September 2, 2015
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2015/09/ben-and-jessa-greenfield-podcast/
[00:00] Introduction/Harry’s
[05:05] Ben's Recovery Toolbox
[15:12] Jessa's Workout/Migraines & Hair Loss
[21:14] Ben's Current Supplements
[26:56] Incline Treadmill
[29:55] Rainbow Vacuum
[33:36] Reliable Sources
[37:47] Ben's Tip on Speed Reading
[41:04] The Greenfield's Arguments & Breakdowns
[51:41] Human Charger
[55:33] End of the Podcast
Ben: Hey, welcome to The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. Last week, you may have noticed that we didn't have our usual Q&A episode because I was off getting a tube stuck up my butt. That's right, I was getting a Colonoscopy last week. I'll be sure to bring you all the nitty gritty details on that and more about preventive gut health in a future article at bengreenfieldfitness.com, but guess what? This week, we don't have an official Q&A either because I'm off in the Colorado wilderness hunting elk, and it's hard to carry a microphone and a bow simultaneously. So what I'm bringing to you this week is an insider interview straight from The Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle, and this is not just any old interview. This is a show that my wife, Jessa, and I sit down and record each month for all of the members of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle. We call it The Ben & Jessa Random Show, and basically it's us about talking about all the little hacks and tips, and foods, and exercises, and everything else that we've discovered over the past month. So you get to sit in on a special episode of that this week.
I also, before we jump into that, want to give you a quick tip about how to remove hair from your body. That's right, this episode is brought to you by Harry's, Harry's Shaving. Now Harry's Shaving are German-engineered blades made in these amazing restored German-engineered blade factories. I'm not quite sure exactly how they do it, but the end result is an amazingly engineered shave at a fraction of the price of which you'd normally pay at a drug store for a cheapo-drugstore brand that breaks or cuts or shaves or does everything else that you detest in a razor. Instead the Harry's razors lovingly, efficiently, and quite stylishly remove hair from your body quickly and painlessly. So how do you like that? You can go to harrys.com/ben, and when you go to harrys.com/ben, you get five bucks off any the Harry's shaving kits, and what you'll get in a saving kit is not just the razor, but also some facial care equipment that's paraben and phthalate-free. Foam that will make you smell amazing, after-shave that will make you smell even more amazing. So check it out at harrys.com/ben. Enjoy the episode, and if you do like this episode, you can get plenty more goodies at bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle. That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle.
So welcome, to Summer 2015 Inner Circle Webinar. Now I'm going to start things off with my usual. As you may have read in the recent wine post, this is my nightly recovery drink.
Jessa: [laughs] A very inflammatory drink, recovery drink?
Ben: No, it's anti-inflammatory. I take a latte frother like this, okay?
Jessa: Don't get it on my couch, it's beige.
Ben: I won't get it on you couch. We're sitting on the couch in our living room, and what you do is you kind of put the frother. My apologies by the way to our Mormon and or, I guess what, Seventh-Day Adventist viewers for when this is a completely useless tactic, and also those of you who are of Asian descent and choose not to drink due to an alcohol dehydrogenase deficiency. Any of you, these thirty seconds of your life you're never going to get back because this is completely useless for you. For everyone else, cool trick. You know when it's frothing like this that it's going to be ready. Okay, so I go about thirty seconds or so, and of course you got to clean your latte frother.
Jessa: It's very disinfective for you to do that.
Ben: That's right. So, the way that our inner circle webinars go aside from us both drinking giant glasses of wine, we go over things that we have found interesting. Interesting since the last webinar, random things, things I haven't asked, things that may even be offensive like the Mormon alcohol joke. Basically, it's also a chance for you to ask your questions live. You should have a Q&A box there in front of you, and occasionally as we go through tonight, just then I will pop into that Q&A box. The way we'll do things tonight is I will start of by going over my kind of latest thing that I've been getting into. Jessa will go over hers. We'll answer questions, and then we'll keep going into the next big thing that we're going to talk about. So that being said, the first thing that I want to get into is I get a lot of questions about my recovery toolbox, and I'm into this new thing now, and I'm designing this into an actual workout, but it's a combination of a mobility workout and an actual workout routine. It involves breath restriction, mobility work and exercise. Jessa watched me doing this for 45 minutes out on the porch in my underwear.
Jessa: Actually I'm really busy doing the work out that way.
Ben: I'm doing this about once or twice a week in the morning. So it is a way for you to be able to hack into all of the mobility techniques that are in my favorite book. Actually we'll just set aside that wine just so I don't spill it while I do some demos here. Thanks.
So, what I have is I keep in the living room a giant box. I'll show it to you here. The reason I keep it in the living room.
Jessa: The only reason it's in a box is because I put it in a box.
Ben: So it's top of mine, oh and yes, I'm in my underwear. Sorry, I forgot about that. Okay, so this is what the box looks like. This box sits in the corner of the living room, and it is my go-to for my mobility work. So the first thing that's in it, and I recommend it to any of you who are trying to kind of stay, put together for life, and want to like be in the game in terms of producing joint pain and etcetera for a long time. Especially those of you doing, you can't use it in my face, Spartan raises, triathlons, stuff like that. Stuff that beats up the body, stuff that takes your body, what we may call, up and beyond the call of duty. The traps and these things, so first of all, I keep my quip book in here. “Becoming A Supple Leopard”, okay, so any time I have an acre of pain in a specific body part, I simply flip to the section of the book that addresses that body part, and I pretty much do just about everything in that section, until the pain goes away. Usually it takes like 3 or 4 rounds, 3 or 4 kind of like workouts, mobility workouts for that pain to go away. Okay, a few other things I keep in here, and I will tell you after I demonstrate some of these things how I actually do the workout and make it a “workout” workout. Not just laying around in the foam roll, yeah, so I talked about this in a recent podcast.
Jessa: It sounds like something out of Star Wars.
Ben: It's kind of cool because it's like a bunch of little roller blade wheels, but it's extremely hard and really digs into fascia and muscle tissue, and it sits on this. I can roll with it okay, so this one's called a Battle Star. I don't think you can get it on Amazon. I think Rogue Fitness carries them. Kelly Starrett's website MobilityWOD probably has them. Romo roller, okay, so it's like a roller with the ridges on it, and I keep this in there, okay. A vibrating foam roller. You probably saw me demonstrating this recently on the YouTube channel, but it's literally just a foam roller that vibrates if you can catch that vibration that's in there. This is not necessary, honestly it's kind of a toy. Full disclosure, they sent it to me. I don't know if I would spend whatever it is, a hundred bucks on a foam roller but there you go. I don't know why Dave Asprey's Sleep Induction Mat is in here.
Jessa: How is it, the boys were in here.
Ben: I don't use it that much, but sometimes after mobility workout or when you want to relax in it. It's nice to lay this thing on the ground.
Jessa: Our boys like to wear it like a cape.
Ben: A bunch of spikes that kind of spike into you when you lay down on it. Okay, some of the other things. I've got a variety of different muscle sticks, I mean I have like every muscle stick on the face of the planet because they can all be used for a variety of different purposes, okay. This looks like some kind of a sado-masochistic like dominatrix box, basically especially the beads. Basically for the knees, the back, different areas of the body will get hit differently by these different sticks. I mean, you know, I just kind of had added to the repertoire of muscle tools that sit in this box over the years. If you're any of the athletes who I coached, you know that I'm constantly like sending you links to like pick up this one, pick up that one for different injuries you may get because they're good for specific issues. Like for thoracic mobility, I've got one of these right for just going up and down the low back.
So couple of others things that are kind of crucial in my opinion to have in your toolbox. Some kind of a ball, this is a spiky ball because it, I got it from the same people who do the Rumble Roller, and they're obsessed with like spikes and ridges, and I forget what this one's called. If I had to name it, I would call it Spiky Ball. Spiky Ball.
Jessa: Stardeath.
Ben: Stardeath, anyways though, it's good for like digging into your hips, underneath your armpits, stuff like that. Okay, a few other things that I keep, I have an electrical muscle stimulation device. I actually have both the MarcPro and the Compex in here, but I mean, you know, MarcPro is better for injuries honestly. Compex is more for something like doing a workout. This is something that I would hook up to my body when I'm like working during the day, etcetera. Aside from that, there's just like a few random ace bandages and stuff like that in here, but ultimately, that is what the toolbox looks like.
Jessa: If you could pick three, the top three, how? What would they be?
Ben: The Rumble Roller, a muscle stick and a ball. Those are the only three that you really need.
Jessa: I think that's helpful.
Ben: I would say, I would throw the book in there, but honestly if you really want to, you could probably like hunt most of the stuff down in YouTube. Okay, so what do I do with all that? That's the question 'cause I know that honestly it'll be like, you know, whatever, a bunch of random recommendations from me for a shopping list. Oh, and next, I keep a training mask in there that this leads into what I actually do with this. So here's what I do.
Jessa: He does really well with the Death Star, what is it? Then you sound like Darth Vader, and then you put on the mask.
Ben: So I put on a mask to restrict oxygen. Okay, this just makes anything that would normally be easy, harder. Okay, so I put on the mask to restrict oxygen, and then what I do is I start with my feet and my ankles. Roll my feet and my ankles all the way up to my calves, and then I stand up and either do 10 burpees or do a hundred jumping jacks or 10 high knees or something to get the heart rate up. Okay, then that's 30 to 60 seconds of exercise. Pick your poison, whatever it is. Sometimes it'll be exercise that focuses on that specific body part, right? So if I've just rolled out my IT bands, I will do like 20 leg swings side to side to improve mobility in the IT bands and to get my heart rate after I've rolled them out. But anyways, I start with the lower leg and do the calves, and then exercise, and then I do from the knees up to the hamstrings, and then exercise, and then I do the hips, and then exercise. Then the front of the quads, then exercise, then the IT bands, then exercise, the adductors, then exercise, the low back, and then exercise, the thoracic spine, then exercise, the shoulders underneath the armpits, then exercise, and then finally the neck. That's, and I just put on a podcast or an audio book, it's about a 30 or 45-minute routine.
I guarantee, if you start doing this routine, I'm working on writing it out for our inner circle members too. Like if you pay attention to the workouts that I upload each week into the inner circle, you'll start to see this one appear. Basically when you finish, not only have you worked on your heart rate and your heart rate recovery, but you've also worked on your breath work and your diaphragm right, if you wear one of these, and then you've also pretty much hit every single part of your body with fascia being important for everything from like releasing your transmitters like dopamine and seratonin to getting rid of your propensity for injuries especially in specific body parts, but literally like that is what has kept me a) from spending hundreds of dollars of massage therapists every month, and b) just staying put together because you're working on breath work, focus, fascial adhesions. All this stuff, all at the same time. You know of all of the things that I wanted to show you, this is like my latest thing because I figured out well hey, I can stay fit. I can get my heart rate up, I can do breath work and I can do mobility work all at the same time, and it's incredibly effective and literally. Like it takes 30 to 45 minutes. Like it's not just like hitting the foam roller for 10 minutes, but I feel like a new man every week when I do this, and like at a race week or an important week, I'll do it twice a week.
So, I will shut up now while Jessa talks about her favorite, if you have a question about everything I just talked about, leave it in the Q&A box if you're watching live and we'll address it. While Jessa talks, I'm going to put on another recovery tool that I'll talk about. I'll talk about it in a second, but in the meantime, I'll let Jessa take it away. I got to have a glass of wine 'cause my throat's dried talking. Okay, go ahead.
Jessa: Well mine's, I feel like very different than Ben's. I think it is usually very different from Ben's [laughs] because honestly this year I feel like I've held back more on the working out genre of life and mainly that's just because I wanted to see how that would affect my body because I have dealt with, for a majority of my life with migraines and recently my hair was falling out for a long period of time. Not like it was growing back, but it was coming out, and that worried me a little bit so, one of the things I started cutting back on is stressful workout. Like where I felt like my body was really over-stressed or it doesn't feel good like competing. It was stressing me out then I kind of stepped back from that a little bit, and honestly to report, I have not dealt with a migraine headache in the last three months and my hair has not fallen out for a while now. And so I've actually had something really positive, and I wanted to ask Ben exactly why that might happen.
Ben: I haven't heard any of this, this is so new to me. I mean, I knew that you weren't working out as much. I thought it was 'cause you were doing way more like gardening.
Jessa: Well it's that to, but I don't want people to think that I've like stopped doing anything physical. I still do very physical things like last week I was hauling up, you know, cinder blocks and a wheel barrow up a hill, you know. It's not that I like totally like, I'm done with physical activity. No for me I'm more working, sorry our dog just walked in. I'm more focusing on movement, what I guess with a purpose, with a goal in the end. So like, some people are building a brick wall or something like that. They're hauling the bricks up the hill by hand and building a wall at the same time while achieving a workout. It's that kind of stuff.
So my workouts have been more workouts-with-purpose, I guess, with an actual like physical, like I receive something at the end. Does that make sense?
Ben: One of the primary causes of migraine headaches is vasoconstriction that's related to inflammation. Sometimes the inflammation, and this doesn't have to be just for migraine headaches, this can be headaches in general. Sometimes the inflammation is due to food allergies, what are known as tyramines, histamines such as what you would find in packaged food. Sometimes the inflammation is due to blood sugar swings and high blood glucose, constantly high blood glucose levels from a high carb intake, and sometimes the inflammation is in environments like EMFs, water stuff like that, but also, and this is an observation and I'm not saying this to throw you under the bus or anything like that. But sometimes the inflammation is due to exercise, and specifically it's due to exercise that is not accompanied by a lot of the stuff that I just got on, right? And you got all these adhesion 'cause like I like watch you workout, and you work out really hard but you don't do any of that stuff that I just talked about.
And I see this over and over again in my clients who neglect their injury prevention workouts 'cause they just like the part about getting fit or, you know, fellow athletes who drop of the face of the map for a couple months 'cause they're injured with IT Band Friction Syndrome or whatever. They're not doing the kind of stuff that just like keeps you in the game. I mean like, right now, like here. I'll show you what I just did, and this [19:01] ______ not something I was going to talk about, but let's just go do it. Like I'm wearing these giant moon boots now as I sit here, again because, you know it's one of those things where a lot of times like you just have to figure out here and there where to squeeze in the recovery, but that's why a lot of people get things like headaches and not feel good once they start to exercise. It's all just inflammation, so.
Jessa: Yes, sometimes I feel like it's after I do like very jarring workouts like if I did a hit class or something like that where I feel like maybe it's more like alignment.
Ben: That's the other thing, you read my mind.
Jessa: Okay! [laughs]
Ben: Cervical alignment and jaw alignment are two things that if you deal with headaches right, and you've already kind of looked into like tyramines, histamines, inflammation, you know, blood sugar stabilization. And you're solid on all of those fronts, then you start to delve into cervical alignment and jaw alignment, and again, the actual alignment of those tissues effects vasoconstriction or vascular flow due to that.
Jessa: I've been wondering a lot about that because I had massive work done in my mouth. I've had braces, and I've done all of that.
Ben: Yeah, so that would be a deal where you see either a holistic dentist or a chiro or both.
Jessa: So you don't think it's exercise related at all?
Ben: I think that it is likely due to a combination of the alignment issue that we just talked about, inadequate recovery. With you because you really need a good diet. I doubt that it's histamine-tyramine blood sugar levels.
Jessa: I've kind of ruled out, for a long way I thought my headaches were from wine, but I realized that I can drink wine and be totally fine, but then there were days where I would drink wine and it would just affect me differently. So it wasn't like the wine. It was just like that day or something. Sorry, it was kind of a question, and like something that I have been experimenting a little bit with, and also it is because I've been doing a lot more of farming stuff and gardening, then it's only trial and I will talk about that too.
Ben: They call it Crop Fit. Okay, question from Bob in the inner circle, and by the way, if you're ever unable to make it to one of our webinars, you just want to leave a question beforehand. Whenever you get that e-mail that says “hey, when it is our next webinar”, you can log in and ask a question. So Bob says, “Hey Ben. I know you get asked to try a lot of new supplements, and you've discussed several on an ongoing basis in your weekly podcast. Can you tell us what you are taking currently and what your basis is for making a change in what you take?”
You know, I get this question a lot because I'll talk about a supplement or somebody will ask about whatever. I'm getting a shoulder labrum surgery or I get headaches frequently or I've got eczema or whatever, and I will recommend some kind of natural remedy or essential oil or a supplement, and people will automatically assume I take it. Okay, that's not the deal. I don't 'cause I've mentioned probably in the past month, 50 different natural remedies or oils or whatever. The fact is it's not the fact that I use all of that stuff. What do I use? I use a multivitamin, okay? Total shotgun approach just to cover the basis. I use EXOS Multivitamin, 3 in the morning, 3 in the evening. There are two things that I take that I cycle, okay? I will take them typically in the four weeks leading up to like a high-priority race. Those two things are a) an herbal testosterone support blend. Okay, I use aggressive strength by Mike Mahler, and colostrum. Those two are at some points during the year I take them. So it's something I load with leading up to an event.
What else do I take? On days where I don't eat fish and I don't have good Omega-3 fatty acid intake, I will take either some fish oil or krill oil. Again that's not a daily, right? All this depends on what my diet is going to look like that day. If I have a big steak that night, I'm getting boatloads of Omega-3 fatty acids from grass-fed beef. I'm not going to take fish oil that day. I have tested my gut, and because of the amount of stress my body goes through from exercise, I have low enzyme production. Okay, if I don't take a digestive enzyme, totally don't want to gross you out here, I wind up with pieces of food in my crap because my body does not produce adequate digestive enzymes to support the number of calories that I must eat, to support the unnaturally high levels of physical activity that I do to prepare for the sports I'm competing in. So before almost every meal, I take a digestive enzyme.
What else, if I am injured, I will take the NatureFlex stuff, but again, that's not every day. That's if I'm injured, I'll take 12 capsules of that a day until I'm pain free. Just a boatload of the NatureFlex which is turmeric or curcumin, etcetera. Anything else, occasionally as I mentioned before in a podcast on a very, very cognitively commanding day, I will take a smart drug. Anything from like Ciltep to alpha brain to neurotropic infused coffee. Honestly, I don't have a cyst. I will use whatever I happen to kind of want to play around with that day. And then for sleep, I will use, I actually have some naps, I use this stuff now. NatureCBD, it's cannabidiol. I take 3 capsules before bed to help with sleep because it has a bunch of things that help to calm me. If you take less than that, like if you take one, it just helps with focus. It stacks well with smart drugs. That's another thing, and that is about it. If I'm travelling, and I'm not eating a lot of the nice fermented foods that we have here like kimchi or kombucha, I will use a probiotic. I'll travel with a heat-stable probiotic. And that's it, so again like a daily, every single day that I take year round would be a multivitamin, oh, and then one other creatine. So it's the two that I just take every day, year-round, multivitamin and creatine. So that's it, so when you swing open my refrigerator and you see like 20 different bottles, yeah, I don't take those every day. Like some bottles are going to be there a year and a half because that's how long it takes for me to go through them 'cause it's only on occasion that I would take something.
So you always want to supplement intelligently, preferably in the presence of testing, right, like blood testing. Let's say you do DNA testing, and you wind up having the MTHFR gene and being heterozygous for that gene, or maybe you have to take a boatload of methyltetrahydrofolate because you don't adequately produce folate from food sources, or let's say you don't get a lot of sun and just because of where you live you can't get a lot of sun, and you test and you're low on vitamin D, you take a blend of vitamin D, and of course, vitamin K, and magnesium to assist with the vitamin D absorption, but again. It's not like an everyday thing or done everyday thing and every person. Okay so I do recommend a blood test, a gut test and a DNA test to customize what is it that you should be taking. So, it's a good question.
What is another thing that I want to talk about? I made a little list here of things. Okay, alright, so I've got another one, kind of workout based that I recommend. Now I understand that this is like an expense, just like some of the other stuff that I talked about earlier like the recovery box. That's an expense, but I recently purchased an incline treadmill.
Jessa: I tried that for the first time yesterday.
Ben: A NordicTrack Incline Treadmill. This is different from a gym treadmill which will go up to 15% incline. This goes from 20 up to 40%, why did I do that? First of all, there are a boatload of mountains that I must climb in the Spartan Race. It's just a steep, ungodly steep inclines that you're literally like inching up, but the other reason is that when you are walking on a 20 or a 30 or a 40% incline, you are engaged in very, very low joint impact with extremely high heart rate and cardiovascular stimulus. So for me as I age, right, and as my knees and my hips and my ankles become less and less able to take a pounding, it's quite beneficial for me to say instead of me going for a 45-minute run to instead walk on an incline, a very, very steep incline for that same period of time, and why wouldn't I go outside and like climb a mountain in my backyard? Because what goes up must come down, unless you're on a treadmill. So if I were to go and do that outside just they were coming on a steep walk, yeah, I go on a steep walk, but I still have to pound my knees going back down.
So this incline trainer has literally changed the efficiency with which I can massively improve my VO2 max, my lactate threshold, etcetera, but without the impact. There a ton of things you can do with them like you can wear one of those Elevation Training Masks. You could wear a weighted vest. Sometimes like carry a sandbag over one shoulder, and see if I can walk for 15 minutes. Just like shifting sandbag from shoulder to shoulder. Again, if you go look in the inner circle at our workouts that I post every week, you’ll see some of the workouts that I'm doing on it. But ultimately, you can buy one new from NordicTrack, they have a payment plan, right? They have like some kind of a 0% interest for 12 months, well honestly if you just want to like go buy one and have it easy on cash flow, you could. You can find them on eBay. You can find them on Craigslist. That's one of the best ways to get exercise equipment is rich people on Craigslist literally pay you to take away things they bought that they never used, and then treadmills are way up there. Just make sure it'll actually go up 20 to 40%, but an incline treadmill. That's one of my latest things I've been using. I mean, I'm literally on that almost every day.
Jessa: So what happens when you go to a race and you have the descent? Does it like hurt more and you just feel like? ‘Cause it's a different muscle group.
Ben: Once a week, I've been practicing the workout that I just said.
Jessa: Okay, because you have to work the quads to be able to help that.
Ben: You do. Or you just have to be really sore after the race so. Once a week I do a workout that's a formal.
Jessa: But if you're going to be running down a hill, you have to have the muscles to stock you.
Ben: I agree like that e-centric lengthening, that breaking of the muscle that you have to work so. Alright, your turn babe.
Jessa: Okay so, what was it? About a month ago? We got our rainbow vacuum.
Ben: A rainbow vacuum?
Jessa: Yes, this is my new household gadget that.
Ben: Real quick, just so you know.
Jessa: Have you already spoken about this?
Ben: No I haven't, but I do have a podcast coming out about the dangers of conventional vacuum cleaners, so I will be covering about like the science and detail upon this, but yeah go ahead.
Jessa: Well, I'm just going to tell you. So the rainbow vacuum basically uses a water system which traps dust and hair and whatever in the water, so it doesn't get kicked back up into the air is how I understand it. I think that's right?
Ben: Yeah.
Jessa: Okay, so but some things that I've noticed with it instead of sweeping which kicks around. We have a dog, god bless him he sheds, but when I sweep, you know, you get a good portion of it but a lot of it gets kicked back up in the air, and you know, settles somewhere else. And so you're not really totally getting everything clean, and part of me is okay with that. I'm like you know, that's just life, but since getting this rainbow vacuum, it's really actually lessening the amount of time I've had to dust. Just kind of wipe things down and, you know, 'cause it basically is taking what's on the floor and trapping it inside the machine. And so that's really kind of a cool, new, and we're in new construction and so new construction, I mean, has a lot of dust. We're working on putting it in the yard and stuff like that, and so there's all kinds of sand and dirt coming in on my kids and the dogs or just through the windows. And so it's something that I really had to struggle with over the past years 'cause we've just had all of these bare ground around us, and so a lot of dirt coming in, but I'm happy to report that the dusting is less. The wiping of the mantels and other things is less, and I don't notice dog hairs much.
Ben: I personally have a complaint about the vacuum.
Jessa: What?
Ben: I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would spend, okay, brace yourselves here. It sounds stupid, and it sounds like something like stupid like wealthy people viewers, and I don't throw money around, two thousand dollars.
Jessa: It is expensive.
Ben: Here's what, it has a hepa filter, it diffuses essential oils all day long, it cleans mold, it cleans fungi and it's got like some kind of an ungodly warranty on it.
Jessa: Twenty years.
Ben: Yeah, twenty years. So I mean I'm never going to buy another vacuum, so I'd figured I'll get this one, but I'm doing a podcast on it to talk more about it. My podcast is not just about vacuum cleaners. It's about mold and fungi and dust in general, but yeah, I would say that it should belong in our circle workshop because it was probably the most money that we've spent on a household object in the past year.
Jessa: I would say yeah, that's true. Yeah, I kind of forgot. I didn't forget it, I just…
Ben: It was not cheap, and it really hurt to write a check for that , but listen to the podcast, and I'll tell you guys more about the rainbow vacuums and all that jazz because there's more to it than that, but yeah, that's interesting.
Jessa: I know there's more. Yeah, that's my new household life. You've got your boots, I've got my vacuum.
Ben: Okay, let's take a question. New, freaking, expensive possible… Okay, David says, “You seem to always be up to date on the latest studies coming up about exercise fitness, health, and nutrition. In a world with so much information overload, how do you find the best and most reliable information out there? You have specific journals you subscribe to or sources you recommend.”
This is a great question. Let me tell you David. Yes, here is what I follow. First of all, I use Feedly, so every morning when I wake up and I'm doing my reading. What Feedly allows me to do is view a preview of an article, or like the first paragraph so I can decide okay, this is run the mill crap, this is old news or this is something ground breaking that people should know about. Then I go read it, and I see whether or not it's based on peer reviewed research. So using Feedly, I subscribe to a variety of different, shall we say like synopses or reviews of research. Everything from Mark's Daily Apple, to Chris Kresser, to the Perfect Health Diet, to Rob Wolf, to Sire G's website. I forget the name of it, so many things I've been subscribed to for so long I forget the actual URL. But bloggers, like me who are out there doing what I do, but I figure if these other guys are also doing what I do, I can take as much firepower as I can from them and go through it and disseminate that for you. So ultimately, you really only have to follow me because I'm going… but you asked, so I'm telling you.
So what else, I get the Examine Research Digest from examine.com, I subscribe to Alan Aragon's Research Review, I subscribe to the Stone Hearth Newsletters, I subscribe to the National Journal of Strength and Conditioning research, I subscribe to, there's a couple more. Gosh, there's one other big one that I'm totally blanking on. You know, a lot of these are like PDFs that get delivered to you every month. This, no these are mailed, but this one is an e-mail. It is Nutrition Products Insider, right, it's designed for the nutrition-supplements industry, but it actually has a ton of really good information on like the latest nutraceutical research, encapsulation technology, supplements, stuff like that. Oh, I remember the last one. It's an aches and pains website. It's a Canadian website, it's called Injury, Aches and Pains, something like that. That's another one I subscribed to, Alex Hutchinson's Sweat Science website.
And then podcasts, I also subscribe to Science Friday, TED talks, the TED talks help. What else? From a podcasting standpoint, for podcasting science, TED talks, NPR, Radio Lab which doesn't have a ton of science on it but it's okay. The How Stuff Works podcast. Most of the podcast will star NPR, right? This American Life whose line, not whose line it is anyway. No, not program because I didn't know it like that. I forget what it's called. Anyways, in the TED talks, Freakonomics, Planet Money. I don't do like a lot of the health and fitness podcasts 'cause honestly it's just like, yeah, it's like listening to my podcast right? It's just like the same old stuff that I am already reading, and talking about on my show, so it's almost like too much 'cause like work when I'm doing that. So yeah, those are some of my sources. Good question.
Jessa: That's a lot of sources.
Ben: I read a lot, like constantly. And then books too, right like anytime. Victory Bell comes out with a book. I'll go read that 'cause they publish a lot of good folks like the paleo health and fitness sector. Anytime that a new book comes out, like in the Amazon health and fitness category, I read that just 'cause I want to stay on top of what people are writing, and I just use a Kindle. I send stuff to my Kindle, I send the free samples to my Kindle, I look at the table of contents, I look at the first few chapters. If I read the first few chapters and I don't learn anything new, I delete the book 'cause that done, but if I read the first few chapters and find anything enchanting, intriguing, etcetera. My take on books is if I read an entire book which'll take me any more from an hour to 3 hours, and I come away with one nugget of advice that will help people, then that book was worth that 7.99 to 9.99 price that I spent on it to put it on my Kindle even if it's just one nugget. So ultimately that's what I do is I go through books like they're going out of style on my Kindle. So I'm a speed reader, I always have been a speed reader. I've never taken a speed reading course.
Just from a very early age, I was a voracious reader, and I read fast. My tip I can give you for reading fast is I always read 2 chapters at a time. Okay so it's like the Pomodoro Technique. I never read more than two chapters at a time. If I made it through two chapters, I'll take a 2-minute break, 5-minute break, whatever. So 2 chapters at a time, and then the other thing that I do is I forbid myself to flip back and read a page that I have already read. Okay, so as I'm reading, no that's the thing. Once you've set that rule for yourself, you have no choice but to get it. Okay, so I don't allow myself to flip, so if I'm reading a book on my Kindle or in a book, I'm not allowed to flip back. And by setting up that rule for myself, I force myself to grasp and digest what I'm reading, and I never get into that stage where I've read 10 pages, and all of a sudden, I'm like what did I just read? Like when it's you're driving to work or to your home and you forget like the last 5 minutes of driving, and you're like wow, I can't believe I just drove from this street to that street. I didn't realize that I was driving. It's kind of like that with books sometimes. You could be turning pages but not digesting. So that's my rule now is I'm not allowed to flip back a page and recheck ever. So those are my tips for you. Alright cool, I think you've got time for one more, probably one more tip each, so okay. Crap, I didn't bring it over here.
Jessa: What?
Ben: I wanted to show people the light thing that I've been using. I'll just explain it. Use your imagination as I explain it.
Jessa: You mean the light in your ears?
Ben: Yeah, the light in the ears. So I wrote this article on this thing that I've been using because I have been travelling a lot. I've been using it a lot. It's not the same being in video than me just taking.
Jessa: It's like earphones that you stick in your ears, and you like…
Ben: Okay I'll tell you what, I am almost done doing this boot thing anyways. So why don't you talk about your thing and I'll go get it, so I can show them to the people. Okay.
Jessa: I hate it when you leave me here hanging now. [laughs]
Ben: You'll survive.
Jessa: I know I will, I always do. Okay so, this summer has been full of a lot of changes here at our little Greenfield homestead. I've gardened for a while now, but this is a new environment that I haven't gardened, in an alki environment or a heavily shaded environment, in a very wild environment. And so, I have had to deal, I knew going into this year that would be experimental and that I wasn't really sure how the garden would work out and that kind of thing, and we've also have added goats. We've added chickens and what, anything else I'm missing? A lizard? So with all of this change in all this new stuff, I've kind of just gone into this summer with, I guess, going in with a focus that I know it's going to be different. It's going to might be hard, I might have failures, I might have successes, and so with that I've had to really like kind of try to prepare myself. And I don't, people go through with this like jobs and that kind of stuff where they had to go and like prepare their mind and their emotion with the fact that there might be discomfort or like I said failures. And I have dealt with quite a few failures this summer in my garden. I feel like my garden is the worst it has ever been in my last four years of my life.
Ben: I posted a video of your garden on Facebook.
Jessa: I know, and I was not satisfied.
Ben: Yeah it sucked, totally.
Jessa: There are things that are working out, and there are a lot of things that aren't. We have rabbits and all kinds of critters that I just never had to deal with, and so you know, part of you where you feel like you can just like, okay I'm going to just deal with this. This is going to happen, I'm going to deal with it. You try to like almost muscle your emotion through it if that makes sense. I don't know. Anyways, I think Ben saw me last week, you know, where I had a massive breakdown.
Ben: Okay so, Jessa and I both had breakdowns last week. Jessa had a breakdown because I was out of town for like two weeks, and she was getting over like the chicken-goat gardening curve, and she had a breakdown.
Jessa: The chickens were like the bane of my existence.
Ben: And then I had a breakdown like two days ago when I had like, basically I was just like, I had a combination of like business stuff and personal stuff that essentially resulted in me hemorrhaging cash. You know when you like empty out your bank account, and you're just like, oh, crap. I got to whatever, pay the bill, and I was just like in stress coming from all directions, and you know you guys are our family in the inner circle, so I'm fine talking about this stuff. Plus just like one of those deals where, so then, we're watching my sister-in-law's dog and dog walks in and like starts to eat my food, and I like flip out. Stupid, darn sister needs to come pick up her stupid dog, and then like, I know. And then what else happened that was dumb? Oh like, Jessa bought the wrong kind of wine, and I just spent like fifteen dollars on this bad wine, and you know, that happens while we're drinking. Anyways though, so we all have our breakdowns, and honestly, like my, this is all of a sudden getting really woo-woo.
Jessa: I was like, for me personally I might… we put on these videos, and we're like yes, we know what you're doing. This is great, you know, we know what we're doing.
Ben: Hi, welcome to our perfect world.
Jessa: Yeah, but I was like there are definitely like moments where I'm trying new things or learning. I guess for me, it's just being open to learning new things, open to drawing upon other people's wisdom because we don't, you know, have all the wisdom. I'm like, you see us taking about things that we do know a lot about, and so people have this perception that you have all of this wisdom and all of this knowledge, but we have a learning curve just like everybody else like, and I'd draw upon other people's information, reading books on stuff, having failure, learning from failure. It was something that I felt like I want to talk about because you have to be really like open to that to grow as a person, and so I felt like I kind of failed a little bit last week when I was literally having a loss of panic attack with the chickens 'cause they don't listen to me.
Ben: She didn't kill them though.
Jessa: I threatened a lot of them.
Ben: Do you want to know what I do? We haven't talked too much about this, what I do when I have that breakdown, I have that stress. So mine is a combination of woo woo and like biological stuff. So a) I stop where I like no MP3 player, no music, no workout, no like catharsis, right? A lot of people be like I'm here to go do deadlifts 'cause I'm pissed.
Jessa: I really did live, lots of lying.
Ben: Yeah, not really a good strategy. Chemicals, whatever. Marijuana or weed or wine, again not the best fix. Sure, a glass of wine at the end of the day to calm you down like we're doing right now, fine.
Jessa: But I'm not stressing right now.
Ben: Yeah, it's not 'cause we're pissed or something. What I do is a) I find quiet. If it can be quiet in the presence of green like plant phytochemicals that have been shown to decrease salivary cortisol, being outside, whatever. Something quiet, somewhere I can unplug or see something green, and I don't have a great deal of patience, right? 3 to 5 minutes is about how long I last doing this. But then I do box breathing, okay. Four count in, four count hold, four count out, four count hold, and then after that I find, as the song goes, somebody to love. Okay, the reason for this is that there's like a verse in the Bible that says love covers a multitude of sins right, so you're pissed at somebody, you love them. You give them a hug. You are mad at yourself, then you find someone to hold onto who you know loves you. A child you love, or even a pet.
You find a way to introduce love, even a song that you love, right? Or something that stirs up feelings of love, or gratitude also works, and that works really, really well for me. Okay, so box breathing, somewhere outside in the quiet, and then love. Because love is so powerful, right. Like it's just like the ultimate fix for just about everything is either expressing love or receiving love, so I know that sounds woo woo, but if you try, it actually works, right. So if you're mad, even if you're just all alone right, you call whatever. Your mom, hey mom, just wanted to call you up and tell you I love you, and automatically just by doing something like that, you feel better. If you're religious, you can just pray to God, and like hey, “God, I love you. I feel your love. Thank you”, boom. Like it doesn't have to be complex. But basically the idea is I use a combination of nature, breath and love. That's my fix for when I have a breakdown. So there you have it.
Jessa: Mine's chocolate and wine. Excuse me, I'm joking.
Ben: This has been a moment with Pastor Ben, and his alcoholic wife. Okay so, let's see if we've had any questions come through. If not, we're going to start to wrap things up here. But of course, if you do have questions, we're always on the forum that'll update.
Jessa: Wait, there was one at the very bottom of it.
Ben: That's just from Jake. Oh okay, Susanne says…
Jessa: I'm out looking out for you Susanne.
Ben: Susanne says, “Where can I find notes-slash-references mentioned on the webinar?”
Okay, well technically, okay so when I mention a bunch of stuff, kind of unlike the podcast. Like these webinars are in case you didn't notice are casual, a few hanging out with us in our living room. Alright, so I don't have like PDFs and big notes and links. Maybe I should hire someone from the Greenfield Fitness Team to like watch them and take a bunch of notes, and generate links or ever, but honestly. Like most of the stuff I talked about, you can find at greenfieldfitnesssystems.com, or you can do a search for at bengreenfieldfitness.com, or you can ask me in the forum and just say hey, “Ben, you talked about whatever…”
Oh, I forgot to show you the thing I was going to show you. We'll end with that. Basically just ask, and maybe eventually, you know. If you would like, it's helpful. Let us know. Maybe we'll generate some kind of like PDF bonus that we can give you, like some links to stuff that we talked about. I don't know. Honestly, the reason I'm not prone to do that is what I don't want it to be is like me coming up with an excuse to show you a bunch of stuff that you can buy or that I can sell you because I have to somehow create like a resource list. So I want to be careful not to get in that whole like here are all the things you like, and here are all my affiliate links that you can make money off of all the stuff I just talked about. So, you know, I want to be careful about it, but anyways, I will work on some kind of a mechanism to give you guys references. But in the meantime, for this webinar, just ask in the forum and we'll hook you up. Okay, so that being said.
Jessa: I smell sweet potatoes burning, so.
Ben: Okay, why don't you go? I'll show this. Do you want to say goodbye while I show this?
Jessa: No, it'll just be a moment.
Ben: Okay, this is the Human Charger thing that I talked about 'cause some people didn't understand how it works. Well what I do is like if I wake up super early, right, like at 5 AM because I've been traveling to the East Coast, and over on the East Coast, whatever, I've been waking up at 7 or whatever, so back here when I go back to the West Coast, I wake up quite earlier, and it pisses me of because then I'm up early and then I am tired and cranky by noon. So it takes me about one to two days now to reset and shift my circadian rhythm forward. And the way that I do it is if I wake up early, right, and I can't get back to sleep, I just get up and start to do stuff, but I stay out of the sunshine and I stay out of like the light and I keep the lights off.
Jessa: He turns into a vampire.
Ben: I turn into a vampire. When the time of day rolls around at which I actually want to send my body the signal that it's morning, that it's time to like get all that cortisol going, whatever. I take this guy, and I flip this on, and these little buds, see that? These go inside my ears. If I were to put them in right now, I'd be dumb because it's nighttime and I'll wake myself up.
Jessa: Does that really work well?
Ben: Yes. Like you literally feel like you've had a cup of coffee after you do this. It's like staring into the sun without the bright light of staring you into the sun. It does a 12-minute countdown, so I sit there and I drink my coffee while this thing shines in my ears, and it resets my sleep cycle. I can also do this for example, if I go to the East Coast, and I got to go to a seminar or give a talk or something and it's like 4 or 5 PM, I can shine this in my ear to like wake myself up when I'm in a different timezone, and honestly the main thing that I've been for though is shifting my sleep clock forward. The other thing that a lot of international travelers will use it for is to begin to wake themselves up the place they plan on going to, right. So the way that people would theoretically use this for example, if you are in London and you're 8 hours ahead of New York and it is let's say, how would I put this? Let's say you're going to get up in New York at 6 AM is going to be your wake time for when you go to New York, what you'll do is at 2 PM London time, you would do a cycle of this to give your body…
Jessa: New York time?
Ben: No, London. London time, you do this for like three days before you go back to New York to tell your body that oh hey, so when that time of day happens back in New York. Like you're ready for it, and it's less like afternoon and more like morning. Hopefully that makes sense. It makes sense logically if you think about it, but you just use it to hack your circadian rhythm. It's called a Human Charger. Read the article I wrote on it, just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and do a search for Human Charger. I think it's cool. It's small, it's portable, it's again one of those things that probably cost. I'm guessing they probably make a lot of money on this thing because honestly it's like lights in your ears, right? It's like a hundred and fifty bucks or something like that.
Jessa: Why couldn't you just take the lights of these things?
Ben: Probably could shine flashlights in your ears, but this is sexier. Anyways, so that's what we got. Leave your questions in the forum. Thank you for watching. Thank you for being a part of the inner circle family. Always be letting us know what you want to see, how we can help you because our goal is to take what we do, teach it to you, help you live longer, be happier, have better skin, hair, nails, etcetera. Alright, over and out. Thanks for watching.
Jessa: Night.
I am currently hunting elk deep in the Colorado mountains, completely off-the-grid.
Hence, there is no official Q&A podcast this week.
Instead, I am bringing you a sneak peek inside the BenGreenfieldFitness Inner Circle – specifically, the show that my wife Jessa and I release each month to our members. In each of these live, interactive shows, we talk about the latest workouts, fitness gear, nutrition, supplements, recipes, anti-aging strategies, biohacks, healthy kid tips, and more.
You can click here to listen to the audio, or you can watch the video below. Some of the things you’ll get in this episode include:
-The true size of the Greenfield wine glasses…
-Ben’s fancy new foam roller routine, and all the mobility toys he uses for it…
-How to use an incline treadmill…
-How in-ear light phototherapy works…
-How Ben uses cannabidiol for plane flights, and which smart drugs he combines CBD with…
-A peppermint oil and soda water hack…
-The #1 cause of migraines…
-The research and fitness journals Ben personally subscribes to…
-Why Jessa chose to step back from stressful workouts
-How the Greenfield’s deal with arguments and breakdowns…
-And much more…
If you want all the handy-dandy shownotes and links that accompany this particular episode, just click here to get a full trial of the BenGreenfieldFitness Inner Circle for $1, and leave your questions, comments or feedback below!