December 24, 2017
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/article/the-runga-podcast/
[0:00] Introduction
[6:30] Pulse Electromagnetic Fields and BEMER Mats
[10:30] When to Use and When not to Use Exogenous Ketones
[15:55] Near vs. Far Infrared, UVA and UVB Rays
[31:45] How to Deal with Stings and Bites from Mosquitoes, Scorpions and more When Traveling Internationally
[34:50] Deuterium Depleted water
[45:14] End of Podcast
Ben: Hey, what’s shaking, baby? It’s Ben Greenfield and this show is a unique one because it was recorded from the jungles of Panama. I was at a fabulous digital detox retreat called RUNGA, R-U-N-G-A, in Panama and we all gathered around one evening and recorded a live Q&A with all of the participants attending that particular event and we delve into everything from near and far infrared therapy, to exogenous ketones, to the unfortunate scorpion sting that I sustained, and much, much more. Recorded this one with my sidekick at that event, Aaron Alexander of the Aligned Podcast a [0:00:59] ______ and body worker and therapist who is a wealth of knowledge in his own right and I think you will enjoy this one. It’s a special Sunday episode. So, sit back and get ready for some action from RUNGA.
Hey, this is Ben Greenfield, welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show which is a little bit of a unique podcast because we’re recording this bad boy not only in front of a live audience but also along with my fellow podcaster of the Align. Not Alight Therapy, just Alight?
Aaron: No, no, no.
Ben: Alright Therapy.
Aaron: I like how you went sultry when you said Align; that was good.
Ben: Yes, I have a sultry voice. Not as sultry as you, my friend. Introduce yourself.
Aaron: Aaron Alexander, Alight Podcast. For people listening to Align, thanks for listening, thanks for tuning in. For people listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness, same!
Ben: Yes, yes! My apologies to those of you who listen to both our podcasts who suddenly realized you got totally shorted because you’re having to listen to the same podcast episode on both of our respective podcasts. Visual, we are at RUNGA in Panama. If you don’t know what RUNGA is, freaking go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, type in RUNGA, and you’ll learn a lot because I’ve interviewed Joe DiStefano about it and I’ll put a link to those previous two episodes in the show notes. Have you ever interviewed Joe DiStefano about RUNGA on your podcast?
Aaron: It’s coming up.
Ben: Uh huh.
Aaron: It’s in the making.
Ben: You just made that up.
Aaron: We’re neighbors now.
Ben: Okay.
Aaron: No, it’s real talk.
Ben: Yeah, play your skin flute.
Aaron: Joe D and skin flute podcast.
Ben: We’re also not only in front of the ocean, I don’t know which ocean this is. Is this the Atlantic, the Pacific Indian, Gulf of Mexico? What are we at?
Aaron: I thought this was a lake!
Audience member: It’s the Pacific Ocean.
Ben: It’s the Pacific Ocean. Okay.
Aaron: This is the ocean?
Ben: We’re listening to the lulling sounds of the Pacific Ocean at about 9 PM at night beautiful Sansara Resort and we’ve got about 25 fabulous attendees from RUNGA here circled around us ready to just slay us. I was going to say like tiny little Jews in the gladiator arena but that would just sound wrong for the podcast.
Aaron: No, that won’t be good.
Ben: I don’t know why that came to mind, like a Ben-Hur movie or something. But let’s go with something else like…
Aaron: I was thinking…
Ben: Russell Crowe movie? Like, throwing us to the lions what I was thinking of which is how that whole…
Aaron: We mentioned the weeping virtual assistants in the Philippines.
Ben: Yes.
Aaron: But that’s also a racial slur.
Ben: We’ve already threw the Russians and the Jews under the bus.
Aaron: Yeah, can’t do that.
Ben: Okay. They’re basically going to ask us very highly scientific questions and look to us as experts to answer them because we are experts in underwear sitting on the floor.
Aaron: Go! Go! Podcast go!
Ben: So, that being said, this is a full on Q&A podcast recorded from Panama with or without the assistance of the social lubricant we refer to as ethanol. That being said, if any of you out there in our live studio audience have questions then now is the time to jump in and ask them otherwise you get to suffer through and listen to Aaron and I talk about whatever we freaking want which is probably going to be Aaron’s passion: burlesque dancing and the skin flute.
Aaron: That’s right.
Ben: Or my passion which right now is whatever drink was the latest one I just got, I think I’m mixing my alcohols.
Aaron: Yeah, you’re dabbling with alcoholism.
Ben: I’ve got both heavy amount of mercury and ethanol circulating in my system for dinner, even though the fish was really good. So, questions, questions, questions?
Here we go, first question coming right up! Introduce yourself not like your whole life story, we really don’t want to hear it on the podcast, just your name and your question. I want to hear your life story later on.
Aaron: After.
Jim: I’m Jim Stane from Detroit and fitness is my life partly because you inspired it and I’ve listened to almost all of….
Ben: Aaron, he was looking at me when he said that.
For the record, he was looking at me not at Aaron.
Aaron: Sorry, I forget your name, but thank you Ben.
Jim: Almost all 380 of your podcasts, many twice, and Aaron, I can’t wait to start listening to all your backlog as soon as I get home.
Aaron: I appreciate that.
Jim: True inspiration in person.
Ben: Yeah, he’s okay.
Jim: The BEMER is used by tens of thousands of hospitals and elite athletes in Europe.
Ben: Oh, jeez, you wrote your question. You’re reading off it. This is going to be a serious question.
Jim: But I haven’t yet heard you talk about it and the reason I cyphered through all your podcasts, but not Aaron’s, is because he might have mentioned it. I don’t know.
Aaron: Nope, didn’t.
Jim: It’s changing the face of Europe but it’s new to America. What are your thoughts on the BEMER?
Ben: I don’t know if it’s new to America.
Aaron: Just got here.
Ben: It’s been popping up a lot in the biohacking conferences like this giant mat that you lay on or sit on or lounge on or have a special chair made out of their BEMER material that apparently is, I believe primarily pulsed electromagnetic field frequencies.
I love the idea of just being able to lie on a giant mat of PEMF because there is a host of research of PEMF for everything from healing stress fractures more readily to giving you very similar effect to if you were earthing or grounding and getting in touch with that 7.8 hertz frequency that the earth emits. We tend to see geomagnetic frequencies around the globe range from anywhere from three to 100 hertz and by walking on the beach out here, smelling the ocean, being out in the forest, camping, laying on the ground, we’re getting exposed to a lot of the fields but the idea behind the BEMER is it’s bringing that kind of technology into our homes or into our offices as something we can lay on or sleep on.
I like the idea but I personally travel a lot and because of that, I don’t’ really travel a lot with… I even have a grounding and earthing mat at home that I don’t travel with just because I travel really light. I don’t check in any bags. So, in my bag over there by the table, I actually have the same technology that is used in the BEMER. So, I can generate a 3 hertz frequency up to 1000 hertz frequency, but it’s a square that big.
Jim: Actually their technology is patented and no one else can use what they have.
Ben: It’s pulsed electromagnetic field frequencies. They might have an actual frequency that’s patented and I don’t know what that actual frequency is…
Jim: Probably the only one that works.
Ben: But, just go to PubMed and do a search for PEMF and you’ll find a host of research that has existed far before BEMER patented their technology. Now, at the same time, I’ve used BEMER mats, I’ve laid on them, you feel fabulous afterwards, you feel as though they’re a great tool to recover your body, but they are/can be kind of bulky for travel. I don’t personally have one at my house.
The way I do it, is I like to get infrared, negative ion therapy, and PEMF all at the same time when I’m at home, and the way that I do that is I used an EarthPulse and I put it underneath a Biomat and I do that while wearing a giant aluminum foil hat… No I’m just kidding. But, that’s what I do. I use a biomat combined with an EarthPulse and then I travel with something called the Flexpulse which generates a huge range of frequencies so I can literally just play it like a DJ or I can set for sleep or anxiety or muscle recovery. I put it on for a scorpion sting at ten to 100 hertz so it was pulsing backing and forth between the two frequencies. So, the BEMER is cool; good research behind it; I just disagree that it’s the only way to get PEMF therapy.
So, Aaron, quit hogging the microphone.
Aaron: I don’t really have anything to say about that. Next question.
Ben: There you go, easy.
Aaron: I feel like you nailed that.
Ben: Thank you. Alright, next question! Here we go. Introduce yourself.
Angela: Hello, I’m Angela Marie from San Diego.
Ben: And tell us your life story! No, I’m just kidding. Go ahead.
Angela: My question is, I know you’ve talked a lot about ketones on your podcast, exogenous ketones are becoming very mainstream, a lot people who don’t currently have their diet and healthy lifestyle in check, they’re starting to take these exogenous ketones. Is there anyone that this can actually be hurting instead of helping?
Ben: Aaron, you think people should be eating ketones? What are your thoughts on this?
Aaron: I think I trust your thoughts on this subject, I’m looking forward to it, and I think that with anything, when we’re isolating specific parts out of say any type of food, I’m going to use the analogy of isolating pectin instead of eating the apple, any time we’re doing that, I think the short term, like right now, caprylic acid is a big thing, MCT oil. We’re doing so much and it’s like the hot, sexy thing, in our industry, to be utilizing but the long-term effects we end up finding two years, five years, 10 years. So anytime we’re isolating an individual component out of something that was coming as a whole and we’ve been simulating that for potentially millions of years, I find it dubious. So, if I can get something from the whole form, I trust that more, but that’re more of an intuition thing, and of course there’s other science around it as well, but that’s my sense.
Ben: Yeah, and I agree. You can take a lycopene supplement or get similar benefits from eating a whole raw tomato and many would argue superior benefits to the isolated supplement form granted, if I’m on an airplane, I’m going to take a multivitamin that has lycopene in it because I don’t want a big ol’ tomato squashing itself in my travel bag for example. So, there are times we want to use better living through science and exogenous ketones can be a time to do that, right. So, let’s say you’re an athlete and for you to get into ketosis via excessive fasting really doesn’t jive well with the amount of exercise you have to do, it’s just not enough calories on board, but you want all the benefits of having ketones as readily available fuel for your diaphragm, or your heart, or your brain, or some of those tissues that burn ketones quite regularly. That would be a situation where, and we see everybody from DARPA to Tour de France riders taking advantage of this fact. You would use ketones as a way to both have your cake and eat it too: so, enter a state of ketosis without excessive fasting and without excessive calorie deprivation.
Most people would benefit more from freaking learning how to fast, learning how to restrict carbohydrates, learning how to not have their scone or biscotti or their gluten-free granola for breakfast and kind of getting their body in a state of ketosis as the way our ancestors might have while hunting down meat for a few days with limited amounts of food and lots of plants and maybe some mushrooms and then some things that allowed them to get food, but not enough so they were actually able to go out of a state of ketosis. So, the idea would be, use exogenous ketones if you need them as a performance aid or as almost like a hack, or if you’re doing a long fast and you need a little extra help because your boss doesn’t understand that you can’t take the day off work because you’re going to take three days from eating and you might have a little trouble getting energy. Well, then in that case you might want to take some ketones or some amino acids, some electrolytes to keep energy levels up. So, there’s a time and a place to take them.
I’ve taken ketones before like a race for example, I know even taking ketones and combine them with glucose, so I’ve elevated blood glucose and elevated ketones at the same time. Theoretically you can argue that that is very similar to diabetic ketoacidosis where I’m creating a net acidotic state within my body, that’s probably true. There’s probably a biological bounce back if you’re constantly using exogenous ketones and eating at the same time with high blood glucose levels. That’s not a natural state for the body to be in. That’d be like me saying go out and fast for three days and figure out a way to keep your blood glucose high, right. Unless you have exogenous ketones, there’s no way you can actually achieve that metabolic state. So, I need you to be careful, but I think for folks like athletes or soldiers or people who need to have calories and be in a state of ketosis, they’re actually a pretty damn cool tool to use.
Aaron: I liked what you mentioned just a few days ago about treating your supplements to be like food. So, when you’re looking at the ingredient list of your food, you want to understand what’s inside of that. I think we can just get ourselves down a slippery slope where we start countering this supplement with that supplement. It’s the same argument that we have in the pharmaceutical industry. So, for me personally, when I look at a supplement, I would like to understand what’s inside that supplement and see it as literally I’m ingesting a food. It’s not a cheat, it’s a part of my diet. It’s my nutrition, it’s my food. Just that reframe, I’ve been pondering on that since. So, thanks.
Ben: Thank you, I’m glad I went that deep.
Aaron: You went deep.
Ben: Yeah, deep enough for Aaron to ponder for three days.
Aaron: Yeah, it doesn’t take much.
Ben: Thanks for listening, folks! Oh, wait, another question.
Maria: Hey guys, Maria from New Jersey. I’m near…
Ben: And by the way, I must say I’m surprised that no one has pitched themselves like Maria from Maria.com. Nobody has done that yet! I’m just surprised. Okay, go ahead.
Maria: Near or far infrared, which is better?
Ben: Near or far infrared, what is better? Well, what does the sun give us, Aaron? I mean, it’s both.
Aaron: Yeah.
Ben: So, whenever I get a question like that, you kind of sort of look to nature. Like talking about the BEMER mat, nature gives us a host of frequencies from three up to 100 in a few cases 1,000 hertz when we’re wandering through nature. So, we know from that that exposing ourselves to a wide variety of these PEMF frequencies, not just one patented frequency, might be better for the body. Or ketones, nature puts us in a place where we’re sometimes going to be in a state of ketosis where our body is going to produce ketones and that’s not just by putting beta-Hydroxybutyrate in our coffee every morning.
For near and far infrared therapy, if we walk out in the sun, the sun’s giving us both, right. So, you can’t say near infrared is better that far infrared what am I going to put in my sauna, what kind of little tent am I going to put in my office that I saw in this cool biohacking symposium, and am I going to get this special lamp or that special lamp. I would expose yourself to as many different varieties of biologically natural light as possible. So, a JOOVV lamp over here to our left that would produce near and far infrared. Well you know what, you’re screwed if that’s your only light because you’re missing out on UVA, UVB, who knows what those other frequencies are the sun emits that we haven’t even discovered yet to be biologically beneficial for the body.
So, the answer really is neither. I have a far infrared sauna but I use a near infrared lamp. I go out in the sun. I try to go out for a copious amount of time while the sun is shining every day. So, near infrared good for skin, collagen health, doesn’t penetrate quite as deep from what I understand as far infrared does, which would be better for growth hormones, testosterone, athletic recovery, we’re still missing on the vitamin D benefits which you’re going to get more from some of the UVB exposure with some of the UVA. So, the answer is yes! Give me all of it!
Aaron: It feels like with all these myopically questions or focusing on near infrared or far infrared, it feels like a similar thing to what Ben and I went through around bodybuilding. So, you start your journey off from a movement perspective of okay I want bicep, I want tricep. So, what I do is I do bicep curls and tricep extensions. That’s kind of like near infrared and far infrared and then you realize that, “oh my god I actually really want to connect all the dots”, and through that process of a snatch of a deadlift or squat or dance or martial art which forces the integration of the body, that puts pieces together that we might not even be shining the science flashlight on and then maybe two years, five years all of a sudden the science flashlight broadens a little bit and we start putting these dots together and we say, “oh my god I wish I just went out in the sun every now and again.”
Ben: Yeah. Except for the adductor machine. Everyone should own the adductor machine. The one with the thighs that goes in and out!
Aaron: I retract my previous statement.
Ben: Yeah, you want good legs and fat loss at the same time? Get the adductor machine.
Aaron: That’s good.
Ben: Okay, let’s take another question. By the way, I’m going to totally use the opportunity to say my drink is empty. I’m leaving Panama in a few hours, I would love to have some kind of chocolate-y, colada-y, smoothie-y something…
Aaron: Look at that! I just got myself a drink buff.
Ben: See how I use podcasting to get myself free booze.
Aaron: We’ve got an elite athlete here. Oh my gosh!
Audience member: What was your favorite part of the week?
Ben: My favorite drink? Is that what you said? Or my favorite part of the week? Because they’re probably the same. My favorite part of the week was learning how to surf like a champ… kind of, more than I ever used to be.
Aaron: I witnessed it. We got a question!
Ben: All right, question! Here we go.
Danny: Danny from [0:20:12] ______ and my question is with the New Year coming up…
Ben: [0:20:15] ______ is that like a city?
Danny: It’s a small city in Saskatchewan.
Ben: Oh, okay. [0:20:21] ______ sounds like a spaceship!
Aaron: [0:20:22] ______, I like that.
Ben: Okay.
Danny: So, my question is, with the New Year coming up, you see a lot of New Year’s resolutions coming up, my question is, what advice would each of you give somebody who’s looking to form a new habit?
Ben: Oh boy.
Aaron: Yeah.
Ben: Well, I can tell you my best trick for forming a new habit but it’s not very advanced. I put a calendar on the fridge because you know what? I open the fridge every freaking day.
Aaron: Yup.
Ben: I see it’s in front of me. That or I’ll put it on my desk which is another place I go every day. I will sometimes use Evernote as well, especially when it was going to be a heavy travel period of time for me when I’m not going to be in front of my own fridge and I use little “X” mark or checkmark and I write down what exactly that habit is. Right.
So, right now, I’m completing a tai chi gong meaning I’m going 100 days doing five minutes of tai chi every morning which is basically when I get out of bed, next to my bed in the morning, I’m doing kind of like swaying, circular tai chi motion and Paul Chek challenged me to do that in the last podcast we recorded together and I’ve been doing it. The checklist is actually on my refrigerator at home. I make little checks each time that I do it. I’ve been doing it in my gratitude journal and when I get home, I transfer those from the gratitude journal onto the fridge, right. So, for me, there’s got to be pen to paper or pen to chart-on-the-fridge for me to form a new habit. For me, there’s something magical about writing it down and checking it off and there’s that human psychology of checklists that we all love.
Aaron: Yeah. I just read, because I’m reading the five minute journal which I just got from here which is fantastic, 85%, apparently, of all New Year’s Resolutions…
Ben: It’s a really boring journal to read because it’s like “Day 1… Day 2… Day 3… Day 4… Day 5…”
Aaron: Let’s scratch that.
Ben: I just read this book in one night!
Aaron: So a part of I got out of it there is, since I was just looking, was 85% of all of our New Year’s resolutions, they end up not working out, right. So, with that, I think a big part as we end up setting too high of goals and I think just having those little bit of rewards, like something people have talked about quite a bit is making your bed, something to kind of keep you in this place of feeling like you’re gaining good momentum. We do that a lot when we go see doctors or chiros or physios or whoever it may be and they focus on what’s wrong with your body. As you go into this place, you want to be liberated and feel good and fixed your knee and you come out feeling dependent on that thing, you feel broken. So, if we can start to feed some of those little victories, all of a sudden we gain momentum off of that.
So, something I will do with myself is just start it off with just five minutes, if I’m looking to meditate for an hour, we don’t start there, we start with like shoot, I was just grateful for my meal today, those little things. That felt good. I did a little bit of yoga that felt good. Eventually you start to change your perception of yourself. I’m a person that gets things done as opposed to I’m a person that fails repeatedly, I start things and then I stop. I start to habituate that self-perception.
Ben: The funny thing is, websites like, is it Snapchat? That uses this to their advantage where people don’t like to close that loop. Do you know what it’s called? You’re laughing out there in the audience. Do you remember what Snapchat calls that? Snapchat has this thing where people on Snapchat will like make it a point to communicate with each other every day on Snapchat and if you’re the person who closes that loop or breaks that chain, then you fail essentially. So, it’s just human psychology that we want to accomplish this. It’s like all of us here at this digital detox retreat, we’re closing a loop where we’re making sure we keep all those red notification marks in messengers in Facebook checked off. But that’s human psychology to want to go in there and check that check mark, check that list. So, again, it can work for or against you. All these social media companies, they realize that aspect of human psychology that we actually do like to get rid of the little red notification mark on our phones or on Facebook.
Aaron: And just hacking out that Bruce Lee quote that everyone’s probably heard too many times, we want to hack away the superfluous. It’s about subtraction not addition as I think so many of us coming from just looking at how you do anything is how you do everything. When you look into your laptop, when you open that screen up and it’s bombarded with 67 different tabs, to me, that stresses me out immediately. So, if we’re looking to create bigger change in our realities, whether it’s our movement thing or whatever it may be, start looking at your laptop, start looking at the organization of your room, start looking at the organization of your fridge and we can start to make little micro-changes around our reality and then from there, that spills into the macro, but self-perception is a big thing. Words, we don’t really give a [bleep] about the words that we say, as much as we care about the actual reality that we see. So, just making those physical, material changes, you end up, again, with more momentum.
Ben: Amazing. So, this podcast is brought to you by, should we make up a sponsor? This podcast is brought to you by Aaron’s skin flute, Scott Dolly’s drum JOOVV, we’ve got a lot of JOOVV lights around here, my ukulele, and whatever this horrid, spawn of Satan drink Joe DiStefano just brought me that tastes like a glass of vodka with some brown thing added to it to make it look like an actual drink.
Aaron: I think that’s camel semen.
Ben: Yeah, camel semen. Camel semen: biodynamically favorable. It’s a highly absorbable protein.
Aaron: We’ve been drinking it all week.
Ben: I like me some camel semen. Alright, another question, another question. Alright here we go.
Aaron: That was a commercial break.
Ben: That was a commercial, we said all our sponsors. We had skin flute, camel semen, JOOVV, okay.
Trent: Hey, Ben, it’s Trent from Canada. I have a question for you on lightheadedness and dizziness. So, do you have any recommendations or ways to prevent lightheadedness and dizziness from just generally standing up or rolling on the ground doing somersaults and things like that? Really what causes it as well?
Ben: Quit drinking so damn much comes to mind. Alcohol I mean. Alright, that’s it. Nobody laughs, okay that fell flat.
Aaron: No nothing. Nothing.
Ben: Wow, tough crowd.
In most cases, what you’re looking at is either a sodium potassium imbalance or aldosterone depletion or something else that’s affecting blood pressure, right. Some imbalance of hormones responsible for diareses or for water retention or for sodium retention. So, there are tests you can do for that. You can get a blood electrolyte balance test for your sodium, potassium, chromium, red blood cell magnesium levels, and actually see if you have identifiable imbalances. You can also do what I did when I was a heavily competing athlete, specifically in Ironman, you do a lot of sweating for a long time each day, I would lay awake at night and my heart would be pounding in my ears and I couldn’t figure it out until another athlete told me “hey, same thing happened to me and I started putting a bunch of sea salt and water at night” and so I started doing that and now you guys see me here, what do I have in my cute little bag that I pull out at the table at dinner every night here, I have this bag of salt. In this case, Kona black salt and I just travel everywhere with salt and if I don’t travel with it, I’ll find a cool, little local shop and just buy their salt and if I don’t have that, I’ll go up to the restaurant, even if they just have regular iodize, regular old table salt at the table and I’ll just ask do you have any kosher salt or rock salt back there at the bar. So, I’ll get my hands on some of the better salt that doesn’t have as many fillers added to it and I just use copious amounts of salt. Since, I started doing that and really being cautious about the amount of minerals in my diet, by the way, thank you Joe, my charger by the way is plugged in. Sorry. This podcast is also brought to you by my errand boy/bitch, Joe DiStefano.
So, yeah, I do a copious amount of salt consumption. Honestly, it’s probably to the point I’m pushing six grams of salt or more a day, especially down here. That really fixed the issue for me personally because I used to deal with this a lot where you stand up and you get dizzy. Athletes go through a lot of minerals, especially. What do you think Aaron?
Aaron: From a structural perspective, I’d explore also something like a cranial sacral therapy and see if there could be something inner ear related. So, your face, your skull, it’s all fluid floating bones, it’s not just [0:29:16] ______ there’s actually sutures in between there. So, we have, it’s called motility, and so as we’re sitting here, our faces are kind of expanding outward and expanding upward and expanding outward and expanding upward, and so something that I would look at as well on top of, from a nutritional perspective, is also from a structural perspective. So, I might go see a cranial sacral therapist or an osteopath or somebody like that. Just a thought.
Ben: Sorry, quick underwear adjustment, I want to make sure no flesh pops out from my pink banana boxers I’m wearing on this podcast, even though it’s not a video podcast, probably wouldn’t matter.
Aaron: Brought to you by Ben’s moose knuckle.
Ben: Yup, that’s right, Ben’s moose knuckle, a visual sponsor for this podcast. Alright, what else do we have out there for questions? Great question Trent, by the way.
Yes, we have a question from Amelia, our local raw dark chocolate. Funny story about Amelia is we, the staff here, technically did not have our meals catered for us on the weekend and so Joe and Amelia disappeared in the town the other night and they went out there with a few friends, including Scott Dolly, he’s been in our podcast before and Scott came back, I’m talking with him and I’m like where did Amelia and Joe go and he’s like they’re up at Joe’s place making dinner. And I’m like, “oh they’re making dinner because they invited me over for dinner.” What did they get? He said “carrots.” Carrots? “Yeah they got some carrots.” And his voice just kind of trails off completely disinterested and Amelia is this raw food chef. I know your people, right. I know that when I walk up, there’s carrot cheesecake and some amazing carrot soufflé and a carrot casserole and some giant carrot brick that you made to taste like a ribeye steak, and that’s all washed down with a carrot superfood smoothie. It was an actual really good meal. I think you pretty much just too a bunch of vegetables and drowned them in coconut butter, but either way it was amazing. So, thank you.
Aaron: Salt, salt.
Ben: And sea salt. Honestly, sea salt and coconut butter added to anything, plus her touch and amazing chopping skills.
Aaron: Then I proceeded to pour the juices from the pan into my mouth.
Ben: There’s nothing better.
Aaron: It was good; it was legit.
Ben: There’s pretty much drinking coconut butter and orgasms. Those are the two best things in life. Alright, what’s your question Amelia?
Amelia: Should I get up?
Ben: Yeah, you got to come up to the microphone.
Amelia: Thank you for the kind words.
Ben: Get closer.
Amelia: Top three tips for scorpion bites.
Ben: Oooh. That’s such a random non-applicable question for the general audience. We could probably make it.
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, we could make some [bleep] up.
Ben: I mean opening a kimono, I got bit by a scorpion the first night I was here. I couldn’t move my leg the first day and was lying awake in bed crying because I didn't have any cell phone reception and I couldn’t get a hold of everybody so I was just lying there like “what just bit me, am I going to die?” are the two things going through my head, and when I wake up in the morning and take like an hour to hobble 200 yards to the resort, walking and they proceeded to engage in some pretty good TLC for me. The things that help the most for my scorpion bite that would be helpful to make this applicable to the general audience for any stings, bites, wounds, etc. was I made a poultice which draws the poison out of the wound, I used a blender and I made up a poultice using a coffee filter, and ginger root, and fig leaf, and I blended all that together with hot water. I placed in on my knee and I just let it sit over and over again on my knee to draw the poison out. Number two was frankincense essential oil. Who knew? Some crazy, old, housecleaning lady here at the resort was apparently well versed in Mexican folklore, I mean, Panamanian folklore. She gave me frankincense oil, so there’s that, and then lymph massage. Lymph massage. I have three lymph nodes in my upper femur that literally swelled, this was two days ago, to the size of golf balls. Like I’ve never actually, I think I’d come into you and I would look at myself in the mirror, like my entire right crotch looks like it, looks like an old lady’s calf… looks like there’s lumps everywhere, and I literally massaged all that out. I, like, masturbated my femur for a good hour and a lot of it went away. So yeah, there you go: poultices, frankincense oil, and masturbation. So, yeah.
Aaron: Addition, with lymphatic massage, something you guys can take for if you’re going out with yourselves, sometimes we think the only type of body work or manual therapy is if it’s really deep and really painful, but lymphatic massage is about the weight of a nickel and it says we’re working through there to work with the lymphatic glands; you’ll blast right through those guys if you do a deep elbow to the groin, so something to tinker. Ben had a really beautiful experience where he got to have an intimate experience with the glands up on his groin, right? And so, just in general, you guys, just something to play with – having awareness of all the varieties of touch are helpful. We don’t always need to go in with grenades nor create change.
Ben: I often fantasize about a deep elbow into my groin though, I have to say. Alright, next question. Question. Anybody, in the audience. Don’t be shy. Come on up… oh, no repeat question or I won’t take it!
Angela: Hello, Angela again. So I’ve been hearing a lot about deuterium depleted water, and I even tried it myself, I felt really good but it’s $10 for a small bottle. Do I really need that? Is spring water enough? What are your thoughts on that?
Ben: Alright. This might be more fringe than scorpion bites. DDW or deuterium depleted water is based on the concept that water that is imbalanced is heavy in this isotope called deuterium which makes it very, very difficult for a cell to properly metabolize water, and the idea is that you do not engage in normal cellular metabolism as efficiently if the water that you’re drinking is heavy in this isotope called deuterium. And if you actually analyze a lot of plants, a lot of produce that we eat nowadays, it is full of deuterium heavy water. That could be due to mineral depletion in soil. Some have argued that it is due to radiation, some that is due to glyphosate exposure, but the idea is that where the water that we’re drinking is very heavy on deuterium, and that leads to metabolic deficiencies and some have argued, cancer.
Not a lot of research on this deuterium-light water that you would consume to compete with the deuterium-heavy water but there are some pretty compelling studies if you do a search on PubMed for deuterium depleted water and cancer, and there’s actually studies in which they have literally reversed stage 4 prostate cancer by giving people, I believe it was for about 12-16 weeks deuterium depleted water, 3 times a day. This stuff is pretty expensive, it’s like 10-15 bucks a bottle. I’ve drank it before. You feel pretty good when you drink it but I asked a few researchers who I respect about this. Dominic D’Agostino probably gave me the best and most informed reply, Dr. Mercola, another guy whose brain I picked about it, basically – and again, Dominic and Joe, my apologies to you if I’m misquoting you on the show, but the idea is that theoretically if you’re in a state of ketosis and you’re drinking really good, clean, cleared structured water with good minerals added to it, your body should be able to make its own deuterium depleted water as a by-product of cellular metabolism, and you shouldn’t have to drink multiple 10-15 dollar bottles of water each day, and I tend to agree with that too.
I don’t think God made the world so that we have to drink a bunch of super-expensive bottled water each day. Yes, there’s this idea that we humans have kind of like, more or less [bleep] up the planet a little bit and so it could be that now we have to kind of like really pay closer attention to the type of water that we drink, but ultimately I have yet to be convinced that something we need to be spending 40-60 bucks a week on if I got cancer, or 40-60 bucks a day. If I got cancer, would I drink it? Honestly, I probably would. Based on a few research that I’ve seen, especially if it’s for prostate cancer, and I know people who have or have had prostate cancer who are drinking heavy amounts of deuterium depleted water now. So it’s an interesting thing to explore right now. I would hate to actually end today’s podcast episode on deuterium depleted water and scorpions, so let’s go ahead and take one more question to wrap this bad boy up. Here we go. We’ve got a volunteer.
Stephanie: I’m Stephanie from Alabama and I want to know what you think about doing intravenous, Myers, or B12-type cocktail therapy vs. injections and intravenous vitamin C for help as an alternative for cancer therapy.
Ben: As an alternative… you had to throw that in at the end, the “as an alternative for cancer therapy” thing. Do you ever get Myers’ cocktails, Aaron?
Aaron: I have, yeah, but I trust your opinion on this. This is your question.
Ben: Okay. Alright. Apparently I put more needles into my body. I like the scale for efficacy of everything from glutathione to vitamin C to all the different B vitamin complexes that are in the Myers’ cocktail would be taking a supplement, that would be like, the least effective way. Capsules that you swallow, next would be like some kind of liposomal or sublingual delivery. Next would be some kind of a subcutaneous injection. Next would be some kind of an intramuscular injection, and next would actually be mainlining into the blood stream via an IV or push IV, or some method of delivering all those vitamins to your body in a more concentrated way directly into the bloodstream, especially if you have gut issues where you can’t absorb micronutrients quite as well. There are people who get Myers’ cocktails, there’s a night and day difference for that and multivitamins.
There are a lot of people who have claims to have had better progress compared to chemotherapy with the use of this type of thing. I’ve seen way more evidence with this whole metabolic approach to cancer; like, think of the idea that cancer is the mitochondrial disease, not a micronutrient deficiency disease so instead of doing a Gerson Protocol or heavy amounts of juicing or IVs, you instead approach it from the standpoint of mitochondrial health, like hyperbaric oxygen therapy, ketosis, infrared light, sunlight and water, good water, everything you’d normally do to enhance the health of the mitochondria. I think that that compared to just mainlining as many nutrients as you can in your bloodstream, is probably going to put a bigger dent in the cancer.
Look at it this way: the more nutrients you provide in your body, the more nutrients you provide into tumors, so technically, it’s like dumping your body full of readily available metabolic products is not necessarily going to kill cancer. For the average person though, speaking from my own personal experience, you feel like Superman after you get a Myers’ cocktail, more so if you’re hungover or detoxing or something like that. I went through a period of time last year where I was literally getting tiny little bottles of Myers’ cocktail and doing self-administered push IVs into my left bicep, straight into the vein, and I was doing that as I was taking a multivitamin. So, just once a week, I would just inject all my vitamins. So, it’s kind of like better living through science. It’s a way you can mainline stuff into your bloodstream and just skip gut absorption all together. It can be effective. I’d say spendy but if you really need to enhance your micronutrient availability, and some people would say “why don’t you just eat plants?” We were talking about depleted minerals, depleted nutrients, the way they’re grown these days. I think there’s more pros than cons aside from the harm to your wallet of doing things like Myers’ cocktails and vitamin IVs.
Good question! What do you think, Aaron? Do you think we should wrap this up?
Aaron: I think it’s time.
Ben: I think it is time. There are some sleepy eyes out there. So, we’re going to release this as a podcast episode some time in the very near future. For those of you listening from afar, thanks for tuning in and for those of you here, thanks for attending and for putting up with our relentless skin flutes and half-naked pink banana boxer banter and Aaron, thanks for cohosting this bad body with me.
Aaron: Thank you so much, I will hopefully… I look forward to relistening to this. I’m sure once the alcohol wears off, it’ll sound much different.
Ben: Yes, it will sound way more intelligent; trust me, everything sounds more intelligent the next day, the next morning.
So, I’m Ben from the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast along with Aaron Alexander from the Align Therapy…
Aaron: Align Podcast!
Ben: I keep making it sound more complex than it is. From the Align Podcast! Thanks for listening! You can check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com or Aaron, what’s your website?
Aaron: AlignTherapy.com. So, you’re kind of right. The previous episode that we just released on the Align Podcast was with Joe Mercola who Ben mentioned and Ben introduces the episode because they love each other apparently. But we get into the conversation around water and even, kind of interesting thing, in relation to how your cellular water becomes structured, which is more stuff you can pick Ben’s brain about after here, just upon walking on the beach. So, a lot of the stuff we can do, these natural things, you don’t necessarily need to go out and get the supplement. A lot of the stuff is in most of the stuff, maybe all the stuff, I’m not sure, we can get from doing simple things like taking your shoes off, waking up early, checking the sun out, getting in the ocean. We get into that with Mercola.
Ben: That’s a wrap! Thanks for listening folks. Have a healthy week.
In this special episode recorded live from RUNGA retreat in the Panamanian jungles with co-host Aaron Alexander of Align Therapy, you’ll discover:
-Ben’s perspective on EMF’s, recovery and the BEMER mat…[6:30]
-When to use and when not to use exogenous ketones…[10:30]
-The difference between near and far infrared and UVA and UVB rays…[15:55]
-How to deal with stings and bites from mosquitoes, scorpions and more when traveling internationally…[31:45]
-What the deal is about the new “deuterium-depleted water” craze…[34:50]
-Why Ben wears his pink banana boxer underpants when he records a podcast…
-And much more…
Resources from this episode:
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-RUNGA 2018: RUNGA is a once a year retreat, currently hosted in December. RUNGA is designed to facilitate a dramatic shift in attendee’s current outlook, lifestyle choices, self-efficacy, motivation, love, even spirituality. The retreat spans 8-days and centers around fostering heightened awareness, presence, and connection with others through a mandatory “Digital Detox” – or no cell phones, computers, and other technology. Yoga is offered twice per day, every day. There is also an off-site adventure ranging from hiking volcanoes to white water rafting or zip lining. World-class spa treatments are available and 100% of the food is suitable for vegetarian, vegan, paleo, gluten-free, or ketogenic dieters. It is also delicious. Click here to sign up for 2018. Use code BEN (or let them know I sent you) to get VIP treatment and a free gift valued at $100!