Aug. 22, 2021 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| It's interesting because we see that also with the plants and herbs and spices that I mentioned, with their built-in plant defense mechanisms, or some of these centenarians who are smoking like a cigarette a day, or the exposure to the radiation from sunlight, or the stress of heat or cold like I was talking about. | ||
| It's kind of like this concept of what's called hormesis. | ||
| Things that would be bad for you in large amounts, like alcohol, which is technically a toxin. | ||
| are actually good for you in small amounts because like exercise, they beat up the body, but the body in the process of bouncing back becomes stronger. | ||
| It builds more antioxidants, the cells become stronger, and so it's not an idea of living super clean. | ||
| You know, by living super clean, you can actually become a little bit more weak. | ||
| It's about exposing your body to these mild stressors. | ||
|
unidentified
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(upbeat music) | |
| I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is a human performance consultant, a speaker, | ||
| and a New York Times bestselling author of 17, yeah, 17 books, including "Beyond Training," | ||
| "Boundless," and "Fit Soul." | ||
| Ben Greenfield, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Hey, what's going on, man? | ||
| Ben, this is a first time for me. | ||
| I have never had a guest. | ||
| I've probably interviewed about a thousand people at this point. | ||
| I don't think I've ever had a guest just sort of wandering in the forest. | ||
| First time. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Have you ever had a guest wandering in the forest naked? | ||
| Are you bare-ass naked? | ||
| Well, you know, in this area, you never know when somebody's wearing pants, but considering that I'm walking through the neighborhood and not strolling on the treadmill in my office, I did have to pull on a little bit of clothing. | ||
| But I'll try not to have any wardrobe malfunctions during our show here. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| I just like to get my vitamin D, you know. | ||
| Yeah, this is YouTube, not Pornhub. | ||
| Let's keep it clean. | ||
| All right, so as you know, right now, I am off the grid completely. | ||
| We are taping this at the end of July. | ||
| For an August release, I am completely away from cell phones. | ||
| All tech, television, news, the whole thing. | ||
| I'm working on diet, I'm working on exercise, and I'm working on a digital detox. | ||
| Let's start there with the digital detox situation. | ||
| As a guy that's doing YouTube interviews while doing exercise and wandering around, I take it you think maybe we're a little too connected these days? | ||
| Well, first of all, I don't know how the heck you're staying fit during a digital detox without being able to be motivated by all the Instagram influencers out there, because we all know the best way to get fit is via osmosis and scrolling through Babe and Hulk feeds on Instagram. | ||
| But that being said, yeah, I am, you know, I Honestly, I really took a great deal of pride for years in being one of those hyper-connected guys. | ||
| And by hyper-connected, I don't mean on social media all day, but I mean using all the wearables, the self-quantification devices, the supercomputers on my bike, the power meters on my laces for running, the swimming goggles that tell you how many laps you've swum with a screen right there in the goggle. | ||
| You know, I, I really like to be a little bit more unplugged now. | ||
| I'm pretty bare bones when it comes to fitness. | ||
| I wear like a ring that tracks my step count and my sleep and a cheap ass $15 Timex, you know, and that's, that's about all that I do now. | ||
| But you know, I think even more related to your point is this idea that, you know, the, the more connected you are, the more difficult it can be to, to move and to exercise because You know, it's just difficult to engage on something like social media while you're working out, you know, which is obviously why half the people at a gym have their asses parked on a bench hunched over looking on their phones rather than, you know, before that it was, it was magazines on the TV, you know, now it's just replaced by, by phones. | ||
| But, you know, I, um, I think that, that there, There can be some efficacy to this stuff. | ||
| Like I've even seen during COVID, I mean, some of these companies, cause I do some investing in the health and fitness sector as well. | ||
| And I've seen the valuation of some of these like home fitness companies, you know, the Peloton S companies like Tonal and Mirror and Catalyst and Fight Club. | ||
| Um, and of course Peloton as well, just explode. | ||
| And obviously you need to be connected to use those types of products. | ||
| during your session. | ||
| Some of them allow for like offline downloading of the workouts, which I actually encourage people | ||
| to do if they can, 'cause it's one less distraction, one less notification going off on your device | ||
| while you're working out, et cetera. | ||
| And possibly, you know, even a bigger thing here that a lot of people don't think about | ||
| is all of these devices, you know, all these things you need to be connected to, | ||
| they do emit low-level radiation that could be problematic | ||
| in terms of your mitochondrial function, your red blood cell, what's called red blood cell stickiness | ||
| or the propensity of red blood cells to aggregate together the calcium influx into a cell, | ||
| which causes a little bit more of a burn and a slower. | ||
| ability to be able to buffer lactic acid and some of the things that build up during lactic acid or during exercise | ||
| a lot of that stuff actually | ||
| becomes affected by exposure to | ||
| you know Your cell phone signal 5g Wi-Fi, etc | ||
| That's why a lot of people during a day of work, you know, they get brain fog, they feel kind of blah in the afternoon, they don't sleep well, they got a bunch of devices next to their bed. | ||
| And so I question, you know, the impact some of those things are having on you while you're exercising as well, if you are using those type of things during exercise. | ||
| And of course, the use apart from exercise is just, it can be a time suck, but there's, you know, there's some efficacy. | ||
| I'm not I see a ton of benefit in social media for spreading a lot of good knowledge and information. | ||
| Obviously it can spread disinformation, negativity as well, but I think when responsibly used, it's a big blessing. | ||
| Yeah, you mentioned tonal and mirror and I just was at the mall the other day, I saw tonal. | ||
| So it's basically like these mirror type, I mean they're literally mirrors that you stand in front of to work out. | ||
| They have some things you can pull on and Yeah, you know, they're connected to the internet and all that. | ||
| Do you think there's a risk in people actually doing this stuff all from home and not going to the gym, not being around other people, getting that kind of motivation? | ||
| Uh, well, first, um, not, not really because they, they enable people to be able to actually lower the barrier of entry, right? | ||
| If you can roll out of bed and walk over to your, whatever your basement or your backyard or whatever, | ||
| and just use a home training device and furthermore relate to the safety component, | ||
| use a home training device that now has the ability to have a personal trainer, | ||
| you know, or an expert walking you through the workout. | ||
| And again, sometimes like, you know, I do like full body electrical muscle stimulation workouts, | ||
| which sounds crazy, but I mean, it's very simple. | ||
| You just pull on this suit and it stimulates your muscles while you're exercising. | ||
| So you use more muscles. | ||
| And it has a personal trainer that walks you through the workout, | ||
| but I can download all those workouts 'cause they're prerecorded. | ||
| And, um, it's, it's actually very, very similar to what you might experience in a group fitness class at a health club or, or a gym. | ||
| So I'm not really against that. | ||
| I mean, I, I think that probably the two main things that we miss out on by not being able to go to a health club or gym, or by Kind of like making those highly optional due to the emergence of a lot of these higher-end home fitness training devices is that, A, we know that human beings thrive on connectivity to other human beings. | ||
| Touch, eyes, even the electromagnetic signal sent out by our hearts and our brains, we are designed to be social creatures just based on, you know, that whole idea that You know in more ancestral times to be banished or cut off from the village or from your tribe usually resulted in death and we still have kind of that that nervous system and physiological response to isolation that causes a lot of the health issues that we're now seeing | ||
| We saw before COVID, we see it more now, just this idea that human beings don't thrive when we are alone for long periods of time and digital interactions do not replace what happens physiologically during physical interactions. | ||
| In addition to missing out on that, and that can be replaced by dinner partings and outings and hanging out with friends, etc. | ||
| But the other thing is that there's a lot of value as well to shared experiences. | ||
| Right. And, and honestly, um, that's even more important for men than for women. | ||
| You know, men tend to bond over shared experiences, shared workouts, shared, | ||
| you know, noon basketball games at the gym, shared tennis matches. | ||
| Like, that's how guys a lot of times form friendships. | ||
| That's one thing I've found is, you know, when I want to make friends, I'll invite them out for frisbee golf or, you know, to over to my house to do a garage workout or something like that. | ||
| And, you know, if you're always working out by yourself in front of some mirror mirror on the wall, you know, at your house, you're also missing out on that. | ||
| So I would say if you're aware of the importance of real human interaction and shared experiences, And you're fabricating those somewhere else in your life, then, you know, working out by yourself at home with some of these home fitness training devices, especially because of, like I mentioned, the low barrier to entry that occurs when you don't have to get in the car, drive to the gym, you know, figure out what time the classes show up, shower, go home. | ||
| You know, for me personally, if I have a chance to work out during the day, it's like a 20 or 30 minute slot a couple of times during the day. | ||
| And I could use all that time driving to the gym or I could just hop out to my garage or my backyard or my basement and | ||
| throw something down. | ||
| That's what I do like 90% of the time and I get all my social interaction through, you know, group dinners and, | ||
| you know, and church outings and, you know, playing tennis with folks and stuff like that. | ||
| So yeah, I still think the pros outweigh the cons of a lot of these trendy fitness devices for home. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So since I'm in the middle of nowhere right now, disappeared throughout August, my goal basically is, in terms of working out, eating, that sort of thing, is I'd love to lose a couple pounds off the belly, tighten up a little bit and just eat right and feel good. | ||
| And, you know, obviously the digital detox is the mental portion of that. | ||
| What do you tell people that are just trying to just be like a little bit better than they are, not do like full transformations? | ||
| Well, let's not bore people with the idea that you should exercise and eat healthy, right? | ||
| Let's assume that you've already learned that you're supposed to, you know, engage in physical activity on a regular basis and you're supposed to eat a diet that's, you know, high in healthy Recognizable foods, preferably somewhat low in sugar and vegetable oils, right? | ||
| That's just the basics. | ||
| So far, so good. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm there. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| But then a lot of people are like, I'm not seeing results. | ||
| I still have low energy levels. | ||
| I still have poor sleep. | ||
| My gut isn't working the way that I want it to. | ||
| When I try to work out, I feel kind of blah. | ||
| I get these food cravings that dictate that I can't stick to that healthy whole diet that you talk about. | ||
| Well, then there's the things that, you know, like Men's Health Magazine and Women's Health and all these, these, you know, modern forms of fitness media don't tell you. | ||
| And really, it all comes down to viewing your body as a battery. | ||
| I mean, the human body actually operates on a finely tuned electrochemical gradient. | ||
| across the membrane of every cell. | ||
| And if you can, if you can take that concept and incorporate modalities into your routine that take advantage of the fact that you have the ability to be able to charge up your body's battery, then you begin to see results that are highly amplified over just exercising and eating healthy. | ||
| So what I mean by that is, um, Well, I'd say there's probably like six things to really focus on. | ||
| One would be light, right? | ||
| Like I'm walking out in the sunlight right now. | ||
| We know that photons of light, particularly from the sun or even from these newfangled like infrared light panels or infrared saunas that are becoming very popular nowadays, these actually act to to charge up the mitochondria, they speed up the activity of what's called the electron transport chain, they help you to produce more ATP, they allow the heart to function more effectively, you know, they can lower blood pressure, increase the effectiveness or the efficiency of the cardiovascular system. | ||
| And so the regular use of things like infrared saunas, infrared light panels, and regular sun exposure, like this idea that you should get out in the sun every single day, we know that Skin cancer is an issue with people who tan or burn or visit the beach on the weekends and people who like work in the sun or in the sun regularly every day. | ||
| They don't have those same issues because you almost build up almost like this sun callus. | ||
| I live in LA and I've got an infrared sauna, so so far I'm doing all right. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Regular exposure to light, particularly in the morning, because that's what helps you sleep at night. | ||
| That's what basically sends your body the message that its circadian rhythm has begun in the morning. | ||
| That's number one for charging up your body. | ||
| Number two would be another form of charge that we have at constant access, and it's this concept of earthing or grounding. | ||
| Like walking outside barefoot, walking barefoot on the beach, swimming in the ocean, touching trees, touching rocks, lying, you know, with your shirt off in your backyard. | ||
| The earth actually emits these negative ions and low-level frequencies that are incredible for decreasing inflammation, for, again, increasing the charge potential across those cell membranes. | ||
| They're books like Earthing or documentaries like Grounding that kind of walk people through this. | ||
| And kind of like the sun is free, but there's like those light panels | ||
| or saunas we talked about. | ||
| You know, Earthing and going outside barefoot is free, but there are also companies now that sell like mats | ||
| that you can put underneath your top sheet that you sleep on during the night | ||
| that plug into the grounding outlet of your home. | ||
| Or like in my office, back in my office, I have a mat I stand on all day long | ||
| and it's just got a little wire and a stake planted in the ground outside. | ||
| So it's as though I'm constantly connected to the surface of the planet. | ||
| Sounds kind of woo, but a ton of people see huge increases in energy | ||
| by not only regular sunlight exposure, but also regular exposure to the surface of the planet. | ||
| That's another one to think about. | ||
| Heat and cold are really popular now. | ||
| You know, saunas and like cryotherapy chambers and cold plunges, cold soaks, those actually do a really, really good job at also enhancing that electron flow through the body. | ||
| You also get production of things like heat shock proteins and cold shock proteins, which are fantastic for your immune system and for Cellular resilience, um, you know, you get, you get better weight loss, especially if you like the cold and a fasted state in the morning, because you burn a lot of fatty acids to generate heat. | ||
| There's just so many benefits to this idea of regularly doing heat and cold. | ||
| I mean, almost every morning for me is 20 to 30 minutes in the sauna, two to five minutes in the ice or in some cold body of water. | ||
| And I mean, everybody who I put on that protocol, you know, especially when they're combined with like sunlight and being outside barefoot. | ||
| They see huge, huge improvements compared to again. | ||
| Just exercising or eating healthy. | ||
| And then the last two things to think about would be, you know, you have to carry these charges through your body. | ||
| And the way that that's done is via water and minerals. | ||
| So regular intake of really good, clean, pure filtered water. | ||
| Like I start every day and then redose again in the afternoon with a giant 32 ounce glass of water with electrolytes added to it. | ||
| I put vitamin C in there, a little bit of baking soda, which is alkaline and kind of offsets the acidity of the vitamin C. | ||
| and then minerals. | ||
| And so I drink that down in the morning and then again in the afternoon. | ||
| And so what I'm doing is I'm giving my body not only the fluid that it needs to build blood | ||
| and carry these minerals through the body, but the minerals themselves. | ||
| You know, we're often salt phobic these days because of the impression we've been given | ||
| about the deleterious effects of salt. | ||
| And it is true that salt can cause some damage to the body, you know, can increase blood pressure, et cetera. | ||
| But what we're talking about is isolated sodium chloride that you'd find in like table salt | ||
| or in let's say like packaged foods which use sodium chloride as a preservative. | ||
| But a wide range of minerals and electrolytes that you would get from, like, you know, produce grown in mineral-rich soil, or these, like, really, really good salts, like, you know, sea salts and rock salts and Kona black salt, you know, all these salts you can add to your food and sprinkle into your water. | ||
| I am a salt fiend. | ||
| I go through tons of salt. | ||
| I go through tons of water. | ||
| I do the sun and the cold every day. | ||
| I'm out in the sunlight every day. | ||
| I get in touch with the surface of the planet every day. | ||
| And man, oh man, when you combine that with Physical activity and eating a healthy diet. | ||
| Those are the things that people can do that a lot of times folks don't think about, but that's where you really start moving the dial. | ||
| Right, so let's talk about the diet stuff. | ||
| I think a lot of people, especially in the last year and a half, they've realized that they gotta take control of their health and their lives. | ||
| Trapped at home, you can't go to the gym, you're eating takeout food, everything's being delivered, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| What's some basic dietary stuff that people should know? | ||
| Well, you know, the fact is that based on biochemical individuality, you know, different shapes of the stomach, the pancreas, the liver, different vitamin D excretion rates, and different ways that we all process food as unique human beings, paired with the fact that we all have unique genetics, right? | ||
| Like someone from, let's say, Sub-Saharan Africa is going to do far better based on equatorial location and sun exposure to high carb intake and lots of fruits and And a lower amount of, like, saturated fats compared to someone of Northern European descent who does really good on, like, fish, steak, fermented foods, you know, high-fat milk, stuff like that. | ||
| You know, the idea is that it's not going to be the same for everybody. | ||
| But we live in an era in which the, you know, the same type of self-quantification test that would have cost, like, tens of thousands of dollars at, say, like, you know, the Princeton Longevity Institute or Duke or You know, any of these places where, you know, a lot of execs would normally get tested to really, really dial in something like diet or nutrition or supplementation. | ||
| Those are available to us in the comfort of our own home now for, you know, for, for a fraction of the cost. | ||
| So people can test their blood. | ||
| They can test their genetics. | ||
| They can test their stool for like, you know, what, what the gut is asking for. | ||
| And by testing your body, by looking at your genetics and by paying attention to your own, unique biochemical individuality, you should be able to tweak your diet to you. | ||
| And what I mean by that is like, you know, the same ketogenic diet that your neighbor used to lose 20 pounds might be super crappy for you and cause inflammation and weight gain in you because you have a liver and gallbladder that isn't processing that high intake of saturated fats very well. | ||
| Or you have, let's say like an ApoE4 gene, which would dictate that high intake of fats predisposes you to Alzheimer's or | ||
| dementia, or you have poor enzyme production that dictates that you can't burn fats that well because | ||
| you don't have enough lipase. | ||
| And so that's just one example of the fact that there is no one diet that works well for everyone. | ||
| Now that being said, a couple of things to think about. | ||
| First of all, when you look at epidemiological data for a wide, wide variety of the world's populations, probably because humans likely originated somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, something along the lines of like a low-carb-ish Mediterranean diet tends to work really well for a lot of people. | ||
| You know, not like an Olive Garden unlimited breadsticks diet, but I mean like a diet very rich in herbs and spices and You know, a wide variety of plant matter, some amounts of fish and eggs, red meat, but in moderation, lots of healthy omega-3 fatty acids, not only from those fish, but things like extra virgin olive oil and avocados and avocado oil and seeds and nuts. | ||
| Like that low-carb Mediterranean profile tends to be something that seems to agree with a lot of people. | ||
| And then when you look at, you know, these blue zones, you know, these longevity hotspots around the world, like, you know, Nicoya and Acaria and Sardinia and Loma Linda, even though the diets widely vary, you know, in terms of low-carb, high-fat, you know, high-carb, low-fat, different plants and herbs and spices being used in those regions, different forms of alcohol intake, etc., what we do see in terms of prevailing characteristics in all those regions is, A, there's always some semblance of fasting worked in. | ||
| A lot of times it's based on religious concepts, you know, like the Mediterranean diet, you know, it's very popular among, like, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and then there's a ton of of special fasts in that diet. | ||
| Certain days where you don't eat red meat. | ||
| Certain periods of time where you're avoiding a high intake of proteins. | ||
| Certain periods of time where you're just straight up fasting. | ||
| We see fasting as one predominant characteristic of every single healthy diet on the face of the planet. | ||
| Some type of fasting and some type of time during the day or the week or the month where you're not eating a lot of protein. | ||
| Because protein in high amounts can tend to have a little bit of an accelerated aging effect. | ||
| Um, we also see the concept of eating with people, right? | ||
| Um, not only saying grace or having a moment of silence or having a moment of appreciation or sacredness around a meal, but also not stuffing your face with a superfood smoothie while you're, you know, going 65 miles an hour down the highway on your way to work instead. | ||
| And I'm highly cognizant of this myself. | ||
| If I'm going to eat, I always eat in what's called a parasympathetic state. | ||
| I sit down, I do a little, you know, just a few centering breaths, like in through the nose, | ||
| out through the mouth, I say grace, I chew each bite 25 to 40 times. | ||
| I try to eat with people, so I'm not distracted by my computer or by my phone, | ||
| but instead I'm visiting with people. | ||
| And we see that as another predominant characteristic of a healthy diet, like eating in a very low stress state | ||
| and eating with people. | ||
| And then you also see a wide intake of a huge variety of plants and herbs and spices. | ||
| And I realize that diets like the paleo diet or the carnivore diet or a lot of these highly restrictive diets have popped up and become very popular over the years. | ||
| And a big premise of those diets is that they eliminate a lot of built-in plant defense mechanisms, like plants can't move. | ||
| Because they don't have hooves and teeth and claws, they develop things like, you know, gluten and lectins and other things that would cause a mammal's gut to be a little bit disturbed, cause that mammal to poop out the seeds of that plant elsewhere so that plant can flourish, or cause that mammal not to come back to that plant to eat it again because it kind of hurt. | ||
| And so if you have a compromised gut, or if you have the inability to be able to do like your ancestors would have done and soak and sprout and ferment and properly prepare a lot of your plant matter, Then yeah, doing something like a paleo or carnivore diet has efficacy. | ||
| However, in people with healthy guts who don't have a lot of health issues, like a wide variety of plants and herbs and spices really seems to induce longevity and be a healthier form of a diet. | ||
| And that's another thing we see in a lot of these blue zones. | ||
| They're not highly restrictive. | ||
| They eat a huge variety, like a hundred plus different plants and herbs and spices. | ||
| Whereas, you know, in America, we often, I think we're somewhere around like 15 to 20. | ||
| Right, so would you say that paleo and carnivore, that kind of stuff, like it's sort of short term to help fix the gut inflammation kind of stuff, but not necessarily long term? | ||
| Yeah, let's say you have leaky gut, you have inflammation issues, | ||
| you need to kind of give your gut a break or you need to not have a lot of gluten, | ||
| a lot of lectins, a lot of dairy, you know, follow a carnivore diet or a paleo diet | ||
| for like 12 to 16 weeks to allow your gut to heal and restabilize, but then begin to reincorporate, | ||
| you know, things like whatever, you know, kale and cucumbers and tomatoes and you know, | ||
| all those foods that you might've been missing out on. | ||
| And then probably the final big, big thing that we see in a lot of these healthy locations | ||
| is not the absence of sugar, right? | ||
| We actually see a lot of these, they like their chocolates, they like their sweets, | ||
| they like their candies. | ||
| You look at, you know, the analysis of, you know, centenarians or people, you know, | ||
| in many cases who've lived 115 plus years old. | ||
| I was reading a fantastic article the other day about like 20 different 115 year old people and a lot of them, you know, they comment, Oh, I love to have my chocolate every day. | ||
| I love my, love my sweets. | ||
| And you know, there's even some of them that, you know, that, that would like smoke a cigarette a day. | ||
| But the one thing that you'll notice in these folks and also in a lot of these longevity hotspots, is almost complete absence of vegetable oil intake, right? | ||
| Canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, a lot of these vegetable oils that we tend to see especially in processed and packaged foods or used in restaurants to cook. | ||
| And the reason for that is because vegetable oils, based on the fact that they're comprised of fats, are what your body uses to create things like cell membranes, cholesterol, mitochondrial membranes. | ||
| Your body uses these oils as building blocks. | ||
| And if there are unstable oils, rancid oils, oils that have been exposed to high amounts of heat or pressure, what happens is those vegetable oils really truly become a case of you are what you eat, and they create rampant inflammation, weak cell membranes, poor metabolism, and so Whereas sugar isn't as big of a deal as most people think. | ||
| Vegetable oils, I tell people, you want to be healthy, ruthlessly eliminate vegetable oils from your diet. | ||
| And sometimes that means, you know, like me, if I go to a restaurant, I literally ask them, like, I'm that asshole who says, like, what, what'd you cook the Brussels sprouts in? | ||
| Or can I have my, my salad, but bring the dressing on the side. | ||
| And then like, you know, I have like a little fanny pack I go out with, and I just have like a four ounce thing of olive oil in there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| and I'll put olive oil on my salad instead of whatever sauce or dressing | ||
| they have at the restaurant. | ||
| 'Cause I am so aware of vegetable oil intake. | ||
| That's the one thing. | ||
| So you want everything basically to be cooked either in olive, anything that needs to be cooked with oil | ||
| to be cooked with either olive oil or avocado oil. | ||
| Does it matter which one? | ||
| You know, heat and all that? | ||
| The top ones I like are butter, ghee, extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil | ||
| or any super stable animal fat like tallow or suet or any of those fats, you know, | ||
| coconut would be another one, like the fats that are solid at room temperature, | ||
| but not solid at room temperature because like Crisco, they've been synthesized, but instead solid | ||
| because that's the way they naturally are. | ||
| So yeah, so when it comes to diet, you know, just coming full circle here, you know, eat in a de-stressed state, Have some periods of fasting and protein restriction. | ||
| Be careful with sugar, but you don't got to swear that off completely. | ||
| Completely eliminate vegetable oil and eat a wide variety of plants and herbs and spices. | ||
| And if you can, get your genetics tested. | ||
| Get your blood tested. | ||
| Just kind of see what your ancestors ate. | ||
| See what your bio How'd you get into all this stuff? | ||
| to actually be able to flourish with. | ||
| And that way you can take some of those concepts I just outlined and then tweak your diet a little bit | ||
| so it's more customized to you. | ||
| How'd you get into all this stuff? | ||
| Were you always like this? | ||
| Oh, no, no. | ||
| I wanted to be a computer programmer growing up. | ||
| I loved to like design video games and, you know, tear apart my hard drive. | ||
| And that's really what I wanted to do. | ||
| I also, you know, dude, I was homeschooled. | ||
| I was president of the chess club. | ||
| I played violin for 13 years. | ||
| I, you know, I wrote fantasy fiction novels. | ||
| Like I was a total nerd growing up. | ||
| But what got me into like nutrition, fitness, physical culture in general, was I really fell in love with tennis when I was about 14 years old. | ||
| And I just started to look into like how you could eat healthy to be a better tennis player. | ||
| And I started to, you know, run the hills behind my house. | ||
| And, you know, my dad bought me a couple of 10 pound dumbbells that I tried to learn how to use. | ||
| And eventually I just got, I got so into tennis and how good fitness and eating healthy seemed to make me that in college, I, you know, I studied, um, you know, biochemistry and biomechanics physiology and, and wound up just nerding out on, on just the entire science of the human body and the human brain. | ||
| And, um, You know, got a master's degree and all of that, and I've just been immersed, immersed in that science ever since. | ||
| Where does booze fit into all of this? | ||
| Are you doing any wine? | ||
| Are you doing any tequila? | ||
| Any anything? | ||
| Well, speaking of blue zones, most of those folks drink. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And for men, it's about two to three drinks a day. | ||
| For women, about one to two drinks a day. | ||
| But you gotta take into account the nature of the alcohol, right? | ||
| We're not talking about margarita mixes and giant fishbowl martinis. | ||
| We're talking about like, organic biodynamic wine grown in soil that doesn't have a lot of water added to it so it's less irrigated so you got a higher concentration of antioxidants because the grapes have been beat up and a lower concentration of sugars because there's less water or you're looking at like you know fermented compounds | ||
| Like, you know, like kombucha, for example. | ||
| You're looking at clean burning, higher alcohol compounds like vodka or gin or tequila, often added to bitters and herbs and spices. | ||
| So, like, for me personally, I do, at the end of every day, either a glass of just, like, organic, biodynamic wine. | ||
| And if you don't know or you're out at a restaurant, the three countries that still do a pretty good job at that are France, Italy, and New Zealand. | ||
| It's like if you're gonna order a red out at a restaurant, you're pretty safe with those three countries. | ||
| And then the other thing that I'll do if I'm not doing a glass of wine is a very bitters-forward mix. | ||
| Like I'll pour a glass of ice, a little sparkling water, put a shot of gin or vodka or tequila in there, and then just add bitters like ginger or turmeric or lemon or lime. | ||
| Or even if I'm out at a restaurant and I'm ordering from the bar, I'll kind of glance through the cocktail menu and choose something that's just like a super bitters-forward cocktail. | ||
| And I'll occasionally, you know, if I'm having a couple of drinks because it's a long steakhouse dinner or something, I'll have my glass of wine with my meal. | ||
| But then leading up to that, I'll just have the bartender, just over the rocks, give me a selection of house bitters with sparkling water and a squeeze of lemon. | ||
| Because those bitters are actually really good for you. | ||
| That's part of why alcohol can be good for you. | ||
| But they also help you digest your food better, and they even lower your blood sugar response to a meal. | ||
| So for me it's usually like a real bitters forward clean burning cocktail or a glass of organic biodynamic wine and it turns out that unless you have a compromised liver or you know or you're unable to stop it you know two or three drinks that alcohol seems to have a little bit of a life-extending effect and it's interesting because we see that also with the like the plants and herbs and spices that I mentioned with their built-in plant defense mechanisms or some of these centenarians who are smoking like a cigarette a day Or the exposure to the radiation from sunlight or the stress of heat or cold, like I was talking about. | ||
| It's kind of like this concept of what's called hormesis. | ||
| Things that would be bad for you in large amounts, like alcohol, which is technically a toxin, are actually good for you in small amounts because, like exercise, they beat up the body, but the body in the process of bouncing back becomes stronger. | ||
| It builds more antioxidants, the cells become stronger, and so it's not an idea of living super clean. | ||
| You know, by living super clean, you can actually become a little bit more weak. It's about exposing your | ||
| body to these mild stressors. You know a perfect example that would be | ||
| you know we know that you know back to what we were talking about before with | ||
| not going to the gym this concept of the hygiene hypothesis. | ||
| Kids who grow up on farms and around animals and with pets and | ||
| who have been exposed to lots of germs and bacteria growing up they tend to | ||
| have stronger immune systems. | ||
| Kids who drink raw unpasteurized milk with all these microbes and bacteria in it, you know, which would just gross out or freak out a lot of parents or people, like they tend to have lower incidence of asthma and allergies because they're getting exposed to these microbes. | ||
| And so that's another perfect example of the things that could crush you in large amounts actually help your body to become stronger in small amounts. | ||
| So, so alcohol's got a thumbs up in moderation from the right sources. | ||
| Right, so from alcohol, where are you at with weed, psychedelics, that kind of stuff? | ||
| I know a lot of fitness people are sort of big on weed right now, even as part of the workout routine, or recovery. | ||
| Yeah, I just interviewed a guy on my podcast about this, just the fascinating idea behind the pain-killing effect of THC and CBD, especially for endurance athletes like ultra runners or marathoners, and also for people who are in a painful sport like fighting or football or hockey. | ||
| It seems like the use of cannabis either for recovery or for painkilling as an alternative to opioids or for being able to just like get into the zone and push through like low-level pain like ultra endurance running for long periods of time. | ||
| It's usually beneficial for that. | ||
| Cannabis also of course has a lot of other beneficial effects for inflammation. | ||
| It's wonderful for sleep. | ||
| The problem, of course, is to be careful with the addictive potential of it. | ||
| And also, most of the research shows that in folks who are generally about under the age of 18, | ||
| there's a deleterious impact on mental function, cognitive function, brain matter, et cetera. | ||
| So be super careful if you're young. | ||
| But there's not a whole lot of issues with moderated cannabis use, kind of like alcohol, | ||
| for adults and even exercising adults who need it for kind of like the pain killing or the focus effect. | ||
| And then as far as the plant medicine piece, look, I think there's a ton of efficacy to microdosing. | ||
| You know, like microdosing with psilocybin or microdosing with LSD or microdosing with San Pedro | ||
| or Boga or whatever, not only for workouts and exercise, but for productivity, for creativity, | ||
| for kind of like merging of the left and right brain hemispheric activity that allows for you | ||
| to think in different ways. | ||
| than you might have otherwise, and even neurogenesis, the growth of new neurons, | ||
| which particularly happens with psilocybin. | ||
| And for some people, the ego dissolution or the personal, professional, or spiritual breakthroughs | ||
| that can occur with larger doses on an infrequent basis, like some people will go to an ayahuasca journey, | ||
| or others will use a higher dose of psilocybin, or a whole combination | ||
| different plant medicine compounds. | ||
| That can also be pretty transformative. | ||
| The problem is, a lot of people will use that as an escape, to just kind of check out, | ||
| take a whole bunch of psilocybin and just lose control of your body | ||
| and float off into bliss for a while to escape the pain of life | ||
| that you should be confronting head on and dealing with in other ways. | ||
| Or they're not doing the work, what's called the integration work afterwards. | ||
| For me, if I do a plant medicine journey, I have like four or five days scheduled afterwards | ||
| for journaling, for self-reflection, for deep work that doesn't involve the medicine, | ||
| but that instead involves me just like logging my thoughts and my feelings and my breakthroughs | ||
| And a lot of people, and this is the reason why you'll get folks doing like their 38th ayahuasca retreat, you know, and they're still the same person. | ||
| You talk to them, they're still searching. | ||
| You can see, tell they're still incomplete, et cetera. | ||
| It's because, you know, they're, they're not doing the work. | ||
| It'd be like, You know, taking a pre-workout supplement and then sitting on the couch, right? | ||
| And not actually going to the gym, right? | ||
| So, that's the problem is I find a lot of people will use popping a pill as an escape without actually wanting to do the work. | ||
| And then, in my opinion, it just turns into the same situation as a drug addict, you know, who's just kind of shooting up to feel good but never actually benefits from the intended purpose. | ||
| of that compound. | ||
| So, um, so yeah, for the most part, there's a lot of benefits to these, to these type of plant medicines. | ||
| It's just that, um, I think most of the benefits are achieved by proper use of, of them via microdosing. | ||
| And then, and I have a whole section about that in my book about how to properly combine and stack these, you know, as different microdoses for productivity, for creativity, for sleep, et cetera. | ||
| And then for the larger journey doses, I think it should be taken far more seriously than people | ||
| take it. I mean the like for example what I mean by that is | ||
| Let's say someone's going to journey with plant medicines like deep and actually use this as a breakthrough. This | ||
| would be something you might do During a rite of passage into adulthood when you're 15 | ||
| years old with your | ||
| Lover on your wedding night. Um Um, you know, so that you can completely dissolve all barriers and just be sitting with them in full truth serum for, you know, four to six hours on your 40th birthday. | ||
| And then maybe, you know, as you approach your death in life for a near death experience to be able to release a little bit of the fear of death. | ||
| So maybe somebody might do this like four to six times in a lifetime. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But a lot of people now they're just like, Oh, I'm journey and bro. | ||
| I'm on my, My second trip to South America this year for ayahuasca is like, no, no, no. | ||
| These, these are, these are pretty serious things. | ||
| Like you need to, you need to take them seriously and acknowledge the sacredness of these compounds and also acknowledge the fact that, that, that they're to be used in very specific scenarios in a very ceremonial setting and with a great amount of intention and work afterwards. | ||
| And I just don't see a lot of people using them in that way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, listen, man, I am really gonna try to incorporate some of this stuff for this month and then beyond, so I appreciate your time. | ||
| For the people that won't find you on this little wander through the woods, where can we send them? | ||
| BenGreenfieldFitness.com is a pretty good place. | ||
| I just wrote a new cookbook. | ||
| That was my latest work. | ||
| It's at boundlesscookbook.com. | ||
| If people want to try any of my weird recipes, I promise there's no psilocybin on the steak, but other than that, it's all in there. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That was a good place to find me. | ||
| Right on, Ben. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Awesome. | ||
| Thanks, Dave. | ||
| Thanks, man. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about lifestyles instead of nonstop yelling, check out our lifestyle playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, check out our full episode playlist. | ||
| They're both right over here. |
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