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Jan. 30, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:22:36
Joe Rogan Experience #1235 - Ben Greenfield
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ben greenfield
01:43:09
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joe rogan
37:52
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jamie vernon
00:35
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
Four, three, two, one.
Hello, Ben.
ben greenfield
Hello.
joe rogan
What's up, buddy?
ben greenfield
There's a discrepancy.
My coffee is way, way bigger than yours.
I've got like this 40-ounce Big Gulp French press.
joe rogan
Yes.
ben greenfield
Is that a caveman?
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
Cold brew?
joe rogan
Nitros.
ben greenfield
Yeah, those are pretty good too.
I love them.
joe rogan
Dude, thank you so much for the bread and the macaroons.
ben greenfield
The goodies.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's awesome.
ben greenfield
Awesome stuff.
I would probably be morbidly obese if I wasn't an exercise freak.
It seems like it.
Yeah, Jessa makes that sourdough bread and it is freaking amazing.
joe rogan
Did you do that carnivore diet thing?
Did you try that out?
ben greenfield
No.
joe rogan
You didn't?
ben greenfield
No.
I like meat, but I didn't do the carnivore diet.
joe rogan
I thought you were going to do it for a certain amount of time and test it.
ben greenfield
I thought about it.
I'm too much of a foodie.
What I did was I tried to eat ribeye steaks every night for dinner.
So I did like a 33% carnivore diet.
But there was a study actually that came out.
Now, it was just like two days ago on that TMAO, the sugar that is associated with gut damage when you're eating a high red meat diet.
joe rogan
Right, when your body takes excess protein and it turns it into sugar.
ben greenfield
Right, with theoretically the idea being that that might be present because your microbiome is imbalanced from a diet that's too heavy in meat.
joe rogan
Is it a micro?
If you don't get enough fiber.
It's because of your biome?
I thought it was just because of glucogenesis because your body has nothing but meat.
Your body turns it into glucose.
ben greenfield
No, that would be something different.
Oh, really?
That conversion to glucose is a different sugar than the TMAO.
So what the TMAO is, is that's going to be present if you aren't getting enough fiber or if your biome is imbalanced.
But what this study a couple of days looked at was people who were eating like a fish and egg and plant-rich diet, and they had high levels of TMAO too, but they weren't deleterious.
They're actually protective because they had the fiber.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
ben greenfield
Yeah, and I mean, you could do a carnivore diet if you were—there's a few populations that do this, like in Spain.
I forget the name of the sausage, but they'll eat the ruminant, like they'll eat the intestine of the ruminant and get their grasses and their fibers and their plants literally by eating the stomach of the animal.
joe rogan
Like a cat.
ben greenfield
Yeah, and it's the same issue with methionine, too much of the amino acid methionine from just eating red meat.
Would be deleterious, but if you're getting glycine and some of these other amino acids, if you're eating like nose to tail, right?
Bone marrow, bone broth, all the organ meats, you know, head cheese, Braunschweiger, just like all these different mixes of meats, I think that would be the way to do a carnivore diet.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a lot of people that are proponents of that as well.
And then there's a bunch of people that are, you know, it's interesting because you've got a, there's a disparity between the anecdotal accounts of health and well-being and then blood work.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
The blood work these folks get is not impressive.
ben greenfield
You mean the people on the carnivore?
joe rogan
Yeah, from what I've seen.
I haven't seen anything where I see all their inflammatory markers down, their testosterone up.
I haven't seen anything where it's looking really good.
ben greenfield
Yeah, high blood glucose is another thing that you see.
joe rogan
But I should say that there haven't been a lot of tests done.
It's not like a lot of people are publishing stuff on it.
But the anecdotal evidence is amazing.
It's really weird.
My friend Jordan Peterson, he's had a tremendous success with it.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
Lost a lot of body weight.
He says he's in his intellectual prime.
He said he's never felt better in terms of his energy levels.
And that guy, he is so rigid and disciplined with it.
All he's eating is meat with salt on it, and he drinks water.
And that is it.
ben greenfield
Well, if you think about it, it's an elimination diet.
It's like an autoimmune diet.
Or you can say, well, I don't know what's giving me trouble.
Soy, or wheat, or dairy, or what have you.
So I'm just going to stop eating all that stuff.
And switch to primarily meat.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
The problem is that it's, you know, I don't want to call anybody out and call them lazy, but it's almost like kind of a very easy lazy-esque approach because rather than figuring out how to do, you know, like that sourdough bread, it's slow fermented, the rye and the wheat are in there, but all the phytic acid that would normally inhibit your ability to absorb minerals Is pre-digested by the lactobacillus and all the bacteria in the wheat.
So you've got a bread that's lower in a glycemic index, and it's more easily digested.
joe rogan
Which is why both rye and sourdough are more healthy for you.
ben greenfield
Right, and you put the rye in it because it lowers the glycemic index.
And then you've got the, what's it called?
The...
I forget the term.
It's like a gluten digesting enzyme that gets activated with the lactobacillus.
So that's a smart bread.
I mean, it takes freaking 24 hours.
It's not 24 hours, but it's like 15 minutes over 24 hours that it takes to make it.
That's an intelligent approach to food preparation, right?
That's the way that our ancestors or many of the Blue Zones would have treated their foods, fermenting, soaking, sprouting, slow food.
And you can take a lot of these things that would result in, you know, you're talking about Jordan Peterson.
I know his daughter does this as well, Michaela Peterson.
They use that elimination diet, which is the carnivore diet, to clear up a lot of those autoimmune issues, but you could also just render food more digestible or switch to an elimination diet or an autoimmune diet for 8 weeks or 12 weeks, something like the carnivore diet, heal the gut, and then return back to a more all-inclusive eating pattern.
That allows you to eat dairy, wheat, plants, etc.
All these things that would normally damage the gut if the gut is actually leaky.
joe rogan
So what's the process?
What is happening when they go on this very strict elimination diet and they're just eating meat?
What is happening to their gut that allows them to have all these...
weight, increase of energy, autoimmune issues.
Like Jordan had some pretty significant gum issues.
Those all went away.
Depression, that went away.
ben greenfield
Right.
Some of the gum in the joint stuff might be just as much related to the fact that he's getting a shit ton of collagen, fiber, or not fiber, but elastin and muscle fiber precursors.
He's getting a lot of protein.
I don't know if he's eating bone broth and bone marrow, but maybe a lot of glycine and some of these other metabolites.
So part of it could just be more fuel on board to repair muscles or to repair the joints.
But then the other part of it...
Is that when you eliminate inflammatory products that you're consuming, like let's say you're eating whatever, you know, Wonder Bread and commercial dairy or unfermented soy or any of these things that can actually damage the lining of the gut, you're creating an inflammatory scenario.
And I know you're familiar with the gut-brain axis and how our gut interacts with our nervous system via the vagus nerve.
And when you have inflammation in the gut, that affects neural symptoms, it affects sleep, it affects intellectual performance, and then you've also got the autoimmune component.
If you're actually truly allergic to or intolerant to some of those proteins that wind up in the bloodstream in the presence of a leaky gut, plant proteins, lectins are another one that a lot of people complain about, then you create Almost like a full-body damage scenario.
So the idea is you get rid of all that stuff, you introduce the carnivore diet, and I don't know that there's a lot of components of the carnivore diet that are actually healing the gut as much as it's the absence or elimination of the foods that were harming it.
joe rogan
Interesting.
The Bell Brothers, Chris and Mark, do you know those guys?
Their take on it is, basically, they've never felt better, and these are guys that work out very heavily.
The difference between them and Jordan is probably that, especially Mark as a gorilla.
He's powerlifting and has been doing that basically his whole life.
These guys are...
What their take on it is essentially, at least the way they think, is that most people that are talking about diet, they really don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Even though you might be able to look at it on paper and you might have these ideas about what's beneficial or non-beneficial.
Some people are proponents of vegan diet.
Some people are proponents of paleo.
He's like, until you are actually physically doing something, until you are actually doing something with that diet, and then you report how much better you feel.
the people that are actually training really hard, those are the ones you should rely on.
And he's saying, for him, personally, he's never felt better, never been leaner.
ben greenfield
Yeah, and a big part of it, I mean, this just returns to diet personalization and customization as a whole.
You know, we live in an era where you can self-quantify pretty easily with genetics, and you can find out what ancestry you came from, what blood markers that you have, what your gut microbiome looks like.
I think we talked about this on the last show, but there's this idea of eating according to your ancestry and the concept of what are called cold spots, like areas around the world where people have a genetic susceptibility to have certain diseases that they don't actually develop.
Those diseases don't actually manifest because of their traditional diet.
Like you look at like the Icelandic population that carries the genes that would render them more susceptible to something like depression or seasonal affective disorder.
But their diet is very rich in omega-3 fatty acids and DHA, which we know can protect against those disorders.
And you take the Icelandic population and you uproot them and put them in the context of a westernized diet.
And all of a sudden depression and SAD manifest.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
ben greenfield
Say the same thing for like Cameroon, Cameroon, Africa.
Higher than normal risk for colon cancer, but they're eating a diet that's high in fiber.
joe rogan
Why is it higher than normal risk?
ben greenfield
I don't know.
know it's a genetic susceptibility but but the idea is that that population probably figured out at some point in human history that if they eat a lot of plants or they eat a lot of fiber all of a sudden people don't have as many issues with their colon right and then you take that same population again strip out the fiber put them on a westernized diet and you get a large portion of the african american population developing colon cancer That's crazy about the seasonal affective disorder.
joe rogan
And you got to wonder how would that affect people that live in Seattle, the Pacific Northwest that are dealing with constant rain?
I wonder if that would have some sort of an impact on them.
ben greenfield
Probably even more if you come from that population.
I mean, I'm on the Spokane side, but I'm out in the middle of the forest.
I get sun for maybe 10 to 2, and I'm on the north-facing slope, and I work indoors a lot of the time.
I'm typing on my computer, I'm blogging, and so I don't get a lot of sun exposure.
That's where all these newfangled light panels and head-worn light devices and things come in that were actually developed for seasonal affective disorder that actually work pretty well just to keep your mood up.
If you're working indoors, you don't get sunlight exposure.
joe rogan
Right, but Spokane is a different environment, right?
You're not dealing with the constant rain that they're dealing with on the actual coast?
ben greenfield
No, the precipitation builds up.
On the mountains and then dumps back on in Seattle.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean it still must be, you must get much more than you get in California or Southern California at least.
But it's supposed to be very beautiful out there.
ben greenfield
It's gorgeous.
So I'm about 25 minutes from Coeur d'Alene.
joe rogan
Oh, really?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's supposed to be amazing.
I've never been.
ben greenfield
Coeur d'Alene's beautiful.
I used to go over there and race the Ironman, and they'd have that in Lake Coeur d'Alene.
It's an iconic race just because, I mean, the mountains, the lake, everything is just gorgeous.
joe rogan
I saw pictures of the lake where people were taking photographs of the bottom of the lake, like from 100 feet, 100 feet deep of water, you could see the bottom of the lake.
It's that clear.
Yeah.
Like, that is insane.
ben greenfield
But it's kind of funny because it's actually polluted because of all the mines that they have around there.
Like there's a lot of metals in it because the Coeur d'Alene feeds into the Spokane River and your allotment of fish that you're supposed to eat from the Spokane River is like one a year.
unidentified
Really?
Why?
ben greenfield
Like it's that high in metals.
So, I mean, I don't eat any.
I don't want, I don't choose a month to go down there.
joe rogan
That's awful.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
Yeah.
joe rogan
God damn it.
ben greenfield
Yeah, but it's a beautiful lake.
I mean, it's...
joe rogan
But what is the allotment of fish that you're supposed to eat from the lake?
Is it similar?
ben greenfield
I don't know.
I don't know.
But if I went to Coeur d'Alene and I spent a lot of time swimming there, I'd probably spend some time in the infrared sauna, too.
Spend some of those metals out.
joe rogan
So let me ask you this.
What's the benefit of infrared sauna versus traditional sauna?
Is there a benefit?
ben greenfield
So the idea is it's cooler.
You have an infrared here?
joe rogan
No.
ben greenfield
So you walk into the infrared, it's like 155 to 158 degrees, most of them.
There's a couple that'll go up to like 170. Even though the air is cooler, the actual photons of light that are being released by the panels, you're surrounded by infrared panels while you're in there.
Those penetrate more deeply into tissue.
So you wind up getting a deeper sweat.
You sweat for a longer time.
You can stay in there longer because it's not quite as hot.
But you look at like the studies out of Finland, right?
These studies that show four to five year lifespan increases from a weekly sauna protocol of, you know, I think it's like four times a week for 20 to 30 minutes.
And the significant drop in dementia and Alzheimer's and a lot of these mortality risk factors.
And you look at the studies that have been done in athletes where you get almost an erythropoietin, like a blood doping effect from sauna exposure when done post-workout.
You stay in there for 20 to 30 minutes post-workout.
All of these were done in a dry sauna.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's why I use a dry sauna, as per Rhonda Patrick's recommendation.
I just got that because she said there's no real studies like that.
On an infrared.
ben greenfield
There's a few metal.
So they've analyzed metal and detoxification in some of these infrared saunas.
And they have found that you release more through your sweat.
You get a deeper sweat.
So if your goal is something like detoxification...
joe rogan
How is that even possible?
When I'm in that, I'm fucking drenched.
How could I get more out of that?
ben greenfield
Have you tried a 30-minute infrared versus a 30-minute drive?
joe rogan
Yeah, I have.
I'm an idiot, so I don't feel like I'm suffering as much, so I don't like it.
ben greenfield
When you're in the infrared, you don't feel like you're suffering as much.
unidentified
Exactly.
ben greenfield
Yeah, see, that's the thing.
And maybe I'm jaded, because when I'm in my infrared, I've got a kettlebell in there, I've put my bike in there, I've got yoga in there.
When I go in there at night, actually, like I was telling you, we were talking about those massage devices, those they have up there.
The psoas, the ones that are like a...
P-S-O-R-I-T. They're like a shiv in your abs.
joe rogan
Love those things.
ben greenfield
But they open up.
You can work them on a lot of different body parts.
Anyway, so I'll have stuff like that in there and occasionally do body work.
But I actually move.
I exercise in the sauna.
joe rogan
There's actually a sauna that's designed for that.
What the fuck is that called again?
There's a specific sauna that a lot of UFC guys are using.
ben greenfield
They're in Vegas.
joe rogan
Yeah, and they're building them in gyms.
I know Winkle John's gym.
Mike...
ben greenfield
It's got like a TV panel in there.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
They have televisions in there so you can even watch things, like watch directionals or watch some sort of instructional video on exercise.
ben greenfield
Yeah, that's what I think they're doing is they're trying to have you do your workout.
Like you look at a screen in the sauna and you do your workout while you're looking at the screen in the sauna.
joe rogan
I think it's a Fit Spa.
I think it's called Fit Spa, something like that.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
But the hot one that I go into, I mean, I sweat so much.
I have a hard time believing I would sweat more anywhere else.
I mean, I'm literally pouring sweat.
And I keep that fucker around 190 degrees.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
So I'm really feeling, but I love it.
ben greenfield
In an ideal scenario, I would like it.
I don't have a dry sauna, but I would like to get a barrel sauna because I have the infrared.
In my basement, it's one of those big ones, like the four-person infrared sauna that you can get into an exercise, you can have more people in there, do yoga, whatnot.
And I'm 6'2", but I can get into a full down dog or get into a lunge or whatever.
But I'd love to have a dry sauna as well.
joe rogan
What is a barrel sauna?
ben greenfield
It's like a big barrel.
You've probably seen them before.
I don't think so.
They got benches on either side.
They're shaped like a cylinder.
They're very popular.
They build up a lot of heat.
I think even the shape of the barrel somehow allows the heat to be distributed more evenly through the sauna or something like that.
Almost like a Traeger grill, for example.
joe rogan
Okay, so this is it.
ben greenfield
Yeah, so that's what the barrel sauna looks like.
So I've got...
What I did was I bought one of those endless pools that you swim against.
joe rogan
Jamie, go to that one in the upper right-hand corner with the bubble on the outside of it.
That looks fucking awesome.
You keep that sucker in your backyard.
ben greenfield
I was at a guy's house in Santa Monica a couple weeks ago.
joe rogan
Wow, that's so cool.
Look at that thing.
And it heats up the same way that some sort of a power source is attached to that?
ben greenfield
Yeah, it's the same thing.
joe rogan
That's pretty badass.
ben greenfield
See, I want to get one of those and just put it out in the forest so I can look out with the zeal.
joe rogan
Cedar barrel sauna.
Yeah, it looks fucking cool.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
Especially if you were in like a cold area and you could like, like that, look at that guy's got it set up looking over a lake.
ben greenfield
You could look out into the snow.
joe rogan
Serene.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
unidentified
That's pretty.
joe rogan
Pretty.
ben greenfield
Like a pastoral scene.
Do you get in the cryo after you do the sauna?
joe rogan
I do sometimes, but most days no.
Most days I do either or.
Yesterday I did cryo.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
Yeah, I've been doing cryo every day because I'm staying down at the Hilton and they have a cryotherapy chamber there.
unidentified
Oh, nice.
ben greenfield
I'm a bigger fan of the cold water.
joe rogan
Wait a minute, the Hilton has a cryotherapy chamber?
ben greenfield
Yeah, they've got a cryotherapy chamber.
They've got a bunch of...
They have somebody who works it?
They have this thing called Upgrade Labs in the basement of this...
This Hilton.
unidentified
Really?
ben greenfield
They've got like a cryo.
They've got an infrared sauna.
They've got...
So I've just been going down there every day and working out.
My workout this morning, actually, I did this machine.
They've got a machine called a VASPR. Have you seen this before?
joe rogan
No.
ben greenfield
You put like...
It's got cold cuffs.
You know katsu training, like blood flow restriction training, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
ben greenfield
So you put cold cuffs on your arms and then you put cold cuffs on your legs.
And it increased the millimeters of mercury until you basically get less blood flow to your arms and your legs.
And then it's one of these full body exercise devices, right?
So you're moving your arms and your legs like an elliptical trainer.
You're barefoot and the whole thing is cold.
So it's pumping cold water through the blood pressure cuffs on your arms and your legs.
And then it's got cold water back behind you.
joe rogan
Here it is right here.
We're watching this.
ben greenfield
And by the way, this thing is not going to make you an athlete.
Like that's not the purpose of something like this.
joe rogan
What is the purpose of it?
ben greenfield
Just general fitness.
You know, you're getting cold and when you take off the blood pressure cuffs, what happens is you've got a bunch of lactic acid trapped in the muscle as you're moving.
And typically you're doing like 30 seconds as hard as you can go.
So you might go in pretty heavy wattage, like 600-800 watts for 15 to 30 seconds and then you recover.
And when you finish and you take those cuffs off, you get this amplification in growth hormone Testosterone, and based on some of the research they're talking about now, stem cell mobilization.
unidentified
Really?
ben greenfield
And it's like this super quick 21-minute workout.
I actually want to get one for my house.
joe rogan
And how long is the amplification of testosterone and growth hormone and all that stuff?
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
How long does it last for?
ben greenfield
I don't know.
I mean, in many cases, I mean, it's like...
A lot of things that affect testosterone or growth hormone or inflammation generally, it's like a 24 to 48 hour cycle.
It's like weed.
We know that weed suppresses testosterone, but it's not chronic.
It's a temporary 24 hour drop in testosterone.
joe rogan
Does it really suppress testosterone?
unidentified
It does.
joe rogan
I didn't know about that.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
How does it do that?
A lot of the studies on marijuana, they're using pretty high dosage and they're using rodent models.
They're using like 100 to 200 milligrams in rodent models.
joe rogan
A rodent?
ben greenfield
Yeah.
I'm sorry, what would be the equivalent of 100 to 200 milligrams in a human on a rodent model?
A lot of the studies on supplementation, same thing with TBI and concussion.
You hear about DHA and fish oil for that, but you need to take a lot of fish oil, a lot of DHA. If you extrapolate from the rodent models, you're looking at 50 to 60 grams of DHA or fish oil to manage TBI or concussion.
It's a lot of DHA, but if you were going to use a multimodal approach to TBI or to Alzheimer's or dementia, I'm a huge fan of that.
I'm a fan of hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Ketosis definitely works.
These light devices that you wear on your head now.
They've got a lot of research coming out on something called photobiomodulation for TBI, and these things produce hertz frequencies at 10 to 40 hertz range.
You place them on your head.
Typically, there's like a probe that goes into your nose, and they've got new research coming out on this for restoring blood flow to the head, increasing your alpha brainwave production, your gamma brainwave production.
Very cool devices.
joe rogan
So what does a probe up your nose do?
ben greenfield
It delivers a wavelength of light that is supposed to activate part of the mitochondria.
It's called cytochrome C oxidase.
And when you activate that, you get increased mitochondrial activity.
You get increased blood flow.
You get increased production of nitric oxide.
And this kind of returns to what I was talking about with seasonal affective disorder, where you can use a lot of these new things that are designed to deliver infrared light or light to the body.
To increase mitochondrial density or to increase blood flow or to increase nitric oxide.
And people are now using this for TBI and concussion.
And stem cells as well.
Actually, last time I was on the show, we were talking about how when I got that concussion in Austin, I did a self-administered infusion of sugar alcohols.
I used mannitol.
And then I followed that up with stem cells because I had my stem cells stored down in Florida and also in this lab called Forever Labs in Berkeley.
And I followed that up.
I chased it with a stem cell injection because when you inject sugar alcohol into your bloodstream, it renders your blood-brain barrier more permeable, and then the stem cells can cross over through the blood-brain barrier.
unidentified
Whoa.
ben greenfield
Whoa.
Wait a minute.
joe rogan
Hold on.
Slow down.
So what are you doing with sugar alcohol?
How are you administering it?
ben greenfield
Intravenously.
Intravenous mannitol solution of sugar alcohol.
joe rogan
You're doing this yourself?
ben greenfield
I do this myself, but you can get this done by a doctor.
I recommend you get it done by a doctor.
joe rogan
It sounds like a good idea to do.
Now, what kind of dosage are you using?
ben greenfield
Of mannitol?
I don't remember.
It was what I was advised to do by the doc who taught me this protocol.
I don't remember how much it was, but it was like a vial.
Yeah.
I do the same thing with NAD every week.
I do a weekly NAD injection.
Every week?
Yeah.
joe rogan
Do you do a push NAD that takes 10 minutes?
ben greenfield
It's a push IV. 10 minutes is pushing it.
It hurts.
I mean, so normally, if you were to get 500 to 1,000 milligrams of NAD, most people will sit under a four to a six-hour drip IV to do that.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
ben greenfield
And one reason for that, that they say, is that you get less of it degraded by the liver and the kidneys and the gut as the NAD goes into the body.
joe rogan
Then a push.
ben greenfield
But I think that the bigger factor is simply the fact that when you do a push, like you're nauseous, you feel like your whole body's on fire.
I mean, you feel like Superman afterwards, but it's a very, very uncomfortable IV. And I don't want anybody pushing that in except me.
I want to be in charge of the trigger when I'm putting that thing in because I've got to stop and go and stop and go.
But it's quicker.
joe rogan
It's more convenient than sitting down and doing an IV. So a push, you would actually have a nurse actually pushing down on the button as things are going?
ben greenfield
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
And at intermittent intervals?
ben greenfield
I do about two ticks on the syringe at a time because it's a 30 ml syringe.
So I'll go like two cc's, then stop, and you can feel like your heart rate go up and you get nauseous and your skin kind of flushes a little bit.
And you breathe it off, then you wait like 10-15 seconds and you do another push.
joe rogan
Kyle Kingsbury was saying it felt like his guts were on fire.
ben greenfield
Yeah, Kyle I think is a champ.
I think he did it in like 5 minutes or something like that.
That sounds like Kyle.
For me, if I can do it in 10 minutes, then it's absolutely mind-blowing in terms of how hard that is.
So I don't know how he did it in 5 minutes.
joe rogan
Well, he's a savage.
ben greenfield
You know, it's interesting, though.
I started to listen to your podcast with David Sinclair on the car ride over, and he's talking about this NMN stuff, which supposedly, when orderly administered, simulates a lot of what NR, nicotinamide riboside, which is one thing that a lot of people are taking for anti-aging, and NAD, which is what we were just talking about, administered via either...
In most cases, it's IV. There's a couple companies doing like an oral NAD version.
But supposedly, NMN, I don't know if Sinclair has any human studies coming out on this right now, or at least released.
But he's done rodent studies and shown that it's like...
Exercise in a bottle.
The NAD, from what I understand though, and this returns to the TBI concussion piece, crosses the blood-brain barrier easily or more easily than NMN or NR. So if you were doing it for like a cognitive or a neurological effect, you may want to choose NAD. Sounds to me like from the research I've seen, if you were doing it for the exercise effect, maybe you'd choose NMN or NR. Interesting.
The anti-aging effect, I mean, they don't even know in many cases all the pathways on which these things are working.
But most of them are related to these sirtuin pathways, right?
Like sirtuin activating compounds that actually allow your mitochondria to repair more quickly or give your body more antioxidants.
So the idea is they probably all have a pretty good effect on anti-aging.
joe rogan
And when you're doing it, are you pushing yourself?
You say you're doing it once a week.
Are you doing it yourself?
Are you pushing it?
ben greenfield
The IV? Yeah.
joe rogan
And how much time do you give yourself?
ben greenfield
To actually do the NAD? Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
If I've got 20 minutes, I'm happy.
If I have to compress into 10 minutes, it hurts.
I like to at least allow for 20 minutes and then you follow it up in most cases with like an IV cocktail, like a Myers cocktail, vitamin cocktail.
Why so?
Supposedly, it does a few things.
Supposedly, it enhances your stem cell mobilization or the activity of stem cells.
It allows the ND to be absorbed to the cells more easily.
So you basically, I mean, the way I do it is I use it like just a butterfly needle, and you do the NAD administration, and then you just unscrew the end of the butterfly needle line, and then you put the vitamin cocktail in to follow up with vitamin cocktail, which takes like 30 to 60 seconds, and then you're done.
joe rogan
And why do you do it once a week?
ben greenfield
Do you feel good?
joe rogan
No, but why once a week?
Why not twice a week?
ben greenfield
The idea is you're supposed to maintain your levels.
And there's even some evidence, and this is kind of similar to testosterone, that long-term use may suppress your body's own NAD production.
So if you're going to start to do it, great.
But you may want to realize that this is something you'd need to do regularly to keep your levels elevated because you may get a down-regulation effect.
joe rogan
Oh, interesting.
So your body might recognize that it has a surplus of NAD. It's got a lot of NAD. It doesn't need to make more.
ben greenfield
One of the very interesting things, though, I did a couple of weeks ago was I went to New York City, and I got NAD from this doctor, Dr. Chen, over there.
But then he infused me with CoQ10 and a bunch of other vitamins to allow my body to make more of what are called Adult pluripotent stem cells.
They're also known as V-cells, very small embryonic-like cells.
Now, if you've heard of parabiosis before, this idea of taking the blood from young mice and transferring that into old mice, there was research that they did at Stanford University on this, you impart essentially enhanced longevity to the old mice.
The idea is that's a non-autologous transfer.
That's the transfer of blood from a young, healthy donor into an older recipient.
And there are companies now in Silicon Valley doing this, like the Young Blood Institute.
For like $8,000, this company called Ambrosia will give you the plasma from a young, healthy donor.
joe rogan
Is there any evidence that that does anything good for you, though, other than the studies that they've done on mice?
ben greenfield
I don't know of any studies on humans.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
But was there anecdotal evidence?
I mean, people that you know have done it?
ben greenfield
Yeah, I'm about to get into that.
joe rogan
You're going to do it.
But you haven't.
ben greenfield
No, I did an autologous version of that.
So I didn't want to put somebody else's blood into my body.
So what I did was I had this doc take out a pint of my blood.
And what happens is if you put all these vitamins like NAD and stuff into your blood, it increases your stem cell production.
If you stress the blood after that, it dumps out a bunch of these tiny little adult pluripotent stem cells, which is exactly the same type of cell that you're getting when you do one of these young blood transfers.
So he stresses that overnight in cold.
You can use cold, you could use pressure, you could use anything to increase the stem cell release from the blood cells.
But they get stressed out, they release stem cells, and then what happens is you get them injected back into your body afterwards.
joe rogan
So is this similar to what they're doing with Regenikine?
ben greenfield
I don't think it's anything like that.
joe rogan
Well, you know, Regenikine, they take the blood out and they stress it with heat and then they spin it in a centrifuge.
ben greenfield
Yeah, but I think, and I don't know a lot about what Regenikine is doing, but I think they're more concentrating the growth factors.
I think they might be doing exosomes.
I know they've got some overseas places where they're doing like a culture expanded or something like that.
But as far as in the U.S., this protocol is one of the few that I know of where you could take your own blood and get a lot of that same stuff that you'd get from Culture Expanded or from parabiosis, like using the blood of somebody else, and you get all these stem cells released into your body.
joe rogan
So you essentially get the same effect as you would if you took young person's blood?
ben greenfield
If you did a young blood transfer.
joe rogan
And the young blood transfer, they're not transferring the entire body's supply of blood.
ben greenfield
No, they're taking a bunch of plasma.
I don't know the volume that they're using.
In my case, they took a pint of my blood, so four 60cc tubes.
joe rogan
Now, is there any anecdotal evidence or any published evidence on your style, what you're trying to do and the benefits of it?
ben greenfield
No, just N equals one.
I just felt like a million bucks afterwards.
The other one that I did that worked very well on my knee, Because I have some meniscus issues on my left knee.
I did what's called a nerve hydrodissection.
Have you heard of this before?
No.
Hydrodissection is a protocol where they take a liquid and they use the liquid to act like the scalpel or the knife that a surgeon would use to remove adhesions like scar tissue adhesions or separate a nerve that's causing pain or discomfort or lack of mobility in a certain joint.
But when they do a nerve hydrodissection, they don't have to use something like they'd use in prolotherapy, like sugar water or regular water.
What I had done, and this was at a clinic called BioReset in San Jose with Dr. Matt Cook down there.
and did a nerve hydrodissection, and he used ozone and a placental cell.
It wasn't like a culture-expanded placental cell, which is what I understand to be illegal in the U.S., but just like a regular placental extract.
He did that into my knee, and my knee went from like 25% to 100% in a couple of weeks.
unidentified
Really?
ben greenfield
And that protocol was called nerve hydrodissection.
They use ultrasound imaging to basically visualize where the needle is going into the knee.
They identify the area where the adhesion or the scar tissue is.
They inject it right there.
I mean, it's like a 10-minute long procedure.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Now, this is for only a buildup of adhesion and scar tissue?
What about for people that might need a scoping?
ben greenfield
Yeah, it was developed for nerve pain.
And what they found was that it actually seems to cause some kind of a release of the scar tissue, followed by an increase in the blood flow, which is difficult to get in some areas of the knee.
joe rogan
Right, especially the miscus.
ben greenfield
So, yeah, I mean, if I ever get to the point where somebody wants to scope my knee or something like that, I would I would definitely consider doing that treatment first.
It worked very well, and it was just quick and easy.
joe rogan
I had a meniscus issue, and I got exosomes shot into there.
I've had it done three times now.
Every time I've done it, I've experienced a good benefit from it, but then I beat the shit out of it.
I think I gave it not enough time to heal up before I started pounding again.
I would give it a week off, then start running again.
But now I'm going to give it a full six weeks.
With no pounding, no running hills, nothing crazy.
And I've experienced, just in the two weeks since the procedure, a very significant decrease in pain, no inflammation, decrease in discomfort.
I have to try to make it feel weird now.
I have to go out of my way.
And it seems like every week that's more and more difficult to do, and the range of motion's increased.
I basically can go all the way down with my ass to my ankles, no problem.
I bend all the way down and back all the way up with no discomfort, no weirdness.
ben greenfield
Yeah, I kind of question the one thing, because I've asked myself this before, and I don't know if you have.
When you get a protocol like that done and you kind of go easy on your knee because you really want it to work and you start backing off of some of that stuff you were doing anyways, how much of it is you just backing off of what you were doing and how much of it is the exosomes and the stem cells?
joe rogan
I know because I did try to back off initially and it didn't have any impact at all.
When I backed off initially with nothing, I said let me just take some time off and see if I can let it heal up.
It didn't do shit.
It stayed exactly the same.
It was just hurt.
It was one of those things where, in the past, I would have had to just deal with it.
Now this is my new world.
This is my new feeling in my knee until I get it scoped.
So it's pretty significant, the impact that it's had.
I mean, I'm a giant believer in stem cells and exosomes.
I had a full-length rotator cuff tear on my right shoulder, and now it's gone.
It's gone.
Like, it doesn't exist anymore.
And Dr. Rodney McGee out of Vegas, he looked at the MRI and he said to me, he goes, do you know how fucking crazy that is?
Like, you had a tear in your rotator cuff and now there's no tear.
Like, it's regenerated tissue.
ben greenfield
It's crazy.
joe rogan
Which is the ultimate goal, right?
I mean, I have zero pain in the shoulder.
I mean, nothing.
Did you do peptides for long?
I did peptides.
I did, what is it, BPC-157?
ben greenfield
Yeah, well, BPC-157, that's the only one that's still legal, according to USADA and WADA, for athletes to use.
And that one decreases inflammation and increases blood flow.
And then the other one, the one that's not allowed anymore is TB500, thymosin beta 500, and that one repairs the actin and the myosin fibers.
And so in a gold standard protocol, you go back and forth between the two.
joe rogan
So you switch it up one day, one the next day?
ben greenfield
Yeah, you just inject subcutaneously near the site of injury.
And that works for a lot of people.
But peptides are weird.
I'm attending all these anti-aging and longevity conferences now because I want to learn a lot more about this.
I'm almost kind of...
I'm kind of starting to pivot from just pure human performance to how can you live a long time.
joe rogan
Just talk to Sinclair.
ben greenfield
Yeah, yeah.
I want to finish listening to your interview with him because I was intrigued driving over.
joe rogan
He's a fascinating guy.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
So the...
The idea is that these peptides are talked about a lot now in these anti-aging circles.
They've got weird names like epitalon is one.
And two times a year, like a 10 to 20 day injection protocol of epitalon, they're getting a bunch of increased mitochondrial density.
Decreased markers of aging, increased fat loss, increased muscle gain, and they've done that in humans.
And so again, it's just a peptide.
It's very easy, like you would inject it next to your abdominals subcutaneously.
There's another one.
No side effects?
Not with that one, but this one called Milano Tan.
Have you heard of it before?
unidentified
No.
ben greenfield
So I was intrigued by this.
Somebody was telling me about it.
It's a peptide, and it was used in the bodybuilding industry for a long time because when you inject it, it gives you this amazing tan.
They call it melanotan.
It stimulates your melanin.
joe rogan
Is that that lady that was on that fucking show that was turning black?
She believed that she was in the wrong skin, so she was shooting something into her body, and she got black like Congo black.
ben greenfield
Well, I tried it out.
I tried it out for about a week.
joe rogan
Did you try to get black?
ben greenfield
No, I didn't try to get black.
I just wanted to see what happened to the tan.
I started to get some freckles, but the side effect of this is you get massive boners that last a really annoyingly long time.
Oh, poor baby.
No, but people will use this as almost like an ED type of drug.
And I don't even know the mechanism of action.
I don't know how it's even working.
joe rogan
Well, it's giving you a black dick.
ben greenfield
So basically, you get a tan and boners.
joe rogan
Yeah, this is what it is.
Look at her.
ben greenfield
I don't...
No, that's not how you would administer melanotans.
She's doing some kind of like a volume filler.
jamie vernon
She might have done something else.
joe rogan
What is that thing that she's doing with a syringe?
What the...
That looks like a caulking gun.
Like, what is she doing?
jamie vernon
Might just be for a picture, I don't know.
joe rogan
Yeah, that bitch is crazy.
ben greenfield
Isn't that the type of thing like the Kardashians are doing to their ass cheeks?
Like the fillers?
joe rogan
I don't know what they're doing to their ass cheeks.
They're doing something that seems like...
Well, it's very popular with the young people these days.
They're taking fat out of certain parts of their body and putting it in their ass.
Right?
It's not...
I don't...
We should find out.
How are they getting diaper butt?
Just Google, how are women today...
How are Instagram models getting diaper butt?
ben greenfield
I'm curious.
joe rogan
Because that's what it is.
ben greenfield
They're using their own...
So they're taking their fat from somewhere else in their body.
joe rogan
Yes.
ben greenfield
And injecting that.
joe rogan
I know that some people do that.
ben greenfield
We should do that for our calves.
unidentified
I know some people do that way.
ben greenfield
We could start an Instagram calf channel.
joe rogan
No.
I don't want fat calves where they jiggle when you walk like a girl's butt.
ben greenfield
Well, he's pulling that up.
What kind of coffee is this?
joe rogan
This is Black Rifle coffee.
ben greenfield
It's good.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's good stuff.
Yeah.
ben greenfield
I figured out something.
Thank you, by the way, for hooking me up with Traeger.
joe rogan
Oh, no sweat.
ben greenfield
It's great, right?
I got one of those Traeger Timberlines.
joe rogan
Those are the shit.
ben greenfield
And I've been making a coffee rub for the steak.
You've done a coffee rub before?
joe rogan
Yes, I have.
Traeger has their own coffee rub.
ben greenfield
Well, they have their own.
I love you, Traeger, but I sometimes never know what all is in some of these spices and rubs.
They'll add sometimes maltodextrin and sugar and stuff.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's some sugar in there.
unidentified
Tastes too good.
ben greenfield
So I fine grind coffee and I mix that with black Kona salt, cayenne pepper, and paprika.
And you can just make that rub as thick as you want, put that on the ribeye.
And I've almost switched completely from doing my stovetop sear followed by the quick broil on either side to doing like a one and a half to two hour smoke in the Traeger with that coffee rub on and then just finishing it on the grill with the Traeger.
joe rogan
I did a, what would you call it?
A prime rib.
You know, so it's basically ribeye roast.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
And I did one on the Traeger and I cooked it for like four hours at 220 degrees.
Holy shit.
ben greenfield
You smoked it?
joe rogan
Yes.
ben greenfield
For four hours?
joe rogan
Yes.
Yes.
And it had, I used Traeger's prime rib rub.
unidentified
Does the Traeger smoke?
ben greenfield
Is the Traeger smoke at that temperature?
joe rogan
There's a super smoke setting at 225 and below.
You press the super smoke button and it constantly infuses this pump of smoke.
ben greenfield
I've never tried super smoke at that high of a temperature.
unidentified
Oh, good lord.
joe rogan
It's delicious.
But the Traeger prime rib rub, I know it has sugar in it.
It tastes too delicious to not.
But holy shit, when it's in there for three and a half, four hours and it has that crust on it, There's something about that long smoke.
ben greenfield
Have you tried a beer can chicken on that thing at all?
unidentified
Yes.
ben greenfield
Beer can chicken.
I've tried a bunch of different rubs on that, but just coarse salt and black pepper works fine for the beer can chicken.
You empty about half of the beer can out.
You open up the beer can, but then you poke a couple extra holes in the top so you get more of the steam so the inside of the chicken gets even more moist.
But then what I figured out is if you use like a little scalpel or exacto knife and you cut open the skin of the chicken around the outside a little bit and you stuff that with pads of butter and then you do your smoke with the pads of butter inside the chicken, the skin gets crispy, like super crispy.
And so you just, it's like, I think it's like an hour, an hour and a half you cook that one.
And you can't smoke that one very successfully.
Like, you want to run the grill with the smoke on, but you can't super smoke it.
It doesn't seem to work so well.
But that beer can chicken, that's freaking amazing.
joe rogan
Yeah, whoever figured that out, whatever drunk figured that out is a goddamn genius.
I know what I'm going to do.
ben greenfield
It works.
But I've wondered before if there are other things that will work even better than beer.
joe rogan
What do you got, Jamie?
jamie vernon
It says, in most cases, what I'm finding is either Brazilian butt lift or just like a fat graft or fat injection.
But there have been cases where I'm seeing that they had to get an injection taken out within weeks because it was causing a problem.
So, like, I don't know if that was just fat.
ben greenfield
Well, you got the fat put in and you have to get it taken back out?
jamie vernon
Yeah, because they were dying.
ben greenfield
That'd be a bummer.
joe rogan
Great.
And then you have this fucking war zone of an ass.
jamie vernon
Yeah, most of it is lipo from one part of it.
ben greenfield
It's got to leave some marks.
joe rogan
Like a Syrian airstrip.
ben greenfield
Yeah, no more G-string.
jamie vernon
32 people died, supposedly, in 2017. Wonderful.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's like the same amount of people that died from coconuts falling on their head.
That's a fucking ridiculous way to die.
And here's the thing.
What they're doing is not aesthetically pleasing because it violates your sensibilities.
Because you look at the ass, and you look at the legs, and you go, what's wrong here?
How did you get that ass with those legs?
They don't go together.
Like, if you look at, like, a CrossFitter's legs, like one of them powerful gals with a big butt, but they also have big thighs.
ben greenfield
Especially with those knee-high, neon compression socks.
Ooh, la la.
unidentified
Thank you, you.
joe rogan
It looks right.
It fits.
Like, the ass fits the thigh.
ben greenfield
It's not entirely disproportional.
joe rogan
Yes.
When the ass pumps out and then it goes to these little toothpick legs, you're like, that's gross.
That's weird.
You know?
Like, what's going on there?
That's a real ass.
ben greenfield
In the advent of Instagram, we may be evolving as a species to find these type of things more attractive, though.
Because that's the whole idea with social media is you get a dopamine hit.
Every time you click on the little blue notification button or you look at a new photo, so maybe we're just going to eventually develop a real appreciation for that type of symmetry.
joe rogan
No.
ben greenfield
We'll redefine our idea of what true human symmetry is.
joe rogan
Incorrect.
It doesn't look as good.
It just doesn't look as good.
It's a cheap fix.
For squats.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
Get your ass to the gym, girls.
Do some deadlifts.
Run up hills.
ben greenfield
All right, so squats and muscle building.
Did you see that Rhonda Patrick tweeted that study about mice and myonuclei and how when they dope mice, they never actually lose the muscles myonuclei.
joe rogan
Yes.
ben greenfield
Like those don't actually ever disappear.
Not even just when you dope, but just when you lift, period.
joe rogan
Muscle memory, essentially, which we've already known, right?
ben greenfield
Built-in muscle memory.
joe rogan
But muscle memory has always been sort of an anecdotal idea.
ben greenfield
Well, muscle memory has been, in many cases, just based on motor unit recruitment.
Meaning, my wife, she ran for University of Idaho.
And when I go out running with her still, even though she doesn't train, she's just got faster leg turnover.
She's got better form.
Her body just remembers that.
The same thing with the swimmer.
I'll do...
I'm in college but hasn't swam in 10 years will kick my ass just because they have that muscle memory in terms of which motor units to recruit when.
joe rogan
Sure.
ben greenfield
But this latest one was basically the idea that you retain actual myonuclei in the muscle.
Like they thought for a long time that those just disappeared and went away once you detrained.
But it turns out that they're all still there.
So as soon as you start training again, you build muscle more quickly and furthermore, and this was kind of like the political part of it, is if you've done some kind of illegal performance enhancing procedure or steroids or doped or whatever, you actually would have a higher concentration of micronuclei or myonuclei available. you actually would have a higher concentration of micronuclei or And there was a study even leading up to that.
And this was, I think this was like 2013, like this was a while ago where they took mice and they gave one group testosterone and the other group didn't get it.
And then they spent six months off testosterone.
I don't remember how long they were on it, but they spent six months off it and then they took those mice and they trained them with the training protocol.
And the mice that were on the testosterone but were no longer on it had a 30% increase in muscle mass compared to the other mice that only had a 5% increase on it.
So once again, and this was probably related to that myonuclei thing that just came out in this recent study.
So it turns out that A, you should lift like when you're young because you can build all these myonuclei that just basically hang around your body.
And then B, when they like ban somebody from sport for doping and then they come back and start to compete in that sport again, they still have an advantage.
joe rogan
Well, that has huge implications for MMA, because that's the big debate right now.
How long should someone get suspended for, and for how long afterwards should they be considered enhanced?
They're giving people some pretty significant suspensions now for steroids, like two years.
But, you know, there's this John Jones case that I'm sure you're aware of.
Do you aware of this?
Yeah.
Where he's testing positive for the metabolite, for a long-term metabolite, for a very small dose.
He's never tested positive for a short-term metabolite.
ben greenfield
For testosterone?
joe rogan
No, it's not testosterone.
It's, um, what is the stuff?
Teranobol?
Yeah.
And, essentially, it's a tainted supplement.
And it's not, it doesn't have any performance-enhancing benefit in terms of, like, the amount of, the dosage that he's tested positive for.
But it's lingering in his system because the protocols for, um, well, their ability, rather, to detect these metabolites has increased rapidly.
And over the last year, it's just unbelievably more sensitive.
To the point where they're detecting these infinitesimally small levels of these metabolites, and there also seems to be some sort of a pulsing effect where your body releases these infinitesimally small metabolites and then doesn't, so you'll test negative, and then next week you'll test positive, but only for the long-term metabolite, which is an indication that there's no re-administration of the performance-enhancing drug.
And everybody's mad.
There's so many athletes that are mad about it, and From what you're saying and from this study that Dr. Rhonda Patrick highlighted, it's, you know, especially for someone who's willingly taken something.
ben greenfield
Yeah, it's one of those, like, once a doper, always a doper type of things.
joe rogan
There is that.
See, the Jon Jones situation is very tricky because he's so good and he's so dominant that people just assume that he's been doing something his whole career.
And when you catch him, they're like, aha, that's the reason why he's so good.
And it may be, but it also might be he's got phenomenal genetics.
ben greenfield
He has two brothers that are super athletes.
He was just the best of the guys who were taking drugs.
joe rogan
That's a different situation because that's a sport where, at least in the time period where he was competing, everyone was doing something.
100%.
They had to go back to 18th place.
ben greenfield
And you don't think the UFC is like that?
joe rogan
It's not right there.
It's not.
It's not.
It can't be.
They're too strict.
You saw it as knocking on doors at 6 o'clock in the morning, peeing this cup.
And you do hear about positive tests, but the amount of positive tests versus the negative tests is overwhelming.
Way more guys are not doing something.
It used to be the opposite.
It used to be in the 90s, everyone was doing something.
We were just talking about this on the Fight Companion podcast that a big issue is grappling.
Grappling competitions are overrun with steroid users because no one's testing.
The smell test is off the fucking charts.
You're looking at these guys, they're just ridiculous.
Just jacked.
Low body fat, super high muscle mass, and they're training jujitsu all the time, too.
So you would think it would be very hard for them to maintain muscle mass as well as be able to train the way they're training with technique and drills and cardio and all those different things.
ben greenfield
It's very difficult to maintain muscle.
Any concurrent strength endurance training scenario, very difficult.
joe rogan
Very difficult.
So there's a real issue with some of these guys competing this way and then trying to transition into MMA. Yeah.
ben greenfield
Now, what's the deal with marijuana in MMA? It's pretty much legal now.
joe rogan
They don't care.
ben greenfield
In season, out of season?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's fine.
They've lowered the acceptable level, or they've raised it, rather, like what you could have in your bloodstream.
You basically just can't be high the day of the fight.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's another interesting one.
I mean, that acts, especially THC, acts on a lot of these mTOR pathways.
That's the same thing with a lot of these anti-aging compounds, right?
Like rapamycin or metformin, to a lesser extent, acts on that mTOR pathway and inhibits it.
But again, it's short-term with something like marijuana.
And you also get this painkilling effect.
And there was, I forget if this was a study or if it was anecdotal, but it's almost like a higher thrill-seeking effect.
Like the endocannabinoid system, when stimulated, shuts down some of your sense of fear when it comes to experiencing a new adventure.
unidentified
Really?
ben greenfield
And so you actually go adventure seeking more.
And when you look at like ultra runners, anybody who's competing in a non-complex activity in which they might have already developed the ability to be able to be in the zone, right?
They've put in their 10,000 hours of practice and they're able to just kind of check out and go into automatic mode.
When you combine that with the pain quelling effects of something like, you know, in most cases, like a THC CBD combo is what a lot of ultra runners are using.
I'm not sure what they'd use in MMA right now.
But ultimately, you get a good effect, but the loss of reaction time and the loss of the ability to be able to perform complex tasks, which they've proven in flight simulation studies, It dictates that it's still not that great of a drug if you were going to be doing complex tasks.
joe rogan
Here's the question though.
When they're talking about reaction studies, are they talking about reaction studies for people that are acclimated to taking marijuana?
Are they talking about it with people where they take someone who's a sober person and they introduce them to marijuana and there's this overwhelming effect of it?
Because one of the things that happens to people that aren't accustomed to THC is the freak out effect where they're just like, oh, they're not comfortable with the experience.
After a while, the way it's described, and again, this is all anecdotal, but by people that are accustomed to it, they say you just get good at being high.
And see, the reaction time thing, I don't buy because a lot of strikers, a lot of kickboxers, they train while they're on marijuana.
It's very common.
ben greenfield
I believe it.
Well, the study on reaction time was done on pilots, and there's a few more blinky lights in a cockpit than a mat.
joe rogan
Sure, sure.
ben greenfield
So there might have been more going on.
joe rogan
Sure, but the question is, are they experienced stoners?
Or are these people that are freaking out, and maybe the reaction time is they're spacing out, and they don't know what the fuck this experience is like, and they might have anxiety because of it.
There's a lot of really overwhelming sensations that come with that marijuana high, and a lot of them you call paranoia or oversensitivity, and sometimes you get paralysis by analysis when you're under the influence of those things.
ben greenfield
Yeah, it's the acute versus chronic effect.
joe rogan
But with jiu-jitsu, personally, my personal experience with jiu-jitsu and marijuana is it's an enhancer.
And I've argued this, that I think it's a performance-enhancing drug.
unidentified
With CBD? Do you combine it with CBD? No, just marijuana.
ben greenfield
That's what a lot of endurance athletes are, you know, like folks in the ultra-running community using it now.
They'll use a trace amount of THC combined with CBD, like a 4-to-1 to a 10-to-1 CBD to THC ratio.
And I think, you know, now with the Farm Bill and increasing legality, I think this idea of developing...
Sports performance supplements for athletes who aren't competing in sports where that is banned are going to be steered in the direction of high CBD and then some of these other novel molecules like CBG or CBN. I'm not aware of those.
What are those?
joe rogan
Cannabinoids?
ben greenfield
Not just terpenes.
Yeah, CBG, CBN are cannabinoids.
THC-8 is an anti-inflammatory that's totally different than THC-9.
joe rogan
Are these from orally ingesting it or from smoking it or vaporizing it?
ben greenfield
No, they actually are now isolating these in labs, almost like organic chemistry.
And you can take hemp or marijuana and you can actually isolate specific compounds and then combine them.
So you can take like...
You could take like CBG, CBD, combine that with other terpenes from like whatever, let's say lavender and valerian and chamomile and make like a de-stress relaxation type of compound.
Or you could do like a THC, but a THC-8 instead of a THC-9 and combine that with like cinnamon and peppermint, maybe some caffeine or creatine or something like that to make like more of a pick-me-up type of compound.
But I think that's the wave of the future when it comes to a lot of these marijuana companies that are developing stuff for specific goals.
joe rogan
I know a lot of folks that are trying the CBD that use it for inflammation, especially athletes, like it with a little bit of THC. They seem to think it's more effective.
ben greenfield
There's some sort of combined effect of the THC with the CBD. Yeah, they call that the entourage effect, when you have all the different terpenes and the endocannabinoids playing together.
joe rogan
Which one's turtle?
ben greenfield
Yeah, which one's turtle?
I have no clue.
joe rogan
So, there's hundreds of different cannabinoids, right?
ben greenfield
I don't think there's hundreds.
I think there's at least dozens.
I don't know about hundreds.
joe rogan
How many of them?
ben greenfield
Let's find out.
I mean, if you look at a chart of the different endocannabinoids they've actually discovered, if you were to just Google...
joe rogan
113. I don't know.
ben greenfield
113. Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's a lot.
joe rogan
That's a lot of fucking cannabinoids.
I wonder if they'll be able to design something that gives you the high without the paranoia or gives you the various effects without spacing out.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
I think that's where supplementation is going in general, right?
It's just like we were talking about with diet, how based on your genetics, based on your blood work, based on your biomarkers, that's how you would choose your diet.
I mean, like, you know, like the carnivore diet.
If you're, let's say, like, sub-Saharan African or Southeast Asian and you have high levels of There are genes for salivary amylase.
There's one called the AMY1 gene.
There are genes responsible for you having a higher inflammatory response to saturated fat or a ketogenic diet.
There's one called the APOE gene, APOE34, which I have.
It dictates that even though I personally eat a higher-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, the majority of my fats come from Mediterranean fat sources.
A lot of olive oils, a lot of avocado oil, a lot of fish.
And I do that because my genetics dictate that my macronutrient ratio, my diet is going to be best suited to that specific ratio of fats.
But you could say the same thing with supplements.
I think with supplements now, with all these different places that will self-quantify, like WellnessFX, InsideTracker, and 23andMe, you can take all this data, put it together, and actually determine whatever.
Everybody's saying we're supposed to take 2,000 international units of vitamin D a day.
If your vitamin D levels are like 80 or 90, then that could cause arterial calcification if you're taking excess vitamin D. I had both myself and my kids tested for our genetics.
Like, none of us boys in the Greenfield family actually have the gene that allows us to generate Appreciable amounts of vitamin D from sunlight.
So we all now supplement with vitamin D and vitamin K. My boys, neither of them possess the enzyme or the, I guess it is an enzyme, superoxide dismutase.
It's a gene that allows for increased expression of this enzyme that allows for glutathione production.
So they take glutathione now.
Now, they have the one that results in a lower than normal level of BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor, the stuff that's like miracle grow for the brain.
So they use lion's mane extract now before school.
So I like the idea of doing a genetic test and doing a blood test and looking at what your ancestors would have eaten if you happen to have, I guess, kind of like a clean enough to interpret ancestral profile to be able to say, well, here's, you know, I'm mostly Northern European, so this is what I'm well, here's, you know, I'm mostly Northern European, so this is what I'm going to You combine all that stuff, I think, you know, return to your question about the carnivore diet, that's the way to eat.
joe rogan
This ApoE4 also leaves you predisposed to CTE, correct?
unidentified
Yes.
ben greenfield
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
So you have that?
ben greenfield
At higher risk.
unidentified
No, I've got the ApoE34.
ben greenfield
The ApoE44 is the one that's more concerning for that.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
ben greenfield
Yeah, and you get a very deleterious response in many cases to fats.
It's like an inflammatory response to fats.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
ben greenfield
Very similar like if you had familial hypercholesternia, you know, and you get on like a ketogenic diet, for example, and your cholesterol goes up to 500. I mean, it's something that just doesn't agree with a lot of people.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what's really important to discuss, right?
Everybody's body really does respond differently to all sorts of different diets.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's so difficult for people, especially if they don't have a lot of research in the field, if they haven't read a lot about it, to try to determine what's the best diet for them.
ben greenfield
Yeah, there are specific characteristics, though, that regardless of macronutrient ratios and regardless of food composition, you see over and over again in centenarians or in people who are Living in a blue zone or people who have the absence of a lot of disease risk factors or high risk of mortality.
Like, we see regular periods of caloric restriction, like at some point, either a compressed feeding window, or intermittent fasting, or like, you know, the Mediterranean diet, everybody talks about goat cheese and olive oil and fish and eggs, but not a lot of people talk about the religious aspect of that.
That includes certain periods of time where you fast, certain periods of time where you don't eat meat, certain days where you aren't drowning all your food in olive oil, right?
And so in terms of other characteristics that you see, glycemic variability, you see very low periods of glucose fluctuations occurring throughout the day because you see very low periods of glucose fluctuations occurring throughout the day because of a high intake of either fiber or legumes is a big one that you see in
like high intake of things like lentils and split mung beans and a lot of these things that get thrown under the bus now where we're talking about I'm not aware of that.
joe rogan
What are the issues with lectins and guttins?
ben greenfield
So the issue with lectins, and this is based on a book that was published, I think about two years ago, called The Plant Paradox by Dr. Stephen Gundry.
And he talks about how lectins are these built-in natural plant defense mechanisms that are in primarily plants and seeds and the skins of certain fruits and vegetables that will cause your digestive tract to become damaged or give you a deleterious or inflammatory response to that food.
Kind of a similar argument as the paleo people make, right?
They say, well, you don't...
Don't eat dairy because that could have inflammatory proteins in it that might cause an autoimmune reaction.
Or don't eat bread because of the gluten and phytic acid.
But when you step back and you look at a lot of blue zones, a lot of longevity hotspots, a lot of centenarians, you don't see avoidance of these foods.
You see smart preparation of them.
When you hunt, you don't set up in a tree with a dagger in your teeth like Peter Pan and jump out of the tree on the back of a deer and just start eating the deer.
You have to go through a pretty long process of tracking and stalking and hunting and field dressing and quartering.
And even then, there's a pretty intensive cooking process and we do things like You know, like coffee rubs and things to decrease the amount of carcinogens in the meat when you cook it and we dry age and you'll take the organ meats and soak them in lemon juice or buttermilk to remove the gamey flavor and blah, blah, blah.
joe rogan
Stop, stop, stop.
ben greenfield
Okay.
joe rogan
Hold on.
I've got to do this to you.
Otherwise, I'm going to forget.
Coffee rubs.
How does it decrease the amount of carcinogens?
ben greenfield
Well, coffee, rosemary, thyme, a lot of these things that we use as rubs, one of the benefits of them is they decrease the formation of a lot of these carcinogenic compounds in the meat, like the burnt, charred components of the meat.
Anything that's an antioxidant, and you could just go in your spice cupboard and start to make up rubs based on this concept.
Anything that would be, you know, these sirtuin precursors that people are talking about now for anti-aging, like blueberries and red wine and dark chocolate and dark purple fruits and berries, etc.
You dry those, you powder those, that's a great rub, right?
Because all of a sudden you're decreasing the carcinogenic aspects of burnt meat or charred meat or heavily cooked proteins particularly.
So the idea is you want to prepare your food in a manner that renders it digestible and that unlocks the nutrients.
And so when we talk about dietary customization, not only do you see calorie restriction, compressed feeding windows, fasting as one element that regardless of the diet that you choose has been shown to improve health and lifespan, but you also see low amounts of glycemic variability. but you also see low amounts of glycemic variability.
You see a high amount of emphasis placed on rendering the food digestible, again, no matter what it is that you're eating.
And so whether you're eating a ketogenic diet or a carnivore diet or a high carb, low fat, high fat, low carb, what have you, the idea is you try to choose real recognizable food.
Then you render that digestible and you eat as many different food groups as you can eat based on self-experimentation primarily until you land on that diet that works well for you.
And if you can combine that with self-quantification, blood, biomarkers, look at your microbiome, look at your genetics, I mean, there's no reason that most people shouldn't just be able to eat the diet that works for their body.
joe rogan
But it's a hard thing to discover.
The idea that you can figure out what works best for you, like what feels best.
People start convincing themselves that one thing is more beneficial to the other.
And that's one of the things that people wonder about this whole carnivore thing.
Are they...
Mindfucking themselves.
Are they giving themselves a placebo benefit of only eating this way?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then you just go to Sean Baker's Instagram every day and you hashtag meat heals and you're like, yes, meat's healing me and you start believing it.
ben greenfield
Well, it's a tribe, right?
It's a tribe.
It's like a church.
It's a religion.
Nutrition is highly religious and dogmatic.
joe rogan
Well, the carnivore diet people are the exact opposite of the vegan people.
They're the same but different.
They're all just preaching that you should only eat meat and meats the thing and they're mocking vegans and the vegans are mocking or saying disparaging things about People who eat meat.
It's really similar.
ben greenfield
The issue is the same thing, though.
It's the fact that when you start on a highly restrictive diet, that tends to be dogmatic, too.
Like, I'm going to only eat meat, or I'm not going to have meat, and I'm going to only eat vegetables.
You feel pretty good.
Like, you feel a difference.
It's impossible not to feel a difference once you go completely myopic on your diet and have a very limited number of food choices.
But we know that vegans build up deficits in creatine, in taurine, unless they're eating algae and stuff like that, in DHA, in EPA, in fatty acids, in amino acids, long-term deficits in cortisol, which affects your cell membranes.
You can definitely do it right.
I mean, there's dudes like, you know, frickin' Rich Roll, right?
Like, great guy, and he's into, like, the, you know, fermentation, soaking, and sprouting, and superfoods, and, you know, it's honestly kind of expensive and time-consuming to do a vegan diet the right way, but you could do it.
A lot of people don't.
But if you're not careful, you build up deficits long-term, even though you feel really good short-term.
It's the same thing with something like a carnivore diet.
You're probably going to build up some kind of microbiome bacterial deficiencies unless you're eating the intestines of ruminants or, I suppose, supplementing with some kind of really good probiotic.
joe rogan
Well, it's just fascinating because they find these people that have been doing it for 20 years.
They pull these folks out of the woods.
Like, look, we've got this one guy who's been doing it for 18 years.
Look how healthy they are.
They show someone doing chin-ups.
But the reality is you don't really hear about that diet, or you didn't really hear about that diet until like three or four years ago.
And much more so over the last two years, probably because of me, accidentally, having all these people on and talking about it.
And people like Jordan that have had...
Look, it's impossible to deny the benefits that he's gotten.
The guy looks fantastic.
He lost a tremendous amount of weight.
But to your point, that is most likely because of an elimination diet and whatever was fucking with him before.
And I think, you know, most people that start off with a poor diet and then switch to a restricted diet, they're just going to be better because they don't have the stuff that's poor.
They don't have the trans fats.
They don't have all the sugar.
They don't have all the nonsense.
It's probably causing a good deal of the information in the first place.
So by eliminating all those bad things from their diet and then concentrating on the only one thing that they're eating, you think the one thing they're eating is causing all the benefits when it's probably the lack of the bad things.
ben greenfield
Exactly.
It's a fancy elimination diet.
joe rogan
But it's a delicious one.
ben greenfield
It is.
Speaking of delicious, are you hunting at all?
joe rogan
Yes, yes.
ben greenfield
What's your hunt?
joe rogan
Well, I mean, I'm going through the two elk that I've given away a lot of it to, that I shot last year.
Every year I schedule two elk hunts and assume I'm going to strike out.
And the last two years I've been very lucky and I got two elk each year.
ben greenfield
Yeah, that's breaking the rules of the secret and think and grow rich, you know, to assume you're going to strike out.
You're supposed to sit cross-legged in your sauna and manifest that shit.
joe rogan
Yeah, I work hard, but I assume...
It's a hard thing to do, to fucking kill an elk.
ben greenfield
And people don't realize.
joe rogan
No, they don't.
And you look at a clip, like there's clips of me online, and the clip is like a minute long, and it seems like, oh, look how easy.
You don't see stalking in for hours, you don't see the hundreds of hours of shooting arrows, the coaching from John Dudley, all the reading archery articles, and keeping your mindset clear in the moment.
It's a lot of difficulty.
ben greenfield
It's a long haul.
My boys have their first hunt in three months.
joe rogan
What kind?
ben greenfield
And we've been prepping for seven months.
They're doing bow hunt in Kona for pig.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
ben greenfield
Yeah, my wife, she's going after sheep.
joe rogan
How old are your kids?
ben greenfield
Boys are going after pig.
joe rogan
They're 10. So are you getting them a crossbow?
ben greenfield
No, no.
Right now they're shooting a Hoyt Ignite.
They're shooting at about 25 yards.
Jess is shooting at about 40 yards.
How many pounds have they been pulling?
They're about 45 now, which is going to be enough.
That's enough if you have a cut-on contact problem.
Yeah, but I mean, they're still, when they draw, they're pointing up and So they've still got a couple more months of training to really get dialed in.
But yeah, it's difficult.
I still haven't even gotten my elk bowhunting.
My last time I spent six days up in the Colorado mountain range in the, what do they call it, the Santa de Cristo range.
And on the last day I finally came in on elk and it was dark and I shot and I missed.
And that was after seven freaking days of trying.
And you walk out or ride your horse out completely empty-handed.
It's about 45 yards.
You know, in dusk.
But, you know, you know how it goes.
You're shaking.
It's a little dark.
Anyways, though, so I'm going to do Kona.
joe rogan
I would like to get you in touch with Dudley.
I've been in touch with him.
ben greenfield
We've talked before.
joe rogan
I know how you shoot.
You shoot with a finger trigger.
ben greenfield
Yeah, I shoot with a trigger.
joe rogan
I want you to get rid of that thing.
ben greenfield
I need to.
It's on my list.
joe rogan
Because those moments like that when you're hunting for six days and you're just trekking through the woods 20 miles a day and you're exhausted and you finally get that one moment.
There's so much weight on that moment that it's so difficult to stay focused entirely on the task of executing the shot perfectly.
And there's methods.
There's a guy named Joel Turner who has a website called Iron Mind Hunting.
He's an instructor for first responders and snipers and things along those lines.
ben greenfield
Iron Mind?
joe rogan
Where does he live?
I think he's a Pacific Northwest guy.
ben greenfield
Really?
joe rogan
And he's helped me tremendously.
His methods, it's all about keeping the difference between an open loop system and a closed loop system, being able to control it and stop it and stop the process anytime you want, and keeping yourself in that versus like a baseball bat swing, which is once you start swinging, you're just swinging.
And the idea is to maintain the present and to have a mantra.
And he gives you a mantra to chant and to think about it in terms of controlling all of those movements.
So you are in control constantly of your movement.
Well, you develop your own, but the idea is to talk yourself through it.
Don't let your excitable mind take over.
Oh, Jesus!
You freak out and you pull the trigger and you shoot fucking over the thing's back and you don't even know what happened.
ben greenfield
What's your mantra?
joe rogan
You're lost.
I pull back and I say draw.
I go through all the steps in my head that I'm supposed to do.
I actually modified his and went to John Dudley's.
So he has his own one, which is draw back and aim, get it done, watch it to keep it.
And the whole idea is just keeping those things in your head so you have one thing.
But with Dudley, I go through all the different things that he says, like draw back, tip of the nose, center the peep, center the bubble, pull through the shot, pull, pull, pull, let the shot break.
And so I go through all those things in my mind.
But the whole idea is to not allow the freak out.
Because the freak out is what causes the target panic.
And when you have that itchy trigger finger with the finger trigger, I've done it.
I mean, I've seen it.
I've done it.
I've seen it.
I've heard it.
Everybody does it.
The arrow goes in the spot where you're yanking it and you're pulling.
It's not very precise.
You want to get it to where it's a surprise shot.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
And when it's a surprise shot, you're just concentrating entirely on the area that you want to hit on the elk.
Your form is perfect.
Everything's aligned in order.
And if it's not, you let down.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
If it's not, you let down and try to get your shit together.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
See, those train-to-hunt competitions helped me out quite a bit.
joe rogan
I'm sure, but those are...
ben greenfield
It's like a 3D shoot, but they put you in hand.
joe rogan
But you're running around and you're getting exhausted.
ben greenfield
Well, no, not really.
Like, they do have part of it as like that, like an obstacle course race with your bow, but then part of it, too, is just a 3D shoot.
like a 40 target 3D shoot where one shot might be, I'm facing you, but the target's behind me, and you've got a 10-second time span to draw, turn, and shoot.
Or you've got to take a shot seated through the trees at 40 yards and then within 20 seconds do a shot at 60 yards.
So it's a lot of hunting scenarios.
joe rogan
But Dudley would tell you that that is going to cause target panic, that that whole thing of shoot now, that you should never just do that, that you should always execute the shot correctly.
He doesn't even like this fucking game, this thing, this techno hunt that we've done.
He thinks that that thing causes target panic because you only have a brief window and you let go.
He believes that you should concentrate entirely on the correct fundamentals and execution of archery and then with time and understanding of the situation and the experience of hunting itself, then when those moments present themselves, you're going to execute correctly.
Interesting.
Whereas when you have this like 10 second, you got to turn and behind your back, ready, go.
You're like, ah!
You're just going to hit that.
You're going to hammer that trigger.
You're going to put that pin on the target and hammer that trigger.
And that's just, you are emphasizing all the wrong things that you could do when you're hunting.
ben greenfield
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm going to go to Hawaii next month and do sheep.
joe rogan
Which island?
Big island?
ben greenfield
This will be Kona.
Kona.
I like to go down there because you can spearfish.
So you can double up and do a bow hunt spearfish.
So we'll do sheep and goat, pig, possibly turkey, and then we'll have a couple days out on the boats.
And that'll be actually Kyle and Aubrey are going.
unidentified
Oh, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Aubrey was telling me about that.
ben greenfield
Peter Attia is going to come with us.
joe rogan
Oh, nice.
ben greenfield
So we'll have a doctor on the trip.
Oh, cool.
And then the one I'm excited about is doll sheep up in Alaska.
So I'm going to do the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
joe rogan
Wow.
ben greenfield
That's a float hunt.
So you're floating about 40 miles down the river up there.
You fly into Fairbanks, and there's a fort that you fly in from there on a charter, and that'll be doll sheep, caribou, and grizzly.
That's a 10-day hunt.
joe rogan
And this is a bow hunt as well?
ben greenfield
That'll be a bow.
Well, I'll pack.
I've got a Smith& Wesson.44.
It's a big-ass gun.
So I'll pack that, and then I'll probably have a.272 if I can make weight with that number of weapons.
joe rogan
And are you hunting grizzly, or are you just avoiding them?
ben greenfield
No, I'm hunting doll sheep.
That's what I really want.
That's just an adventurous...
I'm not much of a trophy hunting guy, but I am an adventure guy.
I want to go out and have an amazing adventure out in the wilderness.
joe rogan
Let's explain to people why that's an adventure.
Because the place where these things live is some of the fucking sketchiest ground on earth.
It's shale rock, a lot of it.
ben greenfield
Yep.
joe rogan
A lot of times you're wearing crampons on your boots.
You're at extremely high altitude in precarious situations, these little cliff peaks.
ben greenfield
Long pack outs.
I'll have a caribou tag and a grizzly tag as well.
joe rogan
So do you have a grizzly tag to shoot a grizzly because it's charging you or to shoot a grizzly because you're going to eat it?
ben greenfield
No, that would actually be to harvest and eat a grizzly.
I'm a cook.
joe rogan
Look at those doll sheep on that edge.
unidentified
Yeah, exactly.
ben greenfield
Exactly.
So that is an adventure right there to be able to get to those little specks on that rock.
joe rogan
So hard.
ben greenfield
So we'll be floating the river.
We'll be fishing.
They got arctic char up there.
A few other fish.
joe rogan
Those are beautiful fish.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
So you get some big fatty fish.
They're so crazy looking.
Cold water.
It'll be about 10 to 12 days and then I'll just fly all the meat out and fly home.
joe rogan
That's a thing where people are hearing this and they're going, what the fuck are you talking about?
And I had Donnie Vincent on the podcast.
He's a really interesting guy.
Very educated and really articulate and really like Rinella in a lot of ways.
He does a great job of explaining what hunting truly is about and the conservation aspect of it.
But he's a big fan of eating bear.
And he's always telling people, they're all good.
Like, if you prepare correctly, all bear is good.
ben greenfield
Yeah, apparently the trick is to get rid of the glands early on when you're field dressing, because apparently that taints the meat.
And I've never field dressed a bear, so I don't know.
But Stephen Ranella, though, I love his cookbooks.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben greenfield
He's close to me.
He's up in...
He's up in Bozeman, I think.
joe rogan
Yes.
ben greenfield
But I've been trying to get him to come through Spokane and swing into my house to do a podcast.
So I want to actually ask him some questions about his- Have you connected with him?
He's got a new cookbook.
Yeah.
Yeah, we've connected.
We've talked a few times.
I just got to get him to come through Spokane.
joe rogan
I love that guy.
unidentified
Yeah.
Yeah.
joe rogan
He's the one who got me the honey.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's fun, though.
joe rogan
Yeah.
He's a great cook, too.
He really is.
He really understands, like, so many different preparations and tries to get people to try things like osabuco, you know, to braise the shanks.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
Yeah, I love that.
Now, how about spearfishing?
Have you gotten into the whole spearfishing, freediving scene at all?
joe rogan
I was in Hawaii recently.
My youngest daughter is obsessed with fishing.
She fucking loves it.
And we caught a bunch of yellowtail when we were in Hawaii this last trip.
And now she's super hooked.
Because, you know, she's eight.
And she's hanging on to this rod.
And, you know, I mean, sometimes I was helping her like I was holding the rod.
And she was with her two little arms cranking these yellowtails.
And, you know, you catch a 10-pound yellowtail when you're eight years old.
I mean, the fucking pull of that thing.
Oh, my God.
They're so powerful.
ben greenfield
It's a fight.
I took my boys out for steelhead.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben greenfield
And my boy, Taron, he almost got pulled into the water on North Fork of the Clearwater.
Big steelhead.
I mean, those things are massive.
What is it?
And he snagged one.
joe rogan
Steelhead, you're not supposed to eat them, right?
You're supposed to let them go?
ben greenfield
It depends.
There's a certain...
I forget the color, but there's a certain style of steelhead that you are allowed to eat.
He had to throw this one back.
This wasn't one of the ones that we were allowed to eat.
joe rogan
I don't totally understand that.
I mean, I kind of understand it, but it seems to me like it's an ocean-bound rainbow trout, correct?
ben greenfield
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
So why can't you eat it?
ben greenfield
I don't know.
I don't know.
And there's a certain variety that you actually can't eat.
joe rogan
Well, you can eat it physically, but you're not supposed to.
ben greenfield
No, I mean legally.
joe rogan
But that seems so strange to me, is the idea to protect the population because they're in the process of breeding and you don't want to interrupt.
But there's a certain mortality rate that they're accepting with catch and release.
This is one of the reasons why I have an issue with that.
And I've done catch and release fishing.
I don't want to appear like I'm a hypocrite because it is fun.
But there's a thing about it is you're just shoving a hook in a thing's face and then releasing it.
ben greenfield
That is why I like spearfishing.
Because you're underwater, you're going after the exact fish that you want.
There's no doubt in your mind, I'm going to shoot that fish, and you're not wondering what's going to bite the hook.
Whether it's going to be a legal one or an illegal one.
Regardless of whether you get a fish, it's amazing.
You're happy.
You see the coral.
You're going down and up.
If you're into fitness, the cold thermogenesis and the breath hold and the spleen compression and the red blood cell production.
It's an amazing workout.
It's just fun.
It's zen.
joe rogan
Yeah, they wouldn't let my daughter do it, though.
She's too young.
They said you have to be 13. To spearfish, yeah.
unidentified
To spearfish.
joe rogan
She wanted to, though.
ben greenfield
She could probably do shallow water with a sling.
That's the way to do it, is you want to start offshore 8 to 15 feet of water.
You want an easy sling.
A lot of people think spearfishing and they think of the big roller guns that you've got to put the handle against your chest and pull back.
It's very difficult.
And then you've got to dive to depths.
If you're going after tuna, you've got to be able to go 30 plus feet and you have a floater and it's a very involved process.
But if you're just in freaking Hawaii and you've got a sling and a good spot and some coral and some good fins and you can just...
Basically, swim away.
I'll tie a string around my waist and put a little knife on my belt, and you can just go out there and string four or five fish, and it's an easy day.
It's a ton of fun.
joe rogan
Yeah, and it's almost like it's not fishing.
You'd call it spearfishing, but you're basically hunting underwater.
ben greenfield
You're hunting underwater.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
I haven't done this yet, but maybe you've seen these underwater bows where you can shoot a bow at the fish.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
It's a bow.
I don't know if they call it bow fishing or what, but have you seen this?
joe rogan
I've seen something like it.
I know there's a lot of bow fishing that people do.
They're shooting down at gar, alligator gar in particular.
That's a big one that they use.
ben greenfield
Have you ever eaten a gar?
I want to try that as well.
No.
joe rogan
It's supposed to be really good smoked.
ben greenfield
Really?
joe rogan
It's such a weird looking animal.
In my mind, it almost feels like you shouldn't shoot it because it's a dinosaur.
It's like, keep it alive.
They really haven't changed in millions of years.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
Such a freaky look.
ben greenfield
They're fun to prepare though.
I do a fish feed after a spearfish.
You're all cold.
You're hungry.
Last one I did, we had a parrotfish down in Hawaii stuffed with avocado and mango, coconut oil, baked it in the oven with macadamia nut, like encrusted macadamia nut.
joe rogan
Parrotfish are the ones that are eating the coral and shitting out white sand.
ben greenfield
I don't know.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
Apparently you've watched more nature TV than I have.
joe rogan
That's what white sand is.
It's shit.
ben greenfield
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, believe it or not.
Really?
Yeah, these fish eat coral, chew it up, and shit out the white sand.
ben greenfield
So like a giant white sand beach like Clearwater, Florida?
unidentified
Shit.
ben greenfield
That's all fish shit?
joe rogan
Parrot, fish, poop, makes beautiful beaches.
unidentified
There you go.
joe rogan
There's the article.
ben greenfield
I wonder if it's good for your microbiome.
unidentified
I don't know.
ben greenfield
Because you're out on bacteria.
joe rogan
These motherfuckers are out there just eating rocks.
ben greenfield
That's a lot of shit.
joe rogan
That's a lot of shit.
ben greenfield
That's a lot of parrotfish over a very long period of time.
joe rogan
Millions and millions of years.
Like, here you go.
You can see them do it.
They're chewing on the coral.
They bang it out.
They have like a beak, essentially.
That's why they call them parrotfish.
They smash down that coral, and then all that white around them is just basically swimming around their own shit.
ben greenfield
That's pretty cool.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
ben greenfield
That's pretty cool.
joe rogan
Very strange.
ben greenfield
I dig that.
Yeah.
I was going to ask you something.
Metformin.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben greenfield
You started talking about it with David.
joe rogan
Yes.
ben greenfield
David Sinclair.
You going to take that?
joe rogan
Yes.
ben greenfield
Metformin?
joe rogan
Maybe.
I don't know.
It seems weird because that one's a drug.
ben greenfield
It's like the darling of the anti-aging industry.
unidentified
Right.
ben greenfield
It's like a nickel a pop.
And it inhibits mTOR to a certain extent, but the big deal with that is glycemic variability, reduced risk of chronic disease.
But there's a lot of side effects to that.
unidentified
Really?
ben greenfield
That's why I wanted to mention that to you.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
So you were saying that there's none.
ben greenfield
No, there's lactic acidosis, and it inhibits the electron transport chain in the mitochondria, which is fine if you want to down-regulate metabolism and live a long time, but not if you're an athlete.
You don't want to inhibit mitochondrial respiration necessarily.
Vitamin B12 deficiencies.
It's derived from French roux in physicians for hundreds of years, been using it, but in limited quantities because it induces nausea.
So you get gastrointestinal disturbances.
My take on metformin because I've been looking over the past year into a lot of these anti-aging compounds that people are now using or talking about using like rapamycin and metformin and NAD and a lot of these sirtuin precursors.
But metformin And rapamycin, actually, for different reasons, because that's an immune system suppressor, are two that I don't think I would ever take.
joe rogan
Really?
ben greenfield
Because with metformin, there are a variety of natural compounds that reduce blood glucose and improve insulin sensitivity in the absence of that, like berberine, curcumin, apple cider vinegar, Ceylon cinnamon, bitter melon extract.
joe rogan
And you think all those things are mimicking what metformin is capable of doing?
ben greenfield
I think so.
I'm not wearing it right now, but usually I wear a Dexcom G6. It's a continuous blood glucose monitor.
It actually fell off yesterday when I was doing that exercise.
joe rogan
That's one of those ones you see diabetics wear, they stick it to their body?
ben greenfield
Yeah, it sends my blood glucose to my cell phone.
I wear all sorts of interesting things, like...
My blood glucose would spike in the mornings, like clockwork, about 8 a.m.
every morning.
And I was trying to figure out, like, why is my blood glucose going to 120, 130 every single morning?
Well, I'd have a cup of coffee in the morning.
And even though I don't put cream or sugar in my coffee, I just drink straight-up black coffee.
Coffee actually causes your liver to engage in something called glycogenolysis.
So you actually release glucose into the bloodstream, which is a good thing.
That's why you drink coffee.
You want that cortisol release, that glucose hit.
Maybe you want the flavor and the antioxidants, too.
I would get a blood glucose response from coffee.
Another one that surprised me was green beans.
You talk about legumes, you talk about slow-release carbohydrates, and it falls into that category, but my blood glucose would go up whenever I'd have green beans.
So I actually got a food allergy test through this company called Cyrex.
They do a really good food allergy test that doesn't give you this big...
Laundry list of false positives like the ELISA and the ALCAT test, like the skin prick test.
You just get a very small number of foods that you're actually allergic to.
Because a lot of these other tests, they'll show a bunch of antibodies to food, but it's antibodies to food because you're eating that food.
So many people will be like, dude, I'm allergic to eggs.
I got a test on allergic to eggs and I'm depressed because that was a big staple in my diet.
Well, it's only showing that you're allergic to them because they're a staple in your diet.
egg proteins in your bloodstream.
But this Cyrex panel...
joe rogan
Wait a minute, explain that.
ben greenfield
So basically, if you're eating a lot of eggs, you actually have a lot of egg proteins circulating in your bloodstream.
And if you get a food panel, you actually can very readily produce, like a food allergy panel, you produce antibodies to the egg protein.
And they say that you're allergic to the egg protein when in fact you just have a lot of egg proteins in your system because you've been eating a lot of eggs.
And sometimes they'll even test the white blood cell reaction to a raw egg, not a cooked egg, right?
And so your white blood cells are going to react more readily to a raw egg versus cooked egg, a raw chicken versus cooked chicken.
I don't think a lot of these food allergy panels are that accurate for that reason.
I think they're just giving you a laundry list of foods that you may or may not be allergic to.
But this one, it's called Cyrex.
I have no financial affiliation like that with this company, but I just think they do a good job with their testing.
You got to order through a physician.
And I ordered this test, and I was allergic to almost nothing.
Like, barely anything would spike for me.
Kind of like a moderate spike for gluten.
Green beans, though, were off the chart.
Off the chart.
So, that continuous blood glucose monitor was actually able to tell me that I was eating something that my sympathetic nervous system was responding to.
I was going to fight and flight mode, releasing a bunch of glucose, and I never would have really known that or gotten a clue about that unless I was wearing one of these continuous blood glucose monitors.
I'm not going to wear it my whole life, but I'm going to wear it.
My plan is to wear it for a year to just learn a lot about the foods that I usually eat, what they do to my body, what certain workouts do, what certain supplements do.
But returning to metformin, I started to use a lot of these things like berberine, like curcumin.
You can do a shot of apple cider vinegar before a meal.
Take a couple of teaspoons of Ceylon cinnamon in your smoothie.
And these things actually have an effect on blood glucose that mimics what you're trying to get when you take metformin.
joe rogan
That's all that metformin is doing?
Is it just limiting blood glucose?
ben greenfield
Well, like I mentioned earlier, it does inhibit mTOR a little bit.
So you get that mTOR inhibition, but you can inhibit mTOR through calorie restriction fasting done regularly or like a compressed feeding window.
I should have had you here yesterday.
joe rogan
I should have had you here to talk to David Sinclair.
ben greenfield
I want to finish listening to that interview too because he's a very smart guy.
But I'm not enamored with Metformin.
I think that there are better, more natural alternatives.
joe rogan
He's not an athlete.
He barely works out.
He works out a little bit.
He does a little bit of a run, a little bit of lifting.
But you can tell he's not a guy who's really exerting himself rigorously.
ben greenfield
To me, I want the marriage of performance and longevity.
I don't want to live a long time if I can't kick ass and feel good.
I don't want to be cold and hungry and libido-less and live till I'm 150. Even if that means I'm going to live till I'm 145 instead of 150 because I've got more muscle mass or whatever.
I want to feel good.
So whenever I'm looking at a compound like that, I'm questioning whether or not it's the best way to go if it's going to inhibit my actual performance.
joe rogan
Right.
ben greenfield
His focus is so...
Especially if there's natural alternatives.
joe rogan
He's so focused on longevity.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
Yeah, but you could say that about a lot of these things.
I mean, like cryotherapy chambers, right?
I mean, you look at the Cherokee Native American tribe would dip their babies in icy cold water until they were like two years old.
Or there's the viral video footage of the Siberian school children.
I don't know if you've seen this one.
They rush out into the snow during recess in their underpants, and they dump cold water on themselves and run around in the snow and then come back inside.
And in Iceland, based on some of the research that was done a few decades ago on immune system, they let their babies sleep outside in sub-zero temperatures in strollers.
Yeah.
joe rogan
What?
ben greenfield
The Russians, the Finnish, the Eastern Europeans.
joe rogan
They're trying to kill their kids.
ben greenfield
They've all got their cryotherapy.
Like the Baltic Sea, you go back and forth.
When I go to Finland, they've got the Men's Finnish Sauna Society.
There's no cryotherapy chambers.
It's just old school saunas.
Then you go jump in the sea and you dry yourself off in the air.
Then you go back in the sauna.
So, you know, a lot of these things.
There's natural alternatives.
And I get flack a lot of the time because I'm, you know...
I'm one of these so-called biohackers.
I have the laser lights in my office that I shine on my balls and I've got the The lights that go in your ears, and I've got the stem cells and IVs and injections, but I always, always want to make sure people know that you go after the natural stuff first.
Natural ways to get cold, natural ways to get hot.
If you're going to buy some expensive pultzed electromagnetic-filled mat, you sure as hell will be perfect.
Better be going outside barefoot, right?
Or camping, or sleeping outside, or learning how to earth and ground in a more natural way.
joe rogan
What is involved in earthing and grounding?
Is there a real provable effect?
ben greenfield
Yeah, there is research, especially in terms of a reduction in inflammation and improvement in joint comfort.
That's a very interesting one.
And then when you take these same frequencies, so the Earth naturally emits somewhere in the range of about 3 to 100 Hz electromagnetic frequencies, like way lower than the million Hz frequencies you're getting when you hold your cell phone up to your ear.
We're walking around on basically a giant electrical mat.
Like, there's radiation and electromagnetic frequencies released by Earth.
And the idea is that these fancy devices now, these mats that you can sleep on or do therapy on, there's...
Like, I've got one in my basement that just packs a punch.
Like, he was used in the racehorsing industry for a long time.
It's called a Pulse Centers.
And you lay on that thing, and it's just like...
It vibrates your whole body.
joe rogan
What is it doing?
ben greenfield
It reduces inflammation.
You think of it like exercise for your cells.
It's opening and closing the cell membrane.
joe rogan
What's it called?
ben greenfield
This blood flow.
It's called a Pulse Centers.
It's like a giant table.
joe rogan
Pulse Centers?
ben greenfield
It's got different coils.
Yeah, it's Pulse Centers is the name of the company that makes this.
joe rogan
Centers or Centers?
ben greenfield
Centers.
joe rogan
Centers.
ben greenfield
But it's got attachments like coils and pads that you can attach to your knee or attach to a bum shoulder or whatever.
I'll just sit in there and work on my computer.
I get a massage on it every week for a couple of hours.
So it's taking the same frequencies you get from the earth and just magnifying those, just delivering them in a more concentrated manner.
The same thing with like an infrared light panel.
I don't know if you've seen these before.
They deliver near infrared, far infrared, red light.
People will strip off their clothes and stand in front of these things to get more collagen production.
Or in the same way that that light that I was talking about for your head can enhance mitochondrial activity in neural tissue, your balls are basically little eyes.
They have photoreceptors on them.
They respond to light.
You can actually increase mitochondrial activity in the testicles, the Leydig cells in the testes, to increase testosterone or increase sperm production.
joe rogan
So you shoot a light in your balls?
ben greenfield
No, yeah, it is.
joe rogan
You grow more tests?
ben greenfield
Go outside and you sunbathe nude or you'd use one of these lights and just stand in front.
Like I literally, I look like an idiot at work, but this is what I do.
I've got a light panel in front of me.
I'm at a standing desk.
I work at a standing desk.
I've got a light panel behind me.
And every day for 20 minutes, I just take my clothes off at work and I stand sandwiched in between these light panels.
And it basically blasts me with this red light.
But I also go out in the sun.
If I've got the option to do that versus get outside in the sunlight, I go out into the sunlight.
If I've got the option to take berberine and bitter melon extract instead of metformin, I'd rather take the berberine and the bitter melon extract.
So I think it just strips up down and go as natural as possible.
And then once you step up to the more advanced anti-aging strategies or biohacking strategies or what have you, you still have to look at those with a skeptical eye.
And ask yourself whether or not those are really safe or if they have side effects that might, in many cases, limit your physical performance.
joe rogan
And why do you prefer a standing desk?
ben greenfield
Well, the whole sitting is the new smoking thing I disagree with.
I think sitting is just fine.
It feels natural to sit.
It doesn't feel like you're breaking some rule of the human body to sit down.
We're sitting down right now.
It feels pretty good.
The problem with sitting is that that is the posture most people are adopting for eight hours per day.
The best position to be in when you're working would be whatever position you're not in at the moment.
When you look at weight training, this would not apply to hypertrophy, which would dictate that you want to hit a muscle over and over again using the same angle with increasingly difficult loads.
But for metabolic Training, you would want to actually throw curveballs at your body.
The best workout, therefore, would be the one that you're not doing right now if your goal was just to limit any type of metabolic efficiency.
So the idea with the standing desk is I have that to give me yet another position to be in during the day.
So I've got a TrueForm treadmill, and I had TrueForm modify it to take the dashboard off.
So I've got that in front of my standing workstation, and then I've got one of these balance boards that I can stand on, and I've got like a stool that I can lean against.
So I've got all these different positions that I can be in during the day, and then I've got that Pulse Center's chair in my office that I can go and sit in.
So every 25 minutes, I'll just shift to a different position.
And my stand-up desk is a hand-cranked stand-up desk, so I can crank it up and down if I do want to sit at my desk.
It just works.
It's the idea of hacking your environment, of equipping your environment to be in as many different positions as possible.
So I think that's the key to feeling good at work, especially when you're stuck indoors.
joe rogan
Do you believe in one of those, have you seen one of those, you stand at your standing desk on this variable sort of surface?
Have you seen those things where it's like...
ben greenfield
Like a topographical mat.
unidentified
Yeah, it's weird.
ben greenfield
It's got a bunch of weird surfaces.
There's one called a topo.
The one, like in our boulder offices for my company, we've got the stand-up desks that go...
You push a button and they go up and down.
But then what we have is just scattered around the office.
A few of those mats.
We've got some of the...
I don't know if you've seen these fluid stance things.
They're kind of like skateboards that you stand on top of, but they're not...
They're not as gnarly as a balance board, so you can still focus while you're standing on top of it.
We've got different stools, different chairs that will go up or down.
So again, even if you're in a corporate office, it surprises me how many people in their corporate offices don't equip their employees just to be able to move during the day.
joe rogan
Yeah, they don't care.
Yeah, and most people aren't using ergonomic chairs either.
ben greenfield
Yeah, yeah.
What do you use as your main chair for an ergonomic chair?
joe rogan
These chairs that we have here.
ben greenfield
That's what we're sitting in, right?
What am I sitting in right now?
joe rogan
Capisco.
ben greenfield
I feel like I'm not using it to its full capacity.
joe rogan
It's excellent.
unidentified
What's the purpose of the way that this is shaped in the back of this here?
joe rogan
You can kind of lean on it in a weird way.
Put your elbows on it if you like.
But it encourages you to have an upright posture.
ben greenfield
I've got this thing called a MoGo upright.
It's a stool.
And I can even travel with it because it will compress.
It weighs about two pounds.
And you can actually lean against that and get into some different positions on that one.
joe rogan
What is that company that sent us something?
They have one that's basically almost like it's on a spring where you kind of have to balance yourself out.
You have to activate your core just to be...
ben greenfield
I saw one of those at a chiropractic event once.
It kind of makes you squeeze your pelvis while you're in the chair.
But actually, there's this dude in Finland.
He's got a company called Sally.
S-A-L-L-I. He used to ride horses.
And he decided to start making chairs that would get him into the same upright position that he'd be in when he was riding a horse.
unidentified
We have one of those.
jamie vernon
It's a saddle chair.
ben greenfield
Yeah, it's a saddle chair.
jamie vernon
There's one in another one there somewhere.
ben greenfield
I have one of those, too.
joe rogan
That red one.
ben greenfield
That's up at my kitchen table.
joe rogan
That shit is so uncomfortable, though.
jamie vernon
Yeah.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, it feels like your balls are sandwiched in between these two planks.
jamie vernon
I think the armrests on these are so you can spin it around if you want to sit like A.C. Slater style.
Really?
ben greenfield
What's A.C. Slater style?
jamie vernon
It's a chair backwards.
ben greenfield
Oh, really?
joe rogan
That's A.C. Slater style?
jamie vernon
In my head that is for sure, yeah.
ben greenfield
Well, those saddle chairs, they've got like little Allen keys that come with them and you can adjust to your pelvic width.
joe rogan
No, I mean, it fits my width.
It's just weird.
ben greenfield
Maybe all those fat injections you've been doing just give you that big-ass white pelvis.
joe rogan
How dare you?
I don't do that.
That was my main chair for a long time, the saddle chair.
But then when I started using these Capisco chairs, it's way more comfortable.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
Well, if you're sitting for a long time.
joe rogan
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's just...
It's easy.
And I have no back pain.
When I use a regular office chair and I sit for long periods of time, I get that center back pain from just poor posture, just sitting in a curved stance or a curved position.
ben greenfield
What about a treadmill desk?
Have you tried one of those?
joe rogan
No, no.
ben greenfield
See, I can't do a lot on the treadmill desk production-wise, but if somebody's interviewing me on Skype on a podcast or I'm doing a consult call with somebody, reviewing blood work or something like that, I'll be walking on my treadmill and then I've got my microphone in front of me and I have this program called Dragon Dictation.
And Dragon Dictation allows me to talk via a headset, and then it'll type the words on the screen.
joe rogan
I used to use that a long time ago, but apparently it's moved leaps and bounds.
ben greenfield
Yeah, it's called training your dragon.
You get this off, it tells you to train your dragon.
And so you say all these words, you read all these paragraphs, and it learns to identify your phrasing.
joe rogan
Right.
ben greenfield
And the volume of your voice.
And it gets more accurate.
But it's way better than the built-in Apple, whatever it's called, voice recognition software.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
So it works.
And I like that because then I can just walk.
I can talk emails.
I can talk with people.
So there's like three or four different things that I do at work that I will walk during.
joe rogan
Yeah.
No, that makes sense.
That makes sense.
I write when I'm just completely alone and quiet, staring at a computer because I want to spend time on each individual word and really concentrate on what the fuck I'm saying.
Because most of the time I'm writing stand-up, so I need to bounce it back and forth.
And to talk it out is not really the right strategy.
ben greenfield
Yeah, yeah.
I'm working on a book right now, and what I've found is, for me, I have to have a triggered environment, like a place in my house that when I go to that place, that's the place where your mind says, okay, this is the writing spot.
For me, it's this chair in the corner of the living room outside of my office.
As soon as I get into that thing, It's like writing mode.
joe rogan
Right, right.
ben greenfield
And I just go Pomodoro, I'll write for 25 minutes, get up, take a five minute break, come back.
That's how I do it.
I just have an environment to write in.
joe rogan
Yeah, an environment and a good time, like a specific time to write is good too.
Like where you know, hey, now it's X time, that's when I write.
ben greenfield
Yeah, that's the idea behind all this new research they're doing on morningness, eveningness, chronotypes, different people being night owls versus morning larks.
There was a study I was looking at yesterday about the response to an inflammatory stressor.
I don't remember what the stressor was, but when a morning type is stressed out in the morning, they handle it better than when they're stressed out in the evening.
And vice versa.
And it's very interesting, this research on chronotypes.
I like the idea of just being able to shift your circadian rhythm, because I travel a lot.
Like, I haven't been home in 17 days.
I've got two more days on the road, and then I'll be home.
But when I'm going east to west or west to east, I use light a lot to reset my circadian biology.
I call it a...
These are cues that regulate your circadian biology.
Eating is one.
You want to wait to eat until it's actual meal time in whatever area of the world that you're traveling to.
If you arrive in New York City from California at 3pm, you don't want to eat a bite of food until 7pm when it's actual dinner because that helps to regulate your circadian rhythm.
Movement is another one.
You want to get outside, go for a walk, go for a swim, go hit the gym.
joe rogan
I found that.
That's a big one for me.
Whenever I travel, the first thing I do is I check in and I go right to the gym.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
I go outside.
I take off my shoes and go outside.
joe rogan
That's good, too.
But for me, a rigorous workout makes all the difference in the world in terms of how I actually feel, especially when I'm...
If I'm traveling a lot and doing shows, you don't want to.
You get to a hotel room, you just want to lay down and relax.
ben greenfield
You have to defy that urge.
joe rogan
Yeah, I just go straight to the gym.
ben greenfield
Yeah, that's what I find.
If you shut up the inner bitch and make it through the first two minutes, you're good to go.
But light is the biggie.
Light is the biggie.
So I've got these buds that make light that go in my ears.
joe rogan
You make light into your ear?
ben greenfield
You have photoreceptors in your ears.
Really?
You have photoreceptors all over your body.
I've got the one that goes in the eyes.
That one's called a re-timer.
And that one makes like this greenish blue light that's not damaging to your retina, but that just blasts your entire skull with light.
So I've got light on my eyes, light on my ears, and light on my head.
And I'll flip those lights on back in front of the body.
And that's my home setup to get my circadian rhythm restored.
So what I do is if I've been back east...
And my body at 4 a.m.
Pacific Time is telling me it's 7 a.m.
because I'm on Eastern Time.
My circadian clock is on Eastern Time.
What I do is I wake up.
I'm not going to lay in bed for three hours waiting until the time when I actually do want to get up.
What I do is I wake up, I get out of bed, and I put on those blue light blocking glasses, the ones that you're supposed to wear at night, like the yellowish-orange lenses.
But I block all light.
So I'm basically just walking around in a pretty dim setting in my house.
I'll make coffee sometimes or have some water, stretch out, get some work done.
But I've got the light blocked the whole time.
And then, whenever the time rolls around, when I actually want to start waking up, let's say I'm like 6 a.m.
I don't want to wake up at 4 a.m.
I want to wake up at 6 a.m.
Then I'll go down to my office and I'll put on the eye thing, the ear thing, the head thing, the light in front of me, the light behind me.
joe rogan
I need to see a photo.
ben greenfield
I've done it on an IG story before.
And then you just blast yourself for like 20 minutes.
And if I do that for two or three days, my circadian rhythm is just right back on time.
Right back on time.
I mean, I fall asleep when I'm supposed to fall asleep.
I go to bed at like 10 p.m.
I get up about 6 a.m., And that's my cycle every day.
But I just blast myself with light when I get home.
joe rogan
For me, lack of food is a good one.
Make sure you use some sort of fasting in order to regulate everything when you're traveling.
And then exercise.
Those are the two big ones.
And then eating after rigorous training puts everything sort of back into perspective.
ben greenfield
How do you fast?
What's your fasting protocol?
joe rogan
16 hours every night.
ben greenfield
Every single night?
joe rogan
No, one or two nights a week I'll fuck off.
ben greenfield
What about longer fasts during the year?
unidentified
I don't.
ben greenfield
At all?
joe rogan
No, I haven't done that.
ben greenfield
I started doing it.
joe rogan
Yeah?
ben greenfield
I started it last year.
So my protocol now is 12 to 16 hours of intermittent fast every day.
Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever.
As soon as I stop eating, I'm competitive.
I'll set my watch.
If I finish eating at 8 p.m., I don't eat again until 8 a.m.
If I finish eating at midnight, then I don't eat again until, you know, if I get up at midnight for a snack, I won't eat again until lunch, at least 12 p.m.
So I do that every day.
And then what I started doing, once Walter Longo came out with his research on the longevity diet and this whole idea of a fasting-mimicking diet, inducing cellular autophagy and enhancing longevity to the same extent as if you were just do like a pure water fast or stop eating.
So what you do is on a quarterly basis, four times a year, you restrict the normal amount of calories that you would eat to 40% of what you'd normally eat.
So maybe you're just dropping one meal, or for every meal that you eat, you're eating a little bit less.
And you do this for five days on a quarterly basis.
I started doing that last year, and I just have like this stew that I make with split mung beans and basmati rice, and it's called khichri.
It's an Indian Ayurvedic cleansing stew.
Dr. Longo's company, El Nutra, sends out these kits called Prolon kits that are all done for you, but I just wanted to make my own stew.
That's easy for me.
I put a little coconut yogurt on it, and that's just breakfast, lunch, and dinner for me for five days in a row.
It's almost like a seasonal cleaning.
So you do that four times a year, and the only other thing that I do is one or two times a month.
I try to go from Saturday dinner to Sunday dinner without eating.
So it's almost a 24-hour fast.
And with those three things, 12 to 16-hour intermittent fast, the quarterly five-day modified fast, and then the 24-hour fast one to two times a month, that's sustainable for me.
I could still perform.
I could still work out.
I think that's the way to go.
joe rogan
How do you feel when you do that 24-hour fast?
ben greenfield
Pretty good.
About 2 p.m. you get hungry.
About 2 p.m. in the afternoon on Sunday.
Because what I'll do is I'll have dinner on Saturday, and then I'll wait the whole day, and then I'll have a big Sunday dinner.
And honestly, it doesn't affect the workouts that much because the magic of fasting seems to be the compressed feeding window and not the calorie restriction.
This returns to not wanting to be hungry and cold and libido-less if you're going to live a long time.
So the idea is that you could fast from Saturday dinner to Sunday dinner and have a giant ribeye steak, sweet potato, fry, red wine, dark chocolate.
Halo top ice cream, whatever you want.
At the end of the day on Sunday, eat 3,500 calories and then you're topped off and you're ready for the next day and you have a long period in which you're engaged in cellular cleanup, cellular autophagy, but you kind of get to have your cake and eat it too because you have a bunch of calories at the end of that.
joe rogan
Are you drinking coffee?
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
So coffee's fine.
ben greenfield
I was actually surprised you didn't ask me when I brought in the sourdough bread and the coconut macaroons and everything if they would take you out of ketosis or break your fast.
I get that question a lot now.
Well, of course it does.
No, but people want to know if the butter in your coffee, you know, putting 800 calories of butter in your coffee is going to break your fast.
Basically, the idea is if it has calories, it breaks your fast.
If it doesn't have calories, it doesn't break your fast.
joe rogan
Coffee has zero calories?
unidentified
Yeah.
ben greenfield
It's negligible.
It's like a few cholesterol molecules and like the, what do they call it, the coffee stall and the kawaiol.
And even that, if you use a paper filter, you're filtering a lot of that out.
That's actually why I like French press because you're not filtering some of those like brain spinning compounds out.
joe rogan
Have you fucked around with any of that Four Sigmatic mushroom coffee?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I like that stuff a lot.
ben greenfield
That's actually, before I came over here, I had...
A cup of coffee, and I had a packet of that Four Sigmatic Lions made, which is good for cognition.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've been drinking those little packets.
They're fantastic.
It's a sponsor now.
ben greenfield
Oh, really?
joe rogan
I know that guy.
I'm a big fan.
ben greenfield
Taro.
He lives down in Venice Beach.
Smart guy.
joe rogan
Seems like a place for a guy that makes mushroom coffee.
ben greenfield
Yeah, they do a good job with their mushrooms.
So yeah, anything that has calories is going to take you out of fast.
But I'll drink black coffee, green tea.
Both of those enhance your fatty acid burning, so it's actually enhancing the benefits of a fast.
Occasionally, if I'm going to do a pretty epic workout, the two things that I'll use in combo are ketone esters with essential amino acids.
You combine those with a very low number of calories, but that's like rocket fuel.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben greenfield
How much ketone acids are you?
Because you get the anabolism, about 10 grams of essential amino acids, and then the ketones.
What I've been doing is a shot glass of this stuff called, it's Ketone Aid, and then there's another company called HVMN that does like a, they all taste like ass, but you combine those with like a little bit of amino acid, so you have high ketones, high amino acids, but neither of those are insulinogenic, so it still keeps you in a relatively fasted state if you want to go to a hard workout or maintain muscle.
Or whatever.
joe rogan
What about cordyceps mushrooms?
You ever fuck around with those?
ben greenfield
They're amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like cordyceps.
They seem to act primarily on some of the pathways for oxygenation.
joe rogan
Have we gotten you any of the Onnit Shroomtech?
ben greenfield
Yeah, I've got all the Onnit stuff.
Shroomtech is good.
Actually, Four Sigmatic does a cordyceps as well.
But the other one, the lion's mane, what I've been doing...
I'll do this about two times a week.
Just take a very small amount of psilocybin, about 0.2 grams of psilocybin, and you take two packets of that Lion's Mane, the Four Sigmatic Lion's Mane extract, and then anything that increases blood flow.
So it could be like beetroot, any nitric oxide precursors.
You could probably try Shroom Tech.
Niacin.
A lot of people use niacin.
But you combine anything that increases blood flow, a couple of packets of the lion's mane, and then about 0.2 grams of psilocybin, and the cognitive pick-me-up you get from that is profound.
I mean, you know that psilocybin increases your sensory perception, your ability to pick out color, smell, sense temperature, etc.
But just for getting through a day of work, or even like going on a long hike, or I would not be surprised if our ancestors used psilocybin for hunting because you actually do get a pretty good increase in sensory perception, smell, and sight from it.
joe rogan
And visual acuity as well.
ben greenfield
Yeah, but that mix works really well where you do the lion's mane along with the psilocybin extract.
joe rogan
It makes sense that there would be some sort of a symbiotic benefit to combining those sort of mushrooms together.
Yeah.
ben greenfield
Well, it's like that, we were talking about this last time, that doctrine of signatures, the idea that what things look like in nature could actually give you clues about their benefit for the body.
And when you find lion's mane, I don't know if you've seen it in nature, but it looks like this cluster of axons and dendrites.
Like, it looks like brain cells.
joe rogan
See if you can find it.
ben greenfield
Yeah, just look up like lion's mane in the wild.
Pretty badass looking.
There's a lot of stuff like that.
There's this place in Kauai that I go to called Kauai Organic Pharmacy.
And they just grow on this tiny little two-acre farm all these different superfoods like noni and cacao.
And they've got comfrey there.
And if you dig up the root of a comfrey plant...
joe rogan
There it is.
ben greenfield
Yeah, that's lion's mane.
joe rogan
It really does look like a lion's mane.
What a great name for it, too.
ben greenfield
Yeah, but it also looks like dendrites and axons and neurons.
So it's very cool.
joe rogan
What a freaky plant.
ben greenfield
It's an amazing plant.
I have yet to actually find it in nature, but apparently you can find it up in the inland northwest where I live.
Anyways, though, comfrey, they call it knit bone, and the roots look like knuckles and joints and human bones, and it's very good for healing up fractures or for making, like, a plaster for your joints.
joe rogan
A plaster?
ben greenfield
Comfrey plant.
joe rogan
What do you mean by a plaster?
ben greenfield
Yeah.
Well, what that pharmacy in Kauai does is they grind it into a powder, and then you reconstitute that with water, and you smear it, like, over a shoulder joint, and you could just use, like, a T-shirt or whatever to hold it on there or an ace bandage, And it actually increases the speed of bone healing or joint healing, like it's an anti-inflammatory.
They do like a muscle cream with it too, made out of the comfrey.
So it's very interesting.
There's all sorts of different things in nature that give you clues, like the carrots and the eggs for your eyes, the walnuts for the brain.
I think there's something to it.
joe rogan
How does that stuff increase your bone healing?
What is it doing?
What's the mechanism?
ben greenfield
I don't know.
I don't know.
It might be like some way of mineral delivery through the skin, something like that.
joe rogan
I've been blown away by CBD, by using, putting CBD over muscle injuries.
ben greenfield
A lot of companies do like, you know what the trick with that is?
One of the guys, one of the doctors who worked with Tour de France teams, We're showing me this.
Do you have an electrical muscle stimulation unit?
joe rogan
I do, but I've never used it.
ben greenfield
Like a Mark Pro or a Compax or what have you?
joe rogan
Yeah, I've got a Compax.
ben greenfield
So you put your CBD oil on, or your magnesium, or your Arnica, your Tramil, whatever it is that you're using, and you rub that in, then you put the electrodes on top of that.
And then you put an ice pack on top of that.
So it's three things.
You've got the cream or lotion, you've got the electrodes, and then you've got the topical thing that holds it on, and the electricity drives the anti-inflammatory deeper into the tissue.
So it enhances the effect of a CBD oil or a magnesium, and the ice allows you to turn up the electricity to a higher level without getting uncomfortable.
So I do this at home.
I use one called a Mark Pro and just kind of surround the area that's actually torn or that's painful, and I'll do a rub like that.
But you're right, CBD oil works amazingly for that.
joe rogan
Yeah, that stuff is, it's remarkable because it's, you're putting it on the surface of your skin and it's weird how it can get all the way deep into a muscle or into a joint.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like a lot of people use it with knee pain and it's just, it's remarkable how well it works.
ben greenfield
The skin is a mouth.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
That's why some of those personal care products are kind of scary.
But CBD. Personal care products?
Yeah, like personal care products, like parabens and phthalates and phytoestrogens and endocrine disruptors and stuff like that in them.
I mean, they've done studies where guys will take a shower with the average shampoo that's got parabens and phthalates and these things that can be endocrine disruptors or phytoestrogens, mimic estrogen in a man's body.
And they actually, within a short period of time after taking the shower and using these care products, you can actually detect this stuff in their urine.
Like your body's actually soaking this up and absorbing it.
There's a very interesting book.
I interviewed this guy on my podcast.
It's called Estrogeneration, about how many guys have really high estrogen levels now from primarily their personal care products or their household cleaning chemicals.
joe rogan
So it's true.
That's tough trying to turn you into a bitch.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
It is.
More or less.
joe rogan
Like if you go over a guy's house and you see a bunch of sweet-smelling shampoos, you're like, what are they doing to you, bro?
ben greenfield
That's what always surprised me.
Like when I raced for Team Timex, we used to train out at the Giant Stadium in New Jersey, and I go in the locker room there, and it's just like this.
You'd think that the peak of performance in professional sports would have started looking into, by this point, how could you keep testosterone as high as possible on a male athlete's body?
Right.
But you walk into the bathroom and it's just like every endocrine disruptor known to man just like lined up in a pretty shiny row there on the shelf in front of them.
You know, the shaving cream and the shampoos and the spray deodorant.
joe rogan
Shaving cream as an endocrine disruptor?
unidentified
Yeah.
ben greenfield
I mean, not all shaving cream.
joe rogan
Right.
ben greenfield
But if it's something that has those kind of chemicals in it, absolutely.
joe rogan
Have you ever used Dr. Carver's shave butter?
ben greenfield
That sounds familiar.
joe rogan
It's a Dollar Shave Club product.
It's the most fucking incredible shaving cream of all time.
Regular shaving cream, you just won't use it after you try that stuff.
ben greenfield
I think I've tried that because this probably happens to you.
You get lots of personal care products since your studio or your home.
joe rogan
Yeah, but that stuff blows me away.
It's like a butter.
ben greenfield
It's called Dr. Carver's?
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben greenfield
Huh.
Yeah.
Interesting.
joe rogan
I'll get them to send you some.
ben greenfield
I'll have to try it.
joe rogan
You'll fucking be blown away by it.
ben greenfield
I don't have to shave that much, so don't have them send very much.
joe rogan
You don't grow a lot of facial hair?
ben greenfield
No, I don't grow a lot of facial hair.
No.
No.
But yeah, these...
joe rogan
You'd think with all your experimenting, you'd be growing it on your fucking cheeks.
ben greenfield
You'd think something would have sprouted, but you'd think it'd be kind of weird.
Like, it'd just be like one right side patch of the chin.
unidentified
Right.
ben greenfield
And it's like a hair, but there's a mole attached to the hair.
joe rogan
Do you ever wonder what you're doing to yourself?
ben greenfield
It's got little stem cells bleeding out the end.
joe rogan
Do you ever, like, sit in bed at night?
ben greenfield
Occasionally.
Like, there's some of the stuff on stem cells that admittedly are a little bit of, like, a venture into human experimentation without robust evidence of safety.
joe rogan
How about the one where you shot it into your dick?
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's a good example.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
But I'm kind of shifting my whole philosophy on stem cells to kind of go after stuff from my own body as much as possible.
joe rogan
Bone marrow.
ben greenfield
Being autologous.
You know, like that one I did in New York City.
It's just it's not somebody else's blood.
joe rogan
Right, right.
ben greenfield
My own stuff.
Or, you know, in some cases you could argue that placental or umbilical or amniotic cells are so young and so pluripotent, you know, and if they don't have the DNA in the nucleus, which apparently they can kill off somehow, which is how they make exosomes, you're not getting somebody else's DNA. You know, it's just something your body would have made anyways and recognized as self.
So, yeah, sometimes, though, I probably have taken it too far with a few of those things.
But the CBD that you were talking about, I'm a huge fan of.
I take CBD before bed every night.
joe rogan
Orally?
ben greenfield
A lot of it.
When you look at the studies on CBD for anxiety and for sleep, most of them are pushing 100 and up to 900 milligrams, which is nuts.
When you look at the actual serving size of the average CBD tincture or capsule or pill, it's like 10. So you've got to take a lot of it.
But I sleep like a baby.
Like last night, I got the ring that I do my sleep score on.
I slept eight and a half hours last night.
And I take 100 milligrams of CBD. I take a little bit of melatonin, and I'm just out.
But you've got to take a lot of it.
And you wake up kind of groggy when you do.
But if you're used to that, and you know, like, you get up, shake it off, 10 minutes later, you're good to go.
joe rogan
What's the grogginess coming from?
ben greenfield
Probably just overstimulation of the endocanninoid system.
You're just, like, super relaxed, which I want to be when I sleep.
joe rogan
Right, of course, yeah.
ben greenfield
Yeah, that's what works.
joe rogan
What about regular marijuana?
Does that affect your sleep?
Do you find it beneficial or no?
ben greenfield
So, CBD... Can enhance your deep sleep cycles, which is when a good majority of your neuronal repair and recovery occurs.
THC allows you to sleep, and it actually decreases sleep latency, how long it takes you to fall asleep, but it does reduce the amount of time you spend in deep sleep.
So if you're one of those people whose mind races, who's hypercharged up and you've got to get to sleep at night, use THC. Hit a vape pen or whatever, but know that you might miss out on some of the things you want during deep sleep.
Memory consolidation, neuronal repair and recovery.
You know, nervous system repair, but it's still pretty decent sleep and you're not getting as much of a reduction in deep sleep as you would get if you were to be taking like Ambien or Valium or something that's literally just like a sledgehammer for your frontal cortex that knocks you out, but you almost get no deep sleep.
So if you do this, if you were to get like a sleep tracker and test your deep sleep levels, you would find that with CBD, you don't fall asleep as fast, but you get higher deep sleep levels.
And then with THC, you can fall asleep faster, but your deep sleep isn't quite as high.
When you consider that CBD can counteract a lot of the effects of THC, then that means that what you could try is take THC to allow you to fall asleep faster, but then pile a whole bunch of CBD on top of that.
I've done that before, too, where you just take a hit on a vape pen, then take a bunch of CBD, and you shoot for the best of both worlds.
joe rogan
Yeah, folks that are taking Ambient, I mean, especially people that are doing it virtually every night, that has got to have a profound effect on your brain's ability to recover.
ben greenfield
I think there are a lot of people shorting themselves on life who are taking Ambien or Valium.
I mean, I think to start with sleep, you need to rely on your body's own internal chemistry.
And that would be breath work.
Like I think everybody, before they start taking whatever, phosphatidylserine and adaptogenic herbs and all this shit for cortisol, and before they start taking Valium or Ambien or anything else for sleep, you should learn how to control your physiology with your breath.
I think that's the most powerful way to do it.
Prana, your chakra, whatever you want to call it.
Being able to do things like breath work, box breathing, alternate nostril breathing, even holotropic breathing.
You can go some very interesting places in terms of DMT production by the pineal gland by just doing holotropic breath work.
There's a lot of very interesting things that you can do with your breath, but I think that for getting to sleep or for decreasing stress, you start with the breath.
And then you start to introduce some of these other molecules.
But Ambien and Valium, like in the era of readily available CBD and all the other sleep compounds that we have available, like valerian and passionflower and chamomile, and all of those are what are called gamma-aminobutyric acid or GABA precursors.
They produce inhibitory neurotransmitters.
I don't understand why people are still taking Ambien and Valium.
joe rogan
Because they're idiots.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
joe rogan
They're just addicted to it, or they just want a pill.
I mean, that's essentially what it is.
ben greenfield
They want fat in their buttocks, and they want Ambien and Valium.
joe rogan
I don't know if it's the same folks, but many times it is.
I think it's our president.
I think our president takes that shit.
I think he's sleeping with Ambien.
ben greenfield
I think a lot of politicians do that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, they can't sleep.
Otherwise, they're fucking ruining the world.
I've found that if my brain is racing, just completely concentrating on breathing in and breathing out and concentrating on just the breath itself, like really being cognizant of it and slow breathing Deliberate breaths in and out and in and out.
By doing that over long periods of time, I've found that I can pretty much conk myself out.
ben greenfield
You can, but that takes focus.
A lot of people are not willing to learn how to do that because they want the fast track out.
They just want to take a drug and pass out.
joe rogan
That is the thing, right?
They just want a pill.
It's very unfortunate that those things exist and that sort of thinking is reinforced.
ben greenfield
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
It's encouraged, in fact.
You know, all these ads and all these doctors and different people, well, if you have a hard time sleeping, I'll just write your prescription.
Next thing you know.
Yeah.
ben greenfield
And, I mean, you look at the animal world.
Like, they self-medicate.
They'll use clay for parasites and, you know, dogs will eat grass for stomach issues.
And, you know, I guess birds now are putting, like, We're good to go.
So it's not like supplementation or self-medication or the whole creation of pharmaceuticals is something that's unnatural or not an acceptable human activity.
But once you start to use it as a crutch, I think that's where you run into issues.
Like once you deny the human body's ability to be able to heal itself or to be able to decrease stress on its own, you begin to rely on these exogenous chemicals, I think that's where you start playing with fire.
joe rogan
I just wonder what's happening to people's minds over long-term use of this stuff where you're not going into these deep sleep cycles and you're using it every night because essentially once you get hooked on it, a lot of people have a really hard time sleeping without it.
ben greenfield
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, they're shorting themselves, right?
joe rogan
Right.
But I mean, I wonder what studies...
ben greenfield
It's memory.
It's learning.
That's where a lot of that type of stuff happens.
I mean, it's the same thing with, what's it called, glymphatic drainage, like this new drainage system for the brain that they've just discovered in recent years.
This idea that you actually detoxify the brain during these sleep cycles, and it's even enhanced when you sleep on your side.
They even looked at sleeping positions and this thing called glymphatic drainage.
And when you're not going through proper sleep cycles or you're constantly waking because you're on your back and you have, you know, a lot of people have sleep apnea where you'll look at their sleep charts and they'll frequently wake during the night or you'll see periods where they just get ripped out of deep sleep.
Yeah, you wake up and you don't have memory consolidation or you don't have the type of neuronal repair and recovery that you'd want or, you know, you can even short yourself on muscle repair.
unidentified
Hmm.
ben greenfield
And there's probably a lot that we don't know about just dreaming and its ability to be able to do things like help form memories or make learning or experiences more deeply rooted.
But yeah, I think sleep architecture is something that just gets super fucked up in a modern post-industrial era.
We've got access to pharmaceuticals that just take a sledgehammer to our heads.
joe rogan
Yeah, no question about it.
And it's also, there's been a lot of work done on actually going to sleep with a problem.
This whole idea of sleep on it.
Like, there's actually something real to that.
That works.
There's some cognitive balancing that's going on while you're sleeping, where your mind is actually going over whatever issues you might have and trying to come up with a problem during sleep time, during your subconscious.
ben greenfield
You don't want to know how many times now, and I'm learning this as I get older.
That you delay a decision, or you delay replying to an email, or delay responding to a text message, or what have you, until you've gotten a full night of sleep on it.
And the clarity that you get after that, I mean, you just, basically, you think about it a little bit before you fall asleep, then you go to sleep, and you wake up with such a better answer.
The same thing with walk on it.
Like, walk on it is another thing.
We know you make more nerve growth factor and more brain-derived neurotrophic factor when you walk while you're learning.
I recently gave a TEDx talk I made the whole TEDx talk and I learned the whole thing while I was walking up on the farm road back behind my house.
I just walk up through the forest, pop out in the sunshine, walk up and down that road, and just listen to my TED talk on my earbuds and give my talk.
It's amazing for the brain.
But yeah, I agree.
Dwelling on something before you go to sleep, it does the trick.
joe rogan
If I do that, I always have a response the next day that's kinder, less emotional, more understanding, friendlier, reciprocating, any sort of good vibes.
It's really interesting.
It's really interesting how there is some sort of a wisdom that's imparted on you while you're sleeping.
ben greenfield
There is.
And now what I do is I'll think about what it is, but I am a big fan of fiction before you fall asleep.
It just lets you escape to a whole different world.
I took my kids on this giant tour of New York City.
We went to Chelsea Market.
Highline Park and the Empire State Building and Ellis Island.
We just did it all.
But we went across the street from Central Park to the New York Historical Society, where they had a Harry Potter exhibit.
We walked in there.
I've just always been resistant to the Harry Potter phase.
I've never read the books, never watched the movies, but my kids really wanted to go, so I took them.
And when I walked through there and saw all the research, the deep research that J.K. Rowling did on alchemy and herbology and the history of magic and wizardry, and she actually took a deep dive into all this stuff.
She pre-planned out all seven of those books before she even wrote the first one.
And all of her original manuscripts were in there and her letters back and forth to the editor and to the publisher.
I walked out the other end of that exhibit.
It took us about two hours to get through, you know, just looking at everything, thumbing through everything.
And I was just like a diehard Harry Potter fan.
joe rogan
Where is this exhibit?
ben greenfield
It was one of those things that was at the New York Historical Society.
But, you know, a lot of these, they'll do an exhibit and it'll kind of go in and out during the year.
So I doubt it's still going right now because this was like three months ago.
And we walked out, and my kids are like, Dad, this is the Gryffindor wand, and this is the Dumbledore's wand, and the Gryffindor sweater, and the Slytherin sweater, and I just started buying them all the sweaters and the wands, and now I'm reading the book.
So I'm halfway through Goblet of Fire right now, and I'm actually digging it.
joe rogan
My 10-year-old read all of them.
She read all of them in the course of a year.
Have you gone to the Universal ride?
unidentified
No.
ben greenfield
No, but they have a brochure for that down at the Hilton where I'm staying.
joe rogan
It's amazing.
The Harry Potter World ride.
It's incredible.
It's a 3D ride where you're on a roller coaster, but it's not 3D, but it's augmented or virtual reality.
ben greenfield
Yeah, that'll be next to me.
I'm a fan.
I'll go by myself.
Scream.
My hands up in the air.
joe rogan
You'll love it.
It's really good.
The whole Harry Potter World is really good.
Don't drink that butterbeer, though.
It'll give you diabetes.
ben greenfield
One of my boys made butter beer for his classmates.
They help mom with all this stuff.
They've got a cooking podcast.
Their last episode was marshmallows.
They made marshmallows, but there's a cup's worth of bone broth in every marshmallow.
It's this healthy glycine-infused marshmallow that they made a dark chocolate fondue with.
Wait a minute.
joe rogan
How are you using that much bone broth in a marshmallow?
I don't know.
What does it feel like?
ben greenfield
I don't have the recipe, but it tastes amazing.
I'm usually not much of a sneak snacks into bed kind of guy, but I was taking marshmallows to bed, eating marshmallows and reading Harry Potter.
joe rogan
How much sugar is in the marshmallows?
ben greenfield
Not a lot.
joe rogan
Really?
ben greenfield
Not a lot.
No, they're doing a good job with their podcast.
They're doing a lot of blackstrap molasses, stevia, and raw honey, and they're doing...
What else did they make?
They made like a gluten-free baked donut with a cream cheese ginger frosting and cow nibs on top.
You dip it in coffee and it tastes like a real donut.
Good lord.
They're turning into little chefs.
You make me hungry, dude.
joe rogan
What's the benefit of grass-fed beef over regular beef?
I know there is a benefit, but I never can recall it correctly.
unidentified
It's something to do with the essential fatty acids.
ben greenfield
Yeah, because grain, you're going to have more of the omega-6 fatty acids, which have been unfairly vilified.
Meaning that a lot of people are just like, don't eat any omega-6s.
Don't have any arachidonic acid.
Don't overdo your seeds, your nuts, your nut butter.
Kind of like the orthorexic health world as a whole.
When you read nutrition magazines and stuff, they're like, do your omega-3s, but be careful.
Americans have a...
20 to 1 omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.
But the problem is that omega-6s, a lot of those are derived from what are called parent essential oils.
And your cell membranes need a certain amount of omega-6 fatty acids from seeds and nuts and plants and even to a certain extent grains.
And when you have an excess of omega-3s and not enough omega-6s because you're going so far into the fish oil category...
I would imagine the most nutrient-dense ones.
Almonds, macadamia.
I mean, what I eat is like almonds, macadamia nuts, Brazil nuts.
I just don't eat the quasi nuts like peanuts, which are not as high in nutrient density.
They're more of a legume than a nut.
I eat a lot of my nuts either raw or lightly roasted.
You always look at the label to make sure they didn't put a lot of vegetable oil and canola oil in them.
I'm a fan of nuts.
I eat my nuts like you'd eat your nuts if you were going to have to shell them.
If you've ever had to shell a walnut, you're not going to eat 30 walnuts because that would be exhausting.
Pistachios.
joe rogan
I buy pistachios shelled.
ben greenfield
It's annoying as hell, but it keeps you from eating too many of them.
joe rogan
I buy them shelled and I eat fistfuls of them.
Last night I ate half a bag.
ben greenfield
Pistachios are great for your microbiome, too.
I actually had a couple of research studies on that last year that showed an improvement in the diversity of the bacteria in your gut with pistachios.
That's one of the nuts that's good for your body, probably because of the fiber content in pistachios.
But grass-fed...
First, grain-fed is primarily the omega-3 fatty acids.
Many have less of the arachidonic acid, less of the potentially inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids.
There's probably part of it being that grass-fed, grass-finished beef is generally raised on a farm that's using less herbicides, less pesticides, raising their meat in a more sustainable fashion, giving it less hormones, giving it less antibiotics.
That's painting with a broad brush, but generally grass-fed, there's more to it than just the fatty acid composition.
It's just a Well, better health-wise.
Grain-fed beef, I will not lie.
You can have a pretty damn tasty fatty cut of grain-fed beef.
joe rogan
You certainly can, but I honestly prefer the taste of grass-fed.
I like the denser meat, the darker meat.
I like it better.
To me, it just tastes healthier.
I crave it more.
And when I go back and forth between the two of them, when I eat grain-fed, it feels like a lazy cow.
It's good, it's delicious, don't get me wrong, but there's a difference.
ben greenfield
It's kind of funny, because I've gone over to Dubai a few times and taught fitness conferences over there, and they advertise grain-fed.
When you go to the restaurants, it's like, this beef is the finest grain-fed beef.
joe rogan
Well, if you go to Peter Luger's, which is pretty widely recognized as the greatest steakhouse in the world, that place is all grain-fed.
ben greenfield
That place is a trip.
I actually...
I didn't like my steak at Peter Luger's.
joe rogan
How fucking dare you?
unidentified
Who are you?
ben greenfield
I'm going to get killed by it.
joe rogan
Why did you not like it?
ben greenfield
Some rude Brooklyn waiter is going to take me out.
joe rogan
How could you not have liked it?
ben greenfield
I didn't like it.
joe rogan
What didn't you like?
ben greenfield
Just something about it.
The meat just tasted like it was drenched in vegetable oil.
Something about it just didn't taste right.
Maybe I had a poor Peter Luger's experience.
joe rogan
That doesn't even make sense.
ben greenfield
I did not enjoy it that much.
joe rogan
Dude, I ate there and afterwards I'm like, I don't think it gets better.
I don't think food gets better.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
How dare you?
ben greenfield
New York does have a lot of good restaurants, though.
joe rogan
Yeah, they do.
ben greenfield
My buddy, David Boulay, he's a chef over there.
And he has this wonderful restaurant where he brings doctors and nutritionists in, and they teach you about certain aspects of the food that you're eating.
Like, I did one there on longevity.
Mm-hmm.
I taught about having bitters before your meal to reduce your glucose and your insulin response to the meal and the use of sweet breads for your thymus gland to increase the activity of your immune system to a lot of these polyphenols and antioxidants from the purples and the greens and the blues.
There are these things called uncoupling proteins that actually get activated with cryotherapy and cold water immersion But that also are something that get activated with the consumption of...
It's like a sea urchin.
It's like a sea urchin foam that they did at this dinner.
But basically what he does is he'll partner with the physician or the nutritionist or whatever and make this amazing four-hour, five-star meal that's designed to enhance the health effects or whatever it is that you just learned about.
unidentified
Wow.
ben greenfield
I was actually in New York City when I did that blood procedure a couple weeks ago.
I dropped in there again and ate.
That's one of my favorite places to go.
joe rogan
You know who's got a steakhouse in New York City?
He's that guy who fucking sprinkles the salt.
What the hell's his name?
Salt Bay?
He's got a place in New York City.
ben greenfield
I don't know this guy.
joe rogan
You don't know that meme online where the guy's got the salt and he's throwing it on the meat?
ben greenfield
No.
joe rogan
You're too busy doing actual work.
ben greenfield
But I like salt.
I like good salt.
As a matter of fact, you know what the very best salt that you can get is?
joe rogan
What?
ben greenfield
This is based on...
I was with a group of doctors a couple of months ago in Park City and this guy, one of the guys that was there, he's like a water and a salt expert.
And he did what's called a mass spectrometry analysis of all these popular salts, like Himalayan sea salt, and black Kona salt, and Aztec salt, and Mexican salt, all these different salts, and analyzed them for their mineral content, because you want high mineral content, but their metal content.
We know that iron, especially in guys now, we're finding out it's not that great.
It's oxidative.
It can cause damage.
It's associated with inflammation.
We know that metals and microplastics and all these kind of things are winding up in the food supply.
But top of the list, in terms of cleanliness, and Celtic salt.
joe rogan
Celtic?
ben greenfield
Celtic salt.
You know, a blue bag.
It's kind of like a gray salt, and it's gray because they don't, like, bleach it.
But it's still clean.
It's not like pink and reddish because it doesn't have a lot of iron.
joe rogan
I haven't even heard of Celtic salt.
Have you ever heard of Celtic salt?
ben greenfield
It's amazing.
It's flavorful.
It's a big chunk, so it works well as a meat rub.
I carry salt.
joe rogan
There it is.
Look at that.
ben greenfield
Yeah, I mean, you can buy that just about anywhere.
Yeah, and that stuff is about the healthiest salt you can get.
joe rogan
Okay.
ben greenfield
According to this dude.
Yeah, I like it.
I always travel with some kind of salt.
My wife gets pissed because she'll make these amazing meals, and the first thing I do is I just pull out the salt and just cover everything in salt.
But I think it's because I excrete a lot of salt.
When I raced for Timex, they brought in a bunch of physiologists to test our sweat sodium analysis, meaning that they measure how much sodium you excrete for any given volume of sweat.
And this kind of returns to that whole genetic thing.
Like, when you look at people of a northern European ancestry who would have come from a population that did a lot of fermenting, a lot of curing, a lot of pickling, we would develop some pretty robust sodium excretion mechanisms, right?
Because we're preserving our food with salt.
You don't want all that salt to build up in the body because, you know, theoretically you could increase blood pressure.
You could cause some damage if you have too much salt.
And when you look at other folks who didn't, you know, people who would, for example, sweat a lot and live in a hot environment, you know, like whatever, South Africa or a very hot region of the Philippines or whatever, they would have some pretty robust salt conservation mechanisms to be able to hold on to sodium and hold on to salt because you're sweating more.
Well, my sweat-sodium analysis revealed that I lose like two and a half times more salt in my sweat than the average person.
So I think that dictates to a certain extent almost my craving for salt.
When I was racing Ironman triathlon, I would lay awake at night and I could feel my blood flowing.
Pounding in my ears after a day of training.
And I started using salt heavily.
And one of the first things that happens, because salt regulates aldosterone, which is one of the compounds that regulates your blood pressure, all that went away.
Like I could fall asleep at night, you know, when you lay your head down on your pillow and I couldn't hear the blood pounding in my ears.
So for about four years, I've just, I've been salt on everything.
There's a ton of it.
joe rogan
I'm sold.
I gotta wrap this up, unfortunately.
That was awesome, though.
You're the best.
Dude, thank you so much.
It's always good to talk to you.
I don't know how the fuck you retain all this information, but I'm glad you do.
ben greenfield
Thanks, man.
Thanks for having me on.
joe rogan
My pleasure.
Give everybody your Instagram.
ben greenfield
Just Google Ben Greenfield.
joe rogan
On everything.
ben greenfield
There you go.
unidentified
Alright.
joe rogan
Thank you, brother.
Appreciate it, man.
unidentified
Thanks, man.
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