How To Biohack Your Sex Life - Ben Greenfield

Ben Greenfield 0:00 I was kind of concerned because for, like, three days my dick was purple and black and blue, and looked like it'd been run over by a semi-truck. My wife was obviously a little bit concerned as well with me experimenting with these fringe protocols on my genitals and, and them looking pretty bad after the fact.

Chris Williamson 0:19 Ben Greenfield, welcome to the show.

Ben Greenfield 0:21 Hey, man. I forgot my, uh, I forgot my fake pop, my fake soda. You have one, but-

Chris Williamson 0:29 So...

Ben Greenfield 0:29 ... unfortunately, I now have soda envy, fake soda envy.

Chris Williamson 0:32 So, you told me when I was on your show, I was drinking a Diet Dr Pepper, and you castigated me-

Ben Greenfield 0:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:38 ... uh, for-

Ben Greenfield 0:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:39 ... for drinking it, which has happened a number of times by both my audience and you. And you told me-

Ben Greenfield 0:44 Good.

Chris Williamson 0:44 ... you red pilled me on Zevia, which I liked because I liked the taste and that it was zero calorie.

Ben Greenfield 0:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 0:48 But then you started telling me about stuff they've done with the type of tin or, uh, uh, aluminium that they use in the cans and a bunch of other stuff. What- what's so good about Zevia?

Ben Greenfield 0:58 Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what aluminium is. Uh, in this country, we say aluminum. Uh, but I, I actually interviewed their founder. He has a weird name. I think it's like Patty or something like that. Um, maybe that's not a weird name in the UK, but it's a w- it's a weird name here. Patty. And he filled me in on, like, the natural form of stevia. Like, you know, not all stevia is created equal. Some has like maltodextrin and sugars added to it and some of it is synthetic and... You know, because I, like, have stevia growing right outside my window here. It's just like a natural stevia leaf that I can use to sweeten stuff. But apparently, they use like a supernatural stevia in it and they've tested the actual like liquid contents of the can to show that the metal isn't leaching out into the can. So, I was... 'Cause when I interviewed them, I put him on the spot about a lot of this stuff because I'm like, "Okay, so it says natural and calorie-free, but let's get into the details and we just drink it like some toxic form of something that's supposedly bandied about as healthy." And like, it kind of passed all, all the, uh, all the, all the checks on the- on the checklist.

Chris Williamson 1:59 So this, the Ben Greenfield smell test says that if you're going to do a calorie-free soft drink, Zevia is one of the best?

Ben Greenfield 2:07 Yeah. It's, it's pretty good because look, they do like a ginger beer that's good for a Moscow mule, that Coke that you're drinking right now is great for whiskey and coke, and the ginger root beer, if you pour that on coconut ice cream, you've got yourself a, like a, you know, healthy hippie root beer float. So yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:25 Serious.

Ben Greenfield 2:26 Some versatile shit.

Chris Williamson 2:28 So you just got back from a hunt. Tell me about that.

Ben Greenfield 2:31 Oh, I was hunting, um, in, in Molokai, which is this cra... It doesn't even feel like you're in America. It's like this third world country. Like, no offense to the people who live in Molokai, it's beautiful and the people there are super cool, but it's just like isolated and it used to be where they'd exile lepers, like people with, uh, with Hansen's disease, which is like this sickle cell disorder that results in like the, the skin getting eaten away. You probably heard of leprosy before. And they used to like have a leper colony there and they do even like, like tests on these lepers and bring in prisoners and inject them with leprosy to develop vaccinations. And like, you know, Monsanto, bless their hearts, are like the main employer on the island so they got a bunch of like crazy seed testing stuff going on there. So, so they're almost kind of like shy of the mainlanders, it seems, almost as though-

Chris Williamson 3:22 Where is it geographically?

Ben Greenfield 3:23 ... I mean, good reason, good reason to be, right? It's like... Well, it's, it's in Hawaii. Um, it's one of the Hawaiian islands. It's like 10 miles wide, about 30 miles long. Takes like maybe an hour to drive across the whole thing and it, it's, it's like a jungle. It's um, like you, you, you flew into Jurassic Park on a helicopter as you're coming in. There's waterfalls tumbling down these steep cliffs going into the ocean and, you know, very, very few people, but a ton of really good hunting, particularly for axis deer, which is considered amongst many hunters to be like some of the best tasting wild game meat on the planet. Matter of fact, yeah, you can see in the video. I, like that I have hunted axis deer a few times. I've, I've shot three axis bucks before. That one behind me is, uh, is, is one that I got in Texas actually, but it actually tastes really good and they're super hard to hunt. They're like white-tailed deer, which are already a really smart deer that are pretty elusive, they're like white-tailed deer on crack. Like, you, you, you literally shoot your arrow from your bow and they can hear the arrow coming off the string. And I, I shoot, I shoot a pretty heavy poundage and a pretty fast arrow. It's about 360 foot per second, which is pretty fast for an arrow coming off a bow. And they'll even hear that. And by the time the arrow has reached them, they will either duck or jump and like try to miss the arrow. So, you know, even if you get in on them, it's hard to hit the vitals and it, it's a, it's a tough hunt. I was s- I was hunting with my sons, my twin 14-year-old sons. I was super proud of one of them who just like sat like a freaking sniper for eight hours, just covered in camo in the bushes, you know, his, his scent block on and ju- you know, just sat silent, which is hard for a 14-year-old boy, you know? And, uh, and he, he shot a deer and got some venison and I was, I was super proud of him, but it was-

Chris Williamson 5:24 That's fucking dope.

Ben Greenfield 5:24 ... it was cool. Cool father-son experience. Yeah, I just came in on a red eye yesterday and, uh, and here I am, baby.

Chris Williamson 5:30 Dude, unstoppable. I remember we went to, uh, Paleo FX in Austin. We caught up in Paleo FX-

Ben Greenfield 5:37 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:38 ... a while ago. Um, I noticed then that you had a, uh, that necklace on that you've got around your neck. What is it?

Ben Greenfield 5:45 I don't know. People just send me shit to put on. Uh...

Chris Williamson 5:48 Right.

Ben Greenfield 5:49 This is, this is two... It's, it's two things actually that I put on the same necklace, which I... So I don't know if it cancels each other out, but the one is called a bio geometry pendant.... and I got it from an organization in Egypt that has studied a lot of the geometrical shapes built into many of the pyramidal structures, you know, like the, like the pyramids in, not only in Egypt, but all over the world. And they found that there are specific geometric forms that create what they call, like, a negative energy field that's supposed to be able to block harmful frequencies or allow your body to better be able to handle everything from, like, negative energy from people to blasts of EMF from Wi-Fi routers, et cetera. Now, I'm pretty skeptical of a lot of this stuff, but they've actually got some studies on things like red blood cell clumping and the health effects of certain cities where they've incorporated these, these shapes all over the city. And you can get them and wear them around your neck. And I actually, I'm building a home in Idaho right now and I'm having them come out and do, like, a full analysis of my land and my home in Idaho to set it all up, like, feng shui-wise to have these little shapes, like, all over the house. Uh, I visited one of my friends, you may know, um, he's a pretty prolific health guy. His name is Paul Chek. I visited his house and I walked into it and I'm like, "This feels like a peaceful cave." Like, you walk in, you literally feel... You ever been in one of those little meditation pods? You know, like a, like health centers have them now, you climb inside, they're almost like sensory deprivation chambers. His house, his whole house felt like that. I'm like, "Dude, what'd you do?" And he said that he did this sacred geometry analysis and buildup of all, like all his land, his home, everything. So short term, while I'm waiting for my home (laughs) and, and the full thing built into my home, I'm wearing the necklace from them. And this other one is from a company called LiLum Quantum Tech. Also pretty woo. And it's got, like, these capsules inside of it. You can see, I, I just unscrewed it and dumped them out. And so basically, this, this is super Jedi. They've got, like, all these... So apparently, certain people are born with the ability to be able to do, like, hands-on healing and distance healing, and can kind of like blast their frequencies across space to other people. And, um, I don't deny that certain people are born with specific gifts because I've actually interviewed one guy in Illinois, or actually no, he's in Ohio, Dr. Nemeh, N-E-M-E-H, and he does like prayer and faith-based healing, and some of that stuff is kind of gimmicky and just like a way for churches and stuff to make money. You know, people walk in and get slayed in the spirit or whatever, baby. But this guy, um, this guy actually has a ton of, of, of like proven cases that he's healed using like his hands and prayer and faith and energy and, you know, you're probably familiar with like Reiki healing where people do a massage but they're not actually touching you, they're using the energy from their hands. Um, and we know that humans emanate some kind of energetic frequency, but certain people seem to be able to do it better. And so this company, LiLum Quantum Tech, they've got like 12 of some of the most powerful healers from around the globe that they have put their frequencies into like wearables and jewelry and clothing.

Chris Williamson 9:14 Oh, to like imbue them with stuff.

Ben Greenfield 9:17 Yeah, and then they ship them to you. And so this necklace is embedded with all these frequencies from all these healers. And, I don't know, it could be placebo, but I feel pretty good when I wear this necklace. So, that's my story and I'm, I'm sticking to it. It's probably not as beneficial as the, as the fake Dr Pepper, but (laughs) it helps out a little bit.

Chris Williamson 9:39 (laughs) Yeah man, for someone that is a, an evidence-based guy, I think that's probably up toward the upper bound of, uh, of woo for you.

Ben Greenfield 9:48 Oh, it totally is. It totally is. But, you know what? I, I feel good and it works for me so I'm going to keep convincing myself that it's doing something. Plus it just looks cool.

Chris Williamson 9:55 Yes.

Ben Greenfield 9:55 It's a conversation piece. I mean, you and I just managed to fill five minutes of dead air talking about it, so it's doing something.

Chris Williamson 10:01 We never spoke about all of the stuff that you did for Men's Health back in the day. Those experiments around sex and penis injections and PRP and blue pills.

Ben Greenfield 10:12 No, we didn't.

Chris Williamson 10:14 I-

Ben Greenfield 10:14 Believe it or not, believe it or not, bros don't sit around at the coffee shop talking about that shit.

Chris Williamson 10:18 I want to talk about your penis, Ben. I want to talk about- ... what you did to your penis. Please?

Ben Greenfield 10:24 Yeah. Um, it's kind of old news, uh, but, but we'll talk about it. It was, Men's Health Magazine was doing an issue, I think it was January 2000, like, 18 maybe, uh, called New Year, New Dick in which they wanted to have a magazine devoted to all the things that a gentleman could do to enhance his sexual performance or his libido or his fertility. And so they decided that I would be the perfect little immersive journalist to do the story. So for six months, I basically was given the assignment of chasing down all the random things that one could do to enhance one's sexual performance. And I'm not a fricking playboy, right? Like I've, um, I've been married for 20 years, I got a couple of kids, you know. (laughs) You know, so it was, it was very interesting, uh, I think I was a very interesting person to, to assign this to and my, my dear wife had to be pretty patient as I'm going around, you know, getting my, my dick injected with random substances and trying out different pills before we'd make love and, you know, doing the no ejaculation for a month. Just... So everything. So a few of the more interesting things was that, um, for example, they, they had me try like five or six of the most popular so-called gas station dick pills which have all these, all these wonderful superfood herbs from, you know, China and the far reaches of the Amazon. And-

Chris Williamson 11:54 Natural supplements.

Ben Greenfield 11:55 ... Tubacuá Island from some, you know, one-horned goat. And they, uh, they package them up and of course on the label, uh, presents you with this idea that you've got all these crazy superfoods, which I, I have no clue how they manage to do that and sell it for three bucks at the gas station counter, but somehow they do. And so, uh, I took each one of them and tried each one of them and of course, as you inevitably, uh, anticipate, you get-... clammy hands and a racing heart and, you know, not only a giant gorged dick, but just like blood flow to the whole body, like the perfect pre-workout supplement. But kind of like the pre-workout supplements that got outlawed because they were giving people heart attacks. And we al- we actually did lab testing (laughs) on, on all of them, and it turns out that the main two ingredients in every single one are, um, ephedra and sildenafil. Ephedra being, you know, a potent central nervous system stimulant that's kind of like an amphetamine, and sildenafil being the active component of Viagra. So, th- when you see a gas station dick pill with all the purported superfoods and herbs and blends and everything, it's basically sildenafil and, uh, and, um, and ephedra. So, but I mean, they, they work but I wouldn't, I wouldn't consider them to be healthy, especially for anyone who has say like, um, a heart. Uh, then the, uh, the other interesting ones was like the no ejaculation, you know, where... And that was, that's more of like an Ayurvedic, you know, ancient, you know, Eastern practice where you just basically don't come for a month. And that doesn't mean no intercourse, you just don't come. So that I absolutely hated. I was angry, I was pent up. It's like, again, I'm a married man with kids. When I have time to have sex with my wife, I want the full meal deal. I want the full experience. And so, I would like get grumpy and I'd get pent up and I'd get like aggressive and I'd have to go lift weights like, you know, the morning after we'd had sex hard because I felt like I, I had like this, this, this pent up energy inside me. So I suppose when, you know, there's advice to say like, I don't know, UFC fighter or, or a tennis athlete or something to, to do like, you know, no sex, no porn, no masturbation prior to their event, I, I think there is something to it. I think it's just pent up energy that it creates.

Chris Williamson 14:15 Right. It-

Ben Greenfield 14:15 I suspect it's probably accompanied by a rise in testosterone. I didn't do a blood testosterone test but, you know, it seemed to work for that but I, I didn't like the whole feeling that I had from that experience.

Chris Williamson 14:26 Well, the mechanism, the mechanism that it's working on might not be something quite as complex as the physiology and the relative levels of your sex binding glo- ho- hormone globulin and stuff.

Ben Greenfield 14:36 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 14:36 It could just be that you're a bit pissed off.

Ben Greenfield 14:39 Yeah, exactly. I, I think that's the case. And a lot of people say, "Well, it depletes your minerals, bro, and you're wasting all your zinc and boron and DHEA 'cause you need that to make your sperm and your semen." And the fact is like, you need so, so few minerals to make like the teeny tiny half teaspoon or teaspoon or, you know, whatever if, if, uh, if you're a real performer, maybe a tablespoon of, of sperm that like, there's no way it's going to deplete you. You could, you could like ejaculate every day and not take any minerals and you'd survive-

Chris Williamson 15:12 Still be fine.

Ben Greenfield 15:12 ... I suspect, for, for years on end.

Chris Williamson 15:15 So-

Ben Greenfield 15:15 So it's not like it's nutrient-depleting.

Chris Williamson 15:17 Bro, I was in... I got to tell you this story. I'm in Dubai about, uh, a couple of years ago and I was there with a bunch of friends, just sat in the pool talking about whatever the fuck we were talking about. One of the guys turns to us, looks at me dead in the eyes, and he's like, "Dude, how much do you come?" I was like-

Ben Greenfield 15:36 Like the volume?

Chris Williamson 15:37 ... "What do you mean?" Precisely my... I needed clarification. "What do you mean? Like the volume of semen that comes out of me?" "Yeah, yeah, like how much do you come?" I was like, "Well, what, like what do you want? Do you want the actual like amount? Do you want it on like a percentile?" He's like, "Well, just like compared with other guys." I said, "Well, look, I, I make it-"

Ben Greenfield 15:55 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 15:55 "... a purpose of mine to try and avoid watching other men come as much as possible. If I've made it to that point in porn-"

Ben Greenfield 16:02 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 16:02 "... when I do see another man come, then I've made an error because I, like I, I don't tend to watch that far in."

Ben Greenfield 16:08 Right.

Chris Williamson 16:08 But I was like, "Look, if it's percentile-"

Ben Greenfield 16:10 Wait, press pause, rewind, press... Okay, there it is.

Chris Williamson 16:12 Skip back 15 minutes.

Ben Greenfield 16:13 All right. Measure.

Chris Williamson 16:14 Look, like, and also I don't think that if I was to do that, that they're probably a very representative sample of men in any case. Look, I reckon I'm 50th percentile. I reckon I'm like slap bang in the middle of the normal-

Ben Greenfield 16:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:24 ... distribution of normal amount of semen." And like (snaps fingers) quick as a flash, turned to me and he went, "95th percentile. I'm definitely 95th percentile." And I was like-

Ben Greenfield 16:31 And there's an, there's an actual curve for that somewhere-

Chris Williamson 16:34 Probably.

Ben Greenfield 16:35 ... that you can find.

Chris Williamson 16:35 Probably.

Ben Greenfield 16:36 Okay.

Chris Williamson 16:36 And I was like, "Look, what, so what's it like? What's, what's being 95th percentile come distributor like?" And he was like, "Frankly, a little bit inconvenient." Like-

Ben Greenfield 16:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:49 I was like, "Okay, well, what tells you, given the fact that you probably have as much information about other men's semen volume as I do, what-"

Ben Greenfield 16:56 Right.

Chris Williamson 16:56 "... gives you the impression that you are 95th percentile?" And he's like, "Well, every single girl that I'm with looks down and, and goes, 'That's a lot of cum.'" And I'm like, "Well-"

Ben Greenfield 17:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:09 "... I don't know." So just FYI, there are, there are people out there that maybe break a c- a couple of tablespoons.

Ben Greenfield 17:16 It's po- it's possible that it's like highly diluted though, you know? It's like when you make yourself a smoothie and it's got way too much ice in it-

Chris Williamson 17:22 (laughs)

Ben Greenfield 17:22 ... and not enough of the good stuff, you know? I don't, I don't think the volume counts as much as the millions of sperm that are in the teeniest tiniest amount so it doesn't matter anyways. Um-

Chris Williamson 17:32 Oh, so you're saying that you could have-

Ben Greenfield 17:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:34 ... like a, a dark matter anti-gravity version-

Ben Greenfield 17:37 Right.

Chris Williamson 17:37 ... of this that is just-

Ben Greenfield 17:38 Right. It's-

Chris Williamson 17:38 ... unbelievably dense. It would be the size of a pinhead but it would sink-

Ben Greenfield 17:41 Quality-

Chris Williamson 17:41 ... through the bed.

Ben Greenfield 17:43 It's quality over quantity. It's like when you bite into a Hershey's chocolate bar versus the darkest 100% cacao from the Amazon, you need a, a lot less of the latter.

Chris Williamson 17:54 Yeah.

Ben Greenfield 17:54 That's, that's, that's my opinion at least. So that's a bit awkward talking about eating chocolate and, and sperm volume simultaneously. So, uh, so, so, so we can move on to a, to a few of the other things that... You know, the, the thing I guess that caught the most attention from that whole protocol was, of course, the idea of getting your, your dick injected. And so I, I did a f- a few different things. The first thing I did was what's called a GAINSWave treatment where they take, uh, they, they use what's called acoustic sh- acoustic shockwave therapy. Uh, and what you do is you go into the clinic and there's a bunch of these all over the US, and you walk in, uh, you've, you've been evaluated beforehand, accepted as a new patient. Uh, the nurse hands you a little bottle of numbing cream with instructions to go into the bathroom and apply this numbing cream all over your genitals, which, which I, I did. I, I... If someone tells me to put numbing cream on my genitals, I'm usually gonna do it just 'cause I suspect whatever comes afterwards, I might need the numbing cream on hand for. I'm not one of those guys who's gonna like grit my teeth through, through something that my penis needs to be numbed for. I just... So I, uh, I put it on and then I go into the room and...I... (sighs) The, the girl who did it, like I did this in Miami, she was kind of like a hot Cuban. So it was a touch awkward for me just because I have this lady with this giant wand, like a jackhammer going (imitates sound wave) all over my crotch. And I'm like draped so I can't see my crotch but I can feel everything going on down there. I have no clue if I've got a boner 'cause everything's numb. And so, um, she finishes, takes like 20 minutes and, uh, it's kind of like ultrasound what... Supposedly it breaks up old blood vessels in your penis and women can do this too. As a matter of fact, my wife did it a few times and, uh, and builds new blood vessels. And so, uh, then what they'll do for the full meal deal is they do the P-shot afterwards. For women they call it the O-shot. And they take platelet-rich plasma, which is an extract of your own blood that's been centrifuged and spun, uh, in the centrifuge to concentrate the growth factors which are then injected into the penis either before or after the acoustic shockwave therapy. So, I did that protocol and the funniest thing about it was I had dinner with my grandma scheduled that night 'cause my grandma lives in Miami and I wasn't gonna go to Miami and not see my grandma because I'd be in the doghouse if I did that. And so, we went out to this Cuban restaurant and this was like five or six hours after the protocol had been completed and it was about then that the numbing cream started to wear off and it was like insty boner. Insty bone, like literally, like I'm, I'm popping a 10 right there underneath the table sitting and having dinner with my grandma and also my aunt was there. My aunt, uh, Cindy and, and my grandma Rose are sitting there as I'm, you know, eating these plantain fries and trying to hide the fact that I've got a raging boner and it lasted like the whole night. Not like, not like go to the hospital priapism, you know, had too much Viagra type of thing, but it's like it was very engorged and I couldn't wait to get home to my wife. And, the effects of that lasted for a solid, I did not intend that pun, um, for a solid couple of months. And so, that actually really wor- worked and like those clinics still exist and they even sell like an at-home device called the Rocket now, that you can do the same thing with at home, that's not quite as intense so you don't need the numbing cream-

Chris Williamson 21:23 Have you got any idea how-

Ben Greenfield 21:24 ...but obviously you can't, you can't do the injection yourself.

Chris Williamson 21:25 Yeah. How much of that c- was contributed to by the, the platelet rich plasma and how much was from the sound wave therapy.

Ben Greenfield 21:31 I think a lot of it was the platelet rich plasma 'cause I did that protocol like six times and I think three or four of 'em they didn't do the injection and it seemed like the results were just as good. And I have the at-home device as well. I've messed around with it a little bit and it just seems to work. So yeah, it's a... And it's very, very simple concept. It's just like ultrasound bla- breaking up blood vessels and introducing new blood flow. So, there's, there's some science behind it. And then like the, I guess the cherry on the cupcake was the stem cell injection into my penis, which actually I had to prepare for because when I did it, um, you know, the stem cell was still a little bit of the wild, wild west and I went to American Cell Technologies in Florida which was actually rated by the FDA the day after I got the protocol done. I actually checked this week and my stem cells are still stored down there but they have to take your stem cells and suck them out of your fat. And, I'm a pretty skinny ass guy so it was like violent liposuction wand like in and out of my back. You know, it felt like somebody was stabbing me over and over and over again to extract enough fat for them to be able to grow my stem cells which is now illegal in the US which is probably one reason that they had the FDA raid but they expand the stem cells from your own tissues called autologous stem cell expansion. This is why some people go to Tijuana and places like that now to get their stem cells 'cause they can expand them overseas. They can't in the US. They now combine them with something called exosomes in the US which arguably makes the stem cells just as good as if they were expanded but they didn't have much of that technology when I did it. So, they're expanding the stem cells but they got to expand them for two or three months to get enough of what's called a mesenchymal stem cell count, an MSC count to allow them to be worth like reinjecting back into the body. So, I actually have my stem cells from my bone marrow in my hip stored at Forever Labs in Berkeley, California from when I was 30 years old and I've got all of my fat stem cells stored at American Cell Technologies in Florida from when I was, I think 34, 35. So, if I ever get in a horrific car accident or I need a major surgery or something like that, it is kind of cool 'cause I can actually use my own body stem cells rather than like embryonic or umbilical or placental stem cells to, to help with recovery. But in this case, they, they expand the fat cells and then, uh, about two months later I had them shipped up on dry ice to Spokane, Washington, my hometown, where I went to the office of, uh, Dr. Luneau, uh, whose, whose son actually later became a friend of mine. He's coming over for steaks tomorrow night. Speak of the devil. And, uh, his, his, his dad had never done this procedure before so admittedly I was a little bit nervous but it basically involved injecting the corpus callosum of the penis on either side, like the spongy tissue of the penis, with like, um, the equivalent like, like kind of, um, you know, a nerve block, a numbing agent again, back to the numbing agent and then injecting in three different spots my penis with my own stem cells. And, I was kinda concerned because for like three days my dick was purple and black and blue and looked like it'd been run over by a semi-truck. My wife was obviously a little bit concerned as well, uh, you know, with, with me experimenting with these fringe protocols on my genitals and, and them looking pretty, pretty bad after the fact. But that, like if the PRP and, and shockwave therapy thing lasted a couple of months f-... like the stem cell thing, I feel like I've been on cloud nine since. So, and, and, and I, I have to clarify, I've done it twice since then. So, I've done a total of three stem cell injections into my penis, and every time it seems like it gives me a solid, like, two years of amazing boners and my orgasms last, like, two or three minutes sometimes. And I have no clue if I'm in the 95th percentile for cum production. I don't pay attention to that, but it feels like it just kind of keeps on coming out and coming out. And so, there's, there's something going on with the stem cell injection. I don't think that's, you know, like my necklace, Super Woo and placebo, like, I can guarantee... And again, like, I'm 40, you know? I, I technically on paper should not be performing like I'm 18, but I feel like I've got better sex, longer orgasms and a harder dick than I did when I was a teenager. And you know, I'm not financially affiliated with any of these stem cell companies or anything like that, it's not like I'm a doctor selling this stuff. I just, I just can say, like, it seemed to work. So, I think that was the best part of that whole protocol, the New Year, New Dick thing was the stem cells.

Chris Williamson 26:21 What

Chris Williamson 26:22 mechanism do you think these stem cells are working on? Like, what, what is it that causes orgasms to last longer?

Ben Greenfield 26:30 Hmm. Probably all the dick cancer I have.

Chris Williamson 26:34 (laughs)

Ben Greenfield 26:34 I suspect. Just all those, all those little foreign molecules making extra, baby. Uh, that, that actually is the one concern that I slightly had. I'm like, "Well, I'm injecting technically a growth medium into a gland, a major gland of my body," and one of the definitions of cancer is undifferentiated cell growth. But yet, I, I don't, I don't get... People think I cowboy everything in my body. There is actually a lot of literature on what's called Peyronie's Disease, which is an abnormal curvature of the penis, and also ED or erectile dysfunction, and the use of stem cells in both those cases had been used for, like, five or six years prior to when I did the protocol with nobody getting cancer or having ill effects or anything like that. So, I was pretty comfortable with it. I suspect the mechanism of action is restoration of more youthful tissue, um, you know, cleanup of old dead tissue, probably an increase in the activity of what are called the Leydig cells in the testes, uh, which, which help to produce sperm and testosterone, things like that. You know, you know, at the same time, you got to remember, like, as a part of this magazine article, I did the shockwave therapy, I did, like... Like, I had this red light beside me, right? And I still do, like, the red light naked in the morning every day, which actually has some good data behind it for testosterone production and it's also really good for blood flow. Um, you know, I, I started to pay more attention to a lot of the, the foods like, like ginseng and ginger and avocados and a lot of these things that seem to also help out with men's sexual health. So, I had stacked a lot of stuff, but at the same time, it was like, when I got the stem cells, within three days it was like, "Whoa. Some- something's going on here." So, there's probably multiple mechanisms of action, uh, and you know, I could hypothesize all day long about what else is going on.

Chris Williamson 28:24 Mm-hmm.

Ben Greenfield 28:24 But, you know stem cells? I mean, they're, they're cool. I, I, I think that, um, despite them often, I think, being overpriced or the mesenchymal stem cell count that you get if you get injected with them in the US, whether it's for a joint, for anti-aging or whatever, tends to be a lot lower than what you get overseas. I don't think a lot of doctors really do a good job with things like ultrasound guided imaging when they inject a joint just versus just kind of randomly putting it where it seems to hurt. Like, there, you know, it's again, it's still the wild Wild West, but I'm a fan of stem cells. Like, I, I do think they're good for, for regenerative medicine. I think they're good for longevity. I just think the, uh, the mechanism via which they're delivered and what they're combined with is super important. And what I mean by that, again, is if you're getting stem cells in the US, ideally they're from your own tissue and if not, from really, really good screened tissue like Wharton's jelly from the umbilical area or, uh, or placental stem cells. And then ideally they're also combined with exosomes, which are the tiny signaling molecules that stem cells use to communicate with one another, and they're ideally delivered using some form of ultrasound guided imaging so they get into the area they're supposed to get into, unless you're just doing an IV for general anti-aging. So, so yeah, I, I think that there's something to them though.

Chris Williamson 29:42 That's very interesting to me because I've got a call with a company out in Colombia. It looks like I might be going out there to get some stem cell treatment from them. And all-

Ben Greenfield 29:52 You mean Ohio or South America?

Chris Williamson 29:54 South America.

Ben Greenfield 29:55 Okay.

Chris Williamson 29:56 And, um...

Ben Greenfield 29:57 I mean, I'd go to Ohio if I was you. I think it's a lot more fun than South America. (laughs) It's just me.

Chris Williamson 30:03 As long as I can fly over the top of all of the gangs with burning cars in the middle of the street in Mexico at the moment, I think I should be at least on a, a good head start. But yeah, they've been going through all of the different elements of this. It's Wharton's jelly from umbilical cord.

Ben Greenfield 30:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:17 It's from screened spates, blah, blah, blah, or it's culture.

Ben Greenfield 30:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:20 But all this sort of stuff. Um... Yeah. So, it's, it's something that I hadn't really considered much before, but yeah, they're saying about, uh, ultrasound guided... Some of the work that I would get done would be intradiscal injections.

Ben Greenfield 30:32 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:33 Um...... two bulging discs or two, uh, two discs that have, have lost height, uh, plus stuff for, um, uh, mental, I guess, sharpness and agility.

Ben Greenfield 30:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:43 I had a Achilles rupture two years ago. They, they still want to go into that. They want to go into my shoulder and they want to do an IV as well. And then you go into a hyperbaric chamber afterward. There's a bunch of other stuff that you go into. So it seems, it seems pretty...

Ben Greenfield 30:55 It sounds like they're doing it the right way. There, there's, there's a guy in the US who does something like that in Park City, Utah. His name is Dr. Harry Adelson, and he does this thing called a full body stem cell makeover. There's ac- there's a couple videos on YouTube somewhere because I, I had him run the camera while they were doing it on me, and he literally like puts you under a form of anesthesia and knocks you out for like four hours and does like head to toe, every single joint in your body. But what they're probably using in, in Colombia is expanded stem cells because again, he can't do that in the US. He like pops into your bone marrow, like into your hips. I still have scars on either side of my hip. And just pulls the marrow out of your hips and uses like this bone marrow stem cell soup of your own cells for the injection. So he does something kind of like that, and usually we'll do like NAD IVs and different cocktails beforehand to kind of prepare the body. I tell people who are going to travel internationally to do it though, if you're going to go internationally to do stem cells, understand that international travel itself can be kind of hard on the body, and ideally if you're going to get stem cells, you want your body in as low a state of inflammation as possible. So like, you know, arrive, you know, three to four days early, maybe try to do a little bit of hyperbaric beforehand, you know, do anti-inflammatory stuff, get a good night of sleep, you know, take your ginger and your curcumin and you know, if they have an NAD IV, get that kind of stuff. So like do a lot of TLC beforehand so your body's a little bit more primed to use the stem cells.

Chris Williamson 32:18 I'll be texting you for the protocol before I, uh, before I go and do anything in any case. Uh, going back to what you were talking

Chris Williamson 32:24 about there. So obviously, sex is only one part of a relationship, and as somebody that looks at strategies for optimizing different things, have you got principles that you follow when it comes to maintaining a healthy relationship with your wife? You've said that you're married for 20 years, which, you know, is a hell of a long time. Four kids now? Three kids, four kids?

Ben Greenfield 32:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:42 Uh, you know, what-

Ben Greenfield 32:43 I have two, two kids. Two kids.

Chris Williamson 32:46 Two kids.

Ben Greenfield 32:46 We're kind of thinking about adopting another kid right now, actually. We were talking about that last night. But right now, two kids. Um, and really I think the main thing it comes down to, Chris, is his and hers towels. The, like you got to have the rack w- and it's got to be marked his and hers. The bathrobe's not quite as necessary, but the his and hers towels are pretty important. Um, besides that, the, uh, the main things that I think hold us together in our relationship is when it comes to daily check-ins and daily habits, we have two things. The first is that as a family, we gather for family meditation, breath work, tapping, prayer, and singing both in the morning and in the evening every day. So I get up usually about 4:30, 5:00 AM. I get a bunch of work done. I have my own kind of like spiritual fitness time where I'm reading my Bible, I'm praying, I'm listening to really good music, typically burning some incense, doing a little breath work and um, you know, then I'll go do some stretching and foam rolling and stuff, get a couple hours of writing and work done. And then by then my family's awake. And I gather the family... It's usually about 7:30. I pop upstairs to the living room from my office and usually I'll tell everybody, "Hey, five minute warning. Meet on the back porch or on the patio," and you know, the whole family will gather some meditation cushions, you know, we'll journal. We use one called the Spiritual Disciplines Journal, and we gather about 7:30. We go into meditation, breathing, uh, play some nice background music. I, I actually like to use Insight Timer as a meditation timer just because-

Chris Williamson 34:32 That's the one, man.

Ben Greenfield 34:34 ... it's got like the... My, my selection right now is the angelic choir voices. So instantly transported to the clouds of heaven with the harps and, and the choir. And we play that. And I have it set for about eight-minute meditation. So for the first three minutes, we're just basically settling in, you know, and that could be your own private time of prayer. That could be you doing some breath work. That could be, uh, there, there's like a little Bible verse on the top of each page that we meditate with. And, uh, I, my, what I do during that time is I try to memorize the Bible verse, so I'm memorizing some good proverb or something every day of the week. And lots of times my sons are doing that. And then there's a little timer that goes off, a little bell that goes off at the three-minute mark. At that point, we go into gratitude. So it's two minutes of writing down what it is that you're grateful for, and then as... You're no doubt aware, like re-imagining and reliving that experience in your mind so the same neurotransmitters and hormones and chemicals and feelgoodedness kind of rushes over you. That's the same as you may have experienced when you had that moment of gratitude occur in the first place. So two minutes of writing down what it is we're grateful for, thinking about that gratefulness, praying, a prayer of thanks for that thing that happened to us or that person we encountered. And then the bell goes off and the last thing we do is service. So I think a lot of morning practices are based on self-affirmation. Like, you know, like who does, uh, uh, Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live, like, "I'm good. I'm wonderful. Gosh darn it, people like me." And-

Chris Williamson 36:03 Me, me, me, me, me.

Ben Greenfield 36:04 ... we instead have a more others-facing approach. Yeah. So we write down one person we can pray for or help or serve, and then we got two minutes to like plan that out, right, to, to make our grand master plan for how we're going to help that person that day, or maybe we can't, we're just going to like pray for 'em during that time, send positive emotions their way. But it's, but one person every day. It's 365 days a year, you got one person you're really going out of your way to sacrifice for or help or serve. And then we finish af- the final bell goes off at the eight-minute mark with about 20 seconds of tapping, just based on neurolinguistic programming, we'll, we'll set an anchor that when it gets stressful later on in the day, we tap in that same location. We've trained the body to go into that same state of peace and rest that we were in at the end of the meditation that morning. Uh, we all take a deep breath in, just one giant hoo-... and then out, release a sigh, we'll typically say a prayer, and then we do like a team huddle, you know, uh, literally a team huddle. Like everybody comes together, "Yo, what's for dinner?" Uh, "What time is dinner? Who's cooking this? Who's cooking that? What time's jujitsu? When are you guys going to tennis? When's Dad gonna go play pickleball? You know, what time are we, are we starting this and that?" And so, it was basically like a five-minute team huddle where we're just all getting on the same page, then, you know, boom, and we're off. And if we don't see each other the whole day, you know, we're like ships passing in the night. And we usually do see each other during the day 'cause I work from home. My sons are unschooled. My wife's a domestic engineer taking care of the goats and chickens and stuff like that. So we're kind of together but separate most of the day. And then at the end of the day, we have a giant dinner party. Every night at our house is like a giant party. Like we literally meet in- meet in the kitchen at 7:00 and we cook an amazing meal and we'll, we'll sing songs and play the guitar and then bust out a game and literally just like play games for an hour, hour and a half while we stuff our faces and we all clean together. And then we go up to my son's room and I'll play some guitar or I'll read him a story and then we finish with meditation. And that evening meditation is ba- basically self-examination, uh, you know, an ancient practice that's super useful for stacking each day and making each day consecutively better. And for that, we literally watch ourselves live our entire day like we're watching a character in a movie, you know, in the third person. And as you're watching that character view in the movie of your day, uh, which is something you can get better and better at. Like I can literally play out my whole day in, pfft, 60, 90 seconds now. Like what I do when I woke up, what did I have for breakfast? Who did I talk to? You know, what assholes did I podcast with who were drinking fake soda? What did I have for lunch? You know, what do I do in the afternoon? How was my workout? So on and so forth. And then you're asking yourself three questions. "What good did I do this day? What could I have done better this day? Or what did I fail at that I don't wanna repeat tomorrow?" And then, "Where was I most purpose-filled this day?" And those three questions not only help you to identify those areas where you're really contributing to the world, those things that you don't want to repeat or fail at because, as you know, how we live our days is how we live our life. So examining each day really, really helps make each day consecutively better. And then the purpose-filled one I think is the best one, because it's kind of surprising sometimes the things you're doing where you actually were happy and time was flying by and you felt like you were using your unique skill set and the things that you realize are not serving you or you should be delegating or outsourcing because they don't feel that purpose-filled, right? Like, whatever, you know, I used to, I used to write all my social media posts, right? And, and I never once wrote down that that felt purpose-filling, you know, in my journal. For me, purpose is doing a podcast or writing an article and then something surprise, like I feel purpose-filled when I'm cooking a meal for my family. I feel purpose-filled when I'm writing a song on the guitar, right? Like, so, and there's some stuff that, that come up in your journal that surprise you, you know? Sometimes it's not something that- that's monetizable or part of your business. So, you know, that's kind of like the ikigai purpose part of the day. And, uh, you know, and then and that whole time we're doing breath work and then we finish, I say goodnight to the kids, uh, and we go to bed. Um, so I would say that in addition to that kind of bookending of the day, which is obviously not just my wife and I, you know, you're asking about relationships, it's more of like a familial thing. The two other things that come to mind is every night, the last thing we do before our eyes close and we fall asleep is my wife and I pray together. And a lot of times it's literally just like words slipping out of our mouth as our eyelids are fluttering and we're falling asleep. It's the very last thing we do. I can tell you that this kind of surprised me 'cause I heard a lot of couples who were married for a long time prayed together every night before they went to bed. And I thought, "Oh, it's, makes sense," kind of, you know, it's like you just have some routine that you're relying on and some touch point. Uh, I wasn't convinced it had to be a prayer. But then I realized it's really hard to be spiritually yoked or to like talk to a higher power or commune with the divine together if there's something, some rift between you, right? Some argument you've had on something that's between you and you'll pray and you'll feel like, oh geez, something's like fake and awkward here. And so it almost forces you to make sure everything's set right before you go to bed 'cause you know the very last thing coming up is praying and you don't want it to be fake. You want it to be real and you want your heart to be pure. So we pray every night before we go to bed. And then once or tw- or sorry, once a quarter or at the least once every half year, my wife and I go somewhere for t- two to three days. Sometimes it's a staycation, sometimes it's, sometimes it's going to an exotic locale, sometimes driving to a town two hours from our house and checking into a roadside motel. But we will go and lock ourselves away and we will talk, we will journal, we will plan out the next year, you know. Uh, not, not only, you know, do we wanna live here? Are we gonna move? Uh, what do we feel about the kids' education right now? What are things I'm doing that I need to stop doing? What are things you're doing that annoy me about you? Just everything laid out on the table like truth serum. Now, I have to admit that we started that process, um, a- about seven years ago. And we started that process with drugs. So we would go take MDMA or we would, um, you know, do like a sassafras or some other heart opener or, you know, or microdose together or just, just basically be in a different space mentally, merge left and right brain hemispheres, sit together facing each other in bed in these little chairs called Back Jack Chairs, you know, legs intertwined, sometimes for six to eight hours talking. We'd have recorders on the whole time recording everything we said so we could play it back and transcribe it. Now, we don't even need, it's almost as though after you've done MDMA a few times with your lover or something like that, it's such a heart opener.... and you realize that you can be transparent and tell the truth no matter what, even without a substance in your system. So, now it's, it's kind of cool. We'll just go off, you know, sometimes we'll go out to dinner, have a glass of wine, whatever. But those, those quarterly retreats, those quarterly touchpoints that are intentional and built for family planning, for coming together, for checking in with each other on a much deeper level than we might on a random date night, are, I think, super critical to our relationship's success.

Chris Williamson 43:28 It seems like a lot of the things, or trying to find

Chris Williamson 43:31 a common thread between the stuff that's came up for you there, is unearthing or not allowing, um, malignant ideas or unspoken concerns or emotions or feelings to burble under the surface without actually verbalizing them-

Ben Greenfield 43:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:49 ... whether that be as a part of the family, whether that be between you and your wife. Uh, I had Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on, and he's this data scientist, right? But he has this great little quote where he talks about how we often mistake a familiar or comfortable activity for a valuable one. And it's kind of the same when you think about life as well, that there are things that you do just because they're routine, there are thought patterns that you have just because they're routine or because they're comfortable. Maybe it's always hitting snooze, maybe it's always giving yourself a cookie after a meal, maybe it's whatever. And without the ability to step back-

Ben Greenfield 44:21 Mm-hmm. Measuring your cum.

Chris Williamson 44:22 Measuring your cum with tablespoons.

Ben Greenfield 44:25 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:26 Uh, if you don't give yourself the ability to step back and actually observe that and say, "Look, do I need to continue measuring my cum? Should I be doing this in front of other people? Should I be bringing it up in a pool in Dubai?" You never actually check in and realize, like, this, this is maybe something that I need to... So, I love the idea. I love the idea of, of stepping back a little bit. Um, that's cool man. I really, really like that.

Ben Greenfield 44:47 Yeah. Yeah, and it's, uh, we have this, this rule of radical honesty and transparency in our home. There are obviously tons of values one could have as an individual, as a family, but we spent some time a couple of years ago mapping out our key family values and forming not only a family mission statement, but like, a family crest, like literally, like an old-school medieval-style crest that's this giant shield-

Chris Williamson 45:12 Dynasty shit.

Ben Greenfield 45:14 ... hangs above our fireplace. Dynasty legacy. Family logo, uh, that's on, you know, the coasters and the throw pillows, and these, you know, two flags on either side of our front door. When you come up, it's like a fricking, like a Lego castle with a, with a Greenfield family logo flying. We've got like a 100-page document that's the Greenfield family playbook. What do we do on Thanksgiving? What do we do on Christmas? What do we do when the kids are, are eight? When's the birds and the bees talk happen? When do they do their rite of passage into adolescence? When do they do their vision quest and rite of passage into adulthood? When do they quit getting money from Mom and Dad? When do they go on a service trip overseas that's, that's entirely other-faced? Um, what is the family mission statement, and what does each element of the crest represent? My 14-year boys already, you know, based on the concept of memento mori, have their entire death planned out. They have their funeral arranged, they have their memorial service planned out. Everything is in this book, from end-of-life wishes to family traditions to family mission statements, to family values, to the family crest, all the way down to each of our individual family hex color logo and font type and spirit animal. The same with one of the brands-

Chris Williamson 46:22 It's a branding guide. It's a branding guide for the family.

Ben Greenfield 46:22 Same, yeah, it's a branding guide for the Greenfield family. When my kids have kids, when they move out of the house, I'll be able to just hand them this book. They can take it, they can run with it, they can improve on it. I think it's one of the best ways to kind of counteract that rags to riches to rags phenomenon that's all too common, where, you know, poor Kit will-

Chris Williamson 46:39 Yeah, the slow erosion of all of the good wisdom that you accumulated.

Ben Greenfield 46:42 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, what do they say? Uh, he, you, you might have to help me out with this one, Chris, 'cause I don't remember. It's, what is it? Hard men make good times, good times make soft men-

Chris Williamson 46:53 Soft men make hard times.

Ben Greenfield 46:54 ... soft men make sad times or something like that.

Chris Williamson 46:55 Yeah, yeah.

Ben Greenfield 46:55 Yeah, and it's kind of based on that concept of continually improving generationally as a family, uh, from a legacy standpoint, rather than simply having things slowly degrade because there is no tradition, there is no built-in playbook. I mean, you know, of course we have a family bank too. Every single member of our family has a whole life insurance policy where they have paid up cash additions every month. We literally have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for each family member socked away that any of us can borrow against using ourselves as a bank. Basically, that money that we borrowed can stay in the account being invested for whatever it needs to be invested for, but I can borrow money against myself at a very similar rate as I might be able to get competitively from a credit union. And that money, the reason that I think it's more valuable is because it's going into an insurance policy. So, even if my interest rate I'm getting on my loan from myself might not be necessarily lower than I get from a bank or a credit union, I've also got this massive cash policy if I die. So, there's like that protection component worked in for, for me, for my wife, for our kids. So that family banking concept is, is really, really cool too, and that's, that's just built in as part of the Greenfield family constitution. And you know, that's what, that's what a lot of families who pass on generational wealth, that's, that's one thing that they'll use as a tool to do so.

Chris Williamson 48:14 Yeah, I think that you're right there. There's definitely something interesting about people no longer living usually with parents or near parents, uh, definitely not near grandparents. You know, most people, most kids at the age of 18, 22, something like that, they wanna fly the nest, but that ancestrally wouldn't have been the way that we would have typically lived. It would have been a pan-generational household. It would have been multiple generations of the same family with extended families and second cousins, blah, blah, blah-

Ben Greenfield 48:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:40 ... all living under one tribe, one roof maybe even in some situations, one blanket, you know, before we d- developed clothes.

Ben Greenfield 48:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:48 And I think-

Ben Greenfield 48:48 Just sitting out on the, sitting out on the front porch playing the banjo with your cousin who you just married. Totally, man.

Chris Williamson 48:54 (laughs) Speak for yourself. So look-

Ben Greenfield 48:56 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 48:56 ... um, one other thing that I've been considering a lot recently is,

Chris Williamson 48:59 um, the difference between training for aesthetics and training for health and longevity, and I think that if people haven't spent a little bit of time considering it...... that those two things-

Ben Greenfield 49:11 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:11 ... can often get confused, that people can think-

Ben Greenfield 49:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:14 ... "I go to the gym, I do a push/pull leg splits, I make sure that I eat one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, I am d- I am doing both health and fitness and longevity and looking good all together." But what I, I... This is, uh, going from your background, someone that did bodybuilding, someone that did endurance racing and triathlons and stuff like that, what are the biggest changes or what are the, um, biggest holes in training protocols that guys and girls that go to the gym to train for aesthetics are missing if they want to benefit their health? What should they add in if they want to benefit longevity alongside the way that they look?

Ben Greenfield 49:53 Yeah. I would say that probably, in addition to your question, would be that training for aesthetics/performance is not synonymous with health, right? So it's kind of both 'cause some people who are, who are doing CrossFit or Spartan racing or Ironman triathlon, and I experienced a lot of this myself racing, you know, 20 years in Ironman and, you know, four years in Spartan racing, uh, fitness and athleticism are not necessarily synonymous with health, with fertility, with longevity, and often, you know, paradoxically to some people, uh, fly in the face of those values. Uh, and so, you know, if you decide you're gonna, like get fit and do an Ironman triathlon, you know, don't convince yourself that it's healthy. You're gonna be fit, you're gonna look good in spandex, you're gonna be able to go for hours on a bicycle and stare at the black line at the bottom of the pool for a really long time. But if your experience is anything like the thousands of people I've seen doing this when I look at the blood and biomarkers of these folks, you have thyroid dysregulation and, uh, you know, endocrine system dysregulation and hypogonadism in males and, you know, amenorrhea in females and low bone density and rampant levels of inflammation and ironically, like pre-type 2 diabetes in many of these folks, sometimes based on their diet, sometimes based on the stress component. So yeah, it's definitely an issue. I think the main things that the majority of the fitness world in particular needs to understand... Let me think here. If I, if I could boil it down to a few principles. A, the human body is innately good at endurance and aerobic-based activity. Given proper amounts of food and water, we can outlast any animal on the planet. Humans have outrun horses, for example, in 100 mile races in, you know, in the mountains in the west, and we can go and go and go. There's very little need to train yourself with chronic cardio and mid-level aerobic activity for long periods of time at all. I tell most people one session a week, you know, where you're going out on maybe a hike where you're, where you're sucking air just a little bit more, or a bike ride to a neighboring town or a coffee shop, or a long swim or something like that. You really only need to touch endurance once a week, max. And fewer people in the kind of like meatheady part of fitness do this, but still it's a big thing in endurance sports. People are doing way too much time with just like chronic repetitive cardio.

Chris Williamson 52:14 Is that-

Ben Greenfield 52:14 The only type of chronic repetitive cardio you should be doing is walking.

Chris Williamson 52:17 Would that be zone two? Would you be... Does that mean that you're not a fan of zone two cardio for people to spend, whatever-

Ben Greenfield 52:22 I-

Chris Williamson 52:22 ... 180 minutes a week in?

Ben Greenfield 52:25 Zone two cardio would be like the ancestral activity of hunting all day long, or me walking on the treadmill while I'm talking to you. It's obviously conversational, I'm not sucking air.

Chris Williamson 52:34 Yep.

Ben Greenfield 52:34 A lot of people think they're zone two and they're way above it, and they're what I would consider... I wrote a book about this called Beyond Training. They're in what's called no man's land for their training zone, hard enough to where you're not getting super fit, uh, or, or, or, or, or not so hard that you're getting super fit but hard enough to where you're draining your body without much points, like junk training basically. So most people think they're aerobic when you see them jogging down the side of the road with a, with a poopy face on, you know, in the heat with their fuel belt strapped around their waist. Now most of the time, like again, unless you're training for Ironman triathlon and you've accepted the fact that, "Okay, I'm trading in my health for performance 'cause I want to cross the finish line of this Mount Everest I've built for myself," fine. Like just don't commit yourself to getting healthy. You're probably not. You produce arterial stiffness and inflammation and, you know, heart disease and ventricular hypertrophy and a whole host of factors that dictate it's not healthy. So yes on zone two, but for most people they don't really understand that zone two is literally like easy walk in the sunshine with your dog, right? Or maybe it's a little bit of yoga in the sauna or something like that. So the majority of your training should be super easy or super hard, right? So when you, when you get in, you just drain yourself. So like my workout this morning in the weights was one... Took me 20 minutes. One single set to failure for deadlift, chest press, pull down, squat, overhead press, and row. Each set took me about three minutes, right? So a lot of time under tension and you just go bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bang it out, and that's my strength training session. I'm going balls out the whole time, but I'm not, I'm not sitting around at all, right? And the same thing for actual cardio training. Like my cardio workout yesterday was I had a little like oxygen restriction device on. It was 30 seconds easy, 30 seconds hard for 20 minutes on the Airdyne. And it sucked ass the whole time, right? But when you're done, you're done. So that's my philosophy is go hard when you should go hard and then everything else is just like hyper, hyper easy, low level physical activity throughout the day. Now that being said, I think that in addition to excesses of endurance or when you do your strength training and your high intensity interval training, going for too long at a medium level intensity versus just going balls out and being done, the other mistakes that people make is not understanding that the human body is basically like a giant battery. Each of the cells operate at a precise electrochemical gradient across the cell membrane. There are books about this, like The Body Electric by, um, Robert Becker or Healing as Voltage by Jerry Tennant. And the idea that your body is very electrically tuned is something that is largely ignored in-... context of modern fitness and health advice, like Men's Health Magazine or Women's Health Magazine or whatever like. They're establishing that fitness is important and movement is important and healthy movement is important. They do a pretty good job doing that. A lot of them also have established somewhat healthy eating patterns where they're like, "Eat naturally, as close to the Earth as possible. Trade in the diet Dr. Pepper for foofy overpriced stevia water. Uh, you know, um, you know, eat, uh, adequate amounts of protein, eat healthy fats, eat no nose to tail meat." It's like, it's not rocket science to like, eat more like our ancestors and avoid fake shit, right? Like, and then, and I, I could tell you this stuff, but it, that's a giant echo chamber of advice in the whole, you know, nutrition podcasting sector. Everybody kind of knows this stuff. Uh, and it's going to vary from person to person. But let's say you are eating well and you're moving well. When it comes to treating your body like a battery, that's not enough. There are other things that you can do and I think that the most important things would be, um, contact with the surface of the Earth on a regular basis because you get this natural anti-inflammatory magnetic frequency that's emitted by the surface of the planet. Every time lightning strikes the Earth, it collects negative ions and these are then absorbed by your body. When you're outside barefoot, when you're down there in Austin swimming in Barton Springs, when you're climbing a tree, when you're rock climbing, whatever. Most humans don't touch our planet enough. And there are books about this, like the book Earthing that, that has some really interesting data on how much that lowers inflammation, regulates circadian rhythm, improves mood, improves performance, improves cellular health and longevity. So, I think most people need to be, from a fitness standpoint, touching the planet more. They're also-

Chris Williamson 56:58 How long and how often?

Ben Greenfield 57:00 Well, 20 minutes to two hours a day if you can. I mean, I have a mat that I sleep on all night long 'cause there's this, there's this field of, of, of, uh, health technology called pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, PEMF therapy. And you can literally like get mats in your office that are earthing or grounding mats or PEMF mats. You can sleep all night. So, you can kind of turn your home into the equivalent of what you'd be absorbing if you were in a cave. Even if you're on like the, the, you know, the sixtieth floor of a skyscraper or downtown, you can kind of like pull the Earth into you using technology as well 'cause a lot of these will plug into the grounding outlet of your living space or they will, with, uh, control or create a frequency of anywhere from three to 100 hertz, which is similar to what the Earth naturally emits. So, there's that. Photons of light are also super important for that electrical component because they're what excite the electrically charged molecules that are traveling through your body. That's why there's a lot of data behind the health benefits of things like near infrared, far infrared, and red light. Um, in moderation, UVA and UVB radiation from sunlight. Um, you know, the use of even things like, like headgear that produces red lights and, and things like that for control of Alzheimer's and dementia and activating parts of the mitochondria that are in neural tissue. You know a while back we mentioned red light, you know, on the testes and that does actually increase the activity of the Leydig cells in the testes, helps to produce testosterone. Like, we are meant to be light creatures. You know, like light eaters, light collectors. The human body is kind of like a plant in that context, which is crazy 'cause like if you consume chlorella or like methylene blue or spirulina or any dark green or bluish compound and go out in the sun, you get an even increased activity of a lot of this mitochondrial upregulation. So, your body does have a little bit like this plant-esque aspect to it. So, number two would be light. Um, which again, a lot of people in the fitness system are like they're indoors in gyms and not getting earthing and light. I think that, um, and I'm glad that this is catching on now. Most people do not subject themselves to extremes of temperature enough, extremes of heat and extremes of cold. A robust sauna practice with a deep sweat four to five times a week, 20 to 45 minutes, could be a barrel sauna, could be an infrared sauna-

Chris Williamson 59:17 What sort of temperature?

Ben Greenfield 59:17 ... could be a barrel sauna with, could be a barrel sauna with infrared lights in it. A barrel sauna's going to be hot, like 190 to 200. My, I have an infrared and it goes up to like 156 and because infrared light kind of penetrates the tissue, you got to be in there a little bit longer or pre-heated a little bit longer, but I can get just as deep a sweat in infrared as I can in a barrel sauna. The only one I would be careful with is a steam sauna unless you know the source of the water and whether or not the room is regularly checked for mold because you don't want to be breathing into your lungs the steam from water that's got like, you know, chlorine and birth control chemicals and pharmaceuticals and all the stuff that collects in the municipal water supply. Unless that's your jam, you don't want to be breathing that in when you're in a steam sauna. So, a lot of times like just ask the health club, "Hey, you have a water filter here? Any idea if it's, do you know if it's connected to the, to the water that goes into the steam sauna?" If nobody knows, I'm, I'm pretty careful with steam sauna. But barrel or infrared, um, so much data behind the benefits of that for cellular resilience and blood sugar control and cardiovascular health and the same could be said for cold. Like daily cold soak, most of the data shows that you can either do shorter periods of time at very cold, which is what I do. I have a cold tub right outside the door here, 10 feet from me right now, keep it at 33 degrees. I get in there for one to two minutes a couple times a day. You could also do longer soaks. It's got to be at least 55 degrees and cold water immersion is better than cryotherapy chambers because of the hydrostatic pressure of the water against the skin and the fact that your head gets wet. And both of those allow for either a decrease in core temperature that's more significant or an activation of the vagus nerve, which is really good for your central nervous system in response to cold. So heat and cold, preferably cold water immersion, really important. And then the last things I think that people in the fitness world forget, and again all this is related to treating your body in terms of increasing its electrical conductivity, uh, would be good clean pure water, preferably filtered, preferably as close to nature as possible. You know, out of glass, not plastic. You know, for example, gold standard would be, you know, for a water filter like double carbon block reverse osmosis with some type of re-mineralization added to it because a lot of those will strip the minerals from the water, so you add minerals back into it because those are what charge the blood, what carry the electricity th- throughout the blood is charged minerals. So, water is something that-... kind of, well, it kind of shocks me when I see someone, like, do a hard workout and walk out and just, like, grab a plastic bottle of water, you know, which is basically, like, dead water without minerals in it, and a lot of times plastics in it, and suck that down. Like, people don't pay attention. Even people who pay attention to food a lot of times don't pay close enough attention to water. You know, I, I think I'm probably biased because my dad, when I was growing up, was a coffee roaster, a gourmet coffee roaster, and he used to repair espresso machines for a lot of the coffee shops that he'd work with, and he found that the major two factors that affected the flavor of the coffee were, of course, the source and the quality of the bean, but then also the source and the quality of the water that was used in these machines. He eventually got out of the coffee industry, and now all he does is design water filters. So, I've learned a ton from him. Like, he imports this crazy shit from Israel and these technologies that, like, structure the water and, like, I'll go and visit his warehouse and he's got everything from, like, the coolest latest technology that spiralizes and vortices and mineralizes the water after it passes through reverse osmosis and double carbon block all the way down to, like, like, icons of saints and holy water from lords in France, and a tiny drop of that goes into each filter. So, he's got, he's got it covered from the woo to the scientific. So, I've learned a lot about water from him and the importance of water after seeing what happens to, like, the, the, the cattle at the feed lots that install these type of water filters or, you know, the people who use those type of central water filters at their house. So, water and minerals are important. So, coming full circle, I would say that if you're eating well, you're moving well, you're not overtraining, you're not doing chronic cardio, you're eating close to earth, treat your body like a battery and get outside barefoot or use some kind of earthing and grounding technology, get a ton of exposure to photons of light, get hot a lot, get cold a lot, be super picky about your water, and add minerals to your food and add minerals to your water, and you will have a battery that actually works. And that covers the basis for, like, 95% of people who are already working out and eating healthy and feel like they're still not moving the dial.

Chris Williamson 1:03:30 Dude, I love it. That's really, really nice. I also agree that I think it's cool that a lot of the fitness world is starting to converge on this sort of thinking. Um,

Chris Williamson 1:03:39 what is the most convenient or easiest way for people that think, "Wow, I really haven't considered much to the water that I use," maybe they've got an in-fridge filter, maybe they're using a Brita filter at the moment and they- they've considered that to be enough, is that enough? And if not, what is enough? What's the minimum viable water, uh, approach?

Ben Greenfield 1:03:56 Yeah. Brita's not that great. Minimum viable, I've got no, like, investment or financial affiliation with them, but there's, there's a guy named Robert Slovak who's pretty smart who helped a company called Air Doctor develop a countertop reverse osmosis system that, unlike a lot of countertop reverse osmosis systems or pitchers, has special coating and special treatment inside the basin that allows it not to collect bacteria and mold, which a lot of people don't realize builds up pretty quickly in countertop water filters. So, I'd go with something like an Air Doctor. I think there's another very similar one. It might even be the same company called Aqua Tru, like, without an E, T-R-U. Um, so you guys mispronounce shit like aluminum in the UK, and we misspell shit like Tru in the US. But basically, an Aqua... Uh, what did I say? Air, Air, um, Air Doctor. An Aqua, Aqua Tru. Air Doctor is the air filter. I think the same company makes, that's what I'm thinking of. But, yeah, Aqua Tru. Um, Robert's got a website, I think it's Water & Wellness, and they have those type of air filter, or those type of water filters there. Um, so that's a pretty good solution. And there's some pretty decent just, like, pour-through water filters as well. Um, uh, Greenfield Naturals is, is my dad's stuff, and he's got, like, a pour-through water filter that I'll travel with sometimes.

Chris Williamson 1:05:13 Nice, okay. Final few things. ARX, owned by Mike Polano. I've started training with him-

Ben Greenfield 1:05:21 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:05:21 ... out here.

Ben Greenfield 1:05:22 Are you sore? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:05:23 Dude, that thing is fucking wi- Have you got one in your house?

Ben Greenfield 1:05:27 Yeah. (laughs) I do.

Chris Williamson 1:05:29 Built different.

Ben Greenfield 1:05:30 It's crazy. It's like fighting a giant robot. I mean, look, you, you can do things like, you know, there's a guy named John Jaquish who makes the X3 bar, which is kind of similar. It's, like, single set to failure resistance training with these super hardcore elastic bands. You can do, like, a super slow routine set to failure on Nautilus, or if you're more functional, with, like, dumbbells and free weights. But having, like, 25 fricking horses, 'cause that's what it is, it's a 25 horsepower engine, that thing-

Chris Williamson 1:05:55 Yeah.

Ben Greenfield 1:05:55 Like, you're basically fighting 25 horses with cables for the entirety of the set. You know how some people will, like, trip with magic mushrooms and then look at psilocybin and say, "I never want to touch that shit again"? It's kind of like that. When you finish your workout on the ARX, you finish and you're like, "I never want to do that shit again." And then, like, the soreness subsides in three or four days, you're like, "I'm back for more, baby." It's a, it's a great time hack. I like it.

Chris Williamson 1:06:21 Dude, it's so good. I'm very, very impressed with what those guys have done. I can't wait until it becomes, uh, more widespread, you know? If you could get one in every airport in the country and you-

Ben Greenfield 1:06:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:31 ... need to get a 20-minute workout in.

Ben Greenfield 1:06:33 Have you used a ToneL before?

Chris Williamson 1:06:35 What's that?

Ben Greenfield 1:06:36 It's like the wall-mounted space-saver device. It's got, like, this-

Chris Williamson 1:06:40 No.

Ben Greenfield 1:06:40 ... eccentric function. It's kind of like, it's kind of like the ARX, but maybe think, like, 1 horsepower instead of 25. But it's, like, for people who don't want to spend, like, 50,000 bucks on an exercise machine or hunt one down in their city, the ToneL actually does a lot of that, like, push-pull against you type of stuff-

Chris Williamson 1:06:55 Mm-hmm.

Ben Greenfield 1:06:55 ... that the ARX does. So, that'd be another kind of, like, budget option for folks. I would say the ToneL or the X3 bar would be the top two ways to kind of experience what we're talking about, uh, if you don't have access to one or don't want to spend the money on a machine.

Chris Williamson 1:07:06 Yeah, eccentric training is just, uh, it's, it's absolutely wild.

Ben Greenfield 1:07:10 It's so efficient.

Chris Williamson 1:07:11 One thing that you brought up earlier on that you mentioned about was, um, some of the different ways that people can get themselves, uh, give themselves a state change without using alcohol. What are... I, I know that you've made a, a diversion away from psychedelics and stuff like that recently. What are some of the ways that you would say people could perhaps get themselves-

Ben Greenfield 1:07:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:31 ... a little woozy on an evening time without dipping into alcohol?

Ben Greenfield 1:07:35 Yeah. Obviously, there was all sorts of like crazy elixirs out there and all these companies like, I don't know, Kin comes to mind is one that I'm aware of that has all these different nootropic and herbal adaptogen blend and those like kind of sorta work. It's pretty seldom I don't run into somebody who doesn't pour themselves a shot of that over ice and come back 15 minutes later and be like, "Hey, you got any, got any rum, bro? (laughs) I need a, I need a, I need a drink." Um. However, that being said, I think there's two ways to go when it comes to actually feeling the socially lubricating and relaxing kind of like GABAergic effects of alcohol without the toxic side effects of all the acetaldehyde and shit. And I think number one is this company that makes ketones, which are kind of like alcohol but don't get converted into the same damaging stuff. It's like a ketone ester 1,3-butanediol, dangerously close actually to 1,4-butanediol, which is basically, uh, gamma-hydroxybutyric acid which is, you know, the old school GHB. So you gotta be careful with this stuff. As a matter of fact, if you combine it with alcohol, you're likely to roofie yourself or whoever you serve the drink to. So proceed with caution. But they are, uh, they're made with 1,3-butanediol. They've got a Moscow mule flavor. They've got a gin and tonic flavor. They've got a new champagne flavor which I honestly think tastes amazingly like champagne, which is super cool. And, uh, the company is called KetoneAid. And that stuff works remarkably well, like surprisingly well to feel like you're on alcohol. But again, like my brother came over to the house, he had a glass of wine then he had one of those and like I made amazing steaks and he was almost face down on the table not even interested in eating. So don't combine that with alcohol, but by itself, amazing. Uh, and then the other would be more of a technology play. There's one company called Apollo and one company called Halfbee. Apollo is a haptic-based wearable that will simulate the magnetic signature of... There's a few on there like, um, I like the one for like socializing at parties 'cause it was actually designed by a MDMA therapist so that one kind of simulates MDMA. Um, another signal will stimulate caffeine. Another will stimulate like, uh, melatonin or relaxation. So you can wear that around your ankle, it's called an Apollo, and just flip it on. And there's one called Social Mode and you can use that as an alternative to drinking alcohol or in addition to drinking less alcohol. And then the other one is called the Halfbee and that one simulates the magnetic signature of a whole host of different molecules like caffeine and THC and nicotine like I had it on focus mode when I was working, uh, yesterday, but it was called Creative Focus Mode so it was giving me caffeine plus THC but I didn't have to like drink a cup of coffee and smoke a joint while I'm working on an article. So they're just like doing it through a magnetic signature then as soon as you take it off, it disappears. And a lot of people don't seem to feel it when they first use it. I didn't really notice it much for like two weeks and I think that's based on the process of what's called entrainment where your body kind of has to like get used to the signal and then you just start to soak it up. Like I hope a social worker doesn't wind up on my door by me saying this but I put it on alcohol and put it on my son Perrin at dinner one night and he just got like super loopy and hilarious and then he kind of like got quiet and started to like slump over in his chair after dinner and I took it off him and then he was, he was just fine. And so, you know, you can, you can using the magic and wonders of technology get your children drunk legally, uh, or use it for the purposes that, that you're asking about, Chris. So I would say the Apollo, the Halfbee, or these KetoneAid drinks are all pretty good for that.

Chris Williamson 1:11:11 Dude, I love it. Look, Ben Greenfield, ladies and gentlemen. What have you got coming up next? What can people expect over the next year?

Ben Greenfield 1:11:19 I'm writing a parenting book. A really big one. It's kind of like Tools of Titans or Tribe of Mentors where I've interviewed about 30 of the most amazing parents I know who all have really impactful children and I just like picked their brains. And it's like the hardest book I've ever written 'cause I'm basically, you know, like sheep herding and, and cat herding, you know, tons of different parents from divorced fathers to, you know, polyamorous parents to, or polygamous parents to, you know, single mothers to home schooled Christian backwoods folks to, you know, liberal Bay Area parents. Just like getting everybody's advice and I've condensed it into this book. Right now the manuscript is about 1,400 pages so I'm kind of getting it cut down as I do with a lot of my books. I'm putting the stuff that I cut 'cause I don't like to kiss my babies goodbye on, on the website for the book and so that'll live on but the actual book will be like a, kind of like a 650-ish page tome on parenting with some of the best advice from some of the best parents on the face of the planet and, uh, that's hopefully gonna come out towards the end of this year and it's gonna be called Boundless Parenting. So that's at, um, I think it's at boundlessparentingbook.com right now.

Chris Williamson 1:12:27 Dude, I love it. I really, really enjoy seeing the little arc that you're going through as well. You seem genuinely happy and fulfilled at the moment which makes me feel fucking good to bask in the reflective-

Ben Greenfield 1:12:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:39 ...glow of someone that's got stuff right. So I'm super happy for you, man.

Ben Greenfield 1:12:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:42 I appreciate the hell out of you.

Ben Greenfield 1:12:44 All right, man. Well, go, uh, go back to your cum measuring and soda drinking and I'll, I'll hold-

Chris Williamson 1:12:49 (laughs)

Ben Greenfield 1:12:49 ...down the fort up here in Washington. I'll see you in October. I'll be down there in Austin in October.

Chris Williamson 1:12:52 Yes, sir. See you soon.

Ben Greenfield 1:12:53 All right. All right. Later, bro.

Chris Williamson 1:12:54 What's happening people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe. Peace. (instrumental music)