Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 33 - Ben Greenfield

Episode Date: April 11, 2018

Ben is a Coach, author, speaker, obstacle course athlete, founder and CEO of Kion. Ben was in Sacramento for the Tough Mudder X Race which took place after this episode. Re-Watch the Live Stream here: https://youtu.be/P1Zf8H102aM ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/user-921692324 ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell

Oh, dude. You like that pork? The pork rinds? Oh, yeah. They're fantastic, aren't they? The epic ones, they're amazing. They're amazing. That's some good stuff.

Where are you from? Put those crunchies on anywhere. Spokane. Well, I'm from Idaho. I was born in Idaho. From Spokane, Washington? Yeah, I live up in Spokane. What you doing here in Sacramento?

Racing. Racing the Tough Mudder X. Good Lord. It's a mashup of American Ninja Warrior and CrossFit and Spartan. Oh, my God. And all these athletes from these three different sports come together. Have you done the Spartan race before? Go head-to-head against each other.

I have. I've done a lot of them. What about some Broken Skull Ranch? You ever mess with that? I've done that one, too. Yeah about some Broken Skull Ranch? You ever mess with that? I've done that one, too. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah.

With Stone Cold Steve Austin. Yeah. How was it? How'd you do? That's hard. You're out there in the middle of the freaking, well, it feels like you're in the middle of the desert. I think it's like a few miles outside LA or whatever, but.

He said that it's brutal. You know, he said it's fucking rough. It's hard. Oh, well, you've seen it. You know, they strap you to each other and have you go head to head and drag each other through sand. He's only had a couple people win the competition. Yeah, I got beat on the one that I thought I was going to do really well on, the water. Because, you know, I raced Ironman triathlon for 10 years.

And so I love water and swimming and, like, going through water. And I was a water polo player at the University of idaho and so it's like this long trench fuck water polo is hard water polo is very like swimming at the same time as doing some other sport that's the strongest my legs have ever been the egg beater kick don't you like drown people right isn't that kind of that's kind of kosher yeah yeah i think it's the think it was one of the Olympics. I forget the year. It was Russia versus USA, and the water's all red because there's so much blood coming off these guys. I mean, what goes on underneath the water is worse than what goes on above the water.

People doing what? Kicking each other? Or scratching and clawing and grabbing your balls and pulling the short. I mean, anything goes because you can't see it. Hmm. What's going on with your balls? You got like red lights on them or something I've done that article yeah the the the photo biomodulation with with the infrared light that's not

normal human behavior what's going on where's some of these weird I think it is I mean I think I think some people do that's kind of a blue steel face right there. That is. That's my blue steel. That's not even at my house, that photo. The giant red light bulbs. That's at my buddy Drew Canole's house in San Diego. That's a good angle.

And I actually, it's not the tattoo. I actually am seeing a little bit of shoulder striation right there. So the lighting's perfect. I mean, you nailed that. Yeah. Yeah. You get your ass skinny enough and everything's striated oh yeah you also kind of look like you've been caught doing something bad i kind of do you don't know what's going on farther down with that light no but you i mean you actually do while joking aside you you pull down your pants and you stand in front of this light for 5 to 20 minutes. And you're like, grow, baby, grow. Well, no, no, it's not.

It's kind of fine. It's not for size. You get blood volume. But the idea is you have these ladig cells in your testes. And apparently what happens is a specific wavelength of light activates what's called cytochrome C oxidase in mitochondria. And it generates more little swimmers and increases testosterone activity. Yeah.

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it's a, it's a, it's a, it's did you study some of this stuff in school or like, you know, how does this come to be where you end up standing in front of this red light with your pants down around your ankles? Well, I did study. And so my master's degree is in exercise physiology and biomechanics up at Idaho. And I operated personal training studios and gyms for a long time,

but then I got into authoring and writing and speaking. And one of the things that goes along with that is, is people ship weird things to your front doorstep to try out. And so a lot of times it really is like something will show up and you dive into the research and sometimes there's good research behind something. And, uh, you know,

sometimes it just gives you, you got a lot of, uh, you got a lot of, uh, curiosity, right? Yeah.

Yeah. When it came to this, uh, particular thing, um, did, did it yield any results for you? The lights? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I actually, so what I do at my home office is I have one in front of me and one behind me. Because they actually, they make you feel really good, you know, like you're out in the sunshine. Gotcha. And the one in front of me is aimed at my balls. And then the one behind me is just like this bright light on my back. It's good for collagen. It's good for mood.

It feels warm maybe. You're grabbing the same type of near and far infrared rays as you get from the sun. So that's really, that's an interesting thing. Plus at night, I don't do a lot of blue light. You know, I try and be careful with that because it can shut down some of your melatonin production. So I flip these on as the main lighting source in my office at night when I'm working. What would be considered a blue light? Like your phone? Oh, your phone. I mean, if you activate on the new iOS, the night mode, and there's this special trick

you can use to make it all red on the phone as well. It's in the settings. You can go in and actually change it to be red at night. Phone's a big one. You know, the Kindle and the e-readers are a big one. Just lighting in general. Right. You know, what I did was in my gym, it's all blue light bulbs because I want to be awake

and alert in my gym. And there's this company called Lighting Science. I feel like I should be kind of looking at the TV just slightly so I can see what's going on. My peripheral vision is catching little flashes of light over there. The biological LED, it's called. There's less flicker and less intensity from the light, but you can get a type of light that produces a lot of blue light. The two companies I know of, one's Walla and one's Lighting Science. Walla's for more industrial settings like gyms,

but you can get lights that have really high amounts of blue light and then lights that have really low amounts of blue light. Like in my bedroom, it's all red light bulbs. They call them sleepy time bulbs. Or in my kid's bedroom, same thing. And then like in the gym and in the office, it's, it's these awake and alert bulbs, which produce a whole bunch of blue light. So that's the trick is you want, um, you want a lot of, yeah, it looks like that.

That's, that's a sleep enhancing one. You want a lot of blue light in the morning to jumpstart your circadian rhythm at the same time that the sun is rising and the sun is out. And a lot of people say, well, why not go out in the sunshine? Well, a lot of times you're working in the morning, right? You're hunched over in front of the computer. Right. With your pants pulled down and the red light shining on your balls.

So the idea is you figure out a way to expose yourself. Sunlight's preferable, but any type of large amount of blue light in the morning. And then absence of blue light at night. of blue light in the morning and then absence of blue light at night. So have, have you noticed a big difference from it? Um, either just, uh, just in the way you feel or have you noticed a big difference in it? Maybe also in like something like blood work or something as well. Well, I mean, you know, obviously inflammation is tied to lack of sleep. So theoretically, like your CRP would go up if you were, if you were low on sleep.

But what I notice it most with is I travel a lot and you can use it to regulate your circadian biology, you know, your circadian clock when you're traveling. So for example, if I've come home to the West coast after being on the East coast and I wake up at, uh, let's say 4 AM because I'm used to waking up at 7 a.m. on the East Coast, I will put on those blue light blocking glasses in the morning and restrict myself from seeing screens or have the blue light blockers on. When I go down to the kitchen, I'll make myself coffee in the dark. I just keep things as dark as possible. And then once 7 a.m. rolls around or whatever the time of day is that I want to send my body the signal that it's wake time in that new time zone. That's when I'll flip on the blue lights. I have like glasses that produce blue light. They

make like in ear buds that produce blue light. So you just bathe yourself in as much blue light as possible and it shifts your whole circadian rhythm forward. So after a couple of days of doing that, you start waking up at the time that you want to wake up rather than that, you know, that ungodly hour because your body's in the Eastern time zone. And when you shift it forward in the morning, it also shifts it forward in the evening. So rather than being super duper tired at 9 PM, because I'm used to it being midnight back East, that's different. I can explain what that is in a second. Uh, what, what, what's showing up on the screen right now is, is a different form of, uh form of light therapy.

But the idea is it just shifts everything forward. And you can use the same technique to shift everything back, too. So it's great for travel to kind of. Yeah. It's almost like hacking your light exposure to adjust your circadian biology. So ultimately, I mean, that's kind of what all this is based in is you like to train. You like to train. And so a lot of this is based in is you like to train. You like to train. And so a lot of this is based in recovery.

You're trying to figure out ways to sleep better, feel better. Be productive, right? Right. Because you have three cues for your circadian rhythm. There's light, there's food, and there's movement. And so when people have poor dysregulated sleep patterns who are, let's say, uh, intermittent fasting and skipping breakfast. I tell them not to do that. Like you actually want to send your body a signal that the day has begun and have a breakfast, like, like a protein rich, you know, 20, 30 grams of protein with breakfast. And you don't do that for the rest of your life.

But if you're having trouble sleeping at night, it starts in the morning movement in the morning, blue light or sunlight in the morning and breakfast in the morning, blue light or sunlight in the morning, and breakfast in the morning. And that oftentimes can cause you to fall asleep better later on in the day or in the evening. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people are waking up and, you know, people that are utilizing intermittent fasting or having a coffee in the morning or something like that. So you're saying, you're suggesting something slightly different. Coffee's hit and miss. I see a lot of people there. There's a researcher.

I think it's Dr. Sachin Panda who has some research and he has a website. I think it's a my circadian clock or something like that. You could look him up, but he's of the opinion that anything will, will send that circadian cue to your body and, and knock you out of a fast. And so for him, he says, if you're fasting to like,

you know, lose weight or something like that, anything is going to cause it, you know, like a rise in those incretin hormones. But I personally, you know, if I'm fasting in the morning, all, you know, coffee's fine. Supplements are fine, like a caloric supplements, right? So, you know, hefty doses of fish oil, for example. Um, I don't do a lot of that. I just drink black coffee, you know, so, so I don't put a lot of calories into my body in the morning if I am fasting, but if I am trying to regulate my circadian rhythm, I will have some kind of calories in the morning. Now you just flew in here and right away you hit, you hit the gym, you hit up super training here. Yeah. You, uh, messing around with some mobility work and you're moving around and

you also have a compacts unit with you. Yes. uh just always trying to move around are you always trying to like do the most optimal thing possible yeah the the way i like to think about it is you set up your environment for low level physical activity all day long right you you know i'm i'm i'm an author right like i'm i'm stuck in front of a computer much of the time and so the way I think about it is I'm tricking my body into hunter, gatherer, gardener-esque mode. Cause my wife's outside all day, you know, pushing the wheelbarrow and taking care of the goats and the chickens. And we grow all our own food.

That's cool. She's outside all day. I'll look at my office window, you know, and she'll go by with a couple of cinder blocks and, and I feel, I feel trapped sometimes inside. There you are inside dusting. Right. Exactly.

With my pants pulled down in front of my light. So, you know, I've got a treadmill in the office and, you know, you've got mats in here and I have like, you know, mats with different surfaces on them so I can shift. And I've got a balance board and there's a kettlebell behind me and a pull-up bar in the doorframe of the office. And, you know, all sorts of things to kind of keep the body moving throughout the day. So, yeah, I mean, I, I try and move as much as possible. And this is, um, this is one of the things that I did a lot when I was doing Ironman triathlon is I didn't train that much. I would do a high intensity interval training session at the end of the day, typically, and just move, you know, I can walk six or seven

miles during the day and just get that low level physical endurance into the legs by, you know, when I'm, when I'm, when I'm doing consults, when I'm on phone calls, I've got one of these, um, it's called a, uh, a Jabra nine 30 headset. It's a pretty good Bluetooth headset. And then I've got the dragon dictation software on my computer so I can dictate, you know, I can dictate a chapter of a book. I can dictate emails. It's very accurate. And so I can walk on the treadmill while I'm doing my emails. So, uh, yeah, I mean, that's the idea is you figure out ways to do this low level physical activity during the day. And the idea is there's, there's two different pathways to really increase increasing mitochondrial density pretty quickly. The PPAR pathway and the AMPK pathway. One is very responsive to long

bouts of endurance exercise, which works really well. I mean, you look at the majority of endurance athletes on the face of the planet, most of them use what's called a polarized training approach, 80% heavy aerobic, very low intensity exercise, and then brief bouts of high intensity interval training. But the other way that you can increase mitochondrial density if you're tight on time and you, you know, let's say you're, you know, you're an office worker training for a marathon or Ironman or something like that is very brief spurts of high intensity interval training. So what I do is I stay active all day long, very end of the day when the body temperature peaks and your grip strength peaks and your reaction time peaks and your, your post-workout protein synthesis peaks,

I'll do something very, very hard at the end of the day, but it's brief, you know, like a 30 to 45 minute training session. And for me, that works really well to, to be able to compete in, in endurance events, for example. Really? That keeps your endurance up even, right. Even, uh, doing short bats, something, do you still have to, uh, you know, go outside and like run and stuff like that? Or, I mean, mean, you do, but less than most people do. I guess it makes sense, too, because you've been doing some of this stuff your whole life. And water polo as a base is probably a really huge base. Base endurance and frequent physical activity is important.

But, you know, for example, a lot of people will do, you know, let's say an Ironman athlete will do like these, these road death marches, you know, every Saturday where you're out there for three or four hours. When in fact, if you're doing low level physical activity all day long, this high intensity interval training, you can do a long run one or two times a month. Right. So, so a lot less than what most, you know, same thing for the long bike ride or the long swim. So when I was training for Ironman, I figured this out and I could go crush it in Ironman on eight to 10 hours of training per week by staying active, staying on my feet all day and doing these brief high intensity interval training sessions at the end of the day. Yeah, that sure beats a hell of overtraining coming back to like these, you know, cross country skiers and runners and swimmers, you can get away with this, this 80-20 polarized training approach with low intensity aerobic exercise. that a guy named dr. Phil Maffetone used with Ironman champion Mark Allen who won a ton of Ironman triathlons in Hawaii exercising at a very very low like conversational heart rate so he wasn't risking over training so don't say I mean if you have the time available right you can exercise for a long time

without over training if you do it right all you're doing is aerobic training and very high intensity interval training to kind of put the icing on the cake and very little time spent in no man's land in between. You mess around with any heart rate stuff like heart rate, you know, you train in a certain heart rate zone. Dr. Maffetone first kind of came up with and endorsed, and I forget the exact equation, but anyways, it's a way to, based on your lactic acid threshold heart rate and subtracting, it's something like 20 beats or something like that. It's the Maffetone formula. That's your aerobic heart rate. You could also go to an ex-phys lab and test the point at which fat peaks, at which fat burning peaks, not total calorie burning peaks, but the point at which fat burning peaks, that's an approximation of your aerobic threshold heart rate. That would be the heart rate at which you would spend the majority of your time training. And occasionally

you'd really put the pedal to the metal, right. And, and do something that, that churns out copious amounts of lactic acid. It brings you close up to VO2 max, but you don't do a lot of this, like kind of sort of hard 45 minute lunchtime run stuff, right? All that's out the window. So that's the way you would do it if you had a lot of time on your hands and you didn't want to overtrain. But for people who are, you know, working professionals who might want to go do some kind of an endurance sport, doing instead, you know, staying physically active at work, like I mentioned, then just super brief bursts of high intensity interval training. That's the other way to do it without overtraining.

When you're doing, you're mentioning, you know, doing explosive training, like what type of explosive stuff are you doing? Oh, like kettlebells, you know, box jumps, barbell work. Sprints. Sprints, you know, I've got a long driveway. It's about 125 yards long, and I can go up and down the driveway. Burpees, lunge jumps, a lot of plyometrics, pretty much anything that's short and intense. Any Olympic lifting or any power lifting movements in there at all? you know, uh, basic compound lifts. You know, I did bodybuilding for a while and that's all I use was compound cause I'm a hard gainer. So I did a lot of compound lifts and, uh, the, uh,

the idea though, is that, you know, it's, it's, it's very quick, you know, it's, it's in and out and then you can use things. Was that hard? Was that hard to do, to adapt to? Bodybuilding? Uh, no, no, just, uh uh was it hard to uh have short training periods because like we get there's we get excited about training you know yeah there's that there's that big question mark when you're towing the starting line of the race and you haven't in your training let's say for an iron man for example well let's say something even more palatable like a marathon right you haven't yet run more than 20 miles. It's the unknown. You don't have that confidence. But once you've done it once, my first Ironman, it was a 9.59, I think, just under 10 hours. And

it was on that style of training. And at that point, I knew, okay, this stuff works. And since then, I've talked to other people who have incorporated this type of approach. You know, one guy who's been on my podcast a few times, uh, Sammy Inconin, uh, he, he used the same approach and just, just crushed it for a long time. And a lot of his endurance events doing high intensity interval training, you know, typical, typical workout, you know, uh, 30 seconds of, uh, as hard as you can go on an incline on a treadmill, 30 seconds off 10 times through, boom, that's, that's your run when everybody else is out there for an hour and a half. Yeah. Sammy, he developed that app.

He's trying to reverse type 2 diabetes, right? Yeah. Virta. Virta Health. Virta Health. Yeah. Yeah. They just came out with a very interesting study.

That guy's brilliant. Unbelievable. I think they did it with Volek, the ketogenic diet study on diabetes. I mean, granted, I think it was sponsored by Virta. So there's a little bit of, of, of bias there, but know, it's just, it is important that there's an approach to it. You know, it's an important that there's a, there's kind of a system in place and they utilize a ketogenic style diet. Now, you know, a lot of people when they're, when they think about performance, they're not always linking that to a ketogenic style diet, but some people have chosen to utilize a ketogenic style diet. How are you eating? What are you doing? utilize a ketogenic style diet. How are you eating? What are you doing?

Well, you know, coming back to a guy whose name I dropped, Jeff Volek, right? He actually did a study at his lab when he was at University of Connecticut. He's no longer at UConn. I think he's in Ohio now, right? Yeah. This was just before he went to Ohio. He ran this study. He called it the FASTER study. And in that study, he had one group of endurance athletes follow a traditional endurance athlete diet, which would be anywhere from 55 to 75% carbohydrate, traditional carbohydrate loading. You know, just a basic, you know, Gatorade Sports Science Institute prescribed diet. And he had another group follow a ketogenic diet, very high fat diet. I mean, this was pushing 90% fat. And each group logged their diet, and then he brought them into his lab

at the end of, you know, it was six to 12 month range. So these athletes were actually, you know, this wasn't a two week adaptation period or a four week adaptation period. This was enough to, you know, as a guy like Marxism would say, turn you into a fat burning machine, right? Like enough time to actually increase mitochondrial density and train the body how to digest fats and, you know, upregulate lipase and push more ketones through the body, just everything that happens when you're following a ketogenic diet for a long period of time. And he had the ketogenic group do a VO2 max and then a treadmill time to exhaustion test. And he had the carbohydrate group do the same thing. And he also, it was, it was actually a really horrible test because he did

pre and post muscle biopsy and pre and post fat biopsy. So needles into the butt cheeks, needles into the quads, needles into the hamstrings, and then you go run for three hours on the treadmill. And he also, he also investigated, uh, the microbiome. So there was a GI test. He was running bloods the whole time, right? So we had needles coming out of our veins and stopping every 15 minutes on the treadmill for a blood drop. No TV, staring at this white wall in the Yukon lab, just banging it out on this treadmill. And he also tested he also tested a respiratory exchange ratio at rest, how much fat you're, you're burning at rest versus carbohydrate. And that study literally rewrote the textbooks because the prevailing literature and exercise physiology

says that you can burn one gram of fat per minute and during exercise and the ketogenic group, we were burning, you know, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 grams of fat per minute. during exercise and the ketogenic group, we were burning, you know, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 grams of fat per minute. So we actually upregulated our fat burning by following this, this ketogenic diet and, and performed not better, but just as well as the carbohydrate fueled group, which is important because when you look at a free radical production from a high amount of glucose oxidation, and when you look at a lot of issues that you see a lot of athletes deal with, like small intestine bacterial overgrowth and gut rot and, you know, fructose and maltodextrin sensitivities, all these issues that happen when you consume carbohydrates, there's kind of like a health and a longevity advantage. So, you know, I've never said that, that, you know, the, the ketogenic low carb athlete is going to be faster than, than the athlete who's drinking Gatorade and energy bars. But if you can go just as fast and, and, you know, have less free radical production and

less gut issues, then why not? So the, so that's the type of diet that I follow with the exception that I had some issues during those months. Increase in TSH and a significant drop in T3 and T4. Drop in testosterone almost to the point of hypogonadism. There are some things that went on that you'd expect to go on. What's TSH? Thyroid stimulating hormone. So if that increases, it's a sign that your brain is sending a message to your body to increase thyroid production because for some reason,

you're not making enough. And it's likely because some amount of glucose is necessary to convert inactive T4 to active T3. Same thing with testosterone, right? Like high amount of throughput on the body with endurance, not a lot of actual, you know, glycogen on board and the body sends a signal to downregulate fertility because it doesn't want you to, you know, make babies when you're being chased by the enemy and there's not much food around, right? So what I discovered is that you can actually do a carbohydrate refeed because I would test my ketones all the time when I was doing these races. You can do a carbohydrate refeed at the end of the day, or like 100 to 200 grams of sweet potatoes, yams, white rice, you know, quinoa, amaranth, millet, my wife's amazing, slow fermented

sourdough bread, you know, whatever, and be back into ketone production, right, like above one millimolar of ketone production by the next morning, but replenish your glycogen stores and not experience the same thyroid deficits or hormone deficits. And so that's the way my diet looks now is I'll eat a ketotic diet the entire day, a plant-rich ketotic diet the entire day. And at the very end of the day, specifically within a couple hours after I've done that hard workout at the end of the day. So my glucose transporters are already pretty upregulated. I'm already pretty insulin sensitive. I'll have the carbohydrate. So a lot of it will wind up getting shuttled to liver and muscle glycogen. And then, you know, it's, it's, uh, you know, no carbohydrates until dinner the next day. Yeah. I've always kind of felt that, uh, you know, I get a lot of questions

asked about this. I ended up utilizing a ketogenic style diet. I've been doing it for a long time on and off. Um, ended up in my powerlifting career, going up to 330 pounds to pursue, uh, trying to become as strong as I possibly can. So I was like, fuck it. I'm just going to get as big and as strong as I possibly can. Was that you, was that here in this photo on. In this photo on the cover of War of Carbs? No. You're Russian. You know, you have the tattoo.

Yeah, what's that tattoo? This is the tattoo that Mark, I don't know why you guys- That's the original photo. You photoshopped, this is the original photo. Yeah, I photoshopped it out. With the mustache

and the tattoo of Mark Loves Ben on the right bicep. I, first of all, I loved having that mustache. And secondly, I love that tattoo, so I don't know. You know, I'm not in control of everything at this point. The company has grown a lot. And so people make executive decisions. They try to position me a certain way. I got an image and

stuff. The board corners. Yeah. I hear you. That's right. That's what happens all the time. It's just tough being rich and famous. It's not easy. It's not easy. But what I've learned is that, you know, through doing a ketogenic diet for a long time and, you know, starting this war on carbs and, you know, going 50, 60 days with very little to no carbohydrates and kind of experimenting and pricking my finger and peeing on the sticks and doing all these different things that we, these weird things that we get into. I kind of feel like there's, I kind of feel like there's no really extra benefit of being like, you know, crazy about keto.

In my opinion, it makes some sense to have a little bit of carbohydrates mixed in here and there. I mean, it depends on what the person wants. It depends on their goal, obviously. But for most people, most of the people that are in our circle and a lot of people that listen to this podcast, they want to perform better. They want to look good. And they don't want to have to really, really overthink it. And so I think in this book,

I kind of shared with people, I don't pee on sticks. I don't prick my finger. I just don't do it anymore because I've done it for a long time. I have a good understanding of what's going on. At least I think I do. You don't have an acu-check in your back pocket where you can pull out at any moment to prove. Yeah, yeah. I'm not in that spot at the moment, you know, and I don't weigh stuff and do all these different things. But just being like almost a little bit like riding that line of ketogenic seems to make the most sense to me.

I agree. And granted, if you look at, you know, if you look at a medically therapeutic ketogenic diet, such as one that would be prescribed for, you know, epilepsy or seizures, or even, you know, perhaps something like, you know, type two diabetes, you know, might be some pancreatic, you know, like beta cell regeneration in response to a diet like that. In a medical setting, I get it. When you look at somebody like Dr. Terry Walls and the Walls Protocol, fantastic example of a very low-carb, plant-rich, ketogenic protocol, but I think it's like 20 to 40 grams of carbs per day. it's like 20 to 40 grams of carbs per day. And I'll often hand athletes that book or tell them to go to Amazon to get that book as an example of a phytonutrient rich ketogenic diet. But then I'll tell them, Hey, you know, the, the part where it says limit yourself to 20 or 30 or 40 grams,

that's where you're going to break the rules. I want you to have, you know, a big sweet potato with dinner and slather some, you know, some, some raw honey on, on a couple of slices of good and sexually prepared bread, you know, and that type of thing. So yeah, it, uh, if you're not doing it to manage a medical condition and you're doing it for performance and you want to have your cake and eat it too, and increase your fat burning capacity, but also perform, dude, I'm a, I'm a fan of the carb refeeds. Have your cake and eat it too. I've always found that to be fascinating. Cause like you have it and you can't eat it too. I don't understand how it all works out.

It's pretty rare that I've had. Well, to tell the truth, I'm not a fan of like traditional flour cake. Cake is bullshit. Every year when I was a kid. I just want to hug you right now because I agree. Ice cream cake. Yeah, no, it's got to be ice cream cake. It's got to be ice cream cake.

If it's the flour cake, I'm out. Who the fuck eats regular cake anymore people do it shocks me it's it's it's like cardboard in your mouth with frosting on top the frosting now the frosting i can get on board with if it's cream cheese it's got to be cream cheese frosting just go get yourself some fucking frosting and get it over with yeah exactly mainline the frosting Or people that cook their cookies. Just fucking eat the cookie dough. Yeah.

Let's just get right to it. I know, exactly. Let's get right to the raw materials and let's just get shit done. That's what I used to have for breakfast every morning before I did the ketogenic or the low-carb approach was I did oatmeal, peanut butter, whey protein, cinnamon, some honey or some brown sugar.

I'd microwave it for about three minutes so it turns into like a, what would be almost like a souffle, right. And then, and then you eat that. It's kind of hard on top and amazing. I'm an amazing oatmeal microwave chef. Uh, but yeah, I'm, I agree. Go straight for the cookie dough and the cream cheese frosting. You might as well. What's going on with bread? I thought bread was bad. Why are you eating bread, bro? What's going on with bread? I thought bread was bad. Why are you eating bread, bro? What's going on? It's so bad. You know, when we look at ancestrally preparing a grain, right? And this is my beef with like a paleo diet, right?

It makes the assumption that plants are smarter than humans. Uh, if, if I go out on my land and I pick, uh, wild nettle and dandelion and, and mints and, you know, and, and the plantain leaves and all manner of different plants, those plants have built in defense mechanisms, right? And, and consumption of, of those plants in their raw form, there actually is a hormetic effect, right? Just like radiation in small amounts is good for you and cold thermogenesis and small amounts is good for you. And, you know, doing the sauna insane amounts is good for you, you know, consuming small amounts of these, these hormetic stressors from wild plants is good for you can even make the argument that that small doses of gluten are good for you. But once you get to the point where you're consuming them in the form of like the huge handfuls of plants thrown into the smoothies, or, you know, a couple big pieces of bread with dinner, that's where those can cause digestive distress or mineral malabsorption or, you know, leaky gut syndrome or anything else that would happen when you consume, it'd be like if I, you know, I bow hunt, I'm not going to jump out of a tree and wrap my arms around the neck of a deer with the, you know, with the sharp sticks coming out of its head and expect to survive or, or, or to have a tasty meal, right? I have to make a lung or a liver

or a heart or a vital shot. I have to dress it. I have to, in most cases, cook it, ensure that it's not laden with bacteria. So I have to freeze it or salt it or preserve it in some way. And when you look at, let's say, well, let's go to bread, let's say wheat, right? Same thing. I'm not going to not eat wheat, but I'm not going to wander through a field of wheat and just sink my teeth into a stock of wheat and expect my gut not to have a deleterious response. like a vinegar or a lemon medium, and I go through all the ancestral methods to actually render the gluten digestible, pre-digest the gluten, and decrease the presence of a lot of these digestive enzyme inhibitors, then it becomes a digestible piece of bread. So, you know, perfect example, like I mentioned earlier, slow fermentation sourdough bread. That's a bread that's actually digestible. You know, it's something that's not going to do a number on your stomach because of the huge amounts of gluten. And then glyphosate and GMOs are a whole different issue. We use a non-GMO red wheat berry from the Palouse. And I still know,

God bless Monsanto, that it's probably got some traces of glyphosate on it. And I don't know if you've heard of this guy, Dr. Zach Bush. He's done some really interesting research on soil-based probiotics and soil-based compounds and their ability to be able to close the, the, the, the gap it's called a zonulin protein that kind of opens and closes and in an open state or in a damaged state would allow the large gluten proteins to go through the gut wall into the bloodstream and cause a lot of the autoimmune issues that people experience when they consume gluten. So he has a whole host of research on the consumption of soil-based

probiotics and a compound called lignite that helps to protect the body against the ravages of glyphosate. And there's very few supplements that I tell my kids they need to take, but I actually keep a bottle of that in the fridge. I've got no, no financial affiliation with the company, but I keep a bottle of that in the fridge and I have them take a shot of that stuff before they eat anything. Kind of for their immune system and stuff like that. No, for, for, well, I don't, I don't know if it does anything for the immune system, aside from the fact that indirectly it would keep, you know, keep glyphosate from damaging the gut wall and causing, you know, large protein particles to, to do a number on the immune system. But the idea is, uh, it, it protects the body a

little bit from, from, uh, the, the evil Monsanto. How do your kids eat? They eat what we eat. Uh, they actually, uh, they're, they're in the final stages of MasterChef Junior auditions right now. So they're foodies. Oh, that's so cool. I mean, the last meal they made for me, one of them made like a sauteed rice cake with a tuna tartare and micro green sprouts. And the other guy did a salmon in parchment paper with like this rich chocolatey souffle that he makes. And they do bread and they get up in the morning and they make themselves like, like, you know, poached eggs served over sliced avocado with a side of sardines.

And, you know, I do, I do a smoothie, right? And they're nine years old. They're nine-year-old twin boys. But they, from a very, I mean, from the time- Twins that cook? Yeah. From the time they were born- Sounds like you hit the jackpot.

Look out, ladies. From the time they were born, they eat what we eat, meaning when we go to restaurants, they don't order off the chicken finger, hamburger, french fry, kids menu. They go straight to the adult menu where typically more of the good stuff is. When we're at home, there isn't, the way I grew up, there was like a, you know, if the adults were having something weird like escargot and asparagus and liver, the kid's got Kraft macaroni and cheese, right? Because you got to eat like a kid because that stuff's the gross stuff that the adults eat.

But, you know, in our household, the kids just eat what's on the table, what the adults are eating. And if they don't like it, they can go to bed hungry. So they've grown up from an early age with palates developed for a lot of these more ancestral foods like organ meats and, you know, sardines. And, you know, they pretty much eat what I eat. Um, it's, it's an interesting dynamic, you know, when you talk about children, um, people, they just want to kind of, uh, they want to make their kid, you know, happy. They want their kid to, uh, they want to have convenient stuff out on those important parts of life.

Yeah. They want it like, oh, let your kid be a kid or or even just as an adult you hear people all the time say i'll live a little you know have a beer or do this or do that right when do you when do you have your cheat meal i tell people like i don't want to i don't want to cheat on dog shit right if i'm gonna cheat i'm gonna have a massive ribeye steak i'm gonna wash that down with an amazing glass of like biodynamic organic wine i'm gonna have some really good 100 organicodynamic organic wine i'm gonna have some really good 100 organic dark chocolate and i'm gonna have like sweet potato fries with an avocado dressing on the side and i'm gonna you know eat the hell out of that and that's my cheat meal

it's just off your normal plan right it's it's not it's not it's not anything that's that's gonna damage you or or slow you down or make you feel like shit. Right. Exactly. I'm going to have like a, a big bowl of coconut ice cream with cacao nibs and coconut flakes on it. Right. Like that's my idea of a cheat meal. And, and having something like a donut, uh, do you ever do anything like that? My kids make a, uh, uh, uh, they use breadfruit flour for this. They make a bone broth colostrum donut.

The last batch they did was a cream cheese, ginger frosting. And the other one was a dark chocolate cacao nib. And they make these donuts. They're baked donuts. They taste just like donuts. I can dip them in coffee and they're amazing. So yes, I have donuts, but they're bone broth colostrum donuts. They're special donuts. Why not eat a regular donut? Because I feel like shit. You get heartburn. Just, yeah. And plus, I mean, part of it too, and I think, you know, this Mark, like when you know what's going on inside your body, you look at a book like Kate Shanahan's deep nutrition, she kicks this horse to death. Sugar is, is not as bad as vegetable oil, right? Oxidized vegetable oil is going to make up your cell membranes. You know, sugar, you, you can, you can burn that. that. There's a certain amount of metabolism that occurs by the body. It's not going to actually be what comprises your tissues. Oils and fats,

though, those lipids comprise your cell membranes. So when I know that when I'm eating a donut, those are the cell membranes I'm going to have for the next 90 days, just knowing that it's not just the donut. It's not just that one time. That's what's going to comprise my tissue. That donut's becoming part of you. Right. I can have sugar and I can at least go out and do 30 burpees, right? And upregulate my glute four transporters and burn some of it. And I mean, you know, sugar is incredibly digestible. Vegetable oils wreak havoc. And, you know, and when you look at fried foods, like I would much, much rather have whatever, you know, like cotton candy or the little sugar sticks you see to baseball games. You know, I used to go through those sitting in the dugouts, like they were

going out of style, but at least all those are going to do is, you know, they'll, they'll exhaust my insulin a little bit, but there are ways around sugar, but there's no way around figuring out, you know, how, how to get your body to deal with vegetable oil or fried foods. It sounds to me also too, that your too, that your diet has enough variety in it where there doesn't really need to be like a – there's not like a real hard craving probably, right? Right. And coming full circle back to, you know, like the reason I'm not a fan of paleo,

we talked about plants. You could say the same thing about dairy, right? You look at – I used to drink almost a full gallon of 2% milk when I was a kid, and I would have stomach issues and acne. My parents thought I just got sick a lot, right? You look at, I used to drink almost a full gallon of 2% milk when I was a kid and I would have stomach issues and, and acne. And my parents thought I just got sick a lot, right? And they're like, Oh, you're a teenager. Yeah. In fact, I, you know, I have lactose, you know, problems. And, and when you homogenize and you pasteurize the milk, try getting a fucking girlfriend when you're farting all day and you get acne. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, the homogenization process is separating the fats from the proteins. And so you're getting more of those large undigested proteins crossing through the bloodstream. The pasteurization is killing off all the probiotics that predigest the lactose. And when you, you know, my raw milk, right, like a goat milk or a raw cow milk, I do fine with that. Like unhomogenized unpasteurized milk is fine. And so again, it's,

it's the preparation methods that count or you ferment it, right? You, my wife makes this amazing yogurt and goat cheeses and my gut does just fine with those. As soon as I dump some, you know, Starbucks and dump, you know, a few tablespoons of 2% milk in the coffee. Done deal. Yeah. Right there. I mean, I, I can feel it almost immediately. Yeah. It's's uh you know and also too when you're having uh the raw milk and stuff i mean you're not um it's not like you're eating cereal you know like as a kid a lot of times you eat cereal until you're eating captain

crush baby oh man captain crush the stuff that rips up the roof of your mouth it's so worth it it's worth it it's milk at the end yeah And then you put more peanut butter Captain Crunch in the peanut butter milk at the end of it. There's a company that makes protein powder and they made their protein powder. Like the flavor is called cereal milk. And I just thought that was the most genius thing ever because everyone knows what they're talking about. They're like, that's the fucking best shit ever. That's like birthday cake. There's another one.

Is it Quest that does a birthday cake? Yeah. Yeah. Right here. Yeah. Birthday cake. Yeah's another one. Is it Quest that does a birthday cake? Yeah, yeah. Right here. Yeah. Birthday cake. Comfort food. Yeah.

That's brilliant. That's great. Yeah. The peanut butter Captain Crush, though. I would go through that. Ron, who's just in here, the guy with the jacked arms, he is the co-founder of Quest Nutrition. How come you don't describe me as the guy with the jacked arms?

I did. I complimented you that you look like you're on steroids. On my garden hose. My garden hose veins. Yeah, you have that weird vein that goes off. I got this one right here. Is that the main vein? I was in Salt Lake City.

I got this one injected with umbilical and amniotic stem cells. Why'd you do that? Because apparently it has an invigorating youthful effect. And it did. It gave me energy for a long time. You're not worried that another head is going to grow from the top of your head? There is that risk. I mean, I'll shoot straight with you.

Like an arm just grows out of the side of your fucking shoulder or something. All joking aside, there is some risk. Like this stem cell, it's the wild, wild west. There are not a bunch of 90-year-olds walking around as case studies of what happens when you do these stem cells. And technically, they go anywhere they would want to go. And they could cause some kind of undifferentiated cell growth. If I had a tumor, for example, and already had cancer, it's kind of like protein in the China study, right? The issue was not that protein caused cancer. The issue was the high amounts of casein in the presence of a tumor or a toxin that was given to these rats to induce a tumor, cause it to grow. Right. So if I was, I don't follow a low protein diet or a protein restricted diet, but if I had cancer, there's no doubt that I would. So yeah, the stem cells are- There's potential that a penis could grow out of your weenus.

There's potential that, yeah that i could have done some damage with the with the penis injections but i mean part of that is is it's my shtick right like i'm i'm you know i'm an immersive journalist i'm trying out a lot of this stuff and i don't profess it all to be you've injected your your wiener with some stuff i have i've done what do you put in a stem cell injection and there's there's uh well what happened was men's health magazine wanted me to do an article on male sexual enhancement everything from gas station dick pills yeah here's a video gas station dick pills and ayurvedic you know eastern techniques like no ejaculation and reverse orgasm. And they had me do acoustic

soundwave therapy. What's a reverse orgasm? That's, that's where, you know, there's a book about this called the multi-orgasmic male. It's where you, you learn how to circulate your breath right as you're about to come back up the spine and down the head. And it's essentially like keeping the, the ejaculate inside you, keeping them, but you can orgasm and then orgasm again. It's almost like you're pulling back at the last minute. And sometimes you put your fingers down around the perineum and apply some pressure there. And it actually, you know, it works. It's not as bad as the no ejaculation method where you have sex without ejaculating.

God damn. Because that's a technique supposedly to increase testosterone and energy and vitality and not give away a lot of what they call your gene. But my wife and I, we usually are having sex at the end of the day. And for me to get a whole big boost of energy at the very end of the day, right as I'm about to go to bed, doesn't work out that well. So I didn't like the reduced ejaculation frequency, but they also did the, so they had me do PRP injections. And we also did stem cell injections because both of these have been studied in men who have, uh, uh, Peyronie's or erectile dysfunction.

And they wanted to see what would, what would happen if, you know, just, just a healthy male without that issue actually did it. And, and it's, I mean, it works for what it's intended to work for. The issue that blew up in my face was I got calls from these reporters who were asking me about it and, uh, they said, well, did it get bigger? And I said, well, that was interesting because it actually seems to have like increased in size. And so all the headlines hit the news and, and basically, you know, headlines like man with perfectly healthy penis injects it to make it bigger. Man attempts to make his small dick grow in size.

So basically what it turned out to be was Ben Greenfield is the guy with the short penis. He's doing everything he can to make it bigger. And we have that awesome photo of you in front of that weird red light. And people are like, oh, yeah. Putting everything together. Exactly. He's doing anything he can to make it grow. Yeah.

Putting everything together. Exactly. He's doing anything he can to make it grow. Yeah. And then it's just this, this, you know, never ending cycle now where, yeah, I kind of developed this reputation accidentally is, you know, for writing this one article as a guy who does everything he can to, to increase sexual performance. Have you ever taken growth hormone before? I like, like, uh, ipamoralin or samoralin or like actual HGH.

Yeah. Actual HGH. No, no. I take, here we go. Thanks for throwing meGH. No, no. I take, here we go. Thanks for throwing me a softball, Mark. I take this stuff. I take colostrum. You have your own supplement company?

Yeah, yeah. So that's colostrum from a little grass-fed, grass-finished, well, the baby goats aren't, but the mommy goats are grass-fed, grass-finished. And we harvest the colostrum from them on a goat farm in Western Washington. And colostrum is actually, it's good for, as a growth hormone precursor for IGF. It also, that's not the reason I started taking it. I started taking it when I would compete in Ironman because coming back to gut permeability,

colostrum has been shown to reduce gut permeability in heavily exercising athletes, especially heavily exercising athletes, especially heavily exercising athletes in the heat where you get a lot of, of, uh, you know, toxin absorption in the bloodstream, uh, which is aggravated even more. This, this is what drives me nuts. When I see athletes like popping NSAIDs or ibuprofen during exercise that increases your gut permeability to a very significant extent. So if you have gut distress and you're exercising, and especially if you're exercising in the heat, I'll load with colostrum a couple of weeks prior to like a hard competition. It helps a lot.

You can get colostrum at some health food stores and stuff. I mean, not just in supplement form, right? It comes in like a more, like, have you ever tried it that way as well? You mean just like the colostrum powder or the colostrum shots? They have at the co-op that I'm thinking of in Davis, I think they just have regular colostrum. It's like a milk, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's what it is. It's a thin milky fluid. But I mean, you can't, you know, if you want it in supplement form. I used to just jump over the wooden fence on goat farms and go chase down the mommy goats and wrestle them to the ground. And just get it that way? Grab their little teeny goat teats and go for it that way. Like, oh my God, there's that guy again it's a small day all the baby goats freaking here he comes again um yeah the guy with the guy with a small dick uh so i haven't actually taken growth

hormone before no so growth hormone uh many people have taken it are like hey man uh have you ever noticed uh that your dick gets a little bigger on it? So I don't know. Might be if you really want to be the guy that's trying to make your dick grow bigger, you might have to try a growth hormone. I mean, it's a gland with blood vessels. And that's the way a lot of these things work is they increase vascularization. That's the theory behind this acoustic sound wave therapy is that it supposedly breaks up a lot of the old blood vessels and causes the formation of these new vessels. I can't have you mention ejaculation on this podcast without bringing up a very important fact.

Here in Sacramento is like home of the come trees. We have these trees that it smells like, you know, somebody fucking lost a battle of Bukkake or something like that. I mean, it just, it smells like a huge load all over town, whether you're in Davis where I live or you're here in Sacramento. These trees are blossoming and the flowers are going or whatever on them. And it just smells like bleach everywhere you go. Every two feet, there's another one. No kidding.

From what I understand, they're extremely cheap to plant. So that's why they're all over the fucking place. Are they worse than these durian trees that I have in Hawaii? Durian is like a fruit. It smells like a horrible, horrible, dirty sock. I put one in my bag once when I was hiking in Hawaii. And you smelled it a couple days later. It's like a rat died in your bag.

But on the flip side, I had a durian ice cream when I was, and it's amazing. So there's some way to make it palatable, but these Dorian fruits, they're up there in terms of horror effects. I think we just learned a lesson that anything that you can turn into ice cream, it's going to be pretty good. Try your country ice cream. That's the next big thing. It's terrible. I'm always like, what the? Every year I kind of forget about it because they disappear for a while.

They kill your allergies if you have them. And there it is. Hits you smack dab in the face, if you know what I'm saying. But if you like ice cream, I've got a good recipe for you. So this is what I have for breakfast in the morning. Write this down. Okay. Yeah.

Write this down. You have breakfast? You have ice cream for breakfast? I have ice cream for breakfast. Oh, there we go. So you take bone broth and I freeze the bone broth and then I take it out when I get up in the morning. So it's slightly thawed, but it's like, like a slushy and I dump that in the blender and then you put it like a good protein powder in there. I like a

vanilla protein powder. That's, that's a good flavor. I put the squeeze of half a lemon because that increases the absorption of the collagen from the protein powder little bit of stevia uh what else is in there those are oh cinnamon and those are the biggies you blend it for three minutes like you blend it for a long time you got the bone broth slushy you blend it for a long time a little bit of salt helps as well and when you blend it for a long time something about the bone broth slushy, you blend it for a long time. A little bit of salt helps as well. And when you blend it for a long time, something about the bone broth, the introduction of air, the presence of the protein. And if you put a little bit of sunflower lecithin or what's called an emulsifying agent in there, you get a little bit more of almost like a pudding-like texture. So you blend all this. And then once it's done, I use a spatula and I put that into a bowl.

So I'll eat it out of a big wide mouth mug or a bowl you sprinkle crunchies on there like spirulina or chlorella or coconut flakes or cacao nibs or you know anything you have that's kind of crunchy and it's literally like like the texture and the flavor of ice cream it's the best protein shake ever what kind of flavor is it uh you mean like the the the way that it tastes? Yeah. Like a, a vanilla or a chocolate Wendy's Frosty. That's awesome. It's good.

That sounds really good. That's a good way to start your day is with an ice cream. You start your day with that and you end your day with ribeye steak and life is just good forever. So you've also tinkered around with the carnivore diet a little bit too, right? No. Well, what I, what I do or what, what I did. I've seen you with an awful lot of steaks lately i did that recently i had steak for i think 10 nights in a row i used the the um the u.s wellness meats i get steak from them yeah grass yeah that company's amazing

they have awesome hot dogs so you ever order a hot dog from there i've ordered their keto burgers which are pretty good but that just make a mess on the grill. Cause there's so much fat in them. It'll light your goddamn grill on fire. 55%. So, so yeah, 55% fat, but they're French cut bone in grass fed grass finished ribeyes. They are amazing. And I had one of those 10 days in a row. My wife was at Disney for a week. So I had seven days where I just had to cook for myself anyways, but I still had a salad for lunch, you know, with some sardines on it. And I still had my, my ice cream for breakfast. So I wasn't full on carnivore diet. I didn't take my bloods before and after I didn't actually quantify much of it, but I felt really good. And I figured out how to cook those things perfectly. Those,

those ribeye steaks, you take them out, you get them to room temperature. There's nothing better than a well-cooked steak. It's fucking unbelievable. A good coarse salt. I use this stuff called aztec salt it's like this this unrefined clumpy salt mexican salt yeah mexican that andrew it's called it's called the hardest working salt you've ever used exactly yeah so i put the i put the salt on there black pepper a little bit of cayenne and then obviously like some kind of anti-carcinogen like rosemary or thyme because you're going to get a good crusty finish on the steak. And then I saute it for about three minutes each side. He's getting like all excited as he's telling us.

Oh, dude, he's so excited. You use the cast iron skillet. So I put it in the oven first to get it hot. And I take it out. And I use all sorts of different fats each week. The one that works really well, I happen to have some of this because again, like companies send me weird stuff. I saw it on your Instagram. You saw this camel hump fat.

Yeah. Talk about hump day. That's good. It's good. So a big old dollop of this camel hump fat, and then you heat it up in the cast iron skillet. You take it out. And so that sounds so gross. The flavor is amazing. It's better than

grass fed butter. I swear. Is it like the actual hump? Is that what I'm assuming you need to get it out of the hump? And that's the camels, but it says camel hump fat on the label. So I'm assuming it didn't come from like the rib cage or something like that. And then you, uh, you go three minutes each side on the steak, throw it in the broil for a minute each side, take it back out and finish it for a minute each side. And it's perfect. It's perfect. Tell us about plants because, you know, plants have been getting bashed a little bit, especially with the carnivore diet circulating around. And I have to pee really bad.

So you can talk about that. And I'll be right back in a second. Say something that I didn't already say about plants. The part of being live. Lectins, the, the, uh,

whole Stephen Gundry anti-lectin thing. Don't worry. I'm here with you. Uh, yeah, you're still here with me. Thanks for keeping me company, bro.

Of course. Us and Jess, you know, we're going to make sure you're taking care of us. I mean, there's not a whole lot more to say about plants. In addition to what I already said, you,

you have to be smarter than the plant. You have to, you know, use like Stephen Gundry talks about in his book. Like if you're, if you're super sensitive election lectins, you can pressure cook potatoes. You can seed your tomatoes or skin your tomatoes. Uh, there are steps you can take to, to prepare, uh, lectins that make them digestible, especially if you have leaky gut or gut issues it works pretty well yeah we have a couple people asking a couple random questions on the uh youtube chat box basically someone's just asking if you're still pretty active is a high amount of protein still okay while on a ketogenic diet well it depends i mean speaking of the of the carnivore diet you know you look at the the blood work i you know, Sean Baker, I guess, got his blood work done.

And, you know, he showed some elevations of blood glucose and insulin from what I understand. And certainly a high amount of protein will result in some gluconeogenesis, which, you know, theoretically could cause some vascular damage long term or insulin ins insensitivity long-term. So I do think that you need to be careful. When you look at cellular autophagy or the body's natural cellular cleanup process, it responds quite well to protein cycling in addition to periods of time spent fasting, whether it is an intermittent fast or a weekly 24-hour fast or a three or five day water fast. So I'm, I'm a fan of this idea that you have certain periods of time where you might restrict meat or, or have lower protein intake to enhance cellular autophagy. Uh, but if, if you're active, uh, the protein intake is, is pretty dang important. I mean, you know, I, I personally recommend no less than about 0.55 grams per pound. I don't usually recommend a lot more than 0.8 grams per pound. And I like encouraging periods of time where you might go without a high amount of protein intake just so that you get cellular autophagy. Um, so that you, so you're not in a constant state of anabolism.

I mean wouldn't it make sense that you know if you if you steer away from something a little bit that when you go back to it it'll have a little bit better effect on you yeah I mean theoretically in a lot of ways right theoretically yeah it seems like the human body seems to work that way coffee is the perfect example for that right so I actually do that I switch to

decaf coffee once a week out of every month because coffee takes up the receptor sites for adenosine like an inhibitory neurotransmitter. And so when you, when you switch off of coffee for seven to 10 days, you restore adenosine receptor sensitivity and you, you get your body sensitized to caffeine again, rather than having to, you know, go, my dad was a gourmet coffee roaster growing up. Right. So, I mean, by the time I was 13, I probably had adrenal fatigue because I would just do shot after shot of espresso.

He repaired these amazing Italian espresso machines out in the backyard. And we just had coffee 24-7 around. It was great. But I also have a very, very high tolerance to coffee still. Yeah. You know, even with that decaf trick, it takes a pretty hefty dose of coffee to get me going. You know, it wasn't that long ago that we were talking a lot about carb loading. You know, people would load up on carbs before a big race or before endurance or before games or various sports. Do you do anything similar to that anymore?

It works very well. You restrict carbohydrate. I mean, the typical Ironman protocol I'd do before switching to a ketogenic approach is you upregulate glycogen synthase levels, which is the enzyme that's going to allow you to really store a large amount of glycogen. I mean, some people would say like 30, 40% more than you'd normally be able to store by engaging in some pretty significant carbohydrate restriction for about two days. So let's say I was going to race on Sunday, the Saturday prior, I would begin to restrict carbohydrates while continuing to train, right? And then going through the week, as you're doing your taper workouts, and as you're approaching the race, you would increase by five

to 10% throughout the week. So whereas Saturday might be 20 to 30%, and Sunday might be something close to that, you know, you'll add 35% and up to 45%. By the time you get to Saturday before a Sunday event, you're up around 85 to 90% carbohydrate. And same thing when I was a bodybuilder, right? Like you'd, you'd go in relatively carb depleted, you know, you take your dandelion extract and you pee out all your water and you know, you're backstage and you're, and you're striated and you weigh in and you make weight, you go out, you pose, your whole body is cramping in front of the judges because you've got no water and no electrolytes. But then you leave there and you just go punish ice cream and bread.

And I mean, this glycogen synthase kicks in and you're just popping by the end of the day and you feel like a million bucks and your body just soaks up glycogen like a, soaks up carbohydrates like a sponge to form more glycogen. Do you do anything like that at all now? Because I know that, you know that carbohydrates are still in your diet. You just don't have nearly as many. Prepping for a race, do you ingest maybe double the amount? I don't. Or have you toyed with that? No.

Or don't need it? I've toyed with it, but I don't. For example, when I was doing Ironman, I would do bulletproof coffee before the race. Wow. when I was doing, uh, Ironman, I would do bulletproof coffee before the race, just basically to, you know, uh, before the swim, you know, about an hour and a half or two out, you know, compared to like the oatmeal, sweet potato yam approach that I do for a really long time, I would do, you know, MCT oil. And, you know, sometimes I'd throw some almond butter or some coconut oil or some Stevia and it would make it pretty flavorful, big old cup of that before the

race. And you're, you're shifting your body into fatty acid utilization. And then during the race, I would consume, you know, there's a video somewhere on YouTube of me preparing this, but I would do amino acids, like an essential amino acid blend to stave off central nervous system fatigue. It seems like you're really big on making these crazy recipes of different stuff, whether it be food or shakes or supplements. So amino acids, right?

So a lot of times central nervous system fatigue or the infamous bonk, it's low blood levels of amino acids, which cause a high level of tryptophan to cross the blood-brain barrier, and tryptophan makes you sleepy. So a lot of times you're not running out of carbohydrates. You're running out of amino acids. Oh, I never heard that before. That's interesting. Amino acids. Exogenous ketones were kind of late in the game. Those were just coming out as I was kind of finishing my Ironman competition. So I didn't do a lot of exogenous ketones, but I did MCT oil, right? The equivalent of about a tablespoon of MCT oil in each one of these water bottles that I'd blend up. Small amounts of carbohydrate. For a while, I used UCAN super starch, which is a very slow release carbohydrate, but it ferments pretty readily in

the digestive tract. So I switched to like a potato-based dextrin starch, but like a quarter of what you'd normally see recommended, like around 90 to 100 calories per hour. So you've got carbohydrates, very, very small, slow bleed of those, essential amino acids, something that's going to be a precursor to ketones like MCT oil, or just nowadays you could just use exogenous ketones. And then because if you're following a high fat diet, you dump glycogen and glycogen loss is accompanied by mineral loss and electrolyte loss. So I'd put electrolytes in there as well. And I just do one water bottle per hour of that very potent mix for endurance. So that would be my approach for like a, like a longer race in a high fat state. You do

something like a Bulletproof coffee prior, and then you do your, you know, your bottles of, of, you know, this, this solution, trying to make it not taste like ass. And, um, that's, this is where, uh, where Stevia comes in handy. Lots of, lots of different products. What do you do about, uh, What do you do about cramps? You know, I've run into, you know, cramps since the time I was a kid, basically. You know, I try to add again salt and I try doing other things. I haven't really found anything that's been, I've been able to, you know, mitigate it a little bit, but I haven't really found anything that's really helped a ton yeah so when you look at a lot of these companies that are coming out with like um i think hot shot is the name of one of them right a very very kind of like hot spicy type of

solution right the the way that those work is they're not replenishing minerals because in many cases a cramp during exercise is not related to a mineral deficiency. And we know this because when you taste something extremely salty, before the salt even has a chance to get absorbed or replenish minerals in the muscles, the cramp can subside. And I used to do this when I'd race. I would race with these electrolyte capsules. And if a cramp would set in, you break open the capsule, you dump it into your mouth. It's a horribly like, you know, it's the saltiest thing you've ever tasted. It was just salt. Just salts, right? But very, very concentrated salts. And what happens is an alpha motor neuron

inhibition, meaning it overrides that alpha motor neuron reflex. It's causing the muscle to go into this protective cramp and the muscle is torn out of its cramp. The reason for the cramp in the first place is usually increased sympathetic nervous system drive because you're asking your muscle to do something in competition that you haven't asked it to do in training. And the way to overcome that drive, the way to overcome that reflex is, and a lot of nutrition companies have figured this out and you look, you know, you could, you'd go the cheap route and grab a bunch of mustard packets from a fast food restaurant or just just you know grab something like anything that tastes very spicy or very salty placed into the mouth reverses that

inhibition and so that's that's typically the reason that a cramp sets and in some cases it is dehydration and it is loss of minerals and loss of electrolytes but in fewer cases than a lot of people think so yeah i end up with cramps i end up with i usually get like a cramp like in my leg and i get them i get them at night i for whatever reason i'm not even sure why but this has been going on for a very long time i mean i've been on a low carb diet for a long time and night cramps those are a lot of times a signs of a deficiency magnesium deficiency is a big one you know you can do like a topical magnesium to to to get absorption right where the cramp actually takes place. Those are a real bitch. Good heart cramp is a real bitch.

Yeah. I used to get, speaking of water polo, I used to get those in water polo, which is even more of a bitch because if you stop swimming, you die basically. So you'd use like your egg beater kicking with both legs and one leg fails because you feel like your calves going to just pop out of your, your skin. And then you're going I kind of use my, use my arms and flail to the edge of the pool and pull myself out. Uh, in, in my case, that was usually because again, asking my body to do something during the water polo match that I hadn't asked it to do in training. Cause you're just pushing harder, right? You've got your adrenaline going and you push yourself much harder than you would in training. Sometimes there's some cross-linking fascial adhesions, things like that, that can, that can aggravate it. Right.

And I think also too, for me, I think part of it is just like, my body's very tight, you know? So it's like, I got to continue to try to work on getting the shit to open up and getting the shit to relax. You know, everything's just kind of like tense all the time. I need to just stretch out and move around a little bit more. Yeah. Hire a massage therapist to carry around in your suitcase. Pull her out. Giant Swedish massage therapist named Helga with a metal bra that can just go to work on you. I could see you digging something like that. I'm there. Yeah. There you go. I mean, my massage therapist at home, Allie, like she's just, you know, big old strong woman that comes over and, you know, every Wednesday or Thursday night, just, you know, kicks my ass for a couple hours on a massage table. Yeah. I know you said you

were looking for some body work cause you got this competition coming up. You get that done regularly. Uh, I, I didn't for a long time. And now every single morning when I wake up, it annoys the hell out of my wife cause she winds up putting it all away. And then I pull it back out every morning. I tell her, just keep it out because I'm going to use it anyways. I've got this big box next to the living room couch of, you know, rumble rollers and, you know, MyoBuddy vibrating massage tools and the Beastie Ball, you know, everything, you know, the Hyper Ice has all their vibrating rollers, but I'll hit it for 10 to 15 minutes while my French press is, you know, I make a French press

every morning. So while that's steeping, I just make love to all these, you know, medieval torture devices for, I mean, it's a good 10 to 15 minutes. And then I do that weekly hour and a half to two hour massage. And now I also do a weekly Cairo. So I drive, I've got a Cairo about 10 minutes from my house and I drive in there for an adjustment in between And between those three things, dude, my body feels amazing. Seems like you experiment and try a lot of things. Is there anything that you were doing maybe just as of two, three years ago that you're like, man, that was fucking dumb. Like I wish I, you know, I was, or just even kind of even almost kind of admit flat out like, oh man, shit. I guess I was, I guess I was kind of wrong about some of that.

as doing like the long-term ketosis with ultra endurance, meaning like I'd lose my morning wood. I haven't, I wouldn't have libido at night. Um, what I'm a bigger fan of now is I'll wake up and I still work out in a, in a facet state in the morning, but it's always more of like a parasympathetic driven workout. Meaning, uh, my top three would be an easy walk in the sunshine for that circadian biology, you know, reason that we were talking about earlier, a nice swim in cold water, right? So I'm getting that cold thermogenesis, white adipose tissue to brown fat conversion, uh, or I've got a sauna, I have this infrared sauna at home and I go in there and I do some yoga moves and I just sweat for about a half hour. And for me to do something very easy like that in a facet state feels amazing, right? I love to move in a facet state in the morning, but when I do the really, really hard stuff in the morning, uh, combined with being in a fasted

state, uh, it, it, it kicks my ass hormonally. The only time I'll do that is when I'm at a conference or I'm, I'm traveling. And I know, you know, you finish up a conference at four or 5 PM. You're like, Oh, I'm going to work out later on. You never do. Cause everybody wants to go to dinner and go have drinks or whatever. So I'll do a hard workout in the morning in a case like that. But now nine times out of 10, super easy morning workout in that fasted state. And then I save the hard stuff for later on. What was an indicator to you that that wasn't working well? That was mostly symptomatic.

That was like I mentioned, you know, you don't get your morning wood, your libido goes away. You feel kind of worn out by the end of the day. Do you tend to use that a little bit more than just getting your blood drawn? Oh, yeah. I mean, getting your blood drawn is a bitch. I mean, you've got to drive to the lab. I mean, nowadays, there are companies coming out with micro-needles that you slap on that will draw the blood that you then chip off to the lab.

There's home test kits. But when it comes to blood as opposed to urine or saliva or stool, blood you still in most cases have to go into a lab for. So that's, you know, it's tricky. And when it comes to self-quantification, I have one of those breath ketone monitors that I'll pull out occasionally.

I have one called a Level. There's another one called a Ketonix. And those do a pretty decent job approximating ketones. I use HRV a lot, a lot. Like every single morning I test HRV. Yeah, the heart rate variability. Heart rate variability as a measurement of neuromuscular fatigue.

Because a lot of times delayed onset muscle soreness subsides and your nervous system hasn't fully recovered. So you think you're prepared for a hard workout when in fact, you're pushing close to illness or injury or overreaching or overtraining, which sometimes you intentionally want to do, right? Like if you're on a good periodized program, but in many cases, you do your hard workout and you get sick and you get ill. And I figured out that if I'd trained through a low HRV too much, it would actually cause that even if my body felt ready to rumble. So now I pay attention to that morning HRV measurements. That's when I do, I do quite a bit of, uh, it's like a morning HRV.

I know, uh, Joel Jameson has been talking about that for, for, uh, for a long time now. And actually, um,

I actually did my first workout, you know, wearing, uh, his monitor and, and kind of tracking some of that. And, uh,

just did a cardiovascular session, just trying to keep my, my heart rate in a rate in a certain zone. And it was fucking hard. You know, I don't really, you know, I'm not an endurance guy. I haven't really trained that way before. So I do like to do conditioning stuff here and there. I've obviously been powerlifting for a long time.

And so for me to try to sustain a certain pace the whole time without any break or rest is pretty foreign to me. So I was like, shit, that was pretty hard. It felt good though. So Joel's program, you're actually measuring your, your HRV while you're working out. Uh, so, um, I ha I only got this, uh, product just to just a few days ago. So it's, uh, Just a few days ago. So it's just a monitor and he has an app. And so his app, Morpheus, is tracking your heart rate variability while it is, I'm probably saying some of this wrong, but basically what it's doing is it's, uh, it's judging your, your heart rate, uh, how it is each day. And it's giving you kind of workouts based off of that. So off of your heart rate or your heart rate variability variability. I believe that's exactly what it's doing because, so if you were to like, uh, let's say I did a crazy deadlift session and let's say tomorrow morning I wake up and I'm, I'm feeling good. Well, if I look at the chart and, or if I look at the, look at the app, uh, and it might have a suggested workout for me based on how my heart rate is. Maybe I over-trained the day before

and I, you know, not really aware of it. Right. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's neuromuscular fatigue. It's a very, very good, good tool. And like I mentioned, you can, you can do, you know, saliva and urine, all these other measurements at home. But I mentioned, you can, you can do, you know, saliva and urine, all these other measurements at home. But I mean, you know, that stuff's not super sustainable, especially for the average person who just wants to keep a finger on the pulse of their body. But HRV is pretty easy. When you were saying that you do sprints and stuff like that, do you, because you need to have multiple levels of conditioning in order to do what you're doing, correct? Because you need to be able to sustain something for a long period of time.

Right. You know, what I, what I want to work on is I want to, I want to work on being healthier. I don't really care too much about where my body weight's at. Strength always matters. I always, I always want to move around some weights, like kind of part of my DNA in some way. But, you know, I, I want to try to continue to get healthier. I was, uh, Joel mentioned to me that if I got my resting

heart rate down, he thought that that might be beneficial. My resting heart rate was 68. He was like, ah, you know, let's work on getting it down to 60. Yeah. He's like, let's work on getting it down to 60. See if we can get it down. Like you're just probably like 40 or something like that. it down to 60 see we can get it down like you're just probably like 40 or something like that or four yeah all right it's very low in in your opinion uh with your training what would be something that would be good for me to try complete cardiovascular conditioning you know to return to like you know you kind of hinted at like multiple modes of intensity for cardiovascular exercise you want to hit it from all spectrums uh Technically, just an increase in stroke volume is going to decrease resting heart rate. But the way that I like to think about it is you have a few different elements

of cardiovascular performance. You have your mitochondrial density, your ability to be able to burn substrate to generate ATP. In most cases to, to burn substrate, to generate ATP. In most cases, you know, like, like a fatty acid substrate to generate ATP. You have your, uh, your maximum oxygen utilization or your VO2 max, which would be, uh, the size of your lungs and the size of your stroke volume and the ability of your tissue to be able to- What's stroke volume? Sounds interesting. Yeah, it does. Hey now. Yeah, yeah.

I've got a very high stroke volume when my wife's away. It indicates just your cardiac output, right? Like how much blood you pump with each beat of your heart. And then you've got the ability of the tissues to extract oxygen as it rushes past in the bloodstream. Those are elements of your VO2 max, right? So you have your mitochondrial density. You have your VO2 max. And then you have two other components, your lactic acid tolerance, right? Your ability to be able to buffer lactic acid or to even shove it through what's called

a Cori cycle where the lactic acid is used to regenerate glucose, which you can then rely upon for more glycolytic efforts during exercise. And then finally you have just pure stamina, right? Your ability to go for long periods of time while utilizing fatty acids as a fuel and, you know, while sustaining the, you know, just the muscle and the bone stress that can occur during long endurance efforts. by doing very, very brief efforts with long periods of recovery time. Meaning a classic 30 second as hard as you can go on an airdyne, four minutes of recovery, very easy, whether it's on the airdyne or doing mobility work and then getting back on the airdyne.

And you would do, for example, five to six rounds of that. So that would be one key workout that you would do each week. So it would be short, short and explosive, long recovery periods. And you've checked that box. It'd be brutal. Right, Yeah. Right. But, but you've got long recovery periods.

Right. Right. The next box you'd want to check for VO2 max, in my opinion, this, this is, this is the hardest of, of the four. VO2 max responds well to longer protocols at a maximum sustainable pace, typically in about the four to six minute timeframe. Right. So we're talking, uh, you know, like a, like a four by four by four, four minutes, as hard as you can go with four minutes of recovery, four times through. Right. And that, those four, you know, once, once you exceed about, in my opinion, two minutes, like once you exceed that glycolytic effort, things get hard. Like you, you gotta go deep into the pain cave. Paul has a pretty good on topic question. Um, he's just wondering, are you worried about scar tissue or myocardial fibrosis in your

heart from all this high endurance training? Paul, that fucking has nothing to do with what I was just talking about. You just totally derailed the conversation. My bad, dude. Come back to that in just a second. But the short answer is yes. Okay, just one second. So briefly, I'm trying to help Mark get his heart rate into Lance Armstrong territory.

So you got your VO2 max, right? Four to six minutes of recovery. So one-to-one work-to-rest ratio and about four to six rounds of that. That's a tough one. But doing that also on a weekly basis. Next for lactic acid tolerance. That's where you work hard, but you don't recover for very long. So you're building up a lot of lactic acid.

This would be like a classic Tabata set, right? Like a Tabata finisher for two or three of your workouts during the week. 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off for four minutes. That's going to generate a lot of lactic acid because it's a two to one work to rest ratio. Right. that's going to generate a lot of lactic acid because it's a two to one work to rest ratio. Right. Most of the time, what would we be using?

Like a bike or a- I like something- You kind of can't use weights because they just don't work great for- Anything that uses arms and legs. You need to do the kettlebell swing, but- I got you. Which would be an example of arms and legs, but VersaClimber, Airdyne- A roller maybe. Concept 2.

Yeah. Exactly. Any of those work well for this because you're using a lot of muscles. And then the last one, stamina, very simple. You wake up on a Saturday morning in a fasted state and you go on a two-hour hike or you save all your phone calls for Sunday morning and you do them all while you're out and walk through the neighborhood and you don't eat anything and you just walk and walk and walk. Right? So low level. But you hit those four parameters, right?

But you hit those four parameters, right? Mitochondrial density, VO2 max, lactic acid tolerance, and stamina on a weekly basis. And your cardiovascular response to that is going to result in a lower heart rate and also very, very complete and well-rounded cardiovascular profile. So at this point for you, you may not need to focus on all four of those things on a weekly basis, but maybe more so on like a monthly basis or something like that. Well, in a properly, I shouldn't say a properly, but in, in a traditionally periodized program, you would be a direct,

you know, I'd, I would be closer to mitochondrial density and lactic acid tolerance during race season. And I would be skewed more towards stamina and VO2 max in the off season. But if we're just looking at like a program for life, right? Your mitochondrial density once a week, you hit lactic acid, you know,

as a finisher after a few of your weight training workouts during the week, you do the VO2 max workout during the week. And on, you know, like I mentioned, on Saturday and Sunday, you do the longer endurance effort. And you could do that till you're 90, right? So that would be what it would look would, uh, what it looked like.

So sorry about this scar. I didn't mean to be offensive. Uh, what was his question? No, he's just wondering if you're, uh, worried at all about that, you know, scar tissue with all your high endurance training and whatnot. Yeah. I mean, technically, uh, there's just as much of an eccentric load with, with weight training, you know? So I think what it comes down to is the type of approach I mentioned a little bit ago, you know, deep tissue work to ensure that you're not getting a lot of cross-linking. You know, I'm a big fan of collagen, you know, as, as another way to do that, you know, collagen, uh, you know, in the form of a bone broth and vitamin C like that morning smoothie. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's break down the body and break down the body. Right.

So, so yeah, it's just a matter of not overtraining and also doing enough deep tissue work and getting enough collagen through the body to, to keep it put together. But I'm, I'm, I've got some scar tissue for sure. Well, you know, uh, I mentioned this before on this podcast, I think, uh, anytime we compete, we're going to, you know, we're, it's not the healthiest thing. No, I don't profess any of this shit to be held. I mean, like Ironman triathlons and even these Spartan races, right. For me, healthy is when I got on a bow hunt, right. For me, that's true ancestral fitness.

Occasionally I'm hiking super fast with a load on my back to the top of the hill and I'm pulling 70 know, pulling 70 pounds on the bow, uh, you know, and occasionally I'm packing meat out and, and you're, you're lifting a pretty heavy weight. Packing some meat. And occasionally. We kind of keep going back. We've got the same theme going on. Stroke volume of meat packing. Uh, and, and, you know, to me, that's very, very ancestral, right?

This other stuff is, it's either ego driven or it's it's social expectation driven or it's Facebook profile photo driven or it's or something else that's just based on us wanting to scratch that primal itch and get out of the office and get dirty and messy and bloody or go across that finish line that we saw our buddy competing or just go, you know, satisfy that urge to compete, right? To go to battle. What do you think about all these things that are going on in the world right now? I mean, especially, you know, from a social media aspect. What's some of your take on social media? What's your, you know, what's your stance on it? It's a dopamine fix, right? I get it.

When I find myself checking Facebook multiple times per hour sometimes, and I know exactly what's going on. It's the same thing that's going on with porn, right? You get this big dopamine rush and it feels good. And it's like the rat pushing the, you know, pushing the lever to get cocaine. Andy, write that down, please. So we know what the deal with porn is because I've been watching way too much. Trying to figure it out. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's this strange social setting that we haven't encountered before in human history where all of a sudden we have access to a huge amount of information and a large number of friends who we can't see, but who we somehow have access to virtually. And we can tap into that human drive

to be social anytime, any place. And in many cases, it's very rewarding because let's face it, a lot of it's positive. It's wonderful photos and it's the brightest part of people's lives. A lot of it is. Well, a lot of things that come from social media and a lot of things from social media, like we're more social. I think some people would argue that we're less social because somebody might be texting somebody from across the room when they can just simply go over and talk to them. But you and I would not be on this podcast together, you know, if we didn't have email, if we didn't have social media, if we didn't have a podcast, listening to you on Joe Rogan and my brother, you know, communicating with you and so on. on. So there's, there's definitely a lot of positive, but what we end up with as well as we end up with a lot of, uh, just a higher opportunity for envy, a higher opportunity

to be like, ah, I don't like this guy. Cause he's sometimes you, sometimes you're kind of annoyed by somebody cause they're executing really well. Rapid and highly available dissemination of information is valuable to a certain extent. It allows us to educate ourselves at a faster pace. It allows me to find your facility here in Sacramento way faster, you know, using an Uber and location services on my phone than I'd normally be able to. It makes life a lot more convenient. And you could even argue that when you look at, for example, the parts of the frontal cortices responsible for fact-finding, which we can now do through Google, or through direction locating, which we can now do through Google Maps, that frees up cognitive willpower

and cognitive energy to do something like write an amazing article or paint something or compose music, right? So, so in a way we're rewiring the human brain to skew it towards creativity and productivity, but we're also becoming dumber in some respects. There's not a lot of kids who can find their way via the sun and the moon and the stars and the wind because they can do it with, with their phones. There's, there's not a lot of people who can, who can memorize facts. I mean, I don't, you know, I still know my phone number, but a lot of people don't know their phone number because you don't need to memorize your seven-digit phone number anymore in many cases. So, yeah, there's a tradeoff.

There's a tradeoff. And I think there are pros and cons. And I think I still think that the pros outweigh the cons until you take into account the biological effect of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and constant connection and cell phone towers and Wi-Fi routers. And I do not profess those to be healthy for the human body. I mean, even out in Washington, my whole home is wired with metal shielded Ethernet cable. You're in a bunker. Yeah. I mean, I'm off grid.

People come to my house. How i can how can i connect to the internet i tell them you gotta you get an adapter and you gotta plug into your ethernet port and if you you know if you have a phone there's like one bar and you know so just tell me eat shit yeah hey man how do i use wi-fi just tell them to say hey you know what there's a dictionary over there the bookshelf hey why don't you go eat some shit um you know i i find that i find that fascinating and i think that um there definitely will be a tipping point you know where the technology is causing causing too many problems the technology the convenience i mean look at look at what convene where convenience has us convenience has us, uh, uh, dealing with, uh, diabetes and insulin resistance, um, at a whole nother level that I never thought I never, I, I mean, I'm not me. Um, just, I,

I don't think our, I don't think we, you know, saw this, uh, a lot of these things coming. I mean, the, the, uh, all the sugar and all the convenient foods and just how fast everything's going all the time. And it's very rare for people to kind of slow down for a second and think about themselves and kind of go internally. We talk a lot about working out, something that I use a lot from Paul Cech. He talks about working in. People need to kind of think about what the fuck's going on inside. And so I think if we're going to use this technology, we're going to use these things that are convenient, we just have to be mindful of what's happening. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi.

It can be overdone. Having these lights in our face all day can be overdone. Scrolling. You know, if you and I are hanging out and all you're doing is scrolling through your phone the whole time somebody's like hell you know uh ben greenfield i'd be like oh yeah yeah he was a great scroller like he just sat there and he just fucking scrolled and scrolled and scrolled yeah you know it's like there's even i mean and we have these built-in biological mechanisms there's a reason my phone's on the floor by my shoe right now because even the presence of my phone right here, I would be mildly distracted knowing I had this magic.

I've got this magic little box right there that I could go connect to anybody in the world with and look up anything. And, you know, I mean, whatever, you know, you can, you can, you can jack off. You can talk to grandma. You can watch something funny, whatever you want to do with that. That is, uh, you mentioned the same sentence. Jacking off and talking to grandma. Yeah. Sorry. That that that bad analogies but i mean you get it i mean like yeah it's it's uh it's very tricky and the crazy ironic thing about it is even if you know it's addicting and you know it's

potentially bad for you and even if you know and i realize this sometimes when I flip on my phone, as soon as the airplane is about to land and I'm inside that metal tube and I know everybody else is doing the same thing and there's signals bouncing all over the cabin, I still flip on my phone because I want to see what happened while I was up in the air for two hours. I still, even though I know it's super shitty for me. Do you guys think we'll get better at being able to put the phone down or do you think it's just going to get way worse because it's still fairly new to everybody i think it is it's going to be a situation in which we'll see more and more research coming out and we'll see more and more case studies and we'll see more and more bodies in the streets that suggest that there might be a biological trade-off

for the convenience that we've developed and at at that point, people will have that, oh shit moment. And I don't know if that's five years away or 10 years away or 20 years away, you know, when all, you know, when, when all of us are, you know, growing tumors out our ears from the cell phone being here or what, but I think at some point there's going to be a wake up moment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've had a lot of, oh shit moments over the years, you know, having this Uber car, you know, take someone's life is a pretty crazy thing, but you know, technology is going to keep advancing. It's going to keep moving forward. And it doesn't matter if, uh, it's no disrespect to the person that we lost, but it, things are just going to keep moving forward. Yeah. You know, it's, it's regardless of that situation. And there will probably be other people that got hurt. There will probably be other people will die, but they're just going to keep moving forward. Yeah. You know, it's regardless of that situation. And there will probably be other people that get hurt.

There will probably be other people will die, but they're just going to keep pushing shit forward. There are societal expectations that people will begin to realize as we dive deeper and deeper into this stuff. I was just, you know, even just last night I was talking to my wife. I'm like, Jessa, I just figured this out. And I was talking to my friend Aubrey Marcus from Onnit about this. Tampons are pussy cigarettes. They're just giant toxin laden pussy cigarettes. And my wife's sitting there.

She's like, you're right. And, you know, it's just like all of a sudden the light bulb went off. And, you know, there are all these things that we just do subconsciously, you know, without mindfulness. Cause we just assume based on, it's like when I go to the chiropractic office and every single fricking person is sitting down, which is in many cases, what landed them there in the first place. Cause there's chairs and the scientist take a seat. Right. And I, I stand there and stretch out my hip flexors and do my lunges. And I love that we're standing or podcasting, but yeah, it's about overcoming all these societal expectations and being more fricking mindful about our, our use of,

of technology and our interaction with it. Yeah. We're inundated with so much. Or use of tampons and our interaction with those. Yeah. Just use those for your ass and don't use them where you're supposed to use them. Oh, you can still absorb stuff in your ass. Trust me.

You've tried. You've tried. Oh yeah. I've done a THC suppositories. Oh wow. It's like a localized high for your ass, trust me. You've tried it. You've tried it. Oh, yeah. I've done THC suppositories. Oh, wow. It's like a localized high for your crotch. For your crotch? For your crotch.

Your crotch got high? Yes. How did that feel? Yeah, it's like the sensation. You still get high because you absorb stuff in your bloodstream through your ass, of course. I mean, it's a delivery mechanism for medications, but you can use THC for a crotch high. How did you, how'd you end up, uh, at this point? Like, what were you doing before you got into all this and before you started writing and before you started, uh, you know, before you started just getting, uh, so deep into, uh, these triathlons

and performance and all this stuff? Well, I've been, I've been kind of immersed in, in health culture since gosh, 15 years old, earlier than that, 14, when I was a, I was a nerdy little kid, homeschooled, uh, you know, grew up in the countryside and, uh, you know, I was really into music and played violin. Uh, and I loved to write and read. I would just read all day long in my bedroom and go to the library and get more books. And I got into health and fitness when my parents built a tennis court. They hired a tennis instructor named Michelle to come teach us kids.

Tennis, by the way, is fucking impossible. I saw a picture of you the other day. You're like, I'm on my way to tennis. And I'm like, fuck, man. Tennis is so hard. It's impossible. Every Wednesday night I play. Jesus Christ.

Every Wednesday night I play and throw down a match on the weekend sometimes, too. I've played since I was 14. And I really wanted to impress the tennis instructor because I had a crush on her, on Michelle. So I started running up and down the hills behind the house. And I convinced my dad to bring me to Gart Sports down the street in Houston, Idaho, and get me these 10 pound dumbbells. And I didn't know how to lift weights, but I'd lay on the edge of the bed and then do like concentration curls off the edge of the bed. And I ordered a, as seen on TV exercise device, remember the ab machine,

where you'd isometrically contract your stomach and kind of pull. Oh yeah, I've seen that thing before. I just remember the ab machine where you'd isometrically contract your stomach and kind of pull. Oh, yeah. Remember this one? I've seen that thing before, yeah. It looks like a giant spaceship. So I got that. And I eventually began to amass all these exercise toys. And I got super into fitness.

Started working out every day. Every single time I worked out, I turned my parents' entire upstairs living room that was like a guest room into a gym. And I would repeat Rocky III over and over and over. Every time I'd work out, every single night, I'd just play Rocky III. Ain't so bad. And I'd start wherever I'd- Ain't so bad. Ain't so bad.

Ain't so bad. Whole world's watching. Knock me out. It's my prediction. Bang. Bang. And I'd just start wherever I left it off. What would have happened if Michelle was not attractive to you?

I would be a world famous JR. I would have been JK Rowling, dog. That's what would happen. And I actually just finished my first book of fiction. I kind of got back into writing fiction. And a lot of times what you enjoy doing when you were a little boy is what keeps you happy later in life. So I'm very, very connected now to fiction and to music and watercolor painting. Three things that I did when I was a kid that made me happy. And I've started to do those again and they just satisfy. Nostalgia is a fucking great thing. They satisfy my soul. It's a great tool. Yeah. So, and then I declared my major once I started playing tennis in college in exercise science

and just never looked back. And I've been immersed in the health and fitness industry since. Did you have a kind of regular job anywhere in between any of this or? Well, I worked as a bartender and a personal trainer. I managed the wellness program at University of Idaho. I worked as a spin instructor. I worked at a French bakery across the street from the gym that I worked at, which was perfect because I'd sell people chocolate croissants in the morning and then train them in the evening. And the only job I had briefly was I wanted to go to medical school and I got accepted to six medical schools after I graduated with my bachelor's degree at Idaho.

So I took the full pre-med courses in the MCAT. I didn't like the schools that I got accepted to. I wanted to go to Harvard or Yale or Duke. So I took on a job in the private sector. I wanted to go to a Harvard or a Yale or a Duke. So I took on a job in the private sector. I got offered some money to work for this surgical hip and knee sales company called Biomet. Biomet? I believe Biomet. Sounds good. You know, competitor with Johnson & Johnson. Where's it going to go with Biomet? Yeah, it was Biomet. I don't know why I said, you know, sometimes when you say something in a microphone, it sounds good. Yeah, it sounds good.

So I worked for them for like six months and became totally disillusioned with the modern medical industry and allopathic medicine and all the doctors damn good, you know, cause I just worked in the fitness industry during my entire, uh, you know, bachelor's and, and, uh, master's degree career at university of Idaho. And, uh, they hired me and I started managing the gym and went straight back into fitness after that brief foray in, in medical sales. That's, uh, you know, I hear from a lot of people that we've had on the show, personal training backgrounds, and oftentimes the people we've had on the show, they aspire to obviously be more than just a trainer. You know, there's other things they want to do. been really successful and they've been, they've been people that have helped manage health clubs or they've been people that have, uh, um, you know, uh, did like sales or something like that in a, in a fitness center. What are some things that you learned from, from that process, good

or bad that, uh, helps you today? Seeing people move and being there with them. I think there's a lot of people in the virtual personal training industry who just haven't been around clients enough, who haven't seen what happens when somebody's doing, you know, speak of the devil, Tabata sat in an Airdyne. There's a big difference between standing there with a clipboard beside them, looking at their heart rate versus you slapping that virtually up on, you know, whatever training peaks or train heroic and whatever online training system that you use and not ever seeing somebody. You know, I spent almost 10 years, you know, counting reps and standing next to people. What's the minimum, Andrew? Working soccer moms. The minimum amount of time to be great at anything. 10,000 hours.

I think technically that study was on, it was chess or violin. But yeah, it's approximately. I always say 10 years. I was hoping that Andrew actually listens to the podcast. I'm not going to do that. Let's just say 10,000 hours is 10 years. I was hoping that Andrew actually listened to the podcast. I'm not going to do that. Let's just say 10,000 hours is 10 years. But yeah, being with people and seeing how they respond and getting, you know, being in the trenches, right? Like teaching triathlon classes and spin classes and also, you know, competing, you know, and that's still

one thing that I'm known for is not being the kid in his mom's basement or the blogger sitting at home in my underwear with my pants pulled down in front of the juve light, just writing and blogging and maybe traveling around the world and, and speaking. Um, I gotta tell you, competing is a big deal to me, competing and also people being in shape. You know, it's like, I, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna listen to you if you're like, I realized that might be closed-minded in some ways And I realize there's some doctors that have some really valuable things It's not that I'm not going to listen to you

I'm just not going to be inspired by you But when I see you come in here and you're jacked You got veins popping out everywhere And you're a triathlete And you can do things athletically that I can't do That gets me fired up I'm like, fuck, I want to be able to do some of these things This guy's doing, I can't do that gets me fired up. I'm like, fuck,

I want to be able to do some of these things. This guy's doing, it looks like he's having a lot of fun doing it. And some people will say, I mean, you can't be a Bobby basketball coach, you know, short guy,

white hair, you know, there's a lot of great coaches out there who, who aren't that great at their sport, but who know the game inside and out. I'm not saying you can't be that person, but in the fitness industry, I think there's too many posers.

There's too many people that are pretty faces on Instagram, you know, slapping their workouts out there who just don't understand biomechanics or physiology or nutrition or, you know. ketones and electrolytes and amino acids and a dextrose based fuel into a water bottle and take that out and do an iron man because my exercise physiology textbook and maybe you know one of jeff volick studies says that's going to work for you it's another thing for me to put all those in a water bottle and go out and and go balls out for 10 hours and see what truly happens to the body right do do you get diarrhea do you get brain fog? Do you bonk? You know, how's it taste after, you know, eight hours sitting in that hot water bottle? How do you mix it when you're on the fly? How do you, you know, how do you execute a pass on somebody 15 times during a race when you're burning the match? Everybody says Ironman is an aerobic event, but I mean, there, there's dozens of times during the bike ride alone, where you're turning out 400 to

500 Watts to execute that pass that you only have 15 seconds to make. I mean, all these are considerations that people who are just sitting there with the textbook or sitting in front of the computer don't know unless they get out there and try this stuff. Hence why, for example, people say, why not just use amino acids and ketones and MCT oil during an Ironman event because you're only burning fatty acids. You sure as hell aren't just burning fatty acids during a race like that. I mean, you know, MCT oil during an Ironman event because you're only burning fatty acids. You sure as hell aren't just burning fatty acids during a race like that. I mean, you're, you're burning a lot of matches. You're going through a lot of glycogen. Yeah.

That's what, what's something that, uh, drives you and something that keeps you, um, going at a good, hard pace when you're doing some of these events. I mean, you know, uh, it's one thing to have some motivation, some inspiration in the tank, but I mean, sometimes you're feeling like you're doing some of these events. I mean, you know, it's one thing to have some motivation, some inspiration in the tank, but I mean, sometimes you're feeling like you're going to die. Not sure where your next breath is coming from. It's a telephone pole rule, baby. You know, Mark, I can't tell you the number of times

during a race, whether it's a Spartan event or whether it's, you know, I did the, I did the Agoge back East in Vermont where we were, you know, it was three days at 38 degrees below zero, where they don't even tell you what's coming next until you get to that. They call it an evolution, you know, same thing with, with, you know, Commander Mark Devine's Navy SEAL Kokoro camp in, in San Diego and Encinitas, you know, you're carrying logs through the streets for hours and they're kicking your ass in the sand and sitting, you know, crashing through the waves or something, right? So you focus on either that single moment or even that single breath, or you're focusing on an extremely intermediate goal, a ridiculously intermediate goal. And those goals become closer and closer together, the longer that the race progresses, meaning that in an Ironman for the, for the marathon run on the Ironman, it starts off, get to the first mile,

and then it's get to the next aid station. And then it's get to the next telephone pole. And then it's get to the next hundred steps. And then it's get to the next 20 steps. And it's all about those intermediate goals in the head. If you think about the finish line, unless you're within about a mile of the finish line, you're fucked because the finish line is so far away. And that's such a daunting goal when you're drained of energy. If you think about the task at the moment, or even get to the point where, you know, Mark taught us this when we did the, when I did the, uh, the, the Kokoro event in San Diego, where they just, you know, they take you through like a Navy sea hell week, Navy seal hell week without the guns and without the boats, but it's your breath.

Every time the waves coming at you, all you're focusing on is that one breath, that one moment, you know, it's your, it's your, your prana, right? You,

you focus on, on that, that single element of life force surging through your body. And that's, that's the only thing that distracts you from, you know, I've used that for everything from, you know,

injections to races. It's just, you focus on the breath, you go deep. And how do you use that in like everyday life? Sitting in the sauna last night with my little boys, having them close their eyes and tell them, okay, guys, we're going to take six deep breaths in through our nose, out through our mouth, in through our nose, out through our mouth, so that we calm our heart rates. We're sitting there in the sauna, we're burning our Palo Santo incense, and I have the music going in the background and i tell them guys you're going to keep that breath going we're going to walk out into the snow in the backyard we're all just buck ass naked boys

you know hanging out mom's out with her girlfriends we're going to go jump in the pool which last night was at 38 degrees we're going to stay in the pool until we all get our heads under five times all we're going to do is keep this breath work pattern going. Once we finish that, we're going to go lounge in the hot tub and go inside and cook up these prawns. But that's a perfect scenario. I'm teaching my children how to control their emotions, how to control their heart rate, how to be mindful, how to, how to be with themselves in their head and conquer fear. Cause, cause for a nine-year-old to walk through the forest in the dark, through the snow in their bare feet, buck ass naked, and know that in the pool house is dark and I don't flip the lights on, they got to get in that pool, slip into it at 38 degrees and get their head

under five times and be able to conquer that fear. That's something that that's, that's, it's, it's just, it's amazing for an adult to learn that skill. It's amazing for a child to learn that skill. So that's, that's where you use that. You use that in, in when, when the, the lions are jumping out from the email inbox in your computer, when you're, when you're stuck in traffic and all you want to do is like shake your fist and flip somebody off and you know, God, why can't I be home? Or like, those are the times in life when you use what you learn out in these deeper intense time in the trenches. Do you use a lot of, uh, positive self-talk for yourself? You know, you're probably talking your children

through it a little bit and you're like, hey, this guy's gonna be okay. You gotta breathe. You're probably, you know, telling them some stuff. Do you use some positive self-talk with yourself? You know, I don't. I don't do a lot of positive self-talk. I understand that.

You know, I've seen the studies that look into, you know, positive self-talk. I've also seen the studies that show that cursing can decrease your perception of pain. So it goes both ways. And then there are actually studies out there that show that, you know, when you swear and you curse, it can actually help you get through something. I'm sure there's a reason why we do it, right? So yeah, for me, it's more about the breath work and the intermediate goals. And I also like the idea, and maybe this is because I'm an introvert. And when you read a

book like The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain, when I'm up on stage, I'm scared as hell until I find my power animal. Right. And for me, when I say power animal, that's a metaphor for me saying, okay, Ben, you're not the scared little homeschooled kid with your nose buried in a book, playing the violin, wondering if you're the odd man out. You are, you're Ben, the expert, stepping up on stage, knowing your shit, being confident, getting out there and almost being an actor on stage, right?

And it's the same thing when you're in one of these events or when life gets stressful, you have to step into that mode that allows you to get through it. So last night, I didn't talk about this at all, but we do our spirit animals, my boys and I do, as we're closing our eyes and breathing. You know, my spirit animal last night was a gray wolf and my son, Taryn, he was a panda bear. My son, River, was a sea otter, right? And rather than us being, you know, dad whose feet are cold and he just wants to go inside

and eat prawns. Now I'm out here in the snow, you know, leading these little boys for the snow. And rather than, you know, Taryn, you know, freezing and not wanting to get in the cold or river, you know, being scared of the dark, they're not river. They're not Taryn. I'm not Ben. I'm a gray wolf, right? My, my son, he's a panda bear, you know, going through the snow and my son river, he's cool sea otter, you know, covered in fur and he doesn't care about the water. So for me, it's more about going inside and finding the power animal or the personality, you know, the persona that helps you get through a hard event more than it is the, you know, that I'm good, I'm great, I'm wonderful. And gosh, darn it, people like me. I'm not a self-taught guy. I get it, but I'm just not a self-taught guy. but I'm just not a self-taught guy. Right. I've just heard some people kind of say,

like when they go on some of these runs and stuff, you know, rather than them thinking about their foot burning or the fucking toenails falling off or whatever it might be, they maybe instead are thinking about their stride or they're kind of saying, Hey, you know what? It's going to be okay. Just keep distracting the mind.

Yeah. Yeah. It's that same element, distracting mind or fooling the mind, right? This pavement is not blistering. I would do that when I race Ironman Hawaii, you know, I did that race six times and the pavement is so hot, it burns the rubber of your, of your, of your shoes. That's terrifying. But you tell yourself it's cold. This, this pavement is so

cold right now. You know, my, my skin feels so cold right now. And I would do that. And you would actually feel more cold or, or you're in the, you're in the cold pool, you know pool you know we're in the in the ice tub at you know that that navy seal kakora event and you tell yourself oh this tub is so freaking warm you know it's like an epsom salts bath back home and you you override your body you fool it so that works as well there's a lot of a lot of techniques you can you can use is your wife trained with you at all no my wife doesn't do any of this stuff she's like i mentioned she's she's she involved in pushing the wheelbarrow she ran at university of idaho i mean she she was one of the top runners in idaho i mean she's she's she's quick but she's you know she doesn't take any supplements she doesn't use any any biohacks uh except for maybe she's gonna switch to organic

tampons now i guess um is she involved in uh uh business side of things at all? No, we made that mistake. So for about 15 months. Didn't work well. She did an online magazine videos of her making fermented sourdough bread. And here's how you raise an Icelandic chicken. And here's how you milk a Nigerian dwarf goat. And here's how you compost. And the problem is we'd sit down at the dinner table and I'd be like, Hey, did you, did you, did you proof that PDF or we got a video out this weekend and it just led to too much

friction. So now she, um, you know, she takes care of the boys and she, she runs a home and, um, some couples do it, but we don't, we're too, too yin and yang. So yeah, she's the complete opposite me. And it saves my ass because, you know, God bless them. I know they do it, but I see these couples

who are like Ironman triathlete couples or CrossFit couples. Yeah. And, and again, I don't want to offend people, but sometimes I don't know

how the hell they do it without driving each other nuts. My wife and I. I got to get my workout in. You got to get your workout in and all they talk about when you go out to eat with them is, you know, what supplement they're using or the, you know, birthday cake quest bar versus peanut butter, captain crunch, protein powder. And it's just like, what I like about my wife is we can sit around and talk about, you know, Ed Sheeran and, you know, the difference between the Cabernet and the Merlot and, you know, how'd you get that sear on the steak? So you like to have some drinks here and there I do yeah I have a I have a drink every day I can't tell you the last time I was drunk but I drink every

single day I have a nice glass of wine if I'm out it's usually a Moscow Mule unless I'm having steak and then often it's it's also a glass of wine and I'll occasionally you know make a little cocktail at home like a digest. When you have digestifs or bitters, they lower your or they don't lower, they increase what's called your first phase insulin response. Meaning they enhance your natural insulin production to a meal. So you reduce your glycemic variability or insulin response. I'm a big fan of these. There's quite a few things that do that, right? To different supplements. Chewing, you know, chewing every bite for a long period of time,

bitter melon extract, berberine, Ceylon cinnamon, apple cider vinegar, kombucha, any of these things will do it. Weight training before a meal

or postprandial, you know, stroll after a meal. But I like to choose drinks if it's not just a nice organic biodynamic red wine that have bitters in it.

That's why I like a Moscow meal where it's ginger. Yeah. It's lime. Usually there's some mint in there. There's one I discovered when I was in Salt Lake City last week called Ebo Lebo, E-B-O, L-E-B-O. Fantastic digestive liqueur. It's Italian. It's got all, you know, it's like yarrow and ginger and licorice.

And so any drink like that I'm a fan of. And I really think that, that drinking, you know, as long as you're in moderation and your liver and gallbladder are good to go, it can kind of enhance not only the palate cleansing during the meal, but also your, your ability to digest the meal and have a normal insulin response. We got a lot of lifters that listen to this podcast. A lot of people that like to throw around some heavy weight, weight, people that have run into a lot of injuries and whatnot. And I know that you know quite a bit about some of these peptides. What do you think is something that might be useful for somebody who's getting banged up from some heavy weight training? Yeah. Just very basic, short chain of amino acids. And I mentioned ip, I mentioned, you know, ipamoralin and samaraline, I think those are technically, you know, peptides that I mentioned when you asked me about growth

hormone, a lot of people use those. BPC-157, that's an example of a peptide that is used for regrowth in many cases of vascularity to damage muscle tissue. Thymus and beta-4 or TB500, that's another one that's used more for tendon repair. These things you'd have to take every day or- Actin and myosin fibers. A typical protocol would be get your hands on BPC-157, not sold for human consumption, but you get it from a website, peptide website, and you order it and you reconstitute it with what's called bacteriostatic water. You want to look at it and make order it and you reconstitute it with, uh, what's called bacteriostatic water. You want to look at it and make sure it's really clear. If it's not, you get, if it's cloudy or clumpy, you got a, you got a shitty product, but like you want to check it and make sure it's

really clear. And, uh, uh, shameless plug. I have a couple articles about this on my website that, that go, you know, take the deep, deep dive. But the, uh, the idea is for example, for BPC 157, a typical dose is you would get an insulin orringe and you'd draw back to about like the 20 or 30 tick mark on an insulin syringe. So you're getting like 250, 300 micrograms and you'd inject the injured site once a day for two weeks. And you could double up and you could do BPC and accompany that with TB-500. If I get injured, I've done that before. I have can do BPC and accompany that with TB 500. Um, if I get injured, I've, I've done that before. I have TB and BPC. You can draw both into the same syringe, inject aside. So you get the vascularity response, right? Like the, uh, the, the

vasculogenesis, but then you also get the, the actin and myosin fiber repair response. And, uh, it's, I mean, I mean, compared to the expensive stem cell injections or prolozone or PRP, um, considering it's, it's cheap relatively, and you can do it at home. Um, I, I like that as a strategy for, for, uh, you know, you're talking about your elbow, like a medial, your lateral epicondylitis, uh, works well on shoulders. Um, you know, I've had a hamstring with it, uh, or, I mean, it works well followed up with a little, uh, little massage or like a a like a vibration tool to really drive it home. They work really well.

Sounds like you are into reading. You read a lot. What are what are some, you know, maybe two or three of your favorite books that you've read kind of recently? Oh, recently. All right. My my top books would be. I'm going to say that I've read in the past month. One is Way of the Superior Man, blew my mind that I had not read that before by David Data.

That book rocked my way.