December 16, 2017

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/andy-hnilo-alitura-unique-skin-care-products/

[00:00] Introduction/GetKion

[07:15] How Andy Repaired His Entire Face After Being Hit by a Car

[14:30] Why Andy Began to Drink Smoothies Made out of Deer Placenta

[31:50] What Clay Does for your Face, and Why Andy Chose the Clays that He Chose

[41:20] Why Use a “Derma-Roller” on your Face (and Ben’s Special Biohack for Collagen Production)

[43:30] A Deep Dive into the Ingredients Andy Includes in his Products

[53:05] Andy’s Go-To Supplements and Foods

[1:05:50] End of Podcast

Ben:  Hey guys, it’s Ben Greenfield and if you hear lots of background noise, people partying, piña coladas being mixed, people jumping in a pool, it’s because I am in Panama; actually far from Panama City, like a six hour bus ride outside of Panama City, where I am at the world famous RUNGA Retreat in Panama.  I’m supposed to be soaking up the sunshine and paddle boarding, surfing, and teaching some courses down here but instead I’ve spent the better part of the day resting due to a pretty bad-ass scorpion bite.  Regardless, I’m bringing this episode to you and it is a good one, where you’re gonna learn about deer placenta smoothies, smearing clay masks on your face, something I’ve actually been doing every week since I’ve talked to the cat you’re about to hear, and a whole lot more with Andy Hnilo of Alitura.

A few things before we jump in, speaking of smearing stuff on your face, I wanted to mention to you the brand new Kion Serum we just developed over at Kion, K-I-O-N.  You can check it out at GetKion.com, but myself, my wife, and actually my aunt, helps develop this one; we sourced twelve of the best essential oils for removing wrinkles, for decelerating, not accelerating, aging and for managing skin complexion, give you a little youthful appearance.  I put this stuff on every freakin’ day, its aloe vera, jojoba oil, amla, triphala, lavender, oregano oil, geranium, palmerosa.  It’s even got turmeric in it so it’s an anti-oxidant for your skin, juniper berry, lemon.  You could freakin’ eat this stuff; put it on a wrinkle and you can watch the wrinkle disappear after about 30 days.  So check that out, it’s called the Kion Serum and you can get it over at GetKion.com, K-I-O-N.

This podcast is also brought to you by Health Gains.  Speaking of anti-aging, Health Gains is this new breakthrough solution for men who want to optimize their sexual performance.  They were just on the Doctors TV show, I’ve done it; it works really well.  It’s a non-drug treatment protocol to give you better erections, better sex, to increase your orgasm intensity.  The way it works is it uses acoustic sound wave therapy to deliver this focused pulse of energy into erectile tissue; yes, we went there.  Breaks open old plaque in old blood vessels and makes you more elastic, that’s a good thing fellas, and stimulates the growth of new blood vessels, and women can do it too, believe it or not.  So you get $150 off any Gains wave treatments; to do that text the word GREENFIELD to 313131, that’s GREENFIELD to 313131.  Alright, you have discovered how to rejuvenate your skin and also how to rejuvenate your crotch, now let’s talk about how to feed your face with Andy Hnilo.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:

“I got hit by a west-bound headed Land Rover, lost consciousness, and that point of impact hit me into the east-bound lane, I got run over by a Toyota Tundra.  Both of them pulled over, luckily, and I was out.” “What it does is just opens up the dermis and escorts the micronutrients and the ingredients of the mask past the dermal layer, and so it just increases absorption drastically.” “There are things that I would just throw together and just put them on my face, just kinda like you said out of the shower, before the showers I throw them together because I knew that they’d work best together.”

Ben:  Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield and my face is covered right now in some kind of muddy clay substance that this dude who showed up at my front door brought me up to my bathroom and smeared all over my face.  I think there’s a little bit in my teeth, dude.  Am I gonna die if I swallow this stuff?

Andy:  No, no.  You hear about those bentonite toothpastes that they do sometimes.

Ben:  Yeah, bentonite clay toothpaste?  I’ve used one of those.  So this is kinda like that?

Andy:  Yeah.  Well there’s bentonite in there but I don’t know about the rasul, what that may do to the teeth.  [laughs]

Ben:  Okay, alright.  Well later on I want you to give me the skinny on what’s smeared all over my face; more or less it’s a clay mask, right?

Andy:  That’s right.

Ben:  Okay, so this guy sat in with me in my office; his name is Andy Hnilo and I’ll let him tell you his crazy story but he literally had a maimed, bloodied face from getting struck by I believe more than one vehicle.

Andy:  Two.

Ben:  But I had him up to my house because what he did is he not only repaired his face, but he figured out how to blend all these different ingredients into some of the most unique, guys don’t laugh coz this is for you too, skin care products that actually heal the face.  We’re talking about the equivalent of smearing stem cells on your face, and I figure since I wanna live to be pretty long and I’m doing all these things like injecting stem cells into my [censored] or taking NAD bark tea and doing injections and doing all these things to experiment with what one can do to stay young.

As I was telling you in the bathroom, Andy, I wanna live ‘til I’m 150 years old and look like Yoda, so I figure I might as well start taking some steps and share it with you guys listening in as well.  So Andy is here in my office and he’s gonna basically fill us in on how to repair and regenerate the tissue in your face and how to look young or at least how to look really silly walking out with mud smeared all over your face.  And if you’re listening in, I will post a photo on the show notes of me and the mud all over my face and what that looks like; and you can access the show notes along with the stuff that Andy and I talk about, everything else you need, you can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/andy.  That’s with a “y”; bengreenfieldfitness.com/andy.  So Andy, I’ve already welcomed you to my bathroom, now welcome to the Greenfield Podcasting Studios.

Andy:  Well thank you so much for having me.  Seriously, been a big fan of you and a lot of other biohackers that are just trying to be the best they can be and keep as healthy as possible; in this case, stay as youthful as possible for as long as you can.

Ben:  As youthful as possible, we’re gonna Benjamin Button ourselves.  Now dude, you got a fill my audience in on your crazy story about how you wound up in the ICU.

Andy:  Sure.

Ben:  I think that’s a perfect jumping off point, so what happened dude?

Andy:  Sure, so March 20, 2011 I was crossing the street; Melrose, it’s here in Bonita, on a Saturday night.  I looked down at my phone and kinda figured that cars were gonna adjust to me; it’s just a bad habit but I got hit by a west-bound headed Land Rover, lost consciousness, and that point of impact hit me into the east-bound lane, I got run over by a Toyota Tundra.

Ben:  Holy cow.

Andy:  Both of them pulled over, luckily, and I was out and I got my clothes scissored off me, I was laying on the middle of Melrose unconscious.  And I got taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital and I woke up with a compound fracture, my chin was poking out through the bottom.

Ben:  Oh my gosh.

Andy:  Yeah, the bottom of my mouth, right here.  So I have little gaps.

Ben:  Like your chin bone almost poked out?

Andy:  Yeah, yes.

Ben:  Holy cow.

Andy:  And those little gaps, food would get stuck in the bottom of my mouth.  It’s really weird and I kinda like fish them out.

Ben:  On the inside of your mouth?

Andy:  Yes, yeah.

Ben:  Oh my goodness.

Andy:  Yeah, and so I had seven broken ribs as well, a collapsed lung, but I’m lucky to be alive.  People don’t survive accidents like that, so I was just unrecognizable.  It was really hard to look in the mirror when and when I finally did, I just… very bad, but…

Ben:  Yeah I’ve seen some photos; it’s shocking.

Andy:  Yeah.

Ben:  Coz I’m not blowing smoke up your ass, you look like a male model now.  We’re gonna talk about some of the things that you did, but you look like a Zoolander male model.

Andy:  No [laughs].

Ben:  I like to think you’re smarter than that.  So you’re in ICU and your face is just completely torn up.

Andy:  Yeah, completely torn up and a couple of friends of mine were in there trying to know what’s going on; I was on a morphine drip and they were telling me not to talk coz they wanted to keep all the particles in the mouth and not get dislodged so they can put them back together with a titanium plate put in.  Well this was actually the resident maxillofacial surgeon from Cedars-Sinai walked; Dr. Rosenberg, I remember his name.  He couldn’t do it; he said it was the worst compound fracture he’s ever seen and so he needed some help.  And so he looked into a private surgeon named Joseph Broujerdi, who Dr. Rosenberg was gonna assist to repair my jaw.  And so I had a titanium plate inserted up top, one on the bottom but my jaw was wired shut; all these teeth right here, they’re all fake.  They’re all just [0:09:44] ______ full of concrete, and so I went home with my jaw wired shut.  Just a complete perspective, I reminded myself that luckily I had my family and friends around me to help me with that; just a lot of love, lot of really good support, but I was in the hospital for a week and I was able to walk out of the hospital.  So one of my nurses was like “hey, any day that you can walk out of the hospital is a good day” and it’s true.  So I just went home and I didn’t wanna sit around and wallow or whatever, so I just figured out a way to beat it.  Kinda like just challenge myself, try to figure out how to get as much into the system and onto my body to counteract and accelerate the healing and my scarring, my abrasions.  It’s so tough, with your jaw wired shut, to get proper nutrition; I was in Cedars-Sinai for a week.

Ben:  Oh I didn’t think about that.

Andy:  Yeah, and so I was just on Ensure; I didn’t wanna drink the tomato soup coz it’s super high in sodium.

Ben:  Right, number one doctor-recommended.

Andy:  [laughs]

Ben:  Chock-full of all the canola oil you need.

Andy:  Yeah, Ensure is like 36 grams of sugar too in 8 ounces.  Do the math on that, it’s horrible, but I actually keep one of those around the house just to remind me.

Ben:  Right.

Andy:  But yeah, so I went home and had an existing clay mask that I was using just one ingredient: calcium bentonite clay.  And I just started with that once my parents left and my brother and sisters had to go back to work; but I didn’t want to leave the house.  A couple of times I would go to Trader Joe’s and order things.  It was like my jaw was up to here, there’s a ton of swelling and my jaw was wired shut.  So people would ask what happened, the teeth are not there and it was really hard to experience that; so I went to whole new grocery stores, things like that.  But then it just came down to I didn’t even want to leave the house, and so I was just “I wouldn’t sit around.”  That’s where my research, my R&D; when you’re researching something out of necessity, there’s no end, I just became obsessed with skin care, with counteracting and healing of scarring, abrasions, removing impurities.  I was in absolute fog from CT scans; every month, twice a month sometimes, I would get an x-ray just to see how the bone was growing back, and then also the antibiotics that I had to take.  The doctors were saying “listen, that gets an infection, we’re screwed; you gotta go back to work”.  It just kills everything, the antibiotics.

Ben:  Including, as if being that self-conscious and that torn up isn’t enough already for depression, antibiotics downregulate your serotonin and your dopamine production so they can spin you even more of a tizzy from a personality and depression standpoint.

Andy:  Yeah, that was definitely happening; trying to do things like going on walks at night just to get that serotonin going, just to get that circulation from head to toe.  But I couldn’t bounce around, I would just go on this one little bike path 3.6 miles there and 3.6 back so I was kinda good; it was dark though and I just didn’t want anybody to see me.

Ben:  Oh yeah.

Andy:  But it’s okay, that stuff just sticks with you in a good way as far as perspective and just remembering where you were.  So I would buy all these extracts searching the web, different little…

Ben:  Specifically for the skin?

Andy:  For the skin, yeah. And also, internally I met with different Chinese herbalists to help with really building my blood, reducing inflammation, getting as many good… that’s where I found out about spirulina, gynostemma, schisandra, he shou wu; I really believed in Chinese philosophy of just building that blood and getting revitalized quicker.

Ben:  Yeah, I did a podcast with Shawn Stevenson who had disk degeneration and we talked about how to jumpstart your body’s own stem cell production or heal from the inside-out like a lizard might regrow its tail.

Andy:  Oh, okay.

Ben:  And many of the things that you’re talking about that I know are smeared all over my skin right now is that he talked about in that episode and it was mind-blowing how this dude repaired his spine and he was using colostrum, he was using aloe vera, he was using marine phytoplankton and spirulina and a lot of these things that it sounds like you discovered as well along the way.  But I think where you differ is you started to tap into how to use this stuff externally.

Andy:  Topically, yeah.

Ben:  Topically.

Andy:  Yeah, that’s exactly what it was and I would drink a smoothie through this little straw through the back of my mouth, which was just horrible; full of deer placenta, egg yolks, bison liver.  There first time I ever had it, I threw up through the wires, so imagine that; your body can’t take all that.

Ben:  I gotta ask, where’d you get deer placenta?

Andy:  Ron Teeguarden Dragon Herbs.

Ben:  Wow.

Andy:  Yeah, Dragon Herbs.  I wish it was just a capsule.

Ben:  You were just down my bar, I introduced you to Toffee and Caramel, the goats, and Caramel had those seven baby goats that you met.  She eventually, her placenta, I was just kinda eyeing her for several hours and I figured if she didn’t eat her placenta, I was actually gonna go out there and harvest it and you can make into little frozen cubes, you can put into smoothies and stuff like that coz lots of people don’t realize that stuff is chock-full of cell precursors and a lot of growth factors and healing compounds.  But the colostrum is also a great source for that, you know, that first milk that they produce.

Andy:  Right, and so that’s what I used and the mask and smoothies and things like that is the colostrum, and it’s collected within the first six hours of milking.  But yeah, it’s just that, spirulina, like you said American ginseng, gynostemma, he shou wu; I would try everything.  And I just wanted to feel back to my old self and recover as quick as I could.

Ben:  Now at the same time that you were supplementing with all these things, were you also using them topically or was that an idea you had later on?

Andy:  So there were a lot of things I tried topically that didn’t really work as far as just particle size that would disrupt actual smoothness of the clay mask that I was using.  But ingredient by ingredient, I would add certain things like the ilite, the rasul, kaolin and pyrophyllite, bentonite; those are just the clays.  But several things didn’t work but I just moved everything out of my bedroom, my living room and I just kinda had this open window area in the back that used to be a patio but they made it a bedroom in my old apartment that I was living in.  And it was just kinda fun just to open up the windows, relax, to see the mountains; it was kinda my little therapy, creative outlets so to speak.  I bought a mud mixer from Home Depot.

Ben:  You bought a what?

Andy:  A mud mixer from Home Depot.

Ben:  A mud mixer, for the clay masks?

Andy:  Well yeah, but it was making it for myself and once I started to gain interest from the same people, friends who might have saw me in the ICU; the abrasions were gone pretty quickly.  The scarring had been significantly reduced, I mean I was doing this mask every other day, sometimes even more than that coz I would just see and feel undeniable results.  I would feel better mentally as well, and so the same people are like “what are you doing dude?”  As hard as it was to admit, I was like “I have this mask” and as a guy, seriously I get it.  I didn’t really wanna tell anybody that I was using this mask; I just wanna recondition my face and help the healing and the scarring of the abrasions and pull out some of the swelling, hopefully maybe mix in some scar tissue.  I was trying everything, I just didn’t wanna use creams and serums that my surgeons were recommending that I use.  There was a bowl of parabens, [0:17:38] ______ fragrance; sure it smelled great but it was counterproductive to healing, I really believed that.  So that’s what I was doing, and I saw stimulation; you’re gonna feel it and see it after you rinse that off but it was something just to help remove those impurities but just get that blood flow, get that circulation, get those stagnant capillaries moving around the face.  It’s just something that made me feel good.

Ben:  Now this is a total rabbit hole, but you mentioned about how some guys might laugh.

Andy:  [laughs]

Ben:  I just got to reading a book, oddly enough I think it’s called “The Masks Men Wear”, it’s by my friend Lewis Howes.  It’s back on the bookshelf behind me, and in it he talks about several masks like the Joker mask and the Sexuality mask, but he also talks about the Athlete mask, the Invincibility mask, and the Alpha-male mask and how many of us guys like to think that any of these things that we might perceive as beautification or as admission that we’re less than perfect or potentially effeminate procedures that we avoid when in fact, it’s like me with dry skin brushing.  I started dry skin brushing as a form of self-love that actually makes you feel like you just alluded to, not just better from a physical standpoint, but mentally.

Andy:  Absolutely.

Ben:  When you take care of yourself in this loving way, what we might call “an embracing of the Yin”; little less of the Yang, more of this female Yin.  Especially for you guys out there, obviously women can do these type of masks too, but it does really change your perception and your approach to just yourself.

Andy:  Right.

Ben:  And your creative expression and your embracing of a little bit more of the effeminate side of yourself, so yeah.

Andy:  Right.  I’m happy to admit that; I’m so glad.  And the thing is you have something that you can control and bring your best energy towards every different situation that you bring.  So if I feel my best, look my best, whatever it be, they all go hand-in-hand and you’re gonna feel better about yourself, you gonna exude better energy in every situation that you come across whether it’s professional, personal, business, just anywhere you go.  It’s something I can’t control, it’s part of my routine that I just know what I’m gonna get every single time with wearing a clay mask or with following up with a nice serum or anything like that.  It’s similar to working out, right?  You know you’re gonna get those endorphins going through pushing yourself, getting your sweat going, whatever it is; it’s part of a routine.  It’s something that’s just in that routine and in that discipline; it’s part of making me feel good, I’m at my best and it’s gonna hopefully lead that discipline routine usually leads to success, whether personal and professionally, whatever it is.  So yeah, it’s true though; even going through different baseball locker rooms, in talking skin care where we go to different teams in spring training every year in Arizona.  They’re usually used to supplements, proteins, clothes, whatever it is, people selling them that type of stuff; I don’t think they’ve ever, well maybe they’ve had sunscreen, but skin care.  I’m not trying to sell it to them, I’m trying to explain what’s different about my products and just give it away. They’re always getting sold and getting supplements that are just loaded with, who knows, fillers and things like that, but I just wanna, you know?  Skin care’s a little different, and you’d be so surprised; they always come back.  It’s something I really think we can all relate to, just wanting to look and feel our best, you know?

Ben:  Yeah, I’m one of those guys who literally just steps in the shower and smears a few things on my face and off I go.

Andy:  Yeah.

Ben:  But I won’t deny that there actually is something we said from a career standpoint and even like an income standpoint to symmetry, to beauty, and to the appearance.  Whether you judge this harshly or not, our appearance matters, right?

Andy:  Sure.

Ben:  People judge us, especially you and I for example, being people who are on videos and people whose bios are appearing on book covers and seminar websites or stuff like that.  I care about how I look but I think you’ve taken things to the next level.  So when did you start taking these things that you’re formulating at home to repair your face, when did you begin to actually tell people “hey, try this out, I bottled this”; when did it actually become a business for you?

Andy:  So I would document just what I was doing on Facebook; it was just a creative outlet that I had and never saw myself as an artistic or creative person.  But I would just take pictures here and there, like me just mixing and shaking things up.  I was hand shaking my mask in my back room going “hey.”  My first sale, I’ll never forget, this is a person who set up my business account in [0:22:41] ______, but this lead to, I was actually on a treatment list and Med Spa San Diego, one of my friends whose a friend of mine on Facebook named Mary Halls who asked me to come down and try the mask on her.  If she liked it, then she would recommend it to a couple of her clients that she trusted.  She loved it, and then the clients loved it as well, then they took it on board; still no name or website or anything like that.  It was just called the nutrient-dense clay mask.

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Andy:  And yeah, so they took it on board and it started to generate money, and that was just like a victory for me and it’s something I did not ever expect to have a product or a business or anything like that.  This is purely out of just trying to get back to my old self, just get back to where I was.  And so that was really cool just to say that I was located in Med Spa and this product was getting three treatments for like $599 or something like that.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.

Andy:  It’s a trip, I mean it’s all out of my apartment, but that was the first victory which led to that momentum personally, professionally, everything, to take it to the next level; how do you do that, you know?  I didn’t really know what to do but that’s how I met Dave Asprey and I’ve troubleshooted his e-mail address, got on as an ambassador to Bulletproof and he had me on one of those podcasts in a discussion just like this.  And people wanted to know where they can buy the mask, they contacted him, he contacted me; I didn’t have a website or anything, and it wasn’t planned.  We were just gonna talk about nutrition, how I benefited through proper nutrition in my recovery, but at the last five minutes, he was asking “what’d you do for your skin?”

Ben:  I’ll hunt that down, that episode, and link to it for those of you listening in.  So that was Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof podcast.

Andy:  Right.

Ben:  Okay, cool.  I’ll find that one for people.  So you started getting all sorts of phone calls and stuff after you were on Dave’s podcast?

Andy:  Yeah, so every time I just gave out my personal e-mail address and had people contact me…

Ben:  Was that this one titled “Engineering Resilience”?

Andy:  Number 90, yup.  That’s it.

Ben:  Okay cool, I got it.  I’ll link to that for folks.  Okay so what happened?

Andy:  And so every time I refresh my Yahoo browser, there’s like a new 24 people saying really nice things and wondering how they could purchase a mask; and I didn’t know what to do.  He was getting contacted as well, but I got a PayPal account; has to really scale up.  I had people PayPal me, I think it was $35, free shipping.  It just sounded good.

Ben:  I remember one of those days, I wrote an e-book when I was a personal trainer called “Shape 21” and it was 21 days of how to eat and how to diet.

Andy:  Nice.

Ben:  Sorted all that stuff out; and it was like magic the first time it happens like “wow somebody actually paid something online” and I can see it.  And then it was a few days before I actually believed that it would wind up in my bank account; I’m like “is this some kinda like a web scam or something” and then lo and behold, I’ve got whatever it was, like $14 in my bank account.  I was like “holy cow, I did it, I figured how to actually make something and somebody who doesn’t even live near me was able to pay for it, and we did a transaction online”.  I remember the very first time that happened, and then I was hooked; I was hooking up the PayPal transactions to my e-mail.  I remember I would log in to my e-mail every now and then “dude I sold two more books”…

Andy:  Yeah, it’s addicting; it’s unreal, yeah.  Something you created that someone out in Sweden or wherever they are just believed in you enough to purchase.  So that was enough, it was that adrenaline that really hasn’t left; it’s super exciting.

Ben:  You can definitely overdo it, like my friend Maneesh Sethi, he designed this Pavlok device that shocks you when you engage in bad habits.

Andy:  Oh okay, yeah.

Ben:  And he was my roommate at a conference and he has hooked up his laptop to go “ding” every time that he sold; this whole Pavlovian response thing.

Andy:  Yeah.

Ben:  And the night that we were hanging out at the hotel room, his episode had Shark Tank on his Pavlok device.

Andy:  Oh, yeah.

Ben:  And he didn’t turn it off all night, I could hear it out in the living room and it was just like…

Both:  “ding ding ding ding”

Andy:  Yeah.

Ben:  You can overdo the Pavlovian response by getting too hooked up to the sales that you’re making, but at the same time you figured out how to actually take this stuff and sell it and fulfill it.  Are you still just mixing it up at home?

Andy:  I was, and so get this.

Ben:  Wow.

Andy:  Dave and I did a meeting a couple of weeks later to sit down and talk about business, but up until then I didn’t know anything about packaging, I was hand-writing the instructions out, I would go to Whole Foods and get those big containers for almond butter or peanut butter or olive oil or honey or whatever.

Ben:  Yeah.

Andy:  They’re snap shut like the little to-go solo cup but they’re clear, so I would clear them out of those; I would get 50 tops and 50 bottoms and I’d bring them over.  The same manager every time had to come up with a price on the spot.  It was 15 cents each, so whatever that is, 7.50, so I’d walk out; I’m serious, I had to do that.

Ben:  That’s pretty funny because again, I remember doing the same thing with this book, bubble wrap packages and staples.  Once I got to the point where I was selling 20-30 books a day, I was just going to Staples and buying all the bubble wrap I can find and package up these books and send them off in these little mailers.

Andy:  And you didn’t even think “maybe I should buy it in bulk” and not have to go here everyday, right?

Ben:  “Or maybe I could hire an assistant”, that thought never crossed my mind.  I just wasn’t thinking that way at that time.

Andy:  That’s a big thing though, is I didn’t delegate up until 2016.  That’s probably my biggest mistake I didn’t sign up for, but now I have a fulfilment center but it should’ve been easy.  I mean a scale, it’s terrible.

Ben:  That’s what I wound up eventually doing was I found a fulfil- coz I’d print all my books in this little place over between Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls, and I would literally just drop my car over there, pick up all the books, bring ‘em back, package them and send them out.  And then once I heard that there was actually fulfilment center and they’d actually print for you and they would ship you, again I was like a kid in a candy store, like “they’ll do what, this actually exists?”  Yeah, just piecing it together; you’d think that smart guys like you and I would have figured that we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel but there’s also something you said about growing your business from your home and doing everything, as much as I tell people it’s useful to hire an assistant and to outsource and to do the things that you’re good at at the same time, kinda knowing how some of the little pieces run.  I programmed my very first website and just knowing how that goes really helps me now work with people as far as delegating what needs to be done.

Andy:  And doing exactly how to do it.

Ben:  Yeah.

Andy:  I’m starting to finish explaining that, yeah.  With the product though, it was difficult; with orders, for me, coz a lot of our bottles are glass and if you didn’t pack it right, it’s shaking around in a box and it gets shipped back to me, customs paperwork, things like that, filling out the right values, shipped back, now the customer’s pissed off.  These are things that would start to happen, or 100% they say that you have to be understanding of the fact that nobody’s giving me 100%.  So my first hire was my little brother, and he’s gonna be a cop so he had to go back, but it was perfect.  He was about 90-95%, an order would come in, he was as stoked as I was; he was perfect, never butchered an order, we got them out that day.  Now, fulfilment centers, they don’t work on the weekend; I worked all-day Saturday and barely stopped on Sunday.  I would get them ready Sunday as well and ship them off as early as I can Monday coz that’s the biggest thing: orders get to the customer as soon as possible.  Now you can impress the customer even more like “wow, it’s already here.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Andy:  But that’s a big thing, I would say to anybody out there just delegating as soon as you can.  So much technology out there; I was hand writing to-and-from slips.  Come on, you can just print those right out; that would’ve saved waiting in line, not dropping them off.  USPS has a service for this…

Ben:  Stamps.com.  This podcast brought to you by stamps.com.  Now it is.

Andy:  [laughs]

Ben:  So you eventually named your company, how do you pronounce that, Alitura?

Andy:  Alitura.

Ben:  What does that mean?

Andy:  So it’s Latin for feeding, nourishing…

Ben:  Gotcha, it’s like food for your face.

Andy:  Right.

Ben:  You should call it face food.

Andy:  Face food, I thought about that.  I think it was taken but yeah.

Ben:  Alitura’s a little bit more refined than face food, yeah?

Andy:  Yeah. [laughs]

Ben:  So it’s this whole range of ingredients, what do I have smeared on my face right now?

Andy:  Okay.

Ben:  Walk me through each of the things, coz I know you’ve got a serum, you got this really good fragrance by the way.

Andy:  Thank you.

Ben:  I gotta figure that out later one, but this mask, this is what you used to repair your face.  What’s in it?

Andy:  So there’s ilite clay, bentonite clay which is a green desert kind of clay.

Ben:  What was the first kind of clay?

Andy:  Ilite.

Ben:  How do you spell that?

Andy:  I-L-I-T-E.

Ben:  Okay.

Andy:  It’s a consumable; I mean there’s so many different names for these clays.  French green clay’s another common name for it.  But yeah, ilite, rasul clay, calcium bentonite clay, kaolin clay which you commonly see in many scrubs; the particle size is not quite as fine as subtle exfoliation to the mask but really blends right in, it creates an amazing smoothness to the texture of the mask but also the skin at hand.

Ben:  What does the clay do?  For guys who are just gonna put on aftershave lotion or serum, why would you want to include a clay, what does the clay actually do?

Andy:  So the ilite is heavily loaded in minerals, particularly silica.  So it’s a building block of collagen, it’s very important to feed the minerals that are lost as we age, that we’re depleting as we age.

Ben:  So if I’ve got left-over after putting it on my face, I could find any cut or scar or anything in my body and it would assist in that area as well?

Andy:  Theoretically I really feel like it would.

Ben:  You don’t want the FDA to come down your doors.

Andy:  Yeah, I know; but I’ve done that before.  It’s helped me out, mitigates irritation, the healing effects that it has; nothing surprises me anymore.  It’s extremely effective, clays are from the earth, loaded in minerals and I’d rather have it from the earth rather than synthetically made in a lab or something like that.

Ben:  Right, okay.  So we’ve got the clay, and then what comes next?

Andy:  We have organic kelp powder which is loaded in sodium alginate, vitamin A, C, K, B12; it’s a very potent topical cleanser and there’s just something to be said, it’s similar to the algaes and spirulinas being from the ocean, it’s just loaded in those good blue-green algaes that I think there’s something when you combine the blue and the green; isn’t there some kind of stem cell benefits to the skin topically?  I’ve heard more and more about organic kelp powder and particularly seaweed.

Ben:  Yeah, I did a podcast with a guy named Craig Dinkel about this, how it actually has blood building properties.

Andy:  Really?

Ben:  Specifically for red blood cells but it also somehow stimulates a little bit of stem cell production, like in addition to erythropoietin or red blood cell precursors.  There actually is a stem cell effect; the other cool thing is interestingly with sunlight, the chlorella molecule or that chlorophyll molecule to produce ATP and so there might be some kind of an effect where it’s allowing for a little bit of energy currency for some of these other things that you put on your skin to work simultaneously.  So this is just like a kelp that you’re using for this chlorophyll type of molecule, or the stem cell type of molecule on the skin?

Andy:  Yeah; right.

Ben:  Interesting.

Andy:  I got two ingredients from spa treatments; that would be ascorbic acid and the organic kelp powder, coz I would go around and get facials back before a job in entertainment industry or something like that.  So those two I knew I wanted to have in the mask, but things like the grass-fed colostrum, the fresh water pearl powder, the American ginseng, and ascorbic acid and the kelp powder.  I knew that was the final roster, those nine ingredients but just measuring them, coz these are things that I would throw together and put them on my face, like you said getting out of the shower or before the shower, just kinda throw them together coz I knew they would work best together.  But then getting the final measurements down and then before Dave put it on his site for his Bulletproof-approved skin care product, he hired a project developer, Karissa Bodnar, she owns Thrive Causemetics, but he hire her specifically just to make sure that the mask was all on point; perfectly put together.  So we had to make some adjustments coz the measurements had to be specific and done perfectly.

Ben:  Yeah, well what you mixed up in my bathroom just a little bit ago, it’s like a toothpaste consistency and you smear it on your face, so you had to experiment with all the way these different powders, this kelp powder and the clay and all these other powders actually work together to mix correctly.

Andy:  Right.

[Music Plays]

Ben: Hey, it’s Ben.  I’m back along with my background music straight from Panama.  So you might know I’ve got my two kids, my sons, they’ve got their own podcast over at GoGreenfields.com where they make and share all these fun and healthy recipes like bone-broth colostrum donuts, and protein pancakes.  They do restaurant reviews, they do plant foraging, they do cooking tips and one of the flowers that they use quite a bit is this stuff from Bob’s Red Mill. Bob’s Red Mill makes gluten-free, organic, stone-ground process; they literally use a stone mill in Oregon.  They’re one of the first companies to make gluten0free products; that’s a gluten-free 1:1 baking flour, they have almond flour, they have a gluten-free chocolate chip cookie flour that is to die for.  All their products are minimally processed, they’re clean, and especially during this holiday season when you’re trying to enjoy sweets and comfort foods but you wanna feel better about doing so and not send yourself on a guilt trip, go to town in Bob’s Red Mill.  Chocolate chip cookies, they’re wholesome, they’re organic, they make these gluten-free oats that are to die for.  And you get 25% off everything from BobsRedMill.com; just like it sounds, BobsRedMill.com and you use promo code “GREENFIELD”.  BobsRedMill.com and use code “GREENFIELD”.

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[Music Plays]

Ben:  And what about the, you said the kelp powder and then clay, and then you said pearl powder.

Andy:  Oh yeah.

Ben:  What is that?

Andy:  Pearl powder it’s definitely… The geishas have been using it for centuries apparently to…

Ben:  The geishas?  Like in Japan?

Andy:  Right.

Ben:  Wow.

Andy:  Just to minimize sunspots, so it’s like an elite hierarchy type deal.  So the paler their skin was or the more even their skin tone, it just signifies they weren’t out in the rice fields collecting rice and the sun beating down on them.  It’s an absolute pristine smoothness and clarity of the skin, as well as a complete, even, nice, smooth, porcelain finish.  So I knew I had to add that in there; I was already taking it internally with water just to help for liver and cleansing coz it had been recommended to me through George of Jing herbs, actually.  And so I knew I had to add that in there, it was actually so expensive; one of these that was added to my existing clay mask, I would break open a capsule and only get like 90 per jar, like “let me try this out”.  Particle size, I think that’s everything with the mask coz we wanted to try to see if a different pearl powder, we still used Jing’s, for some reason their particle size is like silk.

Ben:  That’s really important, the actual particle size?

Andy:  Yes, absolutely.  I mean if you mix it and it crumbles off, it’s still the same.  If you see it under your face right now, it’s not dry enough…

Ben:  Yeah it’s not crumbly; it’s not on my shirt or anything.

Andy:  Yeah, but that’s what it is, it can’t flake off.  If it does, it’s not gonna be stimulating the areas that I want you to hit like the under-eye and the congestion around the lid area.

Ben:  Yeah, and this’ll involve the bags underneath my eyes too, right?

Andy:  Oh absolutely.

Ben:  Like when I travel.  Now, I wanna get back to the ingredients in a second, but before I smeared it on, you had me do this roller on my face.  What was that?

Andy:  So that’s a micro derma roller; it’s basically a hand-held derma roller that little titanium micro needles at different lengths. We sell one on Alitura, it’s a 0.25 millimeter, 0.5 millimeter then 1.0 millimeter, ranging on different sizes.  So if you haven’t done it before, I recommend starting off small, but what it does is it just opens up the dermis and escorts the micronutrients and the ingredients of the mask past that dermal layer.  So it just increases absorption drastically, but I wouldn’t overdo it; maybe Sunday, I do it twice a week.

Ben:  Coz it’s actual needles, you wouldn’t wanna do too much of that.

Andy:  Right.  See, that’s the thing though, they’re not too bad; I mean they are little titanium micro needles but you’re not gonna draw blood or anything like that.  They’re small enough to the point where you just can control the pressure; if you really go over the top, you’re gonna get stimulated with a little bit of redness, like you saw.  But I love that the increased absorption of the mask or the serum or whatever you put on afterwards, it’s effective too; really increases the effects of the mask.

Ben:  You know, I see.  So I’ll add that derma roller to my face biohacking protocol, but I’ll show you one thing I have here that I do full body. I wanna show you this because coz that one I pulled down my pants to do it on my balls.

Andy:  [laughs] Nice!

Ben:  It’s like bright, bright collagen; this infrared therapy.

Andy:  Oh man.

Ben:  So what I did, to you guys listening, is I flipped on this JOOW.  I’ve got one here and one here, and so this is for collagen production.

Andy:  Yeah.

Ben:  So I can do this on my face, I can do it pretty much anywhere on my body where I want collagen production.  I’ll flip these on at night too when I’m working and use these instead of regular lights, coz it’s red lights; you don’t get a lot of the blue/white light.  You don’t wanna look at the too long just like you’d wanna wear your sunglasses when you’re in a tanning bed, but yeah.  So I can add my derma roller into this and just blast my face with the red light for collagen production, do a little derma roller, do a little clay mask.  I may catch up with you, dude.

Andy:  Hey, no; you’re already there.

Ben:  I’m taking notes.  Okay, so we’ve got pearl powder, we’ve got desert clay, we’ve got kelp powder; the other one I heard you mention was ginseng.  Why would put ginseng, coz a lot of people use that for almost like an adaptogen or for hormone regulation or balance or energy, but why would you put it in a skin care product?

Andy:  So I met with George at Jing herbs and I was buying his pearl powder and he was like “have you ever thought of putting ginseng in your mask?”  And I was like “I definitely supplement with it with my morning tonic internally, but externally”; well they say that the workers that handle the ginseng, their hands don’t wrinkle.  Coming from him I just really…

Ben:  Wow.

Andy:  Yeah, I thought I’d try it out.  And it sits on the face, it’s the same idea with the particle size; it just sits on the face a little bit smoother and it holds together a little bit better.  Ever since I added it in there, I noticed a little increase of blood flow to the surface of the skin and then also it holds together a lot better with the ginseng in there.  And I like that story that he told me about; I’m such a believer in ginseng.  Remember Ginsana way back in the day with Scotty Pippen and it was like “oh I take Ginsana” I mean this is 20 years ago or whatever.  One of my first supplement or herb that I heard about and so things like that kinda take me back, that and I would say he shou wu, spirulina are probably my top three that I’ve been taking ever since I was younger.

Ben:  Yeah.  Now when you include anecdotes like that, do you have to be careful with claims? Like “the geishas used it on their face to assist with beauty or smoothness” or “these guys who harvested the ginseng don’t get wrinkles on their hands”.

Andy:  Right.

Ben:  You can’t say that on the actual label, right?  You can talk about it on a podcast but you’re not allowed, coz I’ve run into that too.  I use these ketones for enhancing my endurance during ironman triathlon and when I used them I bundled them with electrolytes and a little bit of MCT oil and some amino acids and slow release carbohydrates, energy for hours and hours.  And none of the gut rot that you get from maltodextrin and fructose and these other energy conductors, but I can’t say that on the label of an actual formulation that I designed coz that’s, it’s an N equals 1,it’s a case study.

Andy:  Oh.

Ben:  It’s crazy what you can and can’t say.

Andy:  I know, absolutely.  And I let my customers talk, that is something we definitely don’t say on the website; our claims.  You have to be extremely careful especially with skin care, reducing wrinkles and helps support…

Ben:  Exactly.  Supports normal skin, which is boring as hell but that’s the kind of thing you have to say.  Well I think on a podcast you can say anything; I’m pretty sure.  You will grow the most beautiful beard ever when you try Andy’s kelp powder.

Andy:  [laughs] I’m extremely careful with that, I know how I feel afterwards and the extremely consistent results I get every time I’ve been using the product.  I just let the customers do the talking; reviews are everything.

Ben:  Yeah.

Andy:  So I just really believe in how we formulate the products and the ingredients but other than that, you’re absolutely right, you have to be very careful, especially with supplements, skin care; cosmetic industry is…

Ben:  Frustrating.  I’d love to just be able to tell stories, right?  Like true stories about “I developed this coz I just love ginseng, I used to use ginseng, I heard that you can’t get wrinkles on your hands”, I mean it’s crazy.  I mean I get it, we have to protect people but at the same time it gets silly.

Andy:  Yeah.

Ben:  The other thing you have, coz we were talking about this when we were greeting my goats was…

Andy:  Yeah.

Ben:  Coz these Nigerian dwarf goats, they make this amazing colostrum or like the first milk that comes out for the babies.  If you don’t wanna eat the placenta, you can get a lot of nutrients form the colostrum; but you actually what’s called “first six hours grass-fed colostrum.”

Andy:  Mmhmm.

Ben:  That’s a mouthful.  What is that and where do you get it and why do you put that in there?  And most importantly, how do you know it’s the first six hours?

Andy:  Well I’ll tell you, I use Synertek colostrum and they explain the whole process of collecting it within the first six hours.  The babies are fed first and apparently they go through the whole process of how, they say it kinda tickles the mother [laughs] when they harvest it.  It’s not a very painful process for them, and the babies are fed first and the rest is collected and that’s what I use in my skin care product.  It’s extremely nutrient-dense; it does have an IGF-1 growth factor content that maybe you could help me out with on that.

Ben:  That’s how it allows the young mammals to grow into big mammals as it stimulates growth factor production or IGF-1 production.  And some people will consider that to be synonymous with insulin production and you can see a small rise in insulin production, nothing that you get from glucose or anything like that, from colostrum but the main idea is that you see a big boost in IGF-1 with an almost non-existent rise in insulin levels.  Because of that, you get growth without the spike that you get from drinking a big glass of milk or eating a steak.  And the other thing with colostrum is that those growth factors are used for the gut, that’s what heals up these zonulin proteins in the lining of a young mammal’s gut; it’s what’s found in human’s breast milk as well, which is why it’s important to breast feed your kids or if you can, to give them something like colostrum because it seals the lining of the gut.  I’ll load with it for a couple of weeks before I do a race or competition in hot weather coz it actually decreases gut permeability in athletes who exercise in the heat.

There’s some really fascinating studies on colostrum, specifically for increasing gut resilience in hot weather exercising in athletes.  So yeah, it’s got a host of benefits which makes sense; it’s one of those things where nature gives us clues.  You can imagine some old hunter/gatherer/farmer rubbing his chin watching these little goats feed off of mom and seeing how the first part that comes out of the nipples’ different than the rest of it and trying some of that stuff and seeing what happens.

Andy:  Right.

Ben:  But I’ve never thought of smearing it on my skin.

Andy:  What about he, Tom, they made a little hair regrowth?  I’m not talking about claims, that is what I’m not gonna touch on, but he had a hair regrowth serum that he put on, just because he thought it was gonna help with the scalp and just hopefully regrow a healthier follicle; but it just makes so much sense to me, it hit that freshly exfoliated area with good and nutrient-dense ingredient like the colostrum and especially with the IGF-1 content, everything that in its rawest form collected within the first six hours.  It’s a very hard ingredient to find when it’s collected within the first six hours like that, but it’s one of my favorite, one of our most prominent ingredients.  That, the pearl, everything in there all has a purpose that the synergy that it creates, it’s pretty special.

Ben:  Yeah.  So you smear this on you and how often do you do this mask, personally?

Andy:  I do it up to four times a week, sometimes like you said if you’re travelling or if you have to speak, it’s perfect.  Just looking your best, it really creates…

Ben:  Family photos.

Andy:  Family photos, yeah. [laughs]

Ben:  Before a date; okay, cool.  And now you’ve got other things too; you’ve got a serum, you’ve got a fragrance, what else do you have?

Andy:  We have a night cream, body lotion, moisturizer, fragrance, serum, body oil, derma roller.

Ben:  Wow.

Andy:  Yeah, supplement as well.

Ben:  What’s in that fragrance; this stuff smells amazing.

Andy:  Its cedar, sandalwood, organic alcohol, fragrant oils and a little bit of leather, little bit of cucumber at the end right there, vanilla, black pepper.

Ben:  It’s like a manly man’s scent.  Do you wear it?

Andy:  I wear it all the time.

Ben:  Do the women go crazy over that?

Andy:  We even got guys look at me “I’m sorry man, that shit’s fire, what are you wearing?”  I’m like “that’s the best compliment you can get in the world.”

Ben:  I usually use this essential oil; I mix vanilla and sandalwood, I’ll do ylang ylang sometimes.  I like this one, Young Living Essential Oils makes one called Valor that I’ll smear on my skin, but that stuff you make, once you start producing dudes, is it available yet?

Andy:  It’s available; we just made the purchase order on the bottle and that’s 14-16 weeks lead time and then another 4 weeks.

Ben:  What’s it gonna be called?

Andy:  Presence.

Ben:  Presence, dude I love it.  I will be a customer for that stuff big time.

Andy:  I appreciate that, thank you.

Ben:  So Presence, you heard it first here.  Couple other questions I wanna ask you while I have you here, obviously what you consume is important, so do you have any little dietary staples that you’re sure to include for skin healing or collagen production in addition to what you’re smearing on your face; anything that you found to be big wins when it comes to food or supplements?

Andy:  Let’s see, good amount of fats; ever since I started consuming good things like grass-fed butter, that’s been huge.  Rib-eyes, animal fat, this K2 content in animal fat.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.

Andy:  That’s big for skin.

Ben:  Yeah, well in some animal fat, especially stuff like grass-fed butter, gonna have a lot of anything that’s gold or yellow like that, like the really good rich egg yolk will have some K2 in it as well.

Andy:  Yeah, egg yolks are huge.  Fermented vegetables, really keeping that good gut health and just keeping things moving and really the body’s ability to digest that and then absorb as much of the nutrients from that fermented vegetables, would you agree with that?

Ben:  Yeah, sounds very much like, and I guess it makes sense because he was very into symmetry and teeth and bones, like a Weston A. Price type of diet, right?  Lots of fermented foods, not issuing dairy but doing things like colostrum and grass-fed butter, including egg yolks, a lot of ferments; and not just fermented vegetables, even fermented grains like really good sourdough bread or taking my quinoa and soaking that and fermenting it.  Yeah, I think this concept of eating a lot of what nature has to offer seems to really help out and I interviewed Cate Shanahan about this too, about ways that we can improve symmetry and beauty.  Not only the importance of that from a cultural standpoint but it’s why my kids have their own little supplement drawer up in the fridge and they do Vitamin D, blended with Vitamin k2 and then they’ve got a fermented cod liver oil.

Andy:  Nice.

Ben:  There’s not a ton of supplements that they take, especially the ones that help with bone growth and symmetry and beauty for sure.  Colostrum is another one that they do.

Andy:  Oh that’s awesome.

Ben:  They actually have a podcast and they cook with colostrum; they just made colostrum bone broth donuts.

Andy:  From the colostrum right out there?

Ben:  They use a more powdered, concentrated colostrum coz we need some in powder form for the donut batter.  Yeah they use bone broth, they use colostrum, they use a banana fruit-flour.  Amazing, amazing donuts; I wish some were left but I ate ‘em all, Andy.

Andy:  Oh man!  [laughs] Sweet potatoes, broccoli?

Ben:  Oh yeah.

Andy:  These are mineral-dense and just replenishing, then eating as soon as I’m done working out.  I’ll try to think of any other game changers that I have.

Ben:  I actually wanted to ask you about that too, was you fitness routine and striking imbalance between not overtraining and depleting the body but also getting good sweat.  One thing I swear by is I do a sauna a few times a week for the skin; I’ll show you my old soak outside and I’ll go back and forth between that and the hot tub for blood flow and for skin flow.  Do you have anything you do from a movement or a lifestyle exercise standpoint that you consider to be a real game changer for you as far as your own fitness and health or even your skin vitality is concerned?

Andy:  So I would say the infrared sauna is huge, as a matter of fact.  If you were to hop in the sauna right now so opening up the pores and getting that sweat going really increases the absorption.

Ben:  So if you hit the sauna while the mask is on your face…

Andy:  As soon as it’s dry like that.

Ben:  It won’t sweat off and stuff or?

Andy:  No, well I mean a little bit but it’s just like you have everything…

Ben: Well what about just flipping this on and letting the infrared shine in my face?

Andy:  That too, that too.  I mean that’s ideal but I like the heat and the fact that opening up your pores and then maybe escorting some of those nutrients of the mask right into the area that was just opened up,  Like the whole idea when you put the hot water on before you put on the mask, sauna’s ideal.

Ben:  Yeah.

Andy:  And so there are couple of companies that do that in their whole protocol as far as infrared-masks and they’ll put it on.  Like if you put it on and hop in the sauna before it was dry, you may sweat it off, but right now that it’s completely…

Ben:  It only took like 20 minutes to dry.

Andy:  Right.

Ben:  Will some of you leave this on all night?  Could you sleep with this on?

Andy:  I know people that have; I definitely have.  I like to, probably 20-30 minutes, sometimes an hour tops, I start checking e-mails and it’s already dry, you hop in the shower then it’s done.  But yeah I’ve definitely slept with it on.  No real difference; I’ve experimented with a little methylene blue.

Ben:  Oh.  I’ll use methylene blue sometimes as a nootropic because it assists with activation of mitochondrial activity in neural tissue.

Andy:  Right.

Ben:  But doesn’t it stain your face?  It’s very potent stuff.

Andy:  It doesn’t.

Ben:  It rinses off, huh?

Andy:  Right, it does.  You mix it in, it looks just like that.

Ben:  methylene blue, who knew?

Andy: A couple of drops, derma roller, methylene blue maybe a couple of little things in the serum in there, clary sage…

Ben:  For those of you who wanna know about methylene blue, my friend Joe Cohen has a great video on his Selfhacked website about how to make methylene blue for like pennies on the dollar.  So I’ll put a link to that one in the show notes as well if you wanna know how to make your own methylene blue.  I actually travel with that as well to assist with some of the inflammation that occurs with jetlag and airline travel so okay, methylene blue.  I’m gonna add that to the show notes, and again you guys, this is all over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/andy, that’s A-N-D-Y, is where you can access the show notes for this.

So I guess one of other question I wanted to ask you was you’re patching all these amazing things that you smear on your face, when you’re buying this stuff, just from a business standpoint I’m just curious, is it expensive?  Isn’t it kinda nerve-wrecking to be spending so much money on all these ingredients or do you just predict how many orders you’re gonna get based on previous sales and just get it made?

Andy:  No, it’s interesting but the truth of the story is I don’t find out my cost until the end.  I just design my dream product every single time; we don’t have the big corporate overhead so I’m able to, I mean we have five staff, a team of investors, things like that but they know like with our pearl cleanser, our serums, our night creams, two different plat-derived stem cells, Manuka honey, colostrum; that’s just one product.

Ben:  Love Manuka; I took Manuka when I got MIRSA and it just killed that.  First time I got MIRSA during a race, I went the traditional route on antibiotics, iodine packing.  Second time, used Manuka honey and a little bit of Thieves essential oil, and it was gone; three days.

Andy:  Yeah, it’s unreal and that’s how I made little pace of these and melted it down in a cast-iron pan, and then the first night cream I ever made.  But it’s just little stories like that; I wanna create the best products regardless of cost.  They may not make the best money for the team, but I’m serious.  It’s like making a meal, I just wanna make sure that everybody loves it, the reviews are, that’s what I live for.

Ben:  Right.

Andy:  So right now, I can do it.  I’m just gonna continue to do that, like if we don’t have that big…

Ben:  That’s what I wanna do with a lot of the products I’m working on now coz I’m kind of in the background trying to design some new formulations for endurance and breakfasts, for stem cell precursors and some; but I’m actually whenever a formula is asking, “this costs this much, this costs this much, are you sure you wanna do this phytoplankton?”  I’m like “yeah”; I’m like “you know what, if I would pay whatever, $6 per breakfast for a breakfast shake, that’s worth it to me.”  I’m still gonna spend $10 if I go to freakin’ like a restaurant or Whole Foods, I’m gonna spend $15 for breakfast so, yeah I want high quality ingredients and everything else sorted out.  There’s gotta be at least a thousand people out there like me who just don’t care about cost and just want the highest quality stuff for breakfast, right?

Andy:  Absolutely.

Ben:  So, it may not be a business that’s gonna sell to billions of people in China, but at the same time I know everybody listening to this show, they’ll do a clay mask on their face if they can look as good as you do, dude.

Andy:  Oh man, likewise.

Ben:  And you guys should see the before-after pics of Andy.  I’ll put a link to his website in the show notes.  Oh, like I promised you guys, you can use code GREENFIELD, that’s your code so just go to the Alitura website, I’ll link to that, it’s A-L-I-T-U-R-A code GREENFIELD; get you 15% off of Andy’s stuff.

Andy: 20.

Ben:  Or is it 20?  Wow, we bumped it up, I dunno.  Whatever it is, I’ll put it in the show notes; you guys are gonna save a lot of money.  Bengreenfieldfitness.com/andy is where I’ll link to a lot of the stuff that Andy and I talked about, including his other podcast that he did with Dave Asprey where he got into this concept of engineering resilience.  And then finally, million dollar question: how do I actually get the stuff off my face?

Andy:  [laughs]

Ben: With cold water, is it warm water, is it clicking my heels together three times?

Andy:  The best way to do it is hopping in the shower…

Ben:  Let a goat lick it off?

Andy:  [laughs] But I would definitely hop in the shower and just let the water rinse it off.  Don’t overly kind of rinse it off.

Ben:  Warm water?

Andy:  Warm water and then finish with a cold rinse to close the pores, rub a moisturizer and serum.

Ben:  Cold water, close the pores, moisturizer, serum, boom.  I love it.

Andy:  Yeah, and one more hack, I would say just a nice serum before you go out in the sun; I really believe in sunlight, maybe you can touch on that a little bit better.  I’ve noticed increased endorphin rush from that but also just a little bit of a, can you explain that?

Ben:  Yeah, it’s a combination of neuron far-infrared; so UV-A and UV-B aren’t gonna do a lot for the skin aside from increase the melanin production and the Vitamin D, but the infrared, the near and the far infrared, same as you would get from a sauna; that’s really where you see a lot of the benefits for collagen and for skin healing.

Andy:  Okay.

Ben:  Yeah, which is why you can’t just get it, I think there was a photo of the trucker who would drive and he’d get the UV-A rays, I believe it is just through the window on the skin, coz the windows block the UV-B; made horrible skin.

Andy:  That one time his face was just like a raisin.

Ben:  Great sun exposure but horrible skin coz you have to get the full spectrum: UV-A, UV-B, near and far infrared.  I actually eventually would like to build or purchase a tanning bed somewhere in my home, and if you’re listening in, please fill me in coz I’m trying to research this, that has that combination of UV-A, UV-B, near and far infrareds.  You can work on your tan and at the same time work on your skin health, boosting the effects that you’re talking about and also you get the full spectrum, much lower risk for something like skin cancer.

Andy:  Right.  Yeah, okay.

Ben:  There you have it.  Okay folks, so bengreenfieldfitness.com/andy.  Andy, it was pretty cool to have you come up and also, if you guys are listening, I’ll put a link to the video that Andy and I shot in my bathroom as well so that you can see how I actually used the derma roller that he talked about, and the clay mask so until next time, I’m Ben Greenfield along with Andy Hnilo of Alitura.  And all the show notes are at bengreenfieldfitness.com/andy, signing out; have an amazing week.  Andy, thanks for coming down dude.

Andy:  Thanks so much for having me, Ben, seriously.

 

 

It has been quite a ride for me. I woke up in an ICU hospital bed on the night of March 20th, 2011 and realized I had been struck by a series of large vehicles while crossing a busy street. I had a collapsed lung, seven broken ribs and a severe compound fracture of my jaw, which was broken in five places…

…thus begins the story of Andy Hnilo – a man who came knocking on my front door several weeks ago with this amazing story and a box full of exactly what he used to attack his injuries from the inside and outside, and the most critical tool he used to heal his broke and bloodied face and skin: a hand-crafted blend of unique, specialized ingredients from around the world, which he formulated himself.

 

In today’s podcast, you’ll discover Andy’s story, and also learn:

-How Andy repaired his entire face after being hit by a car…[7:15]

-Why Andy began to drink smoothies made out of deer placenta…[14:30]

-What clay does for your face, and why Andy chose the clays that he chose…[31:50]

-Why you should use something called a “derma-roller” on your face (and Ben’s special biohack he uses for collagen production)…[41:20]

-A deep dive into the ingredients Andy includes in his products, including Freshwater Pearl Powder, L-Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), First 6 Hours Grass-Fed Colostrum, American Ginseng, Green Desert Clay and Organic Kelp Powder…[43:30 & 47:35]

-Andy’s go-to supplements and foods, including egg yolks, fermented vegetables and grass-fed butter…[53:05]

-And much more…

Watch Ben learn all about an Alitura Skin Care Regime:

Resources from this episode:

–Alitura – use code BG20 for 20% off

–Andy Hnilo’s podcast with Dave Asprey on “Engineering Resilience”

–The JOOVV light Ben uses for increased production of collagen

–The colostrum Ben describes

–How to make your own methylene blue

Show Sponsors:

-Kion Serum – Rejuvenate your skin and invigorate your complexion with twelve potent, all-natural and organic ingredients that have been expertly blended to help reduce the appearance of wrinkles, improve skin firmness and elasticity, and even skin tone. Get yours now at GetKion.com.

-HealthGains – Text the word “GAIN” to 313131 to receive a $150 voucher towards your HealthGAINS treatment.

-Casper – You can be sure of your purchase with Casper’s 100 night risk-free, sleep-on-it trial. Go to Casper.com/Ben AND use promo code BEN to save $50 off your purchase.

-Bob’s Red Mill – Head to BobsRedMill.com to get 25% off with promo code “GREENFIELD.”