June 7, 2014

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/anti-aging-podcasts/nick-delgado-protocol/

[00:00] Introduction/About Dr. Nick Delgado

[03:09] The Telomere Measuring Test

[09:30] How Nick Had a Stroke at 22

[19:58] What Nick’s Meals Typically Look Like

[43:08] How Nick Uses CVAC and How it Helped Him Break World Records

[57:07] End of Podcast

Ben:  Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield and occasionally I run into people who kinda seem to be defying aging in terms of the way that their body looks and in terms of what they’re able to achieve as they get older and my podcast guest today is one of those people.  His name is Dr. Nick Delgado and when he was 53 years old, using the stuff that he’s gonna teach you today, he actually shattered the world endurance record for the most pounds lifted overhead in an hour and specifically, I believe he lifted over 53,000 lbs. over the course of an hour.  And of course now he’s on track to set a new world record for being the longest living man, hopefully, using the protocols that he’s developed.  He’s got a really good book, it’s called “Stay Young”, and I’ll put a link to that over on Amazon, so you can check that out, and that book in particular showcases what he calls his Delgado Protocol for Health.  And we’re gonna dig into some of his specific food and lifestyle and exercise techniques for anti-aging because Nick is considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on anti-aging.  So Nick, thanks so much for coming on the call, man.

Nick:  Hey, it’s great to be with you, Ben.

Ben:  I gotta start right here, I gotta jump right into this but I’m curious, when you’re talking about breaking the world record for aging, how old do you really think that we could live to? What are we talking here?

Nick:  Well, consider that Jeanne Calment reached 122 years of life with several months added to that, so nearly 123, and there was a gentleman out of Japan recently that made it up to 115.  Now what you have to understand is Jeanne Calment and this Japanese gentleman, they did not do anything to augment their hormones, neutraceuticals, power the mind.  They just came on this planet and lasted that long.

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Nick:  So Jeanne Calment actually died of dehydration in the care unit where they didn’t give her enough fluids and she just dried up.  And so you gotta figure that it may be somewhere above that, and if we take into account that the telomeres replicate and they basically shorten with each replication at the end of the chromosomes, so what we’re looking at now is how do we lengthen the telomeres.  We can actually measure them with a test that… we send the test kit up to Spain and there’s a National Institute of Health equivalent in Spain that measures the length of your telomeres.  So Ben, you might…

Ben:  Have you done that, have you had your telomeres measured?

Nick:  Absolutely, I did a baseline and I found out where I was before I started making all these changes.  And the soonest you can re-test, with this kind of an accurate test, is about three years although some people feel you can see some differences in one year based on augmenting and doing different lifestyle factors.  And what’s interesting is this test is tough to pass, I gotta tell you Ben, there were people who were aged 48 and they said “well you tested out at age 62.”  There were people that were in their 30s and tested literally in their 50s.  There were people, a few, in their late 60s, one gentleman age 68 and he tested age 48.  So really, chronological age is a myth.  It’s how you take care of yourself, what you eat, what you think, how well you sleep.  There’s certain things that we look at that we know will extend the length and potentially the quality of life.

Ben:  So what’s the name of that test?

Nick:  It’s done by AMTL Labs and people can just contact us, the specific test itself is a measure of telomeres.

Ben:  Okay.

Nick:  Some people call ‘em TE-LO-meres or TEA-LO-meres, they’re both right.  It depends if you’re out of Canada or U.K. or if you’re talking out of the U.S.  So these telomeres, what they look for is there’s a certain length, and some of them shrink to half the size or 1/3 the size, and also there’s something called telomere chaos, chromosome chaos.  And chromosome chaos, according to Dr. Peter Duesberg, one of the causes of potential cancer that is chromosomal replication and they don’t replicate the cell identical to what the prior cell was, and now you have a mutation.  So we’re really learning a lot about aging, we’re also learning a lot that actually cancer cells are immortal, meaning that these cancer stem cells when they develop and grow, they would outlive the length of the body of the host that they’re in.

Ben:  Now what about these drugs that are out there that are reported to shorten the rate at which telomeres would shorten, or somehow increase telomere length or prevent telomeres from degrading? Do you take or utilize any of those?

Nick:  Well when you say the drugs, I go as natural and as close to nature because I can’t remember a case where a so-called drug and I’ll define as something that’s maybe chemically different than what’s potentially in the body…

Ben:  The one that I’m talking about is called TA-65, I think.

Nick:  Oh okay, so that’s not really a drug, it’s an herb.  Just between you and I, basically they found astragalus out of Mongolia and they said “okay this particular herb, we’re basically saying this is the one that has the extract that we wanna use.”  But we have to understand the history of astragalus, in the countries where astragalus grows, the saying goes and this dates back nearly 2000 years, when you eat this herb you live longer.  So it’s interesting somehow by folklore, people eating this astragalus herb did actually live longer and yes, absolutely I use it, 200:1 extract in our product called Stay Young which I’m the first to use that concentration.

Ben:  So that’s what that stuff is, just astragalus or a mix of stuff with astragalus in it?

Nick:  They didn’t mix anything with it, what they did was they extracted.  They did an isolate so they removed some of what they hoped would be the actual active ingredients that caused this lengthening of the telomeres.  But who’s to say, I mean I’ve personally worked in Whole Food Nutrition for years, and keep in mind the history of vitamin A and beta-keratins.  When they isolated vitamin A and they gave people that as a supplement thinking it would have the full potential as an antioxidant and nutrient absorber of free radical damage, they were shocked to see the groups taking the vitamin A did far worse than the groups taking the whole beta-keratin.  And there’s several different carotenoids in carrots and green and yellow and different vegetables you see, so what I’m worried about is if you’re doing extracts, how do you know you got the full complement? I like to go with Whole Foods Nutrition and then concentrate it, really get a concentrate of that, and now I think you got something that could really work.

Ben:  Yeah, that’s interesting, I actually take astragalus every day.  I didn’t know that was the stuff that was in TA-65, that’s interesting.  So you’ve obviously got this Delgado protocol and we’ve just hinted a little bit here and there about it, and I wanna delve more into what your day of eating and living and what kind of exercise protocol you use actually looks like, but before we do that, how’d you get involved with this in the first place? How’d you start to delve into the realm of anti-aging and hormone optimization and what do you do now?

Nick:  Well I first got intrigued when I was wanting to play football in high school and gained weight like most of us athletes, right? And I remember the story of Nick Buoniconti, he played for Miami Dolphins, he was all of maybe 5’8” and 220 lbs., you know? So I was hoping that I could just add to my frame, I’m also 5’8” and I was weighing 160 in my freshman year in high school, and by my senior year I’d gotten up to 190.  And then in college, my freshman year I was up to about 210-220, but it was about that point just loading up on the “proteins”, which little did I realize at that time that high protein foods are also in some cases high in fat.  And so the complement of fat and protein and minimizing my “carbohydrates”, I thought that was the way to go, but I ended up gaining a lot of weight.  When you gain weight, Ben, it’s not always muscle weight.  You like to hope it is but the reality is I got up to over 25% body fat which was nowhere near what I’m at now which is under 7% body fat.  So I’ve gotta say that you gotta be careful when you’re talking about adding weight.  And a lot of the bodybuilders as you know when they add lean weight, it generally is lean body mass but they also understand a lot about hormones and it’s interaction of anabolics, right?

Ben:  Oh yeah.

Nick:  So what we’re looking at then is I reached a point in my life where I had a small stroke.  I had high blood pressure, I was on blood pressure medications…

Ben:  You had a stroke?

Nick:  Yeah, I gained too much weight and my blood pressure was high throughout my freshman year all the way for four years in high school and my freshman year in college.

Ben:  Holy cow.  How old were you when you had a stroke?

Nick:  I was 22 years old and it was a small stroke which they call a TIA, transient ischemic attack, but I gotta tell you Ben, I was terrified.  I was playing a football game on the Turkey Bowl against the Pasadena Police Officers and I was a middle linebacker and at halftime when I went to the sideline, my head felt weird and I fell to the ground.  I lost complete feeling on the whole right side of my body, I couldn’t even move.  I came out of it but that transient attack, here I was on blood pressure medications and I thought the doctors had me covered and protected, and I was doing what they told me to do, reduce stress, don’t use salt, avoid sugar.  I was doing all that but I didn’t realize the high protein-high fat foods were far more damaging and most likely the cause of high blood pressure.  But when I had that small stroke, it caused me to re-evaluate, so I went back to the university, I started training and educating because I was in physical therapy.  I was working with stroke victims, I was terrified, I thought “I better do something quick.”  And I read the book “Live Longer Now” by Nathan Pritikin, he had a whole section on high blood pressure and it answered all the things that the medical profession had never told me was going on.  And I followed what he taught and within 6 months I’d lost 50 lbs., gotten great shape and I met him in Pasadena speaking at a conference and he invited me to speak and work at the Pritikin Longevity Center which I became director of.

Ben:  Wow, so since that time, I would imagine that you developed basically a day-to-day protocol based off of all this research that you’ve done on how to live as long as possible?

Nick:  You know, every endocrinological convention I go to, every bioidentical hormone research that I review, stem cells, I’ve looked through herbs, nutriceuticals, various lifestyles around the world, about 5 years ago after I broke the world’s strength endurance record and lifted 50,564 lbs. in one hour.  And then in April 2011, people may not be aware of this, but Guinness doesn’t acknowledge a curled press so they sent me a letter that said “well we have a world record for curls.”  And I said “curls”, I said “what’s the weight?” And they sent me a letter, said it was 50 lbs. non-stop and I looked it up, Stu [0:12:14] ______ had done 550 curls in one hour with 50 lbs. from the U.K.  So I had been training my curl to press and I thought to myself, Ben, curl to press I do a lot of curls in my training.  So I followed the regulations that Guinness follows, I had a camera crew that videotaped me continuous, I had three judges and I went out to my favorite place to work out at inspiration point in Corona Del Mar near Newport Beach.

Ben:  Right.

Nick:  and I pulled up the weights and I ripped through, within 30 minutes I’d done 600 curls with 50 lbs. and by an hour 1038 curls which was a new world record.

Ben:  Wow, that’s amazing.

Nick:  And so having done that, I started thinking “why am I breaking strength endurance records? What’s the risk of injury, what could happen as I get older if I keep trying to break these world records?”

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Nick:  Especially since I’d competed in March of this year with 45 lbs. dumbbells in each hand and the competition couldn’t even come close to over 100 lifts that I did, and in the 35 lbs. category I did 285 lifts and no one could come close to it and I thought I’m so far ahead of even the world class athletes, even with 45 lb. dumbbells, the following week I did 340 continuous lifts non-stop.  And I don’t know if you’ve ever curled and pressed 45 lb. dumbbells but…

Ben:  [laughs] I’ve got a couple at my garage.

Nick:  Yeah, it’s a good lift, most strong guys after they get up to about 50 curl and presses they start to shake.  It’s heavy.  So I thought about it and then I thought what if I decided to break the world record for healthy aging? Coz I didn’t wanna end up 124 years old and break the record but be in a wheelchair and be incoherent, right? I thought why not add a caveat, I wanna be the healthiest oldest man in history.

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Nick:  So as I continued to study about these supercentenarians what shocked me, Dr. Leaf discovered when he went out to visit the supercentenarians in places like Hunza, Pakistan, the Villa Camas of Ecuador…

Ben:  Would these be what you would call the “blue zones?”

Nick:  They say that they get a lot of trace minerals off the mountains and they don’t know why but one thing they have in common, they eat a very unprocessed low-fat whole foods diet, right?

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Nick:  And they’re very active, but here’s the truth, none of them reached 120 and above.  What they did was they wanted to avoid getting inducted into the war so the fathers passed on their birth certificates to their son at age 60 so their son at birth was 60 years old and then you add their lifespan of 60-70, and they reached what looked to be 110/120/130 and they were not.

Ben:  Hmm, gotcha.

Nick:  So the reality is these people who were supposedly the longest lived people in the world only probably peak out at about 80-85.  And the longest lived people are in Okinawa but there’s one group that exceeded the Okinawans, and I wanna tell you about that.  Okinawa, the average lifespan is 91.5, but in a part of Massachusetts where the Koreans have migrated to where they have access to anti-aging doctors and bioidentical hormones, their average lifespan exceeds the Okinawans making them the longest lived people in the world, and they’re eating a traditional diet centered around vegetables and rice and sea-vegetables and they’re using natural bioidentical hormones.  They are breaking all the records and that’s what gives me confidence that knowing biochemistry and hormones, that along with the power of the mind and lifestyle and clearing my body of toxins, I have a 5-point plan that’s gonna get me to the world record of aging.

Ben:  Now when you say they’re using bioidentical hormones, how are those people doing that? Are they working with compounded hormone replacement therapists or pharmacists? What exactly are they doing?

Nick:  Precisely, they go to anti-aging doctor trained at the worldhealth.net and I lecture at these conferences at a regular basis but I can tell you that the doctors are trained to use hormones that are synthesized from wild yam extract.  They’re compounded to be identical to what is already in your body whether male hormones, female hormones, and we then are able to measure these people, find out their baseline, how deficient they are at age 60, 70 or 80.  And by the way Ben, I recommend people at age 20 or 25 to get their hormone levels checked because you wanna know about what was perfect for you at your optimum levels.

Ben:  Yeah, that’s a really good point.  I personally do blood testing about four times a year because of that, I wanna keep my finger on the pulse of this as well as some of the other stuff you’ve hinted at like full body inflammation and some of the things that diet could be causing depending on how your body is dealing with your specific diet.  So you said that you got five points in your protocol, and I’m curious if maybe you can kinda walk us through what a typical day looks like for you and how those five points are kinda flushing themselves out in the way that you’re living your life?

Nick:  Yeah, it’s interesting but I’m creating this massive chart and one of them is looking at diseases coz obviously if you die of a heart attack or stroke, the game’s over, you’re no longer part of the world record for aging, right? And then I analyzed various types of diets, Atkin’s, South Beach, paleo, vegetarian, vegan, American Heart Association, Cancer Society, Diabetic Association, I analyzed all these diets that come and go or the ones that have been established by well-known entities and agencies.  And then I look at nutriceuticals and the phytonutrients, so when I’m talking about dietary therapy and nutrition, I get into omegas, the complexity of proteins, the sugars, the nutrition and the biology of the body, what people tend to be allergic to like dairy whey, and then I look at calories, kwashiorkor, marasmus.

A lot of these calorie restriction programs, the animals weren’t very happy, they sit at the bottom of the cage coz they don’t have enough calories to even function or have sex, so I don’t wanna go on a calorie restriction diet coz that doesn’t make sense but you want a nutrient-rich dense program.  I look at them and to answer your question, I put together quality of life, spirituality, how do you function sexually which is a big part of quality of life particularly for men of course, and when a woman’s with a man that knows what he’s doing then the women love it as well.  But most women are disappointed with the sex play with men as we know it.  So I look at these things Ben and what I’ve done is then I look at the quality of sleep and I look at the power of the mind, so I looked at the five points and I put this whole thing together that I personally follow and do a journal.  I think a lot of the top athletes know to do this but you journal what you’re doing.  What does your lab work look like, what’s your body weight, what’s your body fat level, what’s your hormone levels, what’s your state of mind, what’s your relationship status, how're you feeling about your job and your career.  These are the things that I looked at in my own lifestyle and what I teach my clients to do as well.

Ben:  Got it, interesting.  So what’s a typical breakfast, lunch, dinner look like for you?

Nick:  If there were such a thing as typical for me, breakfast is an amazing meal because I routinely will take, like this morning I have a massive salad.  When I say massive, it’s bigger than the serving bowl that’s in front of the whole family, and it’s got all the way from artichoke hearts that are not packed in oil but packed in water, it’s got jicama, it’s got almost every kind of green imaginable, kale, Swiss chard, arugula, it’s got little peppercorns and chilis because you get a lot of vitamin A and C from the chilis.  It’s got tomatoes, a little avocado, it’s just this amazing salad with a fat-free dressing.  I either use a version that we recommend, Worden’s Farm or Galileo’s.  I look for things with less than 3 grams of fat per serving, 0, 1, 2 or 3.

Ben:  I gotta ask you this coz I know folks are gonna comment on this, are you concerned at all about lack of hormone precursors, steroid precursors, cell membrane integrity, stuff like that when it comes to cutting too much fat out of the diet or going too low fat when it comes to healthy fats?

Nick:  I’m glad you bring it up because I studied omega-3, 6, and 9, and what people will tell you is you get your DHA, you get your certain essential fatty acids from fish oil, right? Everyone wants to point to fish oil, but I have a question for you, Ben.  Where do you think the omegas come in the fish because fish do not naturally have omega-3, 6, and 9, where do you think fish gets it’s fish oil derivative to create the optimum 3, 6, 9?  Do you have any idea?

Ben:  Is it from algal sources?

Nick:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Yeah.

Nick:  So I recommend that people get their algal sources whether it be chlorella, spirulina, and I even use a supplement and about the most I allow is a little teaspoon that my 5 year old uses on up to my 35 year old.  As you know I have 5 children if I didn’t mention that earlier, 4 boys and a girl, and for myself and my kids at various stages especially for the 5 year old with brain development, I make sure he gets that little bit of a teaspoon.  You see everyone goes and uses olive oil and coconut oil and they cook it.  The crazy thing is you’re cooking the essential fatty acids and altering its chemical composition.  Some people say cooking it liberates certain nutrients that you need, that’s a bunch of wash.  Oils, when they’re cooked, they’re destroyed.  The moment they’re taken out of olives, the moment the oil’s taken out of coconut, the moment it’s take out of any nut or seed, you’ve destroyed the composition of the oil.  Now there are some cold pressed processing, there are some finesse ways to get it out of the algae, and so that’s why I do use that one.  And you’ve heard of Udo’s oil, he talks about flaxseed and borage and 3, 6, 9 omegas, and I’m very sensible.  What people don’t realize is a high fat diet can cause a fat deficiency.

Ben:  How do you mean?

Nick:  Because they’re taking the wrong compositions of 6 or 9 and they’re not getting enough of the 3s, and omega 3s are hard to get as a vegetarian or even as an animal eater.

Ben:  Yeah.

Nick:  You have to know what you’re doing and that’s where the algaes come in and then the right mix of oil composition.  And the best way to absorb oil believe it or not, Dr. Press proved this, he put people on a nutritional IV that only had glucose and in 30 days, every one of the persons started developing central fatty acid deficiencies.  Their skin got dry, they developed eczemas and signs of fatty acid deficiency, right? So guess how he replaced their fat.  He didn’t give them by mouth, he didn’t infuse it, he didn’t give it by supplement, he rubbed the oil on their skin.

Ben:  Yes.

Nick:  And Dr. Press proved that a 0.01% was enough to completely relieve an essential fatty acid deficiency.  Now I’m not about just relieving deficiency, so in our diet when you select whole natural foods, we don’t discourage the use of avocados, olives, coconuts, soapnuts and seeds, those are whole super fats.  They have the fiber present, so as you consume this food, it makes logical sense your body can absorb the essential fatty acids at the right rate.  The confusion is people say “oh but wait a minute, I extra light virgin olive oil.”  Number 1, extra light is referring to the color of the oil.  If you read the spelling they’re fraudulently making you think its light in calories.  It’s the highest source of calories on the planet, if you use a quarter cup of olive oil as some of these people do in their recipes, you’re setting yourself up for freaking disaster.

Ben:  Hmm.

Nick:  I mean that oil is so concentrated, it’s not that it’s a monosaturated, polysaturated or any type of composition chemically, it’s that it’s mechanically sticky.  When oils are separated out of its natural fiber base of nuts, seeds, avocado, olives, that oil rolls right into the bloodstream undigested, it coats the blood cells, suppresses oxygen to the capillary beds, the leading cause of high blood pressure, one of the leading causes of breast cancer, one of the highest known causes of several different diseases.  And this has been well documented, so Ben I’m sensible, I want about 15-45 grams of dietary fat a day from whole natural superfoods and then I’ll chase it with a little algae oil and so I’m getting far more essential fatty acids than almost 90% of people.

Ben:  Yeah, it’s so interesting.  You’re speaking my language, we actually when our kids were little, we’d break open fish oil capsules that my wife and I take and actually rub ‘em into their feet.  And now what I do, I use some marine phytoplankton and chlorella and then I have olive oil but it’s this olive oil from Europe that’s extremely cloudy and dense, and it has all of these active components in it, it’s all cold processed, the really high quality olive oil.  And then a lot of the healthy vegetable-based fats that you talk about but never heated, never oxidized, so it’s something that I think a lot of people make the mistake of doing is they might hear that fats are necessary for steroids and hormones and stuff like that and then they go out and screw themselves by using all the wrong sources.

Nick:  Yeah, you’re right on.  I would just add a caveat.

Ben:  Yeah.

Nick:  One of the oldest men on the planet right now in Arizona is 111 years old, and this gentleman rubs olive oil on his skin.

Ben:  [laughs]

Nick:  He doesn’t consume the oil, he knows that…

Ben:  That’s so funny, that’s what I do.  I have a bottle of olive oil in my bathroom and use it on my skin.  But he doesn’t consume it at all, huh?

Nick:  Rarely, I mean if he does its very small amounts and unprocessed, unheated, the whole thing.  So I rub olive oil, it’s kinda strange either olive oil or I use various exotic oils on my feet, because your feet, they get a little dry and cracked and you’re running and all these different things and I wear barefoot shoes.  Not just Vibram, I use BodyGlide which gets me lower to the ground and my feet can grip the ground.  So my feet are going and doing a lot of work, they’re not just static and inside a shoe and walked in…

Ben:  Are they called BodyGlide?

Nick:  BodyGlide, yeah.  The same ones you can go skin diving with or go out on the rocks on the ocean.

Ben:  Okay.

Nick:  The divers use them, and they’re a little hard to find but they’re only about $20 whereas Vibram’s about $74 so they’re incredible.  I love the shoes, very comfortable.

Ben:  Nice.

Nick:  So your feet is a good absorption for oils.

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Nick:  If you rub in a little garlic oil in there, you’re gonna taste garlic in the tip of your tongue.  These oils absorb and they go into the deep tissues which is where it’s needed.  And you can just rub it on your face, different areas where you’re getting little wrinkles maybe showing up, even rub a little melatonin cream into the skin and it’s the most powerful antioxidant for wrinkles.  It’s been shown to actually reverse wrinkles in many cases using melatonin cream, believe it or not.

Ben:  Melatonin cream, that’s fascinating.  Wow.

Nick:  Yeah.

Ben:  So many segues and all we did was start to talk about your breakfast.

Nick:  [laughs]

Ben:  Let’s throw one more in there before we talk about your exercise protocol, what’s like a typical dinner look like for you?

Nick:  Dinner is usually an Asian type.  I think Asian diet’s far superior to the Mediterranean diet, I know there’s a lot of talk about olive oil and longevity, but the Italians are 6^th in the world in longevity.  The Chinese, certain parts of China and Okinawa, as I mentioned Japan and Japan are number 1, 2, and 3 besides the new Korean group out in Maryland, in Boston area.  So what I’m saying is you really gotta look at who is truly, by peer review journals, living longer not just the super fake centenarians that don’t live as long as we were led to believe.  And so when you study true longevity, look at the Okinawans.  They eat basically sea vegetables, oranges and a lot of purple sweet potatoes and they eat fish not twice a week, twice a month.  So they hardly consume any animal product whatsoever.

Ben:  That’s so interesting, you hear that fish is a daily staple in an Okinawan diet but that’s not the case?

Nick:  Not the case, the peer review journals and this has been substantiated.  I had a blogger question me on it and did a lot of research to see if I was right, and pulled up the Japanese peer review that were translated, and he said “you’re absolutely right, they only consume fish about twice a month.”  And I don’t know if that’s because their culture just has in inward sense that you shouldn’t really eat that much fish or is part of their cultural habits or it’s just difficult to go sea fishing out in the ocean there.  I’m not sure the reason for that, I’ve been to Japan which is the second longest lived culture in the world in 2006 when I spoke at an anti-aging conference and I taught about sexuality which was… the room was packed by the way and half the women in the room I thought were gonna stay and you can tell the men asked them to leave and the women had to leave.

Ben:  Wow.

Nick:  But it was interesting, what an amazing culture, Japanese and they are so, so ahead of us in technology and in health and nutrition.  They eat a lot of sea vegetables, they eat more rice than the Okinawans, so I’m not a big fan of rice.  I think brown rice is okay but I’m a bigger fan of the tubers.  The sweet potatoes eaten by the New Guinea natives, they’re all sort of free of diabetes, they have a long life except for they have issues of famine when certain times the crops don’t grow and that can kill a 90 or 100 year old and unfortunately that’s the reality of their culture.  My dinner is a lot of times Asian vegetables that are lightly, if at all cooked.  I use oil-free preparation methods, I go to a lot of Asian pho restaurants, Vietnamese.

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Nick:  They have a really low rate of breast cancer.  By the way the Vietnamese have a dramatically lower rate of breast cancer than the Italians.  The Italians, coz they use olive oil, have a very high rate of breast cancer, not as high as we do in the U.S. coz we eat all kinds of fats and meats and everything.  But the Italians are definitely at far greater risk than the Vietnamese and the Thai people.  So Thailand, they eat a very tasty diet.  I love Thai food, I eat out and eat Thai food a lot, or at home I just prepare multiple whole food dishes.  Some split peas cooked in my crock pot with multiple vegetables and a big, big salad, Swiss chard.  I have fruit for dessert so it’s all whole food.

Ben:  Hmm, that sounds fantastic.  Now I’m curious, and I don’t mean to put you on the spot but I’m curious if you’ve ever looked into what Weston Price has studied in terms of some of the longest living populations on the planet as far as their consumption of things like pork fat and organ meats and some of these things that seem to contrast some of the things that you’re talking about as far as fat is concerned.  Have you looked into that at all or do you have an opinion on Dr. Weston Price and some of the stuff that he’s done?

Nick:  Yeah, when I was doing my PhD thesis and research, I was doing a study on 693 people at Tony Robbins’ event and rechecking them in 6 month intervals which I did the most massive human study ever done with microscopy and lipids and follow up.  There’s been studies where they’ve done more lipid studies but we did more where we visualized, helped the patients to see under the microscope what their blood looked like when it was all clumped, filled with fat from raw food like Weston Price recommends, eating raw meat.  Raw meat can be high in fat and I saw recently an all raw food, as in they were following Weston Price, raw meat, raw eggs, the whole thing.  And when I looked at their blood they had so many microbes and bacteria and fat in their blood and the guy felt awful.  I say here’s why, look at your blood, it’s awful.  And blood doesn’t lie, I gotta tell you Ben, that’s my separator of the truth from the lie, and I’ve been fortunate for 36 years to look to tens of thousands of people’s blood based on how they exercise, how they eat, what hormones they take, what lifestyle they follow.  And I’m just telling you, I get one in a thousand people where I just bow down to them and I say wow, you’re doing it all right.  You’re exercising intensely, you breathe heavily continuous during your exercise for at least an hour, you’re eating all whole raw foods, you’re not adding oils, you’re not eating meats, you’re in the positive state of mind.  Just amazing stuff and their blood looks immaculate, it just looks beautiful.  No free radical damage, no signs of cancer, no inflammation.  I mean they just look perfect, and their body looks perfect.  These people are on the planet and I have the proof that that’s the model we all need to follow.

Bob Delmonteque was one of my mentors, 84 and I became his coach, but unfortunately he was a throwback from the meat-eating people and they try to eat processed, you know, raw food and stuff but meat is meat and it’s got its toxins and it’s got high fat content.  And even protein, if you read the China study, T. Colin Campbell, he talks about high protein itself is a risk for cancer, particularly liver cancer.  Jack Lane was a great… he nearly reached 97, I have a date back at my home office so I don’t have that date in front of me, but Jack took 85 supplements, one for every year he was when I videotaped and met him when he was 85.  And when he reached his 90s, he just continued to use whole supplements and exercise and the power of the mind.  He never ate food out of a container, never out of a can.

Ben:  Yeah.

Nick:  And in fact, Jack, he’s a good model but Jack he has some adrenal weaknesses and he ended up having pneumonia, that’s what he died from coz no one taught him about adrenal function and how to support the adrenals.  I use Adrenal DMG which is an amazing product, rich in adrenal cortex, dimethylglycines, so I’ll deviate from a vegan diet because I know some things you gotta get glandulars and you’ve got to get those micronutrients for thyroid, T3/T4, you’ve gotta take certain herbs and supplements and combinations that augment and wherever I can, I go completely plant-based but because it’s not an ethical vegetarian, I’m following a program for breaking the world record of aging, then when you read [0:36:14] ______ and these guys at Google talking about some of these amazing nutrients but it really gets down to I’ll measure my telomeres against theirs in 10 years and we’ll see who’s really right.  The story’s gonna come out when I reach and break the world record for aging, hopefully you’re around to see me do it.

Ben:  Yeah, I gotta get on this telomere testing bandwagon as well.  My whole take on the meat and the fat thing is I choose all whole, pure, unprocessed oils, I choose only organic meats, I choose protein specifically that are rich in glycine as well as methionine.  So most of my proteins are coming from organ meats and things of that nature rather than just the nasty red meat that our ancestors would’ve traditionally fed to the dogs, and that’s the way that I roll.  And it sounds like what I’m doing is a little bit different than what you’re doing and so I’m gonna have to do some of this telomere testing myself coz I’m happy with my blood panel but it sounds like I need to do the telomeres as well.

I’m curious about your exercise protocol.  You obviously have a huge amount of strength endurance and you’ve kinda hinted here a second ago about how the type of exercise protocol you’re seeing folks do that you really respect.  What do you think is kinda the best type of protocol in terms of anti-aging for exercise as far as the research that you’ve done?

Nick:  I’ve studied interval training, I’ve studied ultramarathons, I’ve looked at just almost every imaginable type of exercises, and of course I think most of us into fitness realize that we do need to do a variety of types of training but I isolated down in a different way when I talk about fitness and training.  I look at it from this standpoint: does the exercise stimulate your lymphatics?

Ben:  Hmm.

Nick:  And that’s a big question because I incorporate a lot of trampoline work while I’m lifting weights.

Ben:  [laughs] That’s so funny, that was the first thing I thought of when you said lymphatics coz my dad does that.  He’s got a mini trampoline and I ask him why he uses it, and that was the first thing that he talked about was lymph flow.

Nick:  The lymph is probably the most amazing, I mean beyond the bloodstream, it accounts for 36% of the entire fluid volume so it far exceeds anything that we can imagine with the bloodstream circulatory system.  So you always see these images and they’re showing someone’s skeleton and we see the bones and then you see the heart and the blood vessels coming off, subclavian vein, the blood vessels going to the brain, but they never show the lymphatics.  The lymphatics are far more extensive, far more important, and remember for every toxin that the body liberates during metabolism every time you take a breath, your lymphatics have to work overtime to clear out all these toxins and chemicals.  And so that’s why I’ve looked under a microscope, I’ve looked at and understand the white blood cells, the immune system, how these nutrients function, and I’ve discovered that by wind sprints, Ben, running fast, running hard…

Ben:  Yeah.

Nick:  You increase your efficiency, your lymphatic system tenfold, ten times more efficient in clearing toxins and chemicals.  Have you ever noticed when you’re exercising consistently, I mean hard and consistent, how easy it is for the bowels to function, more efficient urinary tract extraction, your body, your bowel habits increase dramatically because you’re getting rid of more toxins when you exercise intensely.

Ben:  Yeah, I especially like the concept of this type of lymph activation in the morning.  So I don’t have a mini trampoline but what I do in the morning is I do about 200 jumping jacks just to bounce up and down for a while and then I actually have an inversion table.  And I go out to my garage and I hang from this inversion table and I do all of that before I go in and kinda do my morning thing in the bathroom, and it helps tremendously as far as just cleaning you out almost right away.  It’s pretty amazing.

Nick:  It’s amazing.  Hey I’ll add to that, lemme give you an exercise that I created, I don’t know anyone that does this.  I do 300-500 jump pull-ups in the morning, and what I do is I reach up to a high bar and I vary my grip on the pull-ups to do chin-ups where I’m doing like a curl reverse grip so that I’m training the biceps but then I’ll do a little bit of a wider grip at time, but at the bottom of my pull-up, I have a trampoline which is a jump-mate and basically these bungees cords, so when I touch the bottom I get a little kick.  And so instead of doing 30 or 40 pull-ups, I’m doing 300-500 pull-ups, and every time I hit that trampoline, 0-3G force, I’m stimulating my lymphatics.

Ben:  Nice.

Nick:  And I can rip off 300-500 pull-ups in less than 15 minutes, and I’m telling you it’s a cardio workout, it’s a lymphatic system training, and it stretches out my spine like you mentioned an inversion table, it stretches out my entire body and I just feel wonderful because I mix it in with a lot of hammer curl presses on the trampoline, so I’m either lifting or I’m pulling, right?

Ben:  Yep.

Nick:  That’s all exercises are, they’re either squats, lifting, pulling, eccentric, concentric contractions.  And so you’re either doing a lengthening movement, eccentric, or concentric, shortening contractions.  Everything is all based on that basic primary movement, and then how intense you do it, I do a series of pyramiding.  I start heavy coz you’re fresh, you’re strong.  I don’t worry about warmups because I do really good form and I move the weights slowly to do the motion, I start heavy and then pyramid down as I get tired.  And then when I get to the bottom of my pyramid where I’m doing maybe 100-200 lifts, I pyramid back up so I have mental toughness and I end with the highest weight because you have muscle memory and you’ll remember the last weight you moved.

Ben:  Yeah, and you’re also when you’re using different repetitions and weights like that, you’re activating a good combination of fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers, so you’re getting a good spectrum, right?

Nick:  Right, because if I’m going heavy, I’m moving the weights slower by its very nature just to be careful of my anatomy and my structure to not cause an injury.  You have to move the weights slowly, but that exerts a whole different set of muscle fibers, but then when I drop to the bottom of my pyramid and I’m using lighter weights, I’m moving it very rapidly, very fast through its motion, so now I’m engaging the fast twitch muscle fibers.

Ben:  Nice, I like it.  And do you do anything in terms of recovery? Do you do cryotherapy or electro-stim or soft tissue work or anything like that as kind of a staple in your protocol?

Nick:  My favorite is cyclic variations and adaptive conditioning.  So four days a week, a minimum of three, I go to an altitude conditioner and I sit in the tank, I hook up my Tesla device, my neuromuscular stimulator device, and I crank it up to 300-400 volts of energy and I contract my muscle groups while I’m doing three 20 minute sessions and going from 10,000-20,000 feet altitude and dropping it 1,000 feet per second.  There’s only a handful of tanks around the country and I was one of the first pioneers to experiment and use it, and I believe that’s one of the reasons why I broke my first world record past the age of 50, and at nearly age 60 I still out-trained guys half my age.

Ben:  Okay, so we have a bunch of biohackers who listen in and I know that many of them will actually go get this thing, so what’s this thing called?

Nick:  [laughs] Well your deposit is 75 grand and…

Ben:  Oh trust me, I’ve talked to some of our listeners.  They will go out and get this thing, what’s it called.

Nick:  Yeah, well they can contact my office and I can get an actual unit.  There’s an attach fee so that’s the deposit for 5 years and they have a lease with it in and stuff.

Ben:  Oh.

Nick:  It’s phenomenal, I gotta tell you Ben if I were to say “hey, tell me one single thing that’s bounced me into the super fit, into the future of health and fitness”,  the guy that won the U.S. Open last year, Djokovic, I’m not sure how you pronounce his name.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.

Nick:  But he said the CVAC, the cyclic variations and adaptive conditioning, and I’m gonna post on my website all about how I use it because I use it far different than everyone else using it.  They just sit in the tank static, can you imagine that? What a crazy waste of time.  I hook up my electrodes and I’m cranking through my muscle groups full-on hard muscular contractions of my back, my hamstrings, my buttocks, my deltoids, and particularly my traps.  So now my traps are coming up really strong and hard and I’ve got one of these hard Brazilian butt even though I’m a white guy.

Ben:  [laughs]

Nick:  I’ve got a little Latin in me but the girls would be impressed, I’m building that butt.

Ben:  Yeah, I’ve actually talked about it on a podcast before.  There’s actually a pretty recent study down on DHEA activation and hypoxia, hypoxic exposure specifically in swimmers but I do hypoxia several times a week, especially on my off days I’ll go and just hop in the river and do underwater swimming or hop in the pool and do underwater swimming as long as possible for multiple reps.  And then what I have out in my garage is a Hypoxico which is an air generator that will reduce the partial pressure of oxygen in the air, shove you up around 15,000-20,000 feet and you put it on your face while you’re riding a bike or doing push-ups or running on a treadmill or whatever and that’s basically a unit with a hepafilter and an oxygen generator that you just keep in the garage or whatever.  I’m right on board with you as far as the hypoxic stuff goes.  It’s very cool.

Nick:  This is a little different coz its’s controlled by a computer so you’re only exposed to intermediate, brief, short, less than a few nanoseconds of low oxygen and then you drop 1,000 feet per second so what’s happening is your mitochondria and your respiration and your whole body is going through this massive contraction and change rapidly so it’s really taking it several fold above hypoxia because I agree hypoxia can work, but the old saying is live high/train low.

Ben:  Yeah.

Nick:  So the bicyclers would stay at the top of the mountain but they were trained at the base of the mountain, so you don’t usually expose yourself to hypoxia while you’re training.  What you do is you expose it in intermediate intervals and that’s why the 20-minute program I go up to level 4 and 5, and it’s so freakin’ intense that you’ve gotta know how to clear your ears as the tank is dropping at 1,000 feet per second because it’s amazing.

Ben:  Yeah, I found the website for this thing, I’m looking at it right now the CVAC Pods.  It’s crazy, the only way to do that type of intermittent, hypoxia with that unit I was talking about, and I’ve tried this before, just put the mask on then you rip it off your face then you put it back on then you take it off and it’s a little bit less convenient than this thing.

Nick:  Yeah.

Ben:  So obviously we could talk forever about this stuff, but really quickly to kinda finish up just to give people a little bit of a flavor, what exactly are the five protocols, the five parts of the Delgado protocol, kinda like the 30-second elevator pitch so to speak as far as what each of the five actually are.  Coz I don’t think we actually got ‘em.

Nick:  You know, and by the way let me build in the one that I didn’t really address.  So if we say, starting with whole food nutrition, the foods, the super nutrition, I’ll just call it super nutrition, right?

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Nick:  And then you’re looking at your fitness level and I call it rapid fitness because you wanna train hard and fast.  You don’t wanna drag it out throughout the day and hang out at the gym for hours, you really wanna get it in hard and fast.  Somewhere over 45 minutes to an hour your testosterone levels starts to drop and you don’t want that issue.  Also, preservation of wealth because a lot of people need security and to feel that base of security so when they go to work they’re not working just for a dollar, they already know they’re secure.  They have asset protection, they have corporations, they’ve got attorneys they consulted with but they’re really, by our definition, when I say wealthy I mean it’s so secure that it’ll go 2/3/4 generations past that individual.

Ben:  So you mean like thinking about establishing a trust or something like that.

Nick:  Yes, a trust but a trust is protected, but then there has to be entities and certain things can be pierced and I guess, my brother’s an attorney so it gets a little complex but I spent a good amount of time just because we’re in such a litigious society, you really know how to protect your wealth and there actually are long term insurance programs where they’ll pan out to 120 years of age and I’m working with Marc Victor Hansen and he set me up with something amazing for my kids and myself, and I’m telling you I think it’s better than a trust in some ways but it functions differently.

Ben:  I trust you.

Nick:  So it’s definitely worth getting in touch with him.  I’ll let you talk to Marc Victor and he’s my buddy on this.  I’m his coach, you know who Marc Victor Hansen.

Ben:  Oh yeah.

Nick:  Chicken Soup for the Soul probably sold more books than anyone in history besides the Bible and maybe some of the romance novels.

Ben:  Amazing guy, yeah.

Nick:  Yeah, so then hormone balance, back to our number 4 is hormone balance, right?  You gotta have the right hormone balance and the biochemistry and the telomeres and the nitric oxide.  So we go through a whole series of tests in the Delgado anti-aging makeover program and in that program, people find out exactly their biological age, what their goals are, how to do it, and I hold a workshop now.  We’re planning to do it about once a month, the next one coming up June 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th and then in July we’re doing July 11^th and 12^th.  So we’ve got some pretty exciting full day workshops planned in Costa Mesa, and we’re gonna put ‘em on our webinar and on a podcast and stream them, so I’m just hoping a lot of people get word about this incredible transformation weekend because in the transformation weekend, the fifth thing we do, Ben, is transform the mind.  And I gotta tell you, of all things if I were to say choose one out of the five, right?

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Nick:  I’d say the power of the mind because through the power of the mind you can accomplish any of the others.

Ben:  Yeah.

Nick:  And most people are weak when it comes to conditioning.  Athletes tend to have a little bit more discipline, former military guys they have discipline, but that’s not what it’s about.  It’s not about discipline, it’s not about willpower.  It’s about being able to use what I call “laser focus concentration.”  And in laser focus concentration, I have created with the former VP of Motorola, what he did was he created a technology for me where starting this week, in time for our big event, March 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th, you wear these glasses and you close your eyes in the morning for 12 minutes, and the glasses have a blinking light technology.

Ben:  Yeah.

Nick:  And in our website, next week you’ll be able to see this demonstrated…

Ben:  Is that like the DAVID Mind Alive device?

Nick:  DAVID, I think he’s got something where he wears it on his head and it’s a biofeedback device.

Ben:  Yeah.

Nick:  Yeah, I’m not familiar exactly with what he’s got but I can tell you that this is a tonality.  The sound that comes through gets you into a deep theta state, you transform from alpha to theta and theta is a great learning state.  And in this learning state, I recorded my best programs on sleep, people get one to two hours more of quality sleep using these glasses.  I recorded my best information on fitness and in a 12-18 minute program on diet and food choices and restaurant selection, and my concepts about wealth and security and success.  And so you listen to these glasses and you plug them in and you incorporate in seven sessions within seven days, you’ll have mastered one subject and you go on to the next category.  And by the end of a month, you’ll be completely transformed, absolutely because I use NLP, time line therapy, deep transphenomena hypnosis, and it just ties the brain to absolutely guarantee success where most people make a New Year’s resolution, 3-5% follow through on the resolution.  Stay in shape, eat better, exercise, accumulate wealth, do better in their relationship.

Ben:  Right.

Nick:  In our program, it’s the reverse.  95% are successful, 5% the only reason is they didn’t put the darn glasses on every morning and every night before bed.

Ben:  Wow, yeah I’ve messed around with that Mind Alive light/sound device before.  This sounds kinda like that on steroids for anti-aging.

Nick:  It is, it’s so awesome and I just started some core people that we just got a bunch of devices in and we’re trying to order.  So many people are placing orders having heard me talk about it, and it’s only $450 for the device, and it comes with all the educational programs that I’m telling you about that will ingrain in your mind exactly the right conditioning.  And then I got 60 more audio scripts that are gonna be followed, uploaded to the glasses this year for all the anti-aging makeover coaching clients, so we’re really excited about it as part of the makeover program, they get the glasses.  But you can purchase them separate but a lot of people want that private ongoing training with me and my staff for a year which is what we’re excited about.

Ben:  Yeah, nice.  Well I’ve taken so many freaking notes while we’re talking. [laughs]

Nick:  [laughs]

Ben:  So for folks who are listening in, maybe you’re out on a run or a bike ride or at the gym or something like that while you’re listening in, have no fear.  I wrote all this stuff down so you can go over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/delgado, and I’ll have the show notes and the links and then information on Nick’s books, his protocol, all that stuff as well as everything that we talked about from melatonin cream to phytoplankton to the CVAC Pod, everything.  So check that out over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/delgado, and if you have questions or comments or feedback, leave them in the comments section over there and I’ll try and hunt down some answers for you.  So Nick, wow man, first of all I wish you the best of luck in breaking the world record for living as long as possible, because it sounds like you’re on the right track to getting there.

Nick:  With quality and on my 120^th birthday I’ll be having sex with an exotic… would be beyond belief.

Both:  [laugh]

Nick:  I hope my woman lasts as long but I can’t guarantee that. [laughs]

Ben:  [laughs] That’s awesome.  And also thank you so much for your time and for coming on and generously sharing all this stuff with our listeners.

Nick:  You gotta have a sense of humor and that’s one of the keys to longevity, right Ben, and it’s been really a lot of fun with you Ben.  And you really put in those thought provoking questions.  Most people don’t have the depth and the training and the background to even come close to knowing the things I’m doing to break the world record not just for aging but for quality aging.  I wanna be in such super shape they’re looking at me like “this man is 132 years old and he looks like he’s 32, what’s up?”  That’s what I want, Ben, don’t you?

Ben:  Yeah, it’s inspirational.  I’m actually gonna head out to my garage and do a bunch of curl presses after we hang up so…

Both:  [laugh]

Nick:  On the trampoline, do them while you’re on the trampoline.  You improve your core, your strength and your balance at the same time.

Ben:  That’s right, and finish up with the inversion table.  Well folks, thanks for listening in, this is Ben Greenfield and Nick Delgado with the Delgado protocol, check everything out at bengreenfieldfitness.com/delgado.  Thanks for listening in.

 

 

My podcast guest in this episode suffered a stroke when he was 22 years old.

That’s him above, in the blue shirt, at age 23 – at 25% body fat and over 210 pounds.

That’s also him, 6 months later, still at age 23, after he dropped 55 pounds of fat and weighed in at 160 pounds.

And finally that’s also him now, at age 60 in January 2014, after adding muscle from his 20’s to weigh in at 184 pounds.

So how did this all happen?

His stroke actually set him down a path that would change his life forever. Within 5 months, he had dropped those 55 pounds, lowered his blood pressure from 200/90 to 110/70, and began developing the anti-aging system and five age defying techniques that we talk about in today’s podcast.

At age 53, using his own techniques from his anti-aging protocol, he has now shattered the world endurance record for most pounds lifted overhead in an hour (53,640 pounds). And now he plans to break the record for aging.

His name is Nick Delgado, and in this amazing audio episode, we delve into hormones, hypoxia, nutrient density, fats and oils, trampolining, telomere testing, and much much more.

Resources from this episode:

–The Delgado Protocol

-Nick’s book How To Stay Young

–CVAC Pod and the Hypoxic air generator Ben and Nick discuss

–The MindAlive light/sound device to achieve brain theta waves

–Telomere Length Testing

–TA-65 extract for telomeres

–Astragalus herb in TianChi that Ben uses

–Marine Phytoplankton for essential fatty acids

–Melatonin Cream for wrinkles

–The olive oil that Ben smears on his face every day

–The Weston A. Price / Okinawa study that Ben mentions

–Mini trampoline for lymph flow

-Finally, if you want The Purigenex Intensive Collagen System that JJ talks about in the podcast, it has only been sold to plastic surgeons, doctors and medspas for the past 5 years. But this transdermal collagen mask and serum is being made available exclusively to Ben Greenfield Fitness Subscribers for $300 below the doctor price with FREE overnight shipping! Check it out here. You can also get the Age Reversal Serum she talks about here.