine system. We're going to give you Clomid. And, they gave me a host of drugs.

Ben:  Yeah, Clomid and HCG are very, very common to restore fertility or ball size and guys who've been using a lot of testosterone. 

Adam:  And, they give me exceptionally high doses to the point where–

Ben:  Of Clomid and HCG?

Adam:  Yeah. I would have to look back at the numbers, but it was so high to the point where I couldn't take that. I ended up doing less. And, I was so uncomfortable. I practiced jiu-jitsu high at a high level, not a world champion but we train very hard. I'm still lifting very hard. Everything I do in life has a physical component to it aside from my own personal meditative practice. But, I'm working out with my wife all the time. I'm very active.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, when we met, I was a trainer. So, I got off all that stuff. I started taking the meds they were telling me to get on and I was just shrinking. My body was very catabolic itself and not like, “Oh, I'm not working out as much,” it just didn't feel healthy.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I started feeling really sickly and emotional. I would be happy. And, if I was happy, I was happy that I was happy, which is a strange thing. You're joyous that you have a good feeling. So, give me a taste of depression, anger. And, it would change on an hourly basis. Not even on a daily basis. And, I said, “Okay, I'll suck it up.” We know the end goal, we know what we're looking to achieve. And, I did it for four to six months and it was just so uncomfortable. It affects your sleep. It affected everything. So, I had to sit down with my wife and we talked about. Her name's Kristen. You met her. We all went out to dinner.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, she said, “Look, your well-being is more important. Do we really want to have a child when you're feeling like this?”

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  We believe that you should be happy and feel a greater connection to God. And, that's when you're going to conceive. That medical intervention isn't always the way. And, we spoke so many times. I believe in the power of our mind, what we can do on our own. We don't have to rely on the medical establishment. But, I just thought, “Let me give them a shot.” And, I think it really failed. And, I would go to their office every few months and I felt like cattle, like factory farming in and out. They would come in. They would literally grab your balls, do a blood test, you're out. It felt so impersonal. So, I started, I'm done with this. I got back on my low dose of testosterone optimization and just went about our life and then the pandemic hit. So, everyone was stuck at home. Thank God in Florida, we didn't really have it as bad as everyone else.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Florida stayed pretty open. So, we maintained a semblance of reality and freedom.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  But, I decided, you know what, my father had passed in 2019 and I was a big meditator, I taught meditation. But, when he had passed, I said, “I want to meditate every day, every morning. I'm going to make this just a habit that happens every day no matter what along with my other morning gratitude practice.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  So, I started doing that. And, when I realized like we were home a lot–

Ben:  And, what did that look for you, the meditation?

Adam:  It's funny when you have experience with meditation and you teach it, you can let it vary. I can say I'm going to include a little bit of breathwork right now, maybe I'll follow a guided meditation, maybe I'll guide myself, maybe I'll include it as part of a ceremony with natural herbs and plants. Luckily for me, I've had a lot of experience, so I made a creative fun experience every day.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  There's something about I get up very early every day. My wife used to sleep very late before we had a child. So, it gave me a good at least hours.

Ben:  Spoiler alert, you had a child.

Adam:  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben:  But, we'll get to that.

Adam:  So, the meditations that I really focus on, I thought about my father a lot. Just a remarkable person. You felt the love when you got near him. He was a person that they have that phrase he'll give you his shirt off his back. I've seen him do this. And, when he had passed, people came out of the woodwork. The guys that he had hired to clean a pool or he did landscaping with and I saw them in person, they're crying. And, most people just shrug off and go, “I'm hiring someone.” He developed an interpersonal relationship with everyone he met. People loved him and his funeral was so many people.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  He was just such a remarkable person. He'd escaped communist Cuba. He was young. He was six years old and he had worked while being in school in the University of Miami just an incredible, incredible person. He probably took on too much stress of other people; family and friends. I think that's why he probably died a bit too early, but I had a feeling that he would have a part in my fertility journey. I always pictured having a son and him having a great part in my new family, him being part of the family, and just the joy he would feel. So, I had a lot of meditations thinking about him, also visualizing my son, visualizing my testicles filled with sperm, visualizing literally the moment–

Ben:  You would do this during your meditation literally like visualize fertility?

Adam:  For sure. I visualize Kristen telling me, “I'm pregnant,” coming out like a pregnancy test. I'm a firm believer we create whatever we want in this world. And–

Ben:  I'm sure the fertility clinic would have laughed their ass off for this technique.

Adam:  Oh, my gosh. They make you laugh anyways. The first time I went in there to get my sperm check, they sent me to a quest. And, she goes, “Oh, what are you doing?” I said, “Oh, I'm doing a fertility check.” She goes, “Oh, we're choking chickens today, huh?” I'm like, “Oh, man, this is a medical establishment.” She sends me into this room and it was a bathroom. I'm like, “What is going on?” She goes, “Alright, here's your cup.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Full-size mirror. It was a little awkward, but you got to laugh about all these things.

Ben:  Yeah, I've done the sperm test. They have kits now that they'll send to you. I forget the names of some of these. You can find them online but it's very, very similar. They send you a box and you got to figure out how to get your sperm in there or your semen in there and then send it off, freeze it and set it off.

Adam:  Oh, freeze it. Yeah, you have to give it to them within 48 hours–

Ben:  Yeah, you got to set off like ice pack, something like that. Yeah.

Adam:  Okay. So, I was meditating. At that time, I was developing forms of plant medicine that I thought would be more short-acting because I wouldn't say I enjoyed plant medicine ceremonies, but I like the outcome from them. I personally experienced tremendous suffering and challenges when I was doing these ceremonies. I hear about people go off and play the drums and have fun on an island somewhere. It was never like that for me. We took part in ceremonies where it was really facing your soul digging deep into what traumas I may have caused other people or put on myself. At least that's how I experienced it. It was a good way to look in the mirror in a more profound way in a shorter period of time. We talked about the smokable version of Ayahuasca.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, I decided I'm going to do this three or four times a week to connect potentially with the spirit of my son.

Ben:  This is almost like a microdose of ayahuasca.

Adam:  More potent though.

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  So, it's not as long in duration but it's more intense. And, I don't recommend people take it unless it's in a ceremonial setting. I have a lot of practice in this, so that's why I was able to do it myself. And, I've guided a lot of people and I've worked under shamans that are just phenomenal people in general. And, they do really good work. And, it's funny because it coincides so much with a lot of what you've said on podcasts about if these tools are to be used, they need to be used properly.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, everyone's different. They might not be a part of your life anymore. But, no matter what if it is, it needs to be held with a reverence and an honor for what we're doing. And, I don't think it's to see other gods and beings. People, I think, they misunderstand and they go for the fun and they misinterpret what's going on. I think it's a very interpersonal way that we can connect with the collective consciousness and see what's not there for our typical five senses.

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  But anyhow, I was able to connect with my father a lot and I think with my son a good amount. And, I just knew–

Ben:  Your son, before your son was born.

Adam:  Before he was born.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  This is before he was–that I was even told I had active sperm.

Ben:  Right.

Adam:  And, I just knew. I had a mindset that this is what's really going to happen and I was sitting there meditating. That would be an hour a couple times a week, but I really attributed to my gratitude practice and the meditation visualizing what was going to happen, feeling the emotion of it, of when my son would be born. And, I don't know what that's like.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I've never experienced someone else's birth, but I could feel it in my core, in my cells.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  And then, six months into that, I guess it was July of 2020, my wife said, “Go get checked.” And, when the doctor called me a few days ago, after the test, he said, “You have regular sperm,” like a normal guy's sperm. And, I was still on testosterone.

Ben:  And, at that point, had you kind of tapered off the Clomid and the HCG and everything?

Adam:  Oh, I stopped taking all that.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  I was able to get HCG and FSH. Again, I looked at the doses and I took an eighth of the dose. I said, “Let me give this a little bit of a shot.” I don't believe that you need to take these absurdly high doses. I used a lot of U-turn meal. It's more like nose-to-tail eating and talked to Jay Campbell who you connected me with.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Great guy. And, he really explained to me how there's an epidemic of men with low testosterone. He's seen men that just cannot have kids.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, I thought if I conquer this beast, this is something I'm going to be able to help more men with. Some men don't want to talk about this.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  It's all about being masculine. And, I totally understand that, but a guy that doesn't produce sperm, he keeps it quiet.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  A lot of times it affects his relationship. People get divorced because of this.

Ben:  Just imagine a hotel surrounded by nature, vineyards and gardens, this forest classified as a historical garden in a very special country at a hotel located in the oldest demarcated wine region in the world. Imagine this place has a state-of-the-art spot, 2,200 square meters, 10 treatment rooms, an indoor pool with underwater sound and chromotherapy. Imagine a kitchen team that brings to the table not just delicious food at this place but values environmental sustainability and wellness and local sensitivity and global sensibility. Imagine being able to be bathed in luxury and being able to be local, to buy a local and to eat local, not caged off of some fancy tourist but it's a part of the community and part of the torar of the region. 

Well, that's exactly what you experience in Portugal at their Six Senses luxury retreat. And, I'm going to be there for a special event that you can read up on at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SixSenses. It's called the Boundless Retreat. And, at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SixSenses, you can see everything we're doing. Every day starts with a healthy farmhouse breakfast, morning movement session with me, you get access to three different 60-minute spa treatments that you can choose from throughout the day, indoor pool and vitality suites, meditation, sound healing, an alchemy bar with Kokodama and yogurts and pickles and sprouts workshops, retreat meals all made from locally sourced organic produce, Q&As and sing-along sessions with me. This is going to be an amazing remarkable once in a lifetime experience. You get four nights full board accommodation in a deluxe room there at the facility. And, this thing, as you can imagine, is going to fill up fast. It's in Portugal at the Six Senses retreat in Portugal.

Again, all the details are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SixSenses. And, the dates are February 27th through March 3rd, 2023, February 27th through March 3rd, 2023. I hope to see you there.

Alright, families or people with kids or people with friends who have kids who like to hang out with you or people who want to have a family but don't want to work out with their family, I'm getting a little long in the tooth here. Here's what I'm getting at. I'm launching a family challenge. It's called the Boundless Family Challenge. So basically, as you might know, I just launched my book “Boundless Parenting,” and its knowledge and years of experience from not only me and my wife but over a dozen other rock star families and parents and educators and as part of the launch of the book, we're going to have a Boundless Family Challenge. It's a four-week challenge. And, you're going to get all the workouts, all the instructions, all the accountability that you need to actually get fit together as a family instead of everybody just doing their own separate thing at the gym. I'll actually be sharing with you my actual tactics for how I did everything from fitness walks to a group exercise sessions, to breathwork, to spirituality, a whole lot more with my own family and it's going to be fun. So, the challenge starts on January 30th.

You can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/BoundlessFamilyChallenge to claim your seat at the family table today. So, it's BenGreenfieldLife.com/BoundlessFamilyChallenge. Hope to see you there along with your fam.

There's a lot of men now because of the rampant emergence of these testosterone clinics and testosterone optimization therapies that like you kind of get started on this stuff early and they're unaware of a lot of things you're talking about when it comes to how to reverse that and still be able to have a child and a legacy and a family after making some of those mistakes of your youth, oh, you just want to be a swole, bro. 

So, you would also mention to me that the endocannabinoid system was something that you had somehow linked to fertility and you began to use different cannabinoids as well. Is that correct?

Adam:  I mean owning–that we produce CBD and we distribute. And, to me, it's the highest level of CBD. I've taken everything. I've tried hundreds of brands. And, what we were producing for my friends and family, these really small batches was just so potent. You actually got it. Right after I'd ordered labels and bottles.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I believe on Amazon.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I was just selling it to my friends so they could improve their sleep and just have a more balanced sensation.

Ben:  Yeah. That was the Elements CBD stuff–

Adam:  Element Health, yeah.

Ben:  Which I still use. You send me those droppers and I still do two or three droppers just about any evening where I've got levels of anxiety or stress. Probably five nights a week I'll use that and now you have the gummies which seem to work really well too. But, I've never really experienced a CBD like that that really seems to agree with my system, allow me to stave off anxiety. And, as opposed to smoking a joint or taking a hit on a vape pen, you still stay fully alert. 

And, in my opinion, the high levels of THC, they can be kind of a feminizing. It's kind of like a female plant. And, that in and of itself tends to impact testosterone. There was a recent study that showed that high levels of THC can actually impair mitochondrial function, particularly neural tissue. And so, you actually lose the ability of the mitochondria to function properly. There's a lot of issues. I think there's a time and a place for things like pain management, for example. I've had times when I've had, for example, stem cell protocols that leave you in a lot of pain for the first couple of days. And, I'll use something like THC rather than common opioids. And, I know you have a history of opioids. We can talk about that later. But, at the same time, I try to avoid THC whenever possible for a lot of the reasons of the side effects. 

But, the CBD that you make, were you actually getting the raw ingredients for that because it is super unique for some reason the way I feel on it?

Adam:  Yeah. So, we have family farms in Kentucky. And, my wife, it just so happens–

Ben:  Kentucky.

Adam:  Kentucky. To me, that's where we produce the strongest CBD. I'd like to grow in Florida eventually, but right now the rules are very, very strict.

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  And, Kentucky, we had some of the original licenses for research for CBD with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So, there's a long history of farmers and know what they're doing in terms of hemp, but all sorts of crops. And, it just so happens that my wife's family is from Vermont and they have family friends with farms. And, we'll do work with them as well. But, how I discovered CBD was in 2016 and I was using it and I really enjoyed the effects and then I just started noticing it was tapering off.

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  And, when I started studying the effects of CBD on the endocannabinoid system, how it works with serotonin receptors, we can go into details, it's not supposed to have that effect where you lose the sensations of better sleep, anti-anxiolytic effects, all the cardiovascular effects, improved focus during the day. You shouldn't be losing this. You don't need higher doses like you would with say pharmaceutical drugs or even THC. 

So, I started finding out that these companies as they grew, they were moving to California and Colorado and we started doing more research, we were flying out there and we were seeing that they were mass producing these plants. And, there's nothing wrong with mass producing as a company grows and you have to sell more. That's what happens. And, they're hiring the cheapest labor possible, but all the grow techniques from the quality of the soil to the water they're using, everything was just starting to go downhill. And, they began, this is really interesting, using genetics from high THC plants and they were genetically modifying it to lower the THC and increase the CBD. 

So, they weren't using these old, old strains of hemp, which has been around for thousands of years, they were actually trying to make it better and better, just like they're using CBD isolates for everything in synthetic CBD and synthetic cannabinoids, which aren't necessarily better. Sometimes we have to take a few steps back. And, we developed a really old strain, an old industrial strain from the U.K. and there's something about the cannabinoid profile that is just phenomenal. It has the perfect amount of what I think of CBD, CBN, CBG and–

Ben:  So, it's not just CBD in your product.

Adam:  We're doing full spectrum to the max. We're doing a crude formula, which means it's going through even less filtration, distillation. I mean, you've tried ours, you can't mix it with food. Some people put it in their coffee. It's not bad, but it's like you're eating the earth.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Other companies, they're making CBD flavored with strawberry, with mint. And, I get customers that want that kind of stuff and I say, “Look, if you really want the benefits and the effects and you want to connect with the earth and feel balance, you got to get over your sense of taste a little bit.

Ben:  Yeah. And, you use that during the day, you had mentioned for focus.

Adam:  Yeah.

Ben:  And, my primary use for it is sleep and relaxation. But, if you were to use it for focus, tell me about the dosages and the difference between daytime use and coffee or for focus or whatever and what you'd use in the evening. What kind of eyebrow is going to vary widely from person to person but approximately?

Adam:  Well, I used a substantially lower dose during the day. The diurnal effect of the endocannabinoid system, which is something I dove into after hearing you mention it on a podcast. CBD itself doesn't attach to the cannabinoid receptors, it's not directly activating them. It works by degrading FAH, which is the enzyme responsible for degrading anandamide, which is the primary endocannabinoid, the one that we produce internally. So, that's CBD. But, when you have a full spectrum formula. I'm getting CBG, CBN, minuscule amounts of THC. And, the way these work on the endocannabinoid system–

Ben:  When you say minuscule amounts, by the way, you mean less than 0.3? Is that the–

Adam:  THC is less than 0.3.

Ben:  So, there's still mild amounts of THC in it but nowhere near what you'd experience for getting high or something like that?

Adam:  Oh, yeah, you won't get high unless you're eating a couple gummies or taking a few really big droppers.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, I have found if I take four droppers of your stuff and I do that before bed, if I wake up at midnight or 1:00 to pee, I feel like I'm a little bit high, nowhere near if I were to take a THC gummy or something like that. You can feel the THC a little bit.

Adam:  Oh, for sure. And, especially with our new gummies, I formulated them, just have slightly more. Still all within the legal amount, what's allowed. But yeah, the gummies I use more recreationally. But, circling back to what you said daytime use, I try to use very small amounts. And, if you take it with your coffee or tea, you don't get the drop in adenosine. You know how they talk about waiting at least an hour and a half to drink your caffeine in the morning? Otherwise, you're going to experience a crash later on in the day.

Ben:  Right.

Adam:  Well, CBD also works very well with caffeine in preventing that crash by maintaining your levels of adenosine.

Ben:  Would that be something that something like theanine would do as well? A lot of people mix theanine with coffee to enhance the alpha brainwave production and kind of allow the coffee to be oxidized a little bit more slowly. From what I understand, you think that CBD could be used similarly?

Adam:  Oh, even more effectively. I personally like tea. I use a Yogi Brand tea called Vanilla Energy, which is mind-blowing, has different forms of tea with theanine.

Ben:  Really?

Adam:  Yeah. And, I'm usually so focused from the moment I wake up and I start that gratitude, practice my meditation. I'm ready to go all day. But, days, I don't know, especially before when my baby wasn't sleeping as much and they're a couple months old and they're feeding every few hours and we had them in our room the entire time, I needed a little extra focus so I would take it in the morning.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, it's phenomenal, the effects. I took a little bit this morning and I just felt so sharp.

Ben:  So, back to the fertility piece, tell me about what happened in terms of the cannabinoid system and fertility.

Adam:  Oh, right. So, in my research, I discovered that there are receptors, cannabinoid receptors on the testicles and the whole reproductive system of both males and females and on sperm cells, as well as eggs. So, if this is allowing us to function more optimally in every way, I consider the endocannabinoid system sort of our interface from the human body to nature. 

I don't know if I use an example on our previous podcast if we were walking in the forest and a tiger came out, scares the living crap out of you, the fight or flight response kicks in. Whatever the outcome might be, eventually the nervous system has to calm down and there's a whole cascade of hormones neurotransmitters that contribute to this. Without the endocannabinoid system functioning at a high level, it's going to take much longer for the body to reach homeostasis. That's on a hormone level. But, the endocannabinoid system is responsible for so much in terms of muscle, digestion. The central nervous system is filled with cannabinoid receptors, our immune response. I haven't been sick in five or six years.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  And, this is in the middle of COVID. I was training with people that found out they had COVID and we are grappling, literally fighting, spitting, sweat, perspiration, breathing on each other. I never felt anything. I haven't had a cold in forever. And, I believe that talks to what CBD can do for your immune system as well.

So, coming back to fertility, there haven't been distinct studies on it and every doctor said, “We can't recommend taking CBD to improve fertility.” But, that was a major component of it. I increased my doses. I was taking more during the day, a little bit more at night. My wife was also taking some. When she got pregnant, we changed, we took her off CBD. We used it as needed. I completely cut out THC. I'm a fan of THC. I think it has its place like anything. I think everything is use or misuse. Nothing is inherently bad. And, if God gave it to us, it has a use whether it's for us or not. 

And yeah, on that fertility journey, I just knew, I just got a sense. When I hold something, when I hold CBD, maybe it's my practice of seeing things not necessarily with these senses, when I feel my CBD, I knew it was good for my body. And, I didn't even want to take HCG, but I felt it, there was something about it. Clomid, I didn't respond that well, I just had a weird sense about it and there are odd side effects with Clomid. But, people have to find out what's right for them in terms of what's going to improve their fertility. Some people have to trust the medical establishment, which I get, but I really encourage people to do their own research, realize that CBD and a lot of other natural compounds can really contribute to improving your fertility, men and women.

Ben:  When did you actually find out that your wife was pregnant? And, how'd you feel?

Adam:  So, this is a pretty interesting story. At that point, I think I was 38, and I said, “You know what, I'm going to freeze my sperm” because I didn't want a long-term use of HCG, FSH. And, when I actually got that call saying your sperm is very high, I said, “You know what, we can wait this out and we'll continue trying, but I'm going to go and freeze this right now.” So, I did a deep dive into in vitro fertilization and froze my sperm. And, I was like, “Okay, that was my golden ticket.” I know it's here. And then, we started thinking, “You know what, we are not super young anymore and I want to have a child as young as possible.” I plan to live forever, but why not enjoy every moment of it? So, we decided to go through with IVF. There was a lot of steps you can take ahead of time, but I didn't want to put a necessary trauma through my wife. It's much harder on the female. Blood work literally every day or several times a week. And, that's hard.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Huge needles. A young woman's vein. I mean, we could probably take it, but–

Ben:  Why do they have to do all the blood work on the female?

Adam:  They're constantly checking for their ovulation levels.

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  And, with IVF, it's so precise. So, we wanted to make sure we got it on the first bout. And, we were blessed when they basically hyperinflate the ovaries to release more eggs. She had 19 eggs. And, it's funny because that's an extremely high number. I think five to 10 is normal. And, when they did an ultrasound, it said she is 10. I'm like, “Okay.” The concern there is that once it's combined with the sperm and formed embryos, you get a very small percentage. Some people only have one or two active embryos and that's their chance. But, hiding behind the follicle in her body, this is all new terminology to me, I'm not a fertility expert. There was nine more eggs hiding. So, when it came out, she had 19 viable eggs, they combined my sperm with it that day. It's truly fascinating experience.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  It's funny because they had her on so many programs and taking so many things. And, I cut out a ton of it. They wanted to put her on thyroid hormone and I changed it to Armour Thyroid, a more natural version. We didn't tell the doctors this, but blood work showed, “Oh, she's in all the perfect levels for everything.” So, there are a lot of natural compounds that can mimic pharmaceutical versions with a lot less side effects. But, basically, we got five embryos, five very highly rated embryos, which were three boys and two girls. I didn't even know this at the time, but you can choose the sex of your baby. Some of the highest rated one was a boy. And, I told her, I said, “I've always pictured us having a boy.” And, she's like, “I love it, let's do it.” We just vibe so tight.

Ben:  When you say the highest-rated one, what does that mean?

Adam:  They rate the embryos in terms of, I guess, the chromosomes, the quality of the chromosomes?

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  Like the viability of if it's going to lead to a pregnancy. People don't realize that a majority of pregnancies, if a woman tests positive or has a positive pregnancy test, most of the time they lose it. Or, before she even takes the test, it just comes out of the body. God or whatever, if you want to say the human body wasn't meant to have it, that's what happens. It's a natural process. And, most people don't even realize it's happening. So, out of the 19, five of them. So, I don't know what that percentage is, about 25% chance that if I had impregnated her naturally, it was only a 25% chance that she would have a healthy embryo.

So, another benefit to IVF is you can test the embryos. We did genetic testing to make sure there was no Down syndrome and basically anything else. So, you have almost a worry-free pregnancy, which is incredible. And, as much as I didn't want to do IVF at first, the more research I did and the more heart intent, and the more I held it in a sacred manner, the more I was okay with the whole process.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, the more I let myself surrender to the long-term goal. It's a minor procedure where they put the embryo inside and it was mind-blowing to me because we sit there and they have an ultrasound and the doctor, she says, look in this one area. It's the ovary or the uterus and you're going to see half the time, 50% of the time, you see a tiny little star a little spark. And, that's when the embryo is connecting with the uterus and essentially conception just happened. And, she said I'm a scientist, I'm not supposed to say these things, but I think that's when God accepted that you are now pregnant and conceiving. When I heard her say that, I said, we're really seeing eye to eye, you're not just a typical doctor attributing everything just to basic science.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Because it is a miracle. Pregnancy is a miracle.

Ben:  Absolutely.

Adam:  Having a child is a miracle beyond anything I've experienced. And, instead of a little spark, you saw it fly like a shooting star on camera. And, even the doctor goes, “Whoa, whoa, I've never seen that before.” And, it was such a powerful experience. Of course, I'm in tears. And, I have it on camera and I had to send it to my entire family. And, someone said to me, “Man.” I was like, “Yeah, that's a little Superman flying.” And, they go, “No, that's Thor.” And, I was like, “That is Thor.” And, it's funny that's his middle name now.

Ben:  That's your son's middle name. What's his first name?

Adam:  Maxim.

Ben:  Maxim Thor.

Adam:  So, he's Maxim Thor Wenguer. So, he sounds a little superhero.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  The interesting thing is he was the highest-rated embryo too. And, the level, the speed of his development, his immune system, I mean, this kid is miraculous, he's learning things so quickly way ahead of the curve. Not like this matters at a young age, it's just very interesting to see.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I've seen premature babies turn into complete geniuses and 6'4″ athletes. So, who knows the correlation between size, intelligence at a young age, but it's amazing. We've taught him some cool stuff I'll get into later.

Ben:  Did your wife follow a special diet during pregnancy?

Adam:  Oh, yeah, nose to tail. We found out that in Africa, they were doing studies that kids born or women that were pregnant more in the dry season, their babies had lower IQs and lower birth weights. And, in the wet season, when there was more greens and they were eating more greens and there was obviously more animals available to eat, their babies were larger. They had healthier pregnancies and they had smoother pregnancies. So, we made sure she eats nose to tail, tons of organs, organ pills, a lot of greens, vegetables, just the healthiest stuff. Obviously, no seed oil.

Ben:  Sounds almost kind of a Weston A. Price type of diet.

Adam:  Exactly, exactly. Raw, a lot of quality dairy. Everything was so specific.

Ben:  Did you do much in a way of fermented vegetables, sauerkraut and kimchi, and things like that?

Adam:  Of course, we love that stuff. Keeping probiotics very high, antioxidants, and good levels. Sometimes too much antioxidant is not a good thing.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Especially if she's maintaining–she was kickboxing and doing MMA with me. Not sparring till month eight and a half.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  And, people didn't see her from the front. They saw her, let's say, from the back and they saw her hitting pads. And, she could have been in the UFC top 10 in her division.

Ben:  Really?

Adam:  She is a beast of an athlete. She kicks like a mule. Her grappling is high level. And, people would see her from the back and they're like, “When's her fight?” And then, she'd turn and she's nine months pregnant, she's like, “What are you talking on?” People are just mind-blown. So, the way we eat, the way we think–she we meditate with me a lot each morning. And, I would read to her. I'd read to Max in the womb about how we want to have a birth, what we're going to do in the future. We're just preparing ourselves mentally and just connecting more with our source. 

And, when she came to me, it was so funny, she said she had an appointment and I was going to train jiu-jitsu. Just a typical blood work appointment. I'm on the mat sparring really hard. I get off the mat, so I'm drenched. I see her just dropping into the gym. I'm so happy to see her. And, she goes, “Oh, yeah, I brought you a protein shake. I'm like, “Oh, I need it, I am just drained.” So, we opened up the cooler. And inside, I see this thing and it says “Biohazard on the bag.” I'm like, “What is this?” And, I open up and it's a pregnancy test and it's positive. And, I just like–

Ben:  Oh, wow, cool.

Adam:  Oh, my god, you go from people trying to choke you unconscious and break your limbs to running circles around the gym with my arm, my hands in the air. There's people training like MMA, boxing on the gym, lifting deadlifts, cleans, and I'm just sprinting in a jiu-jitsu kimono at the top of my lungs saying how happy I am.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  I don't know. That was the most joy I experienced till he was born.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, I mean, it's such a cool story and I'm so happy for you. I mean–

Adam:  You played a huge part, so I'm grateful.

Ben:  Yeah, we had a lot of chats about the fertility thing back in the day. Yeah. But, it's cool to see it all, all come to being.

Adam:  Especially when a doctor tells you you're not going to have kids.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  So, you just say, “Okay, my life is going to be a little bit different, but I knew deep down I was going to change that.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  We changed our paths every day, every choice, every moment.

Ben:  Yeah. Speaking of changing paths, I want to touch on this. It's a little bit different than the fertility discussion, but you actually had a significant struggle. We've talked about medicines and a little bit about drugs, but you actually were pretty heavy into opioids, weren't you?

Adam:  Opioids, which eventually led to heroin. And, I was using cocaine to stay awake in college while I was on all that getting good grades in school, still trying to body build, so it completely fell apart. Opioid addiction is just run rampant and I'm just grateful it happened to me before the fentanyl, the fentanyl epidemic because that is just killing people left and right. It was bad enough as it is. But, prior to college, I was kickboxing, doing Muay Thai and I suffered a leg injury. 

We talked about on the previous podcast I got hit in the perennial nerve and my foot blew up. It looked like a football. And, I was walking around on crutches and at the time, a lot of people were having recreational use of oxycontin. I was like 17 years old and I tried and I was like, “Wow, this is a fun thing.” Didn't really get addicted at that point, but in college, it became rampant and people realized you can smoke it, you can snort it. I guess people were injecting it. And, they were doing it as a party drug. And, I never really understood addiction. I had seen addiction before but I had used more pots, psychedelics. I tried cocaine a few times but I never experienced full-blown addiction. And, I just started using it and it made everything really fun. Initially, when you start using opiates, it actually improves so much because your dopamine levels are so high that you feel good doing everything, including menial tasks. And, sometimes you're in a class you don't really enjoy and you say, “Oh, I'll just take a little more of this” and now I'm having fun communicating with the professor. I'm able to study longer. But then, the doses, you have to start getting higher and higher and higher.

And, I remember one time, I'm like, “This is becoming too expensive. And, I'm not feeling 100%, let me just stop.” So, I stopped and I rode my bike–

Ben:  Does it make you very constipated too?

Adam:  Yeah. But, of course, I know my way around it. As a young biohacker, you take SENNA or certain amounts of caffeine at the right time. And, the more you use it, the less constipated you get. It's usually in the initial rush of using it. And, I rode my bike to school and I started feeling under the weather like I had the flu or a cold. And, I just take off school that day. I was 19 years old on the phone with my mom and I just like every minute it's getting worse and I told her I'm not feeling well. And, she said, “Go to the doctor,” just normal parent response. And, I said, “You know what, I'm just going to take one of my pills and give me a minute.” I take it. And, 20 minutes into our conversation, every symptom goes away. You have a runny nose, gone, headache, clogged head, body aches, everything's gone. And, I felt like Superman again. So, I told my mom, I said, “Wow, I just took my pain meds.” And, she goes, “Yeah, that's called addiction.” I go, “No, no, I'm just taking two or three a day.” But, 80 milligrams, it came out to like–

Ben:  Two or three oxys a day, geez.

Adam:  Of 80 milligrams oxys, which I think came out to something 64 Percocets a day. And, sometimes I would say, “Oh, man, I want a stronger hit, let me snort it or smoke it.” And, it was so common in my school those days, in the university in the party scene.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  I guess they hadn't hit the addiction part yet. So, people were using it in bars and clubs and we just thought it was another recreational fun drug. But, at that point, it was super hard to get off. I actually couldn't, I had to stay on it for as long as possible. I tried weaning and eventually, I tried Suboxone, which was another medication to help get you off. I tried everything under the sun. Eventually, just had to suck it up, lay in bed, sweat it out for a few days–

Ben:  Just stop cold turkey and go through the pain and suffering.

Adam:  I mean I weaned as much as I could. I use Suboxone. These are not perfect solutions. You still feel it. But, the first three days, it's funny you're in it and you don't wish it on your worst enemy. You say like, “Oh, my god, if I'm gone tomorrow, I'm okay, this is pain.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  In such a weird way because it's physical, it feels like there's something trying to rip out of your spine. And, these itches under your skin and you're trying to claw. You're hot but you're freezing. You're shivering but you're sweating. It's the weirdest sensation. It's horrible. You can't think straight.

Eventually, I got clean. The physical symptoms go away but the mental symptoms. And, what you've done in the time that you're using it is the really detrimental effect. We don't grow emotionally. That's what I really came to realize is in the entire time like, “Why was I using it?” Not just for pain, I had injuries from MMA. That's the excuse I make, but it's to not face our emotions. It's to avoid having emotional intelligence and facing real challenges. Sure physically doing jiu-jitsu, fighting. These are hard things. Running miles, lifting weights. These are hard. But, there is a component of your mental and spiritualness that we can avoid with drugs. And, I find that most people do it. Whether it's painkillers, whether it's barbiturates, food, technology, people will find any type of escape to avoid facing their soul? I believe Young said that. So, I ended up coming across a meditation class.

If you want to hear how, I had completely got clean, getting clean isn't just ending your physical symptoms but it's actually addressing the root cause. Why am I going to this? What in my life is happening that I have a drive to do drugs, addictive drugs? And, I discovered meditation in a class based on a book called “Taming the Anxious Mind” from Jon Kabat-Zinn. And, it was just all about mindfulness meditation. It's a very simple book. It's a small book. Anyone can pick up and get the gist of it.

Ben:  “Taming the Anxious Mind.”

Adam:  I'm sorry, the class was called Taming the Anxious Mind, the book is called “Wherever You Go, There You are.”

Ben:  Oh, I've heard of this. Okay.

Adam:  Yeah. I mean, I've read it maybe five or six times now. It is next level in terms of just grasping the concept, the simple concept of meditation. We complicate it all the time. We think meditation–

Ben:  We complicate meditation?

Adam:  Yeah. We think you have to sit on a mountain. We're trying to seek enlightenment. We have to feel something in particular. But, at least mindful meditation is about being okay with what you feel right then, which essentially is surrendering to the moment. It's listening to God and hearing what He wants to say and what He wants you to feel. I say He but it could be whatever you interpret as your god. And meditation, it just resonated with me so deeply. The first time I did it, I was guided, it hit me so hard. And, I understood so many synchronicities from that point. And, when the semester ended, it was a three-month course and it ended and I talked to the professor and I said, “Hey, what's the next one?” And, he goes, “This is it, it's a one-time course. If you want, you can come back and help teach. I see it's really sitting with you.” So, I did that, another three months, I helped teach, which was fun, but I learned the fundamentals of it of what goes into meditation, taming your mind, understanding your breath, little tricks and tips that stop people from meditating. And, there's so many now with Muse devices. I bought one after you had talked about it.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Interesting stuff. There's so many tools.

Ben:  I mess around with that one a little bit myself. Yeah, it's interesting to get actual feedback on your meditation.

Adam:  Meditation was a little easier back then because we didn't have social media in 2003-ish. We didn't have cell phones that did what they do now. But, either way, I ended up finding a Zen Buddhist meditation center. And, it was cool to me because it had this sense of mystery behind it. I went there and it was just a house, two-story house. I walked inside and there was a dude with like, he's the Abbott of the Zen center. And, I was raised Jewish but I had stepparents that were Christian and Catholic, so I had a reverence for religion. And, I didn't know what Buddhism was. I thought it was like, “Oh, this is a religion in itself.” And, I talked to him and he told me that's not what it is. We practice meditation. There is a Buddhist religion, but we think sometimes that actually gets in the way of it. This is just the principles we use for enhancing our meditative practice. And, I walked inside, and then he took me upstairs where they were teaching where they were having a traditional meditation. And, it was a Buddhist temple in Tibet or India or Japan. I was just blown away. I had this cool–since we're 19-, 20-year-old kid–

Ben:  And, this is Florida.

Adam:  In Gainesville.

Ben:  Gainesville.

Adam:  When I went to school outside of University of Florida.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, I gained certain areas, certain places like if you go to a temple, a church, a place where a lot of people have meditated. You feel it. It's a very tangible sensation. And, I got there and I sat there and I'd only meditated 30 minutes at a time. And, we sat for two hours. And, meditation is not a blissful easy thing. Meditation is a very challenging thing. It could be the most challenging thing. Sitting there not doing anything, not thinking or addressing your thoughts, most people think it's this easy way to just bliss out and be lazy. I think it's the very opposite.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  My teacher and it's a famous quote they used to say, “Meditate like your head's on fire” with that level of intensity. And, that just showed me another level of what was going on behind the scene. Meditation allowed me to see in between the lines a bit. If we're here, I use my five senses to see me and to see you or the grass in the chair. There is another world that we don't see, a world of intuition, a frequency and energy that we often neglect, especially when we're addicted to our phones or addicted to some sort of drug. And, I found that I had a lifelong journey ahead once I got into meditation and that addiction was just a thing of my past. I realized right then what I was using the drugs for and I saw a fairly clear path on how to get out of this mindset and change everything.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  Yeah.

Ben:  Wow.

Adam:  Of course, we had plant medicine–

Ben:  And, during that time, were you also still involved in jiu-jitsu or did you pick that up later on the martial arts component?

Adam:  I started martial arts like jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, very young. Actually, started doing karate when I was 4. It was very different. I sparred and fought a lot and it was cool and I won tournaments. And then, it was point fighting. And, the odd thing was I remember it to this day I think I was 7, I was getting first place. I was ranked very high. And, I came across this kid, he was very athletic, bigger than me, and I thought, “You know what, I'm just going to use my techniques, get my points, win.” And, the second the ref went like this, he came sprinting at me and I was like, “This is not what you're supposed to do.” And, he jumped and kicked me in the mouth, full speed, beautiful kick. At least to me, it was out of the “Matrix” at the time, but of course, I was 7, that hadn't come out. And, he hit me in the mouth and it was boom, rude awakening. 

And, I look at my dad who is my coach at the time and I could see a little shock in him too. And, he's like, “You got this, you got this.” And, I had to try to dig in deep. And, I'm like, “Ready, fight.” And, he just does it again. Boom, the same thing. At that point, I just said, “I want out of this.” I didn't quit, but I think I probably gave up to an extent. Let him hit me, I get taken to the bathroom. My dad's there. I'm bleeding from my mouth. This is not a normal thing in a Taekwondo tournament for kids. And, it was a rude awakening to reality right there.

I'd experienced death in my family, certain things like that, but for me personally on a physical level, this just woke me up. I was like, “I just got hit by reality like it was a ton of bricks.” I thought I'm little Billy Badass here. And, I gave up training for a long time, just focused more on fitness. I'd done a little bit around 1819, but I really liked bodybuilding. So, I guess we get into the superficial aspect of things. We like how it looks. We like how it feels. We like that the opposite sex is attracted to it. There's so many components to fitness especially bodybuilding that is very superficial.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Fitness not so much.

Ben:  Confidence that it gives you.

Adam:  Yeah, and it's great. It's a good background. When you understand the human body, this carries over into every facet of our existence. But, I learned right then that men, in particular, we have this concept in mind that it's very disillusioned where we think we can defend ourselves at any moment. We think if a guy came up and pushed me, a switch will flip, I'll just go crazy, “I'll take them out.” We all have this belief that that can happen. But, the truth is so far from that. You need to train for combat, for defense, whether it's armed or unarmed. You need to train this extensively. If you don't, it's like saying, “Oh, I've run marathons and that means I'm going to be a very effective basketball player.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Everything in life is an art, is a skill, from making love to anything we're learning, gardening. Everything has to be learned and acquired. And, I realize this, and especially at a time growing up in Miami, it was tough. We had talked about this and I said, “You know what, I want to start my martial arts training again.” I started a little bit later. I started when I was 27. And, I loved jiu-jitsu before that, little bouts of it for a few months and I said, “Right now, I'm dedicating myself to it and I'm going to get my black belt.” And, jiu-jitsu is a very different art from every other martial art. People don't understand jiu-jitsu until they've done it. It just looks like you've done it a few times with your kids. I know that.

Ben:  My kids now been rolling for eight years.

Adam:  Really, eight?

Ben:  Yeah, I've jumped in a few times, but yeah, they're doing well.

Adam:  Oh, it's amazing.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Eight years is significant, especially at that age. It's like learning a new language.

Ben:  Yeah, they start in the garage when they were six and now they're 14, still go two or three times a week.

Adam:  Really? I didn't know they kept going.

Ben:  They fought a few tournaments, so yeah. I almost wish that I had stuck with training with them but I just didn't have the time to devote to it. And, it's still something I see myself jumping back into at some point.

Adam:  So, they can't beat you up in the future or no? I'm just kidding.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Adam: Jiu-jitsu is a different martial art. It's a spiritual martial art. It's an intellectual martial art. It's different from I'm throwing a kick, I'm throwing a punch, I'm setting traps with my footwork, my head movement. Other martial arts are great. I love Muay Thai. I love boxing, wrestling, but jiu-jitsu mimics our lives.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  That's the cool thing about it. They call it human chess. And, I went into it the first time so egotistical. I thought, “You know what, I'm going to be a better fighter. I'm going to pick up a new skill set so I can be more complete. Maybe, I'll try to fight professionally.” And, I got on the mat and I was just a savage trying to use all my power and all my strength, all my technique, everything. And, it's funny as you progress, your goals change so much, it becomes such an art to remaining calm under fire.

Ben:  Yeah, it's high-level problem-solving.

Adam:  When someone's on top of you literally trying to take your life away.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  It is a game of life and death. And, before death occurs, you say, “I'm done.” I forget where I heard this, you say, “Okay, tap, tap, tap.” They let go. You hug your buddy again, you say, “Alright, let's do it again.” But, by me tapping is essentially him saying, “If this was on the battlefield, I just killed you and I'm going on to the next person.” And, there's something to that. It's figurative or it's a metaphorical death. And, I like that because I've done a lot of psychedelics, a lot of, I don't like saying plant medicine, that's so overused, and I'd experience death to many aspects of parts of me. I think life and death are things we–well, life we engage. I think death is something people avoid. It's almost every decision in people's lives is, what can I do to prolong death further? They don't want to go to a hospital and visit a family member or we don't want to be around hospitals. We take supplements, we eat to lengthen our lives because we're so afraid of the last moment and what's going to happen after.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  A lot of my practice is getting accustomed to death, understanding it, trying to know it on a grander scale. But, in terms of jiu-jitsu, it's an ego crusher. When I go in and I was really built at the time because I was lifting heavy, 190 pounds, 5% body fat, totally focused, and some young dude, that's a computer engineer, that's 150 pounds, is beating me five times in six minutes. That's a wake-up call and a kick to your ego real hard.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  And, if you maintain that mindset of the ego, you're going to quit. And, I think they say 90% of people, yeah, 90% of people that start jiu-jitsu don't make it to blue belt. Blue belt usually takes one year. Only 10% of those people make it to blue belt. And, of that 10%, only 1% make it to black belt. It took me 10 years to get my black belt. Jiu-jitsu is safe, but when you take it, you go in a bowl in a China shop–

Ben:  So, 10 years, that was pretty recent then that you got your black belt.

Adam:  Right. I've been doing it for 12 years, but I got my black belt in June of 2021.

Ben:  Okay.

Adam:  From Jonatas Gurgel. He used to be the head jiu-jitsu coach in American Top Team, which is an MMA gym that is world-renowned. They're one of the biggest and most successful MMA gyms in the world. And, he taught jiu-jitsu there to some of the highest caliber of fighters in the world. Two of his students, Brian and Kevin Mahecha, we call them the twins, the Mahecha twins, they were part of me getting my black belt. And, it's so funny like Jonatas, he came from Brazil, a very traditional jiu-jitsu from a lineage that goes so far back, [01:21:51] _____, it's Brazilian and this is a world-renowned jiu-jitsu and MMA gym that's brought some of the best fighters in the entire world to the UFC. Andre Pederneiras gave his coach a black belt. And, these are legends in the sport. These are not even just regular black belts, these are people that have dedicated their life to the art.

And, the twins Brian and Kevin Mahecha, one is specialist in kinesiology fitness training, the other one is a software engineer. And, they're twins. And, they bring their approach to jiu-jitsu where they create systems. So, I'm not going there on the mat and they're going to say, “Hey, you're going to learn a choke today. You practice it for a week and then pray that it's ingrained in your nervous system.” These guys develop such distinct systems where there's branches. They call it a tree. So, the roots of the tree come up and they say, “Okay, this week, we're working on this branch and there's a few smaller branches we'll work on that we're going to come back and go back to the tree and then come to this branch.” It's a very systematic approach and to me the most effective way. Probably, if I trained more, six, seven days a week, twice a day, I probably could have gotten my black belt sooner. These guys are geniuses in the art.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  But, I had Element Health, I had my fitness training going on, a lot of clients for wealth or wellness and health. And, guys like us, we do a lot of things.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  You told me once, the life of an entrepreneur. I don't sleep as much as I like, but I'm motivated and hungry all the time.

Ben:  Yeah, yup. A lot of the world's leaders, they're tired a little bit of the time.

Adam:  Yeah.

Ben:  It's okay. I think it was the stoic philosopher I was reading about in Ryan Holiday's book, “Discipline is Destiny” recently and it was this idea that it's so comfortable underneath the covers in the morning. You could just stay there, but is that what life's about or is it about comfort or is it about battling that urge to stay in bed and said, “Get up and be impactful.” I think maybe 1% of people actually accomplish that.

Adam:  Do you still feel that urge to stay in bed?

Ben:  Oh, man, every morning.

Adam:  Really?

Ben:  Yeah. Every morning, there's that slight feeling of the resistance to getting up and going out to the proverbial garden and picking the weeds yet again that you know are going to pop up the next day. But then, once you get up and that light hits your eyes and you jump into what it is that you're called to do, what your purpose is in life and you have to have that purpose and that's what gets you out of bed in the morning, knowing what that purpose is, then it's a resistance that's always there in the same way that as Steven Pressfield talks about in books like “The War of Art,” there's always a little bit of resistance to writing, to creating. But, if the resistance weren't there, it wouldn't be quite as magical an experience or as meaningful an experience. Everybody would do it. But, by overcoming that resistance, you step out onto the battlefield, you cross that portal from the ordinary world in the hero's journey to the great adventure. And, a lot of people like the comfort of the ordinary world, but the ordinary world despite its comfort hold you back from being the true human that you're called to be.

So, it's been cool seeing your journey. It's in the past, what, four or five years, not only your journey of fatherhood but getting your black belt jiu-jitsu, building this massively successful CBD company, and yes, it's just been really cool to see your journey, man. And, I appreciate you.

Adam:  Oh, thank you.

Ben:  What's that? Yeah.

Adam:  I mean, I owe so much to you, the knowledge you've instilled in me, the friendship, just being able to reach out to you. And, I don't know, know that you have a great support from people with the like mind. And, it's so funny as I've seen you grow over the years–has the birds fly away, that was wild. I've seen you grow over the years. It's mirrored a lot of my growth. You'll never leave fitness behind, but your purpose has grown.

Ben:  Right.

Adam:  And, my purpose was growing at the same time and your motivation to so many people. I know you don't want to hear, I'm not trying to blow smoke up your ass, but I appreciate my good friends that have helped me along the way.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  It's so much about connection.

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  In this day and age, people think we have hundreds and hundreds of real friends. And, it's are your online friends your friends?

Ben:  Yeah.

Adam:  Maybe they are, but I think there's a handful of people that have a significant impact in your life. And, that's part of the purpose. Cultivating that garden of those friendships and those loved ones.

Ben:  Yeah. Back to your father, right? And, you were talking about his funeral. At the end of the day, one of the most important considerations on your deathbed is, “Did I love adequately? And, was I loved adequately?” And, the only way for that to occur was for you to actually have relationships and friendships that go deep and be on digital. We can as biohackers or health enthusiasts or fitness junkies or whatever spend our whole lives optimizing our bodies and you forget about optimizing our relationships. And, that's just something I've learned as I've grown older is there's nothing as meaningful as your relationship with God and your relationship with people. And, if that's your priority, that's the pedestal that you start with, then everything else just fills in the gaps beautifully. So, to love people, love God, and I think it's a great message, your journey is inspiring, Adam. Thank you for coming on the show.

Adam:  Thank you.

Ben:  Once again. And, for everybody listening in, I'll put all the shownotes and link to Adam's and my previous podcast if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/AdamWenguer, A-D-A-M W-E-N-G-U-E-R. Yes, I had to look at my computer to double-check one more time that I was spelling the name correctly, but I think I've nailed it now. I'm not going to mispronounce your name for the next 10 years.  Thanks for coming on the show, Adam.

Adam:  No, thank you for having me and being this amazing environment.

Ben:  Listening to the birds. 

Adam:  Yeah.

Ben:  No horses and ghosts, but those birds are wild. Alright, man.

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.

My guest on today's show is Adam Wenguer, who has grown to be a friend of mine after we met while training at a gym in Miami Beach, Florida. Adam grew up in Miami in a Cuban Jewish household and attended the University of Florida. He started martial arts at a young age and continues an extensive Jiu Jitsu practice as a Black Belt as well as training in boxing and Muay Thai kickboxing.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-And much more…

Upcoming Events:

• Six Senses Retreat: February 27, 2023 – March 3, 2023

Join 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 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!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

– Adam Wenguer:

• Element Health CBD (use code BEN15 to save 15%)
• The Official CBD FAQ: Everything You’ve Always Wanted To Know About CBD, Combining Psychedelics With Cannabinoids, Smokeable Ayahuasca, Microdosing With Plant Medicine & Much More!

– Podcasts:

• Is Metformin Really Dangerous, Little-Known Peptides For Muscle Gain & Fat Loss, Testosterone Replacement Therapy & Much More with Jay Campbell.

– Books:

• Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Boundless Cookbook by Ben Greenfield
• Discipline Is Destiny by Ryan Holiday
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

– Other Resources:

• Sous Vide Wand
• Water Bath
• Stasher bags
• Traeger Grill
• Mason Jar
• Coffee
• Cayenne
• Sea Salt
• Paprika
• Tea
• Muse (use code BENGREENFIELD to save 20%)
• Taming the Anxious Mind: An 8-Week Mindfulness Meditation Group at a University Counseling Center
• Jonatas Gurgel
• American Top Team

Episode sponsors:

BioStack Labs. BioStack Labs have formulated their NAD Regen to help you enhance your NAD Status in the most efficient way possible. Buy 2 NAD Regen for $134, get 1 FREE (worth $67!) at BioStackLabs.com/Ben

BON CHARGE is a holistic wellness brand with a wide range of products that naturally address the issues of our modern way of life. They can help you sleep better, perform better, recover faster, balance hormones, reduce inflammation, and so much more.  Go to boncharge.com/GREENFIELD and use coupon code GREENFIELD to save 15%.

Lucy Nicotine Gum: If you are looking for a cleaner and tastier alternative to other nicotine products, Lucy is for you. To save 20% on any order, head over to lucy.co use discount code BEN20.

Six Senses Event: Join me in this beautiful 19th-century wine estate in Portugal and enjoy treatments that go beyond the ordinary in Six Senses Spa. Ten treatment rooms and an indoor pool with chromotherapy and an underwater sound system offer a unique and layered wellness experience. Try delicious food made with local sensitivity and global sensibility. Head over to bengreenfieldlife.com/sixsenses and claim your spot today.

BG COACHING (BOUNDLESS FAMILY CHALLENGE) is a 4-week challenge created to prepare your family to be Boundless. My team will teach you how to make fitness fun and how to get fit together as a family. Head over to bengreenfieldlife.com/boundlessfamilychallenge to claim your seat at the family table today!

Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Adam Wenguer or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply!