May 15, 2021
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:45] Guest Introduction
[00:03:03] Podcast Sponsors
[00:05:25] Why Farting in Public Has Been Unfairly Stigmatized
[00:14:44] How Omega-3s Affect Gut Health
[00:18:35] Nutrition Habits that Max, Crosby, and Ben Implement Daily
[00:31:53] How to Identify Calorie-Dense vs. Calorie-Sparse Foods
[00:34:10] Podcast Sponsors
[00:36:27] cont. How to Identify Calorie-Dense vs. Calorie-Sparse Foods
[00:42:06] Peptides that Ben, Max, and Crosby use
[00:43:51] Go-To Technology Biohacks
[00:54:54] Technology Devices That Stimulate Different Brainwave States
[01:03:34] How Crosby And Max Nurture The Communities In Their Hometowns During COVID
[01:15:04] How Crosby And Max Nurture The Communities In Their Hometowns During COVID
[01:24:46] Closing the Podcast
[01:26:09] End of Podcast
Ben: On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.
Max: So, the news media weakens your immune system. I mean, chronically elevated cortisol we know makes you more prone to infections. And so, like the panic point that pervades the media–
Ben: There are some doctors I know who are setting up all their peptides internationally, and then if patient needs them, they get shipped from an international locale, like that's the only workaround.
Max: Wow, it's insane, because they work so well.
Ben: If you're looking at them for a long-term relationship, perhaps a litmus test should be their ability to interact with your pheromones, with your odors, with perhaps a few of your small poop molecule.
Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.
Well, I recently got back from a trip to L.A. where I was speaking at a private event down there, and I had a chance to sit down with a couple of super interesting guys, my friends, Max Lugavere and Crosby Tailor. We had an absolute geek fest, just jam-packed with our top tools, and tactics, and tips, and nutrition/training/life/spiritual/relationship hacks of late, recorded a sort of a roundtable, each of us sharing with plenty rabbit holing as we talk through our latest self-optimization strategies. So, you're going to dig this one. I'm going to put all the shownotes for everything we discuss at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ThreeWay. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ThreeWay.
So, who are these guys? First of all, Max has been on my show before. I'll link to the other episodes we've done. He has his own podcast. I've been on his show, too. He wrote this book called “Genius Foods.” Followed that up with another book. I believe the other book was called “Genius Life.” His podcast is called “Genius Life.” I'll link to all that in the shownotes, too. He's a filmmaker, he's a health and science journalist, he's a New York Times bestselling author. You've probably seen him on TV before because he's been all over the Dr. Oz Show, on the Rachael Ray Show, on The Doctors, internationally sought after speaker, and he's talked all over the place, TEDx, New York Academy of Sciences, South by Southwest, you name it. Cool guy.
Crosby Tailor is a fashion model and a former college football athlete, turned biohacker and sugar-free dessert chef, as you'll find out in the early part of this podcast, as we sample some of Crosby's fabulous cookies, which he says allow you to eat dessert and burn fat. Anyways, he also has tried every diet fad from vegan to the body ecology diet, to paleo, to alkaline, to super high fat ketogenic, and experiment with everything, and is just a wealth of knowledge, and happens to be really good at making cookies, and cupcakes, and donuts, and pancakes, and cinnamon rolls, and ice creams, and chocolates, too. So, Crosby's cool. Just because he's full of amazing food, baked goods that you can eat whatever you want and not be guilty.
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BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ThreeWay is where you can grab the shownotes for everything, and let's dive in.
So, million-dollar question, fellas, are you going to taunt me with this giant pile of chocolate chip cookies that's like 1 foot away, well within arms' reach of me for this entire show? Or am I allowed to go cookie monster while we are recording?
Crosby: You have to cookie monster as soon as possible. And I made those–
Ben: It's totally gross. Let me take my gum out and put–
Crosby: I made those like an hour ago. So, I didn't even put them in the fridge. These are still fresh.
Ben: You're selling the house, Max. It's okay if I put the gum–are you taking the table with you?
Max: It's totally fine, totally fine.
Ben: Okay. Don't worry, I'll Lysol it afterwards.
Max: I don't know. It's Ben Greenfield's chewed-up gum. I feel like I could sell that.
Ben: You probably could eBay it or something like that.
Ben: I actually have sold like old sweaty triathlon clothes on eBay before. Okay. So, I'm going to grab this cookie. We should have video going, gosh, darn it. We'd have to be wearing pants if we did video.
Crosby: Let me just get the video here.
Ben: I'm going to slowly and lovingly tear this cookie–it's moist, so that's bonus. Now, what is in this cookie? I'm going to take a bite. Alright, Crosby. It's like oily, it's tender.
Crosby: Yeah.
Ben: It's chewy, pretty good texture.
Crosby: Yeah.
Ben: What is it? You got to tell me this is healthy or something.
Crosby: Yeah, of course, of course. So, no sugar. I mean, that one actually has–I'm doing like a new metabolically flexible–
Ben: Only 4 grams of psilocybin.
Crosby: There's only 3 grams. There's still only 3 grams of sugar per cookie, but I sweetened those ones with an organic maple syrup powder and honey powder. Yeah. So, it's still a great fuel, but they're also gluten, grain, and nut-free. So, there's no almond flour. I don't use almond flour.
Ben: What do you use as a flour-esque ingredient?
Crosby: The base is a coconut cassava mix, both organic.
Ben: Oh my gosh.
Crosby: Yeah.
Ben: It was beautiful.
Crosby: And there's also collagen in it, as well as–in my cookies, I'll only use saturated fats for the fat. So, I have organic grass-fed butter and pastured eggs.
Max: So good.
Ben: How come not pork lard? That would be a good one to throw in there.
Crosby: Well, it would be. It would be, but I don't think that–it just doesn't taste as good. I think you can fry better–
Ben: I'm actually joking. I don't think pork lard would work well.
Crosby: No. [00:07:46] _____, but I think it'd be good if you wanted to do donuts, if you wanted to fry donuts. People used to do it with lard.
Ben: Yeah, that's true.
Crosby: That's the old way.
Ben: I know you guys are probably fans of US Wellness Meats since they're right down here.
Max: Huge fans. Shoutout to US Wellness Meats.
Ben: Yeah, shoutout to the folks at US Wellness Meats for the best burger in town.
Crosby: US Wellness Meats is my murse. I got a blue bag over there. It's literally like my man-purse. It's just a small US Wellness Meats bag.
Ben: Well, I have a bunch of their suet. Have you guys ever had like the beef suet, just like the big chunks of fat that they send up in bags?
Male: I've never tried it. I think my sole exposure to suet is when Paul Saladino showed up to my house.
Ben: Oh, yeah. He likes the kidney suet, which is like that deaf's fat right around the kidneys, but the beef suet, there's obviously a whole lot more of it in a cow in areas other than the kidney. So, they have a bunch of this suet, and what I do is I melt it down. So, I have like the fat, but there's always like these little–I think they call them cracklings, leftover. You guys ever have like those pork cracklings? What is it, EPIC? They make their pork rinds and put cracklings. Yeah, you can cook down the beef suet, strain off all that liquid fat, and then fry up these leftover chunks of suet, and it's just like a crackling. And so, I'm on this kick now with lunch during the day because it makes–I usually have a lunchtime salad or something. But I heat up a couple of those cracklings, and I put a little bit of raw honey and sea salt on them. Oh my gosh, it's so good. It's just like pork fat honey and something–
Max: Shoutout to chicharrones. I'm a huge fan. They're similar, they're comparable. They're like the pork skin fried in its own fat. That's what we want to look out for. One of my favorite on the road snacks, when I'm traveling, are pork rinds, but you always have to look at the ingredients list because sometimes they'll throw in, they'll fry–I mean, the pork skin has its own lard usually attached to it. But sometimes these manufacturers will fry them in soybean oil–
Ben: Well, I do have to add fat to my fat.
Max: Exactly, yeah.
Ben: Well, anyways, so we had this grand scheme. I was going to be down here in L.A. for a few days and I thought, “You know what, we should get the three of us together and just geek out on some of our latest tips, and tactics, and tools, and self-optimization techniques,” because I know you guys have some pretty cool flavors in addition to cookies that you lather on to the mix. So, to direct this conversation somewhat and keep us going from completely off the rails, where we go round table, and just like go with the topic, and like just riff on it for a little while about what you're really most excited about for that.
Crosby: It's like an Air1. It's like in big Air1 date.
Ben: Yes.
Crosby: It's like sitting at Air1 just being normal.
Ben: Yeah. I love it. Without the paycheck. The cookies were free. Just save me like, what, $42 in Air1? Exactly.
Crosby: Of course.
Ben: Right, because I would have bought like the $14 [00:10:43] _____.
Crosby: Do you have one or what, [00:10:45] _____?
Ben: I'll have one. I'm actually very impressed because Crosby, you were saying, but then I guess you got cut off. These are metabolically flexible cookies.
Crosby: These are my metabolically friendly, yeah, flexible cookies.
Max: They can touch their own [00:10:59] _____ cookies. They're flexible.
Ben: Wow, these are good. [00:11:02] _____.
Crosby: They're much more like [00:11:05] _____. My other ones are great. The sugar-free ones are delicious, but there's a difference. There's like a chewiness, there's a texture difference, and that's the caramelization of those actual real sugars. Even though they're fructose sugars, they're actually still going to give that caramelization, which Lakanto, the erythritol doesn't. So, that's the big difference.
Ben: That's what a lot of people don't know about Lakanto. It's not just monk fruit, it's monk fruit with a sugar alcohol.
Crosby: It's the sugar alcohol, yeah.
Ben: Yeah, exactly, which can also lead to a little bit of digestive distress.
Crosby: Yeah. So, if you have digestive issues, which is why I wanted to create these alongside, the sugar-free ones, is I'm going to have an audience that's going to want these because they have digestive issues or they're okay with honey and maple syrup, and they like to have those sugars in their lifestyle, because I've–
Ben: Just don't like to own or be proud of their farts.
Crosby: Right.
Ben: It's a natural fermentation process. You should just own it and be proud of it.
Max: Farting in a flatulence in the context of a social setting is inconvenient to say the least.
[Crosstalk]
Crosby: Max knows he can't be having the flatulence on a night out, especially since we're back, like you can actually take a girl out right now.
Ben: If you're looking at them for a long-term relationship, perhaps a litmus test should be their ability to interact with your pheromones, with your odors, with perhaps a few of your small poop molecules just to make sure that that agrees with them. So, should that happen, such as a Dutch oven scenario later on down the road, they're going to be okay with it.
Max: Yeah. There's definitely a–I have a friend who likes to–like on a first date, he likes to actually make a point to fart in front of the girl because it establishes, it breaks the eyes real quickly and establishes right off the bat that he's comfortable doing that with the girl that he's with.
Ben: I don't know if I would go that far.
Max: He should write a relationship book.
Ben: I know, right?
Max: Or maybe she shouldn't. But yeah, I mean, I think to some degree, it's a sign that your bacteria are spitting out those postbiotics. Your gut microbiome is doing its job. And one of the obvious fermentation byproducts can–or they [00:13:22] _____ gases.
Ben: Yeah. Hey, look at me. I'm a man, I'm humble, I'm open, I'm transparent. I just let one rip. That's how much you can trust me. I'm not fake. This is me, me and my bloatedness, and my butthole.
Crosby: Would you say that if you started taking a new probiotic, you might potentially be more gassy?
Ben: Oh, absolutely.
Crosby: In the transition into a new probiotic because it's changing the gut bacteria?
Ben: Yeah. Microbiome shifts often tend to produce large amount of gas, and sometimes not. Sometimes if you have a high amount of methanogenic bacteria, which you can determine via one of those biome tests, which the whole gut biome test, I don't like as much as just a straight-up stool panel for yeast, and parasites, and fungus, and the more acute issues, nor do I like the fact that many of these biome companies like prescribing certain probiotic regimens based on your test because there's no evidence that you can by taking certain probiotics, it actually meaningfully adjust that biome. But you can see something like, “Oh, well, I genetically have a high number of methanogenic producing bacteria, or let's say sulfur digesting bacteria. Therefore, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, et cetera, for, let's say, a date night would probably not be the best idea for me.” And then, from what I understand, there are certain bacterial strains that can almost crowd out some of the sulfur-producing, or the methane-producing bacteria. So, you can shift that just slightly.
Max: Good to know, definitely, especially if you're single.
Crosby: Definitely, that happened to me. I started a new probiotic by a company called Mitolife. It's a spore-based probiotic. It's really good.
Ben: Mitolife, is that Matt–
Crosby: That's Blackburn's.
Ben: Blackburn. He lives right up by me. He's been coming to my house for dinner parties.
Crosby: Oh, he's amazing.
Ben: He's a real character.
Crosby: He's a character.
Ben: Oh, he always shows up with like some paper bag full of, whatever, homemade goat cheese and some vitamin E.
Crosby: That's crazy. You guys live right–
Ben: On a special lecture for me about why I shouldn't be using my fish oil, and yeah.
Crosby: Oh yeah, he hates the omega-3s.
Ben: Yeah, exactly, because of their fragility in their potential for what would be called oxidation, which is actually a natural process that occurs in the body and generates like signaling free radicals that support healthy inflammation, but pair oxidation, which occurs to omega-3 if it gets heated, if it gets exposed to a lot of sugars in the bloodstream, if you have a lot of underlying inflammation, high iron. I think in a metabolically healthy scenario, you can consume high amount of omega-3s, even those fragile ones from, let's say fish oil, and not be at risk of a high amount of peroxidation. But if you're inflamed, tons of, or excess UVA and UVB radiation or other forms of inflammation and radiation, and it's a hot oil or hasn't been treated properly, or you're in a state of excess stress or high blood sugar, I think it can do more harm than good to have like an omega-3 as part of your supplement stack.
Crosby: Interesting.
Ben: I think it depends on the scenario.
Max: Yeah. But also, that's where, I mean, demonizing omega-3s, and particularly fish oil, is where I think sometimes there's a disconnect between looking at like speculating mechanistically, and what we see from like outcome data, randomized control trials that will use omega-3 supplements as an intervention to, for whatever it may be, whether it's to reduce triglycerides. We know that there's now a pharmaceutical available. It's basically hyper purified EPA.
Crosby: Right, which is [00:16:40] _____.
Ben: It's an EPA-based oil that they've done these large randomized clinical trials in. And from what I understand, they actually didn't do a similar trial on DHA and EPA in combination, which theoretically would induce even greater benefits from like a neural standpoint or a cell membrane standpoint than just the EPA-based omega-3s. But you're right, Max. You can say that theoretically consuming fish oil because it's fragile would lead to peroxidation in your bloodstream, yet when you look at the large human clinical trials, we're seeing like lower triglycerides, better heart disease outcomes, variety of factors that show that that's, for some reason, not occurring, or it's that the pros outweigh the cons.
Max: Exactly. I mean, with every treatment, you have to weigh the benefits versus the risks, right? And there's a risk-benefit analysis that you're doing consciously or not with everything that you do pretty much, with every single thing that you do. And every healthcare practitioner, I mean, every treatment is going to have risks no matter what. So, I think to just throw the baby out with the bathwater is it's kind of like anti-science in a way. I mean, there's a lot of good I think that comes from fish oil. I have no financial affiliate with any fish oil company, but in regards to cardiovascular health, in regards to brain health, that risk is definitely there.
I like to say that if you're going to max out and spend your money on any one supplement in particular, you want to make sure that you're getting the highest quality fish oil that you can afford, because whey protein tends to be whey protein. But there's a big I think valley, like CVS brand fish oil that you get compared to something like–
Crosby: Yeah, those are definitely rancid.
Ben: [00:18:27] _____ or whatever. So, your pristine waters full of unicorn tears and–
Crosby: To like a Kion.
Ben: Yeah. Anchovies that were massaged each day until they're harvesting, and shamanistically [00:18:40] _____. I was going to see if you guys want to start for the exercise, but since we're on the whole nutrition bandwidth, let's start here. What's one recent nutrition habit, whether a food, an ingredient of meal preparation style or anything else that you guys have adopted of late that's just been like a shockingly big win for you or something that's just become a staple in your routine?
Max: Well, one of the things that I started doing over the past year just because I've had more free time and gyms were closed, I took up boxing. Ben, do you dabble in martial arts box or anything like that?
Ben: Yeah. Well, down here, I've dropped in and trained with–what's his face? I'm forgetting the guy who's got the boxing gyms down here. Is it Tony?
Crosby: Which box?
Ben: He's been on my podcast before. He's like from the UK, he and his partner. They've got a boxing gym down in Santa Monica. I forget his name. Anyway, so I've done that. Then I own one of these FightCamp things in my gym that's got the Bluetooth sensors in the gloves that will track your number of punches per minute. And then, you got somebody on the screen who's shouting out your combos like 1, 3, 6.
Crosby: That's awesome.
Ben: 5, 4, 1. And so, it's cool because you're training mentally, and also physically at the same time because you got to be on top of the combos, which I like about boxing.
Max: Yeah. So, I've been doing that. I went from having zero experience boxing or fighting of any sort to doing it multiple times a week, and I've been doing it now for about a year. I generally really enjoy fasted workouts. I find that the combination of not having that post-meal fatigue that you sometimes get when you do it–even though the circadian data seems to suggest that later in the day you're stronger and more coordinated, I find that a morning workout–and I credit Crosby to some degree for that because that's kind of Crosby's routine and I jumped on that bandwagon just because I wanted to work out with him. And I found that I had more energy during the day during my workouts when I would work out fasted. You also get that benefit from the morning cortisol spike and the fact that you're hungry and you're using your next meal as a reward.
Ben: So many benefits. You get the cortisol upregulation in the morning, which arguably should best be attained by getting out and looking at sunlight as early as possible, like that's the very, very best way to get that–probably one of the worst ways is a giant cup of coffee in the morning despite the fact that I like that. It's fantastic for my morning bowel movement. Actually, Andrew Huberman from Stanford just talking about this on a recent podcast, how amping up that cortisol too early in the day with too many mechanisms can be problematic versus saving some of that cortisol and epinephrine release for later on in the day.
But some of these more natural so-called zeitgebers like these circadian cues like light, specifically sunlight or blue light exercise, and in some cases, a meal can be really good for regulating circadian rhythmicity. But I'm on the same page with you. I like the fasted morning workouts. I like not having food in my stomach. I like what seems to me to be better body fat percentage and better body composition from a morning fasted workout. For like a hard-gainer, or somebody who's wanting to pile on muscle, or somebody who might have issues with metabolic efficiency, or something along those lines, taking like a caloric or non-caloric pre-workout when you're in that fasted state, like a bottle of liquid ketones, or some amino acids, or something like that, it can kind of sort of help. But I like to just go in with my morning glass of water and a cup of coffee.
Max: Yeah. You're not optimizing for anabolism when you work out fasted. There's no doubt about that, but there are probably other benefits. I don't know, just fasting, the increase in beta-oxidation, just fat burning–
Ben: The post-fasted exercise, rising growth hormone and testosterone also.
Max: There you go. Yeah. Increase in–I don't know. I mean, I don't know to what degree you can measure this, or even if it's like significant, but the autophagy, that sort of AMPK activation with the morning fasted workout, that metabolic workout I think is important. But you're not necessarily optimizing for anabolism and performance when you do that, no.
Ben: No. And if we were talking to athletes–and this was a sports performance podcast. There's going to be a whole different discussion about pre-workout. That's when that comes in handy, but unfortunately, a lot of the nutrition advice the layperson receives is trickle down from the bodybuilding industry or from the pro-athlete industry where you're burping up your pre-workout bar while you're downing your post-workout shake from a 40-minute bout on the elliptical trainer, and you've got 1200 calories down the hatch by 9:00 a.m., and you're really not developing any amount of metabolic efficiency at all.
Max: There you go. So, to wrap up the story, I started boxing, which is very different from resistance training, which was my primary exercise modality. And I found that I was a lot quicker to bunk in that fasted sort of high-intensity glycolytic exercising without having some food in my stomach. And I started just eating–I would have like a banana with some Barùkas nut butter on it and like a protein shake beforehand, and I really felt like a significant increase in my power output.
Crosby: Well, you were working out completely fasted. You just do like a black coffee and it will work out.
Ben: Pretty much like a black coffee.
Crosby: Yeah. So, your cortisol [00:23:57] _____ right before.
Ben: Yeah. So, what you found, like a recent nutrition habit you've adopted is actually doing pre-workout fueling for a morning high-intensity workout, and it's going to better.
Max: And I don't necessarily need that for resistance training, for weight training, but for boxing, which is like 3-minute rounds with 30-second intervals and you're doing that for 45 minutes–
Ben: Highly glycolytic.
Max: Highly glycolytic. Yeah, you need something in the tank.
Crosby: You need something else.
Max: Yeah.
Crosby: Or else you're going to be super flat. Catabolism is going to set in real quick. You're going to feel like just a string bean.
Ben: Yeah, 100%.
Crosby: And that's not a fun feeling. I hate that feeling. I like to feel like dense at the gym. That's why I–I mean, I don't mean to cut you off, but I feel like that's like your nutrition hack, kind of like pre-workout kind of thing.
Ben: You killed two birds with one stone there and gave your recent exercise hack.
Crosby: Yeah. No, I thought you're [00:24:49] _____ exercises like, “What's going on?”
Ben: Yeah. It's not a hack, it's I guess a new routine for–
Crosby: Yeah, you're boxing, but I'm similar in a way where I like to have that empty stomach before I work out. But I wake up so early, but I don't love to train right away.
Ben: What's early?
Crosby: 5:30 and 6:00 sometimes, 7:00 latest, like I can't sleep in past 7:00. It's crazy if I actually get past 7:00. But I like to have my coffee, too. I bulletproof it a bit because I like to put–I have a pretty sensitive stomach, so I kind of buffer it all.
Ben: You mean you bulletproof TM it?
Crosby: What TM?
Ben: Trademark. You got to say TM after bulletproof.
Crosby: True. But I put protein. I'll throw a protein source in there usually away, isolate or something like–and maybe collagen, my fats. And then, I do all sorts of stuff with it. I'll do like lion's mane, and then I'll take an ashwagandha with L-theanine and some stuff to really make myself feel balanced with that coffee, and that lasts me two, two and a half hours before I actually go work out. And then, I make my pre-workout drink, which is like something that you were talking about before, because I'm kind of a hard-gainer, but I don't love to work out with a big–I would never have like eggs and hash browns and go work out. I feel like shit. So, I do a drink that has Kion Aminos with chlorophyll, and cordyceps, and astragalus, schisandra. I put a bunch of adaptogenic herbs in there with amino acids, creatine. I've been adding–I think you were using it before. I actually caught onto it from you, three-workout like carb powder.
Ben: Oh, like a slow-release starch, like UCAN SuperStarch, that type of thing?
Crosby: Kind of like UCAN, but this one, the UCAN made me gas.
Ben: Oh, me, too. Yeah. So much fermentation and bloating.
Crosby: So much fermentation. This one doesn't. This is like–
Ben: It's the Vitargo?
Crosby: Yeah, like Vitargo.
Ben: Yeah. So, Vitargo is good. It's a little bit higher glycemic index, but it seems to give a nice, slow, stable release of energy. I think it's a potato-based chain, and so it doesn't create the same fermentation. It's a super-duper long chain, UCAN. I don't know how many hundreds of dextrose molecules it is, or how they actually create that, but Vitargo burns easy.
Crosby: I get a great pump at the gym. I feel great. My stomach feels good. I don't feel like I really ate much. And then, I have like that post-workout window where I do some type of simple sugar, whether it's raw honey or coconut water with my protein source, glutamine, glycine, get that anabolic response right after I work out. And that sets me up for my day where I've gotten that training in. It's one of those things where I'm doing just a tiny bit each day, but I feel like I'm getting results every day.
Ben: That's what I do is I've given myself permission to actually go to the well in terms of a hard workout for about 30 minutes a day. And sometimes that's in the morning, sometimes it's in the evening. I don't structure it based purely on exercise physiology, science, so to speak, or nutritional science, or circadian rhythmicity as much as me waking up and being like, “Oh, I'm going to have a ton of decision making fatigue by like 6:00 p.m. today based on looking at today's calendar.” I'm going to go ahead and do that hard thing first and then go for a walk this afternoon or evening once I've finished work. Or if it's a pretty easy morning, I'll go for a walk and then wait, as you alluded to, Max, until body temp peaks, and testosterone peaks, and grip strength peaks sometime between like 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. and do the hard workout then. But for me, it's like a half-hour and I can build consistently, and I do that nearly every day. I have very few days off, but I just do something hard, whether it's kettlebells, or cardio, or BFR training, or whatever, for about a half-hour, and then anything else is just bonus, walking during the day or what have you.
Crosby: I've been using the bands, too. I just got those bands.
Ben: Yeah. I used them this morning. Well, I guess–
Crosby: You got to get the bands, Max.
Ben: Yeah. This leads into I guess like an exercise hack. So, I'll do relics from nutrition for just a moment, but I'll tell you guys something new I've been doing. But I used those BFR bands this morning. I use those things. I do some form of blood flow restriction training now, probably like five times a week because I have one of those–
Crosby: Do the legs ones, too?
Ben: –one of those Vasper machines, and I hit that thing like two or three times a week. That's the full-body exercise machine, almost like an elliptical trainer with the arms, but it has cuffs that circulate cold water in them. So, you're getting a bunch of lactic acid buildup from the blood flow restriction, but the cold reduces the discomfort from that, and also gives you some of that cold thermogenesis, extra calorie-burning effect while you're on it to 21-minute workout. But that's more of like a machine that you got to get on and get hooked up to and everything. But those bands, I mean, I travel everywhere with them. I put them on this morning. It was a half-hour squats, pushups, and pull-ups.
They basically limit some amount of arterial blood flow while still allowing for venous return back to the heart to a certain extent. So, you're not fully occluding blood flow or cutting it off completely, but what happens is blood pools and metabolic byproducts from exercising pool in the muscle. And so, when you get all that lactic acid building up, A, the growth in mitochondria and muscle fibers is induced by the muscles being almost tricked into thinking they're lifting something heavy. But the beauty of it is the joints are not under stress, nor is there an appreciable amount of inflammation produced. It's a different signaling mechanism. It's a lactic acid-based signaling mechanism rather than a whole bunch of inflammation. So, you recover–I mean, you could do this twice a day, or every day if you wanted to. You recover more quickly, you build muscle even if you don't have access to a lot of weights or anything like that, and it's portable, right? I can throw these in my bag and weigh like half a pound for the arm straps and the leg straps. I mean, [00:30:33] _____ a ton of that.
Crosby: And it's all about high rep, right? You don't necessarily need to be lifting anything heavy, but you're doing it.
Ben: Right. And because they also increase your heart rate and produce a little bit more of a cardiovascular load just because you have all that lactic acid built-up, sometimes I'll finish a workout like that. And if I got a couple of phone calls I need to make in the morning or something, I'll leave the straps on after I finish that workout with the muscles all pumped, go for a walk. And a walk becomes a lot more of a cardiovascularly demanding workout. When I'm wearing these bands, walk for half-hour while making phone calls and stuff and get a little bit of extra benefit just because it probably takes like four minutes to put the bands on. So, I'm going to spend that time putting everything on. For me, I'm just all about time hacking. Sometimes I will make a walk afterwards a little bit more of a stimulus metabolically.
Max: That's awesome, yeah. I've been wanting to try that, but I just haven't–I've seen it come up on a number of people's Instagrams that I follow and respect. I feel like I've seen Bill Campbell who's appeared–
Crosby: [00:31:30] _____.
Ben: Yeah. They're not going to turn into a super athlete. If anything, you're restricted in terms of your functional movement patterns because, honestly, like you're gritting your teeth. You got a lot of lactic acid built-up in your appendages. But if your goal is just pure portable muscle building and a lot of metabolic stimuli in a short period time, they work remarkably well. And so, I've been doing a lot of that.
I guess to close the loop on nutrition, probably the number one thing I've thrown in is hunting down a lot of ingredients, not a lot, but a few staple ingredients that I use throughout the day that are incredibly satiating to me, but very low in calories. Because I like to eat, but because I'm eating usually three square meals a day, I'm like a breakfast, lunch, dinner guy, I'm selective in what I put on the plate just because I'm aware of my overall calorie load by the end of the day.
So, I use a ton of those, like those content noodles or the Japanese yam noodles that are zero carb, zero–so I can have like a giant plate of “pasta” with lunch and put a little bit of marinara or a little bit of the Primal Kitchen sauces on there. And it's got no calories, but a ton of bulk in the stomach without the bloating or the fiber effect in terms of gas production. Those are incredible. I have a serving of those almost every day. I also do now, like a lot of times for smoothies, I put in avocados, or coconut milk, or something to cream it up or thicken it up, and what I found is a sea moss gel. I think it was Drew Canole who introduced me to this stuff.
Crosby: Irish moss?
Ben: Yeah, it's like Irish moss or sea moss. I've been using a company called Akasha. Put a couple tablespoons of that in a smoothie. I get the same thickness, the same creaminess. It's basically like the content noodles, zero calories, so full-on cheat, but it works amazingly if you're trying to cut calories here and there. And then, the last one that I use is–I wear this by the caseload from Amazon, this organic pumpkin puree, like what you'd use for making pumpkin pie or whatever. But again, super low in calories, digest incredibly easily. It's like this BPA-free can organic pumpkin puree. And I'll have a couple spoonfuls of that in the smoothie or with lunch, or even like–I'm weird, I'll dip my steak in it at dinner and sometimes put a little salt, little hot sauce in there, if you want a little cinnamon, a little pumpkin pie spice, a little bit of raw honey or whatever. But this pumpkin mash, I use that, and the sea moss gel, and the noodles now almost every day, and I'm super satiated. But really, my calorie load is not that significant with those food groups.
Well, hello. I want to interrupt today's show to tell you about something I had actually just this morning, two giant scoops. Here's what I did. I make cacao tea every morning with this cacao tea made by a company called MiCacao. And then, I put it into a little NutriBullet. And this morning, I blended it with stevia, like a vanilla-flavored stevia, sea salt, a touch of cayenne pepper, and two giant heaping scoops of the Four Sigmatic Lion's Mane Elixir. It's a pretty cool little blend. You got cacao, the sweetness of stevia, some sea salt, and then this wonderful elixir. The other thing you put in there is a little bit of vanilla extract. Anyways, what Four Sigmatic does is they harvest the highest quality mushrooms, they extract the heck out of them to get all the wonderful medicinal components, it tastes great, there's no shroomy flavor, if that's not your thing. They have a money-back guarantee, and this Lion's Mane Elixir literally grows your brain, grows new brain cells. It's like Miracle-Gro for your brain. You get a 10% discount of anything from Four Sigmatic. You go to foursigmatic.com/ben. That's F-O-U-Rsigmatic.com/ben. That'll get you 10% off of any order from Four Sigmatic, and may I recommend to you as your mushroom sommelier, their lion's mane extract.
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Max: I appreciate being able to have a discussion and talk about calories because calories are this contentious thing where–I feel like you have some people in the nutrition space implying somehow whether it's by way of promoting the ketogenic diet or other dietary patterns, like calories somehow don't matter, but I think it's important for people to recognize that they do matter. And what you're talking about, calorie density. For somebody to understand how to identify a calorie-dense versus a calorie, let's say sparse food, the difference between those two, that's one of the greatest life and body composition hacks a person can have.
I post about this stuff all the time on my Instagram. Some of these kinds of posts that I do are among the most popular ones that I share because visually, you can eat one single fast-food meal that has as many calories as an entire days' worth of eating lower calorie density, higher volume foods. And volume eating is basically what that's called is something that we should all be able to do. Just very few of us really know how to identify–
Ben: That are the subtle nuances, like we were talking about earlier with sugar alcohols, right? Those can be satiating. They can be a good low-calorie substitute, but there are certain low-calorie substitutes that can create some amount of fermentation and bloating, and others that just create bulk without the fermentation, like the Japanese yam noodle, right? It's a non-fermentable source of insoluble fiber. And so, it just fills you up, but you're not farting. So, yeah. I've been doing that, and I guess for the exercise, the BFR bands, I guess next is boxing and a pre-workout meal. Do you have any favorite new exercise techniques, Crosby?
Crosby: I've been doing a lot of ice–
Max: Crosby is having a lot of sex.
Crosby: Well, yeah, a lot of intercourse.
Ben: Wow, that's sacred spiritual exercise.
Crosby: Yeah, that. It's like the healthiest thing you could be doing in life right now, especially right now, COVID and everything. You have a partner and you're in love with someone, you're in a good place right now with everything else going on. I mean, if you can afford to live a decent life, and eat good food, and get good son, and be in a place where you like where you live, and you have an amazing partner, everything else is not as stressful, right?
Max: Yeah.
Ben: Now, are we talking about–okay, so like–
Crosby: I was about to talk about something else, but this guy–
Ben: Oh no, sex works.
Crosby: Sex is great. No, no, we can go back to sex.
Ben: Yeah. Jamie Wheal just wrote that book “Recapture the Rapture.” And I interviewed him a few months ago before the book was released because he's very into this so-called like hedonic matrix of sex. And in the podcast, we got into this, everything from like nitric oxide, whippets to microdoses with LSA, to certain soundtracks, to tantric breathwork, to all these things that turn sex into, arguably, more spiritual and sacred and meaningful activity, but also a little bit more of like a marathon-esque type of bout. So, when you say more sex, are you saying like hours upon hours? Are you just saying more just like normal quick sex in general?
Crosby: No. I think somewhere in between, definitely somewhere in between. I think that the hours and hours kind of situation. She works a lot, like I'm in a place where I'm trying to build a business. We're not devoting our whole life and days to sex, but yeah, I think that there's calorie-wise burning. There's something to be said when you're having a lot of sex.
Max: Well, with sex, you can–
Ben: Thirteen calories a minute, so you're getting like 26 calories.
Max: Yeah. But, sex is one of the few activities that can be LISS. It can be low-intensity steady-state. Or, it can go all the way up to HIIT.
Crosby: For sure.
Max: Literally, it could be super high intensity. So, it actually is an amazing exercise.
Ben: It is.
Max: If you're lucky enough to–
Ben: I like both. So, we plan, typically, once a month, either a staycation where the kids go off to a friend's house and then my wife and I just get out of the bedroom and go out to the guest house or a different bedroom of the house just to make it a little more novel. Or, get a local hotel, like go out to a restaurant, washer, dryer, kitchen, you name it, if the kids are gone. But, we'll go to a local hotel and do more of that, like Jamie Wheal-esque type of experience where we're literally take plant medicines and have carefully selected soundtrack and do —
Crosby: That's amazing.
Ben: –four rounds of Wim Hof before we even start making out, just all these things to really tweak our physiologies. But, that's not on every night type of thing, especially for busy working parents.
Crosby: To a full-on biohacker, before the sex.
Ben: Exactly. But, we also, as you were just alluding to, Max, the low-intensity steady-state sex versus the high-intensity interval sex, I don't know if you guys have found this, but sometimes, no music, super quiet, this would be the best way I could describe it, if you're having sex at her parents' house type of scenario, where it's just super quiet and you're trying not to make the bed creak or the floorboards creak or anything, but it's still special and silent and meaningful and eye-gazing in low-intensity. And then, there's turn on the music and just pound for 10, 15 minutes, and get a sweat on, front-planking.
Crosby: Great for, I don't do any abs. I don't do any ab workouts. I do planking.
Ben: You probably do deadlifts and things like that, enforceability.
Crosby: Exactly, anything that I'm actually using my core to stabilize for other workouts. But, you'll never see me at the gym doing crunches or anything like that. I've always had a sensitive stomach and I had psoas injury in football. Never really fully recovered. I actually hit you up recently about, I don't know, within the last year, about BPC 157.
Ben: BPC 157, yeah.
Crosby: Because, I was like, “I just need to start healing my body in places that I'm avoiding doing things.” And, that's one of those things that I've avoided for a long time, are those intense core workouts, because it triggers an inflammatory response right away in me, especially with leg lifts, because I'm using that psoas muscle so much.
Ben: That's great. I have the same thing.
Crosby: Really?
Ben: I had a hernia that I got during my Ironman Racing days, and I still can't do hanging leg raises or anything like that —
Crosby: You can't.
Ben: –that produce a really, really high load on the, particularly, rectus abdominis. I just have to avoid those. And, I've thought about going in for repair or something like that.
Crosby: Because you did some BPC 157.
Ben: Not there. But, yeah, I've used pretty much injectable BPC 157 for injuries. Incredibly successful, typically stacked with another peptide called TB 500. And now, there's a newer one. It's not newer, but it is indicated quite a bit now for inflammatory conditions, for tendon repair, etc., called GHK copper peptide.
Crosby: Never heard it though.
Ben: Which is a common peptide in the beauty industry, for hair and skin growth or beauty.
Crosby: Interesting.
Ben: But, they're all injectable. And, furthermore, they are specific amino acid sequences that, one-by-one, the FDA is restricting and making illegal or making it unable to access in the United States. So, I'm not even sure how long peptides will be available to the general mass market. There are some doctors I know who literally are setting up all their peptides internationally.
Crosby: It's crazy.
Ben: And then, if patient needs them, they get shipped from an international locale. That's the only work-around.
Crosby: Wow, it's insane. Because they work so well to heal the body.
Ben: Yeah, exactly.
Crosby: They need a sick.
Ben: Yeah. Now, what about technologies? Biohacks? Because people talk about red lights and saunas and cryotherapy tubes.
Crosby: I got the red light. I got the Joovv. I try to do the Joovv.
Ben: Wearables or devices or things that are go-tos in your guys' routines now?
Max: Yeah. So, I would say the most radical transformation for me has been to my sleep with using some of these tools. I recently went through my bedroom and bathroom, my upstairs area, which is where I spend most of my time in the hour, just prior to going to bed. And, I've replaced all the light bulbs with red light bulbs. So, now, when you go up there and you put–Well, first of all, I have these red night lights so it kind of look like nightclub upstairs but the red is very soothing. It doesn't have any of the blue wavelengths of light that would otherwise disrupt your circadian, tendency to want to wind down and release melatonin, obviously, and get you prepared for bed. So, I have that.
And then, I have developed this sleep routine that–
Crosby: The mouth taping?
Max: Well, it's not just the mouth taping. Because, mouth taping is fairly common, but what I've become obsessed with are nasal strips, which, to me, are revolutionary. And, I haven't seen anybody else talking about this. Man, I'm sure that you have. But, I go to just my local drug store and I buy the generic. I guess the most well-known brand are Breathe Right strips, but I actually don't like those. I like just the generic drug store extra strength brand of nasal strips.
And, what they do is they expand your nasal airways. And, for me, it makes it so much easier to–So, I put those on, and then I take my mouth at night, and it has radically–I was already a good sleeper, but it's made my sleep even better. And, I have no affiliation with any of these companies, but it really does help. And, one of the benefits of that, theoretically increasing airflow through your paranasal sinus is going to increase nitric oxide.
Ben: Exactly.
Max: And, increased, improved, enhanced recovery, cardiovascular–
Ben: Humidifies the air, oxygenates the air.
Max: Yeah.
Ben: Interesting rabbit hole, but the nasal passages are one of the few tissues in the body that contain erectile tissue pretty much similar to that of clitoris and the penis.
Crosby: Really?
Ben: And so, it can expand and contract. You know how, if you've been, talking about having sex a lot, if you've been having sex a lot it, you're dick's bigger. You notice that during the day. It seems to have more blood flow to it, and almost more nitric oxide production, etc. But, by engaging in nasal breathing during exercise, during your walks, such as a guy like Patrick McKeown might talk about or this whole process of Buteyko breathing. You can actually train your nasal passages to become more elastic to have more blood flow, in the same way you can almost train your genitals to do so.
Crosby: Wow.
Ben: But, using those Breathe Right strips, it's not a work-around, but it's a way to amplify that effect even more. Ideally, it's paired with nasal breathing during your workouts or during your walks, but that's something I also hear repetitively.
I have done the Breath Right strips. The mouth taping, I find it seems to significantly inhibit the quality of my wife's and my nighttime pillow talk.
Crosby: Yeah, yeah.
Ben: Because we literally talk each other to sleep or pray each other to sleep at night. And so, when you're wearing mouth tapes, [mumbles]. You're sounding like Kenny from South Park or whatever. But, the other interesting thing, by the way, Max, is I'm glad you brought that up about the red incandescent lights because a lot of people will say, “Well, I've got blue light blockers. I don't need to change out the lights in my bedroom.” But, because you have photoreceptors on your entire body, the idea of just having your retinal photoreceptors blocking blue light but the entire rest of your skin exposed to blue light, when you get up to go to the bathroom at night or when you're sitting in bed, reading at night, or when you're preparing your bedroom for sleep, it technically is going to impact your circadian rhythmicity, so that idea of actually replacing all the cans in your master bedroom and master bathroom with red, or even arguably, because it's the closest to the night-time sunset spectrum, red incandescent, it's actually really, really smart move, even if you have blue light blocking glasses.
Max: I'm not sure of the degree to which your peripheral photoreceptors interferes with your suprachiasmatic nucleus. Obviously, we now know that you have photoreceptors throughout your body in the periphery. But, just in terms of my sleep, those lights have made a big difference. And then, finally, I'll just say, I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with white noise, but what many people are not as familiar with is brown noise. So, knowing the difference, brown noise has been another one of those really significant up-leveling of my slightly different frequency than white. If you're listening to white noise to go to sleep, definitely, try brown noise. It's way more–
Ben: Unless your deep sleep is low. If your percentage of deep sleep is low, it's actually pink noise.
Max: Which is right in the middle, right?
Ben: It's right in the middle, yeah. And then, brown noise, I guess, is the balance between REM and non-REM. But, for me, I started for a long time with checking on my ring in the morning my deep sleep percentages, and I switched to pink noise. I use this app called Sleep Stream. It plays meditation tracks and all sorts of ambient noise. I use the noise on it, but I use pink noise. And, for me, that works really well. Brown noise, also. But, I think white noise is probably the least effective.
Crosby: I think I need some pink noise, too. I feel that might be key for me. I actually do well on six, seven hours of sleep a night. I don't sleep a lot. Probably, 11:00 to 5:30, 11:00 to 6:00.
Ben: Do you nap, though, or meditate at any point during the day?
Crosby: Well, I was meditating for a bit, but I haven't been in a while. But, I don't nap, either. I have energy throughout the day. I can get all my work done throughout the day. But, it's funny because I used to have to take a nap in the middle of the day. But, ever since one big nutrition hack that I was going to bring up that I forgot, too, earlier was, ever since I've been very aware of my fats and the oils that I'm putting in my body, I used to eat a ton of polyunsaturated fat that was cooked tan, not even knowing. Going to [00:50:02] _____ all the time and getting the vegetables, but they're all in grapeseed oil, thinking, “I'm eating super low carb. I'm going to have my broccoli and brisket.” And, everything is cooked in these bad oils.
So, I really started to become aware of–I mean, it's more of a PUFA awareness, but that omega 6 ratio, that changed my energy levels completely. Implementing little bit more vitamin E in my diet. Also, getting rid of all those polyunsaturated fats, eating more saturated fat, more of those stable fats that gave me that energy, along with good sources of proteins, and then adding carbs back in my diet, too. I would be on low-carb for a minute. And then, as soon as I started doing clean ones, I don't eat, really, any grains besides white rice. And then, I love potatoes, roots, and fruits, basically. And then, honey-maple syrup. Just changing that a little bit and having them at the right time, spiking my insulin at the right opportune times, when my insulin sensitivity is high, like post-workout, it's completely changed my body composition. I gained way more lean muscle. My fat percentage went down all from boosting my carbs.
Ben: You sound a lot like, have you guys heard of the anti-aging author? And, I don't know if he's a scientist.
Max: Ray Peat.
Ben: Yeah, Ray Peat, Georgi Dinkov, those would be two of the primary figures in the community that, also, would probably be a community, that guy, like Matt Blackburn —
Crosby: Sure.
Ben: –who we're talking about earlier is a member where they're all about low PUFAs, they're all about actually weaving in sugar and carbohydrates pretty extensively. And then, a third piece of that puzzle is they're really into pregnenolone, progesterone, and DHEA supplementations, especially for men who want to opt–For women, to a certain extent, too. But, those are things that, a lot of times, you would see more recommended to females. But, they're actually big on that as well. And, there's a lot of people in that community claim that their energy levels are through the roof, by doing a lot of what you've done, illuminating PUFAs, not being carb-phobic. And then, they're also throwing in some hormonal support.
Max: I've had my eyes kept on that crowd, just because they're doing some different things that I think–
Crosby: It's different. There's some things that I will still won't do. I've researched a lot of Ray Peat stuff, and I have some people in that community that I conversate with a little bit. There's actually a really cool PUFA-free skincare line by this lady, called CosmoBeauty. I've been talking to her a bit. I've got some of her products, all amazing stuff.
But, the one thing, it's that extra sugar thing that I won't do. I won't do the refined sugar. I'm not going to put table sugar in my food. I don't necessarily love orange juice. That's not a thing for me. But, with anything else, like stuff that I've learned from you, stuff that I've learned from Max, stuff that I've learned from Ray Peat, and even Matt Blackburn, some of these people, I take little bits of each, and I put it into my tailored plan for Crosby Tailor that works for me and my lifestyle and how much I'm working out.
Because, when I went and got blood work recently, my everything was great and my levels were high. But, the one thing that you said was you could even have higher testosterone, but it seems like your problem might be under-eating for the amount of training that you're doing. And so, up your calories, up this, up that. And, I was already eating a good amount, and I was like, “How am I going to eat more?” because my stomach is sensitive? So, I can just gorge myself post-workout. Probably, shit myself if I did that.
So, just finding time to add in more calories. For me, it's trying to get more calories. You were talking about getting bulkier things to have your calorie content be lower. For me, I've been trying to figure out ways. Sometimes, I'll just crush third of a pint of Straus organic ice cream, just to get those calories.
Ben: You're bringing back my bodybuilding days.
Crosby: Sometimes, I feel like that. Sometimes, I feel like I'm back in football.
Ben: Ironman, you just couldn't eat enough.
Crosby: Yes, sometimes, I feel like I'm back in football by the way that I'm training and how balanced my hormones feel right now. It's that metabolic place where I'm, if I eat sugar, I burn them right away. And then, nothing sitting around, nothing storing as fat. And, I feel very grateful of that. But, I know it's not a forever thing, so I'm trying to find that balance with all of it.
It's been a fun process. Me and my girlfriend joke around about it all the time, just avoiding the PUFAs in certain ways.
Ben: I wish I had known back, when I was trying to shove calories down the hatch all day long, about things like liver.
Crosby: Sure.
Ben: And, bone broth and some of these wonderful fats like lard and suet, that, at the time, I vilified, but would have been such great energy sources for me.
Crosby: Amazing.
Ben: Yeah, if I could go back and do it over again, I think I'd do a lot less of a man-in-a-can protein shakes pre-workouts. But, I guess, for me, from a hacking or a technology standpoint, I've been messing around a lot with these devices that can induce certain brain wave states or simulate what supplements or medications might do for the body but using technology instead.
And, I've done interviews about this in the past. There's this one device called Apollo. It produces this inaudible soundwave, and you select from the app, like relax or sleep or social or focus or whatever. But, it operates based on the principle of the soundwave traveling up the long bone of your femur. If you wear it on your wrist, the long bones in your arm. And, it induces a brainwave response, like Alpha or Beta or Theta or Delta, different sequences depending on the sound frequency being used. And, it actually seems to work remarkably well.
Max: It's funny. The science is super interesting. And, it's a coincidence that you bring it up this week, Dave Rabin, who created it, is on my podcast.
Ben: Cool.
Max: They sent me a device and I've been checking it out. Definitely, it is super interesting. And, I think, especially in light of the fact that so many people today are struggling with chronic stress, anxiety, it's–
Ben: Or, even a deleterious gut response to a cup of coffee, but they want that same Beta brainwave release or whatever in the morning or when they need to wake me up, they could do without actually consuming a substance.
Max: Yeah, it's very interesting. So, you found it to be helpful?
Ben: Well, I've messed around with a few different devices. I've found that one to be helpful. That's a keeper for me. There are two others I'm experimenting with right now I'm getting really good results with. One is called a Hapbee. I'm not an investor on any of these companies, or anything like that. This was called a Hapbee. And, it is based on magnetic frequency technology, almost like transcranial stimulation. But, what they've figured out how to do is simulate the same frequency that, basically, would match that of, say, caffeine or nicotine or MDMA or CBD or anything, kind of so much of the Apollo, the app can allow you to select from which signals that you want. But, unlike the Apollo, it's based on magnetic frequencies.
And, so you feel a bit different, feels almost more powerful than the Apollo. And, you can feel it right away. There's one that simulates the social lubricating effect of alcohol. You wear that thing and you feel like you've had a couple glasses of wine. But, again, you are not getting any of the acetaldehyde conversion, you're not getting the calories from drinking.
Crosby: That's wild.
Ben: You could arguably go out to a party, have one cocktail, be wearing that–
Crosby: Feel drunk.
Ben: –and feel the effects of, not necessarily being drunk, but having that nice social buzz. So, that's another one that I like. And then, the last one, and this is far out, but I interviewed this guy on my show as well, called an Infopathy device. And, it's based on the concept of homeopathy, this idea that, when you put certain medications or substances in water, the water can carry the imprint or the actual signature of that particular compound.
And so, for this one, you basically have a device. And, usually, it's like a disk that you place your water or wine or your beverage on top of. Then, you select that you want to infuse it with resveratrol or sildenafil, or just about anything that you would want. There's thousands of different compounds that they've got on there. I'm even shipping them my stored stem cells so they can take the frequency of the stem cells because I have my 30-year-old stem cells stored.
Crosby: Jeez.
Ben: Just to see what would happen if I drink in water the 30-year-old me equivalent of stem cell each day.
And, I realized there's not a ton of research behind this. But, yet–And, actually, I think it was Blackburn who was telling me about this. He's like, “If you try the sildenafil frequency, it actually works just like a Viagra.” And, I tried it out a few times, and I'm pretty in touch with my body. And, I don't think it was a placebo effect. But, I swear, massive hard-on every evening that I used it for way longer than that would normally stay with me by drinking sildenafil in the later afternoon on a night where I knew my wife and I were going to get it on.
Max: Are you actually ingesting sildenafil?
Ben: Well, you're ingesting the frequency. So, you're not having to do first-pass metabolism or anything of the actual compound. But, it's really interesting. And, I feel like we need more research on this type of things that simulate what consumption of foods or supplements would do for the body. I'm never going to be a breatharian. I love food.
Crosby: No, no, no, no.
Ben: I love supplements. I love my glass of wine, but I think it is cool that we're seeing more and more of these technologies that seem to simulate what foods or supplements or meds could do for you.
Crosby: That's wild.
Max: That's interesting.
Crosby: I started using the company, Somavedic. They sent me one of those. You have one of those, too, right?
Ben: Yeah.
Crosby: It was one of those you just have to trust that some things actually–
Ben: The research is either researched or bias.
Crosby: The research.
Ben: But, yeah, for that one, it would be blocking MFS or introducing healthy frequencies into a room.
Crosby: Yeah, it's like harmonizing.
Ben: It seems like one of those things shows up on my doorstep every week, some new pendant or EMF blocking device. And, I got to be honest, most of them, I feel something, but you just never know if it's actual placebo unless you're actually taking a meter through your house and testing everything.
Crosby: Sure.
Ben: Which I've done. And, I have to admit, most of the EMF analysis I've done with meters doesn't show any of those to have that significant of an effect. Yet, physiologically, I see higher HRV and better sleep.
Crosby: And, I think that's what their whole schtick is, is it's not really changing that EMF. It's not blocking it. It's actually creating an environment that your cellular frequencies can actually harmonize with the EMF and not have negative side effects from whatever it is that you would have side effects from the EMF. Because I swear, they just put the smaller type box 5G panels caddy-corner from my apartment, not the big one, but the tiny little square panels. And, there's four of them, one on each side of the pole. And, when that went up, I was like, “Alright, I got to figure something out. That thing is going to fry that corn.”
Ben: We did buy a Faraday canopy for our bed. My wife was resistant to it for the longest time. And, I actually had to show her the design. And, it's actually beautiful. It's a four-poster like I finally get to have my princess bed.
Crosby: Cool stuff.
Ben: Curtains on four posts. But, it's a Faraday cage. It blocks out everything.
Crosby: Wow.
Ben: And, those things feel like just a peaceful cave when you crawl in.
Max: Do you know Luke Storey? I'm sure he's a mutual [01:01:33] ______.
Ben: Yeah, that's right.
Max: Apparently, from what I gathered from his Instagram, so he just moved to Austin. And, there's a paint that you can use to block EMFs.
Ben: Yeah, it's a Faraday paint.
Max: It's a Faraday paint. He painted his bedroom black. Obviously, that would make the room way too dark.
Crosby: He painted over it?
Max: He painted over with white. But, yeah.
Crosby: He got that panel black in there as the protective layer.
Max: Yeah, it's in there below the white paint.
Ben: That paint is freaking expensive.
Max: Is it?
Ben: I got an EMF analysis of my house.
Crosby: He's got to be crushing it because he's building a dream house.
Ben: He can do a paint job on my house, was like 28,000 bucks to actually paint all the rooms that I cared about that had the higher levels of EMF from cell. And, I live out in the middle of nowhere.
Crosby: Where are you at, again?
Ben: I'm up in Spokane, Washington. But, when we went through the house and test it, there were radio signals coming in and cellphone towers we're getting signals from, and some of the wiring in the house. And so, arguably, I might benefit from doing it. But, I have difficulty justifying the expense of a whole house painting versus just, let's say, a Faraday canopy around the one section of the house where you're spending a third of your life wanting to be in a resting and restorative phase. So, that's the path I've taken.
Crosby: During the pandemic, me and my girlfriend did a road trip up to Canada, because that's where she's from. She's from Calgary. We went up the West Coast. And, one of the places we stopped and got a hotel was Spokane.
Ben: Oh, yeah?
Crosby: It's beautiful there. We did a bike ride through Gonzaga, the Washington State. And, there's a really cool health market up on the hill. What's that one called? You know what I'm talking about? You must because you're probably close.
Ben: It's up on a hill? Up on south hill?
Crosby: It's right up from the city, like downtown. Because we stayed downtown-ish.
Ben: I may not know the one that you're talking about.
Crosby: You're probably out.
Ben: But I don't want to make Spokane sound too good, because I don't want people moving there, like what happened to Austin, but it's a cheap boulder.
Crosby: It's pretty nice. We weren't mad at it at all. We're looking around. And, it was a nice fall time. You see the leaves falling and stuff. It was beautiful. And, the nice weather.
Ben: Well, actually, that's a good segue into something I want to ask you guys about as well, which was relationship or community building or anything you've done when it comes to your social life, your relationships or community. And, the reason that Spokane made me think of that was, during the pandemic and the lockdown, I wound up traveling way, way less. I'm still traveling way, way less than I did before when I was on a plane once or twice a week. And, I really developed a desire to be a member of my local community on a greater level.
Max: That's cool.
Ben: Unfortunately, that desire was generated during a time when everything is locked down. I can't be going out to restaurants very much.
Crosby: You can't, really.
Ben: But, we started to have dinner parties, where we're just anybody can come. Wear mask or don't wear mask. Whatever you're comfortable with, we're going to do a huge cook-up of meat. And, sometimes, it will be my kids' jiu-jitsu instructor and a couple of coaches from the local community, and a few athletes. Sometimes, it's a bunch of biohackers.
Crosby: That's awesome.
Ben: Sometimes, it's friends from church. Sometimes, it's a few families. But, at the beginning of each month now, I map out two specific days to have a big dinner party. And, it's been amazing. Just because you get all these people together, they form new relationships, all our dinner parties start with sauna and cold pool and a cocktail bar. And then, it generates into a massive dinner gathered around the great table or outdoors. And then, we always do singing and group music, maybe grab a drum or guitar, what do they feel like, and play music afterwards.
Max: Where's my invite?
Ben: Come on up. That idea of making your home like a gathering place for people.
Crosby: Yeah, it's the best.
Ben: And, planning it out. So, I have a master list, like a Google Doc, where I've got 30 different names, it grows every month, of people in town with a quick description written after who they are. And, I'll just sit down at the beginning of month. It's like making a recipe. It's like, “Okay, I want this person, this person, that couple, and this family.” And, we're going to mix and match and see what happens, and just have everybody over. It's a blast.
Crosby: That's cool.
Max: That's awesome. I definitely value that. One of the reasons why I moved into this place, my house, is because it lends itself to having people over. And, I think that's one of the great joys in life, is building and fostering your social circle. And, there's no better way to do that than, I think, to cook with people and to break bread. You know what I mean? It's been something that people have bonded over.
People have bonded over food for millennia. And, to think that, somehow, now, we can just subjugate that and be okay with it and not suffer any kind of repercussions, I think, is completely naive.
Ben: And, bonding over food, I think–And, by the way, I never thought I'd hear you say breaking bread.
Max: There you go.
Ben: Bonding over food.
Crosby: It's keto bread.
Ben: I think it is something that becomes a bit agnostic. When you say, “Hey, everybody, I'm going to, whatever, grill salmon burgers. Everybody bring a healthy side to share,” you obviously have a wide, wide variety that might fall outside the dietary context you've been following. But, there's something about.
Crosby: Let it go at that time.
Ben: And, this might sound [01:06:46] _____, but letting it go and having whatever, Aunt Matilda's cookies with your, whatever, the jiu-jitsu instructors, yogurt parfait with blueberries and granola, and a giant helping of your neighbor's sweet potato mash, and then, whatever, the salmon burger you grilled up. When you're gathering with people and just enjoying the food in that, arguably, highly parasympathetic scenario where —
Crosby: It changes the chemistry.
Ben: –you're just laughing with people and you're super relaxed, I feel like foods that would normally mess with me a little bit, they don't as much in that scenario, which is super interesting.
Crosby: Well, it's that valve, that valve that doesn't shut from the cortisol response.
Ben: The ileocecal valve?
Crosby: Yeah.
Ben: That's a good point.
Crosby: So, it's nice open, and you're having fun, and you're not thinking about it. And, you just crush something that has a bunch of gluten in it because you're laughing and just, maybe, singing a song. And, nothing happens. But, if you know it's got gluten in it, you sit down, and you're already premeditating the stress response from it, and you start eating it, that valve is going to shut super-fast. All of a sudden, it's digestive distress.
Ben: It's same reason. I think praying over a meal, I think there's more than just being grateful for what you're about to consume and blessing it to your body. I think you're actually generating, in a state of prayer or gratitude, positive frequencies that affect, not only your body but also the food. I think that eating in that state, praying, settling yourself down, doing some breathwork or some meditation prior to a big meal, I definitely think it affects both you and the food.
Crosby: I agree.
Max: Going around the table, that's a good activity for your next dinner party, or even just dinner with the families. Just go around the table and express a bit of gratitude, what you're grateful for. I'm a ardent meat eater, and I wouldn't call myself a carnivore, by any stretch, but I definitely am an advocate for the consumption of animals. And, I think it's really important, actually, to express gratitude for the lives that have been unwittingly sacrificed for our nourishment.
Ben: Yeah, every time I hunt, and now I take my boys hunting, we say a prayer, we return that animal to the earth. It's a very sacred experience. And, we do the same thing at our house, Max, when we have these big dinner parties, which is our family at dinner, it always starts with breathwork, a lot of nasal breathwork. Usually, we're pausing, where we're in a moment of silence for one to two minutes with breathwork. That's always followed by gratitude. What are you grateful for today? Or, who are you grateful for? And then, prayer. And then, finally, you dig into the food. And, having that type of habit, and then carrying that type of habit into your solo meals.
So, for me, now, whatever, I just had one of those bowls of that SunLife for lunch. But, I'm out there in that little outdoor veranda by Next Health and SunLife. And, now, I pause before my meal. We normally, prior to adopting that habit with my family, where it was just dug right in. But, that idea of, “Hey, I'm about to eat.” And, this is actually pretty super special. I have this amazing meal that 99% of the people in the face of this planet would kill for. And, I've got my computer open and my phone on, and I'm distracted by this. I'm listening to that. And, just plugging yourself into a state of awareness and gratitude and actually realizing what that does for you, for your meal, for digestion, like you were talking about Crosby, for even that closure of the ileocecal valve in response to cortisol, it's pretty profound.
Crosby: Yeah, it's really cool. Just to build on that, we have been playing volleyball every weekend with a huge group. We go out to Will Rogers. And, that's been our big community-building thing since the start of the pandemic. I think, probably, a couple of months in, once it settled a little bit and we could actually, and there was no lockdown, we just started playing a lot. She played in college, so she got me into it. I started getting pretty decent, and we're playing with 30, 40 people.
Ben: Your girlfriend, Tessa?
Crosby: Yeah, she played in college and she's quite the athlete. And, I played college football, so I have some athleticism. And, we go out there all the time. And, everybody's slapping hands, being super positive, nobody's in a mask out there. Everybody is just having fun, enjoying life. And, I think there's something to also be said about being in that space where you're having fun and you're not super-stressed and creating almost a placebo effect that you're going to get ill. You're just enjoying life and not really worrying about it, and letting your biochemistry do what it's supposed to be doing, and getting all the different bacterias and touching things and getting dirty and hugging people and exchanging all that–
Ben: Sweat.
Crosby: –sweat and increasing the resilience of your immune system. And then, you go home and eat good food.
And, on top of that, we haven't had a sniffle this whole time. And, I'm not trying to brag or anything. I just think there's something to be said for really having a faith in your body, a sovereign body, and having that faith in your system.
Ben: There's papers right now floating around the internet about the possibility of weakened immune systems in response to social isolation, or at least, less robust amount of physical contact, based on COVID lockdowns.
Crosby: Sure.
Ben: And, I certainly think there's something to that in the same way that kids who grew up on farms have more resilient immune system, just because of their exposure to poop and dirt and animals and germs.
Max: Dude, the news media weakens your immune system. Chronically elevated cortisol, we know, makes you more prone to infections.
Ben: That's a good point.
Max: And so, the panic point that pervades the media. And, I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything like that. But, it's like watching the news is literally asking the TV what you should be worried about today. That's literally what it is.
Ben: True.
Max: Turn it off.
Crosby: No matter what channel. No matter what channel.
Max: No matter what channel. And, we know that that can have downstream physiological effects.
Ben: Yeah, but it's purposeful. [01:12:33] _____ the leads. That's what sells ads, and that's what gets viewers, is something that's sexy and attracts attention, and makes people freak out. And, that's the way news is built these days. I don't know. How do you guys get your news? Or, do you?
Crosby: It's hard not to get it on Instagram, if you're on it.
Max: I just know–
Ben: Do you scan Twitter?
Crosby: Totally.
Max: That's it. But, I'm not news-obsessed. All the news I need is in my group chat with me and my brothers. As long as my family is doing alright, I'm a family guy. I'm realizing now in my third-plus decade of life, the stuff that matters most to me is the stuff that's happening in my immediate environment. Our brains didn't evolve to have a grasp over what's happening on a global scale at an exponential pace. We evolved in an environment where our most pressing needs occurred locally.
Ben: In our village.
Max: Yeah.
Crosby: Your village.
Max: And, where 30 steps away equaled 30 steps away. Today, 30 steps away equals a billion, because we live in the era of exponential technological growth. So, I think that we're all suffering silently due to the fact that we each have taken it upon ourselves. And, because in a way, we're each told that we have to take it on ourselves, to be like these globally-minded people concerned about–
Ben: It's irresponsible not to watch the news, bro.
Max: Yeah. And, I don't buy that for–
Ben: It's like not voting.
Max: Yeah, there you go. I think that we need to return to that more localized vantage point of things.
Ben: For me, honestly, I've got a couple of podcasts that are quick news feeds that are just–And, there's still bias. I'm a freaking libertarian Christian from North Idaho. And, I have to admit, the couple of podcasts I listen to for the news, they are bent that way, just most news is going to have some amount of bias to it. But, I just do a quick check-in. I got a couple of podcasts, 15 minutes long. It's the new. There's one I listen to called CrossPolitics. There's another guy who tends to be controversial, a bit of lightning rod, named Charlie Kirk. I listen to his show, sometimes, just to take a deeper dive, whatever. Biden gives a speech, I will listen to their breakdown of it.
And, yeah, I will fully admit, still biased. But, for me, it's a podcast. Turn it on, turn it off, do a quick listen at three-times speed or whatever, catch up on what I need to know for the day. That's generally what I do.
I guess, if we could cover one more topic in the time that we have left, what might be fun is, inevitably, when we record shows like this, there's just something you thought of during the show or something you want to share you didn't get a chance to share yet, something you want to tell people, some cookie recipe message you want to get out to the world, Crosby, whatever.
Crosby: Sure.
Ben: But, if you guys could leave people with one piece of, either, deeply meaningful and spiritual advice or one super silly, crazy thing that you've been up to that you just think is cool, that people would dig knowing about.
Max: Yeah, I'll start. So, I've been, for a long time, wanting to get therapy, just interpersonal talk therapy. Today, I actually had my first session.
Ben: This podcast?
Crosby: Really?
Max: This podcast, yeah.
Crosby: Really?
Ben: No, no, no. We actually gave Max bunch of MDMA before we started.
Max: There you go.
Ben: Full-on MDMA talk therapy session.
Max: No. So, I bring this up because I think it's important to normalize that therapy. There shouldn't be any stigma about it, that it doesn't make you weak to seek out a therapist. But, sometimes, we have things that we want to deal with or get better at in life, and we're very quick to seek out experts in other regards, in regards that are unrelated to mental health. Like, I wanted to learn boxing, I sought out a boxing trainer. I'm a musician, I sing and I play guitar, I have a singing teacher. There's no ego involved. I can say I take singing lessons and I really, really love it.
But, I had some unsettled loose ends in regards to previous relationships and my upbringing, and stuff that I wanted to unpack with a therapist. And so, I sought out one, and I did a little bit of due diligence.
And, I think it's important. I'm somebody who, like you, Ben, probably, before I make any decision, I research the shit out of it. And, I think that that can make something like therapy very intimidating to begin. I want to know that I'm getting the best therapist, or whatever, or the therapist that's right for my particular needs because I'm a unique snowflake and I have needs that are unlike anybody else's needs.
Ben: That guy.
Max: Throughout all of human history. But, that's actually not necessarily the case, or not necessarily productive or beneficial in the context of therapy. And so, I think, at a certain point, you just have to pull the trigger and just see some person and to start feeling things out in that regard. And so, I was recommended somebody by a friend of mine who is a very smart woman. And, she thought that this particular therapist could be of help to me. And so, I don't know where it's going to go or how long I'm going to be seeing this person.
But, I just think it's important, especially today, but for men in particular, and I think women tend to be more inclined to be open about that sort of stuff. But, there's now all these apps. I'm not using one of the apps, but there are these apps now that make it very accessible for people with all different kinds of budgets.
Ben: I've heard about those. Although, if you were super serious man, you just go down to Peru and do ayahuasca. That's true therapy.
Max: That's what they say.
Ben: That's a sexy stuff that everybody is going to do now.
Max: I'm a little bit reluctant, to be totally honest, unsure.
Crosby: I have done it.
Max: I have a lot of friends that do this plant medicine stuff. And, I think it's okay to be afraid of plant or to be reluctant to engage with plant medicines. I think, in our community, there are people who are like, “This past weekend, I did an ayahuasca ceremony.”
Crosby: Well, it opens up a whole different portal.
Max: I feel like we need to have a little more respect for those spiritual portals.
Crosby: It changes the whole game for you.
Ben: Sometimes, if you're in the wrong place from a neurotransmitter standpoint there are issues. There is a lot more than we probably have time to go into on this show, but that's a proceed-with-caution.
Max: There you go.
Ben: With a great deal of foresight and seriousness, if you're going to do it. This is not a vacation to the Amazon where everything is fixed and [01:18:24] _____ happy. Gosh, I've seen videos of guys finishing up an ayahuasca ceremony and just being su–One of my buddies had a friend who did it, and he came out of the ceremony and sent a video to his family of him cutting his dick off.
Crosby: What?
Ben: Yeah, that much of a messing with your awareness of self or your spiritual connection or even influence from–
Crosby: That's insane.
Ben: –like you're opening up, like you said, Crosby, a different portal, a new different spiritual world that's not just, whatever, drinking extra glass of wine.
Max: Jesus.
Crosby: No. And, it's not even like doing mushrooms, either. It's a whole different ballgame.
Ben: No, [01:18:58] _____ hallucinogenic purgative. Crazy. Anyways, therapy. I like it. How about you, Crosby?
Crosby: Therapy, huh? As of late, I've been really working on personally embracing more change for myself, because I'm a pretty strict stringent routine guy. I have my routine in the morning, and I–
Ben: Control.
Crosby: The control to feel as good as I want to feel every day is a very big thing for me. I like that. I like to be able to grip that and say, “If I do X, Y, and Z again tomorrow, I'm going to feel as good as I felt the day before.” Just working on opening up more to other possibilities, being more spontaneous, even if it's going to push me back a couple of notches. But, being able to have that new life experience.
Me and my girlfriend have actually been talking about–I've been in West Hollywood for 10 years. I've been in the same place for 10-plus years. And, it's comfortable. I have my whereabouts that are my normal whereabouts that I've known for that long. And, she's like, “Let's move West. Let's move to the Marina. Let's do this or do that. Or, even move out of LA.” And, those things are terrifying to me at one point.
Ben: I feel that.
Crosby: But, also, just like I had moved from Northern California to Los Angeles, or from New York back to Los Angeles, there was a moment when I was like, “Man, I'm going to have this new environment.” I've just been doing a lot of thinking lately on being able to embrace that and just being okay with having a lifestyle change in pace that changes, maybe, my day-to-day a tiny bit, or I have to give up a little bit to get something new. And, I think that is a big thing for me in being able to flip that switch for, not only for myself, but also for business and financially.
I think that, once you open up that next door, I think that I'll be able to be a little bit more uncomfortable when it comes to making business decisions and take a little bit more risk and create, do something with the baking company that makes me get over that next–like puts me to that next step. Whereas, I've also been very comfortable with that, too. I've been very comfortable with being where I'm at with the baking company and being where I'm at with certain partnerships I have that give me a decent living. And, I live good here, but I could be changing that as well.
So, I think that, for me, it's been like that. And, Max actually inspired me when he said therapy because he got a little vulnerable talking about his therapy. And, this is vulnerable for me, too. It's like being able to really sit with that, meditate with that idea, that, what are you really going to lose if you start embracing a little bit more change? And, being okay with whatever that is and stepping into a new path and paradigm that might–
Ben: It reminds me.
Crosby: –put me to a new place that takes me to an exponentially different level that was 100 times better than before.
Ben: That reminds me a lot of the work of folks like Anthony De Mello and the idea of detaching yourself in things in life that you thought you were attached to for your happiness, or David Hawkins's book, “Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender,” or the book by Michael, I forget his last name, “The Surrender Experiment.” Just this whole idea, especially for driven guys like us, releasing control can be difficult. And, when you do, there's real freedom about it, and it can even manifest itself biologically or physically. People who are control freaks, who have OCD-like tendencies, on the same way, they tend to have tight psoas, tight abs, tight pelvic floor musculature, all those things that you'd associate with being able to let go. Constipation, issues like that.
And, it's interesting how, when you begin to learn to let go, when you begin to learn to release control, to surrender, to trust that God will provide, or to be open to change, even if it's just whatever, getting a new haircut or trying a new food, or going out at a time you normally wouldn't go out–
Crosby: Totally.
Ben: –it seems to change you physically as well.
Crosby: That makes a lot of sense.
Ben: Well, I got to hit the road pretty soon, so I have to think of something brief. This is going to sound trite compared to what you guys have just said about being able to do therapy and releasing control. But, I would say one other thing I'd throw in there that's actually been cool for me in terms of infusing with more energy and positivity, and just one of those things that I tried, and like some of the other things I've mentioned, just stuck with me that I like, because 90% of the stuff I try doesn't stick. And, it's just like, “Interesting,” and make that part of my routine. I discovered in a book I was reading this morning routine, called the five Tibetan longevity exercises.
Crosby: Yeah, the five Tibetan rites.
Ben: The five Tibetan rites. And, I found a website. I think it's t5t.com, that has a poster and a book that walks you through it. I started doing 21 reps of each, every morning, this morning.
Crosby: It's hard.
Ben: It's not hard.
Crosby: Dude, in the beginning, [01:23:56] _____.
Ben: I end up [01:23:57] _____ 21 reps. But, I feel aligned energetically. I feel as though I'm more open. I feel more positivity during the day. I feel like my journaling and my meditation and my prayer, everything else, just becomes a little bit more enhanced by that ritual. So, I've been doing every morning. I even taught my boys how to do them, these five Tibetan– I'm not going to explain them all on audio because it'd be easier for you to just Google it.
Crosby: I did them years ago, but I never would like made it to [01:24:22] _____.
Ben: [01:24:24] _____ my routine now.
Crosby: But, yeah, it's super cool.
Max: Is one of them butthole sunning?
Crosby: No.
Ben: Butthole, arguably, if you were to do it nude in the sunshine–
Crosby: You would be doing that next.
Ben: –you would get a little bit of butthole exposure.
Crosby: You would do it, yeah, probably not–
Ben: Which, I guess, brings us full circle to what we started off with, the sugar, alcohols, and anything about buttholes.
Crosby: To flatulents.
Ben: To photonic energy in the butthole.
Well, guys, first of all, if people are listening to this on my show, I'll put the links to everything we talk about, and also, to Crosby's Instagram channel on his page and his cookies, and Max's wonderful podcasts and some of the episodes Max and I have done in the past, I'll put all of that at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ThreeWay. I think that's a rememberable URL. BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ThreeWay, T-H-R-E-E-Way, for this discussion.
And, if you guys have your own comments, questions, feedback, new training, nutrition biohacks, relationship routines that have stuck and worked for you, feel free to join in the discussion session there and throw in your own tips. And, thanks for doing this, fellows.
Crosby: Yeah, dude.
Ben: It's always fun to just have a chat you'd normally have anyways, but have the mics on, and just get to know each other better. So, I'm good.
Max: This was awesome. I couldn't think of a better round table gaggle to get together.
Crosby: Yeah, it's super fun.
Max: This was great. And, [01:25:43] ____ cookies.
Crosby: Yeah, absolutely.
Ben: We didn't do alcohol. We didn't do weed. We just ate a little bit of cookie. And, look at us, we crushed it, anyways. Well, fellows, thanks for coming on. And, again, folks, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/ThreeWay. And, I'm Ben, along with Crosby Tailor and Max Lugavere. Do you say it Lu-ga-ve-ré or Lu-ga-ver?
Max: Lu-ga-vir.
Ben: Yeah, it's Lu-ga-vir.
Crosby: Lugavere.
Ben: Signing out. Have an amazing week, you guys.
Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned, over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful, “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode, help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So, when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.
On a recent trip to L.A., I had a chance to sit down with my friends Max Lugavere and Crosby Tailor for an absolute geekfest jam-packed with our top tools, tactics, tips, and nutrition/training/life/spiritual/relationship “hacks” of late (including biohacking sex!) recorded as sort of a roundtable, each of us going one at a time, with plenty o' “rabbit holing” as we talk through all of our latest self-optimization strategies.
So who are these guys?
Crosby Tailor is a represented fashion model and graduated college football athlete turned biohacker and sugar-free dessert chef. Crosby believes that everyone is different, and therefore, not just one diet or lifestyle will work for the majority. Crosby has tried every diet fad from going vegan, the body ecology diet, hardcore paleo, and the alkaline diet, as well as super high fat ketogenic, and never felt completely balanced or satisfied, but there were things he absolutely loved from each lifestyle. So he decided to take bits of information that upgraded his life, from each of his favorite wellness mentors like Dave Asprey, Mark Sisson, David Wolfe, Charles Poliquin, Dr. Axe, and Dr. D'Adamo, among many more, and specifically “Tailor” his lifestyle with what resonated best to increase his overall vibration and quality of living. Crosby realized that no plan will ever be perfect, and that it's about playing the best hand possible from the cards we were given, accepting what is, and celebrating differences.
This would have never been possible if Crosby didn’t learn to intuit what he needed, explore the proper research, and embark upon a trial and error period of learning what worked for him and what didn’t, in order to further the positive development of his mind, body, and soul. Crosby is not a doctor, nor is he here to make certain health claims, but rather he seeks to share information that he has gathered over time, that might help you make your own best decisions for self-improvement.
Crosby is also the creator of Crosby’s Cookies' “Eat Dessert Burn Fat,” a sugar-, gluten-, and grain-free dessert company born from a labor of love. He hacked the dessert world and has come up with hundreds of healthy recipes for cookies, cupcakes, donuts, pancakes, cinnamon rolls, ice creams, and chocolates! Every recipe is boosted with superfoods and beneficial ingredients that serve a purpose for your health. Crosby hopes to take you back to the inherent pleasures that abounded before refined sugar took over.
Max Lugavere is a filmmaker, health and science journalist, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life, published in 8 languages around the globe. He is also the host of the #1 iTunes health podcast The Genius Life.
Max appears regularly on the Dr. Oz Show, the Rachael Ray Show, and The Doctors. He has contributed to Medscape, Vice, Fast Company, CNN, and the Daily Beast, has been featured on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, and in The New York Times and People magazine. He is an internationally sought-after speaker and has given talks at South by Southwest, TEDx, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Biohacker Summit in Stockholm, Sweden, and many others.
From 2005-2011, Max was a journalist for Al Gore’s Current TV. He lives in New York City and Los Angeles. I have also podcasted with Max in the past on the following episodes:
- The Great Bread Debate, Detoxing With Food, Dangers Of MDMA (& What To Do About It), High Protein Myths & Much More With Max Lugavere.
- Why A High-Fat, Ketogenic Diet Chock Full Of Saturated Fat, Coconut Oil & Butter Could Be Destroying Your Brain (& What To Do About It).
During this discussion, you'll discover:
-Why farting in public has been unfairly stigmatized…05:30
- “Metabolically flexible” cookies
- Sweetened by organic maple syrupand honey powder
- Gluten-, grain-, and nut-free
- Base is coconut flour/cassava flourmix
- Collagen
- Organic grass-fed butterand pastured eggs
- US Wellness Meats (use code BEN to save 15%)
- BGF podcasts with Paul Saladino:
- The Toxicity Of Plants, Carnivore For Athletes, Does Meat Cause Acidity, The “Game Changers” Debate & Much More With Dr. Paul Saladino.
- The Truth About The Carnivore Diet: Everything You Need To Know About Dangers, Benefits, Mistakes & Hacks For Eating Only Meat.
- Carnivore Diet, Cleaning Out Your Colon, Eating Brains, Hunting Zebras & Much More With Paul Saladino.
- Farting is a sign of a healthy microbiome
- New probiotics= increased gas
- Viome Complete Microbiome and Metabolic Testing
- MitoLife
-How Omega-3s affect gut health…14:45
- Peroxidation can occur when taking too many Omega-3s
- Weigh benefits vs. risk
- Kion Omegas
- The Giant Fish Oil Episode: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted To Know About Omega 3 Fatty Acids, EPA, DHA, Dosing, Sourcing & Much More!, with Bill and Kristina Harris.
- Make sure you're getting the highest quality fish oil you can
-Nutrition habits that Max, Crosby, and Ben implement daily…18:40
- Boxing training
- FightCamp
- The Benefits Of Fasted Exercise, Busting the Myth of the Pre and Post Workout Meal, Who Shouldn’t Fast & Much More!
- Circadian data suggest workouts later in the day are more coordinated
- Sunlight in the morning reduces cortisol
- The Man Who Is Curing Blindness And Alzheimer's, Growing New Brain Cells & Elegantly Fabricating Some Of The Most Powerful Nootropics Known To Humankind, with Andrew Huberman.
- Ketones
- Kion Aminos
- Most information out there is based on bodybuilders in their mid-20s, not relevant to most people
- Pre-workout fueling before high-intensity training
- Four Sigmatic Lions Mane
- Vitargo
- Don't be dogmatic about your workouts, base them on your lifestyle
- Benefits from BFR Bands(use code BEN10 to save 10%)
- Vasper Machines
- Kaatsu Bands(use code BEN to save 5%)
- BGF podcasts on BFR
- 1 Cheap & Easy Underground Training Method For Growth Hormone Release, 5 Biohacks to Increase Strength in 60 Seconds, 7 Exercises for the Eyes to Radically Enhance Stamina & Speed, with Kusha Karvandi.
- The Official KAATSU Episode: Everything You Need To Know About How To Use Blood Flow Restriction For Muscle Gain, Injury Recovery, Testosterone, Growth Hormone & Much More!, with John Doolittle and Steven Munatones.
- The Hormone-Boosting Minimalist Exercise Machine That Burns A Staggering Amount Of Calories In Just 21 Minutes, with Sebastian Wasowski.
- BGF podcast on Heart Health:
- Implementing Vitamin E(use code BEN15 to save 15%), polyunsaturated fats, protein, and clean carbs
-How to identify calorie-dense vs. calorie-sparse foods…32:00
- How to keep satiated while keeping calorie count low
- Akasha Superfoods Sea Moss Gel(use code BEN10 to save 10%)
- Organic pumpkin puree
- Volume eating is something we all should do
-Biohacking sex…39:05
- Recapture the Raptureby Jamie Wheal
- Burning calories with lovemaking
- Sex is one of the few activities that can range from low intensity to high intensity
- How Ben biohacks for sex
-Peptides that Ben, Max, and Crosby use…42:15
-Go-to technology biohacks…44:35
- Joovv
- Red incandescent light bulbhelps set your circadian rhythm and enhance sleep
- Entire body has photoreceptors; blue light blocking glassesare not enough
- Nasal strips(increases nitric oxide, oxygenates blood, improves recovery)
- The Oxygen Advantageby Patrick McKeown
- Buteyko breathing
- Breathe Right strips
- Mouth taping
- Brown noise vs. white noise vs. pink noise
- Sleep Stream app
- Ray Peat
- Pregnenalone, Progesterone and DHEA supplementation
- CosmoBeauty
-Technology devices that stimulate different brainwave states…55:35
- Apollo wearable
- Hapbee: magnetic frequency stimulation
- Infopathydevice
- Somavedic(use code BEN to save 10%)
- Faraday Canopy
- Faraday Paint
- BGF podcasts with Luke Storey
- BGF Podcasts with Brian Hoyer, EMF Building Biologist
- Hunting Down EMF In Your Office, Bedroom, Gym & Beyond: Is Your Home’s “Dirty Electricity” Wrecking Your Sleep, Your Recovery, Your Health & More? The Official Ben Greenfield & Brian Hoyer Low-EMF Home How-To.
- The Intriguing Science Of Building Biology (Along With A Complete Analysis & Surprising Results From Ben Greenfield’s So-Called “Biohacked Home”).
-How Crosby and Max nurture the communities in their hometowns during COVID…1:06:15
- Bonding over food (diet agnostic)
- Community gatherings at home
- Praying and gratitude expression before a meal
- Crosby: playing volleyball for fun, health, and community building
- The idea that we may be building our immune systems by exposing ourselves to one another during the pandemic
-How panic porn degrades the immune system…1:12:45
- News and media may be making us more prone to infections (panic point = increased stress hormone)
- Crosby and Max are not “news-obsessed”
- Ben feels its important to return back to a localized community
- We're all suffering silently
-Healthy and unhealthy ways to unpack our baggage…1:15:30
- Normalize interpersonal talk therapy
- Plant medicine as spiritual therapy(ayahuasca and mushrooms)
- Being open to new opportunities and lifestyle changes
- Being willing to take more risk to learn/experience something new
- Awarenessby Anthony De Mello
- Letting Goby David Hawkins
- The Surrender Experimentby Michael A. Singer
- Trust that God will provide
- Infusing more energy and positivity into the day
- The 5 Tibetan Ritesby Carolinda Witt and Peter Kelder
- com
- Ben's doing 21 reps each of the Tibetan Rites
-And much more…
Resources from this episode:
– Max Lugavere:
- The Genius LifePodcast
- Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life
- The Great Bread Debate, Detoxing With Food, Dangers Of MDMA (& What To Do About It), High Protein Myths & Much More With Max Lugavere.
- Why A High-Fat, Ketogenic Diet Chock Full Of Saturated Fat, Coconut Oil & Butter Could Be Destroying Your Brain (& What To Do About It).
– Podcasts And Articles:
- The Toxicity Of Plants, Carnivore For Athletes, Does Meat Cause Acidity, The “Game Changers” Debate & Much More With Dr. Paul Saladino.
- The Truth About The Carnivore Diet: Everything You Need To Know About Dangers, Benefits, Mistakes & Hacks For Eating Only Meat.
- Carnivore Diet, Cleaning Out Your Colon, Eating Brains, Hunting Zebras & Much More With Paul Saladino.
- The Giant Fish Oil Episode: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted To Know About Omega 3 Fatty Acids, EPA, DHA, Dosing, Sourcing & Much More!, with Bill and Kristina Harris.
- The Man Who Is Curing Blindness And Alzheimer's, Growing New Brain Cells & Elegantly Fabricating Some Of The Most Powerful Nootropics Known To Humankind, with Andrew Huberman
- 1 Cheap & Easy Underground Training Method For Growth Hormone Release, 5 Biohacks to Increase Strength in 60 Seconds, 7 Exercises for the Eyes to Radically Enhance Stamina & Speed, with Kusha Karvandi.
- The Official KAATSU Episode: Everything You Need To Know About How To Use Blood Flow Restriction For Muscle Gain, Injury Recovery, Testosterone, Growth Hormone & Much More!, with John Doolittle and Steven Munatones.
- The Hormone-Boosting Minimalist Exercise Machine That Burns A Staggering Amount Of Calories In Just 21 Minutes, with Sebastian Wasowski.
- The Best Way To Test How Healthy Your Heart Is: Ben Greenfield Undergoes A Complete Advanced Cardiac Evaluation & Reports The Surprising Results!, with Dr. Ram Dandillaya.
- Recapture the Rapture: Biohacking Sex, Tantric Breathwork, Plant Medicines For Orgasmic Enhancement & Much More!, with Jamie Wheal.
- Biohacking Sex: The Best Tips, Tricks, Supplements & Food To Optimize Libido, Desire & Arousal, with Susan Bratton.
- Maximize Oxygen Utilization Efficiency, Simulate High Altitude Training, Get The Cardiovascular Capacity of a Navy SEAL & More With “The Oxygen Advantage” Author Patrick McKeown.
- A Whole New Way To Deal With Stress, Trauma & PTSD In Just Seconds: The First Clinically Validated Wearable That Helps You De-Stress, Focus, Sleep, Stay Energized & Remain Calm, with Dr. David Rabin.
- A New, Drug-Free Biohack To Finely Tune Your Emotions, Sleep, Relaxation, Energy, Focus, Calm & More: The Hapbee With Scott Donnell.
- How To Turn A Glass Of Water Into A Pharmaceutical, Supplement, Remedy & “Information Carrier” Using The Science Of Infopathy, with Anton Fedorenko.
- Two Nerdy Biohackers Reveal Their Secrets To Spiritual Health, Life Optimization, Plant Medicines, Rites Of Passage, Mental Models & Much More!
- A Crazy Biohacking Adventure With Luke Storey & Ben Greenfield: Smart Drugs, Sleep Hacking, Infrared Light, Cold Pools & Beyond!
- Hunting Down EMF In Your Office, Bedroom, Gym & Beyond: Is Your Home’s “Dirty Electricity” Wrecking Your Sleep, Your Recovery, Your Health & More? The Official Ben Greenfield & Brian Hoyer Low-EMF Home How-To.
- The Intriguing Science Of Building Biology (Along With A Complete Analysis & Surprising Results From Ben Greenfield’s So-Called “Biohacked Home”).
- Sunlight Makes You Skinny & Blue Light Makes You Fat: 11 Ways To Biohack Light To Optimize Your Body & Brain.
- How To Use BPC-157: A Complete Dummies Guide To Healing The Body Like Wolverine.
- How To Build New Blood Vessels, Regenerate Muscle Tissue Fibers, Increase New Cell Growth & More With Something Called “TB-500”.
- The Ultimate Breathwork Ninja Guide: How To Banish Stress & Kiss High Cortisol Goodbye.
- The Most Important Muscle You Own (& Exactly How To Train It).
– Books:
- Recapture the RaptureBy Jamie Wheal
- The Oxygen AdvantageBy Patrick McKeown
- AwarenessBy Anthony De Mello
- Letting GoBy David Hawkins
- The Surrender ExperimentBy Michael A. Singer
- The 5 Tibetan RitesBy Carolinda Witt And Peter Kelder
– Gear And Tests:
- BFR Bands(use code BEN10 to save 10%)
- Vasper Machine
- Kaatsu Bands(use code BEN to save 5%)
- Joovv
- Red Incandescent Light Bulb
- Blue Light Blocking Glasses
- Nasal Strips
- Breath Right Strips
- Mouth Tape
- Sleep Stream App
- Apollo Neuro
- Hapbee
- Infopathy
- Somavedic(use code BEN to save 10%)
- Faraday Canopy
- Faraday Paint
- Viome Complete Microbiome and Metabolic Testing
– Food And Supplements:
- Organic Maple Syrup
- Honey Powder
- Coconut Flour
- Cassava Flour
- Collagen
- Organic Grass-Fed Butter
- US Wellness Meats (use code BEN to save 15%)
- Kion Omegas
- Ketones
- Kion Aminos
- Seed Synbiotics
- Vitamin E(use code BEN15 to save 15%)
- Four Sigmatic Lions Mane
- Vitargo
- Akasha Superfoods Sea Moss Gel(use code BEN10 to save 10%)
- Organic Pumpkin Puree
- MitoLife
– Other Resources:
- Ray Peat
- FightCamp
- Colors Of Noise
- Progesterone Pregnenolone & DHEA – Three Youth-Associated Hormones
- GHK-CU
- CosmoBeauty
- Gas And The Microbiome
- Circadian Rhythms in Exercise Performance: Implications for Hormonal and Muscular Adaptation
- Pre-Exercise Nutrition: The Role Of Macronutrients, Modified Starches And Supplements On Metabolism And Endurance Performance
Episode sponsors:
–Kion Creatine: Fuel your performance, energy, and strength with Kion Creatine, made with 100% Creapure®. You can grab your own Kion Creatine now at getkion.com and save 10% off your order with discount code BEN10.
–Organifi Gold: A new take on an ancient secret: Pain-soothing herbs, incredible antioxidants, and phytonutrients all in one delicious, soothing “Golden Milk” nighttime tea! Receive a 20% discount on your entire order when you use discount code BENG20.
–Four Sigmatic: I’ve been using Four Sigmatic products for a while now and I’m impressed by the efficacies of their mushroom products. I use them. I like them. I support the mission! Receive 10% off your Four Sigmatic purchase when you use discount code BENGREENFIELD.
–Paleo Valley Beef Sticks: 100% grass-fed AND grass-finished. Keto friendly and higher levels of Omega 3 Fatty Acids. Receive a 15% discount off your order when you go to paleovalley.com/ben.