April 14, 2018
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/own-the-day-own-your-life-interview-with-aubrey-marcus/
[00:00] Introduction/Fisher Wallace/GetKion/Organifi
[11:00] Aubrey’s Coconut Yogurt from Erewhon
[14:00] The Recipe Aubrey Uses for the Special Electrolyte-Infused Water
[18:35] Why Aubrey Swims in Cold Water in the Morning
[23:15] The Lamaze Breathing Method
[30:00] Cryotherapy Chambers and Vagus Nerve Activation
[37:54] Thrive Market
[42:05] Aubrey’s Three Step Routine to Make the Most Out of Travelling or Commuting
[52:40] Aubrey Recommends Tobacco and Nicotine
[58:15] On the Use of Mapacho and Rapé
[1:07:22] How Chopsticks Theoretically Satiates Appetite
[1:12:35] The Toxicity of Sex
[1:17:10] How to Mitigate Damage from Drinking and General Hedonism
[1:26:11] End of Podcast
Ben: Hey, hey, hey! What’s up, it’s Ben Greenfield. I had a chance to sit down with my buddy Aubrey Marcus on today’s show. Aubrey just finished a book and it’s really good, and we talk about it. And you’re gonna enjoy this, I know he’s been on a lot of podcasts recently but we talk about things he hasn’t talked about on those other shows so you’ll find this interesting. Aubrey’s a cool guy, but before we talk to Aubrey, I need to tell you about something called a Fisher Wallace Stimulator. That’s how I pronounce stimulator, stimula-TOHR. It’s a medical device, a very powerful medical device that’s used to treat depression and anxiety and insomnia. And I started using one of these to decrease my cortisol levels and to allow myself to nap in the middle of a busy day. This thing stimulates your brain to produce serotonin when you use it for about 20 minutes. People use it once or twice a day, they’ll use it as an alternative to things like antidepressant medication or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or any of these nasty chemicals that folks will use for depression or insomnia or anything else that would involve anxiety or nervousness or lack of the ability to sleep. It works for all this stuff, it is approved by the FDA, meaning the FDA regulates a lot of these devices and it’s one of the ones that they’ve cleared. It’s got a 30-day refund policy, thousands of doctors have recommended it over the past 10 years. Like I mentioned, I own one, I use one, it’s called a Fisher Wallace stimulator. You get $150 off it and you can try it for 30 days, no questions asked. You just try it, fisherwallace.com/ben.
This podcast, like every single freaking episode of the show, is also brought to you by Kion. I dunno if you’ve been over there and tried the anti-aging skin serum, also something I use everyday. I spent about two years researching some of the best organic oils on the face of the planet that can do things like reduce wrinkles, get rid of scars, and maintain this youthful glow that I’m so famous for now. And I use it, it’s hypoallergenic, it’s got aloe vera, jojoba, amla, triphala, lavender, wild oregano oil which is actually really interesting, has this cool glowing effect on your skin, palmarosa, turmeric. Yes it has turmeric in it for your skin, it protects your skin cells from damage, whether you have a sunburn, whether you wanna get rid of a wrinkle, whether you want a youthful glow on your appearance. This stuff works for everything, it’s called the Kion Skin Serum. You can get this along with everything else that comes out of my crazy mind over at getkion.com. You can also get 10% off this stuff when you go over there, getkion.com.
And finally, speaking of turmeric, this podcast is brought to you by Organifi. They have this new stuff called Organifi Gold. If you’ve ever been to Starbucks or you’ve been to, I dunno, where else do you go to get coffee, Dunkin Donuts? A lot of places now, they’re serving this golden milk concoctions that unfortunately, even though they contain turmeric, are basically like coconut sugar and bunch of nasty compounds all shoved into a cup that spikes your blood sugar and leaves you drinking a chemical cocktail rather than actual real, rich, natural, organic golden milk. Well, my friend Drew Canole over at this company called Organifi, he has taken turmeric and blended it with smooth, tasty, organic coconut milk, cinnamon, ginger, lemon balm, even mushroom extracts like reishi, and it’s this warm, relaxing beverage because of the reishi that I sip at the end of a long day. It’s called Organifi Gold, it tastes amazing. I just heat up hot water and I put two scoops of this in the hot water, so good. Anyways, Organifi Gold is something you get 20% off of very easy. You go to Bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi, that’s Organifi with an “I”, and the code that gets you 20% off is mentioned there. Check it out.
In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:
“One of the minerals that’s really important for creating the compounds that break down toxic acetaldehyde is molybdenum. And molybdenum is found in hummus, chick peas, beans, but you can also get it in supplement. We have it in one of our key mineral supplements, and like 300mg of molybdenum will help give your body the raw materials it needs to start breaking that down.” “The wide peripheral gaze says “no, expand your field of vision as wide as you can and spread your focus throughout the whole spectrum as peacefully as possible, seeing everything but seeing nothing.”
Ben: Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield and one of my buddies, an amazing man and a real pioneer in the health and fitness industry, a guy who you may know as the CEO of the wonderful company called Onnit that I’ve talked about many times before on this podcast. A man who has appeared on Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Doctors, The Joe Rogan Experience many times, he’s been on the cover of Men’s Health, he has a life coaching course called Go For Your Win, and now he has a brand new book. An amazing book called “Own The Day, Own Your Life”. His name is Aubrey Marcus, he’s been a podcast guest before but he’s really done it this time. He’s actually written a book.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: A big book, an actual big book. Nice job, dude.
Aubrey: Thanks brother. Yeah, and thanks for your help along the way, I mean we started this conversation about how to create this optimal day and put together one, perfect bad-ass day, not just for your health and fitness but to really live, a day that you could repeat the [beep] out of and enjoy and spend time with the people you care about and do something you could repeat over and over again, and it’s been cool to be on this with you, man.
Ben: Yeah, yeah and that’s why it’s called own the day. You own one day, you own the rest of your life. So before we jump in though, of course, every day in many people’s case unless you’re one of those cold, skinny people that skips breakfast every single morning…
Aubrey: [chuckles]
Ben: Which just to me sounds horrible considering I just finished downing my Wendy’s Frosty smoothie.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: That I think is probably about 900-1000 calories, somewhere in that range so I’m not much of a breakfast skipper.
Aubrey: Yeah, you dip the French fries in your Frosty.
Ben: My justification is that it’s a cue for circadian biology so a cup of coffee with a sprinkling of MCT oil in it and some Stevia just doesn’t do it for me.
Aubrey: No, Wendy’s Frosty and French fries, that’s the zeitgeber you’re looking for.
Ben: Exactly, exactly. Now it’s healthy, granted the French fries are sweet potato variety with crusty sea salt on ‘em…
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: But anyways, let’s break the ice, dude. What’d you have for breakfast this morning?
Aubrey: This morning I had a super ridiculous shake, a shake that could not be sold coz it has so many things in it. I don’t even know what the price would be, it’d be like a fillet mignon priced steak.
Ben: it’s like a billion dollar smoothie?
Aubrey: A billion dollar smoothie, exactly. They actually have that out in one of our places out there in California interestingly enough.
Ben: I know this, yes. Our friend Khalil Rafati’s wonderful SunLife Organics restaurant have it on the menu.
Aubrey: Mmhmm.
Ben: I think it’s more like $32 but it does taste like a billion dollars.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: So what’s your version?
Aubrey: This is the similar version, so vanilla, exogenous ketones, I’ve been playing around with those in the morning. Been enjoying that mixed with our Hemp FORCE Vitality, it’s kinda like the protein base, the Hemp FORCE Vitality. Powerfood vitality has the chia, flax, some of those things to help get moving along with the hemp seed, balancing out the omegas, and then the Kegenix exogenous ketones, that provides the whey. And then I added some avocado, some coconut cream, a bunch of really high quality turmeric to make this kinda golden milk vibe.
Ben: Mmhmm.
Aubrey: And then just kept layering in more different… some medicinal mushrooms, some other different superfoods in there. I use this other product from a company called Vitamineral Earth.
Ben: Yeah?
Aubrey: And I’ll sprinkle a little bit of that in there such as burdock and a bunch of nutritional herbs, so it ends up being this kind of vanilla, spicy, creamy, fatty, golden milk, I’ll sprinkle some of my MCT in there, shake. I don’t even [beep] with breakfast at the house, I just come straight to the office [laughs], get one of those a lot of the mornings, yeah.
Ben: That’s amazing. My Wendy’s Frosty smoothie, I’m not kidding it actually is the texture of a Wendy’s Frosty smoothie. Yours tastes amazing.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: I may have to take a few cues here. Is that recipe in the actual book, or a version of it?
Aubrey: No it’s not. We have a couple of recipes in the book, the thing is, we stayed away from kind of name brand stuff in the book as much as possible, even Onnit stuff. We don’t mention the Onnit formulas all that much…
Ben: You didn’t want your book to be a giant Onnit catalogue?
Aubrey: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. We wanted this to be some book, I know the Onnit stuff is great and a lot of the ingredients were as well, but I wanted to make this more universally applicable and it’s gonna be translated in am million languages and there’s gonna be places where there’s not gonna be Onnit stuff available. So I tried to keep some of the brands out of it as much as possible except when absolutely needed, so this one’s not in there coz it’s pretty specific.
Ben: Nice. One of the things that you talked about in the book that I actually hadn’t heard of before but apparently cleared up your wife Whitney’s, well I mean since it’s in the book we might as well put it out there, she had yeast.
Aubrey: Yup.
Ben: And you fixed it with this stuff, tell me about this yogurt that you do.
Aubrey: Yeah, this is me, again I’m gonna sound like such an [beep] with these super expensive shakes and yogurts. But I was cruising through Erewhon, and they have this like, it’s horrible packaging. It looks like it was printed on a LaserJet from like ’92 or something like that, but it was this like $35 jar of yogurt. And it was coconut yogurt, and it had 400 billion CFUs and I was like “damn, that’s a lot for yogurt.”
Ben: That’s a lot of probiotics.
Aubrey: Lot of probiotics, very low sugar and basically just coconut and then the cultures as the main ingredients. And so yeah we gave that a try and we’re absolutely addicted. It’s like creamy, it’s delicious and any kind of digested yeasts or any kind of yeast expressing anywhere else in your body, it does such an amazing job of combatting that without having to reach for the antifungals and kind of the more supplement side of the probiotic game, which I’m all for as well. But it was just brilliant to have something tastier than milk yogurt, more effective than a milk yogurt, and that you could actually see results within 2 days.
Ben: Amazing, well for those of you listening in, if I can find that yogurt, I’ll link to it in the show notes along with… I imagine you’re probably gonna have a lot of things to go click on if you’re listening in right now coz Aubrey and I tend to find all sorts of random fun toys to enhance your life. I’ll put everything over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/owntheday. Bu I agree dude, I also feel guilty when I’m standing there with my raw carob, acai, chia smoothie bowl.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: Whenever I’m in L.A. at Erewhon and preparing to swipe my credit card for $42 for 4 spoonfuls of breakfast.
Aubrey: Yeah, totally. Well, it’s a luxury that we have for our health, but you know there’s so many free doctors and a lot of this book is just talking about taking the minimum effective dose of all the free doctors.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: Air, temperature, sex, sleep, training, all of these things that we take for granted. You don’t need the $40 carob powerbowl or the probiotic yogurt, you know? If you’re mindful of taking the full dose of all these other things that are free, you’re probably gonna feel as good as anyone out there.
Ben: Yeah, you get into a lot of that in the book, like air, light, electricity, and water. I was listening to a podcast a couple of days ago and a health expert was asked “what’s your number one tip of the day?” And he was like “well, I recommend everybody start off your day with just a big glass of water”, which is great advice but it’s also kinda old-school, outdated horse that’s been kicked to death advice. You kinda take the water up a level in your book as far as what you recommend people drink when they get up, what they should add to their water, like a special water routine in the morning.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: Can you walk me through that?
Aubrey: Yeah, I mean I think the water is a good idea, and you lose over a pound of water overnight just from your water vapors and your body has a much higher level of humidity in the air, particularly if you’re in the air climate in the winter and the heat is on, you’re gonna be losing a lot of water overnight. So getting that water back in is good, but it’s not just any water that you wanna put in there. Obviously, spring water’s gonna have the natural mineral balance, it’s gonna be better, so that’s level one, spring water. Level two, add a pinch of Himalayan sea salts, any sea salt is good, it has a bunch of trace minerals and electrolytes. Himalayan has a little bit of extra iron so for women out there, anybody who needs a little bit more iron in their diet, Himalayan is a great move to add to that. I like it myself, it has great taste. It’s also pretty pristine in that it’s 60 million year old deposits, so before there was sea and ocean liners dumping oil into the water, these oceans were a little cleaner, maybe just dinosaur turds. And then adding some lemon for bioflavonoids, adding some apple cider vinegar, just start to level it up. We actually have a mineral-electrolyte drink mix now that has some extra calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium bicarbonate in there. I’ll sometimes play around with that and you just kinda escalate that to get a really bad-ass morning cocktail, so not only do you get the water but kick it up a notch, and it’s pretty easy to do.
Ben: When did you figure out that your body did better when you started adding salts or electrolytes to your water?
Aubrey: It was actually like there was a real watershed moment, and I remember I was trying to go to sleep and I could actually hear my pulse in my ear. And I was like “I could listen to my heartbeat” and it felt like my adrenal system was really stressed. I remember mentioning that to Dr. Dan Engle who’s a holistic doctor I know at home.
Ben: Yeah, good guy. He’s been on the podcast.
Aubrey: Yup, and I mentioned that and he’s like “have you tried 5 grams”… I just text him like “man, I can’t really relax” and he’s like, “alright, try 5 grams of sea salt and let me know how you feel in like half an hour.” And I did that and the sea salt, 5 grams and some water, it really just relaxed my system and what I realized is a lot of our body’s systems rely on those minerals to function properly. And when starved of those minerals, things like your adrenal system will start to go hyperactive and that’s what was happening with my pulse. And just that insight of “oh, I didn’t get enough salt today”, I worked out really hard and maybe sauna. I forget what I’d done that day but I’d sweat a lot, and then I just had regular food and regular water, but I didn’t pay any mind to salt supplementation. And after that moment, I’ve really tried to put salt on or in most of the things that I have, and my performance and just general overall feeling of being able to relax both improved.
Ben: Yeah. Dude, 5 grams, that’s some pretty salty water.
Aubrey: That was salty and I think he was just trying to prove the case coz I was in real deficiency at that point.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: But yeah, I mean typically it’s closer to around 3, and if you go up to 10 then you might [beep] your pants, so…
Ben: Yeah, you will [beep] you pants.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: And I speak from personal experience because my boys and I thought it would be a special project after I was talking with Paul Chek, who charges his water, he builds these rock charging stations.
Aubrey: I’ve been there.
Ben: Yeah, he takes this big glass water carboys and fills them with water in glass jars and surrounds them with rocks, and I thought I would wind up Paul and add Himalayan… it’s called sole salt, these big huge chunks, to the water. So I had my kids take portar and a mestle… or mortar and pestle, if I can talk this morning…
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: And, you know what I meant, they would crush all this up and they would put it in the carboy, and then we let it sit in the rocks for about a week to charge, brought it back in, and I started off my day one morning with a big glass… a big-ass glass of very, very salty, rock charged water from Paul Chek. And I downed the glass with a big smile on my face that I had just hydrated my body, possibly for the next month…
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: And within about a half hour, I was just blowing chunks all over the backside of the toilet. So more’s not better when it comes to salt.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: But what I do like about the book is you kinda walk people through each of these steps, right? You get out of bed and bleary-eyed, you go and here’s what you put in your water, and then here’s what you do next. And one question that I had for you, coz I’ve gone back and forth with different podcast guests about this, is the morning workout deal. Do you crush a morning workout? What’s your take on the morning movement routine?
Aubrey: You know, I’ve gotten in the habit, especially now that my pool is cold, I swim about 10-20 laps in my pool in the morning, and I feel [beep] phenomenal. And that seems to be exactly the right amount, it’s not enough that requires me to eat a big breakfast to replenish glycogen levels. But the combination of the cold exposure that early in the morning and the breathing that I do before getting in and then that basic amount of movement, I am wide awake, alert, and just excited about the day after that, you know? And I’ll literally just groggily go straight to the water, drink the water, and then take my clothes, got nobody else in the house other than Whitney, so clothes go off completely, goggles are there in the water, naked laps. And then by the time I come out of that, this whole thing takes like less than 10 minutes, and if it’s sunny, then I get out and I kinda dry off and let my body temperature warm up in the sun. And kinda with my eyes closed, look at the rising sun, and when I do that man, I just cannot express how much better my day is, and it’s taken like 15 minutes.
Ben: A lot of our female listeners are gonna be Google Earth-ing your house by the way now.
Aubrey: [laughs] Please do, go for it. I don’t know if you’ll be that impressed from that high up. Maybe they can do a different view.
Ben: That sounds amazing. I tried it this morning, the cold water swim and the problem is it’s winter up here in Spokane. I can last about 5 minutes in my pool right now, it’s about 38 degrees.
Aubrey: Mmhmm.
Ben: And so, it’s freeze your nuts off cold.
Aubrey: [laughs] It’s freezing.
Ben: But when I’m travelling, for example if I’m California or if I’m anywhere where they have good, outdoor, especially like mineral cleaned pools instead of chlorine, that’s my favorite thing to do coz you get the cold thermogenesis, you get the stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system. I’m convinced it takes you back to your womb when you were just kinda floating in this water-like fluid medium in your mother’s placenta. It’s just this very relaxing, almost yoga-esque feeling and one of the things I do is I just take a big breath and I’ll swim underwater back and forth, just holding my breath for as long a period of time as possible. But in terms of parasympathetic nervous system activation, cold exposure, vagus nerve activation coz you get that mammalian dive reflex when you hit the water. I think you’re on to something, if there was one workout I could do each morning, it’d be underwater.
Aubrey: 100%. Another thing I’ve been doing too in the cold water is I’ve been diving down to the bottom like I was spear fishing, and I know we’ve had the chance to do that before, but just going to the bottom, obviously regulating my ears to the atmospheric pressure and then just breathing out my air and just laying with my stomach on the bottom of the pool, and it’s so still.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: Like it’s just impossibly still down there where they’re just… the pressure of the water surrounding you in that kind of atmospheric pressure with the absolute silence, with the cold, and just sitting down there for a little while too, is another amazing way to get 20-30 seconds of absolute peace.
Ben: Yeah. That’s funny, I used to do that when I was a boy. I blow out all the air and just go sit at the bottom of my parents’ pool.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: Just sit there, and it’s very peaceful. I’d forgotten about that.
Aubrey: I’ve done that too, sitting but getting in stock position.
Ben: Ahuh.
Aubrey: Like imagining we were hiding under coral with your actual belly on the pool bottom. I found it so much radder and I’m just imagining training through that moment where we get good enough, where we can actually dive down 15-20 feet and wait for that big [beep] grouper to come out…
Ben: Yeah. That actually works, I mean we were shallow water fishing in Kona, one of the things… I dunno if it was the guide there that told us this or somewhere else, but when you lay motionless on the bottom of the ocean, the fish actually swim up to you compared to if you’re swimming around. They come up to you, they get curious, well this is gonna be horrible for people who love cute, little fishes but then you shoot ‘em when they actually come up to you all curious like that.
Aubrey: [laughs] And then you eat ‘em.
Ben: Yeah, we actually ate a lot of fish.
Aubrey: Ate a lot of fish.
Ben: Like ten fish when we were down there.
Aubrey: You ate the heads, too.
Ben: I love fish head, fish gills, all the DHA up in the eyeballs, please. You mentioned breathing, and I’m curious about the type of breathing that you do before you get in the pool.
Aubrey: Mmhmm. Well I do that kinda classic Wim Hof style, and that’s basically and doesn’t matter which hole, he’s famous for saying that. That’ one of his favorite lines, doesn’t matter which hole you get it in. And so breathe in nose/mouth, and ten instead of focusing on the exhale which a lot of yoga pranayama traditions do is you just let the air escape with as minimal resistance as possible. So in and then just [exhales] let your chest fall without even the exertion of an intentional exhale. And so just focus on the inhale and release, inhale and release, inhale and release, ‘til you just get those baby tingles going and you get the kinda life, that inner fire.
Ben: That’s fast, right? Like [fast breathing sounds]?
Aubrey: Nope.
Ben: Oh really, you go slow?
Aubrey: So that’s more the pranayama style, the breath of fire.
Ben: Got it.
Aubrey: See, coz you hear yourself intentionally forcing the exhale. So this sound is gonna be a little bit harder with the microphone but this sounds like this [breathing sounds].
Ben: Okay, interesting.
Aubrey: So there’s like no intention on the exhale, so it’s just as much as you can get in and then just let it all go. [breathes] As much as you can get in and let it go, and working with Wim at the house, that was kind of the style that he showed me. And there’s many ways to do it, but that to me builds that inner fire the fastest, and then obviously being mindful of shallow water blackout and I’m pretty comfortable in that space but I just wanna always throw caveat out there when you’re using cold water and breath.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: But that to me gets me there the fastest and I just get that little warmth, that little tingle and then straight into the water. And then the other key thing with the water is know that it’s gonna be hard, know that it’s supposed to be tough, know that it’s supposed to be difficult, you’re supposed to be timid and maybe not wanna do it. And part of what makes it so bad-ass is intentionally pushing through that, like asserting your dominion over your petty fears and over your petty concerns, and that’s a [beep] huge win when you start the day. You can say I am stronger than my discomfort and my fear, then any time anything else comes up throughout the day, you can carry that same attitude with you and that’s something I really enjoyed highlighting in the book, how important those mental victories are in all of these processes.
Ben: Now compare that Wim Hof to the Lamaze breathing that you talk about in the book.
Aubrey: Mmhmm.
Ben: A lot of people talk about Lamaze breathing.
Aubrey: Yeah, and it’s interesting because that’s something that has this really strong, external pressure source and that’s gonna be a lot of pain and a lot of difficulty in childbirth. So when you have a strong external resistance point and acute stress, you come up with ways to adapt to it. And one of the classic ways that we’ve come up to adapt to that is through breath, and it’s interesting that we just siloed that to birth. Women only breathe that way when they’re going through birth but we don’t tell them to breathe that way when they’re going through any other hardship, an emotional hardship or a breakup or other kind of physical hardship. It’s like “oh no this is just for birth” but why? And I think that was a really interesting point to highlight because basically Lamaze breathing is a variation of this kind of Wim Hof style or pranayama. It’s very deep, prolonged breaths, it’s actually a little slower version as far as the tempo but you’re doing the same thing. You’re intentionally breathing and you’re intentionally hyper-oxygenating, which is going to just change your mental and physical composition. Change your blood pressure, change your mental state, there’s a Japanese study that showed just six deep breaths alone drops your blood pressure, raises alkalinity.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: It does amazing things and we don’t need to use it only when we’re going through something as impossibly challenging as pushing a football with shoulder out of our vagina.
Ben: I actually have a story about that but out mutual friend, Porungui… Porungai, he’s gonna kill me if he hears this.
Aubrey: Yeah. [laughs]
Ben: I always mispronounce his name. Sorry, Porungai. He, when I lay down on his table to do a sound healing session there in Sedona, he actually had me do kinda like a Lamaze style breathing, deep from the diaphragm, in through the nose, out through the mouth.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: But yeah, we do it for like the whole 90 minutes, the whole freakin’ massage/sound session.
Aubrey: Woo.
Ben: And almost got me into this hypnotic state. On the complete flipside though, my wife and I did a natural home birth for our twins, or attempted I should say a natural home birth for our twins, and we both took a Lamaze breathwork class going into that. And the style of home birth that we did for this Lamaze technique involves the man being there the entire time and actually embracing and holding his woman during the birth. They’re a support, but for me it basically involved… my wife has very pointy elbows and very pointy knees, and it was basically just my entire body getting crushed and poked. I mean by the time the childbirth was over I was covered in bruises, and of course she’s pissed at me the whole time coz women are just pissed at everybody in the room when they’re having a baby.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: And we had a little pool in our bedroom so we can go back and forth in the water birth to the bed, but the primary thing that I remember was her attempting the Lamaze breathing, me attempting the Lamaze breathing, but all I could really think about was “oh shit, her elbows hurt so bad right now, here it comes again, she’s contracting.” I’m guessing it hurt me a lot more than it hurt her, it had to.
Aubrey: Yeah, I’m sure it did. [laughs] I’m sure it did, Ben.
Ben: Yeah. Okay so the other thing, in terms of cold, is that I know down there at Onnit, and for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of going to Austin, Texas and working out at Aubrey’s facility down there, he’s got this gym, DeFranco’s Gym down there where they have cryotherapy and a sauna and a great old smoothie bar. They also have the cryotherapy, like I mentioned, but I’m curious if you’ve developed any little hacks for cryotherapy, Aubrey, as far as things you’ve studied up on to enhance the experience, enhance fat burning or enhance the amount of time you can spend in there. Or basically increase the benefits one would get out of a cryotherapy chamber coz a lot of people are visiting those things these days.
Aubrey: Yeah, I think the number one key for me from an experiential standpoint is I have to get my head cold. And if my head doesn’t get cold, then I only get part of the kind of mood benefits and the energy benefits that I get otherwise. So it’s one of the reasons I like full submersion. So in a cryo, sometimes you get those walk in cryos and those are full body and those are freakin’ awesome, but even here at Onnit, we have one of the cryos where you have to stay above. Now, the way that it works is it’s cooled with liquid nitrogen so you’re not really supposed to breathe any of that in coz you can actually pass out.
Ben: Right, that’s the type of cryotherapy chamber somebody died in.
Aubrey: Exactly.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: So you keep your head above all that, and then it doesn’t really rise that much, and whatever little amount you breathe in is fine, but what I’ll do is hold my breath, and this is something of a more experienced move, but I’ll hold my breath, keep my arms above coz there’s always an attendant in there, keep my arms above the unit and I’ll just kinda tap my fingers lightly and then I will basically old school snorkel dance my way, snake my way down into the tank and then just tap my fingers on the rim, let everybody know I’m fine taking careful not to breathe at all until I get back to the surface. And that allows that cold to seep into my eye sockets and feels like into my brain and it feels like it cools the brain fog and drains inflammation.
Ben: Oh absolutely, that’s my complaint about these cryotherapy chambers is that you don’t activate the mammalian dive reflex and get the vagus nerve toning effect because your head doesn’t get cold. So you’re basically fixing that by (a) holding your breath so that you don’t breathe in the nitrogen, (b) getting your head under, and then (c) making sure people know you’re not freezing and dying a horrible nitrogen-induced death by tapping on the surface.
Aubrey: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. And that is like 100% the best move if you got one of those tanks coz then you get the full experience.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: And you might have to do that a couple of times in the 3 minutes depending on how good your breath hold is, but that makes all the freakin’ difference in the world for me.
Ben: I love it, it’s brilliant. Do you take any special supplements beforehand to enhance fat burning of anything like that?
Aubrey: I’m so lean already man, I’m kinda like you so for me that’s not something that I really focus on. But obviously, when it comes to the fat burning for me, I think the ketogenic supplements and following that kind of largely ketogenic diet. People look at my shake, almost no carbohydrates in there, it’s herbs, protein, avocado, coconut cream, MCT oil, fiber, all of these things, and that’s what I typically keep going all throughout the day. And then at night, it really helps my sleep, like last night I was pretty much all protein, fat, and fiber all the way until like 11, and then I was like “I got way too much [beep] energy left and there’s no way I’m gonna sleep.” So I just cooked up some brown rice pasta before bed and just crushed this…
Ben: Yeah, get that serotonin going.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: You’re making me feel guilty about the French fries and my Wendy’s Frosty, Aubrey.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: I’m just kidding, I don’t put French… for those of you listening in, do not go put French fries because you heard it on the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, that was just joke. But seriously, one thing, I dunno if I told you about this, bitter melon extract enhances conversion of white adipose tissue to brown fat. So now what I tell people to do, if they’re gonna do a cryotherapy session or a cold water swim or something like that, is get your hands on… a lot of these calorie restriction mimetics will do it, berberine is another one.
Aubrey: Mmhmm.
Ben: Bitter melon extract is one, exogenous ketones to a certain extent can do it as well, but they’ll enhance the white fat to brown fat conversion that you want from the cold. So that’s actually something you can take before a cold session to enhance the effects.
Aubrey: It also mitigates blood sugar elevation, right?
Ben: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, so if your liver is stressed and you’re getting a glycogen release from the liver and it’s amping up blood glucose because the cold is stressing you out, it can help mitigate some of those effects as well. As we learned in, I think this was also in Hawaii, anything that sensitizes you to cold, including any type of psilocybin mushroom… and by the way, you need to ask your homie Kyle Kingsbury about this too.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: Coz he may or may not have tried to swim across the entire Spokane River after dosing. And ask him about that experience, I’ll let him share it with you. I forget if you talked about it when I interviewed him on my podcast or not. But mushrooms sensitize you to the cold, that would probably be a no-no.
Aubrey: Yeah, yeah. They’re an interesting beast. [laughs]
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: That should be used with discretion.
Ben: Exactly.
Aubrey: But when used correctly, pretty bad-[beep].
Ben: I know you have a very good history with those and those certainly influence… as a matter of fact, those influenced the formation of your company, right?
Aubrey: Yeah well, a lot of the plants did, from ayahuasca to psilocybin to a lot of the traditional plant medicine ceremonies that I’ve been in…
Ben: But your first product was based on mushrooms.
Aubrey: Oh yeah, well not the very first one. First one was that one BRAIN, but yeah Shroom Tech support was focused on the cordyceps mushroom, which is that pretty rare, high altitude mushroom from Tibet that helps with oxygen utilization and we’ve since clinically proven it effective in studies at Florida State University for high intensity interval training and the things you would expect from better oxygen utilization and ATP production. So yeah, but that was based around the cordyceps sinensis mushroom.
Ben: Nice, I’m actually a fan of that. I tend to consume it with my, what’s it called, the FourSigmatic cordyceps-chaga coffee blend.
Aubrey: Mmhmm.
Ben: That’s what I’ll do in the morning. I do have one other morning routine question for you before we move on, and this is like my million dollar morning routine question I got put out there. Are you an enema guy? Are you on the coffee enema way?
Aubrey: [laughs] No, I’m not. But I’d like to be, I’d like to be. It’s not coz I’m afraid of things going around my butt coz I was fully colonic. We have these great things called Angel of Waters here, I think it’s called, and it’s like this self colonicizing machine where you actually sit on this hose nozzle…
Ben: I like how they give it a clean name like that, Angels of Wa-… I mean, they can call it but brown demonic streaks of death would be a more appropriate title but they decided to call it Angels.
Aubrey: [laughs] Yeah, hydrodemon sodomy or something like that.
Ben: Right, exactly. [laughs]
Aubrey: [laughs] Yeah, that would get less adaption. But yeah, you kinda wiggle yourself onto this thing, so it’s a constant flow of water. It’s not like flow in and then suck out like when you have a colonics practitioner.
Ben: Mmhmm.
Aubrey: So you sit on that thing and it constantly expels so no water goes back into the system coz it’s constantly pushing. And it’s thin enough so that the water comes in, you let in as much as you want, then you just [beep] whenever you feel the need, and then that goes around the little prong, like the little water spicket, and goes into the toilet. And so it’s just basically like breathing water with your butt for like 45 minutes and you go through 30 gallons of water. And it’s not only the feces that comes out but you’ll start to see orange bile and liver… they’re saying “oh this is your kidneys releasing, this is your liver releasing” and you’ll see these different colors and materials that’s coming out, and you just…
Ben: Oh, definitely jumpstarts bioproduction.
Aubrey: Yup. Yeah, it feels like a religious experience when you’re finished.
[Music Plays]
Ben: Hey, I wanna interrupt today’s show to tell that it’s okay to eat cereal. It really is okay to eat cereal, at least now it is. See, I grew up on Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch and then I would drink the milk, or just put more Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch in, or occasionally put in coco chocolate pebbles into my peanut butter flavored milk that was left over from my first bowl of the Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch. Well the fact is, for a long time I quit eating cereal coz it’s so bad for you, doesn’t just rip off the top of your mouth like that Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch, but of course it spikes your blood sugar and is just not good. Lots of nasty folic acid added to it and all sorts of weird preservatives and yeah. And gluten of course, the wheat evil gluten.
Anyways, there is now coconut cereal and it’s very simple. It’s coconut meat, coconut water, and palm starch, that’s it, that’s all that’s in the cereal. This stuff’s comprised of organic coconuts that are sourced from sustainable farms in the Philippines, actually. It is naturally sweet, it’s paleo-friendly, grain-free, my kids can now sit at the table and eat cereal just like normal kids should be able to put cereal on milk. And it’s called Thrive Coconut Flakes, it’s organic, non-GMO coconut flakes cereal, and it’s like tasting the tropics in a bowl with milk. And did I mention you can eat it with a spoon just like cereal coz it’s cereal. It’s Thrive Market Organic Coconut Flakes cereal, and the thing is, this podcast is brought to you by Thrive Market, and because of that, you can get $60 of free organic groceries including this fantastic cereal over at thrivemarket.com/ben. Paleo, gluten-free, vegan, raw, non-GMO, organic, fair trade, you name it. It’s like a CostCo for everything healthy over there, you just join up, you get a little membership, and then you’re off to the races. Never have to pay full price for healthy food again. So check it out, thrivemarket.com/ben. Alright, back to the show.
[Music Plays]
Ben: This is fresh on my mind because I actually just finished interviewing you off of this other book called The Rain Barrel Effect, and he went all over the world studying all these ayurvedic medicine practices and came back with this 1-2-3 combo of lymphatic massage, like dry skin brushing or rebounding or anything that addresses the lymphatic system, and then sauna where you’ll do 20-30 minutes of the sauna but then you finish with a coffee enema. So yesterday before I interviewed him, I wanted to make sure that I was intimately familiar with the methods in his book. And it’s been a long time since I actually… I kinda got off the coffee enema bandwagon just because it’s not, let’s face it, filling up an entire bucket full of coffee and dragging it up to the bathroom and trying not to spill it so you don’t piss off your wife.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: And then put it on the counter and putting the tube up your [beep] and laying there and figuring out what to do for the next 20 minutes and then getting it all out and then putting the stainless steel bucket in the dishwasher and figuring out where to clean the tube coz you can’t put that in the dishwasher coz you don’t want a poopy tube all over everybody’s plates. It’s a process, but you do feel pretty, what’s the word, angelic when you finish.
Aubrey: Analgelic [laughs], analgelic healing.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. And my digestion’s been amazing since… I mean in just 24 hours my gallbladder’s just churning out bile like nobody’s business. Alright, but you’re not at…
Aubrey: [0:41:26 inaudible] up the poop tube, that’s the way we’re gonna roll.
Ben: Someone needs to sell a self-cleaning enema kit though, I mean come on.
Aubrey: It’s disposable.
Ben: That needs to exist by now, or disposable. But mine is stainless steel so I’m not shoving plastics up my butt.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: Okay so…
Aubrey: You’re not even putting plastics up in your butt? [laughs]
Ben: No [laughs], not yet.
Aubrey: You wanna keep those phytoestrogens out of the rectum?
Ben: I do wanna ask you though, remind- I wanna ask you about toxic sex products.
Aubrey: Yup.
Ben: Because you get into that in the book. I wanna ask you about that but not yet, coz we’re gonna come… I’m gonna do this chronologically because we got through some of the morning routine, and obviously there’s a lot more in your book but I wanted to cover some of the basics. And then a lot of people, after their morning routine is done, they’re going to commute to work, they’re gonna find themselves driving, they gonna find themselves sitting in the car. You get into, in the book about how you make your car a travelling university and you make sure you’re very productive while you’re driving or commuting. But you also have this three step protocol in the book for when you’re commuting, to make your body or your brain better. Can you get into that?
Aubrey: Yeah, I think the basic principle is the car is a time… you don’t want it to be wasting time, and you don’t want it to be something that’s deleterious to your life. Like you want it to be part of a productive owned day, and so there’s really two options you have, and you either fill your mind with useful [beep], or you empty your mind of the un-useful [beep]. “Mindfilness or mindfulness” is what we talk about. So obviously filling your mind by listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts, you could learn. We have these super computers, we have entire libraries available to us on our phones and it’s just a simple choice of figuring out what you wanna learn, what you wanna explore. Obviously, people are listening to this podcast now, they’re aware of that. So on the other side, how you empty your mind, keep the drive from being something that by the time you arrive where you’re going, you’re just more stressed and wrapped in beta state and you’re trying to check your phone at every little stop, every little pause in traffic and you’re flipping Instagram and you’re just kinda working yourself up into this frenzy, try to go the other way. And again I mentioned before, 6 deep breaths is enough to create a state change, so it’s not take a deep breath, it’s take 6 deep breaths so I always start with that whenever I’m doing any kinds of mindfulness practice. Get 6 deep breaths…
Ben: That was the tip from Dan Engel?
Aubrey: That was actually straight from the research.
Ben: Oh, really?
Aubrey: Looking at what the minimum effective amount of breathing was to create a state change, and this Japanese study, they went through one, two, three, four, five and then six was like the tipping point where they could really, reliably measure statistically significant blood pressure readings drop, after six.
Ben: I didn’t know there was actual research on this. So six is the magic number?
Aubrey: Six is the magic number, yup.
Ben: Interesting. So you get in the car, you put on something to listen to, you call it “mindfilness.”
Aubrey: Yup.
Ben: Clever. And then you do your 6 deep breaths.
Aubrey: Yup.
Ben: And actually, I went through your book and I got the 6 deep breaths, I didn’t realize it was research based but that makes me feel even better about myself. I have been doing that when I arrived at the door before I walk in when I get home.
Aubrey: Right, awesome.
Ben: Before, coz you know or I know, when I open my door, I guess you don’t have kids… here’s how it goes.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: It’s nice and quiet in the garage, you’ve pulled into the garage, you can hear the car kinda cooling down and creaking and doing this car cooling down thing, and you’re standing there at the door preparing to turn the door handle. And you know that as soon as you open that door, it’s going to be loud Disney music blasting the hell at your ears, two kids standing there with Nerf guns wanting to walk you through the 8 billion Legos that they just finished building and have a Lego battle while they shoot Nerf guns at you and your wife is cooking dinner and at the same time because she’s cooking dinner and doesn’t have time to, needs you to go take care of the goats and the chickens.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: And the one rooster who is sick who needs this special feeding protocol, and you have to be prepared for that onslaught, for that battle. And don’t get me wrong, I [beep] love my family but you have to be prepared for that.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: It’s like getting ready for a workout when you walk in through that door. So I’ve actually been using this when I finish my commute, when I actually get home from wherever I might have been playing tennis or going to see the chiropractor or whatever.
Aubrey: Yeah. Like lines of demarcation, make little points where you can just draw a little dashed line throughout your day and say “okay, time for another chapter.” And all you need to do to do that is 6 breaths, so what you’re doing is you’re taking away everything that’s come before, your work, wherever you were before, whatever mode you were in, get that 6 deep breaths, allow yourself to intentionally move into the next chapter. And when you’re ready for the next chapter, you can repeat it over and over. It’s not hard, but that combination of the physiological change with the intentional change like “alright, here we go”, it’s just gonna make a huge difference and it’s a very small ask. And that’s one of these things that I think we gotta take advantage of, when there’s a really small ask and a really big reward. Some really hard workouts, maybe that’s a big ask for somebody and you gotta work up to that, it’ll have a real positive change or like [beep] NAD infusions.
Ben: Have you done that?
Aubrey: It’s gonna be horribly uncomfortable. No, I haven’t but I’ve watched a lot of people go through that.
Ben: It is pretty uncomfortable.
Aubrey: That’s a pretty big ask, right? You gotta get hooked up, you gotta pay a bunch of money, you gotta get these infusions, gotta feel like someone’s slowly twisting your nut sack, apparently [laughs], that’s an ask.
Ben: It’s very uncomfortable, yeah.
Aubrey: But asking for 6 breaths when you’re gonna change the intention of your next chapter of the day, that’s not much coz it’s just gonna feel good and it’s gonna make everything that comes after it feel good, so it’ll allow you to sort everything that came before it. So it’s just like this little, minimum amount of organizational mental hygiene that will really make a huge impact.
Ben: Now you also talk about the wide peripheral gaze.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: Tell me about that.
Aubrey: So whenever you’re mad at anything, there’s really two strategies. One is to restrict the amount of information, so think sensory deprivation tank. A sensory deprivation tank, instead of all this external input, there’s virtually none. You have no sight, no sounds, no feelings, no smells. You’re floating in water the same temperature as your skin, add some salt water, and you can see anything, you can’t hear anything, can’t smell anything, can’t taste anything. And that part of your mind that’s constantly looking for information slows down, it drops and you can drop into a really powerful meditative state. The other way to do it is actually to overload your mind with so much data that you stop thinking about things as well, and one of the ways to do that is to overload your mind with visual data. Instead of focusing on one thing which allows you to basically prioritize that visual information, and then your brain can process that many bits of information. The wide peripheral gaze says no, expand your field of vision as wide as you can and spread your focus throughout the whole spectrum as peacefully as possible, seeing everything but seeing nothing. And as you do that, your brain feels like your brain literally has no ability to add any other thought on top of that, when you’re really focusing on just pushing as wide out to the sides and as tall to the top and as stretched down to the bottom. And seeing everything, tracking every little tiny movement, a leaf that’s rustling, anything that’s happening, the way the air conditioner is moving, some little thing over in the corner. If you’re outside there’s gonna be way more information, too.
Ben: Do you actually look at the person next to you when you’re at the stoplight with your eyes super wide, googly, open and just freak ‘em out?
Aubrey: [laughs] I know coz I would…
Ben: You could just see these huge, dilated pupils like an evil, wicked clown smile and your eyes are just huge with your wide gaze.
Aubrey: As soon as you look at anything, it’s over, the game’s over.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: As soon as you look at a thing, then you’re mind’s “okay, thing.” It identifies thing, it deprioritizes the rest of the information and then thoughts come back in and then thoughts are what keep us stressed. But if you deprioritize everything, in which case you prioritize everything, then at that point you just can’t really think anymore. It’s a technique though that was taught to me in a book by Tom Brown, who’s a Native American tracker, and they use that technique to get super mindful in the forest and also see any animal movement patterns, anything that looks kind of out of line in an underbrush or anything. Just kind of let it all soak, the subtlest little movement.
Ben: Yeah. That’s how I originally heard of this, it was called the Owl Gaze, when I went to a wilderness survival camp with my kids.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: And we learned this peripheral gaze, it was a Native American meditative sit-spot technique where you sit and you taste the air and you smell the air and you feel your surroundings but then you’re also engaged in this wide owl gaze, very similar to what you teach in the book.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: I’d never thought of doing that when I drive, and actually haven’t tried this yet after reading about it in your book but I’m gonna have to give it a go. So it’s a three step protocol, (a) you put something on that makes you smart, not the morning news or top 40.
Aubrey: Mmhmm.
Ben: (B) you have this wide peripheral gaze, and then the last one is the 6 deep breaths.
Aubrey: Yeah. I typically do the breaths before the gaze, and then the gaze, you have to have some practice. If you’re in a tricky driving space, be mindful of it. But obviously, even in defensive driving they remind you to look in your periphery, so I feel very comfortable and safe doing that in most situations unless I’m making a turn and I need to focus on my rear view or blind spots. You gotta be mindful of the driving, but definitely any time you’re stopped or definitely any time you’re kinda locked into a very comfortable place, coz it’s almost like a martial arts position where you’re not looking at your opponent’s punches coz then it gets really hard to dodge them, but you’re just looking at everything they’re doing and seeing everything. So I feel pretty comfortable in most situations, but of course recommend people play with it stopped first or in really safe places first.
Ben: Yeah, be safe. And knock on wood, Aubrey, you might wind up on the front page of the Austin paper as being that guy… or the LA paper perhaps.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: That guy is pulling out of the Erewhon parking lot with a mouthful of coconut probiotic million dollar yogurt who hit some old lady coz he’s got his eyes peeled open, trying to see what’s going on in his right and left side.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: You never know.
Aubrey: You never know.
Ben: Your book oughta create a lot of [beep] drivers.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: You talk about some things in the book that you don’t find in a typical health book. Namely, there’s a chapter where you expound upon tobacco and nicotine. Those are considered to be vices typically, but why do you include those in the book?
Aubrey: I think nicotine is one of the most important plant allies that we have. And the problem with nicotine is how we get it in the body, coz there is no friggin’ doubt that tobacco, when smoked in a cigarette, is gonna kill you. There’s just no doubt about it, it’s deadly. Cigarettes are deadly, not only from the tobacco in them but from everything else in them, but also the processes of repeatedly utilizing, stressing those lungs. While the lungs are capable of inhaling, ingesting smoke as an acute stressor but not as a chronic stressor, that’s not what they’re there for.
Ben: Mmhmm.
Aubrey: They need ample time to recover from any kind of process like that and the problem with smoking is that it’s chronic, and it will 100% kill you. But the fact of the matter is that nicotine can be incredibly valuable ally. I think there is one meta-analysis that I looked at, it had like 41 studies and it showed that nicotine safely improved fine motor skills, tension, accuracy, response time, short term working memory. And so many benefits from nicotine, and then you look at, granted cigarettes kill you, don’t do that, then you look at the London Royal College of Physicians and they say that if you do non-combustible forms of nicotine like the Swedish snus packs which I freakin’ love and is probably my favorite drug on the planet right now.
Ben: What is it called?
Aubrey: The snus packs, it’s like a smokeless tobacco, these little pouches you put in your gums.
Ben: How do you spell that?
Aubrey: S-N-U-S.
Ben: Okay.
Aubrey: Yeah, it’s one of the cleanest ones. It has the fewest additives, I like this one called Volt which is really strong, don’t start there. There’s this other one that’s mixed with lingonberries, it’s a lot better if you want start with that.
Ben: Huh, never heard of this.
Aubrey: But they did an analysis… yeah, it’s incredible.
Ben: And so what exactly is it? Is it just tobacco?
Aubrey: Yeah, tobacco and some salt usually.
Ben: Okay.
Aubrey: Coz the salt increases the absorption into the gums.
Ben: Okay, interesting.
Aubrey: So yeah, I’d put one of those patches in and within minutes, just feeling that kinda combination of almost feels like when I’m underwater. The atmospheric pressure increase but my alertness and enjoyment of the current moment increases, and from a safety standpoint, like I said the London Royal College of Physicians say that that’s 10-1000 times less hazardous than smoking, depending on the product.
Ben: Wow.
Aubrey: And the Swedish snus is by far one of the cleanest ways to do it, probably second only to a nicotine patch or something like that which is really not very fun and not enjoyable part of the process.
Ben: Yeah, see I’ve been vaping just a little bit this organic tobacco. It’s actually, I think it is a Swedish organic tobacco, and I get a great little cognitive high from that but the other thing I’ve been using is, although your pouches do seem to blow this out of the water and be this on steroids, I’ve been just chewing on these 1mg nicotine toothpicks.
Aubrey: Mmhmm, cool.
Ben: And it’s actually, when I’m on an airplane, I’ve been doing a lot of flying lately, I just posted this on my Instagram account like how I’ve been having a cup of coffee on the airplane with one of these cinnamon-flavored nicotine toothpicks and I can write for hours.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: You get this very, very cool, stable, cognitive high with of course the risk being that it can be mildly addictive, the nicotine so you need to be careful.
Aubrey: Yeah, that’s the only thing to be really mindful of. And it’s not like there’s no health risks with doing smokeless. There are some, I think in vaping they found some issues with cellular repair ex vivo, there’s not a lot of studies on what vape does but it seemed to slow wound healing when they studied it on different cells. But it’s not causing near the damage that smoke will and when it comes to smokeless, there’s still some stress that’s happening to the gums and the tissue there. But just be mindful, as long as you’re giving your body plenty of time to recover, the body’s pretty good at healing itself. It’s just that chronic bludgeoning and repeated use that’s an issue. And then when it comes to addiction, just make sure you give yourself full breaks, don’t tell yourself “oh I could quit anytime, I just haven’t.” Test that, don’t trust yourself coz the body will hijack the mind and you’ll rationalize anything if you are actually addicted. So prove it to yourself, just be like “okay, I can quit this, I can and will and should so I’ll take a week off or take two weeks off” and make sure that you actually can. And that way you can be mindful that you’re driving the decisions, the plant isn’t driving you.
Ben: Right. A lot of these things have gotten such a bad rap, right? Like cocoa leaves versus cocaine or organic tobacco or mild amounts of nicotine versus a Marlsboro cigarette. So yeah, it’s one of those things where you can’t lump it all into the same category, and I like how you walk people through a lot of this in the book. You also talk about the ceremony of Mapacho and Rape – I don’t know what this is.
Aubrey: Rapé.
Ben: Rapé.
Aubrey: [laughs] I knew you were gonna call it rape.
Ben: [laughs]
Aubrey: I just knew that.
Ben: You actually say it in the book it’s pronounced “ha-pe” but…
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: Just wanted to put you on the spot.
Aubrey: it feels like rape, it 100% wasn’t rape.
Ben: What is Mapacho and Rapé?
Aubrey: Well, Mapacho is like a hand-rolled nicotinia rustica, which is a different type of tobacco plant. It’s like a hand-rolled cigarette or cigar with just that plant. So you smoke it like a cigar so you don’t take it into your lungs which is much better for you coz the lungs are a lot more sensitive than your mouth tissue, and you’re not smoking it all the time. But they use that as a way to communicate with the spirits, so they call it a chacaruna or a bridge. And that bridge allows them to talk to the plants in their own framework. You’re probably thinking “okay, Aubrey’s lost his mind.” I’m just explaining how they describe it, and it allows them to talk to the plants, talk to the spirit guides, talk to any other kind of entities they work with and actually just communicate with the best part of themselves so they use it as a bridge plant a lot of times. And so it’s in a lot of the ceremonial use, and also used to move energy, either call it in or move it out, so they’ll be smoking mapacho during ayahuasca ceremonies, preparing for ayahuasca ceremonies, using it to cleanse the ayahuasca before ingestion. A variety of different uses with this particular South American variation on the nicotine.
Ben: Interesting, and it makes you more sensitive to other chemicals, you explained in the book.
Aubrey: Yup.
Ben: So if you used something like this, or even if you used nicotine, you’d want to be aware that it might enhance your sensitivity to say caffeine, which is probably why my nicotine toothpick-coffee trick seems to work pretty well because the nicotine is enhancing my sensitivity to caffeine.
Aubrey: Yeah, exactly. So always be mindful when you’re mixing any different sets of compounds coz sometimes they’re synergistic and sometimes they’re gonna be too accelerating and sometimes they’re gonna just like throwing on the brakes.
Ben: Right, I’m sure. Okay.
Aubrey: And then rapé. Okay, so rapé, so basically you can do it to yourself, most of the time somebody else does it, but they load this little tube up with this little kinda… it has a little hook on the end, so it goes down through this tube and then up. And they put one end of that in your nose and then the tobacco rests at the bottom of the tube in the little elbow part before it goes up to your nose, and they pack that with tobacco and sometimes ash or charcoal and other medicinal herbs. And then they just blast that into your nostril.
Ben: Wow.
Aubrey: And it is one of the most painful experiences you will have, and then they very quickly reload…
Ben: Because it burns?
Aubrey: It burns. It burns like so deep, it’s like you just ate a fistful of wasabi, like you took a giant bite out of the biggest… like you thought wasabi was guacamole and you just packed a whole chip full of it and you just ate it. I mean it’s that kind of intensity of burn, and they know that you won’t have much time, like you won’t wanna do it again if you wait, so they pretty quickly get you to calm and they blast the other nostril. And then what happens is you just get flooded with this nicotinic reaction, and it’s one of the coolest feelings for me for like a minute coz your body is just heavy and vibrating and pulsing with energy from the tobacco. But then man, the nausea kicks in [laughs], coz that… on the upper end dose whether you’re snussing or cigars or particularly with rapé, on the back end of that, if you have a little bit of a higher dose, you’re gonna be wicked nauseous.
Ben: Have you ever had the nasal-cranial release? The chiropractic ones where they take the inflatable balloon and shove it up your nose and then blow the balloon up?
Aubrey: Yes, I have. Yeah.
Ben: Which is less comfortable? Because I’ve had that done, I haven’t had this rapé done.
Aubrey: Well, this one, the nasal-cranial release, that happens and it’s uncomfortable but then it’s over. This one is uncomfortable, then incredibly pleasurable, then you’re incredibly nauseous. [laughs] So I don’t know, it’s kinda hard, one is uncomfortable and then there’s a release that feels good, and then with the rapé it’s terribly painful burning followed by ecstatic, whole body, energetic orgasm followed by two hours of nausea.
Ben: Wow.
Aubrey: [laughs] So I don’t know, choose your poison.
Ben: This is something you would travel to South America to do?
Aubrey: Yeah, this is something you want. It’s part of like a cleansing ritual where they kinda blast you with this…
Ben: Okay, so this isn’t a back alley behind an Austin, barbeque doing this as a ceremony.
Aubrey: No, no, definitely not. It resets the nervous system kinda patterns…
Ben: Okay.
Aubrey: Coz when you get that much energy in your system… if we think of ourselves energetically expressed beings, meaning all of our cells are in atomic motion, all of our brain waves have certain cyclical patterns. I mean we are rhythmic beings, this isn’t any woo-woo [beep]. We literally are in different sets of rhythms and I think some of these rhythms can get discordant, and I think this really helps reset, like a hard reset by putting you to a different vibration and allowing you to settle back, so that’s really kinda what it feels like to me.
Ben: Okay, got it. So there’s a lot of other things that you go about throughout the day, but I wanna cover some of this stuff in the time that we have left. One is you, like me I believe, are a big fan of squeezing in a nap when you can.
Aubrey: Mmhmm.
Ben: I have this elaborate napping protocol where I take my reishi mushroom extract before lunch and I have my Biomat turned on before I sit down to lunch so it’s nice and toasty warm by the time I go up there. And my Normatec boots are right there on the bed and I slip into those and I lay down on my Biomat and I put on my binaural beats and my essential oil diffuser, and I just do infrared and compressive therapy on my legs for about 40 minutes. And that’s my nap, and it’s glorious, but I also know that you’re a fan of a nap. So walk me through any of your…
Aubrey: Yeah, man. What am I gonna say to that? I mean that’s [beep] perfect, man.
Ben: I need something to add in. I need to make it more complex, obviously.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: So, I wanna hear any napping tips that you have.
Aubrey: Man, you know honestly, that sounds to me like an ideal protocol. And really for me, generally all I get is the binaural beats and maybe some scent therapy. I use a lot of Palo Santo, I actually gave you a stick of that which is like a smoked scent.
Ben: Oh, I remember that. I loved that stuff. So you actually use that for sleep?
Aubrey: I use that before I go to sleep, yeah. Just kinda like… that, to me, because I’ve anchored that scent, I’ve anchored that scent to all of my meditative states all the time so I’m really relaxed and now I’m anchoring it to when I’m going to sleep or when I’m gonna take a nap. It’s like a scent trigger, so the minute I smell that it’s like “oh, it’s not time to work, it’s not time to stress anymore, this is time to let go.”
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: And so building that scent trigger has been probably the only thing that I can add to that. So you just talked about your essential oil diffuser but I would encourage people to have a particular scent or two that signifies “let it all go, man.”
Ben: Hmm.
Aubrey: I don’t work on my computer when the Palo Santo smell is there.
Ben: Yeah. That works in reverse, too.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: I do mint and I do rosemary in my office, and rosemary they’ve done studies on this how when you study while being exposed to the scent of rosemary and then you actually take a test or perform some cognitive task associated with what you were studying while also smelling the rosemary, your performance improves. So you can do relaxation association with scent and also performance association with scent.
Aubrey: Yeah, and lemon increases people’s ability, like typing accuracy when they studied people who are stenographers.
Ben: Interesting.
Aubrey: They tested typing accuracy with the scent of lemon, and actually found interestingly enough, while lemon made them type better, more accurately, fish, the smell of nasty fish made them type worse. [laughs] So like lemon, the thing that masks the fishy smell, it’s just kinda interesting to read that in the research.
Ben: That sounds like a pretty dumb study, of course the fish…
Aubrey: [laughs] Yeah.
Ben: Here smell this rotten fish then type. Now don’t smell the rotten fish and type. Tell me which one feels better. Yeah, and you’ve got a lot of research in the books about how naps outperform high doses of caffeine for cognitive tasks. I mean you take a deep dive into that…
Aubrey: And overnight sleep.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: That’s the best thing that people don’t get. If you’re comparing more overnight sleep with a nap, everyone’s like “oh yeah, overnight sleep is the most important thing coz that’s what everybody’s trying to tell you.” Uh-uh, wrong. Naps, you’ll outperform in cognitive tests when you take a nap versus get more overnight sleep.
Ben: Interesting. Okay, so in addition to the naps, you’ve got a lot of other sleep tips in here, but rather than taking a deep dive into sleep tips, coz we’ve kinda kicked this sleep horse to death a lot before on the show.
Aubrey: Mmhmm.
Ben: I wanna cover a few other things that I haven’t seen covered before in other books. Like you’ve got tips for keeping the appetite satiated that a lot of people don’t talk about, like chopsticks for example. Can you go into some of the calorie control or the appetite satiation tips you cover in the book?
Aubrey: Well one of the things that we don’t pay attention to is how fast we eat, and there’s a lot of research on the speed that people eat and how obese they are. One study shows that fast eaters are up to 115% more likely to be obese, and then there’s another study of 4,000 people showed that people who eat very fast gain the most body weight since age 20. And when you chew more and slow down, you end up eating less, so part of that is mindfulness but part of it is just the incredible efficiency by which our tools give us to eat. And I think the beauty of chopsticks is they’re an inefficient tool, so it’s like a physical override to prevent us from eating superfast. Now if you look at some ways they do it in Japan where they actually lift the bowl and then use the chopsticks as a shovel.
Ben: I was gonna say they can get pretty damn efficient with those chopsticks in Japan.
Aubrey: [laughs] Yeah, so I get it, but for us, if you don’t do it that way and you actually use the cocktail fork instead of a big fork, always use the teaspoon instead of the big spoon if you’re having soup or anything with that or mashed potato, whatever. Use the smallest tools you can and they’ll actually force you to be a lot more mindful, to chew more, to eat slower, and that’s one of the best and easiest things to do. Now I also like to layer that with some mindfulness before…
Ben: Mmhmm.
Aubrey: And I have this process of saying grace, which I actually got from Aldous Huxley’s book “Island” where before you take a bite, you create the very best, perfect bite. It’s like that show that they have on the Food Network, I forgot which one it is but it’s just like the very best, perfect bite of everything on your fork, and then you think about where all that food was sourced from, where it came from, the soil that it was grown in, the life that the animal lived. Everything that had to conspire, the people who cooked the food, how they plated the food, where the plate came from, where the silverware came from, where you were to be in this position, just take a moment to take all that in with gratitude before you take your bite. And then taste, let it roll around in your mouth and taste every bit of it for as long as you can and just appreciation for the ability to express physical love through the ingestion of food, and sex with life itself that you experience through all of the pleasurable sense including eating. So that combination of that really mindful state with potentially using some less efficient tools, and you don’t have to change what you’re eating. It’s just changing how you’re eating…
Ben: Right.
Aubrey: And you’re gonna see a massive benefit.
Ben: It actually enhances the, it’s called the first phase insulin response. You’re supposed to have a normal insulin response when you consume food, and when you eat it fast or you eat without mindfulness. They’ve even done interesting studies on bitters and digestives and everything from fennel seeds to lemon. I know you guys have your digestive supplement that has ginger in it, all of these enhance a normal insulinogenic response that causes your blood glucose to a meal, what’s called your glycemic variability, to decrease after you’ve eaten.
Aubrey: Yup.
Ben: And there’s an actual increase in these incretin hormones and insulin when you do this, like a good increase. Plus it’s kinda hard to eat a pizza and Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch with chopsticks, so there’s that too.
Aubrey: [laughs] Yeah, exactly.
Ben: You should write a follow up book called the Chopstick Diet.
Aubrey: [laughs] Totally. I actually wanted to make really heavy handled silverware with really tiny heads on it. I actually almost went through with production on this but I just got too much to do. So it’s like you’re holding something really big and heavy in your hand but you have really tiny ends on it [laughs] and so you’re like working your wrist mobility…
Ben: There’s such a small age population that would ever consider even buying that.
Aubrey: [laughs] I know.
Ben: It’s like, yeah there’s products out there that are just gonna have a lot of difficulty… the chilly pad, you know? It’s a great product, I own one. I’ve got one on the left side of the bed, one on the right side of the bed. My wife can sleep at her temperature, I can sleep at my temperature. I don’t think millions and millions of Americans are gonna be rushing out to get that though. It’s a small niche-y product, and your heavy chopsticks might be right up that alley.
Aubrey: [laughs]
Ben: And by the way, folks who invented the chilly pad listening in, I love your product, I’m just saying. So okay, a few other things that you get into, and I alluded to this earlier so I gotta bring it up. What intrigued me in the book is how toxic sex can be in our day and age. Go into that a bit, because I know even you have a history of having worked in the sex toy industry and I believe you sold some form of, what was it?
Aubrey: The Fleshlight.
Ben: Yeah, a Fleshlight. What was a Fleshlight?
Aubrey: Yeah, the Fleshlight was actually… didn’t have any of those toxic elements in it, it’s mostly mineral oil like 90% mineral oil, like food grade mineral oil so that was on the better side. But yeah, a lot of those sex toys, they’re coming out of the cheapest, lowest grade plastics, rubbers, silicones. You can actually smell it coming off there, and that’s gonna have all of the issues with the plastics that we’re ingesting orally. I think a lot of people misconstrue the fact that the skin absorbs at an incredibly high rate, whatever you put on your skin gets in your body. You don’t just have to take it in through your mouth, you can take it in some other way into your digestive tract to absorb it.
Ben: I don’t think a lot of people know that, but even I… I honestly don’t think a lot, like once I get down to my genitals, it’s like something turns off in my brain. It’s like “oh, this is built for sex, okay I’m gonna smear this all over her vagina and my [beep] and shove this up and get it all in the places where things get absorbed, where they actually give you supplements and suppositories and everything else that allows you to absorb all these things into you blood stream, but heck it’s sex so it must be healthy.”
Aubrey: So the worst of all these things actually isn’t a part of the sex act, and you should be mindful of all the lubes and the toys, but honestly the very worst thing is tampons. There is nothing worse than tampons. Tampons have, not only styrene, which is a neurotoxin, but also chloroform which is that thing they put on those rags and knock people out in the movies which actually doesn’t work that way, and all kinds of toxic chemicals that aren’t regulated because it’s not something that the FDA considers ingestible even though it’s in one of the most highly absorbent areas of a woman’s body. And over the course of a year, over the course of a lifetime, they’ll use 11,000 tampons and 11,000 times they’re basically putting a toxic suppository into their body. And I mean a lot of these things associated with menstruation…
Ben: Wow.
Aubrey: One of the conflating variable is “oh yeah, also did we mention that we’re putting a neurotoxin and chloroform into your body during the whole process?” No wonder it’s [beep] uncomfortable, you know what I mean? A lot of shit is going on hormonally, I get it, but that’s only making matters worse and I think it’s something that everybody should be really mindful of. And whether that’s using pads or using other brands like a brand called Cora is a good one, there’s a bunch of natural tampons.
Ben: Cora? How’s that’ spelled?
Aubrey: C-O-R-A.
Ben: So they make natural tampons?
Aubrey: Natural tampons, which is gonna be a way, way, way better solution and I think that’s just gonna become common knowledge. And there’s other things they put in these tampons that like accelerate bleeding, they’re like [beep] cigarette makers. These are like [beep] cigarettes, they’re really, really bad.
Ben: Wow, [beep] cigarettes.
Aubrey: [laughs] And people just aren’t savvy to it. It just kinda feels like this extension, I studied classical civilization and antiquity, and in ancient Greece they used to make women pack their vaginas full of horse dung and that was the way to keep it sanitary or whatever. I’m like we haven’t gone that much farther, we’re still putting toxic stuff in women’s vaginas. That’s gotta stop.
Ben: Well you may have just started a trend if this is taken out of context, and all the biohacking forums there’s gonna be…
Aubrey: [laughs] Horse dung.
Ben: Bunch of farmers are gonna be just making bank because all these Silicon Valley exec wives are gonna be calling them up asking for horse dung to shove into their vaginas coz they heard it on a health podcast.
Aubrey: [laughs] No, it’s not healthy and it does not result in anything positive. It’s just doing the wrong thing during menstruation, horse dung and tampons = not good.
Ben: So Cora tampons, then I know you get into a lot of other stuff in the book, but basically the idea is look at your sex products, your loobs, any of these things that are petroleum-based, any of these tampons, and use healthy, natural alternatives.
Aubrey: Absolutely.
Ben: Okay, cool. Another question that I would be remiss not to ask, because I know this is right up your wheelhouse and it’s also something that you address in the book, is partying and hedonism.
Aubrey: Yup.
Ben: What to do to mitigate the damage when we’re actually out and about or we’re putting things into our body that might need to be detoxified? What do you do, how do you set your body up for a party or fix the damage after as quickly as possible?
Aubrey: Step one I think is doing it with intention and doing it not like an antagonist to your body but like basically talking to your body. Coz I did this recently, I had my 37th birthday, and I decided to do a grown up frat party, so we had beer pong and flip cup and an ice luge, and I was excited coz I don’t usually part like that. I was like “screw it, I’m getting older, I’m almost 40, how many times am I gonna play beer pong, I’m gonna go for it.” And so I kinda started talking to my body earlier, I was like “hey body, we’re gonna be drinking a lot of beer and we’re gonna be going through this but we’re gonna have a blast. And I’m gonna listen to you during the night and if you need water, if you need whatever…” And it’s just starting this dialogue, so it’s not like you’re completely out of touch with what’s going on in your body and I think that’s a huge thing to remember.
Don’t just completely disconnect, your body will allow you to push the extremes but just stay in communication, don’t just tell it to shut up, don’t listen, I don’t care about you. Like alright, I’m gonna ask a lot of you, I’m gonna ask a lot from you tonight but we’re gonna have a lot of fun. And the body will acknowledge that and you’ll acknowledge that and you can be mindful throughout it coz I remember even that night, at a certain point, it was 1:30am and I drank a lot of beer, I had a lot of nicotine, I had a lot of other stuff. I was like “alright body, what do you need?” It’s like “salt water.” I was like [laughs] “alright I got you.” So for the next 20 minutes, all I did was drink salt water, and the body was like “alright, thanks.” I was like “alright body, I’m going back in there” and it’s like “okay man.” It’s kind of like… obviously it’s not using words but just kinda tapping into what I really needed, and really at the end of the night, the next morning, I didn’t feel guilty about it, I went into it with intention, and I had a blast and I actually felt pretty good. Now compare that to the time where I completely shut off my body and just pounded drinks and not checked in, and not only do I feel guilty, I feel like I made the wrong choice, I feel like I didn’t listen to the body so that, from a mental standpoint, is really important. And then there’s some physical things you can add on to that, too.
Ben: What are some of the supplements or the food groups you would use to mop up the damage?
Aubrey: Yeah, so mop up the damage. When you’re drinking, you’re gonna create acetaldehyde, and acetaldehyde is one of those really toxic compounds that makes you feel like [beep] when you finish drinking. And one of the minerals that’s really important for creating the compounds that break down toxic acetaldehyde is molybdenum. And molybdenum is found in hummus, chick peas, beans, but you can also get it in supplement. We have it in one of our key mineral supplements, and like 300mg of molybdenum will help give your body the raw materials it needs to start breaking that down. So definitely supplement with molybdenum, magnesium is also super helpful, and then glutathione is another great one as the master antioxidant for the liver that also helps break down acetaldehyde, so if you can get your hands on that, either sublingual or intranasal or IV injection of that, that’s gonna be a great one. And then the other thing that happens is alcohol is a GABA-agonist so it’s gonna create more GABA in the brain which makes you feel drunk and happy and everything. So what the opposing neurotransmitter to that, so what the body does to compensate is produce glutamate. Glutamate is that thing that makes you feel cracky, it makes it hard for you to sleep and kinda wired in the morning when you’re hung over. And so that’s why people recommend that hair of the dog method coz you’re actually increasing the GABA again to balance out the glutamate, but that’s not gonna do it coz it just pushes the ball down the hill. So finding ways to increase the GABA and some people can tolerate some kind of pharmaGABA mechanism that can actually take supplemental GABA, sometimes that’s helpful but actually L-theanine is pretty closely related to the GABA mechanism. So instead of reaching for coffee, reach for matcha tea which is really high in L-theanine and that’s gonna be a better alternative to help balance out that GABA-glutamate balance. And beyond that, just hydration, electrolytes, minerals and forgiveness. [laughs] Forgiveness from your body for what you just did.
Ben: Yeah, I like it. Have you ever read “Dirty Genes” by Dr. Ben Lynch?
Aubrey: No, I haven’t.
Ben: Okay, he goes into different genetic pathways, you can take your 23andMe raw data and upload it to his website Strategy, and I had a fascinating interview with him, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. But it turns out that I personally have a specific gene that restricts my ability to metabolize alcohol properly, which is probably why I’m like a 1-2 drink guy when I’m partying then I wanna switch to the vape pen or something. But he actually has like, he told me what if you wanna drink? Here’s your stack and he recommended this anti-histamine supplement and molybdenum, and same. Very, very similar to some of these things that you’ve discovered, but it turns out that if you have these specific genetic snips, you can feed your 23andMe data into this Strategy and find out if you’re somebody who really, really needs to enhance that pathway. So it’s fascinating stuff…
Aubrey: Awesome.
Ben: It’s very interesting, and the whole chapter you have in here on mitigating the effects of a night of partying or other such hedonism is once again very practical. The whole book is just chock full of practical tips.
Aubrey: Yeah, I mean if it wasn’t I wouldn’t do it. I live a really well balanced life, it’s not all about my performance in the gym or all about my performance anywhere, it’s about loving and living as big, as enjoyably as possible. That’s the process we tried to create, step by step by step, something that you can repeat and enjoyably repeat every day and it would just make your life better and better.
Ben: Yeah, I like it man. I like it. Well folks, and by the way… Aubrey, I should tell you that I actually did a search for your super probiotic coconut yogurt with the 1999 food label on it.
Aubrey: Mmhmm.
Ben: It appears that it actually is available on Amazon, Newearth Super Foods Original Formula Non-Dairy Super Probiotic Coconut Yogurt.
Aubrey: That’s the one.
Ben: Unfortunately, I dunno if this is because of your book, could be the Aubrey Marcus effect on Amazon, it’s currently unavailable. However, you can have them email you when the item becomes available.
Aubrey: That’s funny.
Ben: I don’t even know what the price is.
Aubrey: There’s another one called coconut [1:23:53] ______, coconut ______ has one that they’ll ship in cold packs to you, too. It’s not quite as good but it’s still pretty damn good. Actually GTs is coming out with one…
Ben: I know, I had GTs.
Aubrey: That you’ll see in a lot more Whole Foods but it’s a little more sour.
Ben: Yeah.
Aubrey: Like it has a little more of that lactic acid kind of bite to it.
Ben: It’s good, I did the LA Spartan Stadium race and GTs was there. They were sponsoring the event, they had that coconut yogurt that hasn’t come out yet. And yes while I finished, I just stood there talking to the person “oh this is pretty good” distract him, grab another sample.
Aubrey: Yeah.
Ben: Yeah, it’s tasty stuff. So anyways though, all of these things that Aubrey and I have been talking about from the alternative to pussy cigarettes to snus tobacco packs to nicotine toothpicks and beyond, along with the link to his book “Own The Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices For Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex”, I will link to in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/owntheday. Aubrey, thanks for coming on the show, man.
Aubrey: Thank you my brother, pleasure.
Ben: Alright folks, I’m Ben Greenfield along with Aubrey Marcus, author of “Own The Day”, signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com, have an amazing week.
Human optimization thought leader Aubrey Marcus’s personal and professional mission rests on a single question: How can we get the most out of our body and mind on a daily basis?
He answers that question in the new book Own the Day, Own Your Life – an empowering handbook that guides readers to optimize every moment of the day, from waking in the morning, through work and play, until bedtime each night. With small, actionable changes implemented throughout the course of one day, we can feel better, perform more efficiently, and live happier. And these daily habits turn into weekly routines, ultimately becoming part of lifelong healthy choices.
From workouts and diet to inbox triage, mindfulness, shower temperature, and sex, this ground-breaking manual provides simple strategies for each element of your day. Drawing from the latest studies and traditional practices from around the world, Own the Day, Own Your Life delivers an optimization philosophy, including cutting-edge life-hacking tips, nutritional expertise, brain upgrades, and fitness regiments.
Own the Day, Own Your Life is a must-have “choose-your-own-adventure” guide for the everyman and everywoman—packed with pragmatic and effective strategies that empower you to enjoy your life, take charge of your health, and own the day.
Aubrey Marcus is the founder and CEO of Onnit, a lifestyle brand based on a holistic health philosophy he calls Total Human Optimization. Onnit is an Inc. 500 company and an industry leader with products optimizing millions of lives, including many top professional athletes around the world.
Aubrey currently hosts the Aubrey Marcus Podcast, a motivational destination for conversations with the brightest minds in athletics, business, science, relationships and spirituality with over 10MM downloads on iTunes. He regularly provides commentary to outlets like Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Doctors and The Joe Rogan Experience. He has been featured on the cover of Men’s Health, is the author of the life-coaching course Go For Your Win, and his newest (and first!) book is Own The Day, Own Your Life from HarperCollins.
During our discussion, you’ll discover:
-Aubrey’s coconut yogurt for millionaires that eliminated his wife’s yeast infection…[11:00]
-Aubrey’s special “electrolyte-infused” water recipe that can fix adrenal fatigue “blood-pounding-in-your-head” issues…[14:00]
-Why Aubrey swims in cold water each morning and his breathwork protocol before…[18:35]
-The “Lamaze” breathing protocol Aubrey talks about in the book…[23:15]
-How Aubrey hacks a cryotherapy chamber to enhance vagus nerve activation…[30:00]
-Aubrey’s 3 step routine for making your body and brain better while you are commuting…[42:05]
-Why Aubrey recommends tobacco and nicotine in the book, which are not typical health tips…[52:40]
-The fascinating effects of “The Ceremony of Mapacho and Rape”…[58:15] -How to use chopsticks to keep your appetite satiated…[1:07:22]
-Why sex can be toxic and what you can do about it…[1:12:35]
-What do you personally do to mitigate the damage of a night of partying or other hedonism…[1:17:10]
-And much more…
Resources from this episode:
–My previous podcast with Aubrey Marcus
–Super Coconut Probiotic Yogurt
–Four Sigmatic cordyceps/chaga coffee mushrooms
–My podcast on dirty genes with Dr. Ben Lynch
–Balloon Intranasal Adjustment
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