Weight Down Lifestyle

[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]]>

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