[Transcript] – Longevity Vs. Muscle Gain, How Much Cardio Is Too Much, Blood Flow Restriction Training, Sex Supplement Tips & Much More With The Guys From ATPScience.

Affiliate Disclosure

Transcripts

October 12, 2019

https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/supplements-podcasts/atp-science/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:05] Podcast Sponsors

[00:04:07] About this Podcast

[00:06:43] Ben's Personal History

[00:09:26] Writing to Satisfy the Primal Urge

[00:12:45] The Importance Of “Trench Testing” Ideas and Concepts in Health and Fitness

[00:16:35] Why Peptides Are the Future of Supplementation and Medicine

[00:23:50] How to Increase Autophagy

[00:29:33] Endurance Sports for Longevity and Quality of Life

[00:34:08] Podcast Sponsors

[00:35:59] Cont. Endurance Sports Vs. Power Sports

[00:46:13] Sex Supplement Tips

[00:48:17] Differing Opinions on Proper Cardio Training

[01:00:58] What Ben Eats Throughout the Day

[01:06:08] Coming to Australia?

[01:08:20] End of Podcast

Ben:  On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Explosive lifting in a competitive format under heavy load typically results in knees, elbows, low back, whatnot. It's very rare to find a CrossFitter who isn't in some state of injury rehabilitation.

Jeff:  It's something you don't want in your system when you go to buy a car because it makes you very trusting. You don't want to negotiate with oxytocin to your system.

Ben:  I'm a fan of the high-intensity interval training approach for cardio with occasional bouts of stamina built-in.

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

Alright. I hope you're ready for some fun with my boys from Australia or Oz as they say. I had a ton of fun with these cats from ATP Science. You're going to really dig today's show. They have a supplements company in Australia.

This podcast is brought to you by Kion. There are a variety of different herbs and spices that can increase the conversion of white fat into brown fat, which is something that occurs when you are, say, combining fasting and cold. And one thing that I do 365 days a year, if I'm doing this intermittent fasting combined with cold exposure to stay lean, is I always take two of the Kion Lean because of the bitter melon extract and the rock lotus extract in there, which help to activate something called AMPK.

AMPK is a special protein pathway that can actually accelerate metabolism and mimic many of the effects that you get from calorie restriction, but also upregulate the conversion of white fat into brown fat. So, this is one of my favorite fat loss supplements. It's not one on ones that jacks up your nervous system or gives you the jitters. You get a 10% discount on it and all you need to do is go to getkioncom.com. That's getK-I-O-N.com. The product is called Lean, and your 10% discount code is BGF10. That's BGF10 over at getkion.com.

This podcast is also brought to you by something that pairs quite well with cold and heat, and that is light. We know that infrared light is one of the best ways to charge up what's called cytochrome C oxidase in your mitochondria. As a matter of fact, a brand new study that I'm probably going to talk about in the next podcast gets into how, if you are controlling carbohydrates, if you're eating a relatively ketogenic diet, a higher fat intake, et cetera, you're actually going to upregulate what's called beta oxidation, or the burning of fatty acids, whether you're exercising or at rest. Well, it turns out that upregulating your cytochrome C oxidase function accelerates this process even more. And one of the best ways to do that is to expose yourself to near infrared and red light.

So, this is why every morning while I'm sipping my cup of coffee, I stand in front of this Joovv light panel. They're one of the sponsors of today's show. These things are amazing. They had got a tiny one called the Go that you can take with you on the go, especially if you are getting exposed to gray skies, lots of snow, cold weather, wintry days. This can really help with the same type of natural light exposure as you'd get from sunlight. They also make these great big panels you can strip off your clothes and stand naked in front of to increase testosterone production, collagen, elastin health in the skin, reduce pain, reduce inflammation, very, very cool product. I use mine pretty much every day when I'm at home. It's called the Joovv. And you get a gift, a nice bonus gift with your purchase of any Joovv device if you go to J-O-O-V-V/ben. That's J-O-O-V-V/ben.

So, I was recently at Spartan World Championships. I did the race in the morning, crossed the finish line, and literally sprinted to go meet these brilliant Australian supplement designers and physicians from a company called ATP Science. They came all the way from Australia to cover this race, and we wound up sitting down and talking about a ton of stuff, cellular autophagy, longevity, muscle gain, fat loss, daily routines, collagen. It was a really great conversation. So, I think you're going to dig this one. If you want to learn more about these guys or you want to delve into any of the show notes for anything that we talk about on today's show, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/atpscience. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/atpscience. Enjoy the show.

[00:05:16] Start of the ATP Project

Jeff:  Welcome to the ATP Project. You're with your host Matt and Jeff. And today, we have with us Ben Greenfield from Ben Greenfield Fitness. Mate, great to have you on. You're fresh off the mountain, so thank you so much.

Ben:  Fresh.

Jeff:   Yeah. What have you just competed?

Ben:  I don't even know. I was just following science at the top of a mountain where it was cold, windy, and there were little snowflakes coming down already. Yeah. They do like a VIP executive challenge, like the CEO challenge. And so it was about nine and a half, ten miles of obstacle course racing. It's basically just like up to the top of the mountain then back down.

Jeff:   Wow.

Ben:  Yeah. Just sandbags and barbed wire crawls and monkey bars and the whole.

Jeff:   Yeah. There's a couple of miles out there.

Ben:  Yeah. And I almost went burpee free, and I got the spear, and the tire, but there's this thing called the twister, and it's like you hang upside down, you go through these monkey bars to twist, and then you transition off to more monkey bars, then back under the twisting monkey bars, and I was like three feet from the bell you're supposed to ring and I fell off. So, I did a burpee coming to today.

Jeff:   It's a pretty good day. So, [00:06:14] ______ if you mess up–

Ben:  If you mess up on any obstacle, you got to do 30 burpees, which adds up because even if it takes you like two minutes to do the burpees, you might go from running like a seven-and-a-half-minute mile to 7:45 or whatever because the burpees tire you up.

Matt:  [00:06:31] ______.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Matt:  No one wants burpees.

Jeff:   Yeah. Well, it's great having you on the podcast, mate.

Ben:  Thank you.

Jeff:   I mean, we're obviously a big fan of your work. We've been looking at your stuff, especially around your fitness and your education. But Ben, for our listeners that aren't familiar with you, do you want to give a bit of a rundown on how you got into the industry? You started out in triathlons? Is that where you started or–?

Ben:  No. I started off in tennis.

Jeff:   In tennis?

Ben:  I played tennis in college, yeah.

Jeff:   Okay.

Ben:  I studied exercise physiology and biomechanics at University of Idaho. I'm burping up this mashmallowey bite of–I don't even know what I just ate, but it was–yeah, I'm full of collagen. So, I went to University of Idaho, studied exercise physiology and biomechanics, and played tennis before that at a community college, and then up at Idaho, played volleyball and water polo. And then I get into bodybuilding and graduated with my master's degree in exercise physiology. And then after that, I got accepted to a bunch of medical schools and worked in the private sector for a while in hip and knee surgical sales. Absolutely hated that and jumped back into fitness after about six months.

I started managing gyms and personal training studios, worked for about five years in that. I partnered up with a bunch of docs. And so, we worked with the exercises medicine initiative here in the U.S. where we would get patient referrals from doctors. And even back then, I was doing a lot of outside the box things as a personal trainer, like we had a lot of high-speed video cameras for analyzing gaits. We actually worked with a lot of triathletes for bicycle fitting, bicycle biomechanical analysis, running biomechanical analysis, underwater video cameras for swim analysis. And then we did a lot of indirect calorimetry and VO2 max testing. We did platelet-rich plasma injections.

It was just kind of like a sports medicine/sports performance facility. I was director of sports performance at that facility for about four years. And then in 2008, I received an honor as America's top personal trainer. At that point, I started to do a lot more writing, a lot more speaking, a lot more media, and eventually, got rid of the gyms, got rid of the personal training studios and started doing more what I do now, which is writing, I consult and coach with a limited number of clientele from around the world via Skype and work with them on their HRV, their sleep, their nutrition, et cetera. I run a supplements company called Kion, and then I write books and work on articles, do a lot of investing in the health and fitness and health technology space. And so that's what I do.

Matt:  Yeah. That's cool.

Jeff:   So, that's interesting. I'm actually reading in your bio that you're also writing science fiction as well, too.

Ben:  Not science fiction, fantasy fiction, young adult fantasy fiction.

Matt:  Man, that's what I'm doing when I grow up.

Jeff:   Have you published anything yet, Ben, or you're just–?

Ben:  Yeah. I published one book last year, and then another one come out this year. I try and weave a lot of what I learn in the health sector. And also, in just like–I'm in an ancestral living. I bow hunt and we grow a lot of our own food. We kind of live off-grid up in the forests in Washington State. So, I work a lot of survival, and health, and foraging, and fitness into the books as well hoping that I can teach a little bit to the young adults who are reading the book.

Matt:  Oh, man.

Jeff:   It's kind of funny because–

Matt:  That's what I'm doing when I grow up. That's going to be so cool. And I've written all that. I got most of my stuff organized. I just don't have a story.

Jeff:   Yeah.

Matt:  I just got to think about–

Ben:  Well, I've got a tip for really anybody who wants to write a book and have a skeleton, a system to follow, but also write a book that will satisfy the reader, satisfy us human beings inner primal urge to either read about or live the hero's journey, right, which is what all the hit Disney movies are from the–what's the winter one, frosted–not frosted.

Matt:  Yeah, “Frozen.”

Ben:  “Frozen,” yeah. That was close. So, “Frozen” to “Snow White,” to “Sleeping Beauty,” to “Rocky.” All of these popular movies, they all follow the hero's journey, right, the hero living the ordinary life, the call to adventure, the resistance to the call, the crossing of the threshold, meeting the mentors and the friends and the challenges along the way, having the final battle, returning home with the elixir. And there's a great book called “The Writer's Journey.” “The Writer's Journey” details how to craft a story that's written around the hero's journey, how to design your characters, how to make your story actually follow this hero's journey.

And so, when you're writing, it almost gives you confidence because you know that you're following this script and it helps you to stay with the story. It helps me when I'm making a decision about a chapter. If Ariadne or Enya, the two princesses in the book to decide whether they are going to go to battle, whether they're going to die, whether they're going to meet a mentor, it kind of helps me decide what the next turn of the story is going to be because I'm following the hero's journey.

Matt:  Yeah. That's excellent, man.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  That's really cool. I know your experience with people and the people that you've experienced with–the people you're coaching and those sorts of things. That probably inspire a few of those stories or some of those emotions I suppose?

Ben:  Not really.

Matt:  Not really?

Ben:  I just coach a bunch of rich executives who want to sleep better. There's no hero's journey there, but people who want to do Spartan or something like that I guess, but yeah, I don't know. I mean, like no. I haven't yet made that connection between getting inspiration from my clients for my stories. Yeah. My stories in writing fiction, that's like my escape from–

Matt:  From the real world.

Ben:  Yeah, from working with people and trying to get fit, how to get some exact to sleep better after traveling to China or wherever.

Matt:  That is funny. What are you going to say?

Jeff:   I thought you're going to ask some more questions.

Matt:  No, no, no.

Ben:  No, that's it. Interview is over.

Jeff:   That's interview's over.

Ben:  Have a great day. I just raised myriad drunk.

Jeff:   Now, sometimes what happens when we do a podcast is sometimes, we're all ready to go, we got stuff to say. Sometimes you find yourselves just sitting there listening.

Ben:  Oh, yeah.

Jeff:   Then all of a sudden, we're just like, “Oh, hey, what would you–“

Ben:  Yeah.

Jeff:   Now, one other thing, when you said before, you said that you started off as an athlete. You went into the bodybuilding and you still do the coaching, and then you got the academic. I personally think that is a very important group of skills to have because every time you're doing any sort of research or learning something new, you've got all those elements to look at. So, you got the bro, because you've used things and you know that there's things you've used that work for you and you're passionate about it. You try those things. Then when you become into a coach or a physician or practitioner, all of a sudden, then you're realizing that what works for you doesn't always work for everyone, and that there's a bit of system there. And then when you get into that academic space, it's like, “I need to see data. I need to see how well it works across the population so I know how–“

Ben:  Yeah. Everything has to be trench-tested. I mean, whatever, sodium bicarb loading for mitigating lactic acidosis during a high-intensity sprint effort. Yeah. That looks good on paper, but then, once you load an athlete and they've got explosive diarrhea halfway through their set of burpees or their statutes or whatever, it's like, “Oh, that didn't work out quite so well.”

Jeff:   [00:13:45] ______ back in there was the '90s. He had a very upright running style, the American guy. He won all the records here. Do you remember that guy's name? I can't remember. Was it Owens? No, it wasn't Owens.

Ben:  No, no.

Jeff:   He lists everything, but he was a big believer in that.

Ben:  Yeah. In the latest studies on sodium bicarb loading, they actually have come back to the drawing board and they're like, “Okay. So, it works, but how do we mitigate the gastric distress?”

Matt:  Yeah, exactly.

Ben:  And so now, they're doing this latest study that came out last week. They used a 19-hour loading protocol, like half a teaspoon every hour on the hour for 19 hours. And to me, that starts to get to the point where, “Okay. So, if I want that extra edge, am I really going to get up every hour during the night of sleep before my event to load with sodium bicarb?

Matt:  And is that going to really improve your performance?

Ben:  Yeah. Is that really going to improve my performance that much versus being sleep-deprived? Because I just have an alarm every hour to eat some baking soda.

Matt:  Yeah, exactly.

Ben:  So, some of this stuff is just like–it has to be trench tested.

Matt:  Yeah, exactly.

Ben:  It has to be. And I'll come right out and say like even this bar, it's amazing, it tastes really good. This is something I'd eat on a road trip. But if you try and market that to a Spartan racer out on the course and they're trying to chew, chew, chew, choose their racing. Because I ran into the problem when I designed a bar. You couldn't bite through the thing as soon as it got down to about 40 degrees or so and it turned absolute mushy seedy goo for people racing Ironman out in the heat. So, I mean, a lot of this stuff, like once you nail the macros, once you nail your flavor profile, then you got to go out and have a bunch of people actually test it if you're going to market as like a sports performance supplement.

Jeff:   Yeah. That's really cool.

Matt:  And you pretty much try everything. I mean, [00:15:24] ______ your podcast. And so, you're your own guinea pig for all of these things. So, I mean, you want to know if it actually really was.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  I mean, you're pretty good, excellent athlete. You're an excellent athlete. I mean, you're a good person–

Ben:  Well, I mean, I'm an athlete, but let's face it, I'm not going to go out and win World Championships tomorrow. But I do like to keep myself in good shape to be relatively fit.

Jeff:   How old are you now, Ben?

Ben:  I'm 37.

Jeff:   Alright. You don't look 37. You look about 27.

Ben:  Oh, thank you.

[Speaking at the same time]

Jeff:   But I mean, intense of obviously with your triathlete career as well, too. You're right up there in terms of–at the top echelon of the sport.

Ben:  Oh yeah, yeah. I did Ironman World Championship six times and I won long course gold medal for USA in 2013. And for a while, the first few years, I raced Spartan. I had a few podiums and was a top-ranked Spartan. Now, I'm just happy to be fit and still able to go out and prove that I'm keeping myself in shape. I'm not just sitting in my mom's basement writing blog posts about peptides.

Matt:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff:   It's interesting. Actually, I like you talking about the peptides. You like the peptides. I was actually reading some of your research on them.

Ben:  I think peptides are the future supplementation on medicine. I mean, when you can precisely via–well, the good companies now are actually using amino acid sequencers to actually create very precise sequences of amino acids that target very precise mechanisms of action. So, you could use like–we were talking about, before we officially, officially started the things we could slather on our balls, or transdermal delivery of NAD, you look at a transdermal peptide like dihexa. I mean, you smear that on the carotid artery on either side of the neck and it feels like you drank six cups of coffee without any of the jitteriness.

I could compare something like that to modafinil, for example. And then there are other neuropeptides like Cortigen and Pinealon, which can actually improve your memory, like short-term and long-term memory recall. There's another one called BPC-157, which is a gut healing peptide that can be taken orally. It's one of the few peptides that can be administered orally, but it can also be injected subcutaneously as a systemic anti-inflammatory. TB-500, that's another one. It can repair myosin and actin fibers. Again, systemically, you can inject it subcutaneously in the abdomen with an insulin syringe.

And then you look at some of the Russian research on peptides, human clinical data, unreduced all-cause risk of mortality with something like a 10-day protocol once a year of the peptide Epitalon. You look at a lot of these Blue Zones that tested them and found that the centenarians have a higher than normal level of this peptide Humanin, circulating in their bloodstream and they can now sequence Humanin, and you can just do like a yearly dose of Humanin. I think that the barrier for peptides is not a lot of people are going to inject, right? Yeah. There's millions of diabetics walking around, injecting insulin. So, people do it, but I think once these things become largely orally or transdermally available–I mean, you guys owning a supplements company, I've got my eye on that sector right now. If Kion could start actually putting out peptide sequences that do what supplements do right now, but with way better bioavailability and way better targeted mechanisms of action, I think that's one of the frontiers of both medicine and just general supplementation as a whole.

Jeff:   With the BJP and the TBC-400, is that–

Ben:  The BPC-157 and TB-500 are probably the most popular for muscle repair and anti-inflammatory action. I know a couple docs now who are even doing IV administration of that to get even better systemic availability, as well as ultrasound guided imagery injections in the same way that you do like Prolozone Therapy with ozone, or in the same way that you do like a nerve hydrodissection. You can actually go in and very precisely target right into an area of inflammation with a longer needle like a BPC-157.

Jeff:   And how long typically are you looking to use those things before you start to see the results in terms of [00:19:43] ______?

Ben:  Gold standard is usually about a two-week protocol, but I mean, I'll notice things almost right away.

Jeff:   Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

Matt:  There's some interesting–well, we're talking about the peptides. In regards to that collagen research, the Germans are doing this [00:19:56] ______. We use a product called BodyBalance that was targeted towards the muscle, mTOR, AMPK, and those sort of pathways they originally thought. But what was interesting about it is they've gone through just that collagen process and just taking various different combinations of peptides and testing those into medical models just to see what they do. But these are actually peptides that can be naturally contained within the collagen molecules. Have you seen the new data on all the glycine-based peptides that they can actually ring through out of the collagen?

Ben:  No.

Matt:  So, what they've done recently is they went through–there's a paper to be published next year. It hasn't yet been published where they compared BodyBalance collagen peptides to whey protein isolates and just showed that it had a three and a half times the ability to build muscle compared to whey other placebo, and then four times of strength and double the fat loss. And it was all because of these 10% of the serve with this peptide. It's very high in glycine and arginine, but they bypass the absorption. So, they made such extreme temperatures and enzymes that they get absorbed intact. They then can actually have an effect in the body and then broken down by the proteases to release those amino acids to help some stuff.

But on the basis of that, I was at the ISSN Conference last year and we had the collagen research guys doing that research. We had the whey guys, their research, and we had other guys without any supplementation looking at what the initial changes were with muscle. And all of them were trying to work out what the bloody hell's going on because we've got none of the leucines or anything like that in the collagen, yet it has remarkable effects at stimulating muscle hypertrophy compared to the whey. They then showed that the groups–and what it was is this guy, Michael Roberts, had this wicked paper that showed the initial changes in hypertrophy were actually changes in the sarcoplasmic reticulum, and that's where the collagen worked on actually enhancing the fascia, the sarcomere and building a bigger sock, for lack of a better word.

And then what happened is all the ways, macros, leucines, and then the mTOR pathway is everything kicked in later to fill up that sock. So, I think those peptides, it's not just looking at these injectables in the future. We might be out of master what peptides we can make out of different foods as well to get those oral ones absorbed. Because there's some crazy research now that they've just opened their eyes up to looking at a different pathway other than just mTOR for muscle growth just to see what the initial stage is. That paper by Michael Roberts was a cracker because it showed no increase in muscle protein synthesis initially. It was just the increase in the fascia, the sarcomere, lots of hydration, and everything in there as well. And then that really drove the growth to allow everything else to work.

Ben:  Which is interesting if you're not targeting the mTOR pathway, you might avoid some of the–almost like the accelerated aging pathways that you see with–some big problem these days, especially with the paleo industry, the fitness industry or any of these industries where you've got a lot of methionine from your muscle meat, or whey protein, or whatever the case may be. A lot of people do not get enough glycine. I'm a big, big fan of bone broth supplementation and nose to tail eating of animals, organ meat consumption. I mean, glycine is highly protective, too.

The researcher, Dr. James–it's like James DiNicolantonio or something like that. He co-wrote the book–I believe it was called “Super Fuel” with Dr. Mercola. And in that book, he even talks about the protective effect of glycine on the cell membrane in response to like rancid vegetable oils, like omega-6 fatty acids, 20 grams of glycine, and/or 5 grams of spirulina. Both were highly protective against something like canola oil consumption. That's like my restaurant hack now. If I'm eating at a restaurant, I just don't know, like I always have glycine out with a spirulina. I've got an activated charcoal for the alcohol.

Everything to stop up the mess, but yeah, glycine is amazing, and it may also initiate autophagy. This was another thing I was actually talking to Mercola about is he studied up several compounds that would enhance autophagy and blunt some of the mTOR pathway. And so, you can take this stuff like in a fasted state at night. And for a lot of people who are doing like a high protein, anabolic type of diet by day, weight training trying to optimize protein synthesis but still want to optimize at autophagy in the evening from a longevity standpoint, glycine was one component of this, and the other elements were chamomile, like chamomile powder, quercetin, garcinia, and Pau D'arco. And you could put all these–

And after I talked to them a little bit about this and looked at some of the papers he sent to me, I keep all this in a glass mason jar; the chamomile, the glycine, the garcinia, the quercetin, and the Pau D'arco. And you could just basically take a couple tablespoons of that, put in some hot water or just like–if you like to chew the powders, put it straight into your mouth and it's like nighttime autophagy powder.

Matt:  Yeah, yeah.

Jeff:   In terms of the autophagy, that's the–

Matt:  Jeff asked me before the show, “What's autophagy?” which is in the way we'd pronounce it in the show.

Jeff:   Autophagy.

Matt:  And I said, “Eating your own poop.”

Ben:  Yeah.

[Speaking at the same time]

Jeff:   And obviously, the problem with the methionine is that the–

Matt:  But it's not just eating your own poop.

Jeff:   [00:25:10] _______ problems with the heart disease, correct? And God forbid, [00:25:09] _______. But yeah, in terms of–do you want to explain just quickly to the listeners that might not be as smart as you two about the–

Ben:  The problem with excess methionine or methionine to glycine ratio that's too high.

Jeff:   Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Well, methionine, I mean it's largely going to target that mTOR pathway we were talking about earlier. So, state of pro-growth, state of anabolism but–

Jeff:   So, problems also with cancer cells as well too, obviously.

Ben:  Right, exactly. Yeah.

Matt:  The other thing too, and you're talking before about that, we're talking about the collagen ability to bypass that mTOR and have a growth effect. That explains how it can work in those groups because insulin resistance, a lot of people assume insulin resistance is just obese people or diabetes. But the first sign of the insulin resistance is the inability to build muscle or respond to those calorie surplus to grow. So, again, when they did those larger studies using the collagen versus whey, anyone that's insulin resistant isn't responding as well to those whey style delivery systems driving the mTOR. So, that was another way.

And so, anything to improve insulin sensitivity might make those pathways work better. I think that the secret is somewhere in between, combining all of them. But that I think will have a big effect. That insulin resistance, how often are you seeing that these days, and are you finding it? Because in Australia, people talk about one in four, that sort of stuff, but I mean, it's quite easily corrected through diet and exercise. I mean, it should be a temporary state of flux insulin resistance, basically saying you're full now.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously for upregulation of GLUT-4 transporters and increasing insulin sensitivity on the cell receptor, I mean, physical activity and exercise. Particularly, weight training and high-intensity interval training are the best ways to do it. But when you look at, for example, a lot of Blue Zones, right? They have all these different elements in their diet. Like in Okinawa, they have bitter melon. And in Bama County, China, they've got rock lotus and berberine. I mean, there was recently a paper that came out that compared berberine and quercetin administration to metformin. They even added red yeast rice extract into that and we're getting similar results as like metformin and a statin.

Jeff:   That's right. I mean, radiance is awesome. I think they banned it in Australia because it's so effective.

Ben:  Of course, right. Exactly.

Jeff: –pharmaceutical companies basically [00:27:39] ______.

Ben:  Apple cider vinegar, Ceylon cinnamon. Even for me, like if I'm getting a cocktail at a bar before I go have dinner, typically, I'll have like a mess of house bitters on the rocks with a little bit of gin and a squeeze of lemon. And that's a great way to enhance your first phase insulin response, increase insulin sensitivity, and have less of a hyperglycemic response to your meal.

Jeff:   And all the things that you've just mentioned, Ben, and I didn't know some of the ingredients there, but they seemed like relatively–berberine is as bitter as all hell. I mean, you're basically looking at polyphenols.

Matt:  Oh, berberine is bloody horrible.

Jeff:   Yeah.

Matt:  But it's great for you. And what's interesting about–another big problem with the insulin resistance, we're doing a fair few organic acid tests, do a lot of work in the microbiome, looking at the different colonies of bugs that can come in and can contribute to that insulin resistance and that calorie yield. And having berberine has a number of effects because it has those amazing any microbial effect, reducing a lot of the Firmicutes that increase the calorie yield. The Firmicutes are normally associated with infants, and that lots of times where we need accelerated growth and that sort of stuff because they increase calorie yield, and also enhance your ability to use that fuel for growth.

But berberine will actually kill off a lot of those buggers. Berberine will also stop that liver from releasing that blood sugar because the liver gets confused. The liver gets a bit inflamed, especially if you got bad gut health, and the liver gets inflamed, and then all of the sudden, it can't pick up on the amount of glucose in the bloodstream. So, then it feels the need to release sugar and signal, the release of sugar into the bloodstream. That's how most people get fasting blood sugar elevated–

Ben:  That's how metformin works. And metformin largely–it doesn't work on peripheral receptors and muscle tissue. It largely works on the river. So, I'm like, “Seventy percent of your receptors are in muscle tissue. Why would you take metformin if–I mean, why not just go do some burpees before you eat, or do a strength training session in the morning? I mean, because you're hitting way more receptors.

Matt:  Yes. So, what do you think about that? Because one thing that we talk a lot about is if someone's–what I [00:29:37] ______  someone at high fasting blood sugar, anything with fatty livers, any of these insulin resistance. The first thing I would tell them to do is before you eat anything, go clear the pathway, go burn some fuel. Just get some stuff moving because ultimately, insulin resistance will come from the fact that your mitochondria have already got oxidized leftover fuel just sitting there that you haven't burned. We've got to clear that away and then you become more sensitive as soon as your cellular sugar drops.

Ben:  And people will say–of course we know there's a host of data on muscle strength and functional muscle, and particularly, fast-twitch type 2 muscle fibers as being longevity enhancing agents. But I think it goes beyond just the fact that makes you harder to kill and better able to step off the curb and increases bone density and whatnot. I mean, that's a glycogen disposal tank–or not a glycogen, a glucose disposal tank.

Matt:  Exactly.

Ben:  Right? And so, you just basically have more of what you need to suck up glucose in a very insulin sensitive state.

Matt:  And even blood, like it's a good blood reservoir as well. So, people with the high blood pressure should be [00:30:45] ______ and reduce that blood pressure.

Ben:  Forty-two percent decrease risk of all-cause mortality in seniors who strength train. And the only other things that seem to have a slightly comparable effect are racket sports, swimming, and cycling. So, if you were going to do anything as you age, lift weights, play table tennis, or tennis, or badminton, or racquetball, or pickleball, or something like that, go swimming every once in a while, ride a bike, like if you were going to have a totem pole and choose what you wanted to do to live a long time. But strength training beats almost everything.

Jeff:   My father actually played tennis up until two weeks before he died when he was 87, and like still fit, active, healthy. He loved it. And that was the thing as well too, Ben, like for a lot of older people listening to this as well too, absolutely weights is recommended and you're seeing a lot more people getting introduced to that. But staying active and actually doing something that you love and you become passionate about something like a racquet sport, that's a great way to improve your [00:31:39] _____.

Ben:  Now CrossFit, now CrossFit.

Matt:  Now CrossFit.

Ben:  Well, so many people–don't get me wrong, like functional athleticism, and the power, and explosiveness–the study that they did on powerlifters compared to general pop who weren't lifting showed that powerlifting, particularly the explosive nature of powerlifting, had a direct effect on reducing the rate at which telomeres shorten. And so, there's something about moving very quickly, moving very explosively. The problem is as you age and as you're trying to stay uninjured, and as you're trying to be able to, whatever, throw a football around with your kids in the backyard, explosive lifting in a competitive format under heavy load typically results in knees, elbows, low back, whatnot. It's very rare to find a CrossFitter who isn't in some state of injury rehabilitation.

So, what I encourage, especially seniors to do, and I'm largely transitioning this way as I age, is do loaded strength training. Art De Vany talks about this a lot. Focus on the eccentric phase of the strength training where you get a lot of the satellite cell response, you get a lot of the stem cell proliferation. And it's very slow and controlled, almost like Dr. Doug McGuff wrote a book called, “Body by Science,” and it's all super-slow training. It's just in and out, time under tension, right? Two to three minutes, maximum one single set to failure, chest press, leg press, pull up or pull down, some kind of shoulder press, and a row. And that's it. You do that one to two times a week and you can maintain strength, you get a peripheral blood pressure response. So, you get kind of a cardiovascular training response.

And then if you want to hit that fast-twitch type 2 muscle fiber, then you go and do something like–the New York Times is a perfect example. They published a couple of years ago an article called the 7-Minute Workout, where they actually showed a study about the 7-minute workout, 30 seconds as hard as you can go push-ups, 15 seconds recovery, 30 seconds as hard and fast as you can go lunges, 15 seconds recovery to 7-minute workout. And yeah, I mean, if people–I have nothing against working out for a long time. For a lot of people, that's like your happy place. That's meditation. I have nothing against that.

The idea though is even like the 7-minute workout, just do it and do it three times through. But what I'm a big fan of is super slow loaded training with an emphasis on the eccentric phase to the lift combined with bodyweight explosive training. I mean, play some racket sport, swim, bike, do that and you're set for life.

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Matt:  I used to try–yeah, I was always a fat guy. And in this industry, I was always overweight, so I was trained with angst, and aggression, and self-hate, and all that sort of stuff. Originally–yeah, and even just like you see yourself in the mirror and you hate yourself. You do these things and it was a terrible place, and I hated it. And then I go see a guy who basically went through and said, “No, we're going to just turn this into recalibration. You spend too much time in your brain. We're going to spend some time with your muscles telling your brain just how they're going and what's going on.”

So, for that, we took the weight right off. We do 10-second reps pretty much. It's really slow, really controlled, just looking for sticky spots, looking for symmetry, focusing on maintaining the load and symmetry. I dropped 45-pound, but actually built muscle in the process and did that since March without actually even thinking about body composition.

Ben:  I bet you didn't get injured either?

Matt:  No. In fact, before, I was supposed to get a wrist reconstruction, a shoulder reconstruction, and a knee reconstruction from old injuries. And now, I just chose not to do that and I went through the pathway.

Ben:  Beautiful.

Matt:  Yeah. It was a trauma therapy involved seizures and all that sort of stuff in the early phases, but now it's just about maintaining symmetry, and it's the ultimate recalibration because I spend the rest of the time with my brain telling my body what to do.

Jeff:   Ken Ware is a special person.

Ben:  Ken Ware?

Matt:  Yeah.

Jeff:   Have you heard of him, Ben?

Ben:  His name sounds familiar.

Jeff:   He works on chaos theory, basically.

Ben:  Where does he live?

[Speaking at the same time]

Jeff:   He was on 60 minutes because medical science can't work him out. He worked with a guy, John McClane, I think his name is, who was in a wheelchair for 20 years, and then competed in Ironman. My mind was blown. We went and just interviewed some random people down there. And I pulled across one lady and I said, “Why are you here?” She goes, “My daughter has got severe spina bifida–“

Matt:  Scoliosis.

Jeff:   Scoliosis, sorry. She's about to have metal rods put into her back. She's 18 now, so they're going to put the metal rods in. And this is our last chance to see if we could get a miracle. And I said, “Well, how long have you been here?” She said, “Oh, five days.” And I said, “How have you been? Have you found this beneficial, any improvement?” She goes, “My daughter's spine is completely straight.”

Matt:  No scoliosis. They didn't [00:38:18] ______. They went to the surgeons and said, “What should we do? Should we do this?” And they said, “Well, it's not what you should–you don't have scoliosis. We can't do surgery. It's as simple as that.”

Ben:  Have this guy written a book or anything, papers?

Matt:  No. He's working on a few–I'll send you all of it.

Ben:  I'd love to look him up.

Matt:  It's awesome. It's quite an amazing thing what he does. But that whole changing, that perspective changed so much. An interesting thing about that is I then started looking more in towards that self-hate versus self-love. And then you look at that angst and aggression versus everything else. I come across all that new data on oxytocin and having a look at how amazing oxytocin is. And then how cool it is that oxytocin then directly links in with that other research that we're discovering around the fascia?

And then I learned and then started looking more in towards these estrogen receptors and started understanding–I mean, if you consider the fact that estrogen itself in a female can–all within 10 days build enough collagen all through the body to hold an endometrial tissue to get ready for the period or the menses. And then just that sudden drop of estrogen and all of that collagen breaks down. I started looking at that research on that even women are more predisposed to injuries just when that estrogens are high, the amount of ligament or laxity, the amount of collagen they make. Women's feet get longer just prior to ovulation because of the ability to build all this extra collagen, and that's all driven by estrogen receptors.

And then I look back at all the bodybuilders that were telling me that they use estrogen blockers coming in to comp to dry out the lower back, which was usually just a uric acid tension in the lower back. But they'll use an estrogen blocker to do that until they flatten out, until all of a sudden, or until they start getting injuries. And then you go, “Man.” So, the importance of estrogen and oxytocin to regulate collagen and fascia is a really interesting era that we're moving into as opposed to androgens for muscle protein synthesis, and anger, and aggression, and all that sort of thing.

[Speaking at the same time]

Ben:  Tapping into our inside a little bit more.

Matt:  The love and you get it from cuddles and that sort of stuff.

Ben:  It's something you don't want in your system when you go to buy a car because it makes you very trusting and you don't want to negotiate with oxytocin in your system. But it also increases skin receptor sensitivity, which is one reason why people like to snuggle after sex, for example, or babies like to snuggle with their mothers while breastfeeding. It's because all of those things cause a release of oxytocin. And as a matter of fact, this is a tip for the adults out there. You can actually get intranasal oxytocin spray and use that prior to sex and it just brings it through the roof.

Jeff:   Really?

Ben:  Oh, it's amazing.

Jeff:   Wow.

Ben:  Yeah. I use a compounded ketamine oxytocin spray like on date night with my wife. That's amazing. Wow.

Matt:  Yeah. And the ketamine in there is–

Ben:  Yeah. The ketamine disinhibits you a little bit.

Matt:  What's a ketamine, sorry?

Ben:  Ketamine is, traditionally, would be like something using anesthesia as a mild tranquilizer. And in larger doses, it's like a party drug, but just a little bit intranasally compounded with oxytocin. It's a very, very fun little–

Matt:  Wow. They're [00:41:26] ______ a horse to sleep. Right, [00:41:28] ______. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. I've been trying to get that oxytocin nasal spray. I got promised one and it never arrived.

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  So, that's really interesting. And then you're talking–before when you're talking about that power stuff, that 7-minute workout, again in regards to this collagen research, there's another dude, Diego down in South America, he just did publish some data on cluster training. And what he did in that instance there, he preloaded everyone with creatine to get that hydration to create that swelling, and then he does 3RM, whatever the exercise is, with a 20-second break in between to allow for that ATP to regenerate. Go again with another 3RM. They got massive amount of muscle hypertrophy. And again, most of the markers that they found for the initial growth was all in that hydration, and the swelling, and the stretching of that fascia, and then–

Ben:  Doing the 3RM.

Matt:  Yup.

Ben:  And did you know how many sets he was doing?

Matt:  I don't know.

Ben:  So, four sets of three reps with 20 seconds of rest in between each. Creatine loading beforehand. Do you know how much creatine?

Matt:  Now, they did the 20-gram creatine loading–

Ben:  Twenty grams, 3k.

Matt:  –four days and then throughout the rest of the study, they maintained that loading with about 3 to 5 grams into that.

Ben:  Do you know what exercise modality they were using for these four sets of three reps?

Matt:  They're doing deadlifts and squats. I'll get you all the papers. It was mainly deadlifts and squats. Yeah. And I will get [00:42:48] ______ quads. And again, but a lot of the markers and the initial changes again. It was all about that swelling and the stretching in the fascia. And this has all led me back to the totally being re-interested again in creatine, because you know, you we went through a phase where creatine works because it hydrates the muscle. It just puts on more weight, or makes you train hard. It gives you more energy so you can perform better.

But now that I'm seeing this importance of the swelling in through that fascia, and actually the hydration within the fascia and causing that fascia to swell, and then training for pump. Then I start thinking about that old-school static stretching because a lot of people train for latitudinal pump. They're probably a good opportunity then to do some sort of a longitudinal stretch to get that fascia to be more permeable, and then get that [00:43:35] ______.

Ben:  That same swelling is one of the mechanisms of action via which blood flow restriction training works, which is something I actually do quite a bit when I travel. Yeah. So, you occlude the muscle, upper body or lower body, and it essentially tricks your muscles into thinking that they're under heavy load and that there's a lot of damage going on. Lactic acidosis causes a growth hormone response. You do not need to use heavy weight. I have bands back in my hotel room here right now. I travel with the bands.

Now, technically, most of the research that's come from Japan on occlusion training uses the very small elastic tubing that is very precisely controlled. The millimeters of mercury pressure and the tubing is controlled by a handheld device called the Kaatsu device. But that's like a $1,500 unit. You can approximate and you can get BFR bands on Amazon for like 40 or 50 bucks, and you occlude the arms and the legs. I mean, the amount of burn you get in just like a set of 20 bodyweight squats, for example, is through the roof and you can actually–they've done studies on seniors, for example. You can stave off sarcopenia with no load or very light load. We're talking about like 30% 1RM all the way down to bodyweight training just by wearing these BFR bands and occluding the muscle prior to training.

Jeff:   Well, for people that are older or people with injuries, I mean, that's excellent. As you said before, I mean the danger with the Olympic lifts and stuff like that, especially if you're really going for heavyweight, then you damage something, especially as you're older, the ability to recover, the ability to train then goes out the window.

Ben:  Honestly, I like it too because you can just feel the pump. It stays with you for a long time after the workout. With as much as I travel and as often as I'm in a hotel with just a crappy gym, a lot of times I'm in my hotel room, I got 20 minutes before I go down and be at the conference room. But if I can slap on those BFR research and bands and just like spend 15 minutes doing push-ups and squats, yeah, I can get a super-fast–

Matt:  Let me tell you how this is going to work because–you have to try this Prototype 8 with it. So, what we got, we got a cream. It's got a transdermal arginine, which creates a very fast pump, like even without the bands. You do one set and it's stupid. But in it, we've got the [00:45:54] ______ steroids. So, we've got the 20 hydroxy [00:45:56] _____ steroid. There's a recent paper published actually suggest–it was the most anabolic natural agent they could find, and it works on estrogen receptors in the fascia, and it increases glucose disposal by about 30%, protein synthesis up to 50 [00:46:11] ______.

Jeff:    Yeah. It is crazy.

Ben:  I have a transdermal nitroglycerin cream that I use. Okay. So, here's the deal. That ketamine oxytocin spray I told you, the only problem with the ketamine is it gives you droopy dick. So, you need to take sildenafil, or what works even better because you don't have to time it is you can just slap a little bit like a small dab of nitroglycerin cream on your balls right before you're going to action. I mean, it's amazing. That's like instant takeoff.

Matt:  I think we sell more product as Viagra cream. And the ladies are actually really good for if there's any failure to orgasm and that sort of stuff like that. They just [00:46:45] ______.

Ben:  Oh, yeah. For women, and anyone driving their minivan with your kids, they're about to grow up by about three extra years now, but like a little bit of that nitroglycerin cream on the clitoris or a little bit of like a transdermal testosterone cream on the clitoris, and I mean, it's screaming good for her.

Matt:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff:   Yeah. There's a lot of people using the Prototype 8. So, we're actually going to refine that and bring out actually a cream which can actually be used by the guys.

Matt:  And so, you can butter up with that Prototype 8 before you do the occlusion and you get massive pump.

Ben:  Amazing.

Matt:  And really, really fast. And even to the point that with Prototype 8, the way we used to do it in trade shows, because people, they try to explain this stuff now or whatever, so we just massage it on one bicep, do a series of curls and see what happens. And then they haven't even finished one set and they get in the pump, which was terrible in the fact that it worked a little bit better than we anticipated. So, we have to tell people to just use it towards [00:47:43] _____ maybe. So, you could do [00:47:44] _____ quick occlusion training if you only get a quick 20-minute pump that's perfect for that. But if you're trying to get a proper workout out, use it just for a final drop set, superset, otherwise, you get just too much pump too soon and you blow out.

Ben:  Well, the other problem is blood pressure. I know with that nitroglycerin cream, there's no way you would want to–let's say drink the root juice or take Viagra and then put that stuff on because your blood pressure will drop. It just fades [00:48:07] _____ everything and your blood pressure will plummet.

Matt:  Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And that would be pretty powerful nitroglycerin.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.

Matt:  That's amazing, actually. I have to try some of that.

Jeff:   And just changing tack a little bit, Ben, I'd be really interested in. I actually really enjoyed your article on peak fitness as well, too. I actually started incorporating that when I was playing football and I just got an injury. So, hopefully, I'll be able to get back next year in terms of the difference between your high-intensity versus your steady-state cardio. But I know this is little bit of what we're talking a lot about training for building muscle tissue and body composition in terms of your opinions as far as cardio. We've got so many varied opinions now in terms of cardio specifically, not so much for fitness but obviously for fat loss.

We've got the F cardio movement and I appreciate it and those guys are heavy lifters and it's all about doing your big compound groups. You've got other people that are talking about using like Tabata style training. In terms of your opinion if someone–and obviously, depending on the type of person that you're talking to, whether they're quite overweight or whether they're [00:49:09] _____, what's your recommendation for those people?

Ben:  Based on the research that James O'Keefe has done on arterial stiffness and increased risk of cardiovascular-related mortality in response to endurance training, what he's found is that greater than about 90 minutes of aerobic exercise per day are greater than about 60 minutes of higher intensity, like moderate to high still aerobic exercise per day because it's possible to be anaerobic for 60 minutes. But anything greater than 90 minutes aerobic, low to moderate or anything greater than 60 minutes, moderate to high, you actually see–that's the point at which you see the increased risk of mortality and the law of diminishing returns set in.

So, that's where you would definitely be playing with fire. And granted there's many people for whom knew 90 minutes of cardio a day, they just don't have the time of day to do that. But then you look at a lot of Ironman triathletes and marathoners and cardio junkies–

Matt:  Just laborers, too. People work that way, too.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Well, when you're talking about laboring, you are very, very low on the aerobic zone. I mean, we're talking about–typically, even if you're laboring, you're below aerobic threshold. For example, I hunt, and I can hunt for seven days and be trekking all day and be nowhere near what I would be during a marathon or an Ironman triathlon, nowhere even near that. So, what we're really talking about is steady-state cardio. You would not want to do more than 90 minutes of low to moderate or more than 60 minutes of moderate to high on a daily basis.

And then it comes down also to just the whole-time hacking piece. Meaning that when we can activate via–I believe it's the PPAR pathway that we would activate the same mitochondrial training response via high-intensity interval training as the AMPK pathway that we would hit with that longer-term aerobic training. It's kind of like two different ways to skin the cat. And you see competitive elite aerobic athletes like cross-country skiers, or marathoners, or triathletes using a polarized training model. Meaning that they do about 80% of their training, largely aerobically with only about 20% spent in that anaerobic threshold and very little time spent in between. And that's a very good way to get fit to compete on an elite level in aerobic sports. But that style of training, because 80% is low to moderate aerobic training, you're talking about training three to four hours a day, plus.

Jeff:   And for the average person?

Ben:  For the average person, that's unrealistic versus just being able to approximate that same type of approach. You're never going to be an elite world champion athlete doing a 20-minute high-intensity interval training session on the bike versus hitting the hills for four hours, but you're still going to target the same mitochondrial response. So, ultimately, I'm a fan of the high-intensity interval training approach for cardio with occasional bouts of stamina built in. I have a long hike every once in a while, on the weekends or bike ride. But where I think the magic lies for the average person is hacking your workplace environment, standing treadmills, or standing workstations, treadmill workstations, Pomodoro breaks where you're swinging a kettlebell or doing a few pull-ups, basically making your environment such that during a typical day of work, you feel as though you're engaged in this very low-level aerobic cardio during the entire day.

And then if you put the cherry on top of the cake with a little bit of like a high-intensity interval training session in the beginning over the end of the day, or a little bit of like that super slow training we were talking about, or the blood flow occlusion training or something like that, you're really just taking a brief dip into just enough to spark that mitochondrial response, enough to spark that satellite so responsible but if hypertrophy. That's how I live my life. I do high-intensity interval training in the beginning or the end of the day, but I'm still walking like 15,000 steps while I'm talking to people on the phone and working during the day. I'm taking stops to swing a kettlebell. I've got a hex bar in the room next to my office where I'm lifting heavy things every once in a while. So, really, I think that's where the average person can get the most bang for their buck is by viewing their entire day as an opportunity to just take movement snacks the whole time.

Jeff:   As far as cardio is concerned, a lot of people do fasted cardio first thing in the morning. Do you think there's a benefit to that? Do you think that a high interval training first thing in the morning is superior during the evening or you don't think it makes that much difference? And as far as weights then, do you recommend weights in the evening before bed is better because you're–?

Ben:  Yeah. Here's what my model is. A, fasted cardio in the morning appears to be pretty beneficial for being able to mobilize and utilize fatty acids simply because you have fewer of them available from dietary sources. So, you get up in the morning, you work out in a fasted state, your adipose tissue releases fatty acids, you rely upon those as a fuel versus the triglycerides and the fatty acids that your liver might be churning out from you having had a meal, okay? Now, the trick is that you need to realize studies have shown that that also results in a trend towards caloric hyper compensation after the fasted exercise.

So, if you're going to do fasted exercise, you may need to just be in a state of mindfulness and know, “Okay, this is going to make me want to have a 1500 calorie smoothie for breakfast, but I need to remember, the whole reason I'm doing this, especially when I'm doing it to lose weight, is I'm going to do my fasted exercise session but I'm still just going to have a normal sane breakfast afterwards.” Now, I like that scenario of an easy walk in the sunshine, or a little bit of yoga, or some kind of fasted aerobic exercise in the morning because your body temperature peaks, your testosterone peaks, your post-workout protein synthesis peaks, your grip strength peaks, all in the afternoon to the early evening.

So, if you have the luxury of time and you're scheduled to be able to save your high-intensity interval training or your weight training before the evening, you're going to be able to get more bang for your buck out of it when you do it then. And furthermore, related to what we were talking about in terms of muscle being a glucose disposal sink, you also are timing one of the best things you can do for insulin sensitivity, an upregulation of glucose transporters right before the one meal of the day that tends to be for most people living in a westernized society, the meal that has the most amount of unpredictability, dinner. Right, dinners. When we go out to restaurants, we might have more carbohydrates, we you might have alcohol, we might have dessert.

So, it's really beautiful if you can save that hard insulin sensitizing exercise session for the afternoon to early evening because if you're like me, we were talking earlier, you asked me if I was in ketosis and I said I don't pay that much attention. But frankly, I'm in ketosis most of the day because I save all my carbs, like my sweet potatoes, my gams, my rice, my wine, my dark chocolate, all that stuff for the end of the day when I can sit down with my family, have an amazing meal. I've done my strength training. I'm guilt-free. I wore Dexcom continuous blood glucose monitor for a whole year and I was easily back down into normal blood glucose levels within two hours after the evening meal when I used the ketone monitor, the Keto-Mojo. I was in ketosis the next morning. And so it's almost like this cyclic ketotic approach to eating where you wake up, fasted aerobic exercise, and it mitigates your consumption during the day, exercise in the afternoon to early evening, have your carbohydrates at night, rinse, wash, repeat, and that works well for a lot of people.

Jeff:   Just a clarification on that. So, you recommend a steady-state, or you still recommend first thing in the morning or you're still fine with the 20-minute hit training session?

Ben:  First thing in the morning, if you can, I like just easy aerobic. If your schedule dictates that by the end of the day, you're so cognitive fatigued and tired from work, there's no way you're going to want to hit the strength train or do high-intensity cardio, eat the frog, do the hard thing in the morning. But if you have the luxury of time, you can arrange your schedule so that you can just go for an easy walk fasted in the sunshine in the morning. I always finish up with a little cold shower, a cold soak to mobilize those fatty acids even more, stabilizing some levels even more. As a matter of fact, wearing that continuous blood glucose monitor. The number one thing that kept my blood glucose low the rest of the day was starting off the day by getting into a cold state.

Matt:  Is that right?

Ben:  Yeah.

Matt:  That's really exciting.

[Voice Overlap]

Ben:  I'm not going to buy ice bags and dump them in the bath.

Matt:  But what he said was really cool is that even going for a half a liter of ice-cold water and then actually putting a nice necklace–that was I think–I can't remember exactly, but only 60% as good as having [00:57:52] ______. Now, for the average person, they're probably prepared to do that, whereas [00:57:56] ______ jump into an ice bath.

Ben:  Yeah. There are companies like Cool Fat Burner. They make a vest and a device you can wear. For me, because Ray Cronise in his research on the metabolic response to cold thermogenesis, he showed that all you need to do is be at 55 degrees or less, which for most people, 55 degrees Fahrenheit is a cold shower.

Matt:  Yeah, yeah.

Ben:  Right. So, you can stand in the cold shower for two to five minutes. You don't have to buy ice bags and dump them in a tub and do this whole Wim Hof thing. All you need to do is just get a little bit cold.

Matt:  Yeah. Even when we're doing that research for the AMPV (ph), the peppermint was an interesting thing because the peppermint actually tricked the nerves in the liver to thinking you were cold and actually induced a [00:58:36] ______ thermic ability. Otherwise, it could help to [00:58:38] ______ that.

Ben:  Yeah. As a matter of fact, in Ayurvedic typing, in Ayurvedic medicine, if you tend to be someone who has a cool personality, one of the things they tell you to avoid is mint because it's such a cooling agent for the body.

Matt:  Yeah. Anything. And now, when you're talking about that strategy that you used there, that's pretty much the same strategy that I started using for people with polycystic ovarian syndrome. And then my main objective in that syndrome was to avoid insulin exposure. So, I figured their big problem is I just start this cycle of carbs and insulin all day, and then they have all day exposure to insulin. So, what we do is we keep the carbs out as much as possible, keep them in that insulin sensitive glycogen-depleted state. Given that opportunity to reload at night, have a good night's sleep, they get that one big insulin spike if that–but they only get that small exposure to insulin in a 24-hour period, and that makes a massive difference in the polycystic ovarian syndrome. And that works. That does work.

Jeff:   And you're saying as well too in terms of obviously when you're doing that cardio in the morning and you want to have that big intake of food because your body's kind of demanding it. And again, without product flagging too much, but the EMP is fantastic for that because not only does it help with obviously upregulating the body's utilizing burning fat, but also has the feeling of society as well, too. So, it sort of puts that blunt that are on there with again, as you say, being conscious [00:59:56] ______.

Ben:  My trick is a sparkling water, like sparkling water with stevia. I drink Pellegrino, like these big glass bottles–good organic stevia. It doesn't have the sugar alcohols and maltodextrin in it like in the U.S., Omica Organics. They make a really good organic stevia. I do that or Zevia soda. Zevia is great. I get like the cream soda flavor and the ginger root beer flavor. So, for me, after I've had my–I've broken my fast in the morning, done my fasted morning cardio, cold shower. I have a little smoothie. And then I only eat three times a day. I don't snack at all. And so, I'll wait four or five hours before I eat again.

But for me, the appetite satiation, especially because I'm aware of the caloric hypercompensation, how many calories I'm putting into that smoothie, I do the sparkling water or the stevia flavored soda and then I chew gum. I'd chew xylitol gum. Sometimes I'll chew nicotine gum for a little bit of a pick-me-up and I can go all day without eating.

Jeff:   I appreciate we're probably running out of time, but I want to ask–

Matt:  Are we?

Jeff:   Yeah. No, this is great. But I want to know, Ben, in terms of–just really quickly. What do you eat through the day? I mean, you're lean, mean, you're competing at a high level, you're ripped. What do you eat–?

Ben:  Largely whole food diet. So, I hunt most of our meat. So, I bow hunt. We've got deer, we've got turkey, we have a lot of wild caught salmon. I order in the U.S. from a company called US Wellness Meats a lot of organ meats. So, I get a lot of like head cheese and Braunschweiger, some cuts of ribeye, things like that from them. Always we've got a lot of wild meat around. We have six raised vegetable garden beds. So, we've got a lot of fresh veg. However, my personal diet is as follows.

In the morning, I have a smoothie, and the smoothie is the one meal for me that's not real recognizable food. It's coconut milk, bone broth, collagen, sea salts, typically some kind of a meal replacement, powder or protein powder. My stomach doesn't do as well with whey. So, typically, it's like a pea or hemp, or rice protein, or like a Thorne Mediclear or something like that. And that's all blended up with the coconut milk, with ice, with some bone broth, with some stevia, with some sea salt, and then I just–

Jeff:   So, there's no carbs in that?

Ben:  No. And then I just put a bunch of superfoods on after I mix it up. I mix it to the texture of ice cream so I can eat it with a spoon, like an acai bowl almost, and I top it with some unsweetened coconut flakes, typically a little bit of cacao nib. What else will I put on there? Sometimes some nut butter, but it's like a high-fat, high-protein smoothie that I start my day off with. And I like that too because typically, it's during breakfast that I'm taking my first dive into my emails and things like that. So, sometimes I need my hands free for typing. So, a smoothie just works well for me in the morning.

And then I work all day. Typically, that smoothie is something I'm eating around 9:30 or 10:00. And around 2:00 p.m., I have lunch. And lunch for me is usually a small fish like herring, anchovies, mackerel, sardines, sometime whatever meat is left over from dinner the night before like salmon or beef or something like this. And I always have a little bit of a pumpkin or a squash, kind of like a starch but a very low glycemic index, low carbohydrate starch. And usually, a little bit of vegetable on the side from the garden. And so typically, it's just like fish, some olive oil, some seeds, nuts, things like that, and a big cup of bone broth. I have a big cup of bone broth always with lunch. And a lot of times, I'll mix black pepper and salts, and usually some different vegetable powders or some turmeric or something like that in there.

And then nothing, nothing, nothing until dinner. And then dinner again is just some organ meats, typically some sweet potato or some yam or purple potato. I'm a big root vegetable guy for most of my carbohydrates. Sometimes I'll put a little bit of raw honey or something like that on there. I'll have a glass of wine. Usually, a little bit of dark chocolate or something like that after dinner. Sometimes a little bit of berries.

Jeff:   What's that? Red wine?

Ben:  Yeah, like organic red wine. So, stepping back big picture, I eat a largely nose-to-tail carnivore-esque diet working in tubers, raw honey, bone broth, wine, and coffee. And then in the morning, I have that smoothie. And during the spring and summer when we're growing our vegetables, I'll add in some plant matter to that carnivore-esque diet.

Jeff:   Do you have coffee in the morning as well, too?

Ben:  Yeah. I always have a big cup of black coffee in the morning.

Jeff:   Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Ben:  Yeah. Big cup of black coffee in the morning, glass of wine or a little bit of the bitters with some gin or vodka at night.

Jeff:   And do you do anything specific after you do a heavy white training session? Do you put in anything at that point in time, or do you just wait for the evening meal?

Ben:  No, I don't, I don't. I just fast, yeah. I'm still pretty hungry after I weight train, but I feel like I do best on three square meals a day with no snacking, and I like to be hungry. It lets me have my edge. I probably just burnt what I was out there two hours on that course probably at about 1,100, 1,200 calories per hour intensity. So, I already burned 2500 calories. And all I've had today are two scoops of yogurt with a little bit of dark chocolate. So, that was about 200 calories a little wafer out in the course, which is 100 calories and whatever you guys just fed me. I'm at probably a 3,000 calorie burn right now and I've had 500 calories. It's 11:30.

Matt:  [01:05:37] _____.

Ben:  Yeah. I sometimes like to be hungry. And yeah, if I was a high school football player trying to put on 20 pounds, I'd be mowing down amino acids and protein and stuff post-workout. But I'm trying to strike the balance between performance and longevity and staying lean. So, that three square meal a day works for me.

Jeff:   Yeah. It's excellent. Matt, I think we're running out of time. Not only that Ben had the whole podcast that's kind of been squatting after–

Ben:  I'm totally going to be foam rolling after–I'm staying over at Squaw Valley Lodge. The gym has foam roller so I'm making love to that thing after this.

Jeff:   Yeah. Well, mate, really appreciate you coming down to–

Matt:  Well, we have to do more because I want to talk all about the nootropics, talk about–there's so much more I'm talking about. We have to do more of this.

Ben:  Yeah. You guys ever interview people on Skype or anything like that?

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  [01:06:28] ______ on Skype again. Yeah.

Jeff:   That would be fantastic. I know that you've got a good following in Australia actually because I talked to a few people and they're like, “Oh, Ben Greenfield. Yeah, yeah, I know who Ben is.”

Ben:  I've never been to Australia. When I used to race triathlon, everybody's like, “Come to Australia and do it,” and it never happened. I've never put together the pieces because there's long ways to go. If I come to Australia, I want to do some talks, I want to make the most out of the journey, but I would love to go someday.

Matt:  We do an annual summit where what we do is, we get our friends and people like yourself that are [01:07:00] ______ that sort of stuff.

[Speaking at the same time]

Matt:  –friends and then Ben can come, too. So, what we basically do is we create a weekend where people at the start, they go through a series of questionnaires and just different ways of investigating themselves to work out what their health priorities are. And then over the weekend, we have different guest speakers and that sort of stuff that you can direct your own journey to what you want to learn so you can make the learning experience more relevant to you and what you need. So, that's the sort of thing that we'd love to get you involved in [01:07:30] ______ going to be excellent.

Ben:  Sounds cool.

Matt:  And we bring like Ken Way and all those other guys as well. So, you'd fit in perfectly.

Ben:  Sounds cool.

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  It's got to be absolutely amazing for me to make the 18-hour journey.

Matt:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. I'll do it. Yeah, I'm down, I'm down. Try anything once.

Jeff:   Thanks again, Ben. Really good to have you on. Actually, it's one of the podcasts I've really been looking forward to and it certainly didn't–

Ben:  Oh, thanks.

Jeff:   Man, I really, really appreciate the knowledge and what you bring to the industry.

Ben:  I'm glad I didn't die up on top of the mountains [01:07:57] ______ on time.

Jeff:   [01:07:58] ______ been hanging for a long time, but mate, thanks for coming. You go and get your foam roller and whatever else you need to. Go get have a shower as well [01:08:07] ______.

Ben:  I appreciate that.

[Speaking at the same time]

Jeff:   Yeah. Thanks again and we definitely would love to catch up and do some more podcasts with you. It's fascinating.

Ben:  We'll do it. Bye, guys. Thanks.

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

 

 

Founded in 2009, ATP Science is the brainchild of Matthew Legge and Jeff & Toni Doidge.

In this episode, I discuss supplements, longevity, muscle gain, fat loss, training, and much, much more with Matt and Jeff.

ATP Science head scientist Matt Legge has more than a decade of experience creating formulas for well-known companies in the health supplement industry. Matt became frustrated when his formulations were constantly altered to fit in with marketing ideas or reduce manufacturing costs. Seeing a gap in the market, Matt knew if he could work at a company where people and products were placed ahead of profit he could make a real difference. Matt had a simple yet profound idea; base his formulations on science first.

Jeff and Toni Doidge were the founders of a supplement retail store that opened its doors in 2002. They believe the foundation for success is based on customer service and exceeding the customer’s expectations. With that simple strategy, focusing on the “customer first” ideology, their store became one of Australia’s most successful sports supplement retailers. Matt, Jeff, and Toni met by chance in 2009, and soon after, ATP Science was born.

During this discussion, you'll discover:

-Ben's personal history [6:15]

  • Studied exercise physiology and biochemistry at the University of Idaho
  • Graduated w/ master's in exercise physiology
  • Sold hip and joint exercise equipment for a short time
  • Began consulting clients at gyms and fitness studios for 5 years
  • Lots of outside the box initiatives: running biochemical analysis, vo2 max testing, platelet-rich plasma injections, etc.
  • 2008, named “America's top personal trainer”
  • Eventually moved to writing, co-founding Kion, podcasting, etc.
  • Weave health/fitness into fantasy novels he writes

-How to write in a way that will satisfy the primal urge to live the “hero's journey” [9:30]

-The importance of “trench testing” ideas and concepts in health and fitness [12:15]

  • Some ideas look good on paper, but fall apart in the real world
  • The Kion bar went through extensive testing to maintain its practicality for those who consume it
  • Ben tests everything personally before marketing it to other consumers

-Why peptides are the future of supplementation and medicine [16:15]

-How to increase autophagy [24:50]

-Why endurance sports are better for one's longevity and quality of life than power sports [29:30]

    • Effects on insulin sensitivity, telomere lengths
    • Book: Body by Science
    • Self hate vs. self love

-Sex supplement tips [46:15]

  • Transdermal nitroglycerine cream
    • Don't mix with other drugs/supplements (viagra)

-Differing opinions on proper cardio training [48:30]

  • James O'Keefe: law of diminishing returns as mentioned in the book The Obesity Paradox
  • Steady-state cardio is ideal
  • Time hacking
  • Polarized training model used by aerobic athletes (x-country skiing)
    • 80% aerobic; 20% anaerobic
    • The average person doesn't have enough hours in the day for that type of training
  • High-intensity interval training (HIIT) will target the same mitochondrial response
  • Hack your home and work environment:
  • Fasted cardio in the morning:
    • Mobilize fatty acids
    • Trends toward caloric hyper compensation
    • Save carb consumption for end of the day
  • Cool Fat Burner
  • Zevia soda
  • Nicotine gum

-What Ben eats throughout the day [1:01:03]

-And much more…

Episode sponsors:

–Kion Lean: Support for normal blood sugar levels and healthy energy metabolism, even after large, carb-rich meals. Ben Greenfield Fitness listeners, receive a 10% discount off your entire order when you use discount code: BGF10.

–JOOVV: After using the Joovv for close to 2 years, it's the only light therapy device I'd ever recommend. Give it a try: you won't be disappointed. Order using my link and receive a nice bonus gift with your order!

–Clearlight Saunas: You can be sure that I researched all the saunas before I bought mine and Clearlight was the one that stood out from all the rest because of their EMF and ELF Shielding and their Lifetime Warranty. Use discount code: BENGREENFIELD to get $500 off your sauna and a free bonus gift!

–Policy Genius: Whether you’re an insurance expert or a newbie, Policygenius created a website that makes it easy for you to compare quotes, get advice, and get covered.

 

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2 thoughts on “[Transcript] – Longevity Vs. Muscle Gain, How Much Cardio Is Too Much, Blood Flow Restriction Training, Sex Supplement Tips & Much More With The Guys From ATPScience.”

  1. Jeff says:
    January 26, 2020 at 8:22 am

    Are they suggesting that Prototype 8 can be used for sex? If not, where can one get the nitroglycerin cream you speak of?

    Reply
  2. Jen says:
    October 21, 2019 at 11:52 am

    Hey Ben! What brand on oxytocin do you recommend? I followed your link but it goes to amazon with a ton of different brands. Any specific to try?

    Reply

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