February 22, 2018

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/biohacking-podcasts/the-anthony-beck-podcast/

[00:00] Introduction

[00:50] BlueApron/Omax/Organifi

[07:39] About Dr. Anthony Beck

[11:10] Anthony’s Fascinating Morning Routine

[22:29] Why Anthony Only Takes Certain Supplements During Certain Seasons

[30:53] Why Anthony Has His Spartan Athletes Eat Differently

[39:43] Why You Don’t Really Need to Worry About the pH of the Water That You Drink

[47:51] FourSigmatic/Sauna Giveaway

[51:01] Why Dr. Beck Believes the Whole Plant Paradox “lectins are bad for you” Argument is a Bad Hypothesis

[52:19] Dr. Beck’s Favorite Self-Quantification Tests and Why

[59:00] The Reason Dr. Beck Doesn’t Use Cannabidiol Based on the RS1135840 and RS1065852

[1:03:32] All the Damage that Dr. Beck Has Seen ‘Shrooms Do and the Damage They Can Cause

[1:15:00] How Dr. Beck Personally Mitigates the Effects of EMF, and Why He Ssn’t a Fan of “EMF” Blockers

[1:27:35] End of Podcast

Ben:  Hey, what’s up you guys? This is Ben Greenfield, please don’t get upset about today’s podcast guest, coz the last time I interviewed him it was super controversial and I got some nasty comments in the show notes because of all the crazy things that he talks about, the weird biohacks that he does and the controversy about his very unconventional approach to medicine.  His name is Dr. Anthony Beck and today we talk about the danger of psilocybin, mushrooms, and eating and supplementing “seasonally”, which sounds boring but it’s really crazy.  He trained a bunch of pro athletes and they eat differently depending on where they’re at on the globe.  We talk about the whole lectin controversy, this whole plant paradox thing, and a lot, so this is gonna be a fun show.

It is brought to you by, let me put it this way, make your mouth water first, short rib burgers with a hoppy cheddar sauce on a pretzel bun.  Yeah, you heard me right, pretzel bun.  Seared steaks and thyme pan sauce with mashed potatoes, green beans and crispy shallots.  And these are recipes that you actually can make yourself in the comfort of your own home because the number one fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the entire country sends these straight to you.  They have two person meal plans, family meal plans, they have wine plans where you can get bottles of wine from renowned wine makers delivered monthly to go along with your meals should you want to perry wine with your hoppy cheddar sauce on a pretzel bun.  They’re called Blue Apron, and Blue Apron is really cool coz they’ll send these boxes and my kids will learn how to cook.  My wife will not really have a plan for dinner and then all of a sudden the box shows up and boom, we have dinner ready within less than 45 minutes with these fresh ingredients.  And they’re giving all of my listeners $30 off your first order.  Very simple, just go to blueapron.com/ben, $30 off and free shipping, did I mention free shipping?  Blueapron.com/ben. Blue Apron, a better way to cook.

This podcast is also brought to you… broughten? Yeah, I do know how to speak English, brought to you by Omax.  I was actually recently speaking with my friend Keith Norris, who puts on this fantastic event called PaleoFX.  He was talking to me about this recent experiment that he did where he consumed 40 grams of fish oil per day.  And he said his eyesight improved, he became like the ultimate predator, can see at night, all of his joint pain disappeared.  I don’t think he got fatty poo, like fatty in your stool which you think you’d get from eating 40 grams a day of fish oil, but I was intrigued.  I actually wanna try 40 grams a day of fish oil.  But as you may know, taking a bad fish oil is much worse for you than taking no fish oil at all.  So you need to get something that’s pure, and there is this company called Omax.  Omax3, and they do this omega 3 fatty acid supplement comprised of fish oil but it’s actually an ethyl ester form, it is perfectly sourced, meaning that they get this stuff and turn it into 94% pure omega-3 fatty acids.  That’s the purest concentration that’s out there, and if you freeze any other fish oil, it’ll get cloudy, and that’s all the filler.  But the Omax3 soft gel remains clear coz it’s that pure.  This stuff is actually really good fish oil, and you can get a box of it for free.  Yeah you heard me, free.  How? You go to tryomax.com/ben, that’s O-M-A-X.com/ben, and they just will send you a box for free.  There are some terms and conditions that apply but check it out, tryomax.com/ben.

I also wanted to tell you about Organifi.  So Organifi’s most popular supplement that they make is green juice, and I like it, my kids like it.  We do these things called smoothie competitions at our house, we do all sorts of cooking competitions, my kids are amazing chefs.  Last night I asked them to make me some scrambled eggs for dinner coz I was in a big rush, and they made me perfectly poached eggs with crispy onion shallots and sliced avocados, a cucumber carved with my initials, B.G. and a squash fry, that was what I got when I asked for scrambled eggs.  They also do these smoothies, and they use the green juice and the red juice to make these amazing smoothies, but unlike the scrambled eggs that they make, there’s no mess and no clean up and these juice powders that this company Organifi makes, they’re jam-packed with antioxidants.  They use natural, fresh, organic ingredients, it’s like having a huge organic salad but it’s just powder.  You can take it anywhere, it works as a complete meal replacement especially if you use their protein powder which has proteins and fats and vitamins and enzymes all from whole foods.  They have a gold supplement that’s turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, lemon balm.  I had some last night, it’s like when you get golden milk, it’s like that, like golden milk from the coffee shop except healthy.  A whole host of fantastic supplements this company makes, Organifi, that’s O-R-G-A-N, Organifi with an “I”.  O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Organifi and use the code there. That gets you 20% off of anything from Organifi, just use the code mentioned there at checkout, that gives you 20% off of anything from Organifi.  Alright, let’s go talk to Dr. Anthony Beck.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:

“And then when my brain starts to go different, my cortisol starts dropping down, a curb we know all about.  That’s when I hit my far infrared sauna outfitted with some RubyLux lightbulbs and I start banging on my tuning forks.  But that’s after I spend about 20 minutes in my full body light pod, a photobiomodulation.  So what I do is I hit my tuning fork and I put of course at different places, my third eye between both ears, and then under my armpits and then of course down in my manly regions, and just hit some direct tuning.”

Ben:  Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield here, and I’ve got a few friends who I would consider to be VIPs or bigwigs or leading authorities or whatever you would call them in the field specifically of health and biohacking, guys who are out there in the trenches and actually living and practicing what they preach. My guest on today’s podcast being no exception because he doesn’t wear headphones, for example, so that he does not fry his head, so we spent about 10 minutes before we started recording hunting him down some headphones to wear.  So he actually is a physician who advises some of the world’s top military personnel, Spartan athletes, strongman competitors, obstacle course racers.  He’s a functional medicine doctor whose practiced for a couple of decades now, he’s got four national medical board certifications.  He provides philanthropic care for these groups like the Warrior Angels Foundation and the Task Force Dagger Foundation, so he worked with some pretty elite military personnel.  And he’s been on the show before, as a matter of fact, I interviewed him about this tiny hydration invention that he created that I still carry with me during my Spartan races, something called Oral IV, and I’ll link to that podcast in the show notes if you wanna hear about how he created this really unique approach to hydration.

But lately, this guy has been pretty pesky on my own Facebook page.  He’s been jumping in on topics ranging from everything from mushrooms to methylation, so I figured I’d invite him on the show to take a deep dive into some of the more controversial things that he has a very unique perspective on.  So his name is Dr. Anthony Beck, B-E-C-K.  You can access the show notes for today’s show over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/beck2, that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/beck… the number 2, obviously because I’ve interviewed him before and in those show notes I’ll put a link to my previous podcast with the great Dr. Beck.  So Anthony, welcome back to the show dude.

Anthony:  What’s happening my brother from another mother?

Ben:  Not much, my brother with a southern accent.

Anthony:  What?

Ben:  Where do you live again?  Are you in Alabama?

Anthony:  Uhh, no but I am a Roll Tide fan so you know what’s up.  But anyway, I’m in Central Florida.

Ben:  Right.

Anthony:  I’m just outside of Orlando.

Ben:  Yep, between Disneyland and rednecks, right?

Anthony:  Yes sir, yee-haw.  Yeah, I got a couple of princesses, so you know we had to… no, that’s not why.  Yeah, so Central Florida…

Ben:  A couple of what, what did you say?

Anthony:  Princesses, so it’s convenient.

Ben:  Oh yeah, you got little girls, you mean?

Anthony:  That’s right.  I don’t have forests like you do to get ‘em all there, so I’m 45 minutes east or west, I’m dead center of the state to all kinds of ocean and we got tons of springs here just surrounded by all kinds of lovely and deliciousness so…

Ben:  My basement is Legoland so I actually do have…

Anthony:  [laughs]

Ben:  Hey, before we hopped on, in addition to you having to hunt down freaking headphones, we’ll talk about EMF lately, coz I know you’re not a fan of some of the EMF blockers and all these devices out there.  We can get to that later on coz I know you jumped in on that on my Facebook page, but you said you were up to your own little morning routine this morning.  You said you just finished your routine, what was your routine this morning, dude?

Anthony:  Yeah, so my thing is I get up about 9 o’clock, I kinda surprised you in our last podcast when I told you.

Ben:  You wake up at 9 o’clock?

Anthony:  Yeah, yeah.  I always like to wake up after the sun or just as it’s coming up, so somewhere between 8 and 9, whenever my body wakes me up.  And then I work in little blocks, in little chunks, and so I rock out for about 3 hours and then when my brain starts to go different, my cortisol starts dropping down, a curb we know all about.  That’s when I hit my far infrared sauna outfitted with some RubyLux lightbulbs in there and I start banging on my tuning forks.  But that’s after I spend about 20 minutes in my full body light pod, a little photobiomodulation.

Ben:  Wait, wait.  You gotta back up and explain some of this stuff to me man.  So these RubyLux bulbs that you put in your sauna, this sounds exactly like what I light my own office up with at night when I’m working at night.  They’re these little red bulbs?

Anthony:  Yup.

Ben:  Can you fill people in on those?

Anthony:  Yeah so they’re warm so it’s gonna be near infrared lightbulbs, so they’re nice and red and they put out a lot of heat.  Basically biohacked my sauna which is code for drilling a hole in the top and outfitting a four outlet light fixture, a stack in for RubyLux bulbs in a little cross shape at the top.  Of course I have to be careful not to stand up and get a nice little skin removal [laughs] on my shoulders, I’m not as tall as you.  5’8” but anyway it’s still a doable challenge.  But yeah, I’ve got four RubyLux bulbs in the top of a far infrared sauna, so I sit in there under the near infrared and far infrared combo after I’ve soaked a little 660 nanometer and 850 nanometer light pod.

Ben:  Okay, so you put those RubyLux bulbs inside of your far infrared sauna so that you’re getting both near infrared and far infrared, is that why you do that?

Anthony:  That’s correct.  I like to combine them.  Of course light has all its power in its individual wavelengths for sure, but I like to mimic what’s going on out there, and even if it’s midday it’s okay because I have it in my garage, so there’s sunlight coming in too.

Ben:  Right.

Anthony:  I don’t do it in a dark room during the day.

Ben:  Yeah, and what’s this other device that you’re in this photobiomodulation thing?

Anthony:  Well, I actually have the first bed that’s ever come to the United States and it is, a lot of people are familiar with THOR and their light bed.

Ben:  THOR?

Anthony:  THOR, yep.  THOR Laser.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  They’re like the Ferrari out there in LLLT, photobiomodulation.  I did some training with Mr. Carroll who is the CEO, that’s a fantastic company.  They have amazing low level light laser therapy units that are just phenomenal.  And then of course they have a full body pod that is combination of these two wavelength as well, but the difference is of course in price point and all the really kind of fun stuff.

Ben:  Well I wear this on my head.  I have this thing called a Vielight and the reason I wear it, like every other day I’ll put it on.  And I actually put it on every other day on purpose because if you do it too much, you create too many, from what I understand, reactive oxygen species if you just blast yourself with this photobiomodulation all the time.  But it creates nitric oxide.

Anthony:  Mmhmm.

Ben:  And it also activates the mitochondria in your neural tissue.  It’s this little probe that you stick up your nose and this hat and it’s called a Vielight, but it sounds to me like you’re doing the same thing except you got a whole freaking pod.

Anthony:  Yeah, the Vielight is awesome.  There’s so many different things out there, the market is filled with all kinds of crap because people are just thinking “oh it’s red light, it’s there, that doesn’t mean it’s putting out enough irradiance and you’re not giving up joules over time.”  As with energy substance, whether it’s air or EMF or magnetic fields or sound or tuning and stuff like that, too much can have a sedative effect, right?  So there’s a tonification, sedation curve is what I refer to it as, and so the thing about it is you gotta realize that too much of a good thing can swing to the other side for sure.  But yeah, this is a whole body pod of LED strips and it’s pretty amazing.  So it’ll be coming to the market pretty soon.  They haven’t made it completely available.

Ben:  People can’t even buy this yet.

Anthony:  Not yet, coz here’s my thing, man.  I always quantify and make sure before I recommend anything just like you, man.  That’s why I just love and respect you so much, and the thing is because you put your own time into it.  And then I run my patients through it, right?  So we do biomarkers that we wanna modulate and see, we always wanna quantify and measure and monitor.  So you wanna know going into it what you start and then afterwards.  And I have all kinds of frequencies, all the way from 10 hertz for folks with TBI and stuff like that because you gotta remember that the pulse rate and the frequency plus the wavelength.  So there’s a formula of what something is, it’s like playing on a piano.  They’re all part of the piano but upscale and downscale is gonna sound different, right?  So that’s the same thing when you’re playing with the harmonics of sound, it’s the way you’re playing with harmonics of light.

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  So it’s all about that.  So this bed allows you to do all that fun stuff.

Ben:  Okay, so you’ve got your photobiomodulation, so you’re getting a nitric oxide release in your body in that mid-morning after you’ve woken up so darn late.

Anthony:  Yep.

Ben:  Lazy ass.

Anthony:  [laughs]

Ben:  And then you near infrared-far infrared in your sauna coz you have a sauna that you put these light bulbs in, and a lot of people don’t know this, most of these saunas they are just far infrared.  So you’re adding the near infrared to that.  And then also, in addition to that you said doing tuning forks inside the sauna?

Anthony:  Ahuh.  Yeah, so I have two particular ones that I use all the time.  My go-to ones are 432 hertz and the other one’s a 528, and so…

Ben:  I know that 528 hertz is the frequency of love, what’s the other one?  What’d you say, 4…

Anthony:  Well 432 is the one that is reminiscent of phi, the Fibonacci, the golden mean, our DNA and everything.  So it has a tremendous harmonizing and balancing effect.

Ben:  Oh interesting.  I actually have this water-generating device, I know we’re already delving deep into toy territory, called the [0:18:21] ______ next to my desk right here.  And it generates water that I can breathe, like humidified vapor-water that I can breathe while I’m sitting here at work, right?  It also has a nasal cannula you put up your nose, and it does that frequency that’s in that DNA repair frequency.

Anthony:  That’s it.

Ben:  I forget, what’s the frequency?  Its 4…

Anthony:  432.

Ben:  432, and 528 is the frequency that would be more for love and positive feelings?

Anthony:  Mmhmm, and DNA-repair as well.  Just like your Whole Tones, right?  I know you’re a fan of that, same kinda deal.

Ben:  Yeah that’s what I play in my sauna all the time, Whole Tones CD.

Anthony:  Yep, so what I do is I hit my tuning fork and I put of course at different places, my third eye between both ears, and then under my armpits and then of course down in my manly regions, and just hit some direct tuning.  And then the other thing about that is you can actually take the stem of it, or the root of the tuning fork and just touch it firmly to the sauna and it makes my entire sauna into an echo chamber, so the whole thing is magnified.  It puts vibration into it.

Ben:  I wanna try this.

Anthony:  Yeah, it’s pretty cool.  So tuning fork, *bing*, and I’ll show you the one I use and link that for other folks, but you ping that bad boy, but you gotta make sure you have a hammer, a rubber hammer, because you can create a micronage within the frequency if you hit it too sharp of an object.

Ben:  What do you mean?

Anthony:  Well for instance, I did a video on it once, so let’s say you have your tuning fork and it has a rubber mallet on the end of it, you hit it with a rubber mallet, you’re gonna get a whole tone.  If I hit it with the wood handle, it’s still going to hit at 432 but it’s gonna be out of phase.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  So if you’re using tuning forks, you wanna make sure you get a whole tone.  You wanna get the proper tone out of it.

Ben:  Yep.

Anthony:  Of course there’s an app called Tuner T1, and so you can always know.  You can put that app on, hit your tuning fork by your phone and it’ll tell you and show you if…

Ben:  Oh yeah, it’s like a digital tuner just like you’d use for guitar or ukulele for example.

Anthony:  Roger that, exactly.

Ben:  Yeah, that’s interesting.  When I talked to that guy Michael Tyrrell who composes these, for those of you listening in, he composes these tunes, these really amazing tracks that are all tuned to some of these frequencies that Dr. Beck is talking about like 528 hertz.  When I play those, I’ll play them in the sauna, but the other that you can do if you take, if you’re a musician, you can take that same frequency and you can tune, I believe it’s that “A” on your guitar or your piano or whatever to that same frequency to make sure that you’re getting all the same benefits if you’re playing music.  And for those of you who wanna wrap your head around this, I’ll link to my interview with Michael in the show notes.

Anthony:  Yeah, he’s a lovely man.  I’ve never met him but I’ve always been a fan, he’s just lovely.

Ben:  Did you just get these off of Amazon, these tuning forks?

Anthony:  Yeah, but you just don’t randomly get it, there are certain companies that sell on Amazon that are the way to go, right?

Ben:  Like what?

Anthony:  So the thing about it is, remember whenever something is popular, there’s gonna be somebody out there who just tries to make it cheap and price point it and not use the right materials and things of that nature.  So it’s one of those kinds of things to where it would take an entire deal to go over who, what and why the selection.

Ben:  I’ll tell you what, after we finish this interview, if you send me links to any of this stuff that you like, or any of the things that we talk about, I’ll put it in the show notes for folks.

Anthony:  Perfect.

Ben:  So bengreenfieldfitness.com/beck2 for those of you who are writing things down furiously, you can stop and just enjoy and listen.

Anthony:  [laughs]

Ben:  That’s a pretty elaborate morning routine.  So are you also, a lot of people use things like niacin for example or other supplements before they do light therapy or before they do sauna.

Anthony:  Yeah.

Ben:  Do you have a morning supplementation protocol or a pre-sauna supplementation protocol you use?

Anthony:  I do, everything is rhythmic.  It just depends in my summer, my fall, spring or winter, I choose frequencies and substances based on that all the way from niacin to nicotine to methylene blue.  Just a whole variety of things, just depends.  In other words, what I wanna do with my body at the time and also time of day.  So I use the term micronages, right? So you have the cycle of the year, and you have the cycle of the day, of the light, and then you also have the cycle within the body of your membrane permeability changes throughout the day.  It’s not always static and then the other thing is that’s reflective of what you eat.  So there’s an algorithm that I have a balanced protocol you are at in that micronage or continuum, and then I base it upon that.  Every and anywhere from NAD or… just a bunch of different things, it just depends on where I’m at and what I wanna do.  Certain things that I’m certainly not gonna do in the evening time, coz you don’t wanna artificially upregulate system’s biology that is, let’s say in the evening time, in the anabolic phase.  Make sense?

Ben:  Something like a biodentical hormone or something anabolic, you wouldn’t take that in the evening.

Anthony:  Correct, or anything that causes your cell membranes to close.  In other words, cortisol governs the morning and of course melatonin rules the night, right? So they’re competing pathways, not everything is always the same, so people often times take things based on the premise of what it is, but it’s more than that.  In other words, just like I use the example wheat is more than gluten, right? And, I mean even cauliflower has nicotine in it, but the thing about it is it’s dose dependent, and so it’s more complex.  In other words, I wish there was always a simple answer, I have the dubious honor of being that guy that it’s always yes and no, maybe, thereto [laughs].  It’s one of those kinds of things, so my routine for the day is not the same year-round.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  It changes.

Ben:  Okay, now you use the term micronages, is that how you said it?

Anthony:  Yeah, that’s my way of saying “a frequency within a frequency.”

Ben:  Like micronages, N-A-G-E-S?

Anthony:  Ahuh, micronages.

Ben:  I’m not familiar with that term, interesting,

Anthony:  Yeah that’s Beck 101.  I made that up.

Ben:  Okay, so when you’re determining what kind of supplements to take during certain seasons, et cetera, and what kind of foods to eat during certain seasons, are there good resources out there for people, any good books that delve into how to kinda like structure your diet or structure a supplementation program based on time of day or the time of season?

Anthony:  Nope, there’s not, unfortunately.

Ben:  Wow, okay.  Well, are there any kind of like, besides avoiding cortisol-producing compounds or anabolic compounds at night, instead choosing more relaxing parasympathetic-based compounds, which seems pretty intuitive, are there any other hard and fast rules when it comes to eating seasonally or supplementing seasonally or supplementing these cell cycles in the way you’ve described?

Anthony:  Yeah, yes and no.  I’ll say it again that way, so in other words some of the hard rules is where you determine you are at makes the determination, so the patient’s unique story, their biochemical individuality and genetic uniqueness.  So that makes all the difference in the world, but here’s the thing, I’ll give you an example.  So we have catabolic phase from 4am to 4pm and then we go anabolic generally speaking from about 4pm back to 4am, so that’s the two shifts.  But some people are inverted, and so they are anabolic in the morning and catabolic in the evening based upon their current status, and that’s what you need to know because I have a rule of “meeting the patient where they are.”  Coz you just can’t assume that you can say “taking something for something or taking something that does something”, well that’s a big what I call “floatin’ much a ball at ya’, right?  You gotta think about it that you’re presupposing that the body has the ability to receive it, right?  It’s like me playing tuning forks on somebody who’s in body armor or a dog bite suit.

Ben:  Right.

Anthony:  [laughs] You’re impeding it.

Ben:  Right.

Anthony:  So in other words, you’re presupposing.  So my thing is I do like certain ideals that are out there but I’m not dogmatic.  So in other words, as the light cycle starts to shorten in the day and the temperature goes down, you need to eat differently.  When the light cycle is longer, that’s when you can and should eat things typically, but it depends on where you’re starting.  If you’re already and ill and been out of balance and you’ve got dysfunction in systems, you have to find out where you are there and pull somebody out of it.  What I call a clinical bridge, you just can’t go “okay.”  You just instantly start giving them anabolic things in the evening, and that pushes them out of anabolism, you can actually keep them there.

Ben:  Okay, what would be a few examples of anabolic things you’d avoid in the evening?

Anthony:  The thing about it is, when I use the term anabolic versus catabolic, it’s a situation where it might be a little bit different than other people hear about things.  So it just depends where you’re at, for instance if a person is more catabolic, we call that a dysaerobic imbalance, okay?  So that means that they have too much fatty acids in their cell membranes and not enough sterols, right?

Ben:  Okay, got it.

Anthony:  So if someone’s versus the opposite of that, is anaerobic.  So anaerobic people imbalance is they have too many sterols relative to fatty acids.  Quite frankly, I see that more and more today, everybody’s on the paleo bandwagon, that whole narrative of cavemen and ancestral.  And everybody has room for their opinion but my point is this, if you consume all these saturated fats which are wonderful, they’re not harmful, they’re not gonna give you heart disease and all those.  I love coconut and avocado and eat red palm oil just like anybody else.

Ben:  Yeah, I mean my breakfast right now while we’re talking, not to delve down too deep the distracting rabbit hole, but I’m literally sipping melted coconut manna mixed with chocolate chaga mushroom and some decaffeinated coffee, so I’m literally just drinking up some coconut manna as we’re talking.

Anthony:  And that’s delicious, man.  I could slap that on as an aftershave.

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  [laughs] It is.  My point is if you do that over time, especially through the spring and summer, you will tend to shift your cell membranes into a hypo-permeable state.  So what happens is you’re making them too rigid, and so the now minerals, like calcium, won’t afflux correctly.

Ben:  And the rigidity is due to the type of fats that you’re eating or the quantity of those fats?

Anthony:  Both.

Ben:  Okay.  So what you’re saying is that in the hotter seasons, suppose this would even be the case for an athlete who has travelled to a different latitude and is training and racing in a hot environment, you’d actually wanna shift away from a high saturated fat intake or the eggs and bacon for breakfast type of thing and shift more into cooling foods like raw vegetables and fruits and things of that nature?

Anthony:  Nailed it.  So that’s what I’m saying, your geographic location is a micronage.  So you have multifactorial things to conduct the symphony, so my point is how I eat or how I work with patients, coz I work a lot of course with just everyday folks and entrepreneurs, principally, and business owners and that kinda fun stuff.  And so they’re on the go, so their story also has a play into it, what’s your environment for hours of the day and what times of the day.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  So there’s all these factors that come into the decision-making matrix is what I’m saying, so like a lot of people say, all the PUFAs are bad…

Ben:  Polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Anthony:  Correct, and they think that by default they’re all there to… harmful, and that’s just not true.  I use PUFAs to correct people’s metabolics all the time.  Sometimes I have to give people sources of arachidonic acid from let’s say corn.  “What? You have people eat corn or corn oil?” Well, not soaked in acetone, high-temperature solvent-extracted, right? But whole food, in other words working in things like blue corn chips or not GMO, different sources and things like that, plus other things, right?  So in other words, you have to know what your cell membrane composition is made up of for you to determine what fat is best for you at your given time, matching all your micronages of year, lifecycle, behavior, environment, hemisphere, all these things.  That make sense?

Ben:  Fascinating.  Is there any research behind this?

Anthony:  There’s tons!  So some of the works that I studied for all of this, particularly membranes, is Revici, good old Revici.  And I have…

Ben:  Revici?

Anthony:  Revici, Revici.

Ben:  How do you spell that?

Anthony:  Just like it sounds, R-E-V-I-C-I.

Ben:  Yeah, just like it sounds, like a southern doctor would say it.  Are you talking about Dr. Revici?

Anthony:  Yeah he was a doctor.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  So just R-E-V-I-C-I.

Ben:  Okay, cool.  Got it.  So this is the guy who did studies on the response of cell membranes to different intake of lipids?

Anthony:  Correct, and curing cancers with attaching certain minerals to said fatty acids.  Because you gotta understand, most people, unfortunately, get very scientific and they get tunnel vision and what I call very dogmatic.  And the problem is it completely obfuscates the biochemical individuality and genetic uniqueness of the patient.  And I understand we’ll study rhesus monkeys and rats and people in different regions of the world, and we’ll say “oh their diet is great for them and they’re centurions therefore I should eat that way.”  No sir, I’m Irish through and through, okay? And I live in Florida, and you know all these things your audience is familiar with, what’s going on with mitochondria and heteroplasmy and all these other factors, but to just say that those substances are harmful is very obtuse because you don’t know where you’re at.  And it’s the missing link why so many people spin their wheels and when I’m doing all these things right based upon what’s out there and what’s healthy but they didn’t determine is it healthy for them, and it is not static.  It changes depending on latitude, altitude, all of it.  It all makes a big difference.

Ben:  Yeah, that’s really interesting.  I know coz I’ve talked to some of the people you’ve coached.  You do change their diet and stuff based on where they travel, so that’s super interesting.  By the way, this Dr. Revici guy, there’s a book about him called “The Doctor Who Cures Cancer”.  I’ll link to it in the show notes but it’s very interesting.

Anthony:  It’s a must.

Ben:  It says he made the bones grow back in cancer patients, restored health to AIDS patients, drug addicts, and alcoholics.  His medicines lifted debilitating migraines in as little as 3 minutes, and then the JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association totally shoved them under the bus and published a bunch of false reports about his work.  The American Cancer Society blasted him and there’s this big smear campaign that knocked out his stuff.  I’m gonna send this book to my Kindle, dude, I gotta check this out.

Anthony:  It’s a really good read, it doesn’t give the actual work.  You have to kinda have an inside scoop on that.  I’ve got it, I’m more than happy to share that with you, Ben.  I’ll give you my archive if you want, it just takes a lot so it’s not like I can like share the link.

Ben:  Send me what you got, knock me out.

Anthony:  I love to read books like you.

Ben:  Well actually, what I’ve been doing these days is I curl up in my sauna in the evening coz I save all my physical, my paper stuff for the evening.  It’s like a no screen time at night, so no Kindle, no phone or anything like that, so when I send a book like this to my Kindle, what I do is I preview it, and if I nod my head and say yes as I’m previewing it, then I order the paper version.  And then what I do at night, coz I lay on my infrared sauna and typically I have a little one of these acupressure mats in there that I lay back on, little pillow and I’ll pump those Whole Tones sounds while I lay back and read and I have a little vaporizer in there, right, so I’ll vape teas and organic tobacco and a little bit of like an indica marijuana and just sit there and read and highlight and underline.  So I’m generally digesting material for a good hour every night, sweating things out these days.  So yeah, send me what you got.

Anthony:  Yeah.  And that’s amazing, that’s what I’m saying is you got these different inducements that you can do at different times.

Ben:  Right.

Anthony:  And for other people, that routine might not be beneficial, right?

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  It just depends, you gotta always remember that you’re a category of one, everybody is a single entity.

Ben:  Yep.

Anthony:  So that’s my shtick, if you will, for everything on every topic, like the stuff that I always mentioned like your Facebook posts and different things.  You gotta remember who you are, and that is have your own current status.

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  And it makes all the difference in the world.  Even in the rounds of something else, we talked about stuff like pH and things of that nature, right?

Ben:  Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, and to set the background, I posted that I drink Pellegrino. Like if I’m gonna buy glass bottled water when I’m travelling, I go for Pellegrino because it actually has a higher mineral concentration and a higher pH.  More alkalinity, like a lot of people don’t realize a lot of these bottled waters have different pHs.  Then you jumped in on that post and you said the pH of water doesn’t matter at all.  So what do you mean by that and why is it that you shouldn’t even worry about the pH of the water that you drink?

Anthony:  Well here’s the thing.  So I wouldn’t say it’s so cut and dry like that, my point is with something having to do with mineral water, or seltzer water, just to be correct here, seltzer water being bad for your teeth, okay? Well first of all, seltzer water, in other words something you put in a soda stream, high carbonic acid water.  Like if you take what I do, I have an Oro system, but I remineralize the water just a little bit, and then I put it in my soda stream and I put a high carbonic acid in.  So then now, what we have is a high carbonic acid seltzer water, but then if I add a little bit of magnesium hydroxide powder to it, that carbonic acid now converts the water, the hydroxide which milk of magnesium makes you blow your butt out, to magnesium bicarbonate.  So if you put it on a spectrum analysis, all the minerals are the same, you just don’t know what moiety it was.  This is the thing that people are missing.  The example I use is the same thing, is if you take a cellphone, you got all kinds of apps and phone numbers, data, like tangible, literal information.  You seen the guy who puts it in a Blentech or a Vitamix, cellphone into powder [blending sounds], right?

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  So if we measure that powder and we put that in a mass spec, we’re gonna find out what minerals and everything that’s in it, rare earth minerals, stuff like that, but you have no way of knowing what data was in it.

Ben:  Okay, gotcha.

Anthony:  You can’t.  But the data was there, correct? So my point is water, that is like seltzer water or carbonated soda or something like that, Schweppes Canada Dry if you will, is not the same as a Pellegrino that is, yes carbonated, but also now has a higher total dissolved solid.  But then you also have to go to another micronage.  Okay, let’s say it’s a 1200 total dissolved solid Pellegrino.  Well, what’s the principal minerals in it? Is it more magnesium, is it more sulfur, is it more potassium? So again, each water is different, my point is this: no matter what the water is and the total dissolved content in it, your body still has to change that water, just like every food you consume, to your resonant frequency.  It has to turn it into you, it has to tune it.  That why nothing that comes in the hooter comes out the tooter looking anything like it, except for corn or something. [laughs]

Ben:  Right.

Anthony:  So the thing about it is the body has to transform it into you.

Ben:  Corn, carrots and pumpkin seeds.  That’s usually what I’ll sometimes see in my crap if I’ve been eating too fast.

Anthony:  Right, so… that called the poke and choke?

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Anthony:  But the thing is, that’s what I’m saying.  So the pH matters to a degree, but if you go and full force these electrocuted waters into your stomach, you now are shifting pH of 9, sometimes 10, down to…

Ben:  You mean water that’s been through an alkalinized filter, like a counter top Nikken or Kangen or something like that?

Anthony:  Exactly, so you are artificially making water alkaline.  In order to do that, the water can’t be devoid, it can’t be like say reverse osmosed, it actually has to have minerals in it, right? Coz you have to split the anions and the cations, so this is why those machines won’t actually give you drops and add bleach to it, you know, chloride, and also salt.  So that way it can split the streams through the plates and now you have an artificial high pH water.  But here’s the thing: your cells can’t take that in.  Your body has to harmonize it, it has to tune it to you.

And when we use numbers in the pH scale, of like say 8, to the stomach of a 2-3, those are little numbers “oh, 2-3-4-5-6-7-8.”  Listen.  Those are orders of magnitude that are massive, so your body already shifts things from the pH of the stomach to that, empties out to the duodenum.  So it goes out the stomach, goes in the top of the small intestine, and then now all the alkaline, violent, pancreatic secretions have to come in there, and now shift it’s pH hugely, bigly. [laughs]  It’s gotta really make that shift, so the point is that happens for a reason and it determines the tuning, it’s actually the secondary, first tuning happens in the mouth and your saliva.  But the second one happens in the stomach and the third happens in that little junction.

Ben:  How is it the mouth tunes water?  You’re not actually referring to the idea of enzyme-rich saliva, are you talking about the actual electrical frequencies of the body changing the frequency of the water?

Anthony:  Both.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  The saliva is rich in some stuff so whoever you’re slopping or swapping spit with, you better be selective coz there’s a lot of information in that spit.

Ben:  Can you describe that to people, the side of information, coz this also relates to this, when I race I have a few little bottles of this Oral IV in my fuel belt, which I know you helped to invent and I know that has to do with embedding frequencies into water too.  And some find this to be pretty woo, but can you just kinda give me an overview of how it is that your body can change the information in water, or that the information in water can be changed?

Anthony:  Yeah, so light is just a writable device, it’s a liquid crystal.  And you’re familiar with our friend Gerry’s work, you know, Dr. Pollack.

Ben:  Yeah, Dr. Gerald Pollack, I interviewed him.

Anthony:  Yeah, Gerry’s the bomb.  He’s another guy I just wanna kiss on the cheek.  And the thing about it is his work is a good platform to understand this.  But what I let people understand is when you put something into the body, it has to make it at its frequency for it to be harmonized or it just creates a negative effect, okay? And oftentimes the body can’t do that, sometimes we want it to coz you mentioned hormesis a lot of times too.  But the point is is when you put something into your mouth, all kinds of enzymes and hormones begin to meld into and come into congruency with anything that you eat, which is why we wanna fully masticate.  We wanna really chew what we eat, where your mindset is and what your environment is is also gonna determine how your body receives that food, too.  So we do labs with saliva, right? All kinds of, you know, hormone spit test…

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Anthony:  So, it’s in there.  It’s metabolically active with all these informatics molecules we call hormones and neurotransmitters, but there’s the enzymes and there’s minerals.  Just a ton of things, and there’s microbes.  Microbes also help us tune things, so you have to realize that the impact happens in there.  There is a component, okay?  But the whole take home here, where I was going with this, is you gotta be mindful of how your body has to exert an energy in order to do that tuning and that comes from mineral status.  It’s hugely minerals, other things that are on the periodic table of elements.  So that’s what does it, so in other words your body starts to tune it and activate things in the mouth and then it preps it for the stomach.  The stomach’s already getting it’s information on what to put into to receive this food from that signal, then you swallow it, then it responds even further.  And then as its doing it’s magical chemistry in there, it starts signaling to the intestines and letting it know what’s coming through the pipeline.  It’s a whole system, and the point is you gotta be mindful of all of that.  And again, everybody’s different, even comes into your food too, if you’re a secretor or a non-secretor. [laughs]

Ben:  Okay, so basically the big picture is that when it comes to the teeth, the pH of the water doesn’t matter that much because you have salivary enzymes that will adjust the pH right after you consume it.  However, for the entire body, you do have to take into account the mineral status of the water that you’re consuming as well as the actual frequencies, like how many metal plates pass over whether it’s been sitting in aquifer, and this would be a situation in which doing things like adding minerals to water, structuring water, exposing water to sunlight, doing a lot of these things to improve the ability of water to hydrate and pass through the cell membrane would be what you want to do.

Anthony:  And because there’s a lot of channels.  You gotta go in the mouth, down into the stomach, out the stomach, into the intestines, out of the intestines, into the blood, out of the blood, into the interstitial space, out of the interstitial space, into the cell membrane, out of the cell membrane, into the mitochondrial membrane.  There’s all these doors, so the only way you’re moving molecules is with mineral energy, and if you have a finite amount of that and if you are consuming a lot of high alkaline or low acidic pH things over time, based upon your mineral status, your body gets taxation over time.

Now I’m not saying those waters don’t have clinical bearing, they do, that’s why say “oh man, it made all the difference for me.”  But you gotta know when to take the exit, I mean I love ziplines but after a while I’m just like “whoo, that’s enough”, you know what I’m talking about? I’m a kiteboarder after a few spills I’m like “that’s fine, ok I’m done.”  So it’s the balanced understanding of that so you do always wanna have a high quality water free of bad things and pollutants in it.  You do wanna have minerals in it, and then those mineral in water you wanna make it cohesive, you wanna make it together, not clustered, that’s a false term.  We want a cohesive lattice, we don’t want clustered water, and we want to have the body be able to use it where it needs to and work on the function of it.  So food does that and of course anything that you drink.  Now if you’re consuming like say Coca Cola, and you keep bathing that over your teeth over time and holding it in there and not eating any food, it does stay in there, and then that can harm teeth over time.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  But a seltzer water, in what that original post was, no.  You’d be hard-pressed to demineralize the teeth drinking seltzer water.  That was the point.

Ben:  Okay, gotcha.

[Music Plays]

Ben:  Hey I wanna interrupt today’s show.  I’m always interrupting today’s show, I love to interrupt today’s show.  Anyways, the reason that I’m interrupting is to inform you of something I’ve been consuming a lot of this winter: hot chocolate.  But I don’t do the whole hot chocolate with mini marshmallows in it with a little bunny on the front with crumbled graham crackers inside.  Ever crumble graham crackers on top of hot chocolate? Yeah, so you can make hot chocolate super unhealthy, but there’s this company that does mushroom mocha with chaga, mushroom hot cacao with reishi, mushroom hot cacao with cordyceps.  And these amazing cacao drinks that make you feel like you’re curled up next to the fire, drinking a giant piping hot cup full of sugar and marshmallows and chocolate, which is what most of them are.  But this stuff’s actually incredibly healthy, sweetened with Stevia, guilt-free hot chocolate.  And they put things like cordyceps in them to enhance your endurance or reishi to enhance your relaxation, organic cacao powder grown in the high altitude of Peru.  They put ginger in it which makes your digestive system feel amazing.

My favorite is the mushroom hot cacao mix that’s called Revive with cordyceps, they put a cordyceps elixir in it which tastes amazing.  They don’t use the cordyceps derived from caterpillars in their production methods, their product’s totally suitable for vegans, coz you know, a lot of cordyceps come from caterpillars by the way.  Anyways, so it’s amazing, it’s called Four Sigmatic.  Four Sigmatic mushroom hot cacao mix, Revive with cordyceps, try any of their hot cacaos, you’re gonna love them.  How can you get ‘em?  Well you go to foursigmatic.com/bengreenfield, that’s foursigmatic.com/bengreenfield.  F-O-U-Rsigmatic.com/bengreenfield.  Anywhere you’re at on that site, anywhere, you get an automatic discount with code BENGREENFIELD, so check ‘em out.  Four Sigmatic.

Oh yeah, yeah, one other extremely special announcement before we get back to the interview, and that is that at the time that you’re hearing this, you have only until Friday, February 23^rd at precisely 11:45 pm Pacific time, which seems ludicrous, it seems far easier to just say midnight.  But at 11:45 pm Pacific time, that is when the Clearlight Sauna giveaway ends.  This is not like one of those dinky little saunas that you lay down inside and your head sticks out.  This is a full spectrum sauna that you can stand inside, two people, it’s called a Sanctuary.  It’s their full spectrum sauna, it’s the only infrared sauna with EMF and ELF shielding so you’re not microwaving your body, their heaters have near infrared, mid infrared, far infrared, any infrared you please, you can have, and a 100% lifetime warranty, how do you like that, for the entire sauna.  So to get in on this, ASAP go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/saunagiveaway, that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/saunagiveaway.

Ben:  Now I wanna make sure that I address a couple of kinda controversial topics that came up on the Facebook page that you piped in on.  The first one is related to this guy I had in the podcast named Dr. Steven Gundry who wrote a book called the “Plant Paradox”, about how plants have lectins in them that can damage the body so you shouldn’t eat most of these plants.  You gotta pull all the seeds out of your tomato and if you make spaghetti squash, discard every last little seed, things like that.

Anthony:  Yeah.

Ben:  So you had your own thoughts on lectins that you wanted to express, I do believe, so fill me in dude.  Are you avoiding all tomatoes and peeling them, throwing out the seeds or are you not on that bandwagon?

Anthony:  You know, not at all, and not on the bandwagon, again it’s a dogmatic thing.  There’s a lot of things out there, and again let me just be clear so that way I don’t be misread because I tell people it’s a whole different ball game.  I don’t ad hominem anybody but we can talk in scientific terms or premise.  It just has never panned out in clinical practice for me, I’ve never seen it.  It’s a tenant, I get it, it can sound sexy and romantic that plants don’t want us to eat them therefore they create these lectins therefore we should not eat them.  Well if that’s the case, then we are most miserable because lectins are just absolutely ubiquitous, and I know he talks about that in the book too, but the thing is I don’t believe that plants know or have the emotion of not eating.  There are survival mechanisms and things like that, I mean down south if we have a fruit tree that’s not growing, we prune the hell out of it and then we beat the hell out of it with a 2×4, right? And then the next year, it grows back we have a whole bunch more fruit, so it responds to the…

Ben:  That’s what you do, you beat the hell out of it with a 2×4?

Anthony:  Yeah, you hit it.  You hit the trunk and all the branches, not the hell out of it but we say it coz we always say that.  “We gonna beat the hell out of it.”  So we hit it pretty good, knock, knock, knock the tree after you pruned it and you do this in the winter time, come spring time you’ll have a big boost of growth and you’ll have more fruit, it’ll bear more fruit coz there is an intelligence to plants, okay? They do wanna reproduce, but to expand that to the lectins, having this alternative agenda inside of us, I just haven’t seen that ever pan out because of how I monitor my patients broadly across systems biology, I haven’t seen that.  Sometimes, wheat and all its glutenins and you got saponins and you got lectins and all these little molecules which is fun in a marketing spin of “anti-nutrients” but that presupposes that it would be inappropriate to the patient.  Some patients, we heal them.

Ben:  Now what would you test to find out if someone actually was getting damaged by consuming lectins? You say you’re testing the biology, you brought that up a few times about how you test.  I’m curious about what kind of tests you run on your patients.  What gets you the most bang for your buck from your patients and especially, in addition to that, two part question here we go, how would you test for lectin damage or whether or not those are causing issues?

Anthony:  Yeah, so I’m an upstreamist, so I wanna look at systems biology and what’s its function at this time.  So you wanna assess multiple systems, not just go “oh that’s a cool test, I’ll do that, I feel like I have a hormone imbalance, let me do a DUTCH, oh I have a GI problem, let me do a zonulin test.”  So the narrative is if you really wanna be serious about status, you have to look at all the systems coz they all eat out the same refrigerator and they all crap down the same toilet, right? All your cells grow up together in the same neighborhood, so you need to know what they’re all doing together, not individually.  So my assessment is always broad and it depends upon different factors in the patient’s care, finances and everything come into play, but if they have a principal GI complaint, of course I’m gonna do a stool analysis, and there’s various ones for that.  It depends, we always start with their story, we listen to what’s going on, what their complaints are and what their history is and then we determine how deep we have to go.  But as a standard work-up, you do wanna do a stool test, you wanna find out the microbiome and what’s going on in there, right? So you always wanna know where you’re gonna be dumping things and capacity of the pancreas to respond.

Ben:  And if somebody gets a stool test, where would you see if lectins were an issue?

Anthony:  Okay, so the thing about it is, you don’t have to determine if it’s lectin specifically.  See, that’s the thing, that’s a misdirection, that’s the Oz behind the curtain kinda thing.  You look and see what is the status of the two, right? Do we have elevated pancreatic elastase or PE-1? Do we have elevated Eosinophil Protein X? Do we have high betaglucuronidase? There’s a whole bunch of triglycerides and phospholipids and cholesterol coming out in the stool…

Ben:  And those would be all marked as leaky gut or inflammation, right?

Anthony:  They could be, absolutely.  And the thing is we can test for zonulin, I automatically assume if someone has a chronic condition that they have some level of leaky gut anyways.  I don’t need to do that.  Same thing when it comes to SIBO, and a lot of people are used to that approach because they wanna have a diagnosis, the “name-it, blame-it, claim-it, tame-it” game.  They wanna have it called something, “oh I have SIBO”, so then they do the breath test or different things like that.  Well, I’m gonna support it anyways, so some of those tests that are specific like say a methane hydrogen breath test and a zonulin… I’m not really looking at that, not initially.  So you don’t have to look at lectin as the offending agent, you look at the biological terrain.  You take a look at the tube across the board.

Ben:  And so if somebody’s eating lectin-rich foods, they’re eating their tomatoes without peeling and deseeding them, they’re perhaps have wheat or oats or rye or barley or spelt, and you do a test and you’re not seeing any signs of gastric inflammation, you’re not seeing any signs of gastric distress or bacterial imbalances then you don’t really worry about it?

Anthony:  Roger that, that’s relatively true.

Ben:  Now do you still personally do things like soak and ferment, pay attention to the actual preparation method to deactivate, for example, wheat, right?  We always ferment our wheat, we make sourdough and we choose a non-GMO wheat, and ferment it if we’re gonna eat wheat.  Do you take those steps or do you not worry about that?

Anthony:  I do, I love legumes but only when I’m in fast oxidation.

Ben:  What do you mean?

Anthony:  So, legumes are a high purine food.  They have higher nucleotide proteins, it’s different, and again you can understand it’s not just the lectins.  Just like “okay, well what about all the lycopene in the tomatoes and the skin?” [laughs] Remember how good and wonderful that is? See, the thing is you gotta look at the context of the patient and what you’re getting with it or not.  So my point is yes, I always properly consume legumes.  I’m not gonna eat raw legumes, you can actually get really sick from that.  And it’s not just the lectins, lectin is part of that picture.  But properly prepared, soaked, strained off, pressure cooked or cooked slow and slow over time, it becomes more beneficial.  However, the thing is that there are some people that too much of that protein moiety, that source is contraindicated to how their body fuels itself.  We’re talking about another one I call the fundamentals of allostatic control so you got a glucogenic imbalance versus a ketogenic imbalance.  Some people call it fast oxidized but there’s a ton of misinformation out there on those two terms so if you google those two terms, there’s a couple of websites there that’s just awful.  This is when you construct, and that was another great book, I’ll give you one, is “Nutrition & Your Mind” by George Watson.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  Watson, Nutrition and Your Mind, he’s the guy who came up with those two terms.

Ben:  Fast oxidizer and slow oxidizer, those are the terms he came up with?

Anthony:  Yup, got it.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  So anyways, he basically real quick on that was he saw patients with all different kind of mental disorders.  Depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, and his postulate was they were eating things incorrect for their current metabolic status.  And when he determined their metabolic status, he then made their food selection based upon that and they had a complete reversal of symptoms, right? So again, there’s different micronages that have to come into play, so when it comes to legumes they are nutrient dense, they’re fantastic, they’re great for fast oxidizers.  Slow oxidizers, not so much, but people would say “but they’re loaded with these nutrients.”  That’s great but they’re more than just the nutrients they’re loaded with, they’re a tangible thing.  Does that make sense?

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  It’s how your body… So in the same thing when it comes to fermented, I love fermented food, okay? But certain fermented foods, like if you have let’s say that anabolic imbalance, right?  You’re overly acidic, you need to avoid fermented foods regardless of the status of your tubes.

Ben:  Not for life, but while you’re in a very acidic state?

Anthony:  Boom, that’s what I’m talking about.  So if you have too much omega-3s coz you’re trying to eat a whole bunch of seafood and all that stuff, which is wonderful by the way, and you have low saturated fat in your diet and you have an anabolic imbalance, you shouldn’t be eating fermented foods.  You shouldn’t be eating butter or cream or cheese either, but what you need is like cod liver oil, flax seed, hemp and CBD, by the way, is perfect for those.  So just like that, CBD is not the panacea, for some people it’s terrible, like I can’t do it coz I have a 2D6 snip.

Ben:  What’s that mean?

Anthony:  So you know your cytochrome P450 system, your phase 1 detoxification?

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Anthony:  First pass, right? So in other words, all substances are cleared through those enzymes.  Remember on that journey to become you, your body has all these stop-loss gaps and one of them are the cytochromes.  And they’re called cytochrome P450s because the maximum absorption of light frequency is 450 nanometers.  What, another tidbit, which is the spike on your TV and your cell phones, so that’s the reason the light frequency coming through your eyes and on your skin at 450 nanometers disrupts detoxification enzymes.  But the thing about it is they’re so, you know MTFHR?  That’s the famous one out there.

Ben:  Right.

Anthony:  People respond to folate and B12 differently based upon that.  Well, it gets all kinds of press, but your other ones like your 2D6 where we clear different medications and psychedelics and cannabis from, if you have impaired clearance genetically, that substance, though it is clinically and therapeutically beneficial on the premise, might be contraindicated for you or you might need a different dose.  Does that make sense?

Ben:  Mmhmm, yup.

Anthony:  So that’s what I mean by micronages, there’s multiple things that come into play, so we have determine what is the patient’s unique status.  What are the status of electrolytes and minerals?

Ben:  And if somebody wanted to actually look at their genetic testing results from 23andMe, you said the one that they’d look at to see how a gene would affect their response to cannabis, you say it’s CYP?

Anthony:  Cytochrome P450 is the name of the system.

Ben:  Okay.

Anthony:  So it’s 2D6.  I can tell you the gene location if you want.

Ben:  Yeah, coz that’s easy to search for for people.

Anthony:  Okay, so if you go to your 23andMe, you go up and hit raw data, and you wanna just type in Romeo-Sierra, RS, 1135840.

Ben:  RS1135840?  Okay cool, I’ll put that in the show notes for those of you who wanna look into that.

Anthony:  And here’s another one real quick is RS1065852.  So there’s different alleles within the thing, so it’s on the 19^th chromosome, and you wanna take a look and see if you have a snip there.

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  Is it CG or CC or GG, so you gotta know that.  So my point is, just like MTHFR, there’s all kinds of other genetically encoded first-pass phase one detoxification that determines what the substance does in you.  We can’t just say “fermented foods have a benefit across the board.  Lectins are bad across the board.  PUFAs are bad across the board.”  That’s not true.  All of those things can be beneficial and they can be harmful, it depends on the patient.  You have to know what your status is at the time to really get the deep biohack.  Does that make sense?

Ben:  Yeah, okay.

Anthony:  And it’s a complicated thing, I hate to admit.  I wish I could just give it snip but this is why we have wonderful life-givers like you letting people know.  These are the things, I’m giving you tools, I’m experimenting with these, I’m showing you what that n=1 looks like.  This works for me, it might not work for you, right? You’re not dogmatic and that’s what I love about you, right? You say “I’m gonna just guinea pig all these things for you guys and cut through the B.S. and say hey this warrants more questioning or here.”

Ben:  Sure, even though it gets expensive after talking to guys like you coz I gotta go looking for THOR beds.

Anthony:  I know, I know. Those were hard.

Bed:  Hey, yeah geez.  Well, I’ll sell some stuff.  I’ll convince my wife.  Tell her she can buy some shoes if I can buy a THOR bed.

Anthony:  [laughs]

Ben:  You’ve also posted, coz I wanna make sure I get a chance to ask you about this, this is kind of a controversial post on my website, and that was this idea about shrooms.  And somebody’s talking about shrooms and how they discovered shrooms and how shrooms have changed their life, et cetera, and you piped in, you got some pretty strong thoughts on shrooms.  So what are your thoughts on shrooms?

Anthony:  Well, just like anything else, there’s good and bad.

Ben:  As in magic mushrooms, not reishi and chaga, but actual mushrooms that a lot of people are using for increased neurogenesis, psychedelic status, PTSD, all that kinda stuff.

Anthony:  Psilocybin and stuff, yeah sure.  Well the thing is this again, you’ll never catch me duplicitous, I think everything is on the board, okay?  I’ll kinda give you my steadfast rules.  In the sense that if it doesn’t make you have diarrhea, throw up, intoxicate you, it’s able to be eaten.  There you go, coz how did people determine things?  “Oh that just blew out my butt, better not do it.  This one maybe emesis, vomit, don’t wanna eat that, that’s poisonous.  This one just gave me a trip, might not wanna do that.”  But then some people go “well hold on a minute, it’s a cool trip, I just had a spiritual journey.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  “That just opened me up to some things.”  So my point is, they can be a very useful tool, and quite frankly, you know this but I’m collaborating with a physician now to set up clinical application of psychedelics.  So we got a place down in Nassau, Bahamas where the laws are different, and we’re doing some work here in the States so we can leverage DMT, ketamine and different things like that for different things, to unlock a certain situation for a patient.  So in a clinical setting, I think it’s a great thing.  Non-clinical setting, it can be a little bit different.  But some people would say “well if I’m in a sweat lodge with a shaman, doing things right or I’m down in the Amazon doing some [1:07:27] ______, different things, that’s a clinical setting.”  Might not be what usually is clinical coz you wear a lab coat and stethoscope sometimes, actually I don’t wear it anymore, it’s a different kinda deal.  My point is as the world around us gets very rough, you don’t have to get into all the political and religious things that are plaguing the planet now, but the thing about it is people are gonna be looking for and do look for what I call “experience shopping”, they wanna experience something.

Ben:  Right, it’s very trendy.  DHT, ayahuasca, people doing these things every month or so.  Microdosing with LSD every three days, there’s a lot of that going on.

Anthony:  And listen, if you wanna do that, knock yourself out but that’s your own choice in freedom, just don’t expect other people to pay for the possible negative consequences.

Ben:  Right, what… coz what you said on my page, you saw severe aberrations to neurotransmitters, methylation pathways, liver enzyme function, kidney function, blood sugar metabolism, sleep cycles, libido and mitochondrial function in people who were frequently using shrooms.  So how are you actually quantifying that? That’s not a stool test, right?

Anthony:  No sir, so we’re gonna see that in blood and organic acids, okay? Now lemme just be clear, if somebody wants to experiment with magic mushrooms and have a trip, are you gonna die? No that just really doesn’t happen, okay? I get it, the safety profile on them singularly like that and with prudence is really not that bad, but if people have situations and status and their emotions and their mindset to where they’re seeking disconnect from that by using these active substances that have a tremendous power.  If you do it without thanksgiving and prudence and direction, then what you can do when things get revealed to yourself consciously, and you just do it because of the fact that you just wanting to experience it, that’s gonna come to a detriment over time especially if you don’t know, like we talked about, say your cytochrome P450 status, okay? Because like for instance, 5-methoxy-DMT, little toad lick, if we hit that or the patient hits that, it is a substance that must be cleared through the cytochrome P450 system, right? Which is why we usually have to, in different ceremonies you’re gonna mix in some ayahuasca, you’re gonna do maybe some tobacco, right?  There’s different combinations depending on where you’re at, right?  Some harmaline, so because in order to get the 5-hydroxy-DMT experience, you have to block the MAO, right? Well some people already have an impaired MAO, right?

Ben:  Hmm.

Anthony:  Some people have a deficient [1:10:39] COMT, just like MTFHR.  So the COMT metabolizes DMT, and if your 2D6 is impaired and you’re taking, and there’s a range of dose and you’re not working in a clinical setting and there’s not a lot of measurement, you’re just kinda going on what we give everybody the same amount of this and a little bowl, we brew it, there’s different things.  And you don’t know your body’s capacity to metabolize this stuff and you repeat it over time, I have seen countless times, people’s methylation cycles and liver enzymes get impaired.  Because if you look at the science and you’re familiar with the science, they show a safety record.  It relatively, so I’m not here to scare people of them, right? But you gotta think about it, source, form, dose, frequency, and duration.  How much you use, how often and over time, and of course if you’re not eating a healthful diet to support the impact on your body and then you rinse, lather and repeat and experience it again, you’re gonna put taxation.  It’s the same thing as all kinds of medication, the same problem with anti-depressants, and those medications, it’s the third most prescribed category of drug in the United States, anti-depressants.  So, second being anti-lipidemic and the first one being analgesic or pain meds, right? So all three of those top meds have to be processed and metabolized.  Just look at the drug monograph and they’ll tell you what cytochrome and the pharmacology of it, what cytochrome P450 it’s cleared through.

So if you don’t know what your cytochrome status is, you might get more of that drug or less of that drug than anybody else.  This is why we have this term out there, precision medicine coz they’re doing genetic testing now, more mainstream and conventional coz we’re going “oh, well what’s the difference between eating a 20 mg or a 40 or a 100 of a drug?”  It’s kinda like aspirin, right? “Baby aspirin, what is this 83 mg, what is that?  Coz 100 will make you bleed and 60 doesn’t work?” [laughs] Right? So there’s the dose, so that’s my point when it comes to psychedelics, they’re very useful but you gotta be prepared and have a game plan afterwards for unlocking that consciousness and different things that your mind shows you.  Does that make sense?

Ben:  Yeah it makes sense, so it sounds to me it’s almost like this concept of the hedonistic calendar, like Jamie Wheal and Steven Kotler talked about when I interviewed them in their book “Stealing Fire” about how many of these things should be limited in terms of their use and used in very specific situations with specific intentions.  But it sounds to me like on top of that, what you’re saying is that before you dive into some of these categories of psychedelics or other drugs, you need to understand the actual biochemical pathways in which they’re metabolized like say the cytochrome P450 pathway.

Anthony:  Mmhmm.

Ben:  And if you have deficits in that pathway, as could be determined via something like a urinary organic acids test…

Anthony:  That’s right.

Ben:  Then it might not be the best thing for you to do until you’ve sorted out those biochemical pathways.

Anthony:  Nailed it.  That’s my message, right? It’s not this or that, yes or no, it’s “how about we show how awesomely selective one status that you are.”  And the thing about it is in a urine organic acid test, one of my other workups I do for every single patient is the Genova Diagnostics NutrEval Plasma, not the FMV, the plasma.  Well, we know that if you wanna take a look at pathways of involvement of let’s say methylation status, you can take a look at methylmalonic acid in your urine and the FIGLU, right?

Ben:  FIGLU?

Anthony:  FIGLU and MMA.  FIGLU is the metabolic marker for folate and MMA is that for B12, okay? Then we have xanthurenic and kynurenics for B6.  Then you also need a new RBC magnesium, so those principal ones, if someone has a… let’s just make a worst case scenario, okay? So if I just go ahead and say if somebody has a situation where they have excessive levels of methylmalonic acid coming out the urine, excessive levels of FIGLU coming out and they have an RBC magnesium of less than 4, you don’t wanna be putting those substances in right now.  This is why Balanced Protocol, my program, has three phase: nourish, balance, purify.  Build yourself up first, nourish your body, your mindset, your environment, then start balancing things out.  And the only way you’re gonna know if you qualify to do that or not is if you take a deeper quantification.  That make sense?

Ben:  Yeah, makes perfect sense.  So that’s really eye opening to know that coz a lot of people really are just popping these things without knowing if they’re in the proper biochemical situation.

Anthony:  And then here’s the thing though, it’s like that for all the nutraceuticals too.

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  Whether it’s NAD or whether it’s creatine or if it’s a different protein or a nootropic or any of that stuff.  I think they all have their place in premise, but you need to know.  You have different cooking instructions at altitude because we know water doesn’t boil at the same temperature.  If you’re at 5000 feet, if you’re up in Colorado or something like that, it’s gonna be different.  If you smoke a doobie at altitude versus down altitude, for the same person it’s gonna be different.

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  It’s the different levels of micronage you have to reconstruct your story.  That’s my message to people, is you gotta embrace yourself as unique individual.  All these things that you teach, motivate and inspire people to do are phenomenal, they’re tools, they’re strategies.  But finding out where your starting point is in that journey is what I suggest for everybody to do.  And it takes time some doing and it’s not the simplest thing, unfortunately.  Wish I could just do it to everybody but… not.

Ben:  Yeah, so I’ve got one other question for you because I know you’re big into this idea of protecting the body from non-native EMFs and the concept of electromagnetic fields kinda being an issue for the body.  Now what do you personally do about that?  How do you personally mitigate the effects coz I know when I posted on my Facebook page about this idea about EMF blockers, like Himalayan salt lamps and things like that, you seemed to take issue with that but I’m just curious what your thoughts are on these type of mitigation strategies a lot of people are using for things like WiFi and Bluetooth and EMFs.

Anthony:  Yeah, well the first thing is all those are foreign and they’re not beneficial to the body.  However, if your status is strong you can have a controlled burn, okay?  Notice I use a cellphone. [laughs]

Ben:  But you said you don’t use the headset.

Anthony:  Correct, I sure don’t.

Ben:  So how do you talk on your cellphone, just on the speaker?

Anthony:  Yup, and I set it down, I’m not even holding it.  Now there are times where I’m and about and my wife’s at Disney with the princesses and I have to come at what I call a periscope depth.  I come off of airplane mode, I check and see if there’s a thing.  So we have plans in place of when I need to break the guideline, right? And I am walking around and she has a call, she’s like “hey honey I’m stuck” or something like that, I’m gonna do it.  So not like “oh my God, I never touch my cellphone.”  I don’t ever put it to my head no matter what, that’s just not gonna happen.  But it’s on airplane mode all the time and I just pop on from time to time, check and see if there’s any messages and I go about my business.  So you don’t want those energetic exposures that close to you because we’re already a microwave planet.  It’s everywhere, right?  And so by the time we have more, it was actually happening in 2014, we have more devices than we do people on the planet, so it’s everywhere.  Everything is smart and all these devices in people’s house and Bluetooth this and your impact indicators.  I got a new truck and I had to go to the dealer and have him turn all that off.

The thing about it is I have what I call the 3D Law, okay?  What I call disconnect, that’s the only way to deal with these EMF bombs.  That’s it, disconnect.  It shouldn’t be on, don’t have a source of them.  Second rule is distance, if you can’t turn it off, create distance, right? So it’s just like a tuning fork, if I hit it *bing* and hold it up to my ear, it’s gonna be different if I hit it across the room.  The frequency’s still there but there but the amplitude is less, so you want distance.  Third thing is if you can’t disconnect it and you got some distance but you can’t really do that is duration.  Keep it to a minimum, only do it when you have to do it.  That’s it, coz the only safe level is really zero.

Ben:  So what do you think about these things that are neutralizers, like pendants or certain devices that create frequencies that might mitigate some of the frequencies produced by the EMF radiating devices, shields, cases, et cetera?

Anthony:  They’re all erroneous.  And I’m not just saying that dogmatically, I’ve tested them, I’ve bought them, I’ve busted them open and just see little packed in fingerprints mushed with clay.  And the meters don’t change, and I haven’t seen it do a difference in [1:20:49] ______ photography and I haven’t seen it change in biometrical dermal screenings.  Some people do the little dog and pony show with applied kinesiology but don’t get me started on that, I’ll probably piss off some of your audience but it’s okay.  But anyways, in my clinical experience with multiple patients and myself, putting it through its rules of rigor, I have found them to do nothing.  Now, if someone says “hey, worked for me” then I go “well, congratulations, rock on.”  But, are you monitoring your repeatable, testable, quantifiable metabolic markers? [laughs] If you’re not, you’re just going on how you feel, well you’re gonna find yourself in a really bad place over time, 100% of the time.

Ben:  Is there a certain test or certain device you would use to test for these type of things?

Anthony:  Well yeah, all the way from an RF meter, like an acoustimeter and a magnetic or a milligauss meter, like Alpha Labs UHS1.  And then there’s a Geiger counter, some of these things actually are this clay that is emitting radioactivity, it’s amazing.

Ben:  Wow, interesting.

Anthony:  So people are saying…

Ben:  The acoustimeter is one, what’s the clay that you’re talking about?

Anthony:  Well which one was it, was it the, I think it’s called the Home Defender.  It’s this little grey plug and their whole shtick is there’s this magic clay from somewhere that’s inside of this device and puts a little three prong on your thing and harmonizes the environment.  Spend $50, buy one, get your little flat screwdriver, bust that open and just look at the little ball of clay that’s in the inside connected to the prongs on the inside.  That’s all it is.

Ben:  Wow, I’ve never even heard of that.  Interesting, I’ll have to look it up.

Anthony:  Well, here’s the thing.  Some people might say that about my hydration product or different things that I do, I get it.  Don’t believe me just coz I tell you, I want everybody to challenge every single thing that anybody tells them because the best thing is first hand clinical knowledge and quantification regardless of what the tests out there say and the science.  Because they lie, bad boys, there’re a lot of lies out there.  So do it yourself.

Ben:  Yeah.

Anthony:  And here’s the thing, if you want one of these frequency generators, okay great, but you gotta measure first, by what matrix are you determining there was benefit? That’s all I ask people to do is come up with a decision making matrix.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.  I like it, I like the approach with quantification like that.

Anthony:  That’s it.

Ben:  So yeah you, between this and a previous podcast I did with you where we just covered a host of stuff.  We took a deep dive into water in the last show that I did with you so for those of you listening in, just go to the show notes for this episode, I’ll link over to that one.  We only scratched the surface of the kind of stuff that Dr. Beck talks about so I’ll link to his stuff over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/beck2, that’s Beck the number 2, B-E-C-K 2, and I will also, I’ve been taking some notes and I’ll put links from everything like the tuning forks and the rubber mallet we talked about to the books and the research by Dr. Revici that Dr. Beck mentioned.  The different labs that he talked about, and then also the resources, anything else that Dr. Beck sends me after this episode, I’ll put it in there for you guys.  In addition to that, if you have comments, if you have questions, if you have feedback, that’s the best place to do it.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/beck2, that’s B-E-C-K then number 2, and just leave your comments.  Either Anthony or I will jump in and reply to what you have to say.  And in the meantime, Anthony, thanks so much for coming on the show, man.  You’re always a wealth of information.

Anthony:  Oh man, and I love doing it, you’re one of my absolute favorites, you’re doing it right and I send people to listen to you all the time.  You’re one of two folks I just really have people go to on principal there, and that’s the whole thing man is its really super important for people to look at them that n=1 but then do it right.  Not just one thing at a time and realize that your environment is everything where it all comes from.  It’s the air you breathe and how you breathe, right? You’ve had people on for that all the way from Hof to Oxygen Advantage.  There’s information out there for that, and then there’s water and then there’s light and then there’s sound and then there’s EMF and then there’s food.  I call those the 6 environmental inputs, right? So that’s key number one of my particular program, we really wanna master those six things, or everything else downstream is really kinda futile.  Or at least get those going, right?  Don’t pick one that you just resonate with.  Unfortunately if you really wanna get the best out of it, the best biohacking approach is you gotta do all of those.  It’s the symphony.  I know it’s a lot, you don’t have to take it overnight, but you gotta do that and oftentimes it does require somebody like me or you to help walk them through that and help guide them in that journey and mentor them a little bit because it can be arduous.  And the night is dark and full of terrors. [laughs]

Ben:  Night is dark and full of terrors.

Anthony:  That’s right.

Ben:  That’s what I’ll name this podcast.  Alright, well folks, thanks for listening in.  We’re outta time but if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/beck2, everything’s in there.  And in the meantime, Anthony thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Anthony:  Thanks Ben, love you brother.

Ben:  Alright folks, I’m Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Anthony Beck signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com.  Have an amazing week.

 

 

I have several friends who I would consider to be VIP's, bigwigs, and leading authorities in the field of health and biohacking.

Although I will respectfully keep those friends anonymous, I've noted that a relatively large majority of them have one specific man who serves as their personal physician, and he's the same guy who advises some of the world's top military personnel, Spartans, strongmen competitors and obstacle racers.

That man is Dr. Anthony G. Beck, and he's my guest on today's podcast.

As a physician who has practiced Functional Medicine for over 20 years and backed by 10’s of thousands of patient encounters, Dr. Anthony G. Beck doesn’t merely manage diseases ~ he helps people resolve them. Dr. Beck has earned 4 national medical board certifications, is the founder and chief medical officer for Balance Protocol Institute, is the founder and CEO of Helion Nutraceuticals, and provides philanthropic care for combat veterans through groups such as Warrior Angles Foundation, Millennium TBI Network and Task Force Dagger Foundation.

With extensive education in many clinical disciplines such as Functional Medicine, clinical nutrition, systems biology, epigenetics and nutrigenomics, he takes a dynamic approach to assessing, educating, and working with his patients to achieve their highest levels of wellbeing. Dr. Beck’s programs involve a full array of aspects including optimizing ones environment of (air, water, light, sound, EMF), healthful lifestyle design, individualized nutrition, hormone balancing, resolving immune dysfunction, identifying hidden infectious diseases, as well as leveraging extensive laboratory and functional testing to assist patients to determine their biochemical individuality. Even more importantly, Dr. Beck wants to empower patients to demand a higher level of care from their health care providers.

So not only is Dr. Beck a wealth of knowledge on advanced health tactics, medical testing, and the combination of biohacking and exercise performance, but he's also the mastermind behind a hydration tactic I've personally been experimenting with: a tiny hydration invention called Oral I.V. – which we explore in great detail in the episode “The Physician Who Personally Advises The World's Leading Health Authorities, And His Tiny Invention That Pro Athletes Swear By.”

Lately, Dr. Beck has been quite pesky and informative on my own Facebook page – on topics about everything from mushrooms to methylation – so I figured I'd invite him on the show to take a deep dive into some of these controversial topics he has a unique perspective on, including:

Psychedelics

Lectins
Energy Medicine Devices
Dietary waters vs pH effect on body
EMF devices for health and their consequences

 

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-Anthony's fascinating morning routine that includes near infrared, far infrared and photobiomodulation… [00:11:10]

-Why Anthony only takes certain supplements during certain seasons, and how he determines that… [00:22:29]

-Why Anthony has his Spartan athletes eat differently at different latitudes and why you can eat more fruits and raw vegetables in the spring and summer… [00:30:53]

-Why you don't really need to worry about the pH of the water that you drink, and whether carbonated water will really damage your teeth… [00:39:43]

-Why Dr. Beck believes the whole Plant Paradox “lectins are bad for you” argument is a bad hypothesis… [00:51:01]

-Dr. Beck's favorite self-quantification tests and why… [00:52:19]

-The reason Dr. Beck doesn't use cannabidiol based on the RS1135840 and RS1065852… [00:59:00]

-All the damage that Dr. Beck has seen ‘shrooms do and the damage they can cause… [01:03:32]

-How Dr. Beck personally mitigates the effects of EMF, and why he isn't a fan of “EMF” blockers… [01:15:00]

-And much more!

Resource from this episode:

–Oral I.V. (you can use 20% discount code BEN20)

–The Anti-Aging Labs Ben mentions

–RubyLux bulbs

–My podcast on the Vielight for photobiomodulation

–432 Tuning Fork

–528 Tuning Fork

–Rubber Mallet for the Tuning Forks

–My interview with the folks at WholeTones

–Books and research by Dr. Revici

–Book: Nutrition & Your Mind

–Acoustimeter for EMF testing

–Urinary Organic Amino Acids test

Sponsors of this episode:

-Blue Apron – $30 off your first order if you visit BLUEAPRON.COM/BEN

-Omax Health – tryomax.com/ben to get your FREE box of Omax3!

-Organifi – Try it for yourself and use the code “greenfield” at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Organifi to receive 20% off your order!

-Four Sigmatic – Go to foursigmatic.com/bengreenfield

-Clearlight – Giveaway entry deadline is Friday, Feb 23 at 11:45 PM PST – enter at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/SaunaGiveaway before then to win the Clearlight Sanctuary 2 (2-person) full spectrum sauna.

Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Dr. Anthony G. Beck or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply!