[Transcript] – Can Plant-Rich Keto Cure Cancer, Clearing Up Collagen Confusion, Peanut Butter Flavored Bone Broth & Much More!

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Transcripts

February 9, 2019

Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/low-carb-ketogenic-diet-podcasts/cancer-keto/

[0:00:00] Introduction

[0:00:51] About the Podcast and Guest

[0:01:49] Podcast Sponsor

[0:04:40] Audio Issue and Shownotes

[0:05:34] Guest Introduction

[0:08:43] The Heartwarming Story Behind How Dr. Axe Got into Natural Healing

[0:21:14] How Dr. Axe's Business Partner Treated His Own Cancer Naturally

[0:28:57] Podcast Sponsors

[0:31:28] What Dr. Axe Set Out to Accomplish in Writing His Book

[0:42:10] How Do You Tackle the Paradox of a Ketogenic, Thyroid-Friendly Diet

[0:46:57] Keto Forever Cycling

[0:52:24] What does a ketogenic diet look like for a plant-based eater?

[0:56:03] Rapid Fire Questions: What's the difference between that and protein powder and that and bone broth?

[1:01:12] What to make of all the different types of collagen available at Ancient Nutrition?

[1:05:57] What is “Keto Fire”?

[1:08:05] Cool Stuff at Ancient Nutrition

[1:10:34] Closing the Podcast

[1:11:56] End of Podcast

Ben:  I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics, and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet from SEALFit Kokoro, Spartan Agoge, and the world's toughest mudder, the 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science, search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss, recovery, gut hormones, brain, beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

Welcome back, or welcome to you for the first time, maybe. Today's episode is quite interesting. It's heartwarming. It starts off with a heartwarming story about a guy who helped to cure his mom of cancer and then delves into like keto and things that you can use when you're fasting, and different herbs to lower blood sugar. We take a deep dive with my guest today whose name is Dr. Axe. That's a great name, Axe, Dr. Axe. So, this podcast was made possible. Me being able to sit down and buy all this recording equipment and travel around the world to interview these people and just put in the copious amount of time that I put into creating the shownotes and having my team help with editing and all this jazz is brought to you by Kion.

Kion is my company. It's a company that I created as a playground to bring supplements to you. I've got books and journals on the site. I've got a coaching program, everything, including wonderful content of fasting guide, just anything that allows you to live the life that I like to live, and support that life with good clean energy. It's over there. We've got a wonderful tasting nutrient-dense real food energy bar with a delicious chocolate coconut flavor. We've got the purest coffee on the face of the planet, tested against over 50 other coffees for purity, cleanliness, taste, everything. We've got fish oil. We've got a joint support supplement. We have our wonderful new berry aminos which are just, in my opinion, one of the only supplements that I take every day that gives me just like a rocket booster to the moon when I'm doing my workouts. That stuff is crazy. Even when you're fasted, you can take this stuff for an amazing workout.

So, all of this is at getkion.com, getK-I-O-N.com. If you haven't been there yet, go. It's actually a fun site to surf around. Watch our badass videos of me running through the woods in Colorado, inspiring messages. Everything you need is over there, so check it out. We've got everything categorized in a mind, body, spirit, and we even got skincare and beauty products. So, check it out, getkion.com.

This podcast is also brought to you by the wonderful Organifi Chocolate Gold. So, what Organifi did was they combined a bunch of things you would normally get from your golden milk latte at, say, Starbucks but they've cleaned it up. They've made it organic. They've made it wonderful tasting but they've also added superfoods like reishi mushroom and ginger and lemon balm and turkey tail mushroom. Basically, the two main things that this is going to help you with is your immune system with the turkey tail and the reishi, and then it puts you to sleep at night. Like I like to sip this after dinner as a sipping chocolate and it doesn't spike your blood sugar, it's got a lot of coconut in there, and I like to blend it with a little bit of coconut milk or almond milk. I feel like I'm droning on now. They added black pepper to the turmeric, which increases the medicinal potency of the turmeric over 2,000 times stronger. It's a very impressive supplement. I like it. I don't talk about stuff I don't use on this show. I just had a couple last night. I made my 10-year-old son a cup because he wasn't feeling well and I wanted to support his immune system. He loved it. I even put a little heart-shaped marshmallow on top. How do you like that? You get 20% off of this stuff. You just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi. That's Bengreenfieldfitness DOT com slash Organifi, 20% discount code will be right there and it saves you site-wide on everything.

Hey, a quick thing. Towards the end of the podcast episode, for some reason, my microphone decided to go to absolute crap and create a bunch of staticky audio whenever I would talk. I'm sorry. It's teeth-grittingly painful, but you know what, listen through to the end for these last 10 minutes because you'll survive, and we do go over some very interesting information in the end. One of the things that I say at the end that you may not be able to quite understand because it gets so staticky is the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/joshaxe. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/joshaxe. And if you have questions or comments or feedback on this episode, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/joshaxe. Alright, back to the episode. And again, sorry for the static. I'm not a rookie. I promise.

Well, howdy ho, folks. I'm back and we are going to tackle in today's show one of the things that everybody seemingly has a host of never unending questions to. Never unending? That's a double negative, never-ending questions to keto, the ketogenic diet, ketosis. I have a friend, his name is Dr. Josh Axe, and Josh has taken a deep dive into keto. Not only did he just published a brand-new book called the “Keto Diet,” which is basically like a 30-day plan to kind of ease you into the keto diet, but he wove into that a lot of what he's known for, like functional medicine and digestive health and herbal remedies.

Probably, if you've Googled just about anything having to do with health or fitness or nutrition, you've probably run into some article that he has penned online because his website over at draxe.com is super popular for this kind of stuff. And he also has a nutrition company now called Ancient Nutrition, and I've been trying out some of their stuff, thumbing through their catalogue. They are actually developing this really cool suite of products all based around keto. And I will put a link to all of that stuff, Josh's new book and everything that we mentioned during today's show if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/joshaxe. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/joshaxe. And unlike they used to spell axe back in the medieval days, Josh's Axe name is spelled with an E, A-X-E. So, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/joshaxe.

Josh, what's going on, dude?

Josh:  Hey, not much, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Ben:  Yeah. It's actually been quite a while since we talked. I think it was maybe like a Paleo f(x) a couple of years ago that I run into you.

Josh:  Yeah, Paleo f(x). I might have seen you at Cal Jam last year but I think—

Ben:  Oh, yeah.

Josh:  You're going this year, right?

Ben:  I will be at that wonderful event called Cal Jam in Costa Mesa, California, yeah.

Josh:  Awesome. Me too.

Ben:  Yeah. For those of you who don't know what Cal Jam is, we'll put a link to that one in the shownotes too, but it's this kind of gathering of chiropractic docs and alternative medicine docs, functional medicine practitioners, integrative medicine practitioners, nutritionists, fitness enthusiasts, et cetera, and it's kind of like a cross between like an expo and a rock concert because there's like breaks for—it's kind of a weird mashup run by this very interesting cat named Billy DeMoss. Did you ever sit in and listen to the whole rock concert and everything they do there?

Josh:  Yeah. You know what, I think it's fun as a speaker to go there too because when a lot of people are teaching, whether it's in-depth nutrition stuff or other things, it's kind of fun to listen to a band in between the speaker. I love the setup. I think it's great.

Ben:  Yeah, it's very interesting, very unique. I got up there last year and I sang on stage. They rope with me out there before my talk, which is a great icebreaker for my talk when I got to go sing rock music and then give my big boy talk.

Anyways though, you actually have a really, I think an interesting, almost a heartwarming story of how you got into just natural healing in general. From what I understand reading your book, it began with your mom, yeah?

Josh:  Yeah. For myself, I—and your family probably was like to spend too, and I've seen you're doing triathlons and bodybuilding, everything else under the sun, but my family growing up was really into fitness. And so, my mom was actually my gym teacher in elementary school. She was a swim instructor and always seemed really fit. But at 40 years old, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And so, we lived in what I'll call the medical model at the time. So, anytime we were sick as kids, we got put on antibiotics and medications and we just had no idea how to eat healthy. We just thought, “Hey, if we were active and looked good, that meant we were actually healthy.”

So, my mom went through all the conventional medical treatments. And I remember her losing her hair, looking like she had aged 20 years in two weeks. And just thinking myself, I was just in junior high at the time like 7th or 8th grade and just thinking—I mean, I never want to see anyone have to go through this again. I thought to myself, “There's got to be a better way.” And praise God, she went through her cancer treatments and chemo and was eventually diagnosed as cancer-free. And I remember them telling her she was healthy. But really after her treatment, she seemed sicker than ever. My mom got put on antidepressant drugs and anxiety drugs, thyroid medications.

I remember my mom would get home from work teaching then she would have to take a nap every day. She was just so tired and overwhelmed, again diagnosed with chronic fatigue. She was just sick and tired all the time. And this went on for 10 years. About 10/11 years later, I'm actually studying to become a physician and I had some great docs I was learning from. But my mom calls me a year before I graduate and she says in tears, “I've got bad news. I've just been diagnosed with cancer again. They found tumors on my lungs and they want to go and immediately start radiation and do surgery.”

Ben:  Was this a different form of cancer?

Josh:  It was, yeah. You know, this happens really commonly, Ben. The number of people that have cancer return a second time especially via metastasis or something like that, it's common. And so, my mom, her first cancer she had a lot in her lymph nodes, too. And so, I flew back to Ohio where I grew up and we sat down. We just talked it through and prayed together. We just felt really led to take care of her all naturally and I'd been again blessed to have a lot of doctors in my life who were in integrative medicine who had a lot of knowledge that I learned from and had been learning from. And so, we decided we were going to go at this naturally for four to six months. And if it didn't work, maybe we'd do something different, but we decided to do that. I spent, I mean you can imagine hundreds and hundreds of hours, online and reading books and calling people to try and figure out what's the ideal health plan for my mom.

Ben:  How long ago was this, by the way?

Josh:  This was—let me think. It would have been in 2006. So, about 13—

Ben:  Okay. Dude, I can't imagine because now you try to look for natural remedies, what works, what doesn't. You go into a deep dark hole and it's very difficult to navigate actual clinically proven strategies for managing something like cancer. Back in 2006, I would imagine it was a little less cluttered up, but I mean, that's tough to try to navigate that.

Josh:  Yeah. I'd say it was less cluttered but what I did was I would find things, but then I would reach out to doctors to sort of validate them, people that I trusted that I felt like were good physicians. In fact, Dr. Pompa was one of them. Dan Pompa was a guy to think about—

Ben:  Yeah. He's been guest on the show before. That dude is a wealth of knowledge.

Josh:  Yeah. So, I consulted with him. And I called, actually, a guy over in Spain, Dr. Raymond Hilu, and some others. And so, just really got a lot of great knowledge from some people called Oasis of Hope, talked to a few doctors there. So, I put together a plan for her. Actually, one of the articles I read online was about—it was a study on the keto diet. It was probably one of the first studies they've done on it for cancer but I just started reading into, “Hey, it seems like cancer cells may feed off of sugar and use a process like fermentation.”

I'm not going to call it a full-on keto but it was—probably, her diet was consisted of very little carbs. So, the only carbs she ate were from berries and beets and carrots. She started consuming lots of healthy fats. She started doing a little bit of organic protein like wild salmon. But of course, it was lots of that. She's lots of herbs and spices. And then we had her start doing—it was kind of like “Keto meets Gerson therapy,” lots of vegetable juicing. And then I was able to talk to some herbal practitioners and we started doing a lot of herbs. I talked to this Chinese practitioner and we started putting her on. She did a combination of reishi mushroom with cordyceps. She started doing turmeric. We started doing higher doses of vitamin D and C. And she started doing this essential oil therapy where she got a lymphatic drainage massage with frankincense oil and myrrh and some others. We just followed this whole on health protocol.

The other thing we did, we had her speak like healing statements and meditations and even verses from the Bible like into an audio recorder and she would listen to that every morning and every night. And then she started working as much. She used to horseback ride as a kid. She started horseback riding. So, we did all this stuff and she followed this plan for four months. And after two weeks, she started feeling so much better. But we went back to the oncologist in Columbus, Ohio and she called us the next day after she did a CT scan. And her exact words were, Ben, she said, “This is highly unusual. We don't typically see this but your largest tumor is shrunk from 2.5 centimeters down to 1.2, and your scans are looking—I can't believe how they've changed but I want to make sure that you're going to continue to see improvements. I want you to come back in nine months, redo a scan again.” She redid another scan and the tumors were almost completely gone then.

And now it's actually been 13 years and my mom is completely cancer-free and healthy. Her and my dad retired from Ohio down in Florida. In fact, last Christmas, she took a picture of her on my iPhone. She water skis. She's ran five 5ks with me. She's doing really amazing. She says she feels better now. She's about to turn 67 here in a few months and feels better now than she did in her 30s. So, she's doing great.

Ben:  Did you ever write a book or write an article that kind of put together all of the things that you guys did?

Josh:  I did, yeah. I think there's one online. If you look up probably—I don't know what we titled. It might be like Dr. Axe's Mom's Cancer Story, but I think we have a video on YouTube and I do believe we have an article that kind of goes through. Actually, I have her exact daily treatment written down, like the first thing she did in the morning would drink. She drank a glass of milk thistle tea with lemon juice, and then it was a veggie juice, and then it was very—but yeah, we have it, yeah, pretty laid out.

Ben:  Is it the article online called How My Mother Survived Stage 4 Breast Cancer?

Josh:  I think so.

Ben:  Okay. I'll link to that because I think a lot of people might find that very useful. That's the difficult part. You have people like Dale Bredesen doing research on Alzheimer's and presenting this kind of multimodal approach to Alzheimer's that involves a ketogenic diet and high levels of DHA and hyperbaric oxygen therapy and laser lights on the head but it gets kind of scoffed at by a lot of clinical practitioners because you can't actually take that stuff and do like a double-blinded clinical research study on it because it's so multimodal and all over the map. I don't know if you've thought about that but it is difficult. What worked for your mom, the Gerson therapy, the keto, the fringe herbs that you were doing, the Bible verses, the tapping, the chiro. It's so difficult.

Josh:  Yeah. You know one of the things too, Ben, and I know that—my belief system is that there isn't one diet for everybody. Of course, there are key principles that do apply to most people, like if somebody's eating like my mom was which was fried chicken and pizza, not eating good, and then she goes to almost anything she could have done would have been better, especially vegetable juicing and doing a lot of these other superfoods. I think the principle of Chinese medicine, Ayurveda follows this too, but Chinese medicine has their five elements. Ayurveda has their doshas, the three doshas. But looking and understanding each person physiologically and emotionally needs different foods and nutrients. This is really unique.

I have really, when my mom got sick and especially years after, I dove deep into Chinese medicine. One of the things I started finding was—I mean, I just thought this was radical but certain emotions build disease in specific organs. Like for the emotion of worry, it actually causes disease in your upper GI, like your stomach and pancreas. And think about this, if somebody worries during a test, about a test, it causes an upset stomach. If somebody gets really scared like a kid gets scared from fear, it causes them to wet themselves. They can urinate. And so, the emotion of fear, whether it's deeper subtle, causes dysfunction and disease to build up in the reproductive organs, kidney and bladder and adrenal area; fear, again adrenals, that fight-or-flight response.

The emotion of grief and depression actually cause disease in your immune system in Chinese medicine. So, your colon and lungs. And this is kind of the heart of the conversation but just to give you an example that's like—I had a patient come in once and she developed autoimmune disease and we sort of pinned it back to her daughter was her best friend and left for college. She had hardly seen her for two years and she was still dealing with this emotional—like grief, depression, and loss, and her autoimmune disease came on the exact same time. So, it's kind of crazy when you think about it, like liver disease. Why do we call somebody an angry drunk? We drink alcohol. It actually causes overburden of the liver, which then caused you to act out anger. But anger and frustration, impatience and unforgiveness actually also cause disease in the liver and gallbladder. So, all this is Chinese medicine. But I started learning that with my mom. And so, we started being real proactive in her dealing with like—she had a lot of fear. And so, we started being really proactive in combating and psychologically and emotionally helping her beat fear.

Ben:  That's interesting, this strange connection between your emotions and your organs because I think I first kind of heard about this when I was interviewing this professional basketball player over in Israel about bone cancer and how there's this belief that bitterness and anger can settle in the bones and cause things like bone cancer. But I think a lot of people don't realize this goes beyond cancer, and like you mentioned, fear and fright affects the kidney, and anger and frustration affects the liver and the gallbladder, and a lot of people kind of—they scoff at that stuff and say it can't be but we know—I mean, based on books like “The Biology of Belief” by Bruce Lipton and some of the writings of Joe Dispenza. There's a great new book called, “Mind to Matter” by Dawson Church and Joe Dispenza, and it flips it in reverse. It talks about, “Well, hey, if emotions can cause disease, emotions can also heal certain issues; positive emotions, positive beliefs. That gets into the whole, what is called woo-woo science of how emotions affect biology in a positive or a negative way, but it's absolutely a fascinating field that I think not enough people pay attention to.

Josh:  Yeah. The other thing I was going to say with that too is it's like, I know a lot of people try and put all their faith in sort of the current conventional medical system in the AMA and what they believe is sort of this gospel. But I mean Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, they're the two oldest forms of medicine outside of Egyptian medicine, probably, and they are the most proven and it's what they're based off of. It's like this Quran center of and they're based on millions of individual case studies over the past 3500 years. So, it's—yeah, anyways.

Ben:  Yeah. And it's interesting because I remember when my great uncle was passing in Florida, and this was about probably 10 years ago, I remember standing by his bedside and he was researching. He was in his 90s. He's done very well battling a disease. I think it was cancer. I don't remember fully. But I was looking at his bookshelf and he had all these books. And he had one book by this guy named, Jordan Rubin. This may have been even more than 10 years ago. I didn't really know much at all about holistic nutrition or anything like that, like I liked to lift weights and drink protein shakes and that was about all I knew. But this book was about how this guy healed himself with his diet. I found out later he's actually a friend of yours, Jordan Rubin, and he also has a very interesting story. You get into it a little bit in your book, but did he have cancer as well as the disease that he was fighting?

Josh:  Yeah, it was. Yeah, Jordan was diagnosed with testicular cancer. This really was shocking to even me when I found out. I found out, yeah, he just beat it right when I met him and he told me about a year afterwards. Most people he didn't tell 'til—really just shared it about three or four years ago for the first time. And so, yeah, Jordan, first thing he fought was Crohn's and ulcerative colitis and lost 100 pounds and was—

Ben:  That's right. That's what that book that I was reading in my great uncle's room was about. It was like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis. But he also got cancer?

Josh:  You got it, yes. That first book you read about, “The Maker's Diet,” but then after that book, he was diagnosed. And he has a rare surgery when he was a child where I think they implemented something in him like when he was just an infant. They predisposed him of getting testicular cancer by an astronomical amount. So, it wasn't that he didn't eat pretty well or other things. It was he was sort of predisposed because of something specific. But yeah, he developed a plan for himself doing a lot of what probably very similar to what I just shared about my mom, very similar plan, and he did something, like he had an infrared sauna. He would sit in that for almost two hours a day with essential oils on him, getting this essential oil massages.

I remember I went to his house. The first time I visited, he was still on the diet. And I walked into his house and I'm like—Ben, by the first day—and probably, people think of this when they walk into your house and my house. But for me to do this, I was like, “This guy is hardcore,” because the only thing he was eating at the time was he had this salmon flown in frozen from Alaska and he made just salmon ceviche. He soaked in lemon juice and vinegar with some vegetables. He ate that salmon ceviche, raw.

Ben:  For cancer?

Josh:  Yeah. That, along with vegetable juice and salads and avocados, and that was almost all he was eating. And then loads of turmeric and galangal and all these other herbs. That's when I first met him. I'm like, “Dude, do you eat anything, like seriously?” But anyways, come to find out that's why, but anyways, yeah.

Ben:  Wow. And so, what happened with his cancer?

Josh:  So, he beat it naturally. He never took a single drug, didn't do chemo, didn't do any radiation. And after, yeah, six months, he was diagnosed as being completely cancer-free and just kind of put together a radical treatment plan. I've talked to him about this. I think part of it too was—at the time, he was building a supplement company which today is actually the number one selling brand in health food stores.

Ben:  What's that one called?

Josh:  Garden of Life.

Ben:  Okay.

Josh:  Yeah. So, Jordan was building Garden of Life. And he was on the road doing something called the perfect way to America tour, living in an RV, not sleeping. I mean, his emotional and mental stress levels were through the roof because the company wasn't doing well. He's trying to save it at the time, working 80 hours a week. But anyways, and then he put his health back at number one and was able to beat it, but yeah.

Ben:  That's interesting. And this nutrition supplement company that he started, because I know that you work with him now to develop these keto supplements that we could talk about later, things that enhance your ability to be able to get into ketosis, but is this also through Garden of Life that he sells this stuff now?

Josh:  No, he actually sold Garden of Life. I think Garden of Life is an okay company but sometimes—I mean now that Jordan is not there, the ownership, I can't speak for necessarily the quality of their products. But I notice about Jordan, I mean Jordan to me is the best supplement formulator in the world in terms of looking at clinical studies and combining that with Eastern medicine and Chinese medicine plus the current medical studies. And so, yeah, the new company that he co-founded with myself is Ancient Nutrition, and we create everything from fermented herbs like turmeric and holy basil and multivitamins and omegas and probiotics, and of course bone broth and collagen, and a lot of keto products as well. So, yeah, Ancient Nutrition is his new company.

Ben:  Okay. I want to talk about like keto stuff later on. He lives on a farm out in Missouri, I guess. He and I have talked on the phone a couple of times but I'm planning on bringing my family out to his farm in the fall of this year to actually take one of the permaculture courses that they do out there. Have you done one of those?

Josh:  It is. I've been out there. I've sat in on a little bit of it, of the permaculture. I didn't sit through the week-long training but man, it's—he calls it Heal the Planet Farm and it's amazing. I went out there when he first bought it and it was literally like rocks and dirt. He started doing what's called, you're right, permaculture plus—it's called The New Zealand Method of Ultra High-Density Grazing. So, he bought all this exotic livestock. He's got yaks, water buffalo, gazelle, like all these animals out there and he has them rotate throughout the property, eating grass and then they defecate, urinate on the soil.

Now, there's this lush grass growing and it's like the most beautiful property you have ever seen. But it's really amazing. He does what's called food foresting. And one of his goals is to actually feed over 100,000 orphans and kids around the world, but he follows this amazing ancient farming practices with his animal grazing and some of the different—you know, walnut trees and exotic berries like Schisandra he's grown out there. He's growing hemp out there. I mean, it's pretty incredible.

Ben:  Yeah. I think he's even growing psilocybin, as a matter of fact, which I think he'll be ahead of the curve if he's getting to formulation and supplements because even the State of Oregon now has introduced some amount of legality for that for certain purposes. So, I honestly think that that's—everybody's adding CBD to things now. I think that psilocybin is going to be a compound that we're going to begin to see and a lot of especially these medicinal supplements.

Josh:  One of his things out there at his ranch, he has just a pure fermentation facility for reishi, cordyceps, lion's mane, and he actually has certain colors of light and music he plays to help it in growing. And then within the mushrooms, he has them growing on CBD hemp or other superfoods. It's sort of next level stuff.

Ben:  He's growing mushroom on hemp?

Josh:  Yes.

Ben:  Interesting. I'm going to have to look in it. Probably when I go out there, for those of you who want to know more about this dude, I'll likely bring all my podcast equipment and interview him. But in the meantime, his website for all the things we were just talking about is midwestpermaculture.com. And I'll link to that in the shownotes.

Well, hello. We're talking keto on today's show, and I know we're talking about a lot of different supplements but here's something interesting. I don't know, in my opinion, supplements are fun, like it's cool. Try these new tasty things and see what works and what doesn't. And I've been drinking this stuff and it's really, really good. It's called keto balance. What they did was they blended medium-chain triglycerides, DHA, omega-3 fatty acids and grass-fed bovine collagen, and managed to give it this wonderful chocolatey flavor. It's really good. They use this liposomal delivery mechanism that increases the bioavailability. There you go. I'm not going to say that 10 times fast. But the bioavailability is increased by 20 times.

So, you get into ketosis faster. You avoid the keto flu. I drip this stuff into my morning smoothie for a little bit of extra DHA. Sometimes I squirt it right into my mouth, which is kind of a fun party in my mouth. And you get 15% off of this stuff. It's PuraTHRIVE. It comes with a little white bottle. It's kind of like a liquid that you squeeze out. It's really good, about a teaspoon to a tablespoon a day. It's wonderful. Go to PuraTHRIVE. That's P-U-R-ATHRIVE, purathrive.com/greenfieldketo. That's purathrive.com/greenfieldketo, and you'll instantly save 15% percent off this stuff.

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I want to get into your book a little bit, Josh, because you talked about some things regarding the ketogenic diet and ways to enhance ketosis especially, like most people have their heads at this point wrapped around the ketogenic diet. I've done podcast in the past with guys like Dr. Jason Fung on the ultimate guide to fasting where we dive into keto. I've interviewed the guys who wrote “The Keto Bible.” And so, the idea of a low-carb or a ketogenic diet is, I don't think, foreign to people now but in terms of ways to enhance that, that's what I like, in terms of some of the things you talked about in your book.

And the first one that I wanted to get into because I wear a Dexcom G6 now so I'm continuously tracking my blood glucose and I'm trying things like berberine and bitter melon extract to lower my postprandial blood glucose. It's very interesting how you see this stuff talked about and written about but then when you actually consume it and then eat carbohydrates and note a lowering in blood sugar or stabilization of blood sugar, it's kind of cool to actually quantify. But you actually have, in the book, some things that you recommend for specifically kind of like that blood sugar lowering effect that a lot of people are looking for when they're on a ketogenic diet or trying to enhance their glycemic control on a ketogenic diet. In addition to things like berberine, for example, that I already named, what are a few of your favorites for lowering blood sugar?”

Josh:  Yeah. I think for blood sugar—again, one of the things I always look at is going back to Chinese medicine and studying, “Hey, what did they know and what did they look at?” So, there's a few that I love. I'm a huge fan of holy basil. I think holy basil—it's holy basil from a compound standpoint. It's almost like a cross between clove and lavender, actually. And so, it's got eugenol and some other really unique compounds that support lowering blood sugar. So, that's one. Of course, cinnamon. It's fantastic with cinnamaldehyde. That's one I think that's great. Hot peppers are known in Chinese medicine, whether it'd be from cayenne or black pepper or long pepper or any of the others to support blood sugar.

I think turmeric is great. Turmeric has curcumin, which is very anti-inflammatory which supports it. But also, it's got another compound, especially if you get it in an oil form, it's called turmerone, and that's been shown to support stem cell production in the body, and actually hair, the brain, and even the pancreas.

Ben:  Do you know if there's turmerone in curcumin?

Josh:  There isn't. The two main compounds in turmeric are curcumin and turmerone. And so, they're the two separate compounds. Turmerone is the more fat-soluble component of turmeric. And you can look it up online; turmerone, stem cells on PubMed and look up some of the research or turmeric oil and that type of thing. But that's one.

Ben:  That's interesting. And one thing I wanted to comment on regarding turmeric—and I actually noted that you talked in your book about peppercorns and the black pepper extract, the, what's it called, the piperine?

Josh:  Piperine.

Ben:  Yeah, that you find in those and we know that a lot of supplement manufacturers are now combining that with curcumin or turmeric. And I think one important part of that is when you talk about the blood sugar lowering effect of curcumin or turmeric that it's actually not really that systemically available, like it has an anti-inflammatory activity in the gut. So, if you want to take it for gut health and gut anti-inflammation, don't get it. Combine it with black pepper because actually, it gets absorbed systemically [00:35:19] ______ black pepper, that actually allows it to act more systemically. So, in many cases, I think people might use turmeric or curcumin. I don't know if black pepper works with this—what do you call it, turmerone?

Josh:  Yeah. Well, here's what I was going to say, Ben, too because this goes back—you know, we're talking about earlier with the sort of, hey, medicine today. They came out with that study. It was probably like eight years ago when they came out with the study saying, “You consume black pepper with turmeric or the compound piperine with curcumin increases the bioavailability and absorption.” Well, they were all, like people in the medical community, excited about this applauding that this is a breakthrough. If we go online right now to Instagram or Pinterest or Facebook, we'll see recipes for turmeric golden milk, which is that ancient Ayurvedic recipe. That recipe has always been these specific ingredients. It's been turmeric combined with Trikatu, which is a three spice blend of a long pepper, black pepper ginger, a warming spice blend and then ghee.

Ben:  What do you call that, Trikatu?

Josh:  Yeah, Trikatu.

Ben:  Huh.

Josh:  Yeah. Anyway, Trikatu, warming spices—think about warm like you consume cayenne or jalapeno or anything, you start sweating, it opened your pores that also opened your capillaries allowing nutrients then to get in the bloodstream and throughout the body. But this Ayurvedic recipe has been around for 3,000 years and our today's science just discovered that this works eight years ago. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of crazy to think about it. But yeah, it's not just piperine or black pepper, it's really all warming spices, whether it's ginger or clove or black pepper. They're all going to have that same beneficial effect on turmeric. Of course, science will be like, “Well, that's not proven.” Well, it's a basic principle that we know.

Ben:  So, could you get like cloves and black pepper, peppercorns, and then maybe like chunks of turmeric and keep this in, for example, a pepper grinder on your table and just use this on your food like the higher carbohydrate foods before you eat them?

Josh:  Yeah, you definitely could. That's a great idea, actually. Great.

Ben:  I'm going to try this. I'm doing all these experiments now. I'm wearing this Dexcom, so that's easy enough. I actually have all that stuff at home. I would just need to try it before meal and see what it does. In addition to some of these herbs, there was one that you talked about in the book that I hadn't heard of before called Clary Sage. What does that have to do with being in a keto book, this Clary Sage stuff?

Josh:  Right. So, one of the things I did in my book is I—just to get off track for one minute then I'll bring it right back, but I wanted to write a book on keto one because these principles essentially saved my mom's life, a lot of those principles. And then the other thing was people were doing the keto diet the wrong way. And Ben, I swore you, I was on Instagram the other day and they were talking about like one of the ultimate keto recipes and I'm like, “Okay, what is it?” It was taking shredded conventional cheese, frying it in butter, putting bacon in the middle, and then doing that again and making a fried cheese bacon quesadilla.

Ben:  Amazing.

Josh:  And I'm like, “It's sane.”

Ben:  So, ketogenic. I love it.

Josh:  Yeah. That's what gives this stuff a bad name.

Ben:  Well, it's that, and if I could pipe in, it's like when you go to somebody's house and they're on a ketogenic diet and you open up their refrigerator, there's nothing green, there's nothing purple, there's nothing red, there's nothing blue, it's basically like white, white, white; cream cheese, cream, some butter, some shredded coconut and eight other coconut compounds from coconut man with a coconut oil, the coconut butter—and don't get me wrong. I actually like a lot of that stuff even though I don't quite get on the dairy bandwagon so much due to a lot of other issues.

But it's shocking that a lot of people, like they swallow this modern bastardized ketogenic diet thing, hook line and sinker. When you look at our ancestors and a more ancestral appropriate ketogenic diets like plants, fats—and oh, by the way, don't eat too often, do some fasting. I'm not aware of many long livid indigenous populations that are eating frozen fat bombs for breakfast lunch and dinner.

Josh:  Yeah, exactly. And so, with writing the book, it was like, “Okay. I want to create an anti-inflammatory healing keto plan and just do the exact same thing I did with my patients. I really believe that if the keto diet is done the right way what the clinical research shows is, it can be incredible for the brain and conditions like Alzheimer's, it can be amazing for insulin levels and blood sugar, whether it's diabetes or just really rapid weight loss, it can be great for—there's a great study, it's an animal study but on ASD, so autistic spectrum disorders in their gut bacteria in benefiting that PCOS and hormone balance for certain conditions.

And so there are a lot of studies showing that it can be a powerful diet. Just getting into ketosis itself, whether it's through a keto diet or fasting, we know that that alone rush your pancreas, allows that area of your body to sort of regenerate and re-heal itself because it's not working so hard all the time. But all that being said, I wanted to create a combined keto with very specific protocols for healing very specific conditions. For instance, I have a plan in the book for keto diet, the keto cancer plan in the book where it's not only keto but it's combining keto with vegetable juices, with certain herbs like frankincense and reishi and turmeric, and then even brought up clary sage.

I created a plan in the book for—a keto plan for hormones for women. So, I have sort of a keto where I talk about keto and thyroid, and I go through how to do a keto and heal your thyroid. So, it's in combining keto and specific keto foods that are the colors green and black and purple which are known in Chinese medicine to help with the thyroid along with herbs like clary sage, dong quai, ashwagandha. For older women, black cohosh; for younger women, Vitex. But sort of combine these Chinese herbal therapies with keto. And that's why I brought the clary sage. In the book, I recommend for loads of conditions the diet, the supplements, and the essential oils. So, there are even specific essential oils good for certain conditions. So, that's why I mentioned clary sage in the book. It was good for estrogen, balancing out estrogen.

Ben:  Okay. So, you talked about thyroid keto, and I think that might seem paradoxical to some people because—for example, I did a strict ketogenic diet for a while to do the University of Connecticut study up at Jeff Volek's lab, and also for my triathlon training. And admittedly, I was burning a lot of calories, training a lot and that alone, chronic cardio, has an impact on the thyroid. But my thyroid activity just plummeted. My TSH went way up. Bioavailable T3 was through the roof. And even when I was still doing a lot of chronic cardio and a lot of Ironman triathlon training, I started eating more carbs and my thyroid activity went up after I started eating more carbs. So, how do you tackle the paradox of a ketogenic thyroid-friendly diet? Is it just all these hormones or these herbs?

Josh:  Yeah. It's a great question. So, a few things here. One, the key to thyroid health on a keto diet and in general is you've got to keep stress hormones and cortisol low. I mean, it's the biggest factor. So, long distance cardio—and Ben, it's funny. When I first started the keto diet, I was doing triathlons. I got so lean. It was like, “Man.” But body fat drops so low. But then I started getting a little tired from it and I realized I got to add some carbs back in with that amount of training. And so, then started feeling better. It's very exact same thing you just experienced.

And here's the other thing, when I recommend the keto diet to most people, I recommend it for 30 to 90 days and then move into more keto cycling or just generally not going bonkers on the carbs like our daily carb intake for a lot of people is like 60% of their diet. What people think is normal carbohydrate consumption is so off. They consume so much more than what should be normal. People should probably be consuming, I don't know, 33% to maybe 40%. Somebody's doing long distance triathlons, maybe 50. But for most people, maybe 30% to 40% of their diet, maybe that's carbs.

So, I think most people ideally, hey, do keto for 30 to 90 days, but then you're moving into, hey, just keeping carbs in check, doing more fasting, doing some other things and your body's operating more like a hybrid car where, yeah, you're burning carbs for energy but your body is dipping into ketosis or being in a mild state on occasion more often. You have two fuel sources. You're actually able to burn both more efficiently. And I think that's ideal for most people. So, when I bring up the thyroid for keto, what somebody has to do is again, one, it really helps them lose weight, which a lot of people with hypothyroidism specifically need to do. But while they're doing it, they got to keep stress hormones low.

And I have a lot of advice for that in the book in supplementing with a lot of the adaptogens like ashwagandha and keeping those low, but I don't think it's for somebody long-term with hypothyroidism. I think then they need to add in, like I think rice is a perfect carbohydrate—in at least Chinese medicine, it's the most recommended carbohydrate typically for adrenal or your chi. But anyways, all that being said, I think taking the right herbs, keeping the emotional and mental stress levels low, only doing it for a period of time and then adding in berries and rice and seaweed, those are foods that support the thyroid.

Ben:  Go back to what you said about rice. Why do you like rice so much?

Josh:  So, rice as a grain. And again, I'm not saying it's my favorite carbohydrate food but rice, in Chinese medicine, was known to support neurotransmitters. We've heard GABA, type of thing. But really, it was known to be the shape. A lot of times in Chinese medicine, they look at foods by shape. So, a short fat piece of rice is known to build your body's chi, which is essentially your reproductive and adrenal health, which they closely connect your adrenals in your thyroid in Chinese medicine. For instance, they would also say like a walnut looks like your brain. And so, that's going to benefit like a hemisphere of your brain. Your carrots, you're cutting them in half, that looks like an eye. So, that's going to support your eyes. Beets support the blood. So, in Chinese medicine, if a food looks like an organ or—like a reishi mushroom looks identical to your kidneys and adrenals.

Ben:  That's one I didn't know about.

Josh:  Yeah. If you just Google reishi mushroom online, you'll see it's like, “Wow, the shape of a kidney.” Anyways, all that being said, that's why rice is one of those specific foods in Chinese medicine and that is typically known to, yeah, be the more friendly grain for thyroid.

Ben:  So, you're talking about cycling the keto diet. How does this relate to the term used in the book called Keto Forever Cycling?

Josh:  Yeah. So, we sort of used that. If somebody wants to follow it, and whether it's forever or just a longer period of time more than 90 days, I think it can benefit somebody to cycle. So, this is something my wife did, Ben. My wife's really fit. In fact, she's a doctor. She's a CSCS, strength trainer. She's a yoga instructor. So, my wife is really fit and is pretty darn healthy. But she wanted to see fully her six-pack, like she's really into fitness.

Ben:  That's a dangerous territory for a lady as you know.

Josh:  Yeah, I told her. So, anyway, she's like, “Well, okay. I don't need to get that lean.” She just wanted to get down a few more percentage points. She's probably like, I don't know, 17%. She wanted to get down to 15. She wasn't going crazy radical, she just wanted to see a little more definition. So, she went keto and she lost a couple of pounds, another percentage of body fat. But then she did keto cycling. Actually, she saw her better results that way and her hormones just went completely balanced, not when she went full keto but just when she ate more fat and ate less carbs. She kind of combined keto with carb cycling, and so we called it Keto Cycling. So, she would do two keto days and then do a carb day, two keto days and a carb day.

So, on her leg days, like when she's working out harder, she would make those her carb days, or if we're going out with friends. And so, it kind of became this—she does sort of four keto days a week and three carb day—and when I say carb day, she wasn't eating like a whole pizza. It was like, hey, sweet potato and more fruit and acai berry bowl in the morning, those sorts of things. But man, she lost eight pounds and kind of reached her ideal body weight. She had like hormones just—and they were already pretty good but she said she even noticed they got even better.

Anyways, that's where it stemmed from is us experimenting with Chelsea and she just saw really positive results with it. And so, that's where that came from. But we have a whole plan for that in the book too if somebody wants to not be full on keto seven days a week but wants to incorporate some of the keto principles and possibly dip into on that third day a mild state of ketosis then that can happen.

Ben:  Yeah. So, it's basically like a rotating three-day pattern where there are two days full on keto or you're eating less than 30 grams of carbs and then there's like one carb day where you're eating a lot of carbs or 80 to 100 grams of it. And then you're going back into the three-day or back into the two keto days again?

Josh:  You got it.

Ben:  Very interesting. I personally, I keep things pretty non-complex i.e. almost like the same meals or very similar meals every single day but I simply do not eat any carbohydrates at all until dinner. Depending on my levels of physical activity for the day, I'll eat somewhere in the range of like 100 to 200 grams of carbs for dinner. A lot of people who are low-carb zealots will say, “That's going to give me diabetes or rip me out of my ketosis.” But I am so freaking active. That's just restoring my liver glycogen, my muscle glycogen. I go to bed, my blood glucose is already low. I have these ketone monitors and I'm already getting back into a level of ketosis within a couple of hours after that meal. And then by the time I wake up the next morning, I'm burning fatty acids again as a fuel. I again go the whole day without eating any carbohydrates. I'll rinse, wash and repeat that. The only modification I make is when I travel or I've got my ass planted in a sedentary position for a long time, I just don't eat carbs.

It works well for me but this idea of a forever keto cycling plan, I think—like the big picture, no matter how you cycle a ketogenic diet is the idea that you have to have re-feeds. We see very few examples of—even maybe the Inuit population and a few others who are maybe genetically adapted to just like a strict not eating carbs type of diet and maybe for management of epilepsy or something like that. It's a prudent choice. Or if you've had a concussion or a TBI—I'm a fan of a strict ketogenic diet for a certain period of time after that.

But I think that's the issue is you do not want to start on to a strict ketogenic diet and then maybe a year later come into the doctor. A doctor like you with all these blood issues like low thyroid and low testosterone and joints hurting and be reaping the consequences of trying to be too strict with it. I think people just almost get dogmatic and overzealous. Same thing as people do with a carnivore diet or a vegan diet, they get very dogmatic about this ketogenic diet and they wind up just effing up their metabolism and their hormones and process.

Josh:  Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more. I think that that's what people need to realize, it's a true—for most people, it's a time period-based diet. It's 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and then kind of resetting your—just like we do a cleanse or just like we do fasting, it's resetting yourself and then just becoming more wise to what your macros actually look like, just keeping things balanced and reducing the carb load which most people go overboard on.

Ben:  Yeah. I actually want to ask you about some of the other things that you weave into the book for supporting a ketogenic diet like keto bone broth and this keto fire stuff and things like that. But before I do, talk to me about your advice for vegans who want to do this, vegans who want to get off the whole gluten-free cracker bandwagon and vegetarians who want to quit stuff and tofu cereal into their faces. What would a ketogenic diet look like for a plant-based eater?

Josh:  Yeah. So, I had a, actually it was interesting, a friend of mine. He just was over in Asia and he was doing—he's putting together a docu-series. He was over in Thailand and they actually had a clinic that specializes in cancer treatments and they do that with actually more of a vegan or pescetarian keto approach. Anyways, all that being said, for somebody who wants—this is a vegan, by the way, in the book, we have a lot of plants. We have a keto, plus intermittent fasting plan, a basic keto plan, a keto cancer plan, a keto vegan plan is one of them, and in that plan, we have a 30-day plan for just, hey, how to do keto as a vegan.

But for breakfast, it's like a keto smoothie and you're doing like avocado and coconut milk and maybe some blueberries. And then for lunch, you're doing avocado with maybe nuts and seeds. A source of protein, maybe it's tempeh or something like that, but it has to be a smaller amount. You got to look at what the carbs are there. I mean, it's miso soup, something like that. And then for dinner—and some of this is hard for me to remember because I just don't—I personally don't do many vegan meals. With that, you might do like a cauliflower steak and kale chips and you're using like tahini with those and that sort of thing.

Yeah. So, it's definitely doable and we lay out like a whole plan on how to do it. But I think for a lot of vegans, they tend to really weigh overdo carbs even more than people that are not vegan. And so, if you think about this like different organ systems have to deal with different macronutrients, like your kidneys and stomach and liver have to deal a little bit more with protein, well really, your kidneys and stomach, your liver and gallbladder deal more with fat and then your pancreas, more than anything, has to deal with a lot of the carbohydrates. And it's probably the most stressed organ for a lot of people, their pancreas.

So, as a vegan, it's like when you get off those carbs, all of a sudden, your pancreas is like, “Man, I get to heal.” One of the principles I sort of teach and live by, Ben, is that foods don't heal you, turmeric doesn't heal you, bone broth doesn't heal, your body heals itself. And so, that's why fasting is so powerful is that when you rest a system of your body like your pancreas, those beta cells, some of those other cells in the pancreas regenerate and heal. And so, anyways, that's why I think—especially for vegans that tend to be even higher in their carb consumption, giving it a break with keto for even just 30 days, for some of those people can go a really long way.

Ben:  Interesting. Yeah. And you lay it out. Not a lot of books have the vegan or plant-based approach, and I have some other question I want to ask you about some of these products and these things that can enhance ketosis. And so, if you're vegan or you're plant-based and you're listening in, just grab the book. I'll link to it on Amazon. It's called, The Keto Diet. Actually, is that what it's called, The Keto Diet?

Josh:  We just called it keto. We removed the “the.” So, we call it “Keto Diet.” Yup.

Ben:  Okay. Cool. So, some rapid fire. First of all, bone broth protein powder. You talked about this multiple times in the book. What's the difference between that and protein powder and that and bone broth?

Josh:  Yes. So, bone broth protein powder really is just bone broth that's been turned into powder. Just like you make it at home in your crockpot. It's bone broth in powder form. It's really high in collagen, really high in glucosamine, chondroitin, hyaluronic acid. It comes flavored in chocolate, vanilla or non-flavored, and I add it to smoothies. Really the only protein powder I use at this point, for the most part, I actually have a chia seed protein I use on occasion, too. But for the most part, it's really just this bone broth protein because I noticed for myself that the pea protein gives most people gas and bloating. It's really hard to digest, the brown rice protein. It's not necessarily complete hard to digest. The dairy proteins to me, Ben, just wreck me. If I do a whey protein, my nose starts running. It's bad for the gut.

Ben:  Me too. I used to wonder when I was a bodybuilder why I should get out a straw and have horrible gas and it turns out like my body just doesn't like whey protein.

Josh:  Yes. And here's the other thing. When I consume supplements, I want a supplement with something I'm not already getting in my diet. Like I get plenty of branched-chain amino acids because I eat grass-fed beef and wild salmon and that sort of thing, but I don't get much broth or collagen. Bone broth protein is just a great way both as a protein and a collagen supplement. So, that's what I do personally.

Ben:  Okay. So, I don't want to force you to shamelessly plug it so I'm going to do it. One of the things you make at Ancient Nutrition is organic bone broth protein. That's peanut butter flavored. That's like crack cocaine. You need to send me some more of that. You guys sent some to my house. I think I punished it in like a week. What I did was I made a smoothie with bone broth. I used some vanilla stevia and then I used that bone broth powder on top of that. And with that up, I put some coconut flakes on it. Holy hell, I don't know how you guys come up with the peanut butter flavor but man, it's good.

I think it was a few months ago, I actually put that smoothie out on Instagram and somebody piped in and they were like, “That has heavy metals in it. That bone broth has heavy metals in it. Bone broth powder has heavy metals in it.” What's your take on this? Is this an issue?

Josh:  Yeah. It was funny. I mean at this point, it's funny. A lot of people see him as sort of like—I don't want to be mean. I'm just going to say a radical person. He wrote an article and he's all about like—

Ben:  Who? Oh, I see. Okay. We can keep it anonymous. Go ahead.

Josh:  Yeah. I'm going to keep it anonymous.

Ben:  Okay.

Josh:  I don't want to throw stone the other way.

Ben:  Somebody is going to find out anyways, the post in the comments section but do continue.

Josh:  Yeah. So, anyways, he wrote this article—and at the same time, he was about to put—he's putting out his own protein powder, just launched it. And so, we wrote about this because Jordan and I met him before. Jordan knows him fairly well and he's like, “Hey, why don't you ask us for a research? You said that—” and it wasn't just us but we were the one that was highlighted because we were the largest brand that, “Hey, bone broth has heavy metals and these powders have heavy metals.”

And we wrote him and we said, “Mike, here's our research. We did over 300 tests on bone broth protein and it's the cleanest protein source. In fact, it was cleaner than organic turmeric. It was cleaner than the spirulina. It was like very incredibly—in fact, there was either zero of all metals, plus there was a few that had just trace amounts which were normally occurring in food. There are some normal metals in the soil and in food and that's fine.” But anyways, he then retracted the article, wrote a retraction article piece but then left the original up because it was getting so many hits. Anyways, all it being said, it's very clean. In fact, we post all of our results and we posted them all 300 results online but he didn't want to write anyways.

Ben:  That makes me feel better because I want to keep eating that peanut butter bone broth. Actually, I'm going to put a discount link for you guys listening in the shownotes. It's just BEN. You go to Ancient Nutrition website and there's a discount code, BEN. It's amazing.

Josh:  Yeah. I was going to say this, too. I mean, people got to remember, a lot of times, companies that put out supplements—these are people just trying to make money. Like for Jordan and I, Jordan had cancer in the past. I had gut issues. My mom had cancer. My mom is taking this product. I have to give it to her in good conscience. Jordan, six kids, five of who were adopted, he's giving them these products every day. So, Jordan and I, when we formulate these products, we're formulating for our families, for my patients I've cared for, for ourselves. We take this stuff every day. I just had it this morning. So, anyways, I think that's another differentiator, too, is we really care.

Ben:  Yeah. The supplements industry is highly politicized as you know.

Josh:  Yup.

Ben:  Okay. So, a few others. In some of these compounds that you're creating at Ancient Nutrition, because I've gotten actually a couple of boxes of your stuff shipped to my house and inspected the labels and was keeping up some questions or collecting some questions asked on the show, one of the things I noticed is on the collagen, because you guys have like these collagen canisters, but it says type 1, type 2, type 3, type 5, and type X, which I guess would be 10 collagen. And I think that confuses a lot of people. What's the deal with all the different types of collagen and these collagen powders you guys are making?

Josh:  Yes. So, there are multiple types of collagen that make up different areas of our bodies, and it's just like there are multiple types of antioxidants, multiple types of vitamins, and so there are multiple types of collagen. Type 1 and 3 collagen is actually what makes up your skin hair nails and bones. Type 2 collagen is was what makes up your ligaments, tendons, connective tissue and fascia. Type 5 and 10 collagen partially makes up like your arterial walls and surround and support certain organs.

And so, there are different types of collagen. So, we really believe that just like you should get—like if somebody only ate chicken breast, we think people can benefit more from eating not just chicken but grass-fed beef and wild salmon and some other. So, we created the first ever—not just collagen protein. Every collagen protein out there today for the most part or 90% of them, they use bovine or beef collagen. We do a mixture of bovine beef collagen, chicken collagen, wild marine fish collagen, and then an eggshell membrane collagen. And from what we've seen in the studies, like if you have ever cracked open an egg, there's like a little film inside the shell.

Ben:  Yeah.

Josh:  Well, that film is all the collagen but that has type 5 and 10 collagen. It seems to be, from the studies, one of the more or most anti-inflammatory types of collagen, type 2 collagen for your joints. And really chicken broth is really unique, which is where we get the collagen, and it has also glucosamine chondroitin and hyaluronic acid, which other broths don't have which actually has been shown to support your body's own collagen production as well. So, we wanted to have all these cofactors and all these different forms of collagen because we wanted it to be the most premium, the best collagen product out there. So, that's where we came up with multi-collagen protein.

Ben:  That's very interesting. So, the type 5 and the type 10, those come from the eggshells.

Josh:  You got it. Exactly.

Ben:  Okay. And each different type of collagen acts on a different body system. So, rather than just getting one type, you've got bovine, you got chicken, you got fish. By the way, you're not going to get any vegans to eat this stuff. You've got every animal known to man in here and eggshells. Actually, do you like anything for vegans or vegetarians? Well, vegetarians, I guess could do the eggs and fish.

Josh:  Yes. So, here's the truth. So, for vegans, there is not a vegan source of collagen, period. And that's just hard. It's a similar thing. There's not a vegan—well, it's hard to say but there's not as much of a vegan true source of vitamin B12 necessarily, or it's just typically not high in those foods. It's just hard. Same thing with EPA, in omega-3s, it's just not real common or it's not there. Same with collagen. Now, if somebody is a vegan—and I've had lots of vegans, Ben, who've come up to me saying, “Hey, Dr. Axe, I'm a vegan but I've started to make one exception to collagen and I can't believe the difference.”

That does happen. But if somebody still is like, “I will never do an animal product,” then consuming vitamin C does help with some collagen synthesis, which I would still encourage to do. And some herbs support stem cell production and tissue regeneration. So, I think I'd focus on some of those foods like [01:05:05] ______, acerola cherry, amla berry, and there are really vitamin C-rich foods. Or maybe just as a powder every day and then maybe some other things that support stem cells like reishi and turmeric and that type of thing.

Ben:  Yeah, that makes sense. Vitamin C is a big one, like I often put a squeeze of a whole lemon or at least half a lemon in when I'm making a smoothie that's got bone broth in it because there are studies that really show that can enhance your collagen absorption. I suppose if you're vegan or vegetarian, you could kind of cobble together collagen sources, like you could buy glycine or prolene or arginine or some of these amino acids that don't come from any animal-based source. And when you combine that with vitamin C, you could get some collagen. But yes, I think it's an uphill battle if you're plant-based and you're trying to get the collagen rounded out.

Josh:  Yeah, it is.

Ben:  I want to ask you about one other one that intrigued me. You guys set this one to me but I haven't actually tried this one yet. It's still on my cupboard. It's called Keto Fire. What is that one?

Josh:  Yes. So, Keto Fire is a ketone supplement. Ketones are made of keto salt. So, essentially, the scientific term is like beta-hydroxybutyrate but it's essentially ketones already. So, ketones can support your body into getting into ketosis faster. Like now for yourself, Ben, the way you eat, the way you exercise, you get into ketosis fast, like I get into ketosis fast. But for a lot of people, they wanted to get into ketosis or a deeper state faster.

Ben:  I get into ketosis fast, too. I can punish a basket of sweet potato fries in about 5 minutes. I can do both.

Josh:  There you go. That's it. So, anyways, that being said, I think for a lot of people taking it just for 30 days or a period of time, taking a ketone supplement can be beneficial. We didn't do a real high dose of keto. We did ketones but we also did other herbs that we felt like according to studies and what we know from Chinese medicine, we're going to support the body also getting into ketosis faster. So, we did a lot of warming spices in there like ginger and extracts from cayenne.

Ben:  And black pepper, too, like some of those ones we talked about. I know this black pepper fruit extract is in there.

Josh:  Yup.

Ben:  And long pepper.

Josh:  Yeah. So, we did long—long pepper is probably our favorite. So, we put that in there, herbs like ashwagandha. I think there are some MCTs in there. We not only put just the ketones but some of these other herbs and things that support your body getting into ketosis or a deeper state more quickly.

Ben:  So, it's beta-hydroxybutyrate salts like ketone salts. So, medium-chain triglycerides and all these things that enhance your ability to be able to control blood sugar and get into ketosis. It looks like you have a caffeinated and also a non-caffeinated version.

Josh:  You got it, yup.

Ben:  I dig it. This is pretty cool. You guys are formulating some cool stuff over at—Ancient Nutrition is the name of the company.

Josh:  Yeah. Let me share this with you, Ben, too. I mean, we are super stoked about this. So, in the future, we're coming out with just some other cool lines. So, at Jordan's ranch, that's where we manufacture all these products. I'm so excited for you to see it. It is sort of unreal some of what he's doing out there but with our supplements—like a lot of companies—like we have a turmeric supplement. And a lot of people will just, hey, take turmeric as—like companies will just put out general turmeric as a supplement.

What we're doing at the ranch now is fermenting turmeric on hemp, and we're fermenting it also, and then we're combining it with black pepper and long pepper. And then we're doing different forms of it. We're fermenting turmeric and then we're also doing a turmeric CO2 oil, which is liposomal, which is pretty awesome, and then combining that with reishi mushroom and all these other things. People should just read our labels. When you look at our turmeric, we have not just turmeric but a warming spice blend, bitter spice blend for digestion, different forms of it. All of it is certified organic. So, it's pretty stuff we're pretty proud of and excited about, too.

Ben:  Cool, cool. In full disclosure to everybody listening in, I make some money and it helps to support the podcast when you get anything from Ancient Nutrition. I want to make sure you guys know that, but at the same time, I'm using some of this stuff and I love it. It's like their multi-collagen is great for recovery. The peanut butter stuff is like crack cocaine. This Keto Fire I haven't tried yet but as soon as I get home, I'm going to take that bad boy out of the cupboard and give it a try and see how I feel in terms of energy levels during the day.

But Josh and the folks at Ancient Nutrition were kind enough to offer everybody a 15% discount code on all their stuff, and the code is BEN, just BEN. That'll get you 15% off at Ancient Nutrition. And then also Josh's book is well worth a read. So, I'll link to his book. I'll link to the story about his mom surviving Stage 4 breast cancer and some of the things that he did. I'll link to Jordan Rubin's Midwest permaculture site where I'm going to go, like we were just talking about, take my kids and my wife out there this October to check out how he's growing psilocybin on weed, however that works, and plenty more. So, what were you saying, Josh?

Josh:  Oh, nothing, man. I was going to say, hey, thanks so much. I mean, I love doing this podcast. I was going to say, too, people are going to check out the book. I think it's like $10 off right now on Amazon. They're selling it on there. So, that's a great place to check it out or bookstores. But yeah, man, always love being on with you, man. And yeah, I heard a podcast you did recently too and I was—

Ben:  Which one?

Josh:  Joe Rogan, man. It's just a little bit of it but like what don't you do? What topic from preparing meats to—anyways, everything else.

Ben:  There's a lot I don't do, like I don't do movies and I don't do Hollywood.

Josh:  Okay. There we go.

Ben:  I'm kind of a dummy about the blockchain. So, there are certainly things I don't know a lot about but a lot of other people do. But anyways, I think that's how you become an expert in stuff. You have to myopically focus on the things that you want to specialize in and ignore the rest. So, there's my advice for the day. Alright, Josh, thanks for coming on, man. And again, everybody listening in, I'm going to put links to Ancient Nutrition, the discount code, all the stuff you want over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/joshaxe. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/joshaxe and until next time. I'm Ben Greenfield with Josh Axe signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Later, Josh.

Josh:  Thanks, Ben.

Ben:  Hey, that's it. Thanks for listening to the show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, where there's plenty of other goodies from yours truly, including the very helpful “Ben Recommends” page. Now, one last thing, please know that all the links, all the promo codes, pretty much every resource that I mention to you during each episode really helps to generate income for the podcast and kind of helps to float this thing and enables me to keep spending the time to bring you the content every week. So, be sure to use the links, use the promo codes, use all of those goodies, too. Alright, thanks for listening.

 

 

Dr. Josh Axe, DNM, DC, CNS, is a doctor of natural medicine, chiropractic physician and clinical nutritionist with a passion to help people get healthy by empowering them to use nutrition to fuel their health. He operates one of the world’s largest health websites at DrAxe.com, which has over 17 million visitors a month looking for healthy recipes, herbal remedies, nutrition and fitness advice, and information on essential oils and natural supplements.

He is also the co-founder of Ancient Nutrition, which provides protein powders, holistic supplements, vitamins, essential oils and more to the modern world. Dr. Axe is an expert in functional medicine, digestive health and herbal remedies and founded one of the largest functional medicine clinics in the world, in Nashville, TN and served as a physician for many professional athletes.

Dr. Axe just published his brand new book Keto Diet: Your 30-Day Plan to Lose Weight, Balance Hormones, Boost Brain Health, and Reverse Disease.

During this episode, we dive into the book, and more, including…

-The heartwarming story behind how Dr. Axe got into natural healing…7:50

-How Dr. Axe's business partner treated his own cancer naturally…20:20

  • Book: The Maker's Diet by Jordan Rubin
  • Book: Patient, Heal Thyself by Jordan Rubin
  • Garden of Life, founded by Jordan Rubin
  • Salmon Ceviche
  • Vegetable juice, salads, avocados, turmeric
  • Beat it naturally; no drugs, chemo, radiation
  • Dr. Axe calls Jordan the best supplement formulator in the world
  • Ancient Nutrition 
  • Permaculture courses at Jordan's farm in Missouri
  • “Food Foresting”

-What Dr. Axe set out to accomplish in writing his book…32:05

-How do you tackle the paradox of a ketogenic, thyroid-friendly diet…42:00

  • Do a keto diet for 30-90 days, then move into keto cycling;
  • Watch carb-intake
  • Utilize fasting
  • Rice is thyroid-friendly
  • “Keto Forever Cycling”
    • Intended for more than 90 day Keto dieting
    • Carb days, Keto days, alternating

-What does a ketogenic diet look like for a plant-based eater…51:30

-Rapid fire questions…55:10

-And much more!

Resources from this episode:

-Ancient Nutrition (use 15% discount code: BEN on any order)

-Book: Keto Diet: Your 30-Day Plan to Lose Weight, Balance Hormones, Boost Brain Health, and Reverse Disease

–How My Mother Survived Stage-4 Breast Cancer

–The strange connection between your emotions and your organs

-Book: The Maker's Diet by Jordan Rubin

–Midwest Permaculture

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