368: How to Build and Maintain Muscle

Bringing back a classic episode with my friend, biohacker Ben Greenfield. We discuss the top performance tips that Ben is implementing now to build and maintain muscle. Ben walks us through his typical day, from his sleep schedule, to what foods he’s eating and when. We’ll hear the new devices he’s using, what metrics he loves tracking, and which products he’s especially loving now. We’ll also hear how he balances life and work, mitigates stress, and how he gets his own kids to eat, live, sleep, and perform like their dad. This conversation does not disappoint, so grab a pen and notebook because there are some amazing tips in here that Ben will be sharing with you today.

More about Ben Greenfield:

Ben is an author, speaker, coach, podcaster, and founder and CEO of Kion, where Ben creates step-by-step solutions, from supplements and fitness gear, to coaching and consulting, to education and media for the world’s hard-charging high achievers to live a truly limitless life with fully-optimized minds, bodies, and spirits. Whether you want to become the complete mental athlete with a flawless brain and nervous system, attain an ideal human body that fires on all cylinders, from performance, to beauty, to hormones, and beyond, or achieve true and lasting health, happiness, and longevity, Ben combines intense time in the trenches with ancestral wisdom and modern science to make your dreams a reality.

Show notes:

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Transcript:

Dr. Pompa:
Hey, I want to tell you about one of our sponsors, CytoDetox. Look, podcasts cost money. There’s a lot of production going around this but we are grateful to have CytoDetox as one of the sponsors. It’s so easy for me to talk about the product because myself and my family use it constantly as we practice what I preach. For over 15 years, I have talked about and taught doctors and the public about cellular detox and I’ll tell you, Cyto was a breakthrough. Cyto was a breakthrough for us and its changed so many lives so we’re grateful that they sponsor Cellular Healing TV. It makes sense, doesn’t it? They should.

Ashley:
If you’re listening to this podcast and want to access the amazing CytoDetox product Dr. Pompa just mentioned, please visit detoxoffer.com. Again, that’s detoxoffer.com.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I am Ashley Smith and today, we’re bringing back a classic episode with friend of the show, biohacker Ben Greenfield. He and Dr. Pompa discussed the top performance tips that Ben is implementing now to build and maintain muscle. Ben walks us through his typical day. From his sleep schedule to what foods he’s eating and when. We’ll hear the new devices he’s using. What metrics he loves tracking and which products he’s especially loving now. We’ll also hear how he balances life and work, mitigate stress, and how he gets his own kids to eat, live, sleep and perform like their dad. This conversation does not disappoint. Grab a pen and notebook because there are some amazing tips in here that Ben will be sharing with you today. Thank you so much for joining. Welcome to Cell TV.

Dr. Pompa:
Ben, welcome to Cell TV, man. You are someone who I just love and adore, so I am excited for today’s show.

Ben:
Thank you. That’s kind of creepy, actually.

Dr. Pompa:
I love and adore you and your wife. Oh, there she is. Tell her to come here.

Ben:
Don’t hang my poster on your ceiling or anything like that.

Dr. Pompa:
She doesn’t want to come. I’m like, come on, come on. Darn. I had her. I had her. Jessa was there.

Ben:
Oh, you mean in my office just now? That actually wasn’t.

Dr. Pompa:
She walked in the room.

Ben:
No, that wasn’t Jessa that just walked through. My basement flooded a couple of days ago, and so we’re doing a remediation analysis or whatever for insurance.

Dr. Pompa:
It looked like her, man. I’m telling you. It looked like her. Again, she was across the room, so I saw the back of someone’s head.

Ben:
Random women just walk into my office all day long. It’s weird. It’s creepy.

Dr. Pompa:
Anyways, yeah. That did look like her. I saw the back of her again right there. Listen, we love you guys. When you come to Park City, you stay with us, and we just got to be really good friends. Ben, I have to say, I want my viewers and listeners just to know a little bit about who you are. I’m going to start here. Who came to your house to interview you? I forget what it was for. It was for some type of documentary or some type of piece. Who was it?

Ben:
What was the context?

Dr. Pompa:
It was the one where Jessa was actually interviewed at the end.

Ben:
Okay, yeah. That was Men’s Health magazine. They did something called, “Down the Stem Cell Rabbit Hole,” because I got my dick injected with stem cells, and they wanted to do a follow-up story on that and all these male sexual enhancement procedures that Men’s Health sent me on this three-month foray to do. They sent the film crew to my house and they’re tracking me all over the house, shining laser lights on my balls, and doing all these crazy things. They even had me order up stem cells and inject them intravenously to show somebody doing this at home. Then they interviewed my wife after they show me—

Dr. Pompa:
They showed you doing all your things. You wake up in the morning.

Ben:
All this crazy stuff, yes.

Dr. Pompa:
You wake up in the morning, and I’m going to have you tell them what your day looks like. It’s this arduous thing. They get to your wife and they say, well, basically, go ahead, take it from there. After they see you doing all of these things throughout the day, they ask your wife a question.

Ben:
I forget. It was something along the lines of, dude—are you referring to, damn, do you do any of this stuff?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, right. What do you do? Do you do all this stuff? Her comment was, are you kidding me? I can’t even imagine waking up every day with a list, hot, cold, injections.

Ben:
She’s the complete opposite. She lays down in bed and just goes to sleep. She doesn’t work out. She plays tennis every now and again. Sometimes she’ll just not eat all day. I’ll be like, oh, are you fasting? Are you doing a fasting protocol? She’s like no, I just didn’t eat yet. She doesn’t plan anything. She just randomly stays healthy with zero planning at all. She’s also the type of person who, if you send her an email, she might read 20 percent of the emails in her inbox, and she’s got 200 unread messages on her phone. That’s her; she’s Type B. I’m the complete opposite.

Dr. Pompa:
My wife, they fell in love.

Ben:
There’s one box I haven’t checked that needs to be taken care of before I’m going to sit down to lunch like that and she’s the total opposite. I’m glad because I’ve hung out before with—not to sound judgmental, God loves everybody. I’ve hung out with couples who Ironman triathletes or couples who are Crossfitters or couples who are biohackers. I’m like, it would drive me nuts if Jessa was the same as me.

Dr. Pompa:
No, it’s true. Merily brings balance to me as well. Okay, yeah. She is the exact opposite, so let’s look at Ben Greenfield. Ben, tell them your day. You get up in the morning. Go.

Ben:
Oh, you want to go through my day. Okay. I typically wake up and I do gratitude journaling. I write down one thing I’m grateful for, one person who I can pray or help or serve that day, and then one truth that I discovered in the morning’s devotional reading or scripture. While I do that, I measure my sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system using a heart rate variability app called NatureBeat. I also do a quick review of my sleep scores with this ring, the Oura ring. Then I go downstairs, and I get the water for the coffee started up. Typically, I turn off all my sleep stuff. I sleep on a BioBalance PEMF mat, which is covered with a chiliPAD, which actually seems to increase the strength of that pulsed electromagnetic field. Then I turn off my essential oil diffuser because I diffuse lavender while I’m asleep.

Dr. Pompa:
What are you diffusing right there? You’re diffusing something right now.

Ben:
Oh, you can see it?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Ben:
That’s rosemary. I keep rosemary, peppermint, and cinnamon as the three primary essentially oils in my office. I have this assistant who lives in my house. Just helps out with lots of stuff. I just have her surprise me. I tell her, hey, you know the rules, keep them full but the bedroom has to have the relaxing ones and the office has to have the stimulating ones. Anyways, then I turn off the binaural beats because they use binaural beats when I’m asleep as well. Once I shut down all that stuff, I get out of bed, I head downstairs. While the coffee water is on, I do about 15 minutes of self-care. It gives me a lot of momentum going into the day and I live the day in a state of low-level physical activity. I like to just start off by stretching everything out, foam rolling anything that’s sore. Sometimes, I hang from a yoga trapeze or an inversion table. I have a Pedicon neck traction device.

Dr. Pompa:
I’ve seen you doing coffee enemas upside down from your trapeze.

Ben:
With the trapeze, usually, if you see me hanging from the trapeze, it’s a probiotic enema. I do a probiotic enema about once a month. I do a coffee enema once a week. That probiotic enema seeds the colon better if you hang upside down for a while, whereas the coffee enema’s better just laying on your right side for about 20 minutes or so.

Dr. Pompa:
Stop right there. Where can people find these—because people are going, I want to do that. I want to do that. Where do they find that stuff, Ben?

Ben:
Honestly, I blog about it pretty intensively over at bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Dr. Pompa:
There you go, bengreenfieldfitness.com. Okay, continue.

Ben:
The morning routines you’ve just alluded to varies. Every Wednesday morning, for example, rather than doing the foam rolling or the self-body care massage, I instead do rebounding and a bunch of charcoal, and a coffee enema, and then a sauna. I have a weekly mini detox that I do all year long to clear the body.

Dr. Pompa:
You do CytoDetox as well.

Ben:
Yeah. I use CytoDetox, but I space that from the charcoal. On a morning like that, I’ll get up, take CytoDetox, and then it’ll be an hour and a half or so. Then I take the charcoal as a binder, and then I go and do a coffee enema. Then I’ll go in the sauna after that. That’s how a typical detox morning would look like for me. I’m not completely unproductive in that time. If I’m laying on my right side doing a coffee enema, I’ll be dicking around on my phone, replying to emails. I try and stay productive when I do this stuff. Anyways, so I do all the self-body care while the coffee’s on and then I grab my coffee.

I go down to my office, and I spend about the first 20 to 30 minutes of my day writing because for me, as an author—I say author because I sometimes feel like a true author should be writing all day and instead for me, I write for 20 to 30 minutes a day because that’s all the time I have by the time I’ve got podcasts and travel and speaking and everything else going on. While I’m writing, I’ll typically have this on doing photo biomodulation.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s the Joovv light which I’ve done shows on. Why do you do that? Tell them why you do that.

Ben:
Red and near infrared light for activation of the cytochrome c oxidase and mitochondria for release of nitric oxide, for a little bit of collagen and skin health. Like I alluded to earlier, I pull down my pants and I shine on my testicles to activate the Leydig cells in the testes.

Dr. Pompa:
I did it this morning.

Ben:
For sperm, for testosterone, it’s really good for that. While I am in my office in the morning, because I travel pretty intensively, I usually will also use light therapy. I’ll put in the HumanCharger. I’ll put on glasses like this. The Re-Timer glasses that you can flip on and shine green-blue light at the eyes. Then I also have something called a Vielight, which is more targeted photobiomodulation. It looks like this. It’s like a light panel for your skull. I’ll wear that about every [00:11:29].

Dr. Pompa:
In the interview, Men’s Health thing, the piece they did, you had that on your head. You were on the bike.

Ben:
Yeah. I do a lot of light therapy while I’m drinking my coffee and while I’m writing. The other thing that I’ll use, and you can’t see it here, but I have something called a NanoVi next to my desk here. It’s like a tube. I could probably get the tube up here, so you could at least see that. It’s basically a nasal cannula. This generates a small amount of reactive oxygen species. What that does is—it’s like mild hormesis. It enhances cellular resilience, steps ups DNA repair a little bit, and I’ll often have that in in the morning as well.

Dr. Pompa:
Why do you do all this? Look, just in a very quick, brief thing, why do you do all this light therapy? If you had to say, here’s some quick benefits.

Ben:
Mitochondrial health, nitric oxide release, activation of cytochrome c oxidase which is basically related to mitochondrial health, collagen, skin, blood flow to the brain. There’s some effect on thyroid tissue. There’s even some effect on maintenance of muscle, some effect on lipolysis. There’s a mild detoxification effect as tissue is heated. There’s just a variety of benefits and I just can’t go out in sunshine to work on my computer and write stuff in the morning. Honestly, the thing about red and near-infrared light and some of these more targeted forms of photobiomodulation is, you’re really taking a lot of the positive aspects of sunlight that you’d be looking for anyways if you’d go out in the sun and you’re concentrating them in higher doses, so that you’re getting more of that in a shorter period of time.

There’s a lot of things I don’t consider to be biohacking. I don’t consider putting butter in your smoothie or let’s say—what would be another example—or taking ketones or something like that to be a biohack. I consider that to be just like cooking and eating. I do consider anything that shortcuts a natural biological reaction that you’re going after to be a biohack. Photobiomodulation I would consider to be basically morning biohacking.

Dr. Pompa:
If there was one of all the light things that you use that our viewers—you think that everyone would benefit from, which one would it be?

Ben:
It depends, but I would say, if you’re somebody who’s on the go a lot, I would just get a Joovv Mini because you can travel with it. You get red light. You get near infra-red light. The Vielight, the one for your head I like but it doesn’t really target the rest of the body at all. Whereas the Joovv Mini, you could use that on your genitals. You could use it on your face. You could use it on your eyes. It’s great for the retina. There’s a lot of benefits and it’s portable.

Dr. Pompa:
We’ll make sure, folks, we put that in the show notes. That you can access one of those. What Ben’s talking about.

Ben:
My kids have the Joovv Mini up in their bedroom. It’s cute. They have a Mini BioMat and a Mini Joovv, so they get a bunch of infrared. They get a bunch of negative ions. They get their near-infrared and red light. They’re on board with a lot of this stuff that I do as well. They have their little essential oil diffusers. They’re healthy, healthy young kids. They sleep amazingly and they have really good scores at school. They’re just really emotionally stable. I think part of it is because they have good mitochondrial health and they take care of their brain and their bodies.

Dr. Pompa:
The way they eat. You all practice what you preach, just like Merily and I. Okay, we’re part-way through the day. Folks, I’m telling you. This is what Ben does every day. I’m telling you.

Ben:
No, we’re not partway through the day. We’re at like 7:30 in the morning.

Dr. Pompa:
We got to speed it up, Ben.

Ben:
Yeah, we should speed it up. Anyways, I am a firm believer in activation of the parasympathetic nervous system in the morning. Unless you’re so busy and you’re traveling, and your only chance to get a hard workout in, if you really are trying to build muscle or you’re trying—let’s say, you’ve signed up for a marathon or an Ironman or a Spartan race or something like that. Yeah, sometimes you have to do an unnatural amount of physical exercise, whereas our ancestors wouldn’t have necessarily done a WOD. Sometimes, if you are wanting to train or you are wanting to put on muscle or you are—I mean, even for me personally, I, for some of my workouts, push myself harder than what I know to be good for my body.

I cross that threshold of a little bit of excess oxidation and a little bit of pushing myself too hard. Even my body fat is probably about 3% to 5% lower than what I consider to be naturally healthy for ultimate fertility and longevity and cell membrane health, et cetera. However, I also understand that in the industry that I’m in, in the health and fitness and nutrition industry, a lot of times you are judged by how you look with your shirt off or how fast you go on a Spartan race or something like that. I do a hard workout typically at the end of the day and I don’t think that’s necessary for health. I think that’s more of a performance thing or if you’re like me and part of your paycheck depends on—and I don’t want to sound narcissistic or something but ripping your shirt off for a photo shoot or something like that. I actually have to maintain muscle.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s your world. My world’s [00:17:03].

Ben:
It’s my schtick. I still operate in an environment where I’m judged by my body. I accept that and I still push myself with a hard workout. I don’t do that at the beginning of the day typically. I do something easy at the beginning of the day because you already have a natural cortisol release. Coffee amps that up even more. Typically, for me, I will do a sauna, a walk in the sunshine. I love cold water swims and we live near the Spokane River. Sometimes I’ll go down there and toss the paddle board in the water for about 20 minutes then jump in and just tread water in the cold for 5, 10 minutes. I like to ease into the day with physical activity and that’s typically after I’ve had my coffee and done my writing and my light therapy. After I’ve taken my morning dump.

Then I go off and I do about 20 to 30 minutes of light physical activity. At that point, I start my day. Meaning that I really jump into work intensively. I’m a firm believer in this idea of deep work and the concept that you can typically engage in about four to five hours of deep, focused work each day. From about 9:30 or 10:00 AM until about 2:00 PM, I work really hard. I’ll do interviews like we’re doing right now. I do a lot of podcasts. I do a lot of additional writing. Typically, not my book, which is all the morning stuff but articles. Anything that involves deep, focused work. I save a lot of my email responses and stuff like that for my more reactive time, which is typically the afternoon or the early evening.

Dr. Pompa:
I do the same thing.

Ben:
Yeah, I do deep work. If I’ve had a very physically active evening the night prior, meaning I’ve done a hard workout, a glycogen-depleting weight training workout the night prior or I have already anticipated a very busy day and I’ve done a hard workout that morning, I’ll have breakfast. Typically, for me, it’s just a smoothie. I eat low to no carbohydrates.

Dr. Pompa:
Otherwise, you fast. You intermittent fast.

Ben:
I fast or I do like I do right now. Typically, a little bit of ketones. Ketone salts or ketone esters, and amino acids. 9 times out of 10, if I’m not eating breakfast like I didn’t do this morning, I will just be on amino acids and ketones.

Dr. Pompa:
Again, we have different goals. You live in the fitness world. Me, I don’t do amino acids because I want to keep my autophagy maximized and there’s room for both. We’re going to talk about—

Ben:
I’ve tried both and I can do fine with just water and minerals for a morning fast. What happens is, once I do jump in to that hard workout because I’m still training and racing as a professional athlete, for me to throw down a workout, which is typically going to occur between about 5:00 and 7:00 PM or so in the later afternoon or the early evening, if I completely skip breakfast, even if I’ve had lunch, that workout is not as good. My performance is not as good later on in the day.

It does take about eight hours or so for some glycogen restoration to occur, for restoration of things like acetylcholine and some neurotransmitters that get exhausted during exercise to replenish, for ATP to replenish, for creatine phosphate to replenish. Hard-charging athletes who skip breakfast but don’t perhaps replace some of the precursors that they need for exercise in the morning, tend to not have as good of a workout.

Dr. Pompa:
When you train at the level you train at, the demands are so high. It’s abnormal. Therefore, you need more of these precursors, so I agree.

Ben:
Hence, why I’ll at least use amino acids and ketones. I work all day. Then typically, around 2:00, take a break, have some lunch. For me, it’s usually a big salad. While I’m working, I’m doing things like you’re seeing me do now, walking on my treadmill, doing dictation. I’ll stop every once in a while. I’ll do some kettle bell swings or I’ll go outside in ground or earth or get a little sunlight. Typically, I’ll turn on my phone during those Pomodoro breaks. While I’m outside, listen to any [00:21:11] or make sure there’s no fires I need put out and go back in and jump back into my deep work. After I have lunch, I take a nap. I’m a big believer in naps, especially for athletes.

It almost gives me two days. I wake up and I’m just ready to charge into this extra day I’ve created for myself versus slogging through the latter half of the day. A little bit depleted from all that hard work I did in the morning. I take a nap. Typically, I take a nap on a BioMat, so I’m getting a little bit more infrared and some negative ions from the amethyst and the tourmaline crystals that are in the BioMat. I wear these NormaTec graduated compression boots that basically compress your legs. They’re amazing. I pull those on, I put on some essential oil, and I just crash out for 20 to 45 minutes.

Dr. Pompa:
Really healthy.

Ben:
Occasionally, I’ll use audio-visual entrainment. For example, I have a Mind Alive DAVID Delight Pro that you can use to lull yourself into a pretty deep state of delta relaxation. I find that that enhances the nap even more. It even has cranio-electrical stimulation on it that will allow for a little decrease in cortisol. There’s another similar device—

Dr. Pompa:
A nap in the afternoon. Sometimes I’ll even just lay on [00:22:32] and fall completely asleep, putting myself in that sympathetic mode. I play the Wholetones.

Ben:
Wholetones by Michael Tyrrell. Those are amazing. As a matter of fact—

Dr. Pompa:
I did a show on it. I interviewed him. My people put that up, folks. It does what you’re saying. It puts you in that delta, deep sleep. Yo