May 30, 2024

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/solosode-473/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:35] Ben’s smoothie and ice cream-making

[00:03:02] Debunking Myth 1: Intermittent fasting raises the risk of heart disease

[00:11:12] Debunking Myth 2: Animal protein accelerates the atherosclerotic process 

[00:20:04] The impact of cold therapy after a workout

[00:28:35] Exposure to radiofrequency radiation and 5G

[00:39:59] The power of belief in the placebo

[00:45:44] Enhancing memory in cognitively impaired people

[00:49:50] Closing the Podcast

[00:50:53] End of Podcast

[00:51:47] Legal Disclaimer

Ben:  In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast. Will cold water blunt your exercise gains? Is intermittent fasting bad for you? Low EMF headphones, and a whole lot more.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this.

Well, hello. Here I am, still picking shards of spirulina and cacao nibs out of my teeth after my usual morning smoothie. You know, I tried this Ninja Creami for a while. A lot of people have been talking about this Ninja Creami ice cream maker. I used, for my first recipe, some goat milk, some vanilla, stevia, the Kion vanilla whey protein, and a little bit of cacao powder. Kind of like a chocolate vanilla ice cream. You freeze the base, and then you take the container that the creamy comes with, and you put the base back onto the creamy, and it makes ice cream in like 90 seconds or 2 minutes with surprisingly good texture. Meaning, it mimics the actual texture of ice cream pretty well. The cooler thing than that is that, similar to Cold Stone Creamery, you can dig a little hole in the ice cream after it's been made, dump any toppings you want in there. Like, I used some of the Hu clean dark chocolate chips. 

Another time, I used some of the Magic Spoon cereal, and it kind of gives you this textured ice cream. But I sent it back because I just found that the novelty wore off pretty quickly after I tried it about a month ago, and I didn't really like planning ahead 24 hours to make my ice cream. What can I say? I'm lazy. But for smoothie texture, I am still a huge fan of the Ninja blender because it somehow introduces air, the nature of the blender, the shape of it, introduces air into the blender jar as you are blending and makes this thick creamy, nearly fluffy texture that I find really filling. I think it has great mouth feel. So, if I had to choose a blender to use for smoothies, because I'm often asked what blender I use, it's just the basic Ninja blender. I think it's like 120 bucks maybe on Amazon. Works pretty well. I'm curious what you guys have found though to be your blender of choice. Now, it is important that the blender be large enough. My smoothies are massive, you know. We're talking like 32 ounces plus. So, it's got to be a big blender jar. I'm also curious if anybody's tried this Ninja Creami. You can go to the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/473. Leave your comments. Let me know; favorite smoothie recipes, favorite ice cream recipes. If you found a good alternative to the Ninja Creami, anything like that, let me know. 

But we are not here to talk about smoothies till we're blue in the face. This is the chance for me to fill you in on all the latest greatest news flashes. Occasionally, I get to Q&As. I don't know if we'll get to any Q&As today. But, nonetheless, we're actually here to talk about not eating. Not eating, but not eating. This is because the Internet seems to break the other day when this brand new study — if you want to call it that, came out indicating that intermittent fasting, which a lot of people do. It's all the trend. You know, somebody's an intermittent faster, when all they do is talk about their compressed feeding window. Anyways, the idea here is that there are all these headlines that are suggesting intermittent fasting might raise your risk of heart disease. I'll link to the full paper in the shownotes. But, basically, it's been drawing a lot of skepticism. What happened was the American Heart Association, the wonderful AHA, issued a news release. It was headlined “8-hour time-restricted eating linked to a 91% higher risk of cardiovascular death.” That's scary. That's going to cause a lot of people to put giant bowls of almonds, and dark chocolate, and candy on their counter to make sure that they do not restrict eating. Especially, 8-hour time-restricted eating. All that means is maybe you start breakfast at 10 a.m., you shut off the fire hose into your mouth at about 6 p.m. That's an 8-hour compressed feeding window, with typically a lot of that being an overnight intermittent fast. So, they suggested it might pose risks to your heart or could lead to a higher risk of death. And that contradicts a lot of research that has come up before that, showing that time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting could improve heart health factors. Like, insulin sensitivity, or inflammation, or obesity, or cholesterol levels.

So, the AHA news release said that those with heart disease or cancer saw an increased risk of cardiovascular death when it was mixed with intermittent fasting. And in people who have pre-existing heart disease, eating in a window that's no less than eight, but less than 10 hours per day, was linked to a 66% higher risk of death from heart disease or stroke. And fasting did not reduce the risk of death from any cause. Wow. This is one of those things that confuses people I think. You know, when I sit next to somebody on the airplane, you know, some sweet old grandma was like, “I just don't know who to trust these days. Are eggs good for you, are they bad for you? Is coffee good, is coffee bad? We just never know.” You know, that's the issue is these headlines — I've talked about many similar headlines before, they confuse people because it's baby talk. It's all or nothing, this or that, you know, bad or good. 

But here's what you need to know. First of all, the people who in this study group consumed all their food in a daily window of 8 hours or fewer had the following: a higher percentage of men, a higher percentage of smokers, higher percentage of people with a higher BMI, a body mass index. And any of those alone could have raised the group's heart disease risk. They completely lack data on shift work, on stress, and a lot of other variables that are confounding variables that were not adjusted for in this paper — if you want to call it that. Further, more correlation does not necessarily mean causation. So, what I mean by that is just because there's link between shorter eating windows, and bad health outcomes in particular, doesn't mean the eating window caused the outcome, right? So, you could look at the, you know, correlation causation flaw with something like you're more likely to get bitten by a shark, if you've recently eaten ice cream, right? It would be easy to conclude that eating ice cream somehow leads to increased number of shark attacks. When in fact, eating ice cream occurs in warmer weather during which more people are in the ocean swimming; thus, more exposed to lovely sharks. So, ice cream correlates with shark attacks but doesn't cause shark attacks. This is very similar.

The other issue is that the study data for this survey was done by the CDC between 2003 and 2018. Intermittent fasting wasn't even that popular then. Even the term was largely not even thrown around. Relatively unknown, this idea of intermittent fasting.  This means that most people who were skipping meals prior to 2018 weren't necessarily trying to improve their health because they heard, I don't know, some podcast, or talking about intermittent fasting, or saw some documentary on compressed feeding windows. They were just ignoring what was the standard dietary guidance at that time, and that means they could have been far more likely to have poor eating habits and diets. These were just people who, theoretically, may not have even really been paying that much attention to their diet and kind of accidentally intermittent fasting as a part of that. In addition, this study used just two days of self-reported eating activity to estimate 16 years of dietary habits. And two days of dietary record data is not at all reflective of an individual's regular eating pattern. So, it's quite sloppy science really. You know, the other thing that's important to know is that the people who restricted eating to 8 hours or fewer per day also had less lean muscle mass than those with longer eating windows. And less lean muscle mass has been linked to higher risk of cardiovascular mortality. 

So, long story short is, it was a highly flawed paper with a lot of compounding variables. Particularly, I think the biggest elephant in the room here is the people who were intermittent fasting fell into categories like high BMI, poor access to high-quality food, lack of data, or adjusting for shift work, or stress, or other variables, low muscle mass, you know. It's just a cluster of factors that dictates that if a compressed feeding window is something that works well for you, and intermittent fasting helps you stick to a healthy diet or stuff your face less, then all the other more well-conducted studies that have been done on intermittent fasting would indicate that it's going to be better. For insulin sensitivity, for inflammation, for obesity, for cholesterol levels. 

Now, I do have to note one thing, because I know many people might note this also. A lot of the benefits of intermittent fasting appear to be due to the calorie restriction. What I mean by that is if you take people eating an isocaloric diet, let's say, 2,000 calories a day, and one group's eating in a compressed feeding window of 8 hours, the other group is eating ad libitum throughout the day whenever they want. At the end of the day, if the calories are equal, there's not a huge advantage of fasting. But the advantage of fasting is that it makes eating fewer calories more reasonable and doable because there's simply less time that you've allotted yourself during the day to be able to snack and eat, right? For example, people who follow an OMAD diet would be an extreme example of this, right? One meal a day. 

Let's say you're me, right? My metabolic rate is screaming high. I got to eat 3,500 calories a day to even maintain weight, and not lose weight pretty quickly. Well, if you tell me I have to eat all of that at dinner, it's going to be very difficult for me to shove 3,500 calories down the hatch at dinner without having some pretty significant gut issues. So, the similar idea with intermittent fasting, right? If you're a lot of calorie count is, let's say, 2,500 calories per day for weight maintenance or weight loss or something like that, it's far easier to reach that allotment, or not overreach that allotment more specifically, when you're only allowed to eat between like, I don't know, you know, 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., or 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. So, that's the idea. That's where the magic of fasting lies. But, ultimately, the big focus should be on restricting or at least modulating calories, not necessarily fasting. But if fasting makes that easier for you to do, which it does for a lot of people, then don't worry, it's not going to give you heart disease.

So, that's the first myth that I wanted to address. And I have another nutrition myth that's been circulating around the internet as well that I want to get to on today's show. So, this one is about animal protein accelerating the atherosclerotic process. Animal protein accelerating the atherosclerotic process. So, I realize it's a mouthful. But this study was titled, “Identification of a leucine-mediated threshold effect governing macrophage mTOR signaling and cardiovascular risk,” also a mouthful. So, what they suggested was that a high intake of animal protein could potentially lead to atherosclerosis. So, let's look into what they actually looked at in this particular study. 

So, there was a rodent component and a human component. And what they claimed was that they found a protein-mediated mechanism for arterial plaque development and that it was largely an issue with the animal protein that caused the potential for atherosclerosis to occur. Now, the rodent component of this study in which they were fed animal protein was divided into in vitro, which is cell culture, and in vivo, which is actually inside the animal or inside the rodent on a, you know, petri dish or a test tube. The in vitro study, the test tube study, reported a dose-response effect of protein on the reduction of autophagy and macrophages. And in this case, that would be a bad thing, right? You're not turning over these inflammatory components of white blood cells adequately, and that was interpreted as a potential pathway to atherosclerosis. And then, they also did an in vivo trial. This was in the rodents. And they compared diets that were 7% protein, 21% protein, and 42% protein. They found increased arterial plaque development in rodents on the 42% protein diet. And then, in the humans — and this is super important. I'll get to this in a second. Humans are not large rodents. Well, there's a few politicians and lawyers out there who might fit into that category. But for the most part, humans are not large rodents. But what they did was they used strictly in vitro studies in the human components. They didn't actually feed humans protein. They took white blood cells in a petri dish. Human white blood cells in a petri dish. They didn't even look at plaque formation. 

Basically, what they did was they looked at the effects of a liquid and a solid food meal, made up of about 450 to 500 calories. And one of the meals was a higher protein dose. When they examine the effects of the higher protein on the white blood cells in a petri dish, it resulted in greater activation of what's called monocyte mTOR C1, okay. And then, these monocytes have the potential to manifest into atherosclerotic plaque. So, they said, basically, if we give white blood cells in a petri dish more animal-based protein, they seem to turn into something that could potentially, in a human, cause the formation of atherosclerotic plaque. That's it. And then, of course, all the headlines — I'll read one headline from the New York Post. This headline's from the New York Post says, “You might be eating an artery-damaging amount of protein for breakfast, new study warns.” And then, the subtitle is, “Study discovers molecular mechanism that could explain why eating too much protein is bad for your arteries.” The paper authors even said that they found the so-called smoking gun, which is that these monocytes or macrophages in mice and humans, both experienced this issue with escalating doses of leucine from animal-based protein.

So, anyways. I don't know about the funding of this study or anything like that if there was plant-based protein plays or any potential influences. But here's what's important to know. First of all, the metabolizing of branch chain amino acids, particularly leucine, is way different in humans versus rodents. So, humans and rodents, in this case, rats, they have vastly different distributions of what's called branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase. Realize that's also mouthful. But BCAT. BCAT is an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of these branched-chain amino acids that they were using in the study. Now, this occurs in humans, primarily in skeletal muscle. And the catabolism of the other essential amino acids usually occurs in the liver. 

Now, the BCAT activity in the liver and the muscle of humans and rats is very different. Rodents have extremely high BCAT activity in their muscle, but very little in the liver. And in addition to that, they have a much, much higher branched-chain amino acid oxidative capacity in humans. Therefore, it's automatically false to presume that leucine, or protein in general, in rodents is generalizable to humans. And in addition to these differences in protein and amino acid metabolism — this is important for you to understand. Anytime someone's talking about a rodent study, you need to understand this stuff. So, for example, de novo lipogenesis, that's a conversion of carbohydrates to fatty acids for storage as triglycerides. That contributes to about 60 to 70% of triglycerides in rodents, only about 5% or less in humans, which means that we can't even extrapolate carbohydrate and fat research in rodents to humans. In addition to that, the liver receptors, the so-called LXRs, liver X receptors, located in liver cells, have way different signaling activity in response to stimuli from amino acids in rats versus humans. And that's important because these liver X receptors are key regulators of genes involved with glucose, and fat metabolizing, and homeostasis. 

So, a huge difference in carbon fat metabolism in rodents. So, any low-carb versus high-carb ketogenic, versus non-keto high protein, low protein studies in rodents versus humans give us almost nothing that we can extrapolate to humans. Especially, nothing that can tell us with a nail in a coffin type of statement that something, like a high protein diet causes cancer, or that a high amount of animal protein would cause atherosclerosis. Now, I would say the most significant challenge to the findings in this paper is the large existing body of human research, including human in vivo research — not test tube or petri dish research, comparing high protein to low protein diets. For example, one very recent systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies — that's a very well-conducted body of research, found that high protein intake in humans is not associated with increased risk of stroke, increased risk of myocardial infarction, increased cardiovascular death.

Another meta-analysis showed that higher protein diets showed superior benefits for weight loss, for fat loss, for blood pressure reduction, for lipid profile, for insulin levels. And the thing that you must understand here is that probably a big reason for that is — this is related to the recent discussion I had with Dr. Gabrielle Lyons, the muscle-centric medicine doctor, that higher protein intake allows you to maintain or build more muscle, which has a host of metabolically protective effects. I would hate for people to read this paper, especially people at risk for a metabolic issue, such as heart disease and say, “I'm going to eat less protein because protein is going to give me heart disease.” Does the source matter? Absolutely, right? A burger. Even if you, I don't know, take the buns off and skip the French fries at McDonald's is going to be full of a lot more potential heart disease risk factors than say, like a grass-fed, grass-finished steak that you might have at home. A whey protein smoothie that you make at home in your magical Ninja blender could be far different than some type of sugary, artificial, sweetener-infused smoothie that you get from the gym as you're walking out the door, right? 

So, the source matters. But, ultimately, very similar to the intermittent fasting study, you got to take these things with a grain of salt — or in this case, a grain of leucine, and I would not say that based on this, despite all the newspapers reporting that your high intake of animal protein is going to give you heart disease, tells us anything besides rats that are fed a 40 plus percent protein diet seem to indicate activation of macrophages that you could theoretically say would contribute to plaque formation, but the plaque formation was never actually shown. So, there you have it. It's kind of odd when I see reports like this. It's just a head-scratcher.

So, anyways, here's something that I'm asked a lot about that I definitely wanted to address. If I get in cold water after I work out, is it going to blunt my gains, bro? This is something that's gone back and forth in research for a while. It's caused a lot of people to say, “Skip the cold shower, skip the cryotherapy, skip the cold water immersion post-workout because it's going to destroy all that hard work that you did in the gym.” So, a brand-new, pretty well-constructed paper came out called, “Cold water immersion reduces muscle growth during resistance training.” As you can imagine, that automatically sounds pretty scary. “Hey, I'm reducing muscle growth after I've lifted weights if I get into cold water.” 

Let's take a look at what this actually was what it said and what the history of cold water immersion actually looks like. So, this is a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies on cold therapy. They reported that cold water immersion after resistance exercise reduced gains in muscle size compared to resistance training without the cold water immersion afterwards. Though the effects admittedly — and even the paper acknowledges this, appeared very small in magnitude. Meaning, we might only be really speaking here to like bodybuilders who are trying to get every last fiber of muscle on their body who would even care about this. But, anyways, what they did was they did a meta-analysis of eight randomized controlled studies on cold water emerging. The studies were all about 4 to 12 weeks in duration. Folks were lifting weights two to three times per week. One study was using wrist flexor training. I don't know if I count that as weight training. Another study a couple of studies using hand grip training. I don't know if I count that as weight training either. Three studies used low-body training only, then two studies used a full-body training program, which I think is the most appropriate approach when we're looking at something like this. Then all the studies used post-exercise cold water immersion. Okay, three studies expose just the upper limbs, two studies expose the lower limbs, and three studies use whole-body cold water immersion.

Here's what's important to know. These folks are in the cold water for 10 to 20 minutes. Anywhere from 50 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Anybody who's jumped into 50 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit water for, let's say, 15 minutes — let's cut it in the middle, knows that, in most cases, unless you're like an Inuit or an experienced Wim Hof practitioner or something like that, your teeth are chattering and you're shivering and you're kind of goose-bumpy for hours afterwards. That's a drop in muscle core temperature that's likely getting close to 1 degree Celsius, which it is true could impair the natural inflammatory response to exercise and cause a lack of what would be called satellite cell proliferation or an increase in muscle fiber size or even number, in response to resistance training. 

Folks, this is way different than you finishing a weight training session and flipping the cold water on for a minute or two at the gym. Or even jumping in your cold plunge for 30 seconds because it makes you feel fantastic and gives you lots of energy after your workout, and keeps you from pitting out and sweating at work later on, right? There's a big, big difference here. The dose is important, okay? So, understand that the studies, and nearly every study that has looked at cold water immersion and any impairment and exercise using 10 to 20 minutes, resulting in a significant drop in muscle core temperature. Big difference between that and cold water, a cold soak, a quick jump into a cold plunge, which I do after almost every workout. 

So, here's what else is important to know. We need to talk about what we're analyzing here when it comes to the effects of cold water. Because the effects go beyond just muscle size and muscle hypertrophy. So, traditionally, cold water immersion has been used as a tool to help athletes enhance their recovery from exercise and improve their performance in subsequent exercise sessions, or games, or competitions, or workouts. Now, cold water immersion has been shown to improve exercise recovery, significantly. For example, there's a few mechanisms why this happens cold water immersion reduces central nervous system fatigue by reducing your core body temperature and enhancing blood flow and oxygenation. Particularly, blood flow to the brain. That's why it can have a little bit of a stress reduction response as well, and make you feel a little bit sharper cognitively the rest of the day. Cold water immersion reduces car cardiovascular strain. When your body temperature goes up, blood flow gets redirected from your muscles and your core to your skin. That's how it dissipates heat. Now, this reduces blood flow and oxygen delivery to muscles it increases heart rate, and it can impair performance. Cold water immersion redirects the blood flow to central circulation because the skin needs less blood to go out to facilitate cooling. That's another way that it can help with recovery. Cold water can also result in increased clearance of metabolites that build up during exercise like lactic acid, potassium, chloride, calcium. A lot of these things that could contribute to post-exercise soreness, or a little bit of post-exercise swelling, or sluggishness. 

And then, finally, cold water immersion can improve your autonomic nervous system recovery. Not your central nervous system, but your autonomic nervous system, by inhibiting the sympathetic fight or flight response, and activating the parasympathetic rest or digest or relax response. Anybody who's gotten into a cold plunge thinks, “Gosh, I feel like fighting or flighting the whole time I'm in there.” But when you get out, there is a parasympathetic rebound that results in you feeling more relaxed later on, which is why cold water can, again, be very helpful for something like stress management. So, when they've actually looked at — and then, this has been looked at many times, cold water immersion, post-exercise, they found decreased perceived pain after the workout, reduction in markers of exercise-induced muscle damage, a lowered amount of delayed onset muscle soreness, right, DOMS, lower amount of inflammation, lower amount of swelling. When we look at endurance, enhanced endurance recovery from endurance exercise by reducing cardiovascular and thermal strain and lowering levels of perceived soreness. Meaning, you could actually have a better workout the next day.

There was one meta-analysis that showed that cold water immersion reduced delayed onset muscle soreness, reduced ratings of perceived exertion, and even improved jumping capacity after exercise while decreasing levels of creatine kinase and lactate, 24 to 48 hours after exercise. Now, there have been some studies that suggest it's not all rosy when it comes to cold thermogenesis post-exercise. For example, I just named how very long 10 to 20 minutes of cold post-exercise could inhibit your ability to be able to gain muscle. They've also shown that there is a reduction in muscle power, for about 1 to 6 hours after you've done cold water exercise in many studies. And they've even compared like a trained limb that is immersed in cold water post-exercise and a trained limb that is not immersed in post-in-water post-exercise, and found that the muscle or the limb that's immersed in cold water has an inhibition in muscle strength. And again, these are very long immersion periods. We're talking 10 to 20 minutes.

So, what you need to know here is that if you have a major goal of muscle growth hypertrophy, you're trying to get swole, bro, put on as much size as possible, don't go get cold for 10 to 20 minutes after you worked out. But if you want to recover faster, feel better, have less stress, have reduced soreness, potentially increased endurance, or even your ability to perform in the next day's workout or a workout later on that day, the benefits of cold — particularly, briefer forays into the cold, again, you know, my maximum might be 5 minutes, you guys. Maximum. I'm usually in there for 30 seconds to about 2 minutes. The drop in muscle core temperature that occurs with that brief amount of cold exposure in no way is going to cause these issues that so many people are talking about when they're telling you to avoid cold after workout. 

So, that's what's going on with cold. And as I will do with all of these studies that I talk about, all link to this in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/473. But don't freak out too much about cold. It's good for you. I think the pros outweigh the cons.  

But what is not good for you, well, that leads me to the next thing that I wanted to cover. I've been rewriting my entire book, “Boundless.” It's going to come out in January, “Boundless 2.0.” It's like the Bible of biohacking, fully updated. It's going to be fantastic. BoundlessBook.com is where you can check out the old version. As soon as the new version launches, it'll be available there. 

But as a part of Chapter 20 in that book, I revisited the idea of, you know, air, light, water, and related to this discussion, electricity. I found some very interesting things when it comes to exposure to radiofrequency radiation and 5G. 

So, the first thing — and this goes way back, I don't know why more people aren't talking about this, way back to 2009. Title of this paper is, “Increased blood-brain barrier permeability in mammalian brain 7 days after exposure to the radiation from a GSM 900 mobile phone.” Very similar to the iPhone that many of us are holding up to our ears. But way weaker than say, like a virtual headset like the Apple Vision Pro, which is subjecting your brain to much higher amounts. Sometimes, four to six times more electromagnetic radiation than a cell phone might. 

So, this study found significant increase in blood-brain barrier permeability. I write about this in Chapter 2 of “Boundless.” This idea that you can have a leaky gut, permeable gut lining, that allows toxins, compounds, et cetera, to wind up in the bloodstream that are supposed to be in the gut. Very, very similar with the blood-brain barrier, right? A permeable leaky blood-brain barrier can result in significant neuronal damage. And this study showed neuronal damage for up to 50 days after 2 hours of radio frequencies from mobile phone exposure held up next to the head. And this just doesn't get talked about. I suspect it's quite inconvenient thing for phone companies to talk about. It's why I never hold my phone up to my head, why I use wired headsets, and why I'm very careful with any type of electronics. Including, especially, virtual reality headsets around my head. But it goes on because 5G is obviously something that's been getting rolled out.

And I recently came across a report that was submitted to the Australian government. So, what happened was in September 2019, in Australia, the Minister for Communications asked the committee to complete and inquire into the deployment adoption application of 5G in Australia. Now, I'll link to a document. I recently tweeted this same document out. That was submitted by a guy named Paul Barratt. He's not a doctor. He's not like a researcher. He's not a government official. But he did submit a document chock full of some concerning information about 5G. 

I'll read you a little part of this paper. It says, “5G is dangerous and will harm every living being. Thousands of studies link low-level wireless radio frequency radiation exposures to a long list of adverse biological effects. Including DNA, single and double-strand breaks, oxidative damage disruption of cellular metabolism, increased blood-brain barrier permeability,” what I just got done talking about, “melatonin reduction, disruption to brain glucose metabolism, generation of stress proteins. And let's not also forget that in 2011, the World Health Organization, the WHO, classified radio frequency radiation as a possible 2B carcinogen. Now, more recently, the $25-million National Toxicology Program concluded that radio frequency radiation of the type currently used by cell phones can cause cancer.” And it goes on talk about 5G. So, where does 5G fit into all this?

Given that 5G is set to utilize frequencies both above and below the existing frequency bands, it sits in the middle of all of this. But the tendencies for 5G to utilize higher frequency bands, which brings up specific concerns. Namely for eye damage, reduced immune function, influence on the heart rate variability, and potential heart arrhythmias, increased risk of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, depress cell growth rates, necrosis particularly has been noted in plants — meaning, that plant foods might become more unsuitable for human consumption, atmospheric effects, potential for fossil fuel depletion, ecosystem disruption. 

And the misleading 5G study results can also be related to the fact that most do not pulse the waves. For example, research on microwaves shows that pulse waves have more profound biological effects on the body compared to non-pulse waves. Because pulse rates of the frequencies lead to gene toxicity and DNA strand brakes. And a lot of these 5G signals, even though they're not pulse in studies, are pulsed when you're actually exposed to them on your phone and from a lot of these towers that are being installed.

So, when you step back and look at 5G, I think it is something that we need to be concerned about. But at the same time — and I write about this in “Boundless.” I give a bunch of tips about what you can do about it. Because I'm not a Luddite. I'm not going to live with the Amish. I'm not going to throw up my phone and get one of those stupid phones because I like my social media apps. I like the ability to be able to ask Siri or ChatGPT something. It's convenient. But you do need be careful. 

So, for example, I have this little — where is it? I can hold it up for the camera. It's under my desk. Let me find it here. I have this little thing underneath my desk, and it looks like this, if you're watching the video version. Okay. My phone is hardwired via an Ethernet cable. This is a USBC adapter and Ethernet cable. It's even got a power adapter on it. So, the whole time I'm using my phone in my office, it's hardwired. Same as my laptop. Same as my computer. Everything's hardwired, so I don't have to use wireless in my office. A lot of my clients, they have a digital wall timer. You get the digital wall timer on Amazon, it's dirt cheap. You plug your Wi-Fi router into that digital wall timer, which then plugs into an outlet, and you can set it to automatically turn your Wi-Fi router off while you're asleep, and then automatically on when you wake up. Like, you can set it to do like a 10 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. sleep/wake cycle. 

The number one place to protect yourself is your bedroom. That's where your nervous system gets a chance to repair and recover the entire night while you're asleep. And so, you can walk through your bedroom and get rid of Smart appliances. Most of which do not have the ability to disable Wi-Fi, like a Smart TV. You can unplug things that you aren't using in the bedroom during the night of sleep. You can even install dirty electricity filters in the bedroom such as Greenwave, or Stetzer, or Shielded Healing. They all make these dirty electricity filters that reduce the amount of AC power surges that occur in a room that you might be sleeping or working in. And you can go through your entire house and just start to ask yourself, “How many signals am I getting exposed to?” Because there's no biological free pass, folks. How many signals am I getting exposed to that I don't need to be getting exposed to? Are you listening to my podcast right now? Well, take a look at your phone. If it's on, why is it on? Are you expecting a call? Are you texting? Do you need it on? If not, put it in airplane mode. If you need it on, is the Wi-Fi disabled? Is the Bluetooth disabled? If not, disable it. If the Bluetooth is on because you're wearing Bluetooth-enabled headphones, ask yourself why you couldn't just go old school and wire, right?

So, I've got a lot more tips in this upcoming version of “Boundless.” But the last thing I want to know is, a lot of people like, “Well, Ben, you're wearing headphones right now.” Well, we're recording this. If you're watching the video, I'm wearing headphones. Even my headphone choice is pretty specific and intentional. Like, right now, I'm wearing Ultrasone headphones for recording this podcast. It's the only high-quality/high-fidelity set of over a headphone, I could find that have low EMF. They use what's called ultra-low emission technology, ULE Technology, to reduce electromagnetic radiation emitted by the drivers and the headphones. So, there's a metal shield that creates a buffer between the headphone capsule and the air volume at the ear. And they suggest that this can reduce magnetic radiation by up to 98% compared to standard headphones. These are called the Ultrasone headphones. They're a little bit more expensive. Like, you know, they're like 400, 500 bucks on Amazon, which for a pair of over-your-head wired headphones is, in my opinion, pretty spendy. But because I'm wearing them a lot, you know, things that I use a lot, I'm pretty intentional about making sure that I'm not constantly bombarding my body with a lot of these EMFs, including 5G.

I'm going to link to a paper called “10 New Studies Detail the Health Risks of 5G.” This is written by somebody who catches a lot of flak, Dr. Jo Mercola. A lot of people think he's a quack. I think in many cases, he's ahead of his time. He wrote a great book called “EMF'd.” I've been to his house. The guy practices what he preaches. The whole place is like a dark safe quiet cave because he's cut off so many sources of EMF. Similar to what I'm doing in the new home that I'm building in Idaho, in the home here in Washington state that I have now. But, basically, you must understand that, as inconvenient as these truths are, you do need to be aware of the issues with EMF and do what you can to mitigate exposure.

Finally, I want to throw in there that there are certain things you can take; like, in your body, to help protect you against the free radicals that are produced in response to radiation. For example, molecular hydrogen, right? Like hydrogen tablets. It's a selective antioxidant that can assist with the radiation from radio frequency and device exposure. Another would be to raise your levels of Nrf2. So, Nrf2. You can think about it this way. It's called “nuclear factor erythroid 2, related factor 2.” It activates the transcription over 500 genes in the human genome, including many detoxification mechanisms and a lot of things related to cytoprotection. 

Now, I realize that sounds pretty scientific, but the way that you increase it is pretty easy to wrap your head around. If you're eating a lot of sulfur-based compounds — including molecular hydrogen by the way, which activates Nrf2 very, very well. A lot of sulfur-based compounds; cruciferous vegetables, foods high in antioxidants, garlic, onions, sprouts are incredible; like broccoli sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage. Any of these are fantastic for helping boost Nrf2, which can specifically help you deal with radiation. Then, the last thing I would consider in addition to molecular hydrogen, sulfur-based compounds and antioxidants would be the use of magnesium. Because magnesium can offset a lot of the calcium influx that occurs into the cell in response to radiofrequency radiation.

It's obviously a lot of other things that you could do, but you could start there. With magnesium, with high intake of sulfur-based compounds, and anti-oxidants, and then the use of molecular hydrogen, which I go through a lot of for example when I'm flying on an airplane, right? I always have antioxidants. I always have magnesium, and I always have molecular hydrogen, and I throw a fourth in there that's actually pretty protective and also activates the Nrf2 pathway. Ketones, drinkable ketones, when I'm flying. So, few things to think about I don't want to scare you with a tin foil hat, but I'm just saying, you need to be aware of this and understand that despite them being convenient, the use of wireless devices is not without risks. Say the same for things like smart appliances.  

Okay. Want to get into a few kind of, I suppose funny things now. You know, back to the whole idea of these studies. The power of belief in placebo is something that I recently became even more aware of when I came across two new studies that came out. Okay. The first was a milkshake deception study. This is really interesting. It looked at the effect of perceived nutritional content of foods on the actual cardiovascular response to the food intake. Meaning, this was a randomized control trial in young women. And they found that drinking a milkshake worsened a marker of vascular function shortly after consumption of that milkshake. But this effect did not occur if participants were led to believe that the milkshake was low in calories, low in fat, and low in sugar. 

So, what actually happened was they had participants to consume one of the following three beverages: a regular milkshake, 540-calorie milkshake with 80 grams of sugar, 14 grams of fat, pretty crappy milkshake for you if you ask me, then they had a sham milkshake. Okay, this was identical, a nutritional composition in calories and fat and carbs and sugar to the regular milkshake. But, in this case, they were told, the participants were told, that this milkshake only had 100 calories, 3 grams of sugar, 4 grams of fat, and 10 grams of protein. Those dirty, dirty lying researchers. You're allowed to do this ethically in research. 

And then, they had a third condition that was just basically a giant glass of water, right? And then, what they did was they assessed these outcomes, these blood markers, for up to 90 minutes after the consumption of each milkshake. And they had to consume each beverage on different days, separated by at least 48 hours within an 8-day period so they could assess how different people responded to either the milkshake the sham milkshake, or the water. Now, after drinking the regular milkshake, what's called a flow-mediated dilation, which is a marker of vascular function. Even though they also measured glucose, insulin, triglycerides, cortisol, and inflammatory marker called TNF alpha. The flow-mediated dilation seems to respond the most significantly to this. Meaning that it worsened significantly when people drank the milkshake that they knew was bad for them, versus when people drank the same milkshake but we're told that it, of course, wasn't bad for them because it was way lower in calories and way lower in sugars, et cetera. 

So, what's the practical takeaway from this? Well, first of all, how much you know about the harmful effects of a food that you might be eating could actually influence the deleterious response to that food. This is why if I'm going out to a fancy restaurant, I sometimes don't ask. What oil was this cooked in? That's partially because I just don't want people spitting in my food or, you know, doing something nasty to my food back in the kitchen because I'm that person. But I don't ask, you know, with the alcohol how much sugar in this, or do you use canola oil versus olive oil. I don't always do that because just knowing can cause it to be worse for you. And, frankly, sometimes, you just want to go out and enjoy a meal at the restaurant and not worry. 

And this could probably work, I'm guessing, I would be shocked if it didn't work in reverse. Meaning, if you are making healthy choices and you know those choices are healthier, even if a meal isn't perfect, you knowing, that say you chose the skinny option on the Margarita, or you had the milkshake that didn't have quite as much peanut butter in it, or anything like that, could actually result in you having a less deleterious response to consuming that particular food or compound. I thought it was very, very interesting how what you tell someone about the food that they're eating; whether it's harmful for you or not harmful for you, actually dictates how harmful it can actually be. The placebo effect is crazy, isn't it?

So, the other one was caffeine ingestion. This was similar. They took recreationally trained males in long-distance running. Then, they had them do a 6-minute time trial run test. Now, in one, they gave them a placebo and they told them that placebo was caffeine. In the other, they gave them the identical placebo, but they didn't tell them that placebo was caffeinated. You probably can guess where I'm going with this. The group that got the placebo, but that were told the placebo — again, those dirty lying researchers, these participants were told that that placebo contained caffeine, they had much better 6-minute time trial running performance. And this was simply not because they got caffeine, but they believe that caffeine ingestion could improve running performance around maximal aerobic speed. And so, even though they didn't have caffeine in their system, the mere fact that they thought they did, made them faster. So, does this mean that before your child competes in their next soccer, or basketball game, or track meet, you should give them a glass of water and tell them that it contains magical nutrients that are going to make them faster?

I don't endorse lying, but some of these mind-control tricks are pretty interesting. You could say when your child sits down to the dinner table and turns their nose up at the vegetables, “Hey, those vegetables are going to help you perform amazingly in tomorrow's jiujitsu competition, or in tomorrow morning's basketball practice, or in your track and field meet tomorrow afternoon, or your tennis match, or whatever.” Because, technically, that's not lying. It is true. But making your child, or yourself or anyone you know, aware of those truths and aware of the benefits of what they're consuming could make those benefits be even more magnified. That's my takeaway from studies like this, that just imply the power of the placebo effect. So, there you have it caffeine and milkshakes.

All right. Last thing I want to talk with you about today was a cool study on enhancing memory in people who are cognitively impaired. So, this was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial conducted on people who had cognitive impairment to see if they could somehow improve memory. Now, in this case, what they did was they gave these people spirulina. They gave them spirulina, and this was based on the idea that spirulina can increase mitochondrial membrane potential, can decrease reactive oxygen species build-up. It's something that I've recommended in the past on my podcast. People consume if they've had a lot of vegetable oil or a lot of oxidation in their system, spirulina is fantastic for that. It can help to scavenge mitochondrial reactive oxygen species known to cause aging due to protein damage in cell walls, as well as in the mitochondria. And the memory improvement of spirulina has been reported to be related to the antioxidant action caused by chlorophyll. I think it's even more powerful you can bind the chlorophyll in your bloodstream with red light. 

But, basically, when they did this study, they fed people chlorophyll for 12 weeks and found a significant improvement in memory. And again, this was randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial on spirulina. So, I've been a spirulina fan for some time. I had it in my smoothie this morning. I go back and forth between the blue stuff and the green stuff. But the phycocyanin, the chlorella, all of these reactive oxygen species colors in spirulina dictates that I think it's actually a pretty cool thing to have around. And my favorite recipe right now — I think I talked about in the last podcast, was to take this blue spirulina. I get it from this company called a Royal Spirulina. You put a scoop of that in with a giant scoop of the Kion vanilla whey protein. Little stevia, little coconut water, a little salt. And then, you mix that up to an ice creamy-like texture. You top it with cacao nibs, and some coconut flakes, and any other goodies that you want on top, and it's incredible. 

And this company, spirulina, Royal Spirulina, they make spirulina pasta. They make spirulina snacks. They have this blue spirulina that's fantastic. And this is really interesting because if you look at it at truly alive blue-green algae, under a microscope, you can see the spirulina cells moving. If you're kid or you have a microscope at home, you can do this if you get this Royal Spirulina. I'll put a link in the shownotes, if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/473. You can see these little spirulina cells moving around like they're dancing. Now, if spirulina is frozen or powdered or processed, it's not alive. It doesn't have that same energy. But if you look at this Royal Spirulina — it's a new find of mine. I'm obsessed with them right now. What they do is they take this spirulina, hey harvest it, they keep it alive. And it's this extremely rich source of bioavailable nutrients; like, B vitamins, and minerals, fatty acids. It's got all the fatty acids in there like gamma linoleic acid, and alpha linoleic acid, and linoleic acid, and stearic acid, and EPA, and DHA, and arachidonic acid. The lipid content is like 8% in spirulina, so it's a healthy source of fats.

The fact that it's so good for cognition, for sopping up the effects of say like toxins or vegetable oils, and the fact that this stuff is alive. It's pure and alive, and it just tastes fantastic. So, I had to give him a shout-out in today's podcast because I've been going through bags and bags of this stuff. It's not inexpensive. I think a bag's like north of a hundred bucks. But it is incredible. And if you get the blue stuff, the blue stuff is super high in antioxidants, and this phycocyanin, which if you're a fan of red light therapy can interact with photons of red light to increase mitochondrial production of ATP. So, spirulina is cool stuff. It's a new find of mine. And when I saw this research study come up last week on the effects on memory improvement, I thought, “Gosh, well, that's another thing to chock up to spirulina and I recommend, if you don't yet use it in your nutrition — I wouldn't cook with it, you don't want to degrade it. But if you put it in smoothies and stuff like that, it's incredible.

So, anyways, that covers just about everything that I want to talk with you about in today's solosode Q&A. I hope you enjoy these. I hope they're not too fringe or out there when I'm telling you to turn off your cell phone if you're not using the signal. But, hopefully, this information is helpful for you and improves your life in some way. If so, leave me a rating wherever you're listening to this show. Go over to the comment section at BenGreenfieldLife.com/473, let me know what you think. Let me know what questions you have, or studies that you've come across, or other things that you want to see me address on this show. And then, finally, spread the news spread the word to your friends. Any little bit really helps the podcast out. There's a lot of health podcasts out there, obviously, and it's a very competitive field. So, the more that you do to help this show out, spreading the word to your friends, leaving a rating, leaving a review, helps out a ton. So, thank you so much for listening. All the shownotes again are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/473. I'm Ben Greenfield. Have an amazing week.

Do you want free access to comprehensive shownotes, my weekly roundup newsletter, cutting-edge research and articles, top recommendations from me for everything that you need to hack your life, and a whole lot more? Check out BenGreenfieldLife.com. It's all there. BenGreenfieldLife.com. See you over there. 

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Imagine this: You've just powered through an intense workout, reveling in the satisfying burn of a session well done.

But what if I told you that your post-exercise routine, like a cold shower or ice bath, could sabotage your gains?

In this solosode, prepare to dive deep into groundbreaking research suggesting that cold water immersion might hinder muscle growth, and explore a variety of captivating health and wellness topics challenging the status quo.

First up, you'll dissect the truth behind intermittent fasting, uncovering whether it's truly detrimental to your health, as some studies suggest. Then, you'll unravel a study claiming that animal protein might speed up atherosclerosis — a condition where plaque accumulates inside arteries — as I investigate the study's methodology and implications to separate fact from fiction.

Next, you'll dive into the potential health hazards of smartphone radio frequencies and unveil strategies to minimize exposure, including the use of low-EMF headphones. Additionally, you'll get to gain insights into the captivating world of placebo effects on performance and health, discovering how your beliefs about caffeine intake could impact your running performance.

And that's not all — wrap up with a fascinating study suggesting that blue-green algae could enhance memory in cognitively impaired individuals. I'll even offer a personal recommendation on how to incorporate this superfood into your diet.

Join me to expand your understanding of health and wellness, challenging conventional practices with cutting-edge research. Are you ready to revolutionize your approach to fitness, nutrition, and overall well-being? Tune in and take the first step toward a healthier you!

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