Weight Down Lifestyle

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[34:51] biomarkers Mark is tracking at the Young Blood Institute

[46:15] The lowest hanging fruit for people to track

[50:20] What a biological aging clock is

[54:45] The anti-aging booth that Mark and Tom will be operating at a conference called RAAD Fest

[1:00:30] Whether NAD actually gets absorbed into a cell via injections or IV

[1:14:30] How to use technologies such as Vielight and exosomes to address Alzheimer’s

[1:33:45] How senolytics works as a therapy for aging and Alzheimer’s

[1:26:11] End of Podcast

Ben:  Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield and you’ve no doubt heard of this by now that in an attempt to live a longer time, there are some crazy anti-aging enthusiasts out there who are getting themselves injected with the blood of young humans via process that goes by a whole bunch of different names, but there’s one form of this called plasmapheresis. Plasmapheresis.  And my first guest on today’s show is named Mark Urdhal.  He is a technology entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley.  He’s got a bunch of patents, he’s worked in big data and he began his career at IBM’s Medical Instruments Subsidiary that pioneered this process of plasmapheresis.  He went on to found something called the Young Blood Institute which actually does this plasma exchange therapy to rejuvenate the body, stem cells and restore the immune system and prevent the onset of a whole bunch of age-related diseases.

So we’re going to talk about that just a bit with Mark today, but it gets even better because I have another guest on today’s show and he’s been on the show before.  I had a podcast a couple of years ago called “The Next Big Anti-Aging Drug: Everything You Need To Know About NAD”.  And in that podcast, believe or not, we talked a whole bunch about this stuff called Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD.  And as you learned in that episode, my guest Tom got very sick when he was in Costa Rica and he was prescribed a bunch of antibiotics, he suffered some pretty adverse reactions and was told he’d have problems especially gut issues, things like that for the rest of his life.  He developed a whole bunch of food allergies, insomnia, anxiety, muscle pain, chronic fatigue syndrome.  We went into his whole back story in that podcast episode that I’ll link to in the show notes for this episode which you can access over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/plasma.  That’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/plasma.

Anyways though, through Tom’s eight-year battle, he got prescribed a whole bunch of different pharmaceuticals and he eventually turned to this stuff called NAD.  Wound up long story short completely curing him and getting him off all these medications he was on, and I’ve hung out with Tom and he just like this, I would describe him as a ripped beast now.  So he’s definitely come a long ways and we race a Spartan race together down in Las Vegas and he’s definitely come a long way since using this NAD therapies and he’s actually a guy who I can talk to who’s way on the cutting edge of anti-aging and longevity.  And that’s why this podcast is about a lot more than just young blood and NAD, we’re going to talk about biohacking Alzheimers, and we’re gonna be talking about reversing biological aging, different biomarkers you can track and test, how to measure biological age, the biggest obstacles to age reversal, how you can get more involved in the anti-aging community, a whole lot more.  And again, I’ll link to everything.  All the studies we talk about, all the previous podcast episodes, everything if you just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/plasma, P-L-A-S-M-A.

All right, so, let’s go ahead and jump in.  First of all, gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Mark:  Thanks, Ben.

Tom: Great to be here, Ben.

Ben:  And that second voice that you heard, that was Tom.  So Tom, you had the idea that both Mark and you are on at the same time, so tell me what it is that we’re gonna be talking about on today’s show.

Tom:  Well, I think we’re gonna be talking about… you know, Mark can do a very good job talking about young blood or heterochronic plasma exchange.  We also wanna talk about the different ways you can measure biological age and that’s becoming more important as new types of therapies developed and sort of explosion of information out there about all these different therapies that may reverse age.  So we need to find metrics that could monitor where we’re at.  And then we also wanna talk about Alzheimers.  Alzheimers seems to come up because the number one risk factor for that is age, and then I do wanna like just sort of dust the conversation with all these other different ways that we can potentially reverse age and I think we’re gonna have a little debate about NAD.  [chuckles] That’s unavoidable.  So you know, yeah!

Ben:  All right.  Cool!  We got a lot to talk about but, I have to admit that the thing that intrigues me the most right now from everything that you just listed off is this idea of replacing your blood with plasma, and I would love to hear from you Mark, exactly what this whole Young Blood Institute thing is.  And I do know and I’d love for you to mention this as well that there’s another company in San Francisco called Ambrosia, some kind of a blood exchange and I’m curious what the Young Blood Institute is and how it’s different than this other company Ambrosia that’s doing from what I understand young blood exchanges and how this whole plasma exchange treatment protocol works.  So, can you jump in to how we can inject young blood into ourselves and walk around looking like 13 years old?

Mark: [laughs] Well I don’t know if we gonna get to 13 but we could try.  First of all, the Young Blood Institute is a 501c3 non-profit, okay.  So, we got kinda humanitarian research mission to conduct clinical trials in what we call heterochronic, you know, big word for different ages.  Heterochronic plasma exchange is basically removing the old plasma, replacing it with young plasma like young purified plasma component.  So, yeah, obviously a lot of people have been discussing the concept for a long time.  Other people out there that are trying this in different forms.  Ambrosia folks as far as I know and I could be wrong, I understood from one of their MDs in Florida that I’ve met, and what they are really doing are infusions.  They’re not necessarily getting rid of the old stuff.

Ben:  Infusions mean that they’re taking blood from healthy, young donors and infusion that in to other people.

Mark:  Yeah, plasma.

Ben:  Okay.  So just for people listening in, when you say plasma, is that the same thing as blood?

Mark:  No.  Plasma is the kind of the straw-colored liquid that’s 95% water but it’s 50% of your kinda blood volume is plasma roughly, that’s what carrying all of your red cells, white cells, platelets, immunoglobulins, proteins, etcetera throughout the bloodstream, as well as all the cytokines and signaling molecules and so forth.  The primary components of blood are plasma, red cells, white cells, and platelets.  There’s a lot of detail below all that but those are the primary components.

Ben:  From what I understand, correct me if I’m wrong.  Plasma is like about half of our blood volume.  It contains the protein, fibrinogens, the antibodies, and basically all the good stuff that you would find in blood.

Mark:  Bingo!  That’s it.

Ben:  Alright.

Mark:  Yeah.  And so, you mention this I think in the beginning, I actually started my career of all things with IBM Biomedical Systems who had invented what we call back then the blood cell processor.  Way before my time back in the 60s, there was an IBM engineer named George Judson who had a son with leukemia…

Ben:  George Jetson?  Like the Jetsons?

Mark:  Not Jetson.  Judson.

Ben:  Okay.

Mark:  J-U-D… yeah, but it’s easy to remember.  He had a son with leukemia that needed regular white blood cell exchange, leukapheresis as we call it.  And at the time they have a manual process to separate blood, you know, all the blood component with specific gravity.  It’s kinda like oil and vinegar, oil and water, etc. and I mean, you put blood on the shelf and it’ll stratify.  But basically he invented this machine to draw the blood out of one arm and spin it around in a centrifuge which would [09:37] ______ gravity.  While it’s spinning around it’s inside this little disposable plastic, that would allow him to essentially extract as things kinda layered up any particular component he wanted which could be white cells, red cells, platelets, plasma.

So the first application for the blood cell processor was leukapheresis motivated by the fact that his son had leukemia and he’s trying to figure out how to kinda automate the process and donate blood once a week instead of donate a component of blood once a week as opposed to whole blood every two months.  And so, he got a leave of absence from IBM and they got a grant from National Cancer Institute and sometime around I think ’65, ’66, they basically created this machine, and then IBM who’s got kinda history of what we call entrepreneurial ventures created a business unit out of it.  A lot of people know that IBM actually helps with a Harvard professor created the first heart-lung machine back in the 40s and they’ve done interesting little sci projects but they basically decided to create business unit out of this concept basically and that’s the business I joined when I got out of school at UC Sta. Barbara.  And kinda by accident but I gone down for an interview with the computer guys and I got there and they told me there’s a hiring freeze and there’s no job.  But there might be this opportunity over in this little business unit called Biomedical Systems and so I joined it and kinda got my crash course in medicine.  They hand me tables, medical encyclopedia and I’m literally the head of the open heart surgery because they used our products in open heart surgery like my second month on the job watching the whole thing.  And within the year of me joining, they sold the business unit and they re-deploy this into the computer group where I intended to go in the first place.  And it really wasn’t until a few years back when I started reading about the mice research exchanging the young blood and I thought, “Man, this would really can do in humans.”  Why are they spending so much time with mice and so…

Ben:  What were they doing with mice?  I mean, when you talk about the mice research, some people may not even be familiar with mice research.  What exactly is going on with that?

Mark:  Well, there’s a fancy term they called heterochronic parabiosis which in a nutshell…

Ben:  Parabiosis, yeah, that was the other word I was looking for.  That’s basically the word I see throwing around more than this plasmapheresis – parabiosis.

Mark:  Yeah, look, let me tell you what they’re doing.  They’re slitting open the sides of two mice, they’ll stitch them together and they’re measuring the effects of the complete exchange.  They call it the systemic milieu.  Basically meaning it could be blood, it could be all sorts of stuff that’s kinda float around but essentially it’s like they’re creating Siamese twins out of mice that were the opposite of… separate Siamese twins like creating a Siamese twins in mice.  They basically stitched together- an old mouse and a young mouse, and measure what happens.

Ben:  They’re not actually taking the blood out of the old mouse and transferring that to the young mouse.  They’re actually connecting the two mice together?

Mark:  Well, the first range of experiment sort of started in 2005, stitching the mice together.  Now, in the last couple of years, they developed some devices that essentially allow them to deplete blood out of one mouse or the other and then independently inject it.  It’s a very difficult problem with mice ‘cause they’re very small and their veins are incredibly tiny.  And so, it’s not a very sophisticated process, let me say that, compared to humans.

Ben:  Okay.

Mark:  I mean, they did this for humans for 50 years.  I mean, we are…

Ben:  Really?

Mark:  Oh yeah.  Since the 60s.  Yeah, I mean there are millions of procedures of all sorts of what we call aphaeresis every year primarily for autoimmune diseases which is the big indication if you will probably, half of the treatments in the world today are plasmapheresis and the majority of those are used for autoimmune disorders.  Things like multiple sclerosis, [14:42] ______, there’s a whole list of, kind of a dozen rare diseases where they’ve found what we call therapeutic plasma exchange which has a beneficial effect in removing [14:59] ______ factors, ridding the body of auto antibodies- the antibodies that attack themselves, regulating T cells disorders, things like that.

So, and that’s where we made the connection.  I realized very quickly, I met a lot of the mice research people, let me say that, and they are all good people but most of them don’t have a lot of experience with human medicine.  So when I set up the Young Blood Institute, I did so with recruiting some of the best immunologist, endocrinologist, nurse practitioners, MDs, etc. that have got really experienced in real medicine, and in particular with plasma exchange.  So most of our nurses have been doing this for like 30, 40 years, I mean, typically.  And so we’ve got institutionally a lot of experience with that and because I realized that what we’ve really gonna do is explore these new indications that are plausible because we’ve done a sort of connect the dots between autoimmune disorders or autoimmunity, and immunosenescence which is essentially the [16:28] ______ of the immune system.  It turns out that autoimmune disorders and immunosenescence have three fundamental things in common: the presence of auto antibodies, the presence of T cell disorders, and the presence of pro-inflammatory conditions.  So, the interesting possibility is the use of essentially an old technology to a new indication which is aging, associated with disorders that are caused systemically by immunosenescence.

Ben:  Okay.  So basically when you’re putting the plasma from a healthy young donor into somebody who comes in there to the Young Blood Institute, primarily what you’re going after is a stronger immune system?

Mark:  Yeah, that was our original and kind of the base core hypothesis is that we could reboot the immune system just kind of like reboot your computer, right, that the majority of subjects are gonna be on a path of immune system decline.  And we basically dive immunosenescence and you know, the immune system craters and the craters, we become vulnerable to all sorts of different age disorders.

Ben:  Okay.  So what exactly happens when somebody comes in there?

Mark:  Well, first of all what we do is we partner with guys like Tom.  So Tom has a clinic in San Diego.

Ben:  Yeah.  The NAD Injection Clinic.

Mark:  Right.  And so we have a network of really doctors and clinics across the country and we partner with those clinics to host the trial and sort of provide the oversight of facilities, the local MDs, etc.  We run the what’s called an internal reboard- the IRB study protocol, we provide the nurses, the protocol, the equipment, very specialized and then we deploy in the East location and we kinda share the responsibility there, qualifying the subjects, overseeing the procedure generally, and then we’re providing the actual… we come in and kind of turn-key provide the plasmapheresis service for the subjects in these locations.

Ben:  Are there any kind of risks to this?  Like if I was gonna go down and do something like this because I wanna track my telomeres and see what happens to those, or if I want to get a stronger immune system, I mean, is this the type of thing that just anybody can wander and do?

Mark:  Well, millions of procedures are done in a year, okay.  And we started with what is arguably the safest protocol possible where we used purified plasma components because plasma is 95% water.  So there’s a multi-billion industry that basically collects plasma donations and usually they have plasma collections in universities and places like that.  They then distill out the water, they take the key ingredients which are primarily the albumin, the immunoglobulins, and the fibrinogen and they pasteurized it, which means they heated up, wash it, purify it, and it goes through decades of old FDA regulated process.  And it’s kind of frozen lemonade, I mean, shipped around the country, add water, got plasma.  So, it’s a very safe protocol.  There’s about a 4% risk of a transfusion reaction and the transfusion reaction risk is a bit minor and it’s not really that much different than if you went and donate blood at the blood bank.  You know, for flushing or thinking or things like that which usually after someone goes through the process you just make sure that they sit down for a little while and have some water, maybe a snack or something like that.  It’s considered to be a very, very safe procedure.  It’s probably one of the safer procedures in the medical world today.

Ben:  When somebody comes in and does it, do they get multiple plasma exchanges or you just do one plasma exchange and that’s it, you’re done?

Mark:  Well, in our protocol, at least our first protocol, you go through six exchanges which is different than let say an infusion protocol, and the reason being that is we’re using specialized equipment to remove the old plasma.  And the fact is if you’re drawing blood out of one arm, you’re spinning it around, you’re extracting the old plasma, you’re putting the other blood components back in the other arm and then you’re adding the new plasma.  After awhile, you’re producing drawing the old plasma with new.  It’s kinda like trying to change the oil in your car while it’s running and you didn’t drain the open.  And so you can only get two-thirds of the old stuff out roughly, plus or minus 5% but before… you know, I mean, that’s kind of a max and so you’ve got to wait, let it settle, come back within a week or so and then do it again.  And there’s a curve that’s in our website but there’s some sort of mathematical, this is called a history from the 12^th edition of Hematology that basically demonstrates mathematically that it really takes six treatments to get rid of, let’s say, 98% of the old stuff.

Ben:  Is that six days in a row?  You’re coming in six consecutive days or do you split those up?

Mark:  Six weeks in a row.

Ben:  Six weeks in a row.  Okay.  Got you.  So do people need to travel to Silicon Valley or the Young Blood Institute to do this or like you mentioned you’re partnering up with clinics so people can go to these clinics at their town?

Mark:  Yeah, that’s why we’re doing it because if they live in San Diego, okay, go to town.  If they live in Raleigh, North Carolina; we’ve got a doctor there. You know, if you live in Florida, we’ve got docs there, I mean, we’ve got doctors in Texas.  And because of our model, it’s relatively easy for us to add any location.  So if we have somebody who lives in hey, Spokane, Washington, and they want to undergo the treatment, kinda the first question is, who’s your MD? And they be understood in hosting the procedure and becoming what we call a sub-principal investigator because they actually are a part of the study.  You know, grant a space in these guys where we integrate them because they have a lot of wisdom and they kind of a human biomarker, right.  We identify all the data from a study sampling but a doctor and a nurse frankly can make observations that get recorded into… the record for the treatment.  So maybe they know somebody that after three treatments is skipping and jumping, there’s a relative fact that we wouldn’t capture the blood test.

Ben:  Okay.  So when people are looking for a place to go and do this, can they just go to the Young Blood Institute website and do a search for practitioners or where do they do this in a local community?

Mark:  Yeah, we don’t really have the list of practitioners in the website but they can submit an inquiry and we can work with them.  The bottom line is we’re flexible.  If we have a doctor in the area, great!  If we don’t and they’ve got a doctor, well that works too.

Ben:  Alright, gotcha.  So when people are doing this, what exactly are you measuring?  What is it that you’re looking at to see if this plasma exchanges are actually working, like are you tracking biomarkers or tracking specific data points?

Mark:  Yeah, I think that’s probably the most significant thing we’re doing, and actually to be honest because we’ve probably got more technology, testing capability than Stanford, John Hopkins and Harvard combined.  I mean, we have sort of gone to the mat with respect to rolling out the most advanced, sophisticated, scientific test technology on the planet.

Ben:  Like what?

Mark:  Well, one of the key technologies is called time of flight mass cytometry which provides extremely comprehensive understanding of self-phenotypes signaling ways it really enable what’s considered to be system cell biology at a single cell resolution.  It’s called single-cell proteomics- the large scale of study of proteins basically.  And it’s a very advanced method to measure in phenotype cells that can generate significant details about cells and roughly small sample, and it’s sort of a successor to what’s called flow cytometry for the last 30 years where we’ve been measuring immune systems and immunology and so forth.  So we’ve got literally semi two biomarkers just in that alone.  Then we’ve got some ELISA Technology, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay which has been along for a time and we do a few test using the old ELISA technologies ‘cause we can’t get it on the new ELISA, but there’s a new technology called Digital ELISA which is really…

Ben:  Alysa?

Mark:  ELISA.  E-L-I-S-A.

Ben:  Okay.

Mark:  Stands for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.  And the digital ELISA is anywhere from a hundred to thirty-five hundred times more sensitive than the traditional ELISA, and that enables detection quantification of biomarkers that previously where almost impossible to measure and it gives us also automated results so we can minimize operator variation, and give us very sensitive accurate detection of cytokine proteins, all sorts of assay.  We got about 24 biomarkers there.  Then we’ve got mass spectrometry assay for Alzheimers that’s noble and unique, and one of our investigators basically is the inventor of this assay.  And it’s clinically proven in Japan back in like 2012, 2013 to be an accurate measurement or roughly the equivalent of a PET scan in detecting amyloid beta plaque in the brain.  But detecting which considered to be the least evidence of not the cause of Alzheimers using only a blood sample.  So, the problem with Alzheimers is that typically when the time you get diagnosed, it’s too late.  You get diagnosed because people are observing problems.  You may not remember those problems, you get in to get the diagnosis and the disease has already taken its grip.  So that’s the big challenge because it’s not necessarily obvious until it’s too late.  So what we’re trying to develop is essentially with all of these things actually not just the Alzheimers but essentially serious early detection of biomarkers that would allow us or enable us to prevent the onset of a number of diseases before they actually begin to occur or become significant.

So, along the lines of colon cancer, breast cancer, early detection regimens that have been very successful, we’re also trying to essentially develop a kind of a next generation of early detection techniques revolving around the immune system, neuro immunology, neurological disorders, etc., and then we also have incorporated DNA methylation markers, and general markers and other kinda newer more nascent types of “biological aging”.  The differences are we’re not using those as kind of the key measurement, we’re actually working with the methylation companies to look up all of the detailed sub-data underneath so that we can collate it with the other data we’re collecting.  One of the many things we’re doing is getting a significant variety of different types of biomarkers and biomarker testing technologies that we can then correlate to get kind of the whole elephant, if you will, right? Like if anyone test or anyone approach- yeah, you might be looking at the trunk, you might be looking at the tail, you might be looking at the leg.  You get the whole picture and so in order to do that, we’re getting as many test as we possibly can including a new one.  We just added relatively recently, I mean, just half as we get started but we didn’t discover it until then but we’ve got a new one on blood [31:09] ______ which turns out to be kind of interesting.

It turns out that as blood ages, it thickens.  And there’s an interesting curve that shows that past age 60, [31:24] ______ thickens, and so there’s been a lot of historical measurements in let’s say, research settings but it really hasn’t been translated to the broad populace. And yet, it kinda make sense that if your blood is turned to sludge, it’s kinda hard for your heart to push it around.  And what we’ve noticed in some of our treatment therapies is they’re getting rid of the old stuff, some which may look a little thicker than in a young person that after a few treatments it starts to thin out or normalize.  And we’d had people report, “Wow! I had the best sleep I’d ever had in my life.”

Ben:  After getting a plasma exchange…

Mark:  After getting, yeah, one or two plasma exchanges.  And if you look at the output plasma in those cases… and different people have different kind of experience, let me say that, and because we cryo freeze the blood, we measure all at the future point time all at the same time, we don’t have all our data yet, but just experientially what we’re kinda seeing and observing that there are different characteristics of plasma that are coming out of people and those attributes are normalizing after several exchanges.

Ben:  What do you think based on all the different anti-aging biomarkers that you just listed off, people should be tracking and what would be the lowest hanging fruit because I mean, you know somebody can’t get in to Young Blood Institute ‘cause you’re tracking a lot of things there, what would you say would be the lowest hanging fruit for people to actually track if they just wanted to kind of do this on their own or talk to their doctor about running certain test or doing like a telomere length analysis to something like telo years or something along those lines.  What would be the best anti-aging biomarkers in your opinion to track?

Mark:  Well, that’s a pretty tough question because to be honest with you, we’re probably less concerned about “age” as a human constructed in Roman calendar, I mean, ourselves don’t know about age, right?  Ourselves don’t know that there are 24 or 48 or 94, so we’re focused really more on the function of the body, and I will just say on the telomere point, we are cryo freezing the blood and we hope to be able to test it at future point on telomeres but the problem with current telomere testing is that they typical access the telomere lengths on the total, what we called purple blood cell blood mononuclear cell population- PBMCs derived from whole blood.  Basically, PBMCs have a mixture of cell sub-populations that have dramatically different telomere lengths.  So like naive versus effector T cells for example or T cells versus NK cells.  And T cells can have the longest telomere lengths.

So, you could come in the morning and we can do a blood draw and you may have 30% total T cells and you know, things look pretty good, and later that day we do a blood draw, and we only get 5% T cells, and by age 10 years.  So the whole methodology around telomere testing is sort of froth with complication, and we’re looking at methods of possibly spinning down the cell population subsets so that we could look at the differences in those specific cell population subsets.  For example, naive CD4 cells, CD8 T cells, etc.  We compare apples and apples.  And even so, we’re still not sure, I mean, they did a little study on this.  It’s not clear there is absolute correlation with “age” but, it is of interest in terms of its correlated value to us.  So, we’re not really kind of the biohacking community, I mean, we worked with people who are biohackers obviously in the sense of dialogue collaboration, discourse, etc. but we’re kinda trying to get to the bottom line, what’s working, what’s not, and the answers; we don’t know.  I mean, there’s a line out there and just understanding which says matter is the whole important part of the equation.

Tom:  You’re going to get you know, whatever test you do, there’s always gonna be someone that’s gonna poo poo it because there’s so many different theories of aging, and there’s some few scientists that like to poo poo the telomere length.  And so really the approach is to find multiple ways to measure aging markers and biological aging clocks.

Ben:  What’s a biological aging clock?

Tom:  So, biological aging clock, if you want to study aging and you’re using Farris therapies, you might have to wait 50 years to see what the results are, or you could do your study in 75, 85-year olds and then it has something with certain statistical power in order that you won’t have to wait as long.  Or you have something like telomere length that spits out a particular age and that would be another means to determine whether or not the therapy is any good.  So the telomere length is one and then Zymo put out this DNA methylation and at aging test they have a few now.

Ben:  What’s a Zymo?

Tom:  Zymo is a laboratory and they’ve worked with scientist Steven Horvath who sort of a biostatistician and he’s looked at DNA and he has seen a pattern statistically from methyl groups, they’re attached to a certain part of the genome.  So at various points in your life certain molecules attach and detach to the genome and based upon that it’s phased out a high correlation of age.  And so out of this high correlation, there’s even sort of starting to think that perhaps some of aging is coming from the way in which the methyl group attached to the DNA.

Ben:  Okay.  Alright, got you.  So, as far as this biological aging clock and how to reverse it or how to slow it down, are there any other things that you found, Tom, as far as whether you can track biological aging or slow the rate of this biological aging clock?

Tom:  Well you know, I don’t have the access to some of the machines that Mark does unless we partner together, and we’ve talking quite a bit since we met at this cocktail party in Florida where he presented this and yeah, we said yes, this definitely worked together because we’re so passionate about aging and just to come now with this Alzheimers.  What we’ve done in our non-profit and at NAD Treatment Center is we’ve looked at some of the more popular inflammatory markers and we’ve also looked at part age which is measuring arterial stiffness, brain age which we use CNS vital signs to compute a brain age and then long age, we’re using spirometry- how much air you could breathe out and then we use cutometry to detect the age of skin elasticity.  So those are some of the things that we’re doing and then also we’re gonna be using a new instrument out in the market called Age meter that will be at RAADfest which is a conference which can be held in San Diego on September 20.  So we’re gonna have one of the largest booths if not the largest booth at RAADfest in doing IVs of NAD,  and exosomes, and also we want to…

Ben:  When is this RAADfest?  September 20^th?

Tom:  September 2oth.

Ben:  Oh that soon.

Tom:  That is soon.  I hope you can get the podcast out.

Ben:  Yeah.  I think this podcast comes out like the week that you’d be doing this RAADfest.  So tell me more about RAADfest and tell me more about this anti-aging booth.

Tom:  So, Mark is gonna be there.  He’ll be able to talk more about plasmapheresis and also what we wanna do is we wanna really encourage people to get their aging clocks done and we’re using a system called PhysioAge that calculates the aging clocks and you’ll spit out an age.  You know, at the end of the day, it’s the more data that you can get, the better.  There’s always not gonna be enough data to calculate age and aging markers but I’d really love to have maybe if legally possible have sort of a contest where people can sign up and calculate their age and then maybe in the next RAADfest we could figure out who’s made the most progress or whatnot.  And yeah, so RAADfest is something that I’m very excited about.  I think it’s an amazing conference and it’s very different than some of the other conferences.

Ben:  What is RAADfest stand for?

Tom:  So, RAADfest is Revolution Against Aging and Death.  It’s the biggest conference on radical longevity and it’s a place where you can go and hear about studies that people are doing, trials, make investments, have dinners with scientists and doctors, and it’s a social gathering and it’s a non-profit, so it’s pretty inexpensive just a few hundred bucks to go and get a ticket there.  And I think Mark and I will have a side room to talk about… maybe doing some other case studies.  I know Mark and I are very interested and looking at other ways beside this very promising plasmapheresis and so, for example, I had lunch with a scientist two months ago, Greg Fahey.  He wanted to talk to me about an NAD test that he was working on and he said this was a huge game changer.  So, he wanted to maybe have some sort of partnership and figure out how we could help each other.  Little do I know, I find out later, he’s developing a therapy for thymus regeneration and because if you lose your immunosenescence, then you could be healthy like Jack Lalanne and catch pneumonia in a few days later, you’re dead.  So, that’s one of the things he’s working on and the foremost authorities on cryonics or cryonic vitrification which is taking cells or organs and cryonically preserving them.  So, I had no idea who I’m talking to and then these are people that I’ve met at RAADfest the last couple of years and it’s just a great environment to see people who are passionate about longevity.

Ben:  You guys are obviously… you’re talking about things that I haven’t heard anybody before talk about when it comes to aging and longevity, but one thing, just to clarify here, what are the different parameters you’re measuring at this booth?  Just list them off again because it was very interesting.  It was about long skin… What are some of the other parameters here?

Tom:  So, heart age, arterial stiffness, I think that’s called [45:45] ______, brain aging, we’re going to use old standard CNS vital signs, and then you’ve done those air tests, spirometry where you blow as much air out of your lungs as you possibly can.  Then, there’s a skin test that uses a laser to measure the skin elasticity of your forearm and produces a skin age.  So, looking at all these different parts of the body, you’re able to get a better handle on what your age is.  And of course DNA methylation and telomere age, they’re even better when they’re all measured together.  And, we’ve got a couple other ideas for aging clocks as well.  I’m going to be speaking there, so I’ll speak a little bit more about the aging clocks that we’re doing and I’ll be encouraging people to get involved and to see if we can make changes in life expectancy because our life expectancy has dropped three years in a row and our health span is declining as well.  So, this is something that I get really excited about.

Ben:  Interesting.  You guys are going to be measuring a lot of things.  So, RAADfest.  I will link to that in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/plasma.  Kind of last minute, but if folks want to get over to that and check it out, it’s in San Diego.  Right?

Tom:  It’s in San Diego.  Yup.

Ben:  Alright.  Gotcha.  I mean, one of the things I talked with you the last time I had you on the show about, Tom, was this concept of NAD and we haven’t talked a lot about NAD, but one kind of the elephant in the room I should address while I have you on the show, is this idea that was mentioned by Dr. Charles Brenner the last time I had him on the show.  We talked about nicotinamide riboside or NR and he has this supplement called TruNiagen.  ChromaDex, Thorne has one.  Elysium Basis is another one.  A lot of these folks are saying that compared to NAD, that NR is far more absorbable and a much better way to boost your NAD levels, and we know that NAD to NADH ratios are really important as a way to control aging and to enhance mitochondrial health and overall health in general.  I personally, I take NR, but I do these NAD injections.  I’ve been down to your clinic and I’ve done an NAD IV.  I do right now on a weekly basis, I do an NAD push IV self-administered.  It’s one of those things that are controversial though because a lot of people, including Dr. Brenner, will say that NAD can’t enter the cell membrane like NR supposedly can.  What are your thoughts on that?

Tom:  How do you feel when you inject NAD versus taking NR?  I’m just curious.

Ben:  Well, absolutely amazing but I’m wondering if part of it is because the injection process sucks so much and you get so nauseous and your gut feels like it’s on fire.  I wonder partially whether or not it’s due to just extreme relief that the actual injection is over- I feel like a million bucks.  Subjectively, all joking aside, I feel amazing when I do my NAD injections and I can’t say I feel the same immediate, noticeable effect when I take NR.  Again, there are a lot of confounding variables: I’ve got a needle in my arm, I’m getting this stuff injected, you have that rush of adrenaline from the injection itself.  I mean, I’m more interested in data than my own subjective feelings.

Tom: Well, yeah.  I’m too afraid to do the fast injection.  I’m not sure I want to encourage people to do it.

Ben:  It’s uncomfortable.

Tom:  Yeah.  That’s like being run over by a steamroller or something like that.

Ben:  I have to do box breathing the whole time.  It takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to push it all in and I take out a trashcan so I can puke if I need to from the nausea, but then it’s over!  And I save myself six hours and a flight to San Diego, baby.

Tom:  Okay, alright, fair enough. You know, many NAD scientists usually say that NAD does not cross the plasma membrane. The sort of consensus is there, and I personally disagree with that. You just sent me an article that I haven’t had the chance to read, but there was also a journal – Brazzoni – there was an Italian group in 2001 that showed that NAD can cross the plasma membrane at the 3T3 fibroblast which are mouse embryonic fibroblast.  So they used something called protium liposomes and they figured out that NAD crosses the plasma membrane. The hemidesmosome protein called connexin 43.  So if you disagree with that, then one could always go on to Sigma-Aldrich website and buy 3T3 fibroblast for $400 and they’ll be shipped to your door and you can run the experiment.  I really liked the research that was done at the NAD Conference that I held last January where Ross Grant, who you interviewed talked about the uptake of NAD.  I’m not sure if or when that’ll ever get published, but Naty Braidy showed that increase in [51:53] ______ activity and SIRT1 microRNA expression.   Some of that research is trickling out and what I’d love to do is… I was just talking with an NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide scientist and he’s also an MRI expert; he was trying to sell some technology to the government to detect lies with his MRI but he wants to use the MRI much like a Hubble telescope goes out and peers out into the stars.  He wants to use this MRI to peer into the brain before and after NAD treatment and actually count the molecules of NAD in the brain. The hypothesis is that not only is NAD in the brain, but it’s also crossing the cell membranes. He asked me to sponsor that, he wants to look at that for NMN and NAD and I said “sure, let’s give it a go”.

There’s a bit more information and we’ll just show that on the show notes, but it’s kind of neat to see the controversy and the debate, but I really do feel like to really debate too extreme is really unhealthy.  The FDA thinks that we should decide which is the safest and best vitamin B3 therapy.  Whether it’s NMN or NR or niacin or what-have-you, and they’re misinterpreting the law called the Drug Quality and Security Act which goes far beyond NAD. There’s 453 ingredients that the FDA’s pharmacy compounding advisory committee have reviewed, and that they refused to review 390 ingredients and PCAC has further rejected 71% of the 49 ingredients that they’ve reviewed to-date despite a long history of safe use and patient need.  So, what you have is a number of things that you love, Ben, okay, and then a lot of our listeners love, are being threatened of being taken off of the market.  It’s pretty sad.

Ben:  What do you mean?  Why is it being threatened to be taken off the market?

Tom:  Compounds like glutathione, for example.  That for example of glutathione push, that’s being threatened right now.  There’s a review, it’s almost like a court hearing, and people are going to argue for and against glutathione, and they usually give about two or three weeks…

Ben:  You mean glutathione IVs or injections, or glutathione in general?

Tom:  Glutathione in general.  So, that means that glutathione…

Ben:  They would want to take it off the market?

Tom: For compounding pharmacies.  Yeah.  This means that veterinarians, ophthalmologists, dermatologists…

Ben:  Okay.  Not that many people.  The general public though, not than many folks are using glutathione in that form, right?  The compounded form?

Tom:  Well, I mean, if you go to a functional doctor, that’s a pretty common IV.  It doesn’t end there.  There’s alpha lipoic acid…

Ben:  I was thinking most people were just ordering off of Amazon like liposomal glutathione or whatever.

Tom:  But the uptake is not necessarily that good.  People have digestive problems and there’s other things too like thiamine, curcumin, selenium, resveratrol, magnesium glycinate, vitamin A, zinc picolinate.  All those vitamins I just mentioned, are vitamins that we use that we want to be using in Alzheimer’s study that we’re doing where we’re combining Bredesen Protocol with IV NAD.  We’ll be doing a lot of that stuff orally, but those are vitamins…  Who knows?  There’s lot of Parkinson’s patients that rely on glutathione.  There’s vegans who want methyl B12 and there’s a real risk that that could go away.

Ben:  I don’t understand how it’d go away.  Why would they want to do that?

Tom: [laughs] Well, I have my own reasons, but the reasons that they state is that safety is a concern.  But, the reality is that there’s no money involved in proving the safety of these vitamins that doesn’t actually have any intellectual property.  And so if there was then essentially as soon as that occurred then the price of these vitamins would go up, and so health care costs would go up, but basically not only do you have a sort of threatening to naturopaths and functional medicine doctors, but it’s also threatening to the cost of health care itself.  This is sort of what’s going, so I don’t think that a debate about NAD is necessarily a healthy one.  There was a girl the other day that called up the center and she said, “I’m hallucinating”, and I said, “why?” and she said, “well I took Levaquin and I have massive anxiety and I’m hallucinating.”  “Oh! Hang up and dial 911 and go to the ER.”  And she said, “I just came from the ER and they just kicked me out and I was just googling around and I found you and what should I do?” And I was like, “Well, I’m not a doctor, but there’s based on some information I got from [58:29] ______, he’s prescribing 600mg of NAC which converts the glutathione and magnesium 400mg or a gram, and he’s able to stave off some of the problems of adverse reactions to Fluoroquin antibiotics.”  So, lo and behold, she goes out and she takes that.  I tell her to go see a doctor of course, but we were communicating and she said, “Now, the hallucinations aren’t as bad as they were.  They’ve really have calmed down my anxiety, my insomnia.”

And so doctors need to…  there really should be some freedom with doctors and compounding pharmacies, and patients when they’re really desperate and they don’t have anywhere to turn to.  For example, the silver IVs are an alternative to these antibiotics and that’s being threatened to come off the market.  The myrrh from the three wise men, they’ve taken myrrh, the FDA wants to go after myrrh.  What did myrrh do?

Ben:  Poor baby Jesus.

Tom:  Little baby Jesus.  There is really just a threat to all the other potential NAD therapies out there that are making end to health care costs and I think the FDA is really the biggest obstacle to longevity.  That’s what I think so.

Ben:  Interesting.  I want to get into Alzheimers here in a second because I know you’ve been looking into that quite a bit and both of you guys have some pretty big thoughts on a multi-modal approach to Alzheimers and what we can do about Alzheimers, but before that you briefly mentioned that article I sent to you, Tom, about NAD uptake and this one I will link to in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/plasma, but it does show that most mammalian cell types can transport NAD across what’s called the plasma membrane from the extra cellular medium and into the cell.  And it does actually show a pretty significant amount of NAD uptake despite the people that sell the NR supplement which I’m nothing against in this NR supplements and how they work.  But a lot of folks will tell you NAD can get absorbed and I just over and over again I see data like this and you just leave it to, Tom, and it shows that it does, so that whole debate I think we could probably put a nail on that coffin and say that NAD does actually get absorbed.  And again, for those of you who wanna look at the research, we’ll put some over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/plasma.

But I know you have been using NAD to fight Alzheimer’s disease, I know you guys have been using something called the Bredesen Protocol, so tell about what have you been doing when it comes to Alzheimers?

Tom:  Well you know, I’ve heard about Bredesen Protocol when I talked to a lot of functional medicine doctors, they just lied up when they talk about Dale Bredesen and what he’s been up to with Alzheimers, and there was a speaker at my conference who talked about how he was combining NAD with Bredesen Protocol and he was seeing very good anecdotal results, and by the way, Ben, we’ll be selling those videos with the discount and we’ll put those in the show not]]>

[49:30] Reversing the Damage of EMF

[1:06:25] Training with the Maffetone Method

[1:13:52] C-60 for Anti-Aging

[1:20:39] Giveaways and Goodies

[1:24:07] End of Podcast

Introduction:  In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast: Is A Low Carb Diet Bad For You, Coconut Oil Controversy, Inulin In Energy Bars, Reversing The Damages Of EMF, and much more.

Ben:  Brock, I’m beat up.

Brock:  Oh no!  What happened?  Did you get in a fight?

Ben:  Kind of?  I got in a massage fight…  I think.  If that’s what you call it.

Brock:  Very relaxing fight.

Ben:  Yeah, I have a massage therapist.  So, I get a massage every week.  I try to get a massage every Tuesday night and my massage therapist is… she’s got sharp elbows.  She’s got very strong hands.  I think her grip strength is probably much, much higher than mine or anyone you see on the World’s Strongest Powerman Competition or whatever that show is on TV.  Anyways though, she’s got these big meaty fingers and sharp elbows and she does these crazy techniques.  She’s got this one where she pins my teeth and then has me open and close my jaw and she’s got another one where she drives her elbow into my hip flexor and has me extend my leg while I hold my breath and then I release my breath.  It causes this massive hip flexor to release, but I wake up the next morning and I feel just… not bruised up, but just a little bit beat up.  And then, I feel pretty amazing within about 24 hours.

Brock:  And you do this once a week?

Ben:  I do this once a week.

Brock:  Nice.

Ben:  Yeah.  So I do a little bit of foam rolling, a little bit of lacrosse ball and stuff like that throughout the week and sometimes I use those crazy massage devices, but once a week I try to lay down on this table that makes pulsed electromagnetic field frequencies, PEMF, and it kind of shakes my whole body.  So, if I try to talk during my massage I sound like this.  And then, she massages me and she comes over at 8:30, right, about the time my kids are going to bed, and just works on me until about 10:30 and then I go to bed and sleep like a baby.

Brock:  It’s interesting that you bring up the massaging in the jaw because I actually, for the first time ever, had that experience not that long ago where she actually put on, my massage therapist, put on these rubber gloves and put two fingers just below my jaw inside my mouth.

Ben:  Aw, I was hoping you were going for the jaw.

Brock:  And…  I’ll just continue.  And she put some pressure on there and sort of had me open and close just a little bit.  And it was intense!  But…

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  About an hour later, I was just like, I could talk better, everything was just moving better, it stopped clicking because I’ve got a click in my left jaw bone, not technically TMJ, but just a click that pops up when I’m feeling a little stressed.  So, that was a new experience for me, but I’m definitely going to have her do that again because that was an awesome release.

Ben:  Good to know your jaw clicks when you’re stressed out.  The Human Garage does that when they put on… The Human Garage in LA, they do the rubber glove thing, but my massage therapist just works on it from the outside – no gloves required!  However, does your massage therapist use coconut oil because if so, we’re about to talk about how she’s poisoning you.

Brock:  Oh crap!

[News Flashes]

Ben:  So Brock, did you see what the Harvard professor has come out with and said?  It must be true because they’re a Harvard professor.

Brock:  If you’ve had that much schooling, you better be right.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  But, I sort of go ‘huh?’ when you refer to something as ‘pure poison.’  Unless it is pure poison.  But, yeah.

Ben:  This one came out in The Guardian.  It says ‘coconut oil is pure poison.’ Coconut oil is pure poison and…

Brock:  And that’s why we’re all dead.

Ben:  This professor, Karin Michels, she based her warning on the high proportion of saturated fat in coconut oil, said it could raise LDL cholesterol and the risk of cardiovascular disease, citing that it contains 80% saturated fat, which is more than twice the amount found in lard or beef drippings, and this thing just took off.  Everybody ran with this whole coconut oil is pure poison headline and I looked into some of the research behind coconut oil and whether or not it would be pure poison.  Frankly, the fact that she says that it raises LDL on that vilifies it kind of concerns me right off the bat because we know that LDL, in the absence of other risk factors, isn’t really that big of an issue.  I actually like to keep my LDL high.  I wear that thing like a badge of honor.  It’s good for cognition and good for hormones, but anyways there are some studies that go into coconut oil and some potentially deleterious effects of it.

For example, they looked at heart health in one study, and this was way back in the 90s, and they looked at a diet that supplied 75% of the fat calories from coconut oil and they compared that to palm oil and corn oil.  And, they did find that there was a high amount of triglycerides and LDL in the folks who had the coconut oil, with triglycerides being the one that might be concerning if you’re concerned about fatty liver issues or potentially really unfavorable triglyceride to HDL ratio.  But, no bodies in the streets.  There was another study in 2011 that did find high, high intake of coconut oil, compared to extra virgin olive oil, seemed to increase some markers of inflammation.  And, you have to be aware that in many of these studies they’re feeding rodent models coconut oil, soy oil, lard, these strange laboratory feeds, and franken-fuels.  So, you’ve got to take all this with a grain of salt and a dollop of coconut oil, of course.

Brock:  And a dollop of coconut oil!  Mmm.

Ben:  There were a few other studies, one looked at the polyunsaturated fatty acid ratio to saturated fatty acid ratio in the body and found that it was changed a little bit, you know, maybe you have a decrease in your intake of omega-3 fatty acids when you shift a whole bunch of your fats towards coconut oil, but that’s really not rocket science to figure out.  If you decide to shift all the oils and all the fats you take to coconut oil and you aren’t consuming any fish oils or any Mediterranean fats, yeah, that would be an issue.  And then, there are a couple of studies that show some amount of gut inflammation when, again, rodents are fed copious amounts of saturated fats and coconut oil, especially in the absence of, and I wrote an article about this two years ago, in the absence of dietary fiber and plant intake meaning that if you’re going to fill your face with coconut oil or butter or any other form of saturated fat, you may want to consume some plants along with it.  I’m just saying.  So, but when you actually step back and you look at human trials in which they feed actual humans coconut oil and then put them through laboratory tests, you see a pretty different response and there have been studies that were done in the past year on this.

One looked at coconut oil fed to humans, healthy humans, and they found that it increased HDL levels and it increased the proportion of what are called anti-inflammatory lipid subfractions in red blood cell membranes meaning that it actually increased the health of the cell membrane.  There was another study that found that, in terms of coconut oil, and this was compared to sunflower oil, there’s absolutely no difference in metabolic response, no rise in blood sugar, no deleterious effect from a metabolic standpoint.  There was another study where they took coconut oil and they, again, gave a bunch of coconut oil to real, actual humans…

Brock:  Not tiny, little fury ones.

Ben:  Yeah, it raised total cholesterol, it raised HDL, and it raised LDL, but ultimately, when compared to safflower oil and some other oils they were feeding the women in this study, there was no increase in inflammation with the coconut oil.  There was another study that found that coconut oil, when combined with plant intake, could actually reduce endotoxins and clean up the body, probably because of some of the lauric acid or the caprylic acid in coconut oil and then of course there’s the fact that coconut oil is fantastic for reducing bacterial colonization in the mouth, which is why I and my children do coconut oil pulling every day.

So ultimately, the big argument made in The Guardian was that coconut oil is pure poison because it raises LDL, but we know that LDL is an independent risk factor for heart disease anyways and we also know that coconut oil, as part of a varied diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids and plants is absolutely no issue.  So basically, eat your other fats, eat your plants, don’t shy away from coconut oil, it’s not pure poison.

Brock:  Now, I just want to go back to when we first started this conversation, you said that you wear your high LDL as a badge of honor, now do you keep an eye on the density of the LDL because I remember you bringing that up in the past that there’s still, part of the LDL, that may not be all that beneficial?

Ben:  Yeah, you can look at the structure of the LDL particles and what you would like is for the LDL particles to be of large and what we would call, this is the highly scientific term, fluffy variety.

Brock:  Fluffy?

Ben:  So, yeah.  You want a full cholesterol panel that allows you to look at the actual LDL particles.  You also want to evaluate whether or not you have high levels of inflammation, high levels of blood glucose, very unfavorable triglyceride to HDL ratio meaning really high triglycerides, extremely low HDL, those are the type of risk factors that could cause cholesterol to become oxidized.  There are also a few specific conditions like familiar hypercholesterolemia, there are genes like PPAR-gene, there are genes like the APOE gene, certain things that respond unfavorably to a high intake of saturated fats more.  Those are present in some people, but ultimately this article is bonkers if it’s just saying that coconut oil is pure poison because it increases LDL.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  And as if that weren’t bad enough, yet another article came out this week that I got a whole bunch of questions on and that was whether or not a low carbohydrate diet shortens lifespan.

Brock:  Oh.

Ben:  This was a…  Did you see this one?

Brock:  Yeah.  I saw this one and, yeah, I won’t…  I was going to spoiler it, but I won’t spoiler it.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Go ahead.

Ben:  And don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of my sourdough bread and my sushi and my sweet potato fries.  I’m a fan of carbohydrates.  They definitely fit into my diet.  I’m a total foodie.  I’m headed to Japan next week actually and I’ll probably eat boatloads of white rice over there.

Anyways though, this study says that Dietary carbohydrate intake and mortality: a cohort study and meta-analysis.  Basically what it found was that when you have a high intake of carbohydrate and a low intake of carbohydrate, both were associated with increased mortality and that was the takeaway and then of course the fact that the low carbohydrate diet along with the high carbohydrate diet was associated with an increased risk of mortality, of course media took this and ran with it and just basically said, ‘well a low carb diet is going to kill you.’

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, especially if you add a bunch of coconut oil to your low carb diet because then you’ve got pure poison.

Brock:  You may as well just stab yourself through the heart.

Ben:  Yes, so this study had a bunch of weaknesses.  So they collected data over the course of 25 years, so it was a pretty long study, and people were asked to report their diet as far back as six years.  So what did you have for dinner five years ago on a Friday night, Brock?

Brock:  A hotdog?

Ben:  Exactly.  Exactly.  They also found that the low carb enthusiasts were more like to be male and males automatically have a higher risk of death than women, meaning they die earlier than women.  The low carb-ers were more likely to be diabetic, they may have switched to a low carb diet because they’re diabetic, but they didn’t count for the fact that some of these folks may already have a risk factor by being diabetic.  They were more likely to be sedentary; they were more likely to smoke, specifically cigarettes.

Brock:  Hmm, weird.

Ben:  They were more likely to eat fewer plants including fruits and vegetables, which ties into the coconut oil discussion we just had; and they were more likely to be overweight and the scientists did not control for any of these variables in this report.  They also didn’t look at alcohol intake and there have been other studies, epidemiological research, that has found that carbohydrate intake goes down when alcohol consumption goes up.  So not only were these people male, diabetics, sedentary, smoking cigarettes, eating fewer fruits and vegetables, likely to be overweight, but they were also like to be consuming more alcohol.  We don’t address any of those variables and then we simply say, ‘well, a low carb diet appears to be able to reduce health and lifespan.’  I mean, this study has so many holes in it that it’s not even funny.  And of course, when we know that controlling glycemic variability, even if you’re not eating a low carb diet, just controlling your blood glucose decreases cardiovascular risk factors, increases metabolic health, reduces inflammation, increases insulin sensitivity, and lowers overall risk for mortality.  We can basically put a…  How do you say it?  Bury this study in a deep dark hole six feet under?

Brock:  Yeah.  Put a nail in it?

Ben:  Yeah, put a nail on the coffin of this study because it’s a bunch of bull…  So, ultimately, again, I’m not against carbohydrates, but I don’t think that a low carb diet shortens your lifespan.  So, that is my take, for all the people who have been tweeting at me asking about coconut oil, asking me about low carb, that’s what I have to say about that.  And, there’s actually one other thing I’ve been getting a lot of comments about.

Brock:  Oh yeah?

Ben:  Would be…

Brock:  Is it your hair?

Ben:  That.

Brock:  How’d you get your hair that way?

Ben:  I do.  Yeah, I’ve got pomade.  I use this stuff called… What’s it called? Nature’s Blessing hair pomade.  It’s got coconut oil in it and olive oil…

Brock:  Uh oh!

Ben:  So my hair is going to die from pure poison because it’s a low carb coconut oil-based hair pomade that I use.  So, my hair is going to hell in a handbasket.

Brock:  Totally.

Ben:  And that’s not what I’ve been getting questions about, though.  It’s this whole inulin versus IMO issue.  It’s no secret that I launched the Clean Food Bar that I’ve been working on for the past year – the Kion Bar.  Just chocolatey, salty, coconut-ty goodness and it’s coconut flakes, and cacao nibs, and chocolate liqueur, and cocoa powder, and chia seeds, almonds, sesame seeds, sea salt, the list goes on and on!  I just wanted to pack as much real, tasty superfoods as I could into a bar.  And one of the things that I talked about in the podcast that I published along with that bar was the fact that I chose to use an organic honey for the probiotics and for the lack of its ability to be able to spike blood glucose and the taste and a whole host of other reasons I chose to use organic, nutrient-dense honey as a sweetener.  And, what I did not choose to use was this stuff called isomaltooligosaccharide which is also abbreviated IMO and I got a lot of questions about that because a lot of bars contain IMO.  I also got a lot of questions from people who wondered whether or not IMO was the same was inulin, which is also something that you see in a lot of bars.  So, I want to clear up the confusion about when you’re looking at the ingredient label of your energy bar and you heard me talking about the dangers of IMO or the potential dangers of inulin, what you actually need to look at.

So IMO, this isomaltooligosaccharide, if you turn it over and you look at the label of your energy bar, basically an oligosaccharide or an IMO is something that food industry makes.  They use starch that they process from crops, typically wheat or barley or oats or tapioca or rice or potatoes, they break them down enzymatically and what they produce is this stuff that’s called a high-malto syrup which is supposed to be somewhat indigestible in the human gut.  It’s considered to be a non-digestible food ingredient and these oligosaccharides pass through the colon where they wind up getting fermented by the bacteria in your colon.  So it can also be classified, technically, as a prebiotic.  But the fact is, and I highlighted this in that big podcast that I did about the new Kion Bar, is the idea that it has been shown in research to actually be able to spike blood glucose.  So isomaltooligosaccharides is marketed as a low calorie sweetener, you find it in a lot of low carb bars, and it’s labeled as fiber, but it actually is about anywhere, depending on its source, about 2 ½ to 3 ½ calories per gram and has been shown to actually raise blood sugar.

There was a big controversy a few years ago with Quest Nutrition because Quest Nutrition was using IMO in their bars and marketing them as a low carb bar with a high amount of dietary, prebiotic fiber, but it turns out that it actually spiked blood glucose.  So, this turned into an issue and Quest wound up switching to a different form of fiber, I forget what they switched to, but ultimately they got rid of that form of fiber.  I think they switched to a form of corn.  But what you’ll find, even though soluble corn fiber doesn’t really show an impact on blood glucose, there’s still a lot of other companies using IMO in their bars – a lot of companies that are marketing this as a low carb, no carb bar and I have yet to see IMOs be proven to be something that doesn’t spike blood glucose.  Now, there are a few people who have done independent trials of their bars that use IMO from specific sources.  My friend Dr. Mercola, he uses in his energy bar a cassava.  So, cassava is the source of the IMO and he’s shown me some of his blood glucose data and it appears that this IMO derived from cassava doesn’t really appear to be an issue.  So it’s possible that there are some forms of IMO that are not an issue, but the majority, the lion’s share of the IMO in most of the bars out there spikes blood glucose and is not really turning a bar into a low carb bar.

Now, the other form of fiber that you’ll find in bars is this inulin stuff.  And inulin is not necessarily IMO.  So, inulin is a natural storage carbohydrate.  We find it in a lot of these type of carbs that cause farts, right, like Jerusalem artichoke, and chickaree, and asparagus, and garlic, and one of the reasons for that is inulin winds up being extremely fermentable in the human gut.  A lot of bacteria can utilize what are called the fructooligosaccharides that you find in inulin.  And so, they’re relatively unstable in gastric acid, they aren’t broken down very well by the bile, and so whereas inulin doesn’t seem to spike blood sugar as much as IMO, it results in you being that person nobody else wants to hang around with after you’ve had your energy bar because you’re basically a tooting machine.  So, that’s the idea behind inulin.  I also did not want a bar, especially because a lot of people are consuming this bar while they’re out, I’ve got Ironman triathletes using it, marathoners, and people who are hiking, and people who are just using this, for example, for their kids for soccer games and tennis.  I didn’t want to create just a giant fart in a package.  So, that’s why I chose not to use inulin and also not to use IMO.

But, the idea is that, yeah, there are some forms of IMO, it appears cassava is one of them that doesn’t seem to really do much of a number on your blood sugar levels.  And whereas inulin appears to be a little bit more favorable for blood sugar levels, there’s the whole farting issue with inulin which kind of makes me not likely to consume too many bars with inulin in them.  That’s kind of the idea behind using honey, not using IMO, not using inulin, ultimately if you look at your energy bar label and it says inulin, it’s probably still low carb and it’s got a lot of fiber in it, but it’s going to make you fart.  So, that’s your decision.  And then, if it’s got a lot of IMO in it, you need to look at the source of the IMO.  And again, IMO is derived from a whole bunch of different sources these days, but you may just need to go off by n=1 and  pull out a blood glucose monitor and if you have a favorite energy bar that has IMO in it, just see if it affects your blood glucose.  For me, personally, because honey has the ability to lower the glycemic index of a food, doesn’t cause much of an insulin release at all and doesn’t spike blood glucose in me.  The Kion Bar works really well for me and my own blood glucose values.  If you are afraid of honey and you feel as though honey is going to give you fatty liver disease and deleteriously effect your metabolism, maybe you just need to go out and find a different bar.  But, that’s the idea behind the question of inulin versus IMO.  Does that clear things up a little bit?

Brock:  Mhm.  I just wanted to point out that these news flashes were brought to you by Kion’s new fart bar!

Ben:  That’s right.  No, it’s a non-fart bar, dude.

Brock:  I mean non-fart bar!

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.  It’s true.  You can get it over at getkion.com/bar.  Get K-I-O-N.com/bar.

Special Announcements:

Ben:  Well Brock, we already talked about how this podcast is brought to you by a bar that’s going to kill you and ramp your blood sugar levels up through the roof with all that organic honey that it has in it.  So, why don’t we continue to harm people by giving them pure poison cereal?

Brock:  Hooray!

Ben:  This brand new organic coconut flake cereal.  So, have you had this stuff by the way?

Brock:  No, sadly Thrive Market still does not deliver to Canada.  Sons of b****es!

Ben:  Well, you spilled the beans because I was going to say this podcast is sponsored by Thrive Market and one of the things I order from them is this amazing cereal that’s basically organic coconut meat, organic coconut water, and organic palm starch.  It, with a touch of coconut milk or almond milk or hemp milk, tastes absolutely fantastic.  You can sprinkle some nuts in there, some almonds, whatever you’re accustomed to sprinkling on cereal.  What is it up there in Canada?  Rainbow sprinkles?

Brock:  Maple syrup of course.

Ben:  Maple syrup, of course!  So anyways, Thrive Market.  What is Thrive Market?  Well, they’re this online grocery store.  They have over 4,000 different organic products that you can filter by organic or paleo or gluten-free.  You get 50% off of every single item every time you order, any order over I think about 49 bucks always ships for free.  They’ve got an app where you can easily order on the app.  You can order online.  They’ve got a whole bunch of stuff on there like healthy items like this coconut cereal that you can’t freakin’ find on Amazon with better prices on most of the organic stuff than you actually get on Amazon.  I’ve no clue why more people don’t know about Thrive Market, but it’s the best place to go for organic groceries.  They also give, to all of our listeners today, free shipping and a free 30-day trial because it’s one of those things where you buy a membership and that’s how you get all the savings.  And, it’s all over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/thrive.  So, grab yourself some coconut cereal and any other hippiedippie healthy item that you want to throw in there.

Brock:  Right.

Ben:  They’ve also got coconut manna, they’ve got coconut…  They just have a whole store full of poison!

Brock:  Yeah!

Ben:  So, grab everything over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/thrive.

Brock:  If you don’t want to leave your house to get your poison, Thrive Market.

Ben:  That’s right.  Why don’t we just continue down this coconut bandwagon with another thing that I consume frequently that’s got coconut in it?  I didn’t realize how close I am to dying until I really started to think about this, but there is this stuff I have, typically after dinner.  I mix myself up some of this and I actually put some drops of CBD in it and then I blend it.  But it’s turmeric, ginger, reishi, lemon balm, turkey tail which is a mushroom, not the actual tail of a turkey, black pepper which allows you to absorb the turmeric better, acacia fiber, coconut milk, and cinnamon.  And, they put all this stuff together and they call it Golden Milk.  It’s made by this company called Organifi.  Turmeric and reishi infused gold and it’s this gently dried superfood powder, I blend this up, again, I’ll add some CBD to it if I’m drinking it in the evening, this is the ultimate night time beverage.  I also like to have crunchy, chewy things on my tea.  I almost turn my tea into a smoothie.  So I will occasionally sprinkle either cacao nibs or coconut flakes on top of it and it is amazing.

Brock:  It’s like a soup baby.

Ben:  Yeah.  It’s like a soup, kind of, like a chunky soup.  Now it sound disgusting.  No, it’s actually really good.  It’s Organifi Gold and you can get it for 25% off right now.  You go to Organifi, that’s Organifi with an ‘I,’ organifi.com and use code GREENFIELD and you save 20% off of this amazing golden milk.

And then, if the golden milk is too hot for you or if you want a little something to go along with your golden milk, you can actually get a cold pack for your balls.  I’m totally not kidding.

Brock:  I know.  I transcribed the commercial for this… or the ad for this and I was like, what?  But it’s true!

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  It’s a cold pack for your nut sack.

Ben:  It’s a cold pack for your nut sack made by this company called Primal Cold.  It’s based on the idea that when you get your balls cold, you can increase your sperm count, you can increase your testosterone, I don’t know if there are any other benefits besides sperm count and testosterone, but hell, that’s enough for me!  So, if you want to get your balls cold with a special pack designed specifically to cradle your balls and keep them cold, that’s what this jetpack does.  We’re not joking.  You have to see this to believe it.  They make this thing called the jetpack.  It’s Primal Cold and they’re giving everybody who wants to make cold your secret sexual weapon 15% off your order if you want to do cold thermo for your nut sack.  You enter code BEN at primalcold.com, just like it sounds.  The one I’m talking about is called the Jetpack.  I think they sell some other things too for cold thermogenesis, for women for example who just want to use…  I think they have one of these cold packs that you put on your body to increase your adipose tissue to brown fat conversion.  But ultimately…

Brock:  Do you have to put on your tubes?

Ben:  Yeah, the one I want is for the balls.  I have one up in my freezer.  I put it on the other day and it, as advertised, makes your balls cold.  So, there’s that.

Brock:  I’m interested in getting my testosterone up, but I’m not that excited or interested in getting my sperm count up.  So I’m thinking of just putting it on one nut, maybe?

Ben:  You could do a trial.  Just get half and wrap it around one nut and see what happens to one nut versus the other nut.  There’s all sorts of cool experiments you could do with it.  So, check it out!  It is primalcold.com.  15% off called the Jetpack.

Listener Q&A:

Ben:  Brock, by the way, I totally forgot during our News Flashes to mention any upcoming events that people can partake in.  Totally forgot!  And of course, if you’re listening in, you want to go visit the comprehensive show notes where I’ll link to all of the coconut oil, and the low carb diet, and the inulin versus the IMO stuff that we talked about, everything else.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/389.  That’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/389.

Brock and I bust ass on theses show notes so you better go visit it.  But we have over there a bunch of different events that you can go to and one that’s coming up, I’m particularly tickled pink about, is this bio-hacking conference in Toronto where they’re bringing in a whole bunch of researchers and physicians and biohacking experts, which basically means people who stick strange things into their orifices, nostrils, ears, anuses, you name it.  If you want to go and hang out with people who shove laser lights in their holes, then come to this SPARK Biohacking Conference.  It is October 14^th through the 16^th in Toronto, as you say up there, Toronto, Ontario.

Brock:  Toronto.

Ben:  You don’t say the ‘T’ in Ontario though?

Brock:  We do in Ontario, just not in the second “T” in Toronto.

Ben:  That’s weird and now I’m confused.  Anyways though, Toronto.

Brock:  Yeah, we’re a confusing bunch.

Ben:  Toronto, Ontario.  The SPARK Biohacking Conference.  Check that one out.  I’m also going to be speaking in Las Vegas, Nevada at a seminar called Live It To Lead It, which is like a health retreat.  I’m going to be speaking at the World Congress of America Academy of Anti-aging Medicine in December.  Whole bunch of stuff and there are still just a few rooms left, this is planning ahead for those of you who are type A, next June 23^rd through July 7^th, I am bringing a crowd of our listeners on a health retreat in the Swiss Alps in Switzerland, of all places.  And you can come join me in this health retreat where we’ll be doing detoxification, health classes, and amazing organic foods, it’s going to be one of the highlights of the summer for me personally.  And plus, you get to hike in the Swiss Alps every day.  So, that one I’ll put a link to in the show notes.  I think there’s three rooms left, all the rest are sold out.  But if you want to go to Switzerland with me in June, you can get in on that.  I’ll put a link in the show notes: just got to bengreenfieldfitness.com/389.  So, there you have it.

Now can we answer some questions?

Brock:  Yes, please!

Ben:  Alright, here we go.

Shane:  Hey, Ben, it’s Shane from Calgary, Canada.  Just a quick question, just wondering if you know of anything you can take when you go into a float tank?  I’ve had pretty good experiences so far, but I’d love to be able to go deeper.  Thanks, man.

Ben:  You ever been in a float tank, Brock?

Brock:  I sure have!

Ben:  What do you think of them?

Brock:  I wasn’t wowed.  I wasn’t blown away.  It was nice.  It was quiet.

Ben:  I’ve gone through so much as an open water swim competitor and Ironman triathlete, I’ve spent a lot of time staring at the black line of the bottom of a pool and spending a lot of time deep inside my thoughts while swimming for hours in the ocean and I find that when I go into a float tank, I personally, and this is just me, and I have used substances that I’ll talk about here in a little bit in a float tank before.  I haven’t found that it moves the dial much for me.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  And I occasionally have breakthroughs, but when I’m in that float tank in isolation, I have the breakthrough, but I don’t have a notepad or something I can write down that thought with and I think of it, say, ten minutes into my float session.  For the next 50 minutes, all I think about is that thing that I don’t want to forget.

Brock:  Don’t forget the thing.  Don’t forget the thing.  Don’t forget the thing.

Ben:  So then I can’t relax which I why I think I mentioned this before on a podcast that float tanks should install voice recorders inside the float tank so if you come up with something interesting that you want to remember later on you just voice it, you name it, and then it records your float tank session and you can listen to it when you finish your float tank.

Brock:  That’s a good idea.  You could just leave your phone nearby and just be shouting “Hey, Siri! Hey, Siri!”

Ben:  Right.  That would work too, although I want that mp3 recording in my float tank session.

Brock:  My watch just started…  It’s now transcribing what I’m saying because I said “Hey, Siri” several times.  Oh!  Now my phone is doing it.  Oh, jeez!

Ben:  I don’t use Siri.  I don’t use any of those stuff.  Anyways though, so I would love to hear my hallucinations and deep primal screams and everything else that I release while I’m in that float tank.

It was designed though, originally, by this guy, at least from my understanding, this guy named John Lilly.  This was an interesting cat.  You know about John Lilly?

Brock:  Yeah, didn’t he almost die in one?

Ben:  Well, this was back in the 60s.  Back in the 60s, he somehow got funding by NASA to research whether it was possible to teach dolphins how to speak and NASA’s logic was that if we could somehow learn how to communicate with dolphins, we would have a better understanding of how to converse with extra-terrestrials, if they would ever pop down to us for a visit.  So, it’s extremely logical.

Brock:  Totally.

Ben:  Anyways though, he took a house in the Caribbean and he flooded it with water so that the dolphins could live as closely as possible with him and his research team.  And there were even allegations, for example, that they would have sex with the dolphins inside of this flooded home.  Don’t worry, if you’re listening in, float tank experience does not necessarily involve a dolphin making love to you or vice versa.  But anyways, apparently that was one of the things that happened with this whole Lilly thing and he lost funding for the project, but he kept getting into this float tank stuff and he was really into sensory deprivation tanks.  He would not only do sensory deprivation tanks, but he would actually use what would be considered then just recreational drugs.  And, he originally started to do this to see if there was a way to get rid of his headaches, but he wound up shooting up ketamine, even IV ketamine, while he was inside of a sensory deprivation tank along with some other psychedelics such as LSD.  And this was what he did – this was Lilly’s thing, was these isolation float tanks and he was kind of like the Father of Isolation Tanks and also injecting things like ketamine or taking LSD before you get into a float tank.  So, he…

Brock:  And his wife had to save him at one point because the ketamine paralyzed him, I believe, and he was drowning.  So, his wife had to sneak in there and pull him out.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.  That’s something that ketamine can do is sedate you to the point where you feel as though you’re…

Brock:  But he was undeterred.  He continued to research and do it again.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.  Exactly.  And somehow these sensory deprivation tanks have become quite common and floated up again, so to speak, in the United States and in Europe and there are people putting them into their homes now.  But, they’re been around, like I said, since the 60s or even as early as the 50s.  They’ve been used on and off in Europe, for example, since the 70s.  And, what folks aside from John Lilly were doing in terms of psychoanalytic researchers and neuroscientists, was they were using the tank to increase creativity or connection to others, or concentration, or to even bring about some type of a psychedelic experience.

So, the way that it works is these float tanks are filled with water that’s almost the same temperature as the human body.  They put a bunch of Epsom salt in there, usually it comes from magnesium sulfate, and the salts let you float on the water’s surface, the same way you would in the Dead Sea, for anyone who’s ever gone on toured over Israel – same type of feeling.  So you feel really light of body and really peaceful, but you don’t have to tread water or try to stay up.  So even if you’re not in the water, you just feel like you’re laying on this bed of this bed of air that’s the same temperature as your body.  And, the idea is that this is supposed to induce this deep state of relaxation and turn down the body’s fight-or-flight response.  They’ve shown that it may help to lower cortisol levels, it may help to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, and might even help with things like hormone balance or immunity and even normalization of digestive functions, probably because of the gut-brain axis and the fact that when you downregulate the sympathetic nervous system, you get a little bit of a relaxing effect on the gut.  And typically there’s no incoming stimuli, there’s no sensations, you’re in the dark, you’re inside of a tank, typically there’s no music playing and there’s no guided meditation, and you pretty much just are there with your breath in the dark.

It’s an interesting experience, you don’t feel the water on your skin because it’s almost the same as your skin temperature.  It would be very similar to meditation in terms of the way that you feel during, but it kind of steps up a notch as far as the actual sensation.  So, you’re in about ten inches of water, there’s like 1,000 pounds of salt that they’ve dissolve in there…

Brock:  Yes!  Salt?

Ben:  And depending on where you go.  Yeah, it’s like 50 to 150 bucks and you typically float for one to two hours.  You don’t get cold and you don’t get wrinkly, you’re just in there deprived of everything.  So people do this if they’re jetlagged and they do it for burnout and fatigue, they’ll do it for headaches, they’ll do it for mood related disorders, and there is some pretty compelling research behind it actually working for a lot of these reasons that people do it for.  And there are certain things, like I mentioned, that you can take to enhance the experience of a float tank and that kind of gets to Shane’s question.  He wants to go deeper in the float tank.

Well, one thing that a lot of people will use before they get into a float tank, you’d think this would amp you up, but it seems to be able to regulate the mood a little bit, especially if you’re using the correct form, would be some kind of a nootropic or what we would call a smart drug, right.  So, Alpha BRAIN by Onnit is one that you’ll see a lot of people will use.  They’re one called CILTEP by a company called Natural Stacks.  There’s another one by Onnit called New Mood which is a little bit more relaxing.  I’m personally a fan of this one called Qualia, Qualia Mind, which is 40+ different nutrients for the brain that could help you with focus or thought pattern while you are in the tanks.  That would be one.

Another one would be one that I use quite a bit to enhance my parasympathetic nervous system activation via the endocannabinoid system and that’s CBD.  You could use just straight up weed, a lot of people use THC too, although some find that the psychoactivity is kind of uncomfortable in the tank.  But I will take, typically before bed now, about 30 to 50 milligrams of CBD and I sleep like a baby.  I’ve been publishing my sleep scores, I recently put one up on Instagram at instagram.com/bengreenfieldfitness, you could see all my crazy insider stuff.  My sleep has been just through the roof!  All I do is a little bit of CBD and right now a packet of this stuff called Sleep Remedy made by Doc Parsley.  I take that, I sleep like a baby.  If you don’t want to sleep in the float tank, I would say leave out the Sleep Remedy stuff, but just high dose CBD is another one that you can use if you don’t want to dig into the psychedelic realm.

Another couple of things that seem to work really well in a float tank: one would be a form of breath work called box breathing.

Brock:  Mhmm.  That’s what I do too.

Ben:  And there’s a pretty good app, I’ll see if I can hunt it down and put it in the show notes, made by Commander Mark Divine, the Navy Seal Commander Mark Divine.  He’s big in the box breathing.  He’s the guy who taught it to me and he’s got an app, you can technically play the app in there in the float tank although box breathing is very straight forward.  It’s just four count in, four count hold, four count out, four count hold and there are some people, free divers for example or spearfisher people will get themselves up to the point where they’re doing a 20-second in, 20-second hold, 20-second out, 20-second hold.  I go on walks sometimes where I’ll try to do eight steps in, eight steps hold, eight steps out, eight steps hold.  All sorts of things you can do, but essentially it’s like this symmetrical breathing pattern that is in-hold-out-hold.  That one works really well for meditation, also works really well for float tank experience.  So, that’s another one to play around is box breathing.

In terms of tones and sounds, like I mentioned in a typical float tank experience it’s quiet, but you can enhance the experience.  I was talking about my massage, I have this collection of CDs called Wholetones.  It was created by this guy named Michael Tyrrell and these are musical tracks that are recorded at a specific frequency that will induce a pretty intense state of relaxation I’ve found.  I mean, I set that massage table up in between these two speakers and just blast that Wholetones the entire time my massage therapist was working on me.  I’m pretty sure she likes it.  She hasn’t complained yet about the loud music blasting through the room.  But it’s like this very peaceful guitar and piano driven music that I really like and if I were to use a float tank frequently, I’d consider something like that.  You can even get a little underwater MP3 player if you wanted something in your ears while you’re listening to these Wholetones by Michael Tyrrell.  So, I’ll link…

Brock:  He’s been on the podcast before, right?

Ben:  Twice, actually.  Yeah.  He’s an impressive composer and a pretty smart dude.  So yeah, there’s the Wholetones.

And then the last thing, of course, would be what a lot of people go straight to and that would be using either LSD or ketamine in the tank.  And John Lilly, when he did a lot of the research into consciousness and a lot of research into the use of psychedelics in these isolation tanks, he used both.  And, ketamine is a little bit more of… not a downer, but what would be the word, Brock?  It’s a sedative basically?

Brock:  Yup.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Relaxant.

Ben:  Yeah, ketamine has got a lot of interesting chatter around it now.

Brock:  Depressant?

Ben:  It’s not really a depressant, but a lot of people are using ketamine as just a way to relax.  And I’m not necessarily a fan of turning to a drug for sedation versus your own breath or controlling stress in your life or trusting a higher power that things are going to be okay, but ultimately ketamine is something that a lot of people use for anesthesia, the use for pain management, and the use for depression and I have never used ketamine prior to going into a float tank.

I have done a float tank high on weed, I’ve done a float tank on LSD for some of that merging of the left and right hemispheres of the brain and honestly it’s just kind of entertaining. You kind of go into this isolated kaleidoscope experience.  I have not used mushrooms before, although that would be another one especially if the water is not too called or too hot and really is truly the temperature of your body because mushrooms will enhance your sensory perception and can make you uncomfortable if you’re in cold water or hot water.  That would be one I haven’t used either, but I have use LSD in a float tank and I have been high in a float tank and both were interesting experiences, but, like I mentioned, they didn’t really move the dial much for me.  One just felt like being high and laying on my back in my backyard.  The other felt like just sitting inside a kalei]]>

[0:23:05] Strike Against Strict Carnivore Diet

[0:26:12] Research on The Consumption of Vegetable Oils

[0:31:23] Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?

[0:36:15] Special Announcements

[0:42:38] Ben’s Adventures

[0:44:29] Listener Q&A: How to Maintain Focus During Long Workouts

[0:56:56] Does Cholesterol Go Up on A Ketogenic Diet (& Is That Bad?)

[1:10:20] Is Testosterone Bad for Your Prostate

[1:13:53] Giveaways & Goodies

[1:16:30] Closing the Podcast

[1:17:21] End of Podcast

Ben:   In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, does cholesterol go up on a ketogenic diet? How to maintain your focus during long workouts? Is testosterone bad for your prostate? The latest on NAD, quercetin, and a whole lot more.

I have a master’s degree in physiology, biomechanics, and human nutrition. I’ve spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet, from SEALFIT Kokoro, Spartan Agoge, and The World’s Toughest Mudder, do 13 Ironman Triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science, search the globe for the world’s top experts in performance, fat loss, recovery, gut hormones, brain, beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

Well, Brock, it’s been a little while since we’ve had an official Q&A episode with me and you. We have a whole lot of new listeners. So, you, I will clarify my, podcast sidekick, Brock, who joins me for these Q&A sessions.

Brock:  Hey, everybody. You’re new folks, anyway. Hey.

Ben:   That’s the rollicking sound of Brock’s Canadian voice.

Brock:  Good day.

Ben:   Since our last Q&A episode session have transformed myself into a toga-donning Jesus sandal-wearing meditative yoga-[00:01:44] ______.

Brock:  You have. Do tell.

Ben:   Yes, I actually discovered a new form of meditation.

Brock:  You discovered it?

Ben:   Yes, I discovered it. I’ve actually F’ed around with a whole lot of different forms of meditation. I’ve taken Transcendental Meditation.

Brock:  That’s the one you do on your teeth, right? Transcendental.

Ben:   I don’t get it. Explain that joke.

Brock:  It’s such a dead joke, yes. That’s the worst dead joke.

Ben:   Oh, dental. Oh, my gosh. I’m slow on the uptake.

Brock:  Sorry, folks.

Ben:   Yes, transcendental, toyed around with all these light sound devices like the BrainTap and the DAVID Delight Mind Alive. I’m trying this new calm thing now, where you tie technology into your meditation, which I’m trying to determine whether or not actually like. I’ve done mindfulness meditation and Native American sit spots and some of that neurofeedback stuff with the Peak Brain Institute down in LA.

Brock:  I like that stuff.

Ben:   – which is similar to the 40 years of Zen that a lot of people talk about or the Biocybernaut training, which is the other version of that. What I like is this new form of meditation based on a really fantastic book I read called, “Mind to Matter,” which was written by this fellow named Dawson Church, and also a guy named Joe Dispenza. I’ll put a link to that book in the shownotes. The shownotes are at–where are the shownotes, Brock?

Brock:  They’re at bengreenfieldfitness.com/394.

Ben:   394, okay. Thanks. The book is called, “Mind to Matter.” Fantastic book about how our emotions affect our biology but really not presented in that woo of a manner. They’re actually drawing upon scientific research to show that our brain waves can affect things like epigenetic expression or our emotions can affect things like the activity of the immune system. We certainly know this to be true, but the book ties in a lot of the good research. In the book, couched within the pages, I found this fantastic form of meditation called EcoMeditation. They’ve looked at this for producing different endorphins and neurotransmitters like serotonin and oxytocin. What I like about it is I’m a huge fan of the shotgun formula. I like this idea of tapping or EFT, even though a lot of people think it’s a little bit fringe and not proven by science. I get something out of it. Actually, I’ve interviewed Nick. What’s his name, Nick Ortner?

Brock:  Yes.

Ben:   I think his name is, who developed this form of tapping or EFT. I also am a fan of just pure mindfulness meditation. Then, there’s also this research done by the HeartMath Institute that looks into directly controlling your heart rate variability by breathing and directing motions of love and gratitude and peace into your heart, into your heart center. That company, HeartMath, even trains you how to affect those around you with your brain’s electrical signals and your heart’s electrical signals, based on research like how, when a jockey walks into a horse stable, the heart rate variability or the heart rate signals of the jockey and the horse align. You see this in couples who are in love, et cetera. This form of meditation called EcoMeditation, you do all these during the session. You’ve got the tapping, you do the coherence, you have the gratitude, you have just the mindfulness-based meditation. It works in breathwork, of course, which is another really, really good skill to add to your skills repertoire. You got num-chuck skills. You’ve got, what else do we get from the Napoleon Dynamite and his num-chuck skills?

Brock:  Dancing in the moon.

Ben:   Dancing skills. Then, breathing skills and meditation skills. If you want to up your skills, this thing’s called EcoMeditation. I found a place where you could download the whole 21-minute meditation for free. Hopefully, we don’t crash their servers by announcing this, but I found the free downloadable audio version. I’ll link to it in the shownotes. I’ve just been sitting, either in the mornings, at which time it seems to give you a lot of energy for the rest of the day; and also, in the evenings, at which time it seems to really enhance my sleep quality, even my deep sleep quality, which is a nut that a lot of people try to crack when it comes to their deep sleep. This thing seems to cover the bases.

I know there’s a lot of different ways to meditate. I know there’s eight billion different meditation apps out there, but just the ability to be able to download a simple clunky mp3 and put it on my mp3 player and have no other distractions or apps to toy around with, I just sit there and do this 21-minute form of EcoMeditation. I’ve done it eight times now in the past month, and I really like it. Actually, I like it so much I’m doing it with my children, with my twin boys. This Sunday, I’m going to teach it to them. It’s on my calendar to teach it to them this Sunday because I like it so much. I’d like to pass it on to my young ones, so that it could become a part of the Greenfield legacy, perhaps.

Brock:  Perhaps, maybe you can white label it. Can you do that with meditation?

Ben:   Yes. Are you meditating a lot?

Brock:  Yes, I always do that. I haven’t actually bought into any particular brand of meditation, because I have it in mind that you can’t really do it wrong as long as you’re quieting your mind and spending some time without distractions.

Ben:   I could think of ways to do it wrong, like with a toaster and a bathtub, for example.

Brock:  That’s just doing life wrong, really.

Ben:   It could be a wrong way to meditate. Yes, that’s doing life wrong.

Brock:  You’ve got a lot more problems than that, just not good meditation practice at that point. Yes, I definitely do meditation pretty much every day.

Ben:   Let’s do life wrong a little bit and delve into a whole bunch of science and see how much we can confuse people

This is the part of the show where I take a deep dive into a few of the more interesting or compelling items of science or news or research, that I think that all of you listening will find interesting. These are all the things I tend to tweet during the week. You can think of my Twitter account, which you can get at twitter.com/BenGreenfield, is like a portal for all of all the interesting studies that I come across.

Brock:  It’s almost like an aggregate, an aggregator.

Ben:   An aggregate, yes. Thank you. I rely upon Brock for the polysyllabism in this podcast. I’m an aggregate. One of the first things that I found was this idea of a specific molecule that I’ve been seeing pop up over and over again in the research on anti-aging and longevity. We know about NAD, right? Everybody is rushing out to get their NAD IV’s and their NAD injections and their NAD lip jobs and boob jobs and whatever else you can do with this molecule.

Brock:  What does it stand for, again? I think it’s nimorides. No?

Ben:   What did you say? My turn to get polysyllabic. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. You’ve got companies like Thorne. They’ve got NiaCel or Tru Niagen or Elysium by Basis. There’s a lot of companies now using forms of NR NAD. Then, there are a lot of physicians now, of course, administering NAD IV’s for those who would want to enhance their mitochondrial health, or their overall longevity as a whole, based on the fact that NAD is a crucial part of the mitochondria’s electron transport chain. This study, it was titled, “The Flavonoid apigenin is an inhibitor of NAD+ase CD38.”

Brock:  Snappy.

Ben:   I realized it’s a mouthful, but yes, snappy. What NAD+ase is that’s something that would cause more accelerated breakdown of NAD. If you could somehow inhibit that protein CD38, then you would allow yourself to have higher levels of just your own endogenous NAD. What they found was that a couple of interesting molecules actually did a very good job inhibiting NAD+ase. I like this idea because the two molecules that they looked at also have a host of other protective antioxidant mechanisms in the human body. One, in particular, quercetin, is one that I’ve been studying up on lately. It’s one of those antioxidant or anti-inflammatory molecules that seems to hydrogen-rich water or green tea polyphenols induce this protective antioxidant activity without necessarily blunting hormesis, without blunting your body’s ability to, say, be able to build new mitochondria or lay down new muscle fibers in response to a workout. This is an antioxidant you could take post-workout. It seems to act out a lot of different anti-aging pathways.

Quercetin, which in most studies is supplemented in a dose of about 500 to 1,000 milligrams, not a lot more than that. It actually might cause a little bit of damage. I don’t have time to get into that right now, but I’ve got a physician coming on the show in a few weeks to talk about anti-aging and quercetin and some of these other molecules and where the law of diminishing returns or damage might actually come in, especially with a lot of these antioxidants like resveratrol and quercetin. There’s another very popular one called pterostilbene. Anyways, quercetin at about 500 milligrams to 1,000 milligrams seems to induce a lot of benefits, including this ability to be able to regulate mitochondrial NAD levels, and also what’s called sirtuin activity. Sirtuins are what you get from dark chocolate, and blueberries, and red wine, and all these dark purply blue and dark red foods that we’d find in nature. Quercetin is one that has some really good action. The other one that they looked at in this study was apigenin. Have you ever heard of apigenin?

Brock:  No.

Ben:   It’s a color compound. It naturally occurs in plants. You find it in things like parsley, in high amounts of parsley, chamomile tea, sprouts like green sprouts, those are really high in apigenin. Onions have a decent amount of apigenin. Apigenin also has a lot of good research behind it for decreasing inflammation, for having a little bit of a neuroprotective effect. It might lower cortisol. I’m not convinced that it’s one that would need to be supplemented with, as opposed to just eating a lot more plants and some of these, like doing something like green sprouts every day with your salad, or having a cup of chamomile tea, or along with the green sprouts on your salad, using a good dose of parsley. Anyways, apigenin and quercetin seem to really act on these NAD pathways quite effectively, which is good news for anybody who’s looking into anti-aging molecules, or who perhaps is very interested in this whole infatuation with NAD but wants to take the most natural route possible. It was a cool study, a relatively new one. I do not, by the way, at this point in my life, supplement with quercetin, but I am very interested in beginning to do so, based on some of this research that I’m now seeing on it, as well as the research study that I’m about to get into. Thorne, actually, has a decent brand of quercetin that I’ll link to in the shownotes, but I’m on the cusp of ordering that beginning to add quercetin into my anti-aging protocol. It’s just something I take on a daily basis, or at least cycle in throughout the year.

Brock:  The supplementation would either way to go because you’d have to eat it a ridiculous amount of parsley when you want to get the dosage that’s efficacious.

Ben:   That’s apigenin. That’s apigenin. It’s the one that you’d get from the parsley and everything else. Quercetin, you would find in apples, onions, red wine has some. Green tea is a decent source of quercetin as well, and then berries. Berries are very good. One thing that flies under the radar, but it’s a lesser-known tea called buckwheat tea. That actually has a lot of quercetin in it as well. Do not worry, it says wheat, but that’s not like you’re drinking gluten. Buckwheat tea, I believe is relatively gluten-free.

Brock:  [00:14:53] ______.

Ben:   For those of you who are orthorexically afraid of gluten. Anyways, buckwheat tea is another one. Quercetin is not in extremely high amounts in terms of the dosages they would use in these studies in some of those compounds. It’s one that, if you’re looking for the full-on anti-aging and longevity effect, you’d supplement with. It’s silly to eat plants. Geez. Who needs plants in this era of capsules and powders as pills?

Brock:  It’s true. No, it’s not.

Ben:   I like both. I like to eat my whole foods, but then, also, for the stuff that you need a little bit of extra for better living through science, you throw some of those into the mix. There’s other study on quercetin, that I’ll also link to in the shownotes, looked at the effects of quercetin on eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage.

Brock:  Yes, this eccentric.

Ben:   Yes. That’s the type of muscle damage that would, of course, result in soreness. In this study, they used about 1,000 milligrams a day and compared it to a placebo in a randomized double-blind crossover control study. What they found was that just a couple weeks of quercetin supplementation seemed to kick in and be able to significantly attenuate the muscle weakness that you get after a workout, particularly the muscle weakness caused by eccentric muscle damage. In Sports Sciences, this is called myofibrillar disruption.

Also, there’s impairment of what’s called your sarcolemmal action. All you need to think about this is when you’ve worked out hard, when you’ve lifted weights, the next day, let’s say you’re going to go play basketball or tennis, or you’re going to go roll and do some jiu-jitsu, or you’ve got some other sport that you’re going to compete in, and it almost feels as though you’re not able to move, from a biomechanical standpoint as effectively. Well, a lot of that is due to that muscle damage and that myofibrillar disruption and due to the sarcolemmal damage, some of the inability to be able to get your nervous system to call upon muscles in the way that they’re supposed to, it appears that quercetin protects you from a lot of these issues. But like I mentioned when I was talking about that other study, it doesn’t if you were to take it post-workout, seemed to inhibit your ability to be able to build new mitochondria or to build new muscle in response to that workout. I would say that, as part of an anti-aging protocol or as part of a post-workout soreness protocol, somewhere in the range of 500 to 1,000 milligrams of quercetin seems to be a really cool strategy.

Again, this might not be something you do every day, but let’s say you’re doing a weight training workout, two or three times a week you could add in your post-workout supplement stack something like quercetin. So, there you have it. quercetin, by the way, for those of you who haven’t heard of this before and don’t know it, it’s Q-U-E-R-C-E-T-I-N. That’s quercetin. Then, that other one that I mentioned, apigenin, that’s A-P-I-G-E-N-I-N. I thought those are some pretty interesting takeaways. I’m seeing more come out about quercetin these days. The book, by the way, that I mentioned and the doc I’m going to get on the show is “The Kaufman Protocol.” Why we age and how to stop it. If you guys want to delve into that book, I don’t recommend you buy the Kindle version. I bought the Kindle version and the way that it’s packaged is like, for some reason the Kindle version looks like a very hard to read PDF on your Kindle device. So, buy the actual real paperback version if you’re going to get it. That book is very interesting and also discusses quercetin. That’s “The Kaufman Protocol.”

Brock:  Just because I know there’s going to be some very smart folks out there, they want to give this a try, it looks like in the study they took the quercetin after the workout at breakfast, and then another dose of it 12 hours later. If any [00:18:55] ______ to try.

Ben:   Two 500 milligram doses. Yes, exactly.

Brock:  I know people are going to be clamoring to give it a shot, so there you go.

Ben:   While we’re talking about plants, this is another interesting one that Dr. David Perlmutter was recently discussing. I looked up the study and it’s very interesting. This one is about exosomes. Now, I have gotten some publicity for exosomes, because I’ve had them injected into all the different joints of my body and my face and infused into my bloodstream because it’s a cell- signaling molecule that, especially, when co-administered with stem cells essentially upgrade your stem cells. It enhances their ability to be able to communicate with other cells or to travel throughout the body.

One of the more popular forms of exosomes is produced by this company called Kimera Labs. A lot of doctors will use that form of exosomes as an anti-aging protocol and also as a joint repair protocol. This study looked at the gut microbiota, and particularly the intake of wild plant matter. Things like parsley, or cilantro, or thyme, or rosemary, or nettle, or mint would all be very good examples of the type of plants that could do this. These plants contain exosomes, or what are called exosome-like nanoparticles. These get taken up by your gut microbiota and they actually contain RNA that alters your own physiology, meaning that you can think of this as if you’re almost eating your own exosomes because these things serve as cell-signaling molecules. Very similar to this idea of getting exosomes from something like Kimera Labs, inject in your bloodstream or used in the joint.

Again, I’m not saying this would replace something like a stem cell protocol or an anti-aging injection protocol. But again, in combination with something like that, it could be a very, very good way, not only to influence the health of the gut. Because we know that these wild plants can induce what’s called Zeno hormesis, which makes your cells stronger and can allow your gut to repair in a very robust manner, especially when they’re not overdone. Not like boatloads of kale, but used as a condiment in your foods, in your salads, with your cooking with your meat, et cetera. It’s based on this concept of microRNAs. Now, I have a whole section on microRNAs in the new book that I’m working on because they’re very interesting. MicroRNAs can actually influence your emotions, your character development, the expression of certain genes. It appears that they’re also transmitted via saliva, via breath, via urine. There’re even some hypotheses that when you look at a married couple who have been married a long time and you look at a sequence of photographs from their early days of marriage to their later days of marriage, and it looks like they’re looking more the same. The couple, the husband and the wife developed some similar facial characteristics and physical characteristics. Some of that might be due to the exchange of microRNA and saliva when they’re kissing, or the exchange of microRNA in the breath when they’re living together.

If you’re listening in and you haven’t looked into microRNA and you find this stuff fascinating, just Google microRNA, because it’s very cool what these things are capable of. It appears that the consumption of wild plants is a very good way to introduce them into the gut.

One last thing I should mention for this study is the main one that they used in this study was ginger. Ginger, which you could consider to be another wild plant extract or root extract. That’s the deal with eating plants. It actually influences your microRNA, which could influence your genome, which could give you more exosomes, and which can influence your gut microbiota.

Brock:  Score another one for a wild-plant matter.

Ben:   Another one for salads, another strike against a strict carnivore diet, I suppose.

Brock:  Yes. Oops. Sorry, folks.

Ben:   Yes, I caught a lot of flack on that Joe Rogan Episode I was on for talking about the carnivore diet and some of its potential failings. I stand by most of my words. I think I mentioned that it was lazy, and I should have said that it was just excessively restriction.

Brock:  It’s reductionist.

Ben:   It’s not lazy. Yes, it’s very reductionist. I think, if you were to do a carnivore diet, just at least have some green sprouts and a few little wild plant extracts, and some rosemary and thyme, along with those ribeye steaks, and you’ll fill in a few of those bases.

Brock:  Anything that’s so restrictive. It doesn’t even stand reason that that would be the best way for us to eat.

Ben:   Yes, exactly.

Brock:  Just millions of years on this planet. We’re built to be omnivores.

Ben:   Yes. I guess, one other thing I should say about the carnivore diet is one of the things that is very interesting is a lot of people will say, the Inuits and several Native American tribes, and the Maasai tribes in Africa. They eat a strict carnivore diet, but when you look at the Maasai, or the Samburu, or any of these tribes from East Africa, yes, they eat meat and blood as a primary component of their diet. But, when you look at a lot of their warriors and their young men, they’re also eating herbs and tree barks. A lot of the women and the older men, they eat a significant amount of fruit, and tubers, and raw honey. You look at the Inuit, and yes, they’re eating walrus, and whale meat, and seal, and fish but they also are foraging wild berries and sea vegetables, and even fermenting many of these plant foods to preserve them for when they might not be able to hunt them down or when they’re not growing. Or, you look at these Native American tribes, like the Sioux tribes, they would eat buffalo meat but while they’re foraging the buffalo meat, they’re eating wild fruit, and nuts, and seeds as there tracking down these buffalo herds. The nomadic tribes in Mongolia are another tribe where they’re often called out as a tribe that’s carnivorous, but they’re also eating dairy, which is important for the vitamin K and the vitamin A, that you might not get high amounts of on a carnivore diet. They’re also eating wild onions, and garlic, and tubers, and roots, and seeds, and berries. Even these populations that are identified as supposedly carnivorous ancestral populations, they’re also eating plants, and tubers, and honey, and leafy greens. I agree, Brock, there’s just not a whole lot of evidence of long livid, not just long livid carnivorous populations, but long livid strict vegan populations, or long livid keto populations, right? Any of these reductionistic, dogmatic diets, don’t seem to manifest themselves in terms of populations who followed those diets and been around for really long time.

Brock:  [00:26:08] ______.

Ben:   Yes, it is good for zoning diet.

Brock:  It really is.

Ben:   There was also a really cool article that I’ve read on a blog. It dug into some of the epidemiological research on the consumption of vegetable oils. This one, the takeaway from this, ultimately, is if you are eating a high intake of PUFAs, polyunsaturated vegetable oil, especially processed rancid vegetable oil, and going out into the sun, you are actually increasing your risk for damage from UVA and, to a lesser extent, UVB radiation. They dug into a whole bunch of different studies on different populations and skin cancers and in the use of PUFAs. In particular, one fascinating takeaway was from New Zealand sailors. What they found was that as margarine and vegetable oils began to replace things like butter and coconut oil, and even lard, and beef, and lamb drippings, and a lot of these more ancestral fats, there was a significant increase, these soldiers who were spent a long time in the sun, in skin cancer and melanoma development.

Then, this article goes on to identify a lot of the skin repair mechanisms that are inhibited by a high-PUFA diet, and also the increase in radiation damage that can occur when you have a lot of these oxidized oils in your body. The worst thing you could do is go eat French fries or fried chicken or even battered fish on the beach, and then go out in the sun. It’s actually horrible for your skin versus eating butter, or cheese, or full-fat yogurt, or fatty fish, or a good avocado oil– based mayonnaise, or lard, or ghee, or any of these more very natural forms of highly stable fats that are often somewhat solid at room temperature. They have a protective mechanism for the skin, whereas these PUFAs seem to actually spell Bad News Bears, especially if you’re going to be out in the sunshine.

Brock:  I’m just thinking, what if you rub that piece of fish and chips on your skin instead of ingesting?

Ben:   I think it would make it even worse because then you’ve got oxidized oil on your skin, which is the amount that the skin is a delivery mechanism from any drugs and pharmaceuticals and supplements. So, probably not a good idea. Whereas we know that a lot of these more stable fats are not only protective but there are other things that you can do, especially from an antioxidant standpoint. It’s the same idea of returning to the ribeye steak. Cook your ribeye steak with rosemary and thyme, or cayenne pepper, turmeric, or a lot of these protective antioxidants that reduce the form of carcinogens in the meat. Do the same for your body when you’re heating it up. Don’t just make sure you’ve got lots of good healthy fats coming in, but also try to consume a lot of natural antioxidants. Not only things like I was talking about before, quercetin or some of these apigenin-rich plants. Another one is astaxanthin. Astaxanthin is what fish consume, primarily from, I believe they’re getting astaxanthin–

Brock:  From algae.

Ben:   What’s that? Yes, it’s found in algae but there’s, it’s like this pink, red colored substance. It’s technically a carotenoid, but I think it’s krill. That is another thing that fish eat that contains astaxanthin. Algae is another. Then, shellfish have a lot of astaxanthin. A good fish oil will be packaged with astaxanthin. There are companies, there’s one in Hawaii, and I used to consume. I think it was somewhere in the range of 10 milligrams of astaxanthin prior to my Ironman Hawaii competitions because they always used to have this stuff at the expo down in Kona. Once I started doing that, my skin was not as burnt after 10 hours out in the Hawaiian sun. Astaxanthin, of all the different forms of almost edible sunscreen, is probably the highest, in terms of something you could consume along with really good fats to offer you protection against the sun. Then, the other thing that I would also recommend is anytime you’re consuming fish oil, I would consider a really good antioxidant, not just vitamin E or vitamin C, but something more natural like astaxanthin along with the fish oil. I’ll link to that article also over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/394 along with one other about sunscreen. Did you see this outside magazine article on sunscreen being the new margarine?

Brock:  Yes, or the new cigarettes. There was a line in there that I thought was really–let’s see if I can find it.

Ben:   What the study gets into is, it starts off with vitamin D and how vitamin D supplementation is something that seems to have failed in a lot of clinical trials. Part of that might be due to folks like me who have genetic issues that don’t allow us to get as much vitamin D from sunlight as we can. Some of them might be due to the fact that vitamin D supplementation is often something that’s done in the absence of all the other fat-soluble vitamins like A, and E, and K that can allow the vitamin D to become more bioavailable. Then, part of it too is, likely, due to the excess use of sunscreen when people are getting out in the sun. This article goes into some very interesting long-term studies that look into the effects of sunlight on lowering blood pressure, reducing all cause risk of mortality, reducing the risk of prostate, breast, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers. Sunlight improving virtually every mental condition you can think of. Reducing inflammation, dampening autoimmune responses, and how slathering sunscreen on your skin not only keeps a lot of those mechanisms from happening, but there’s actually a lot of evidence now that people who use sunscreen every time they go out in the sun can have a significantly increased risk of skin cancer. That’s probably due to all of these oxybenzones in the sunscreen which can mutate the DNA when applied to the skin. A lot of the other endocrine disruptors, the phytoestrogens that are found in a lot of these sunscreens.

I’ve always stood by the idea of using sunscreen as minimally as possible, using something astaxanthin before you go out in the sun for long periods of time. Then, just educating yourself on natural forms of sunscreen that you can use. There’s some really good information on the website for the environment, the working group over at ewg.org. They have some great sunscreen articles on there and a lot of data about the nanoparticles and the hormone-disrupting elements in sunscreen. What I like even more is they’ve identified a host of actual healthy sunscreens. Do you know how many sunscreens are out there that actually meet EWG’s criteria that aren’t slathering a bunch of chemicals on your skin, that off you some amount of skin or protection from excess UVA and UVB damage but that don’t cause you all the issues with the average sunscreen that you’d grab from the grocery store?

Brock:  Actually, there’s more than there was maybe two or three years ago, but still not very many, I’m guessing.

Ben:   No, there’s actually a lot.

Brock:  How is that?

Ben:   There are 243 different products, from Tom’s of Maine to Suntribe, to Badger. All these companies now. There’s a lot. Just freaking go. I’ll link to the environment the working groups list. There is absolutely no excuse that you should not be using natural sunscreen. By the way, I don’t know why we’re talking about this in the middle of the winter.

Brock:  I am going to a vacation in two weeks, so I could use this.

Ben:   Anyway, I’ll be going to Hawaii in a few weeks as well to hunt. Again, I don’t use sunscreen. I do use natural plant-based antioxidants. Then, if I am going to do something dumb and just put on my Speedo and go spearfish for three hours, or back in the day do an Ironman Triathlon, I’ll use a sunscreen, but I’ll either use something like coconut oil which has a natural SPF, I think of around 6, something like that. Or else, I’ll just use one of these natural sunscreens that would meet EWG’s criteria you can get from the website. We used to make our own, but it’s a pain in the ass. Honestly, you got to do it. You got to cook, and you got to get yourselves a zinc oxide, titanium oxide, and coconut oil, and all these other elements. It’s almost just as easy to buy. As cool as it feels going all hippie-dippy and making sunscreen in your kitchen, honestly, it’s easier to buy.

Brock:  Right next to your kombucha and your yoghurt station.

Ben:   Yes, exactly. Too much. Anyways, I hope that’s helpful for folks. What I’ll do is, in the shownotes if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/394, for everything discussed in today’s News Flashes, I’ll give you, guys, links to that, like that EcoMeditation podcast and some of these books, some of the quercetin I talked about and some other things that’ll be helpful for you. You’ll find those in the newsflashes section near the top of the shownotes.

Brock, I can’t keep quiet about this. Have you tried the berry aminos yet?

Brock:  Ah, the Kion Aminos that tastes like delicious, what is it, blueberry and raspberry?

Ben:   Yes, they’re good. They’re really good. They’re like eating crack cocaine if one could eat that.

Brock:  That’s not a good comparison.

Ben:   Yeah. Essential amino acids, as I think many people listen to this podcast for a while now, are one of the most potent shots in the arm you can use before workout. Or if you’re fasting and you don’t want to lose muscle, or if you need some extra neurotransmitters to help you sleep, or if you want something that’s about it’s nearly 200% more effective than collagen due to the fact that collagen only contains about 50% of the amino acids that you’d need. Whereas, this contains all of them. Over at Kion, we just launched, we already had a Cool Lime powdered version. We’ve got the berry version now.

If you slam 5 to 10 grams of that pre-workout, especially pre-fasted workout, it is absolutely amazing. If you’re injured and you take around 40 grams a day during an injury, you heal up so much faster. We have a big special going on right now because it just launched. You just go to getkion.com. That’s getk-i-o-n.com, and the code you can use on the new berry aminos is BGF10. That’s actually a 10% off site-wide discount. BGF10 for the Kion Aminos absolutely amazing, that new berry flavor. I cannot recommend it highly enough, so that each and every podcast episode is brought to you by Kion. I’m especially excited about this new berry flavor. They’re flying off the shelves right now because people just love these things. What do they say, flapjacks? Line off the shelves like flapjacks.

Brock:  Like flapjacks, yes, I think.

Ben:   The same goes. Anyways, check that out a getkion.com. Your code is BGF10. Then, this podcast is also brought to you by my friends at Clearlight Infrared Saunas. Someone just this morning brought to my attention a brand-new study that came out that showed that one of the key mechanisms for increasing testosterone, increasing, particularly the activity of the Leydig cells in the testes is how much brain-derived neurotrophic factor that you have available. BDNF is something that can be increased by learning new things, by mentally stimulating yourself. It appears that aerobic exercise, or even just doing a regular walk every day can increase BDNF. But heat is a very potent way to boost BDNF. Now, there’s a direct link between that and a significant up-regulation of testosterone production, which is cool news for guys or girls who want to balance their hormones. But based on that and based on all the detoxification studies that are coming out about saunas, since your skin is your largest detox organ, the fact that if you do it post-workout, which is a lot of times and I’ll hit the sauna, it produces red blood cells in a very similar manner like EPO use, like illegal blood performance doping.

There are hosts of reasons for you to consider the use of a sauna. The folks at Clearlight have one of the only infrared saunas out there that don’t microwave you and produce a bunch of EMFs while you’re in it. They have a big one called The Sanctuary that I own. It’s in my basement that I’ll go in there and do everything from yoga to kettlebell swings inside of. If you want to sweat like I do, you just go to healwithheat.com and use code BEN GREENFIELD. That gives you $500 off. They also throw in some free goodies with your purchase. That one’s healwithheat.com. Clearlight saunas. You use code BEN GREENFIELD to get your sweat on.

Then, finally, this podcast is brought to you by something I mentioned earlier, hydrogen-rich water. A lot of people ask me how I consume hydrogen-rich water. It’s very simple. I do a big glass Mason jar in the morning, big glass Mason jar in the evening. There’re over 1,100 different peer-reviewed studies on the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant and therapeutic benefits of hydrogen-rich water, very similar to the exosomes I was talking about earlier. The hydrogen can act as a cell signaling molecule. It improves mitochondrial function, very similar to quercetin. Like I was talking about, it’s something you can drink after work out or before work out to control inflammation without blunting your response to the actual work out.

Brock:  That’s my favorite part. You can actually get [00:41:11] ______ without blunting all your hard work.

Ben:   It seems to respond best to a dual pulsing. You take some in the morning and then some in the late afternoon or the evening. It’s called hydrogen-rich water. I travel with the tablets. Then, I also have, just basically, it’s like a collagen or like [00:41:31] ______ of water.

Brock:  Like a Brita. It sits on your counter.

Ben:   Yes, it’s on my counter. I just pull the tap and I just take a big dose of it in the morning and dose in the evening. If you want one of these water systems like I have, or if you want the water tablets, the company that I go for all my hydrogen-rich water stuff is Trusii . They’re a sponsor of today’s show as well. The Trusii is T-R-U-S-I-I. If you go to trusiih2. It’s like hydrogen. trusiih2.com/ben, that gives you 30% off of their stuff. It’s trusiih2.com/ben. Then, if you enter code BEN, that actually gives you an additional 10% off. There’s a lot of savings on the Trusii stuff if you use our code. I’ll put this in the shownotes as well. If you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/394 if you can’t keep track of all this. I’ll put links to all of our sponsors in the show, but I do highly recommend the Trusii water system and also traveling with their tablets. Check that out.

Then, the only other things are there’s a lot of stuff going on the calendar. My next stop is I’m headed down to LA, again, LA area, for this event called Cal Jam. We’re also be doing some podcasts including the Adam Carolla Show, which should be an interesting one. I haven’t chatted with that cat before.

Brock:  His podcast, Ben, is super cool. You’re going to love it.

Ben:   Really? You’ve been in his studios?

Brock:  Yes, there’s racecars in the back. It’s like going into an old-style garage. Then, there’s a studio [00:43:10] ______.

Ben:   I have been to those studios because I was on the Dr. Drew Show. They record out of the Adam Carolla Studios. Probably, not as cool as a Joe Rogan studio.

Brock:  I haven’t been there.

Ben:   He’s studio is pretty sick. He’s got archery and a whole gym outfitted with a ton of rogue fitness stuff, and like a car shop with Porsche.

Brock:  When are we going to get our cools in podcasting studio like that? Come on.

Ben:   Right now, we’re still stuck in our bedrooms, but let’s see. Maybe someday. Anyways, though, I will put a link to all the different places I’ll be. Next up is California for Cal Jam, which is a really cool event that’s like a blend between a rock concert and a bunch of nutritionists and chiropractic docs and fitness gurus, et cetera. Kind of listening to lectures and listening to rock concerts, and have amazing parties at night. That one’s called Cal Jam.

Then, I’ll also be headed down to the FitCon Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah. If you want to get in on that, I’ll be there as well. Kion will have a booth there. I’ll put a link to all the different places I’ll be gallivanting to across the globe if you want to come see me over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar. That’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar. What do you think, Brock? Jump into some Q&A?

Brock:  Bring it on.

Tom:  Hi, Ben. My name is Tom. I’m 45-year-old adult from England. In May, I’ll be taking part in a 264-mile ultra marathon in Wales, called Cake or Death. I’ll probably be doing this without a support crew. I wondered if you could have recommend anything to help me combat the inevitable cognitive decline that occurs in events of this length. There are sleep stations around 80, 140, and 200 and I will be looking to take advantage of these. Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.

Ben:   What I think is, probably, the toughest part about this ultra marathon that Tom is doing, is the fact that there are opportunities to sleep because the hardest thing about doing any of these events is sleeping and then somehow forcing yourself to wake up and keep going.

Brock:  You just have to just not even think about it. Just get up and go or just don’t sleep.

Ben:   No. When I’ve done some of these three, or four, or five date events, I didn’t sleep. I just couldn’t and I didn’t want to because I didn’t want to just down regulate my amped up nervous system. I just wouldn’t sleep. Even that Spartan Agoge, where we had opportunities with our sleeping bags and our biddies, I didn’t sleep. I just stayed up, tended the fire. I’ve always found that for these longer events if I sleep, the same thing I get World’s Toughest Mudder. I decided to crawl into the tent for a quick catnap at mile 45, and I was cold, I fell asleep, curled up next to my wife who was crewing for me in our tent. I think I crawled in there 2 a.m. I woke up at 4 a.m. and I was like, “Screw that.” I did go back out there, but I think I did 14 more miles. That was it.

Brock:  That would zap you.

Ben:   Just zapped after you sleep. Careful with that sleep. I know you plan to take advantage of them, but I would tell you to just push through and sleep at the end. Anyway, the cognitive decline. You’ve got a while to train for this between now and May. There are some cool tricks that you can use. I would start by training your mind like you would train a muscle. This is very useful for anybody listening, not even folks who are just going to do a crazy ultramarathon in Wales, but anybody who wants to improve their focus, their attention span, reduce symptoms of things like ADD or ADHD.

There’re some very cool tricks that you can use. One would be something that we’ve already alluded to, and that would be begin meditating. They’ve done studies, one very interesting study that involved an eight-week course of meditation, where after eight weeks, and this was decent in size, they had 140, 150 folks in this study, they saw a measurable very significant improvement in attention span after just 10 to 20 minutes of meditation performed over the course of eight weeks. I would, as much of a disconnect that seems to be between going on running a marathon and meditating, I think that meditating is a very good tactic, especially for endurance athletes and focus and attention span.

Another one is memorization. They’ve shown that brain training games can boost attention levels. When you play things like Lumosity, Your Brainscape, or things like that, all they seem to boost your attention levels for those actual games themselves. You get better at that actual game. There is one type of app or game that you can use that does seem to cross over to other cognitive challenges. You can get this for free in the App Store. It’s called N1, N1 training or end-back training. This involves, basically, seeing a number, or a color, or a letter, or some other form of a cue, and then going through a few cycles where you’re shown other numbers, or letters, or signals, or colors, or cues, and then you have to recall the signal that appeared one instance ago; or as you get better, the game two instances ago, or three instances ago. You can work through all the way up to being able to remember whatever signal appeared, like 10 cues back. It’s free. It’s simple to figure out. That’s another one, that if you do consistently between now and May, can also improve your attention span or your time span. I realize this isn’t strength and conditioning. This is just mind training, but you can think of it as strength conditioning for your mind.

Brock:  It goes hand-in-hand.

Ben:   I would do those. Another one would be Neurofeedback. There’s the Peak Brain Institute in LA, which I mentioned early in this podcast, that I’ve gone down to and done a QEEG brain scan at. Identified areas in the brain that have, for example, excess beta brainwave, distractibility style brainwave production. They use Neurofeedback to fix that, meaning that you hook up electrodes to your head which monitor your brainwaves. Any time that your brain strays into a distracted state, or a state of, say, excess beta brainwave production, what happens is any game that you happen to be playing at the time, because you’ll play spaceship games, or racecar driving games, or what-have-you, you’ll actually get a subconscious slap in the wrist, like your car will slow down, or the ignition will stop coming out of the spaceship, or the music will stop playing. This can actually passively train your brain to become focused. I thought it was gimmicky when I first heard about it. Then, I went and did it. I did it for three months. I actually went down to Peak Brain Institute. I bought some of their equipment. I took it back. I trained with it. Then, I went back down for a follow-up QEEG, and all of my scores were off the charts. But in addition to that, I would experience things like walking into a cocktail party I used to get distracted by all the different conversations occurring. I could just hear 10 different conversations and would not be able to focus on what the person right in front of me was saying. That all just melted away after this Neurofeedback. It significantly improved focus. Train your mind like you would train a muscle when it comes to preparing yourself to stave off that cognitive decline that would occur during that event. I would recommend that.

Then, we could also turn to the world of nutraceuticals or supplements. Probably, the ones that I think work best is, A, any wakey-wakey type of supplements. When I did Kokoro, which was about, I think that was about 72 hours of just beat down and no sleep, and ocean, and burpees, and 26-mile night hikes. I’ll link to a whole article that I wrote about that event and how to prep for it. I actually just slipped some No-doz caffeine tablets in one pocket. Then, I had some theanine. You can combine caffeine with theanine to take some of the edge in the jitteriness and the heart rate racing off of the caffeine. If you do, let’s say 200 milligrams of caffeine, about a two-to-one ratio can work well. So, you take around 100 milligrams of theanine. Both of those are available in supplemental form. I would do that. Then, I also use this, and this is very good also for stabilizing your hormones and for lowering some of the cortisol during exercise, I took this Chinese adaptogenic herb blend, I was popping two a day, called