[Transcript] – Bodybuilding, Biohacking, Biometrics Testing, Children As Mini-Adults, What Ben’s Reading & More With Roger Snipes.

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Transcripts

June 18, 2022

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/roger-snipes-podcast/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:39] Podcast Sponsors

[00:04:29] How Ben's fitness priorities are changing with time and age

[00:10:11] Ben's current diet

[00:13:51] Best ways to test your biometrics

[00:18:39] Acclimating children to “adult” foods

[00:22:26] How to reduce inflammation in the body

[00:28:32] Podcast Sponsors

[00:32:37] Ben describes the beginning of his walk and relationship with God

[00:36:32] How Ben consumes a massive amount of books

[00:41:23] How Ben consumes a massive amount of books

[00:45:38] Ben's recommended books on mental agility, emotional endurance, financial success, etc.

[00:52:17] Concerns about how modern-day children are being raised

[00:55:16] Why relationships don't have the endurance they once had

[00:58:03] Is it possible to love others unconditionally?

[01:00:39] Founding origins of Kion

[01:05:26] Closing the Podcast

[01:07:50] End of Podcast

Ben:  My name is Ben Greenfield. And, on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

That honestly is not enough motivation to keep you on the straight narrow path making the choices obeying God's law, et cetera. What it instead comes down to is a deep, deep love for your creator and a love and then just savor all of God's blessings at the end of the day. Lining up in a row, putting a square peg in a square hole, a round peg in a round hole, learning at the same pace of the rest of the classroom, getting exposed to peer pressure and bullying.

So, Kion, it was funny because I don't know if I've told this story before in a podcast, I may have.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. Got another great podcast for you recorded in London during my visit to London for the fantastic Health Optimisation Summit if you get a chance to go to this summit. Next year, you absolutely should here in London. Anyways, though, Roger Snipes, a very well-known professional UK-based bodybuilder reached out to me and we decided that we would do an interview together while walking in the park. So, we discuss a wide range of topics from fitness to faith, to family. I think you'll enjoy this one. All the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/RogerSnipes. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/RogerS-N-I-P-E-S.

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You might be wondering whether your sleep is truly optimized. Well, the bed is obviously a big, big part of this, the mattress particularly. There's a mattress company that I've been working with. They're called Essentia. You may have heard the podcast that I did with their founder, Jack. And, what Essentia does is they dial in the seven key parts of sleep that you need for recovery, and for performance, and for optimization during sleep. Not just sleep but deep sleep. So, they've tested these mattresses by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. They're allergen-free. They got a bunch of technology packed into them for things like active cooling, EMF protection, accelerated recovery, better deep sleep cycles. I mean, this is the mattress that pro athletes sleep on for this reason. It doesn't have any electronic bells and whistles in it, so it's not blasting with Wi-Fi and technology all night while you sleep. It's one of those things where I just rather not be tied down to technology while I sleep but instead, sleep all naturally on these mattresses, and they're just organic as hell. It's pretty crazy.

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It's always difficult to start a podcast when technically you're interviewing me but I brought the equipment. So, I don't know who gets first dibs on the introduction, Roger, but I must say for anybody who is listening in, we're walking through a park right now in London with a portable microphone. So, if you hear a bird get run over by a tractor, that's why. So, anyway, I'll shut up now.

Roger:  Awesome traffic. That's for sure. But, look, it's a great pleasure to meet you in person. I was actually thinking that was going to be via Zoom. But, to see you in person, it's great, man.

Ben:  Oh, it's so much better. We get to absorb each other's electromagnetic frequencies. And, it's always a different conversation when you're face-to-face or at least walking side-by-side than Zoom. I'm 6 foot 2 inches.

Roger:  6'2, alright.

Ben:  Yeah, 6 foot 2 and I weigh about 175. But, I got to tell you, and I'm only going to tell you this because I know you have a history of bodybuilding at least a little bit, a little tiny bit.

Roger:  It's tiny, just tiny.

Ben:  When I was in college I was 6 foot 2 and I was bodybuilding and I was 215. So, I was 40 pounds heavier than I am right now.

Roger:  So, your training has obviously changed since then, what's your training regimen at the moment?

Ben:  Oh, well, it's very simple actually. I'm at the stage in my life where I'm trying to prioritize a lot of time with my sons. They're 14 years old so they're in those formative years when I think they really need a father around leading them through a lot of things. So, I've steered the direction of my workouts to be inclusive of a couple of teenage boys tagging along with me. So, it's pretty much four things the foundation of my training: kettlebells, sauna, ice, and breathwork. Okay. So, kettlebell, sauna, ice, and breathwork. So, I've taken the Russian Kettlebell Certification and the StrongFirst Certification, do a lot of kettlebell snatches, kettlebell cleans, kettlebell swings, kettlebell deadlifts, goblet, squats, et cetera. I'm in the sauna four to five times a week in a deep sweat for 30 to 40 minutes. I'm in the cold plunge every day typically after the sauna, sometimes a couple times a day, two to four-minute cold plunges. And then, typically anywhere from a 15-minute breathwork session three times a week all the way up to five times a week with an occasional long 60 to 90-minute more holotropic type of breathwork session in which interestingly covers a lot of your bases from a cardiovascular standpoint as well.

And then, I walk a ton. When I travel, I probably walk 20,000 to 30,000 steps a day. When I'm at home, it's closer to 12,000 to 20,000 steps. So, a lot of walking when I'm talking on the phone, when I'm having chats with guys like you. And so, the only thing missing from what I just presented to you in terms of kettlebells, ice, heat, and breathwork is that as a guy who's known to be a biohacker, people send me a lot of biohacking equipment, blood flow restriction bands, and Vasper machine, and the ARX single set, the failure machine. And, I sprinkle that stuff in for fun throughout the week. I'll throw in a few sessions here and there. But, typically, I'm doing something hard for a half-hour a day and then everything else is just low-level physical activity spread throughout the entire day. So, my kettlebell workouts are half-hour, my saunas are a half hour, my breathwork sessions range. If I'm using these biohacking modalities, typically a half hour, I find that that's just the sweet spot for me which is great compared to the three hours a day in the gym when I was bodybuilding, just body split training.

Roger:  Oh, man, the precision and training. Sometimes it just takes too much time. As you know, when I sent you the message, I was in the gym for a bit trying to get it all in. And then, I went back a bit later to do some Muay Thai. And, I'll tell you what, the Muay Thai, that was so much more conditioning work.

Ben:  Oh, yeah.

Roger:  I was exhausted.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I roll with my sons every once in a while and I used to do a lot of striking. And, yeah, those rounds where you got sometimes the coach would have us do two-minute rounds with 30 seconds off and 10 rounds of that, and you're just smoked by the end. Jiu-jitsu sometimes longer, four or five minutes. So, yeah, it's great conditioning. Absolutely.

When I was a bodybuilder though, I did almost all. I joked about body split training. I didn't do a lot of that because I was a lean gainer, skinny hard gainer. And so, for me, I found a lot of success with about four times a week, full-body, full-body heavy. So, it squats, cleans, deadlifts, and push press. And then, on the weekends, I do a little bit of vanity work like biceps and things like that. But, that worked really well for me and actually cut down the amount of time I had to spend in the gym.

Roger:  What's your current body fat because you're looking super shredded in your pictures?

Ben:  Yeah. So, since I was 14 years old, it's always been 4 to 8%. I eat like a horse. I can eat 4,000 calories a day. My metabolism is screaming high. My parents are lean. All my siblings are lean. My wife is even leaner than me like a lean skinny Montana rancher girl. So, yeah, despite us loving our butter, and lard, and ghee, and fatty ribeye steaks, and salmon skin, and everything else at the house, we Greenfields don't seem to be able to pack on weight very well.

Roger:  So, to talking about that with all the meat and stuff, do you have a farm at home? Because I know you do some hunting as well, so what's your whole protocol there when it comes to meat?

Ben:  Yeah. So, my diet is largely a nose-to-tail carnivorous type of diet. I do a lot of bone broth, bone marrow, steaks, rumps, roast, chops, liver, heart, kidney, a lot of the organ meats. And then, I dress that up with from a very ancestral standpoint for carbohydrates, a lot of cellular living carbohydrates versus acellular processed carbohydrates. So, what I mean by that is purple potato, taro, sweet potato, yam, parsnip, beet, carrot, underground root vegetables, things like that for the primary carbohydrate source. And then, the other things that I throw in there is a little bit of raw honey, some dark, dark berries like low glycemic index berries. People ask, “What about the fiber when you're eating all the meat?” And, I get a lot of fiber from foods that fill me up that are very satiating but are low in calories. So, I do a lot of the Japanese yam noodles. I'll do a lot of the pumpkin mash, sea moss gel, chia seed slurries.

And, the nice part about eating a lot of these foods even bone broth, of course, is the gelatinous bone broth, a lot of these foods that are higher in gelatin or thick or clumpy or in a gel-like format, they're better able to hydrate the body and carry water through the body because if you look at Dr. Gerald Pollock's research at University of Washington on the fourth phase of water and water able to be in this gel-like structure, which actually is in our cells, if you're getting a lot of your hydration from these water-rich foods that are carrying water and nourishing the gut, I find that to be very satiating. And, that's how I get my fiber. And so, that's generally my diet.

The only thing I throw in is from a product standpoint, there's one company in the U.S. called Tom Cowan's vegetable powders. And so, he basically takes organic heirloom vegetables and powders, and you got turmeric extract, and broccoli, and high protein leaf powder, and root powder, all these wonderful powders. So, I'll sprinkle that a lot of times and the same way one might salt their food. And then, I also use for oils the only seed or plant-based oils that I touch are aside from extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil from a company called Andrea Seed Oils. And, for those, these are very, very high-quality cold-pressed never been exposed to acidity or rancidity or temperature or pressure. But, they're chia seed, flax seed, sunflower seed, but these aren't rancid bastardized plant oils, they're super-duper high quality. And, a lot of times, I'm drizzling stuff like that over the meat.

And then, most of the meat is either stuff I bow hunt. We've got goats and chickens at home so we do a lot of goat milk, goat yogurt, eggs, things like that. And then, I do a lot of ordering from U.S. Wellness Meats. That's one company in the U.S. that ships out a lot of these non-standard cuts and strange cuts of meat and free shipping if you do a big enough order. So, I just keep my freezer stocked with that, the meat that I've hunted. And then, there's another company. I don't know what it's like in the UK if they have these companies, they'll ship food to you like boxes.

Roger:  Not quite the same.

Ben:  Okay. But, there's another one called Seatopia and they ship sashimi-grade fish to my house each month. So, that's where I get a lot of the seafood like kampachi and salmon colors and really nice cuts of trout and scallops and the like. So, yeah, it's pretty varied, but I'd say 80% of it is meat and seafood.

Roger:   Awesome. How do you make your decisions with your variety of food? Is it through, I don't know, different sorts of tests? Have you done a microbiome test to check? Okay, these are the foods I should be eating.

Ben:  Sure, yeah. I think that. And, this is why I've never really written a diet book because there is no one perfect diet for all of humankind. It's going to widely vary based on your individual biochemistry, everything from the size of your stomach, or your spleen, or your pancreas, or your liver to your vitamin D excretion rates, or your uric acid excretion rates, or your needs from an activity level, your genetic predisposition. Maybe you have familial hypercholesterolemia and poor gallbladder and liver function. So, the ketogenic diet might not be the best choice for you based on just a couple simple parameters like that. And so, from a testing standpoint, what I do and what I have a lot of the clients who I might work with doing nutrition plans for, I do a stool test. It's a three-day stool test by Doctor's Data. And, that one allows me to look at parasites, yeast, fungus, bacterial markers, microbial imbalances, things like that. And then, I do a basic blood panel and your comprehensive metabolic panel and your lipid count thyroid, just all the basic parameters you get from a blood. And then, I do a more micronutrient and toxin-based blood test called the Nutreval. And, that one looks at a lot of smaller fungal markers, amino acids, fatty acid balances, omega indexes, et cetera. And then, for food allergy, really, really good gold standard panel that doesn't result in a lot of false positives is called a Cyrex. So, I'll do a Cyrex panel for food allergies. And then, for the hormones, urine is best because it gives you a really good running 24-hour view of the hormones rather than blood, which will give you a one-time snapshot.

Roger:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, the best test for that is called the DUTCH, the dried urine test. And, that'll also give you some information about neurotransmitter balances, melatonin, upstream and downstream cortisol metabolites, what's testosterone getting converted into, what the estrogen pathways look like, et cetera. And then, the last one would be just a salivary genetic analysis to see not only what you might be prime T from an ancestral standpoint because there is something to that, what your ancestors ate is something that you might be more accustomed to be able to tolerate.

And, the other thing you find out from these genetic tests, let's say like the dirty genes test by Dr. Ben Lynch called StrateGene, it's a fantastic example. You can find out, what do your nitric oxide pathways look like, what do your sulfur metabolism pathways look like, what do your histamine tolerance or intolerance pathways look like. So, you can see if there's certain things that you might want to do from a genetic standpoint to clean things up or add in.

Roger:  That's awesome. I mean, that's a lot. So, how would that work with your family? You've all got slightly different microbiomes or maybe it's quite similar because you eat the same.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly. There is something to your local environment influencing your biome characteristics, the people that you're around, you share bacteria with them, how long you've lived in a certain area, and the type of food you've grown accustomed to in that area. So, if you look at my family, we eat somewhat similarly. Probably a few differences would be when carbohydrates come out to the table. I'm very low carb. I have a little bit more sensitivity when it comes to blood glucose fluctuations and I'm always highly cognizant of that. So, my family will do a lot more of the rice, or the sourdough bread, or the sweet potato, or something like that. I'm usually low on that. I'm usually heavier on the meat. A lot of times my wife will make a lovely salad, but I don't do a lot of raw vegetables so I might have a very tiny, tiny bit of the salad but then I'll have extra meat. But, every night at our house, there's options for veg, there's options for starch, there's options for meat. And, really it's more of macronutrient considerations because all the food is super healthy.

And, occasionally, there's something I mentioned the Cyrex food allergy test, one of the few foods I truly have an intolerance to from an autoimmune standpoint is green beans. So, maybe there will be a dish with green beans but I'll pick around the green beans. So, it's pretty simple. And, I could see there being a more problematic scenario where perhaps someone who can't tolerate fats at all is married to someone with Alzheimer's and dementia who needs to be very, very careful because that's almost a diabetes type 3 type of disease. It's very responsive to sugars. And so, in a scenario like that, you have someone who might be a ketogenically appropriate person living with somebody who might need a few more carbohydrates. And so, it can really vary quite a bit, but at our house, it seems to work out pretty well.

Roger:  That's awesome. What about your boys when they were a lot younger because you have a lot of people who have children and they struggle to give them a healthy diet because all they want is sugar? How did you get around that?

Ben:  And, there's actually a couple of research studies that have come out in the past couple of years about food likes and dislikes later on in age or in adolescence being highly correlated to the type of foods a child is exposed to early on. So, for example, if you take a child and you accustom their palate to sweet cereals and sugar-infused baby foods, or even artificially sweetened foods, or you could even apply this to technology, heavy exposure to screens, et cetera. Those children grow up being a little bit more inclined to have a preference towards those type of foods. Whereas, if you're introducing your child at a very early age to foods with complex flavors, umami flavors, bitter flavors, you're giving them things like cabbage and sauerkraut and sardines and avocados and little bits of liver and things that are really accustomed to their palette early on, the child winds up growing up a little bit more inclined to eat those type of foods. And, that's exactly what we did with our sons at an early age. We would go buy organic vegetables and organic fruits and blend them all up and then flash freeze them to have these little purees. And then, we'd add things olive oil, and avocado oil, and mash-up salmon, and puree liver and do all these things that basically set up a scenario to where our sons were basically eating a lot of the same foods that we ate just sometimes pureed, mashed, steamed, boiled, et cetera. And then, as soon as a child is able to chew effectively, and this is based on a lot of the research by Dr. Mu, for example, even Weston A. Price's research on this alludes to the fact that a child should be chewing and exercising the jaw. And so, that'll directly influence the shape of the teeth in the mouth, the dental health later on in life.

And so, as soon as a kid is able to start chewing the food, you want them to chew straight away because we actually have a society where sleep apnea is a big issue, teeth crowding is a big issue, poor dental alignment is a big issue. And, part of that is the high, high amounts of soft, soft foods that a child grows up with ultra-processed foods that are easy to chew and easy to get through the jaw. And then, when you pair that with a relative lack of a lot of these natural fat-soluble vitamins, we live in a fat-phobic era still. So, the kids aren't getting a lot of vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, the things that help with bony structure and teeth formation. And so, those two factors together are not doing kids or adults any favors from a stature jaw alignment sleep quality type of standpoint. So, even when we go to restaurants from a very, very early age, you look at the kid's menu at restaurants, what is it? It's chicken nuggets, or white chicken skewers, or hamburgers and French fries, or the macaroni and cheese, highly processed heavily palatable foods that children theoretically based on the restaurant's ideas would and should enjoy.

And, with our kids, and this hasn't been great for my pocketbook because obviously my kids now order the expensive entrees off the restaurant menu. But, we usually send the kids' menus back. We just let the kids eat off of our plates early on and then they order their own meals off the adult menu at the restaurant just because the kid's menu is just total crap, it's hard to find something healthy on that. So, we, in a nutshell, treat the kids miniature adults when it comes to food selection of course, under the premise that the adults are actually eating good healthy quality food with a wide variety of tastes and flavors and textures.

Roger:  What's your approach in reducing inflammation in the body? Is it remaining homeostasis or more hormetic stress? I'm sure there's loads of different ways.

Ben:  Well, as you know, don't want to reduce inflammation. I mean, in the bodybuilding industry, arachidonic acid is one thing to consume post-workout to amp up inflammation, increase hypertrophy, satellite cell proliferation, mitochondrial density that all responds to a somewhat inflamed scenario. It sends your body to World War II and back. If it doesn't die, it comes back stronger. But, of course, chronic low-level inflammation such as we would experience with a prop or an improper diet or heavy, heavy exposure to dirty electricity and EMF, or not enough time spent in sunlight, or earthing, or grounding, or a diet that's very low in flavonols, and polyphenols, and antioxidants paired with a lot of heavy training, which is, of course, inflammatory and just general stress which is inflammatory dictates that for the average person you're going to want to be doing something as you just alluded to to manage the chronic inflammation.

There's a lot of ways to do it. I think that cold thermogenesis which I briefly mentioned earlier, I think that a regular cold thermogenesis practice is fantastic for inflammation. In a post-workout scenario, you got to wait a little while for the intense cold because it can shut down some of those adaptive responses that you want to exercise. And so, if you're doing a hard training session in the morning, for example, you might save a longer ice bath or something like that for later on in the day. Although a quick cold shower, a quick cold plunge should just decrease the body's core temperature, so you're not sweating at work or whatever is fine.

Another one would be a lot of these dark purples, dark oranges, yellows, blues, even some of the reds and purples. Basically eating a diet that's very much like the rainbow gives you a lot of anti-inflammatory compounds in the diet with turmeric probably and curcumin probably being two of the better ones that are out there in my opinion. Some people think they're damaging to the gut or they can affect testosterone. But, you have to have a pretty high amount for something like that to happen in a very concentrated form.

The other things would be, and just the basics, adequate sleep, sunlight exposure. I'm a big fan of infrared light. This concept of photobiomodulation can have an anti-inflammatory effect. And —

Roger:  How often would you use the infrared light?

Ben:  Yeah. So, infrared light, it depends. If it's on the head or the neck or the face area, the general rule is anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes spaced by 48 hours. So, there's devices like the VieLight, for example, V-I-E-light. And, that one is a head-worn device that triggers the mitochondria in the neural tissue to produce more ATP. But, the neural tissue is a little bit more sensitive to red light, near-infrared light, far-infrared light. So, these are spaced a little bit farther apart. It's a fantastic device though for anybody who wants a cup of coffee for their brain in the morning. The full-body red light treatment's gold standard is 10 to 20 minutes as long as the device is sufficiently powerful. Usually about 6 inches from the bulbs that you're shining on your body. So, 10 to 20 minutes every day. Once you exceed that, the reason you want to exceed that is you can actually get excess production of reactive oxygen species, back to the concept of some inflammation being good too much not. And so, too much red-light therapy in the same way that too much sunlight can cause burning or radiative damage to the skin is something that you'd want to avoid. But, 10 to 20 minutes every single day, you can do red light.

Roger:  What about intracellularly if you got too much of that?

Ben:  Intracellularly too much red light?

Roger:  Yeah.

Ben:  You mean, from a tissue heating type of DNA damage standpoint?

Roger:  Yeah.

Ben:  I don't think the tissue is heated enough in red light for that to occur. You'd have to get to a pretty hefty form of radiation like a microwave radiation or possibly ultrasounds to cause tissue damage. I don't think red light is of a strong enough intensity to cause that.

Roger:  Okay. Is there any particular supplementation which you reckon will be good to reduce inflammation?

Ben:  Well, a lot of these supplements that are anti-inflammatory, they do include the turmeric or curcuminoids that I talked about earlier. There's also an extract of turmeric that's water-soluble called turmerosaccharides that can be very, very effective and even easier on the stomach than straight up turmeric for inflammation.

And then, in addition to that, high EPA, DHA, fish oil that can be a good practice. A lot of the research for heart health says 1 to 2 grams, a lot of the athletes who I work with or people who I'm looking at I want to help with inflammation it's closer to 4 or 8 grams of fish oil. It's not super-duper high dose but two to three times the normal recommended dose of fish oil. And then, one that flies on the radar that I think is really effective is proteolytic enzymes: Serrapeptase, trypsin, chymotrypsin, papain, bromelain, a lot of these enzymes that would normally be considered enzymes that you might take to digest food. They can also help to digest proteins in the body. They can help to quell inflammation. And, those can also be really useful.

And then, one of the things that's been highly not recommended for athletes post-training is high doses of vitamin C and high doses of vitamin E because they're some of the most potent anti-inflammatory compounds that you can consume. And so, doing something like a regularly scheduled vitamin C IV, getting adequate vitamin E that's got a good — vitamin E, it's important that you get a mix of tocopherols and taco triangles. And, a lot of vitamin E products, they just have the mixed tocopherols.

There's companies Designs for Health, for example. I interviewed a vitamin E researcher from their organization named Dr. Barrie Tan and we got into this idea of certain natural compounds like the annatto plant, for example, being very, very high in these mixes of tocopherols and tocotrienols when it comes to vitamin E. So, those are some of the things to think about when it comes to supplementation.

Alright, so there's this thing you may see me wearing on my head around my neck. It's smart, wearable technology that goes way beyond monitoring your body. It actually impacts how you feel. So, what this thing does is, called a Hapbee, it plays back the unique magnetic signature of any popular substance: caffeine, alcohol, melatonin, CBD, THC, nicotine, you name it. It triggers the sensation of these substances without you having to ingest them. So, no side effects, no chemical dependency, you're in complete control. You just pair the device with your phone and then you use the Hapbee app to select from a menu of the feelings that you desire. You can boost focus and creativity. You can unwind and relax. You can sooth anxiety. You can sleep better. So, I could literally put this thing in caffeine mode. Go out at night. Feel like I've had a cup of coffee. As soon as I take it off, the caffeine just gone out of my system, and go to bed, sleep like a baby, put it in melatonin mode. And, the thing just works like gangbusters. And, it works better the more that you use it. Since I got this thing, it works better and better and better. It's like my brain just getting used to the signal and knows what to do when I flip this thing on.

So, you get a long enough free trial to use it because you get a 9-day free trial of an all-access subscription to their entire Signals catalog; the feel-good, the focus, the deep sleep, the energy, the call and the relaxation, you name it. It's safe and accessible biohacking, risk-free. 100 bucks off a 90-day free trial. You go to Hapbee.com/Ben. That's H-A-P-B-E-E.com/Ben to get 100 bucks off a 90-day free trial of an all-access subscription to the Hapbee Signals catalog.

Alright, everybody wants to boost their immune system these days. Getting in a sauna four to five times a week gives you that support, plus it reduces pain and inflammation, increases the levels of these hardy little fellas called heat shock proteins. It helps to maintain muscle even when you can't work out and makes you feel on top of the world because penetrating infrared heat releases so many happy hormones in your body.

In my house, you'll find this thing called Clearlight Sauna. Clearlight is the sauna company known for shielding against EMF. And, each sauna comes a lifetime warranty, so you know they're built to last. The one that I use is called their Yoga Sauna. It's a Sanctuary sauna. It's big enough for a workout, or a family sweat, or having a bunch of people down in there when you have a house party. They've got a variety of saunas, a one-person model up to these four-person models that I use. And, they have a quiz on their website at HealwithHeat.com that lets you figure out the sauna that's going to be perfect for you if you want to sweat buckets and get all the benefits of the sauna in the privacy of your own home.

You go to HealwithHeat.com, HealwithHeat.com, and you can use code BEN for a discount and for free shipping, HealwithHeat.com and mention BEN or use the code BEN.

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Roger:  Would you say you're religious or spiritual or both?

Ben:  Oh, yeah. Both, both, yeah. So —

Roger:  What got you into, I don't know, this journey of God?

Ben:  I was born into a Christian family. My parents became Christians when they were adults and they raised us children as Christians. I really think that it was until I was around 30 though where I really understood what it meant to be able to dialogue with God where I really understood how to just be silent and listen to the voice of God to direct your thoughts and direct your actions. It wasn't until later in life that I discovered the importance of the spiritual disciplines like meditation, and silence, and solitude, and fasting, and prayer, and worship, and even things like breathwork, for example, that you can use to enhance a spiritual experience. And, it really took a long time for me to go from being the Christians like, “Yeah, I go to Sunday school, and I believe in God, and I sing the nice songs, and Jesus loves me,” game over, and to become a person who feels as though I can be in daily dialogue with God, I can cast all my burdens on a higher power, I can believe in the hope that there's a greater story written for my life and all I need to do is wake up each day and do the very best job I can with whatever God has put upon my plate for the day. It's been a daily process of growing closer to God and understanding what it truly means to walk with God because a lot of Christians, for example, it's like, “I'm a Christian so I don't go to hell. I'm afraid of going to hell.” Well, that honestly is not enough motivation to keep you on the straight and narrow path making the choices obeying God's law, et cetera. What it instead comes down to is a deep, deep love for your creator and a love for your ability to be able to wake up, work hard, and then just savor all of God's blessings at the end of the day.

And so, when your heart is full of love, not just love for God but love for all of your fellow human beings, every last cell in your body, all it craves to do is obey God's law like follow the golden rules, follow the Ten Commandments; don't lie, don't covet, don't steal, don't sleep with your neighbor's wife. All these things that normally if you're just not doing that stuff because you're like, “I don't want to go to hell,” that really doesn't enable you, or equip you, or empower you to be able to really be the type of person that God has called you to be. Instead, it's, “Oh, my gosh, I love God so much, I love my creator so much. I'm waking up every day so grateful for this breath of air that I get to take, and the next breath, and the next breath, and the food that I don't deserve but I've got it anyways in the job and money.” And so, when your heart is just full of gratefulness for what you've gotten even though you didn't deserve it and your heart is full of love for the creator that generated your very existence, then all you want to do all day is basically be that person who ideally is impactful and helping out a lot of other people in the world because you're following God's law. And, really the entire Bible comes down to two things: love God and love other people. And so, if you love God and love other people every day, then life becomes very, very magical in my opinion.

By the way, do you know what this is? So, this is nettle, these seeds, these nettle seeds, my apologies to anybody listening to the audio they can't see it, but these nettle seeds they sell for a bunch of money in stores, the testosterone enhancing supplement. And, nettle is just the highest protein, highest nutrient density plant you can find. You could literally pick this stuff and you could survive as if you were eating meat for a relatively long period of time, just on nettle. It's incredible plant.

Roger:  Oh, wow.

Ben:  Yeah. We do a lot of plant foraging at our house. I like to look at all the indigenous plants from when I'm walking around your place.

Roger:  That's awesome, that's awesome.

Do you reckon that all religions can lead to a similar thing like finding God?

Ben:  All religions can lead to finding God. The question is who that God is and whether the basis of that religion is founded upon you being able to do all the work to be a good person versus you saying, “I can't do this on my own, I'm a fallen human being, I need the help of my Creator to be able to be who it is that the Creator has called me to be.” And so, when you ask that question and you step back and you look at, for example, a lot of the Abrahamic religions like Islam or Christianity, yeah, they certainly have the belief in one God. The difference with those religions is, of course, the presence or absence of the Jesus component, this idea that, “Oh, a deity came down from heaven became an actual creature sacrificed himself so that we would be able to be saved because there's no way we can be saved on our own.” Whereas, Buddhism might say, “Well, there's a fourfold path to enlightenment and all you need to do is identify your attachments in life, release those attachments and then eventually be reincarnated and become better and better and better and better with each new life cycle that you might go through.” I realize it's a little bit of a bastardization quick explanation of Buddhism, but the idea is, yeah, that's you doing it and it's your power, and you're eventually becoming God rather than just casting all your cares on God and accepting that there's no way you can do it without being, as Christianity says, washed by the blood of Jesus.

So, I think that there are many paths to living a good life and many religions lead to that path of good life. I think that the only way to eternal life, to eternal life to actually being in heaven and existing for all eternity with God, which I think is just a wonderful existence, I think the only way to that is actually through Jesus Christ. And so, it depends. If you're asking, “Can you be a good person without necessarily being a Christian?” Yeah, you can. “Can you gain eternal life?” I actually don't think you can just because as a guy who goes to the handbook for my particular origin in the Bible, all I know is it says the only way to heaven is through Jesus. And so, I can't say that I believe little bits of the Bible but I don't believe other little bits, I just have to believe the whole thing is inspired by God.

Roger:  That's really interesting because you do have a lot of people that are trying to do great things. I don't know humanitarianism or whatever different spiritual practices but not necessarily —

Ben:  Yeah, but they're not Christians, yeah.

Roger:  Right.

Ben:  Exactly. And, at the same time, a lot of Christians will look at the crusades, look at the sexual abuse and the Catholic church. There's a lot of failures of many religions and Christianity certainly is not an exception. The idea of having some type of law, some type of moral order, some type of absolute morality is where you see a lot of benefits of many of these religions that have play books or guidebooks or rule books because I think about the worst thing is to say, “Hey, you believe what you want to believe, bro. Speak your truth,” which is very common these days. You don't want to offend people. We don't want to rub them the wrong way. But, the problem with that approach is that if everybody speaks their truth, if everybody believes in what it is that they want to believe in, well, I might say, “Roger, right now what would really make me most happy is to grab you and hold a knife to your head and shove your face in that pond and try to drown you.” And, you'd be like, “No, no, no, that doesn't make me happy.” And, we'd stand there trying to figure out whose morals are absolutely correct. And, certainly, we have certain things that bring disgust up or that we might think, “I'd never stomp on a baby's head or whatever.” But then, if you actually look at human beings left to their own volition and human beings who make whatever decisions that they think are right in the moment, well, I mean, look at Nazi Germany. I mean, when left to their own volition, human beings are capable of not making the right choices in the absence of some type of a god, or playbook, or handbook that dictates here is exactly what is right, here's exactly what's wrong like don't lie, don't kill people, don't covet. And so, I think that that's a really, really important part of religion is it does provide you with a guidebook, some sense of absolute morality in terms of what is right, what is wrong.

Roger:  Makes sense. I need to read the Bible more. I used to go to church, but yeah that's another subject.

Ben:  Yeah.

Roger:  So, talking to books, I'm assuming you read quite a lot of books.

Ben:  I do read a lot of books. So, I usually have a stack of books I'm working on, the upstairs bedroom is typically non-fiction fun books, fiction books. Right now, it's “Puzzler” by A.J. Jacobs where it's just a book about sudoku, and crossword, and Rubik's cubes, and it's got little puzzles at the end of each chapter. It's great for putting you to sleep because your brain is kind of like, “Oh, I can't do this anymore,” they just fall asleep. So, up in the bedroom, it's all the fun books that kind of feel a waste of time but that you're able to read when you're just laying there getting ready for bed. And then, I typically have a handful of books that I'm going through for people I'm going to interview for a podcast. I never took a speed-reading course. I have a certain method of getting through the books. I scan the table of comments. I scan the back of the book, the front of the book. I flip through to see how the chapters are structured. And then, I start in and I just basically trace with my finger. And, I've just taught myself when you listen to an audiobook at one-and-a-half-time speed, then you get pretty good at 1.8. and then 2, and eventually before you know it, you're absorbing information at 3x speed. So, reading is like that. It's a muscle.

And so, the other thing that I do is I'll listen to a lot of audiobooks, again, typically at two-and-a-half, three times speed, I rarely listen to music when I'm working out, it's almost always audiobooks when I'm working out unless it's just a gut-wrenching difficult workout. So, yeah, I'll listen to audiobooks a lot. I'm reading a book. I'll use the Kindle Whispersync a lot where when I stop reading on the Kindle say on the airplane as I'm walking through the airport, I can continue listening where I left off. And, when I get back on the next plane, keep reading on the Kindle. And so, a huge, huge amount of book consumption only for me but for my family, my sons know that basically if they ever ask for a book, there's not many things I'll just buy for them hands down. But, if they ever want a book, I buy it for them, I assign them a book every week for which they need to write a book report. So, I'm teaching them how to read a lot of books at an early age, how to write something about that book, and demonstrate that they've learned something from it. And, I think that's also important is whenever I'm reading a book, I take all the notes. And, at the very, very end whether it's a Kindle book with the highlights or whether it's a regular book where I've circled stuff, folded over pages, et cetera, I do one last review of the whole book so that if there's any major takeaway, steps of action like, “Oh, I actually need to set up an appointment with this person I read about in the book” or “this is a product that I actually want to buy and try,” then by the time I've made it through the book, I'll then review and take any action steps that I've highlighted that I need to take in the book.

And then, there's one other interesting thing, there's a lot of these services that will give you book summaries. And, I love them like Blinkist, or Thinkr, or Philosopher's Notes. I use a lot of those services because there's certain books that I am interested in but not so interested in that I want to read the whole thing so I'll do the quick 20-minute PDF or audio digestion of the book. But, the interesting one is called ReadWise. And, ReadWise will sync with all your Kindle highlights and then send you an email each week or each day with a few of your highlights from the Kindle books that you've read recently or that have been your favorites. And so, it allows you to revisit the books and automates the process of you being reminded of important things that you found in the books.

Roger:  That's so awesome. I love that.

Ben:  Yeah, it's a cool little app.

Roger:  Yeah, yeah. What's that blink thing?

Ben:  So, the ones that I use, I would say that the top ones that I use for book summaries would be Philosopher's Notes run by a guy named Brian Johnson that's got about 500 books on it, really good short PDF summary and audio summary of each book; Thinkr, which is an app. Those books tend to be largely more political and a lot of times more conservative and libertarian-leaning books. It's my political leaning anyways. And so, I like Thinkr for some of my political and economics-based book summaries. Then, a couple others are Blinkist, which does really, really great book summaries. There's two people who I follow online, one guy named Derek Sivers and one guy named James Clear. And, both Derek and James do really, really good book summaries on their websites, which again helps me decide if I am or I'm not going to read a book. And so, those are a few of the book digest book summary type of resources that I use.

Roger:  That's awesome. What would you say are your five top books that you'd recommend on subjects like mental agility, emotional intelligence, finance, spirituality? Just diversity of books.

Ben:  I've got a lot of bookshelves in my home and those bookshelves are all labeled. Actually, a librarian come through and spirituality, health, fitness, anatomy, science, religion, et cetera, and then they're all organized by author's last names. So, I literally have hundreds and hundreds of books, probably thousands at this point in my personal library. And, I don't even know how many on Kindle, but the one shelf in my office is books I want to return to, books I want to read again. And, inevitably, one or two extra books gets added to that shelf each year. But, there's probably about 30 books on that shelf.

And, a few ones of note that I think are super beneficial, Charlie Munger's “Poor Charlie's Almanac” for understanding human cognitive biases and mental models, for understanding why humans might attribute a greater degree of credibility to someone in a position of authority than is really the case in terms of the existence of that credibility or why certain human beings will assume themselves to be far more efficient or proficient or intelligent around any given activity than they actually are. Or, the reason that humans will see price anchoring such as something very expensive anchored, so next to something very cheap, and all of a sudden, it will make the less expensive things seem even less expensive. Just all these little mental models and cognitive biases. So, “Poor Charlie's Almanac” fantastic for understanding people.

There's another one that I would say comes to mind, “Stillness is the Key” by Ryan Holiday for having a more stoic and a more peaceful existence and peaceful approach to life. I really like some of Ryan Holiday's work. He's probably better known for books like “Obstacle is the Way,” but “Stillness is the Key,” I think, is one of his best works for introducing more peace and stillness in one's life.

I think that a couple other good ones in some of the sectors you talked about, Ray Dalio's “Principles” as a business-based book. Both his book “Principles” and then a similar book called “Rocket Fuel,” which allows a CEO like me to better interact with members of my organization and understand how to implement my vision. I would say both “Rocket Fuel” and “Principles” have been really, really good in the business side of things.

I would say for financial, there's a book called “What would the Rockefellers do?” And, that's an amazing book because for I'm a big believer in legacy, I'm not raising my children, I'm raising my children's children and my children's children's children. And, we have a Greenfield family playbook, and Greenfield family values, and Greenfield family crest, and a logo, and family t-shirts, and hats, and hoodies, and this deep sense of belonging, and pride, and legacy in terms of what it means to be a Greenfield. But, as a part of that, we also have a family trust, we have a family constitution, we have a family bank in place. So, generational wealth is distributed in the proper way amongst subsequent generations. And again, it's a guidebook for the family. And, all of these are habits that you think of great families, I'm just going to use U.S. examples. But, if you look at, I don't know, the Bush family, or the Rockefeller family, or the Clinton fam, a lot of these families like, “How that family become so great, so powerful, so wealthy, so impactful?” Well, in many cases, this is how they set up their families, a real, real legacy-based approach to building a family.

And so, that's another one. And then, I would say if I could name one more. One of the early nutrition books that I read that I think really helped me wrap my head around something we talked about earlier, the dangers of seed oils, the subtle nuances between fats, the importance of fat, and just generally gave me a real, real good nutritional philosophy, it was early on in my nutrition studies but it made a real, real impact on me was “Deep Nutrition” by Kate Shanahan.” Really, really good ancestrally-based nutrition book. So, I'd say “Deep Nutrition.” And, that was my problem when I wrote my book, “Boundless,” if you read that book carefully, you wind up buying 30 other books because I read so much and I say throughout the book, “Oh, well, go read this book, go read this book, oh this book talks more about this.” So, I consider one of my jobs to be just reading books and based on what I've read telling other people what they should read.

Roger:  I got “Boundless” and I got lost at the same time. I felt I was going to fall in depression. This book is deep.

Ben:  That's one that you need a book summary for. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm working on another one right now called “Boundless Parenting” where I'm interviewing all these amazing parents from around the world and getting all their advice on parenting, and legacy, and family, and some of the concepts we were just talking about and all the way down to kid's nutrition and fitness to building legacy. And, right now, because for me it's usually about three-year process to write a book, so that one is at about 1,400 pages right now of material, and eventually when I get all the information, it'd be close to 2,000 pages, then I cut all that down, I edit it, I decide which babies I'm going to kiss goodbye to and eventually put it into a book. But, I do like to write big comprehensive books when I can, much to the chagrin of my publisher.

Roger:  I love the idea of the kids one. I did get one by Robert T. Kiyosaki. Although he does it on finances —

Ben:  Yeah, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad“?

Roger:  Yes, correct.

Ben:  Yeah.

Roger:  He also has one for children. So, if people do more for children, I think that it would just start off the world in a better place.

Ben:  That's the foundation of everything. By the way, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” also has the Cash Flow game, which is a great — we play a lot of board games with big family dinners each night and a lot of the games that I'll choose are games that I want to use to teach my kids important life principles. There's a fold-out game called Rhetoric where you learn how to give impromptu speeches or persuade people or there's games like Boggle or Scrabble that teach a child how to spell and how to build up their vocabulary, or there's other games Exploding Kittens or Unstable Unicorns that teach kids logic, and if this then that type of sequential thinking. And so, we're a big fan of games. That Cash Flow game is one that's fantastic for finances, that and playing Monopoly, and intentionally, and mindfully, and understanding what it means to mortgage, and what it means to be in debt, and what it means to have assets. Big fan of that stuff.

But, the question about the children not only is the way that we affect change in society always starts from the ground up. It always starts with the kids. And so, if you've got a bunch of kids such as I don't know in the case of America's educational system lining up in a row, putting a square peg in a square hole, a round peg in a round hole, learning at the same pace of the rest of the classroom, getting exposed to peer pressure and bullying, eventually being taught things about being ashamed of your skin color or hating the country that you live in because of certain things that's done, you have kids that grow up, in my opinion, just basically really wired up the wrong way. At least in America, I'm noticing the upcoming generation, they're not creative, free-thinking, resilient, people with patriotic pride, and pride about who they are and their own identity, whether socially, or racially, or politically. Kids are just basically, they're not marching to the beat of their own drum, they're instead just swallowing hook, line, and sinker what they're taught in a modern education system. And then, you look at kids who are home-schooled or unschooled and they're engaging a lot of creative free-thinking, and problem-solving and experiential-based learning, and hands-on education. And, I'm just more impressed with that group of kids painting with the broad brush from the children that I've hung around with.

And so, as parents, we must realize, if we're going to complain about the way the society is going, we're going to complain about politics, we're going to complain about the way things are, we have to think very long-term, we have to think, “Okay, how do I change this?” Yeah, I can go and vote, I can go and lobby, I can go and protest, I can go and affect change socially. But, the number one thing you can do is train the next generation not to make the same mistakes that you made, train the next generation to be better people, train the next generations to be subsequently better and better and better. And, for me, personally, I've realized that no matter what I do from a business standpoint, no matter what cool places I go to and travel, or amazing people I get to talk to, or money that's made, or anything like that, it's very, very hard for me to be happy unless everything is just amazing at home. I pour a lot of energy into making sure my wife and I are always on the same page as radical transparency and radical honesty. And, I eye gaze with my sons and spend both time with them one-on-one. And then, also together, we have big family dinners. I pour a ton of energy into making sure I have a really strong stable happy nuclear family unit because everything else in life, very similar to the idea of how loving God and loving others does this, becomes a lot more magical when you realize the importance of family as a foundation, and the great responsibility and the honor that comes with raising up the next generation to not make the same mistakes.

Roger:  That's powerful. That is amazing. I love that. I love that.

Yeah. Sometimes I do question why relationships break so soon. You've got people who have a pattern of relationship breakup that their relationship lasts for a year or two years, and I'm thinking —

Ben:  Yeah. Well, I can tell you why that primarily is. I mean, it started to be an issue when humans began serial dating. I'm going to date this person. I'm going to dump them if I don't like them. I'm going to try this person on, maybe see what it's like to have sex with that person, see what's like to have sex with this person. And so, what happens is that conditions you to almost have an unfamiliarity with what it means to be happy and stable with one person. Just because you spend your entire teenage years engaged in a serial dating type of existence; whereas, in, I think, a more appropriate scenario basically you'd see a man would court a woman for a long period of time and be with her family and get to know her, sometimes for years and eventually marry. And, maybe they hadn't had 20 or 30 partners before they got married. My wife had no partners before we got married. I had had maybe five or six girlfriends. But then, you introduced Tinder and swiping and online dating apps and the ability to be able to move, move, move through people and swipe, swipe, swipe through multiple people, and then pornography where you can engage in a sexual relationship with sometimes up to 100 women within 20 minutes. And, we create a scenario in which human beings are conditioned to be in serial relationships, polygamous relationships, polyamorous relationships versus embracing the stability, and happiness, and societal order that can be derived from monogamy, from being happy with one person, from learning how to love someone no matter what, learning how to sacrifice yourself for someone no matter what, understanding that a relationship is not just about how good the sex is with that person but how good the friendship, and love, and relationship, and spiritual sacred connection to that person is.

And, once you start to look at your fellow human beings back to loving God and loving other people fully as sacred souls, it's very, very difficult for a guy to go to a bar get drunk, pick up a girl who's also drunk, go home, sleep with her, and then just say goodbye the next day because it basically objectifies a person as a carnal fleshly object that's purely there for pleasuring versus a person who's a sacred soul who you're going to go on to live with for all of eternity. How would you treat that person if you actually knew that was going to be the case and how would you act differently around people if you really did recognize them as sacred souls that you will live with for eternity?

Roger:  Wow, they're super powerful.

That made me think about a post I've done one time and I asked people, what's your thoughts on unconditional love? Is there anyone that you love unconditionally? And then, when I started to think about it myself, I thought, there seems to be a lot of conditions on why we love people. And, it made me question, does anyone love anyone unconditionally? I mean, you mentioned about Jesus and He's the only person I know who actually does.

Ben:  It's impossible, yeah. It's impossible unless you're perfect to love anyone unconditionally. And, that's back to what I was explaining before. If you try to love someone unconditionally, you can't do it of your own power, you're just a fallen human being, a broken human being. It's impossible to truly purely love someone unconditionally in the same way that's impossible to go through your entire life without missing the mark, without sinning in some way. But, when you rely upon the grace of God and you say, “I can't do this,” but you're on your knees every morning praying, “Hey, Jesus, give me the power to,” and that's part, like I say a prayer in the morning when I'm swimming in my pool, I say, “Father in heaven, please turn me into the father and husband you would have me to be into a man who will fulfill your great commission and remove from me all judgments of others. Grant me your heavenly wisdom, remove from that worldly temptations, teach me how to listen to your spill, small voice in the silence, and fill me with your peace, your love, and your joy. Amen.” So, I say that prayer every morning. But, a part of it is removed from me all judgments of others because I tend to be a judgmental person especially coming from a fitness background, I'm fitter than you, I look better than you with my shirt off where I can play better sports than you. I could kick your butt if we were in some a foot race. And so, you tend to start to size up people especially when you're in fitness and you're in health, and look at that person they're eating Cheetos, no good and they don't even know, they're stupid. But, once you're on your knees every day asking for help to be able to love people no matter what, it does become a lot easier. You're never going to be able to do it fully unconditionally. I mean, once you die and you go to heaven and you're perfect, I'm sure.

Roger:  Yeah, yeah.

Ben:  But, yeah, it should be a goal and it should be something that you actually beg God to give you the ability to do each day because obviously if you're going to live your life by the mantra of loving God and loving others, then you should be loving God unconditionally whether rain or sunshine, whether your house burns down or you lose your partner or what, and you should be loving people unconditionally whether they treat you shitty or whether they're not the same type of person as you with the same political beliefs or the same tendencies, doesn't matter. Yeah, you love people unconditionally but you're right, it's very difficult to actually pull that off.

Roger:  How did you come up with Kion? Where did the vision start to where it is right now?

Ben:  So, Kion, it was funny because I don't know if I've told this story before in a podcast, I may have, but there was one year in Kauai that I took a heroic dose of psilocybin on the beach. And, I was with some other people and they were talking with each other and laughing and joking, and I was like, “This is not the context I want to be in.” So, I wandered down the beach and just spent four hours sitting on a log, and I was thinking, and I was journaling, and I was writing, and I was just looking at the sky and in deep introspection, in a state that's sometimes more difficult to get into without the help of some type of plant that shifts your ego in a different direction. And, I don't think you should use plant medicines as an oracle and say, “Oh, the only way I'm going to know what God is telling me is to take a bunch of magic mushrooms.” But, no, to instead to just shift your thinking a different way, the same way you might have a cup of coffee before you go do some deep work in writing. 

And so, I got to thinking, while I was there about how I'd really been craving to create something that was bigger than just me, to create something that could help people whether or not they knew who Ben Greenfield was or whether I read my books or anything like that. I wanted to create something. I think that God as a Creator made us in his image and we human beings, we crave to create something whether it's a story or a piece of art, or an invention, or maybe Elon Musk, it's a tunnel under LA, or a Tesla, or in my case, it was like, “I want to create something nourishing, and healthy, and some type of a supplement.”

And so, at the time, I've been partnering with a lot of different supplement companies as an affiliate representing their product, I was an athlete, I was racing all over the world, and kind of pimping other people's products so to speak and I decided, I'm just going to make my own stuff, I'm going to make my own stuff. And so, met up with a wonderful friend and the CEO of Kion now, my co-founder, Angelo Keely. He's a fantastic guy and we just get along so well. And, we just decided we wanted to start a company where every single ingredient was sourced as high quality as possible, even if that meant that we had limited supply of some of the stuff that we wanted to produce nothing, nothing in any product that doesn't have human clinical research behind it in terms of efficacy and the exact amounts necessary, no fairy dusting, no proprietary formulas. And, we want to target the things people really need. We don't want some fringe like, I don't know, intra workout booster, we wanted immune system, gut, recovery, sleep, and then, of course, we do a bar, we do a coffee. But, what I love about that company is I'm always reading the books, talking to people, finding interesting people, learning about new ingredients, and then I get to sit down and say, “Okay, this would be cool to actually put together in a product.” And, Angelo and I will have these phone calls where we're spitting back and forth in ingredients and setting stuff up. And, we just launched a new sleep product that most of this stuff is for me to scratch my own itch. I struggle with sleep and the Kion Sleep just all of a sudden just crush sleep for me. Or, I really wanted a clean energy bar that didn't freeze when I was in the mountains or melt when I was on a bike ride so I developed the Kion Clean Energy Bar. I love coffee, but I want a really clean coffee, so we have this organic decaf and regular coffee. It's a fantastic tasting coffee, a healthy coffee that tastes good.

And so, yeah, it's just been a progression over the years. But, it started with me literally being on the beach and thinking, “Gosh, I need to do something that's not just about me.”

Roger:  Right, right. That's phenomenal. I mean, I use all the Kion products myself. I noticed that the serum, the skin serum has been removed.

Ben:  Oh, yeah. The skin serum, that's actually something that is now run under the name Greenfield Botanics. It's my aunt's company. So, we just decided to shift the serum production over to her. So, yeah, you can still get it from Greenfield Botanics, but it's not under Kion anymore. So, she does a serum and a facial spray as well now.

Roger:  Oh, that's awesome. I'll go check that out. So, what's the future of Kion then you'd say?

Ben:  Oh, Kion, we're going to continue to develop a lot of cool new products but we're really looking at now functional foods, how can we do a gelatin-based bone broth good tasting energy bar, or how could we create something that gives you the nostalgic flavor of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some type of a smoothie or a powder. We're continuing to refine our Aminos, which is probably our top selling supplements like the Swiss army knife for recovery, for fasting, for muscle building, for sleep. The aminos are fantastic. One little scoop is eating half a steak. And so, yeah, we're just continuing to develop and refine and also going after probably in the near future some more comfort food-esque type of foods.

Roger:  I like that. I like that. I could ask a ton more questions, but I think we covered a lot already, man.

Ben:  We did. We did go through a lot. And, gosh, we got our step count in too, huh.

Roger:  Yeah. I don't normally walk this much to be honest with you.

Ben:  Oh, yeah. Even as a bodybuilder you can do a lot of the aerobic cardio when you're cutting.

Roger:  You mentioned kettlebells, I'll do some kettlebells, and battle rope, and swing some power bags around. But, actual steps itself, sometimes it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't really mount up.

Ben:  Yeah, it's funny. I didn't do a lot of walking around as bodybuilding, but I was a spin instructor. So, three or four times a week, I was hardcore on the bike high-intensity interval training, which is actually great for the quad development as well. So, I was with spinning. But, yeah. I guess, I got to literally run back to my hotel from here and get on an airplane and head back to the states. But, that was pretty fun.

Roger:  Oh, awesome, man. Now, thank you very much. When are you next in UK? Do you know?

Ben:  I don't know. I made a lot of fantastic connections when I was here on this trip in all sorts of biohacking facilities like LondonCryo, and BelleCell, and H2MN and a lot of amazing people, Tim Gray, the guy who put on his Health Optimisation Summit. He's just doing a really great job. So, I think hopefully I'll definitely be here for next year's Health Optimisation Summit. But, we'll see from there, it's not too long of a flight but it's enough to have a really good excuse to come over.

Roger:  You've also been interviewed by Jag Chima.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Jag runs the Superhuman biohacking type of centers.

Roger:  Yeah, yeah, that's right, a good friend of mine.

Ben:  Yeah. He and Kris Gethin and I did a tour of India where we did a bunch of biohacking workshops and stuff across India. So, yeah, he's a great guy too.

Roger:  So, yeah, have you been to the Superhuman?

Ben:  Not yet, but I am going to try and help Jag develop some of his IV and cocktail infusion menus for that. So, we're talking, we're talking. So, alright, well, let me see. I should probably press off on the microphone so I can pull up my locations and start jogging. But, anything else you want to say while the mic is hot?

Roger:  I think I'm good. I'm good. Thanks a lot, Ben. Really appreciate your time, man.

Ben:  Yeah.

Roger:  Definitely want to get a training session in next time you're here. That's for sure.

Ben:  We'll do it. I'll crush you, man. I'll crush you. We'll do arm day.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh entertaining, well-informed, and often outside-the-box approach to discovering the health, and happiness, and hope that we all crave. So, I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And, if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel wherever that might be and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. It means a lot. 

 

 

Roger Snipes is a fitness entrepreneur with an unshakable desire to improve the world.

While growing up in a crime-stricken neighborhood, living with an abusive father, and spending time homeless as a teenager, Roger found fitness training to be his home and therapy.

As a young adult, Roger shifted from job to job trying to find his passion and also trying to find himself. During this time, he would listen to audiobooks and read about psychological development and emotional intelligence, and later become a certified NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) practitioner. Understanding nutrition to achieve a peak body composition, Roger went on to be a model and natural bodybuilder. During his time in bodybuilding, he would go on to win Mr. UK, Mr. Britannia in 2010, and Fame UK in 2011, along with a win at Musclemania 2011. Snipes also competed as a Muscle Model and took first place in WBFF European Championship and also won his pro card in 2013. Along with his first-place wins, a pro card for two different fitness federations, sponsorships, and double-page spreads in print magazines based on his success, he also made an appearance on national TV.

Roger later found personal training, dedicating himself to helping others reach their fitness potential. Roger has motivated over 1.5 million followers around the world on his social media platforms. He seeks to learn as well as teach. He interviews some of the world’s leading experts from naturopathic medicine to entrepreneurship on his weekly podcast, The Roger Snipes Show Podcast. Roger is also the author of Your Mind Builds Your Body: Unlock your Potential with Biohacking and Strength Training.

Roger believes you don’t need to have “all your ducks in a row” to make decisions. Rather, he says that if you make a decision, all your ducks will line up eventually!

Recently, I met Roger Snipes at the Health Optimisation Summit in London. Roger and I decided to get together at a London park for a walk-and-talk interview, covering a wide variety of topics, from faith, to family, to fitness.

In this episode, you'll discover:

-How Ben's fitness priorities are changing with time and age…05:51

-Ben's current diet…10:09

-Best ways to test your biometrics…13:50

-Acclimating children to “adult” foods…18:38

  • As soon as a child can chew, give food that requires chewing
  • Feed foods that are atypical for children, they'll end up eating them later
  • Treat kids like mini-adults

-How to reduce inflammation in the body…22:25

-Ben describes the beginning of his walk and relationship with God…32:36

  • Fear of hell isn't a proper motivation to live righteous life
  • You want to do right when your heart is centered on God

-Do all religions lead to God?…36:29

  • Presence or absence of a messiah (Jesus)
  • Many paths to a good life, but the only way to an eternal life with God is through Christ
  • Benefits of absolute moral standards, vs. every man a law unto himself
  • Humans left to their own volition sans moral law lead to disastrous results

-How Ben consumes a massive amount of books…41:22

-Ben's recommended books on mental agility, emotional endurance, financial success, etc…45:36

-Concerns about how modern-day children are being raised…52:17

-Why relationships don't have the endurance they once had…52:13

  • Transactional “serial” dating leads to a devaluation of intimate relationships
  • Porn promotes a promiscuous nature
  • View fellow humans as sacred souls

-Is it possible to love others unconditionally?…58:08

  • It's impossible to love someone unconditionally unless you are perfect

-Founding origins of Kion…1:00:37

-And much more…

-Upcoming Events:

Resources mentioned in this episode:

– Roger Snipes:

– Podcasts And Articles:

– Books:

– Food And Supplements:

– Gear:

– Tests:

– Board And Card Games:

– Other Resources:

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