I'm excited to have human performance consultant, speaker, New York Times bestselling author, and (most importantly) my friend Ben Greenfield as my guest for today. He’s here today to discuss his epic new book called Boundless which focuses on upgrading the brain, optimizing the body, and defying aging. You’ll hear all you need to know about biohacking one's life. so you can unleash your body’s potential – a unique message that only Ben can deliver!
More about Ben Greenfield:
Ben Greenfield is human performance consultant, speaker and New York Times bestselling author of 13 books, including the wildly popular titles “Beyond Training” and “Boundless”. A former collegiate tennis, water polo and volleyball player, bodybuilder, 13 time Ironman triathlete and professional obstacle course racer, Ben has been voted by the NSCA as America’s top Personal Trainer and by Greatist as one of the top 100 Most Influential People In Health And Fitness. Ben hosts the highly popular fitness, nutrition and wellness website BenGreenfieldFitness.com, a site with over a million monthly visitors, featuring articles, podcasts, and product reviews from Ben.
Show notes:
- Grab your own copy of Ben Greenfield’s book, Boundless: Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body & Defy Aging.
- Learn more about peptides and get expert advice from international peptide society International Peptide Society and Wild Health.
- Alive By Nature has you covered if you’re looking for NMN and NAD+ supplements.
- Get to try the lion’s mane mushroom extract from Four Sigmatic
- If you want to get your hands on premium quality bone broth, these companies are highly recommended by Ben Greenfield: Kettle and Fire and Bonafide Provisions.
- Start biohacking with earthing and grounding devices from Pulse Centers. Use the code Pompa 19.
- Connect with Ben:
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Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
So many of you have asked about things like peptides. If you don’t know what that is, you’re going to have to watch the episode. What about these remedies like ayahuaska and all these crazy plant-based medicines? What about microdosing? Many of you have asked those questions and I really didn’t want to bring on an expert in those areas that think that is just the only way. My good friend, Ben Greenfield, brings a balanced answer to those questions that many of you have. Beyond that, we talk about his book Boundless. This is the Encyclopedia Britannica of fitness, recovery, anti-aging, biohacking. He is the king of biohack. You’ll hear our conversation as Ben walks up a mountain and I’ll bounce some of these topics that will bring some light. Get your pen ready because he throws it at you. Ashley’s done a great job of capturing these resources so don’t panic. I’m telling you, a wealth of knowledge in these areas. Wait until you hear the interview.
Ashley:
Hello everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith and today we welcome human performance consultant, speaker, and New York Times best-selling author and great friend of the show, Ben Greenfield. He’s here today to discuss his epic new book called Boundless which focuses on upgrading the brain, optimizing the body and defying aging. You’ll hear all about everything you need to know about biohacking one’s life. Let’s get started and welcome Ben Greenfield, and of course, Dr. Pompa to the show. Welcome both of you.
Dr. Pompa:
When we have Ben on, you said it, Ashley, you just never know what to expect. He’s always doing something. Whether it’s some type of biohack. Today he’s outside. I don’t blame him.
Ben:
I need to find some kind of chest mounted selfie stick at some point. I’m a Luddite. Someone tried to teach me how to use one of these gimbals, keeps the phone stable while you’re walking around. I’ve got to wrap my head around that at some point.
Dr. Pompa:
I use one, too, and mine got caught stuck upside down so I was like screw it.
Ben:
There’s a couple of studies coming out showing how beneficial nitric oxide is for its antiviral effect against SARS-like viruses so I figure sunlight, some heat, some hyperbaric, some intermittent hypoxic training, some cold, anything you can do to amplify nitric oxide I’ll take this time of year.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s funny. Ben and I, we have down time and we biohack ourselves and both of our homes look very similar. We’re friends so we’ve been in each other’s homes. As a matter of fact, I stayed at Ben’s home when he wasn’t even there. He was out traveling and I wanted to stay there just so I could do the same biohacks I do at my own home. When Ben comes to Park City, you stay at my home to biohack.
Ben:
Oh, yeah. There’s very few places you can go where you roll in and you can shoot some ozone up your back side and flip into a hyperbaric for a little while, strip off your clothes and hit some red light and do all other manner of tomfoolery before pulling out a blender and throwing 20 super foods in and making yourself a smoothie. I think your house, Dan, and my house are two such spots where you can do it without buying a membership at a health clinic.
Dr. Pompa:
Exactly, we take advantage of that which brings us to the topic today, your new book. Here it is here, folks, Boundless. I love it. It’s more like an Encyclopedia Britannica. It has everything in it. I call you the king of biohacks because some people may argue with me, it’s this person, it’s that person. I’m all about biohacks, but I’m going to be honest with you, you put me to shame. Therefore you were the one to write the book, not me, although I practice most of these things.
I earmarked some of the places in the book where I want you to expand upon. Again, that way people now it’s in the book. There’s no possible way we could bring light to all of it. I tell you what, let’s start with the brain because you gave a lot. This is a big book. It has all the biohacks and all of your favorite things but I was surprised at how much you put on the brain. It doesn’t surprise me. I was very happy with it. The brain boosting stacks that you do, you go everywhere from foods, you go everywhere from supplements.
One area that I’ve ever talked about on the show that I want you to focus on about right now, you can scrape all the other ones if you want, but microdosing, psychedelics, microdosing things, and because there’s a legitimate side to that. I’ve been asked the question before, and you know what my answer is? I’m no expert here. You would say the same but you’ve done a lot of it and there’s some benefit to it. Start with just nootropics. What do we mean by nootropics and how do we improve our brain? Let’s start there.
Ben:
You bastard. You would go straight to the drugs.
Dr. Pompa:
[05:27] Nootropics don’t have to be drugs, right?
Ben:
Let me lay down the caveat that I am a total foodie. We live very naturally out here in Spokane. We’ve got goats. We’ve got chickens. I hunt most of our meat. I get salmon from friends who fish or go through companies like US Wellness Meats or Belcampo or Vital Choice. Right now been doing a lot of seed sprouting, alfalfa and red clover and broccoli so I’m growing these wonderful sprouts, which by the way, if you put them in a food dehydrator with a little sea salt, best snack ever. Sprouts are just super nutrient dense.
I’m making a lot of yogurt ferments right now, a lot of goat milk and coconut yogurt, which I break different bacterial probiotics into because from a budget standpoint you can make probiotics go the distance because when you ferment them, you literally ten times the number of active bacteria in them. Also because they’re part of a food bolus passing through the gut, they’re going to do a better job painting the gut with the bacteria rather than capsules, which if they survive the acidic nature of the stomach, are going to just sprinkle your gut with bacteria. To a lot of these yogurts and ferments, I’ll add a little acacia fiber or a good prebiotic fiber so that at the same time those probiotics have a really good food medium.
My wife also and my kids do a ton of wonderful cooking. We eat a very whole foods diet. We don’t do a lot of packaged foods. The reason I’m saying this is I don’t want people to think that I look at supplements as a replacement for really good whole foods based diet including very nutrient dense things like nature’s multivitamin, like organ meat, bone broth.
Dr. Pompa:
In your defense, your book starts with those things then it goes into the supplements and then it goes into this microdosing concept. I have to say the only reason—people have asked me about it and I never brought anyone on the show because I don’t trust anyone else. You have to understand, Ben is not into this, but yet, he’s explored it because there is some validity around it.
Again, I’m not going to bring someone on the show that’s going to be all about this in thinking this is the answer. Ben’s going to have a really balanced answer. I wanted someone to talk about it and I trust you to talk about it, but you’re right. You start with the food then you go into some supplements so talk about some of the supplements of your favorite as well for the brain. First of all, back up, the word nootropic, this is a new word for some people meaning it’s—explain that word because you use it in your book.
Ben:
Yeah, I’ll get there. Caveat number one, whole foods, start there. Caveat number two is whenever we’re talking about either nootropics or smart drugs, although nootropics, to answer your question, are typically natural derivatives harvested from plants that mimic something that the body already creates or that are not a synthetically created lab based compound. They and smart drugs both do have great potential for, for example, flooding the synaptic cleft with serotonin resulting to some amount of serotonin and sensitivity causing a dopamine surge that might eventually lead to dopamine insensitivities and some of the appetite deregulation or food cravings, etc., that can accompany that. Others can cause things like a buildup of gamma-Aminobutyric acid, the inhibitory neurotransmitter intolerance or insensitivity.
What I mean by that is you can certainly do as much damage from a serotonin standpoint with excess use of something like St. John’s wort or holy basil as you can with something like Provigil or like Modafinil or Adderall or even a sweet drug like a valium or diazepam derivative. That’s caveat number two is although nootropics are by definition, to answer your question, Dan, a little bit more natural, you still need to proceed with caution when talking about these things and more is definitely not better and you also want to pay attention to selectively using these type of compounds only when the time requires.
Now, that being said, there are a select few nootropics that I’ve found to be particularly effective and I can tell you what those are and then I can also get into this concept of also using some of these so called psychedelics in more of a microdosing format to enhance cognitive function. From a nootropic standpoint, I would say that a few choice compounds or stacks that I think are particularly effective, one is this idea that we know that certain compounds when they interact with photons of light, such as these red light therapy devices that I know that you use, Dan, such as the Joovv light, or head worn devices, like a V-lite, or of course, sunlight, they actually can kick off electrons. Even in the absence of calories, in the absence of digesting food, that can produce energy and allow for the mitochondria production of ATP via a direct production of electron that can be used in the electron transport chain.
Now, a few of those that interactive photon of light to give you that physical and cognitive pick me up would be anything that contains melanin. There’s a wonderful book called Human Photosynthesis which was translated I believe from Russian that goes into how humans can photosynthesize very similarly to plants using some molecules we have built into our bodies, melanin being one of the most notable. Compounds that are rich in melanin, that there’s not a whole lot of them besides what you already have in your skin, but anything that’s dark black or brown in color usually has some melanin content. Chaga mushroom is one of those. Chaga mushroom in combination with sunlight or photobiomodulation is amazing.
There are a couple of others that act similarly. Anything that has higher levels of chlorophyll in it, like chlorella or marine phytoplankton, and you could also stack this with chaga, in response to red light or sunlight can produce a similar effect. There’s also one that I would consider to be slightly more synthetic, but interestingly in these times because we’re recording this during the coronavirus issue, has also been shown to amplify nitric oxide, specifically in combination with nicotine to the extent where you might get some significant antiviral activity as well. Something commonly sold in the past as a fish tank cleaner, but if you buy pharmaceutical grade online, it’s called methylene blue.
Methylene blue by itself, especially if you’re out in the sunlight or under one of these red light panels, is a fantastic nootropic and it’s even more enhanced if you combine it with pharmaceutical grade nicotine. Nicotine can also be helpful for the mitochondria as well as nitric oxide production. The trick is getting pharmaceutical grade and also not overdoing it because in a manner very similar to some of these photobiomodulation panels people are using, like a Joovv device, for example, or a head worn device like that V-lite I mentioned, or even like a sauna that has infrared panels built into it. We know that excess use of some of these devices can create excess reactive oxygen [13:36] so you actually want to be careful with your dosage of something like methylene blue.
I did a lot of research on it before I started using it and the sweet spot appears to be about 100 micrograms. I give some pretty precise dosage recommendation in the book for measuring and dosing but essentially what it comes down to is let’s say you get a bottle of pharmaceutical grade nicotine extract and then you get a bottle of pharmaceutical grade methylene blue from a company like Blue Brain Boost, for example. All you do is you take—both of them are going to come in a dropper bottle and one dropper full, it’s a one mL dropper.
All you do is you take five of those of droppers of nicotine and get rid of them. Take them out of the bottle, put them in a different bottle, save it for later, or etc., take five dropper fulls of methylene blue and you put that into the bottle instead. If you do that and you mix them together, when you take ten drops of that, it’s going to equate to 100 micrograms of methylene blue. That’s your sweet spot dosage and it will also equate to about a milligram of nicotine which is a sweet spot dosage for a microdose of nicotine.
Those will be three, methylene blue, anything with chlorophyll in it or any chaga extract in combination with sunlight or red light, those are some really fantastic nootropics that fly under the radar. Obviously, there are a lot of done for you blends, like [Siltap] or Qualia Mind or Alpha Brain, but those are a few that I’ve found to be particularly helpful. There are also, if we look at this from a synthetic standpoint and we look at the field of peptides, these amino acid sequences that can target specific cell receptors.
For shutting down brain inflammation or improving the integrity of the blood brain barrier, something I address in pretty good detail in chapter two of the book, there’s a topical peptide. If you go to the website for the International Peptide Society, you can find a doctor who could prescribe this for you, Dihexa is a topical peptide and in combination with an intranasal peptide called Semax. That one-two combo gives you pretty much everything that something like Modafinil would give you without a lot of the neurotransmitter and balancing side effects. That’d be considered slightly more synthetic because those peptide sequences aren’t made naturally by the body and those [16:05] those are made by amino acid sequencing machines in a laboratory. That’s also a pretty good stack. If I could give you one more before I talk a little bit about something like a psychedelic.
Dr. Pompa:
Folks, listen, Ashley will put together what he’s saying and add some links to some of these things that Ben is talking about so fear not. Also, it’s in his book so make sure you get Boundless and Ashley will also provide that link, and of course, you can find it on Amazon. We’ll link it here because it’s all in the book. What’s the third one, Ben? By the way, we’re talking about how to make your brain perform better as brain fog and just not remembering things is the number one symptom people complain about, this is how you optimize your brain health. What’s your third stack, Ben?
Ben:
I’d say the third, not necessarily a stack, although if you combine this with any sirtuin precursor it would be very helpful for DNA repair, particularly if you’re expose to a lot of nonnative EMS. A sirtuin precursor would be something like resveratrol or [17:13] or cacao extract, even like blueberry powder or coffee berry fruit extract. There’s a lot of different sirtuin precursors out there. It would be figuring out a way to actually increase the levels of NAD, particularly in neural tissue. We know the levels of NAD will drop off by up to 90% as you approach the age of 70. We know that it is particularly effective for enhancing the health of the mitochondria and also the health of the DNA if you have your sirtuin levels topped off as well.
A lot of these NAD supplements don’t actually wind up in the hypothalamus. They don’t actually wind up in the brain. If you want something that’ll actually work in the brain, it turns out that out of all the different forms of NAD out there, if you can use sublingual, meaning it’s going to dissolve in your mouth, NMN or intranasal NAD. You can actually specifically increase NAD in neural tissue and that’s less of a cognitive pick me up that you would get from that. It’s more of a generalized brain anti-inflammatory effect. This would be something you use for something like jet lag, maybe you’ve had a dinner party and a few extra glasses of wine the night before, maybe you’re low on sleep, which is going to contribute to brain inflammation, but intranasal NAD via an NAD spray or a sublingual NMN tablet increase NAD levels.
Dr. Pompa:
You have sources for that in the book, those sources.
Ben:
Yeah, one company that’s doing a pretty good job with those two right now is, and I’m not financially affiliated or anything, is Alive by Nature. They do a pretty good sublingual NMN and intranasal NAD spray, which incidentally they compound that with CBD, which has a little bit of an anti-inflammatory effect as well. That’s a cool little stack that you could use if you know that your brain has been subjected to some amount of inflammation, such as, again, jet lag, alcohol, loss of sleep, etc. Those are a few in terms of the non-psychedelic-ish type of sources that I like.
We could also get into—with psychedelics, one of the problems with psychedelic, well, there’s a few problems. A, if you look at this, both you and I, Dan, we’re Christians and a lot of psychedelics these days are administered under the supervision of a facilitator. A lot of times, there’s a pretty strong secular or even what I would consider to be, and hopefully I don’t scare too many people away with this, almost like a demonic type of approach that’s very focused on, we are God, there is no God but us, universal human consciousness, etc. I think you need to be really careful with the world of psychedelics.
I’m not a fan of things like, for example, inhaling DMT or going on ayahuasca trips to South America under the supervision of a shaman down in the absence of a more Christian approach. I’m not a huge fan of a lot of these mind altering compounds taken in high doses because I feel like they can actually take you away from God. I think that everything that we need really for a lot of that is already found in the Bible. It’s already found in scripture. We can get most of the wisdom that we need from that [20:48] medicine in high doses. I have.
I will occasionally do that, specifically with my wife as a way to just dissolve our egos and under couple’s therapy. I actually do it with a Christian couple who supervises the whole thing and there’s not any type of demonic opponent to it. You’re just basically tweaking serotonin and dopamine levels a little bit to have a deeper connection with your partner, not to go on some deep potentially I think demonic journey if you’re not careful because the spirit world, especially if you’re immersed in that, which plant medicine immerses you in and you’re yolked to a secular approach to it. I think it can be very dangerous just speaking from a Christian perspective.
However, in smaller doses, just like alcohol, we know that getting drunk is an irresponsible use of our human temple. It also takes us away from being able to do things like make a defense for the hope of the gospel that is within us or be able to take care of our families if we’re constantly tweaking our brains with excess amount of alcohol. We know that microdoses of alcohol are actually fantastic for you. We know from the blue zones that the consumption of a glass or two of biodynamic organic wine in the evening or some of these really bitters forward cocktails with things like lemon juice and apple cider vinegar and bitters, maybe a little bit of gin, a little bit of vodka. We know there’s even a whole medic response to microdoses of ethanol.
I’m not one of those guys who says alcohol is wrong but I think that anything in excess can be irresponsible. When you look at some of these plant-based compounds, I had the same approach. I think God put everything on His planet for the use of a good purpose. It’s just how you use it and in what setting. A few such compounds, the plant-based fungus ergot would’ve been the original derivative of this. Now it’s synthetically produced. There are a few different forms of LSD, two in particular called PLSD and another one called LSA, that when taken in very small doses, like about 10 to 20 micrograms, can actually cause a merging of the left and right hemispheric activity of the brain and a huge amount of combined focus, productivity, and creativity. That’s fantastic for, in my opinion, powering through a day of brainstorming creation, writing, mapping out a project or a book, etc., and so, a small microdose of LSD, or in particular PLSD or LSA, that’s one example of a psychedelic that I’ve found to be pretty effective for microdosing. We’re talking about one tenth of the dose you’d use for something like a trip.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s what I wanted you to define, what is a microdose. It’s so fractional that you feel normal except it kicks on your creative mind to your point a different part of your brain. Again, people ask me about these things and they’re reading about them, they’re hearing about them on social media on some aspect and I’ve never done a show about it, Ben. I knew you’d bring a balanced response to it.
Ben:
A couple others that folks might find useful, Paul [Stammits], local guy who lives around me, he’s a wonderful mushroom harvester and fungal researcher. He came up with a really nice stack that’s been made popular and that I actually think works quite well. That would be you take lion’s mane, which when we talk about the doctrine of signatures in nature, like walnuts are good for your brain because they look like a little brain or pomegranates or tomatoes, when you cut those open they look like the atria and the ventricles of the heart and they’re good for cardiovascular function or avocado for your testicles, fellas. There’s a lot of cool examples in nature like that. When you look at lion’s mane in nature, it actually looks like a cluster of axon and dendrites. It’s really an interesting looking mushroom.
That can be powdered and extracted, preferably with a dual extract of alcohol and water so you’re getting all the active components of lion’s mane. There are companies that do that like Paul Stammit's company. We have the name of his company, but Real Mushrooms is another company out of Canada that has a good lion’s mane. [25:18] does a good job with their lion’s mane. If you take this lion’s mane, which actually is a decent nootropic in and of itself, you could even use that in a cup of coffee but I think even better is you combine it with anything that’s going to cause a little bit of vasodilation so beetroot powder, niacin, any nitric oxide precursor, even something like nitroglycerine cream.
With nitroglycerine cream, by the way, I always have a bottle of that around because, we’re all adults here so we can talk about this, but if you have a little bit of nitroglycerine cream and you apply some of that scrotally, it’s like instant Viagra and I actually use that sometimes before sex. I’ll give it to my wife and that nitroglycerine cream on the clitoris is just an amazing screaming orgasm for her. It’s also useful if you combine it and you apply it on either side of the neck with any of these nootropics to enhance the blood flow to the brain. In particular, anything like that that’s going to increase nitric oxide production is going to help out with this stack that I’m describing. The traditional stack that Paul Stammit recommends and I give the exact dosages in the book uses niacin.
You’ve got lion’s mane, you’ve got niacin, and the third component is [selecibum]. [Selecibum] extract, just to give you some dosages here, most people will begin to feel the effects of a trip-like dosage somewhere around two grams to six grams, around there. We’re talking about taking 0.1 to 0.2 grams so, again, a very small dose and you combine that with lion’s mane, and for me, personally, I use two packets of the Four Sigmatic lion’s mane and a little bit of niacin. You combine those three together in some coffee or some tea or you can just dump it straight into your mouth.
That is an amazing stack in particular for more of like a social day. That’s something you would use before, let’s say you’re going to a big conference, Dan, and you just want to be on your feet chatting with people all day, really sociable, really in touch with people’s emotions, very connected. It’s very good for that. It’s wonderful for things like hikes or hunting or anything where you want increased sensory perception. It’s good for just, whatever, a day at Disneyland with the kids where you just want to turn on all your senses, all the colors, and lights, and vibrancy. That’s a cool stack, a little lion’s mane, niacin or any nitric oxide precursor, and [selecibum], and like the other examples. If I could give you three, I would say that a third example that’s more of a psychedelic example would be ketamine. Ketamine is commonly used in higher doses as an antidepressant.
Dr. Pompa:
You talk about that in your book, how do you microdosing ketamine for different reasons.
Ben:
Yeah, and as an addiction treatment, but in small doses, there’s a couple of ways that I like to use it. First of all, it’s very relaxing. In higher doses, it turns your muscles into complete jello so you need to be careful but it’s very relaxing in smaller doses so this would be like pre-bed at the end of a very long day. It’s also wonderful for sex because it just relaxes your whole body and I find it increases connectivity with your partner. Really, my favorite way to use ketamine, to be honest with you, is for massage sessions. Like if you’re going to get some deep tissue work or a sports tissue massage and you just want that person to be able to dig their elbows into your IT band and work real deep into the rotator cuff and all these areas where you normally really contract and guard, I’d do a little bit of intranasal ketamine before deep tissue work and before a massage. My therapist can just dig into anywhere and I barely feel it, which makes sense because it’s also used as an anesthetic drug administered via IV for medical procedures but intranasal ketamine is interesting.
Dr. Pompa:
I have a whole story of my son, Simon, when they did a procedure in the hospital they gave him ketamine. I should really attach it here. It’s absolutely hilarious. It acts as a truth serum, I’ll tell you that, too, a little too relaxed.
Ben:
Oh, really? I’ve taken higher doses. I’ve done an intravenous infusion of ketamine before just to see what it was like, even without a medical procedure. I did that with Dr. Matt Cook down in San Jose. He just wanted me to have me experience what ketamine was like, and you full on—I would consider that similar to ayahuasca or DMT, like you full on trip. I don’t necessarily think that unless you’ve got some really good facilitation going on, you have to be careful with the higher doses, but microdosing with ketamine, I think for sex or deep tissue work or a little bit of relaxation at the end of the day, that’s another one that I found some benefit from. Those are some examples of just a few of the psychedelics and the microdosing psychedelics that I discuss in the book.
Dr. Pompa:
Exactly, and I think you brought balance to it. Again, everyone asked me about it and frankly I’ve never done it and I know that you had put a lot of research in that and you discussed it in the book, which is really cool. Ben has put more time into researching these biohacks for the brain honestly than anyone I know, so great resource in Boundless. Let’s shift gears to, I think this is what you’re known for, as I’m in my space the king of detox, you are the king in your space of recovery. Everything fitness related, you are the guy. Let’s talk about something that applies even to my audience, recovery, because recovery, if you’re an athlete, that’s basically how you heal, how you benefit, and that applies to people who are sick as well. First of all, let me ask you this. You talk a lot about recovery in here. What are your favorite, and this is, again, we can pull this into nutrition, supplements, and biohack. Maybe give one of each because this is a broad topic but you’re the king of recovery, which is really [the magic].
Ben:
Nutrition, supplements, and biohack, here we go. Nutrition, huge fan of adding ascorbic acid or vitamin C, or even in a pinch, the squeeze of fresh lemon into bone broth and multiple researches have shown that the collagen properties of bone broth, the joint healing properties of bone broth are amplified with the addition of vitamin C. From a whole foods standpoint because I usually have about two cups of bone broth a day and at least one of those I always consume with ascorbic acid or a good vitamin C capsule or the squeeze of a lemon and adding vitamin C to your bone broth can really upgrade from a joint healing and a recovery standpoint.
Dr. Pompa:
I know your wife, Jessa, she’s making bone broth all the time naturally from actual bones I’m sure, but what is your favorite—do you have a product that people don’t have time to make bone broth every day? Do you have a product you love?
Ben:
I’d say Kettle & Fire, but I want to be totally honest, I invested in Kettle & Fire and I invested in them because I really liked what they were doing, but just all cards on the table. I’m an investor in Kettle & Fire. I absolutely love what they’re doing. They do the slow 24-hour simmer, it’s full organic, there’s no metals in it. EPIC does a pretty good job of bone broth as well. Then there’s a company out of LA. I actually get some meat from this company. US Wellness Meats, I get a lot of meat from, and then this other company, like I’ve got a lot fridge full of beef tongue, beef liver, sweetbread, and I actually have some really nice 14-day dry age rib eye from this company last night, Belcampo down in L.A. They have a wonderful regenerative farm in northern California and their bone broth is really amazing, too.
I like Belcampo. I like EPIC. I like Kettle & Fire. I think the last one that I found I think it’s called Bonafide Provisions. Those are a few bone broths that I’m a fan of. Again, you want to be careful because some bone broths do have some amount of metals in them so be careful with bone broth. Then just add vitamin C to it. You can go pretty high. You can go to bowel tolerance, if you can tolerate ten grams of vitamin C without painting the back of the toilet seat, go for it. For me a sweet spot is around four to six grams of vitamin C with bone broth. That’d be a nutrition tactic.
From a supplementation standpoint, on an empty stomach, because on a full stomach these are going to digest the proteins from foods, but on an empty stomach, they actually work on fibrinogen in your bloodstream, which can actually contribute to everything from clotting, inflammation, and joint pain. That would be any type of supplement that contains proteolytic enzymes, like trypsin or chymotrypsin or papain or bromelain. These are absolutely fantastic for recovery.
I take three capsules of a good proteolytic enzyme on an empty stomach before bed at night. You know what the cool thing is because, like I mentioned, I do a lot of cooking. The cool thing is if you have a really good proteolytic enzyme supplement, you can actually, if you’re marinating meat, you can take about three or four of those capsules and break them upon into your meat marinade and it does a fantastic job tenderizing the meat. You can add this to a marinade as well if you have some of those enzymes on hand, but in the same way it tenderizes meat, tenderizes you. That’s a wonderful recovery supplement just before bed on an empty stomach on any day where you’re injured or you’ve had a really hard workout, big fan of proteolytic enzymes.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ll tell you, it works great for just people that are inflamed, have pain. They work great for atherosclerosis, cleaning out arteries. Like I said, that’s why I love this topic, anything that’s going to help you recover faster is going to be good for the average person who doesn’t feel well so this is great stuff.
Ben:
They may also have an impact on biofilm as well, which is cool. Then from a biohacking standpoint, there’s a lot. I’m trying to think of something that’s not going to cost people $8,000, like a hyperbaric chamber or like a red light therapy or something like that.
Dr. Pompa:
[36:15] They’re higher priced tickets. The average person, what can they do?
Ben:
I would say probably at the top of the totem pole for me, because it could be free or it could be as expensive as you want to make it, would be the concept of course made popular in Clinton Ober’s book Earthing and that would be earthing or grounding. The use of either earthing or grounding mats underneath your top sheet on your bed or that you stand on when you’re working at your desk or even the use of pulse electromagnetic field therapy mats, which do a very similar thing that earthing or grounding does but concentrates the frequency at a higher dosage, like any of Dr. William Pawluk’s products, like the biobalance mat, for example, or the [37:03] PEMF table or even a smaller portable unit like a FlexPulse or an EarthPulse, grounding straps that you can place on the bottom of your shoes like the earthy straps or even sandals, for example, that have grounding plugs built into them, like the earth runners.
Of course, you can just go outside barefoot, you can walk on the beach or get in the salt water, the ocean, etc., but I’m typically doing some form of grounding or earthing, either the free outside version or using some sort of hack like a mat or a PEMF device on almost a daily basis. It’s really interesting because when you look at—it’s called the [relowa] effect, the red blood cell clumping that you can see on the live red blood cell analysis, you see immediate reversal or clumping of cells in response to earthing, grounding, and PEMF, which is going to result in a less anaerobic state and more oxygen delivery to tissues. Again, we’re looking at this from a time sensitive standpoint by the time we’re recording this in the wake of the coronavirus and everything. We know that viruses will thrive in anaerobic environment so anything you can do to increase oxygen delivery to cells, that would include hyperbaric oxygen, ozone therapy, etc., I think is a smart move and earthing and grounding have an indirect effect on that as well.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m glad you actually hit the earthing thing because anyone can do it and it’s a big deal, especially in today’s day and age. Here’s another one. This is cheap, easy and you talk a lot about in your book, cryotherapy. This is something you love. You’re the king of cryo so talk about it.
Ben:
Some people will say, and there’s some media out there about this, you have to be careful with ice baths and cryo because it will blunt the hormetic response to exercise by excessively shutting down inflammation. The problem is that that argument is based on studies that show a decrease of close to ten degrees Fahrenheit in muscle tissue which would be induced by ten plus minutes in a pretty cold ice bath and long periods of cold exposure. Brief intermittent bounds of cold for recovery, for the nitric oxide effect, for the induction of some of these cold shock and heat shock proteins, for the suppression of the mammalian dive reflex and the impact on the vagus nerve.
There’s a host of positive functions to cold exposure but the trick is that your inflammation in terms of the inflammation that’s going to induce things like satellite cell proliferation and mitochondrial biogenesis in response to exercise, that peaks at about the one-hour window following exercise. Arguably if you were going to take antioxidants or you were going to do a cold exposure, that would naturally, even if it’s not ten plus minutes, may have a mild blunting effect of that inflammatory response. You just do it at least an hour after an exercise session and preferably later in the day. It’s wonderful for cooling the body at night before you go to bed anyway. That’s a good time to do it. A lot of times at the Greenfield house, we’re finishing up the day with some sauna, some breath work and a quick two to five minutes in the cold pool.
When you look at these—am I still there? My video disappeared. There we go. If you look at cryotherapy chamber, three and a half minutes in a cryotherapy chamber, the muscle temperature drops about one and a half degrees. Again, nowhere near what you’d need to cause a blunting of muscle gain response or a mitochondrial response or anything like that. I’m a fan of cold. If you really, truly want to play it safe, just don’t do the cold right after an exercise session. Save it for about one to two hours after an exercise session. Even then, if you’re working out within three hours before you go to bed, we know that that impacts core temperature in terms of increasing it to the extent that that will deleteriously impact sleep. Even then, I’d say you’re not going to see a big blunting by doing a quick cold shower after an evening workout. I’m not opposed to just throwing it in right after the workout, but again, just avoid excessive shivering response ten plus minutes to cold exposure and you’ll be fine.
Dr. Pompa:
Last topic and it’s something I’ve never discussed on this show but I’ve had questions about. You mentioned them already. It’s peptides. Peptides right now, it’s a craze. First of all, explain to people what are peptides and then explain how they can use it. You were actually the one who introduced me to peptides originally. Even BPC-157, which is a recovery peptide, you were one of the first to talk about it and you brought that into my world. Talk about these types of peptides and there’s many peptides, by the way, brain peptides, growth hormone peptides, and of course, recovery peptides.
Ben:
Yeah, there are amino acid sequences generally, there may be an amino acid sequence generator, which is really the best way to make them in a lab or grown in an E. coli based medium, which generally the less expensive peptides are a little bit less pure. I always recommend going to a doctor, like going to the website for the International Peptide Society, like I mentioned, and booking up with a good doc. There’s a really good physician practitioner network I refer out to a lot called the Wild Health Network, wildhealthmd.com I think. Most of their practitioners are pretty well versed in peptide therapy as well.
What we’re talking about is when we generate an amino acid sequence, you can create compounds that target cell receptors in very, very specific manners. Like if you take growth hormone or like a popular anabolic compound used by body builders and the athletic community often and also in the anti-aging community, growth hormone is not going to selectively target growth hormone receptors on specific cells. It’s going to act on brain tissue, muscle tissue, liver tissue, etc., which is why it may be mildly carcinogenic if you ever use stuff like growth hormone. When you look at a growth hormone peptide, like tesamorelin, for example, that’s going to primarily interact with muscle and fat cell receptors and that would be one that works really well cycled, like five days on, two days off, for muscle gain and fat loss. Another example that you brought up, BPC-157, body protection compound 157, it’s something that shuts down gastric inflammation, which is why the body…
Dr. Pompa:
It’s one that it works, if you have an injury, if you want to recover, it works.
Ben:
I actually have a couple of bottles of that. I just re-upped my stock just because I know if I contract coronavirus that that cytokine storm produce in response to that is something that can be managed with anti-inflammatory approaches such as the use of something like BPC-157. It’s good for recovery. It’s also good for inflammation. There’s one that’s often co-administered with BPC-157 called TB-500, Thymosin Beta 500, really great for repairing fibers in things like Achilles tendonitis, soft injuries in the knee, shoulder, etc. That’s TB-500, BPC-157 is a good stack.
When we were talking about nootropics and smart drugs, that Dihexa, Semax stack that I talked about, that’s a peptide stack. Then we talked about tesamorelin is like a muscle gain, fat loss peptide. There’s even one for sleep. There are literally dozens and dozens. There’s one for sleep called Deep Sleep Inducing Peptide. A lot of people think because it’s called DSIP, Deep Sleep Inducing Peptide, you’re supposed to take it right before bed. The proper timing for that actually, based on most of the research on circadian rhythmicity, you actually take that in the morning or at least you take it three to four hours prior to bed. That’s another one that’s useful.
The one thing is a lot of these peptides can have a little bit of a tachyphylactic response meaning you can get used to them so cycling is good, like tesamorelin, five days on, two days off. BPC-157 and TB-500 are used only when you need that enhanced recovery. Deep Sleep Inducing Peptide only when you really need to crush a super solid night of sleep. You don’t want to overuse peptides. I’ve got an anti-aging chapter in the book. This book was originally just going to be a book on anti-aging and longevity and morphed. The anti-aging chapter is 150 pages long. I talk about a bunch of other Russian-based peptides from epitalon to [humanan] to [moxie] that are fantastic for mitochondrial proliferation, reduced all cause risk in mortality, even injected in brief cycles throughout the year, like ten-day cycles a couple times a year. There’s some pretty compelling peptides out there and I really think that we’re going to see more and more use of peptides in not just the field of anti-aging but also recovery, cognitive enhancement, anti-inflammation, nerve regrowth, [46:29] production. There’s just a lot of cool peptides out there right now.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m a fan of peptides. They actually work. Again, Boundless, you can read more about these peptides that I’ve used, Ben has used, obviously, for recovery, but just like you said, for sleep and these other things you may not think about beyond just recovery. Ben, I appreciate you. I know you’re on a time schedule always but I appreciate it. You’re the king of the biohacks and your book reflects it. It is the Encyclopedia Britannica of, I would say, anti-aging, recovery, all of it. I love it. Look at this thing. This is just a wealth of knowledge in here so we appreciate you bringing it. We do. It’s great.
Ben:
Hopefully, some people pick it up and benefit from it. There’s Kindle versions. There’s an Audible version. I think the physical version is cool just because it’s like a coffee table kind of book. Anybody who wants it, it’s out there and hopefully people found it helpful.
Dr. Pompa:
I have to pay you a compliment because my son, Daniel, he’s down into everybody doing everything. He knows my work very well and he says, “Dad, in your field, you just don’t take what someone says for granted. You dig deep. You really research it. I feel like Ben is that in the fitness world. He just digs deep. He just doesn’t say things that other people say.” That’s a great compliment from my son Daniel.
Ben:
Thanks, Daniel. That’s awesome.
Dr. Pompa:
Ben, I love you. I love your family and everything you do. You’re a wealth of knowledge in these areas so I appreciate it that I could bring you on. Some of these questions, people have been asking and I just never brought the expert so you bring a real balanced view of everything, Ben. Thank you.
Ben:
It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Those of you who are listening in, look out on my show. I’m going to be featuring Dan pretty soon and we’re going to have another discussion. Stay tuned for a part two on my show.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, get Boundless and follow Ben on his social media. He’s the best. He delves into it all. Thanks, Ben, love you.
