The Biohacks Ben Greenfield No Longer Uses (and What He Does Instead)

24:52Dr. Mark Hyman:Because you mentioned it a few times. What is a PMF mat? What does it stand for? What does it do? How does it work? Electromagnetic field therapy is a PMF stands for. These are usually a mat. Sometimes there's some type of a PMF unit that is attached to a coil or a bed. There's companies that produce like full on like lounger chairs and massage tables. and usually there is a hertz setting that you can set it on, like anywhere from zero up to, in some cases, thousands of hertz, and an amplitude or power setting. And when you wrap it around a joint or you lay on one of these, it causes the cell to have an influx of negative ions, so you're essentially depolarizing the cell.

25:39And so you're supposed to have a slightly negative charge on the inside of the cell, a slightly positive charge on the outside, And this allows for better blood flow and also allows your cell membranes to have a better electrical charge across the membrane. So you would feel faster, you would have less inflammation, you'd recover better. My favorite way to use it is if I have like a cramp or a tight spot in my back or like my left knee gives me issues sometimes, I will wrap a PMF coil around that or lay down on the PMF mat on my back. and the higher intensity PMF mats just seem to relax everything once you've laid in them for a little while.

26:20Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I had back surgery recently and I got a PMF machine and you lay in this kind of sandwich. There's a coil on top, the coils in the bottom. I did it for myself and I would notice it would go right to the area where I had surgery. So it would go right to where the pain was. Right, that's very, like the area that's the tightest is the area that feels like it initially reacts in almost like a nearly like a painful yeah and i and i didn't know that it was i thought it just goes to everybody like that like in my hips and my back and then i had somebody else use it and they're like oh it went to my stomach or it went to my shoulder or it went to exactly the area where i'm having yeah challenges and i was like that's amazing that it actually seems to go right to where the issues are and you feel the intensity of it and in you feel i mean the one i have particularly is a super high powered one and it yeah called the hugo that yeah really you can jack up the current in it and feel so intense the hugo and then the other one i know of that's super powerful the pulse centers those would be like the two that are really good for actual injuries dr william pollock he has one on his website forget the name of it it's it's it's also like a like a high intensity one that's good for like back cramps, muscle spasms, injuries, et cetera.

27:37And then there's lower intensity ones that seem to induce more of like a full body effect that you'd use for just relaxation or stimulation or wakefulness. Like the one I have underneath the top sheet in my bed is called a pure wave. And that one, you can barely feel at all on like the Hugo or the Pulse Centers, but it's kind of more like a full body sweep that's alternating between thousands of different frequencies whereas like um the hugo or one of these others you just put it on a certain hertz frequency like 7.8 for example and you just like target a muscle at that frequency for a short period of time yeah well yeah 30 minutes exactly yeah and it feels great i threw somebody out there the day who had back pain and they were like oh this is amazing it's incredible for the back yeah as a matter of fact i've injured my back a few times in different cities and one of the first things i'll do is like google pmf plus the name of this and try and hunt down a mat that i can actually use because it's that effective at acute injuries.

28:34In addition to electricity, light, use light a lot, not only for circadian rhythmicity, but also for the recovery effects and the blood flow effects. Red light therapy. Red light therapy. And also from a circadian standpoint, blue light therapy. I mean, you know, the sun has this whole bluish green spectrum. It's kind of cool. They even saw meters now where you can hold the meter up and see the light spectrum frequency in a different room or where you might be outside uh as a matter of fact if you have like a pair of blue light blocking glasses or something like that you can put the lens over the cover of this light meter and actually see what it's actually blocking or what it's concentrating which is kind of cool to see if your your blue light blockers actually work yeah yeah for example in my house what we did was we put throughout the house uh bulbs into each can that when you flip on the light bulb once, it will go to daytime mode.

29:31You flip it on again, it goes to twilight mode. You flip it on again, it goes into evening mode. So you don't have to have like different lamps and different lamp stands in each area of the house. You've just got one bulb. It's called a full spectrum bulb. Bond Charge makes one. Block Blue Light makes one. Those are two companies that do like a flicker free. So there's no backend flicker. If you take a video of it with your iPhone camera in slow motion, you wouldn't catch a flicker, which is something that kind of causes a little bit of retinal irritation during the day and eventually can lead to kind of a brain foggy feeling if you've been under bright light.

30:04You and I were like under these lights all day, we'd definitely feel it because we're getting a little bit of flicker. And then they're low EMF, right? Which is something you also want to take into consideration with your lighting system. So basically these are light bulbs that go in any light socket. Yeah, exactly. And then the main areas of the house, because you're missing out on some of the full spectrum of sunlight, even though they're a little bit more of a power hog and they're harder to find, we have incandescent lighting, right? So we've combined incandescent with OLED lighting for the circadian rhythm component.

30:32And then if I'm, for example, I'm in Texas right now. It sounds like a science project. It is. It's super fun. Um, if I'm in Texas right now and I fly back to, um, to Idaho at, I get home on Sunday. So at 7am on Sunday Sunday morning, or let's put it this way, I've been waking up about 6 a.m. here. So at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, Idaho time, it will be 6 a.m. Texas time. And my eyes will probably flip wide open and I'll be ready to rumble because my body still thinks it's 6 a.m. So the way you can kind of play with circadian rhythmicity is rather than flipping on lights, rather than taking your phone out of night mode, rather than looking at a computer, you would actually put on blue light blockers.

31:17And this is something I'll do. So you put on blue light blockers, keep the phone in night mode, keep the lights in the house as dim as possible. And then when the time arrives, when you actually do want to start waking up, that's when you just blast yourself with blue light using either like sunlight. There's devices, let's say, I don't know, like Las Vegas, you know, access to sunlight or you can't get outdoors. You can wear glasses. Like there's a pair called the IOs, A-Y-O. There's another pair called the re-timers, and these produce really bright bluish-green light that shifts your body into your new time zone more rapidly.

31:51And now they even make lenses. So you know these, I just mentioned blue light blockers. Now they have blue light concentrator glasses that will concentrate just the blue light spectrum from the room or from outdoors. So that in the morning, if you really want to blast yourself with blue light, you just wear glasses that instead of blocking blue light, concentrate blue light. Like the first 30 minutes of the day. And this can jumpstart your circadian rhythm. And not a lot of this has to do with healing the body.

32:17Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, I had surgery, as I mentioned, and I slept for like four hours a night for a couple of months. And in my recovery, the sleep doctor I was working with trying to get my sleep reset had me wear these special things in the morning that I can show you later. It basically is like I put it on and gives you like bright light in your eyes. It's like glasses that just shoots light in you. And it was like kind of bluish, greenish, bright. Right, yeah. It's like those seasonal affective disorder lamps. Exactly, right. But you wear them, right? Exactly, right. There was a company, I don't think they're in business anymore, they're called the Human Charger.

32:51And they were designed to stimulate the photoreceptors in your ears with bright light. I don't know if they still make them, but yeah, there was a time when you could literally have the light in your ears and the light in your eyes if you wanted to shift your circadian rhythm forward or backward. And of course, the opposite applies also. You know, we'll dim the lights at night. You know, this is different than like red light panels or red light beds or red light wraparound devices. I'm a fan of all of those for enhancing recovery and use them almost every day. But I'm more kind of intrigued and find more useful the idea of using light for circadian rhythmicity.

33:26And then oxygen is kind of, that's kind of like a new thing for me. Like you were showing me how you have an IHHT device, intermittent hypoxic and hyperoxic training. And in English, that means you go up to Mount Everest and you come down to see that wall. Go up to Mount Everest, but without getting off the couch, right? So you're essentially training your cellular physiology and flooding your cells with oxygen after starving them of oxygen while you're just sitting there, which is fantastic, especially if you're just watching something or meditating. I think a lot of people find that they almost shift into more of like a theta wave state when they're using something like that.

34:01I feel like that in the hyperbaric actually. So it's good for a nap, good for meditation. another way to starve the cells of oxygen and then flood them with oxygen is called eWOT exercise with oxygen training and this would be a similar idea except in this case you would use i have a device called the live o2 it's next to my my exercise apparatus my my cardio machine i can breathe hypoxic air and then at the flip of a switch for example if i'm going to sprint flip it to hyperoxia and flood my cells with oxygen, which normally you'd only be able to do if you were under pressure, like in a hyperbaric chamber.

34:41So there's two different ways to do this. You either get into a hyperbaric chamber or you exercise or sit while giving your cells hypoxia plus hyperoxia. And then - No oxygen and high oxygen. Yeah. And honestly, like if you, I don't know if you're hungover, tired, if you're just getting started warming up in the gym and you feel a little stale, if you just put on an oxygen mask, if you happen to have one of these devices and just put it on full oxygen. So you're bringing like 93 % oxygen for the first few minutes of your workout. You feel incredible. You feel unstoppable. I mean, even without a fancy pre-workout.

35:10And so what is a low oxygen state doing?

35:12Dr. Mark Hyman:The hypoxia? The hypoxia is starving the cells of oxygen. So it's a brief, almost like hormetic effects to where you're going to upregulate oxygen intake once you turn the oxygen back up. So you're basically going to get more oxygen into the tissues than you would otherwise. But a lot of these machines, they work on helping your mitochondria rejuvenate. That helps you with mitophagy and getting rid of old mitochondria, and then helps you create new mitochondria and help them work better. Probably the mitophagy would be induced by the hypoxic state. Right. You're essentially creating a stress order that kills off old mitochondria, and then flooding the cells with oxygen afterwards.

35:50So mitochondria basically run on oxygen in food. Yeah. That's what makes energy. Yeah. That's when you start. So you're taking away the oxygen. I don't know if it'd work any better if you were in a fasted state, you know, like in a low glucose state also, but electricity, light oxygen, I would say those are three big ones for me in the whole like recovery performance department that I use almost every day at home.

36:12Dr. Mark Hyman:And hyperbaric oxygen chambers also. Yeah. We'll do something different, but they, they're very effective for recovery. Yeah. You're breathing oxygen. Uh, typically you're breathing oxygen, even though you don't have to you're still going to get a little bit of oxygen delivery just in a pressurized environment but in most cases you have a cannula you know or a mask and you're breathing oxygen breathing up to 100 oxygen yeah exactly oxygen under pressure yeah and what does that do to your body the pressure drives more oxygen into tissue so it's a way of oxygen yourself but the we're finding that it actually has a lot of benefits in activating stem cells and increasing stem cell production and killing all the zombie cells, which are the senescent aging cells that cause inflammation throughout your body.

36:55Dr. Mark Hyman:They increase telomere length. They have a lot of interesting kind of rejuvenation properties. Brian Johnson just published something. Yeah, the hyperbarics. And he was talking about how all the things he'd done over the years, when he did a series of these hyperbaric sessions, it led to him improving a lot of his biomarkers that he had were stuck. And Israel published a study where they used this technology for brain health and rejuvenation and longevity. and they had pretty compelling data about it. Yeah, it is pretty impressive. And I'm glad you said the word series because I think a lot of people will hear hyperbaric and they'll do one session and expect the results.

37:27But in most of these studies, they're doing several weeks of hyperbaric. Like you're doing 20, 30, 40 sessions. Yeah, 60 sessions. Like an hour, an hour and a half. A couple hours, yeah. You can get the PMF back if your back hurts and it'll be better right away. But this is like a commitment. Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. Like if you're jet lagged or hungover and you do a hyperbaric session, you're gonna feel a little bit better. But if you're in it for the longevity,

37:47Dr. Mark Hyman:effects these are kind of cool tools and and they're some of them are expensive like a hyperbaric chamber but some of them you know are not that that price prohibitive and they can be things you add to your daily life yeah you walk outside barefoot in the sunshine and do breath work for for free that's right which is you know like i mentioned community and i think that's that's the thing is that you see like whatever the you know 110 year old grandma in sardinia italy who's you know, smoking the occasional cigarette and perhaps drinking more alcohol than would be considered the hormetic effect and yet still living a long and happy life because of the community piece.

38:23That's right. And, and, you know, I think it was, uh, the surgeon general in 2023, you know, identified loneliness as the equivalent of smoking like 15 cigarettes a day, you know? And so you're seeing increased blood pressure, increased cortisol, uh, what else? Increased inflammation. You see even increased expression of genes related to inflammatory cytokines and a decreased regulation of genes responsible for antiviral activity. It's almost like nature wants to kill you off when you're lonely.

38:55Dr. Mark Hyman:There's an interesting field called sociogenomics. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. No. But I actually came up with this term independently because I realized after working in Haiti and learning about the work of Paul Farmer, who used community health workers and basically neighbors, helping neighbors to help people treat AIDS and TB and some of the most challenging health conditions in the world, which most of the public health community had given up on as they had to take their medications on a regular schedule for multi-drug resistant TB and for AIDS. And it was too hard. They didn't have clean water.

39:32Dr. Mark Hyman:They didn't have watches. They didn't have, like, it was just super poor and difficult. But he really used the power of community to help heal. And I realized that, you know, when I started looking into literature, that it can work for good or for bad. Like if you're in a dynamic with somebody and then you're in a conflict situation or fight, you're going to express all these genes that are inflammatory. As your emotions get inflamed, your biology gets inflamed. But if you're in a loving, deep heart center connection with somebody, the opposite happens. you activate all these anti-inflammatory genes and healing genes and repair genes, which is fascinating to me.

40:09Dr. Mark Hyman:And, and so you can use community as a tool. I know you, you just launched a new community platform, which is to help people connect around. Oh yeah. I mean, and I think that that's useful if you are a life network, right? Yeah. Go, I mean, there's, there's a lot of community platforms. I mean, there's, I mean, yeah, I think a lot of the people in the industry now, you know, uh, you mentioned Dave Asprey. I think he has one. Gary Brecka has one, Brian Johnson, who we were just talking about. He has one. Do you have a community? Yeah. It's called the Hyman Hive. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a great, is it like H-Y-V-E?

40:41And no, it's H-I-V-E. Oh, it's still H-Y-V-E. That's a good idea. Anyways, though, I think the importance, if you're in a community is, even if it's a digital community, is to try and connect with people in that digital community who might actually be in the same region as you or be traveling to the same area or conference as you because there's actually a book by Sherry Turkle called Reclaiming Conversation where she gets into the idea that a digital interaction misses a prefix and it misses an actual, um, you know, IRL relationship, you know, an in real life relationship. And I think one of the, you know, if you look at the underlying biological mechanisms behind that, you know, if, if like I were to shake your hand, we're triggering skin receptors, you know, your Pacinian corpuscles.

41:32So you're getting, uh, you're, you're getting a stimulation of the vagus nerve, which is going to lower blood pressure and lower heart rate and lower cortisol and all those things that we look for when we're trying to increase heart rate variability, we'd see like an oxytocin release, which, you know, is your, your trusting, loving, snuggling hormone, um, which a lot of animals who are monogamous and mate for life have oxytocin receptors and a lot of animals who, who do not don't, but you can genetically modify like a mouse to express oxytocin receptors and it will become more socially active when you do that.

42:09You know, whereas like a human or a prairie vole, like we already got them built in. I know we got a dog. He must have a lot of those receptors because she's constantly dogs, kittens. Yeah. A lot. We have, we have baby goats. I think they have a few. You get the oxytocin release. Um, and then of course that can result in a subsequent serotonin release. You've got another feel good neurotransmitter hanging around. You've got the, you know, you look at like the research by the heart math Institute on the electromagnetic signal produced by the brain or produced by the heart that can actually affect the energy of those around you.

42:40and we miss a lot of those if we're in a purely digital environment and so you know even me like i tend to be an introvert i tend to be a loner i'm one of those guys who can be super happy by myself for long periods of time and yet when i look at all the research you know i think if i'm spending time doing you know light and water and electricity and air optimization and all these biohacks that i getting a hug could be yeah i i need i need to be going out of my way to also build community, you know, beyond just, you know, Dunbar's number is one 50, right? The, the, the approximate network of people that we're able to, to interact with and stay in touch with.

43:19But what Dunbar was getting at when he came up with that number was also the idea that the deeper those layers, the more satisfied and happy a person was, right? So you have like your five intimate family members or very close friends and 15 kind of sort of friends, then 50 people who you get around with on a regular basis and maybe a few dozen others in your community. Yeah. And once you fall out of those layers, you know, it's like this built-in ancestral mechanism where you just freak out, right? It's like the body goes into this state of nervous system stress. I mean, if you don't have those relationships.

43:54If you aren't connected to people, you know, it's the equivalent of banishment, which would mean, you know, in a time. That was a punishment. That would have been punishment or death, right? It would have been ostracism. You know, it's, uh, that literally comes from a Greek, uh, term for the pottery shard called the Ostraka that they used to actually write the name of the person who they wish to banish for 10 years from, you know, in, in the church and organized religion, you know, excommunicare, excommunication, putting you out of communion. Yeah. The exact opposite of companionship. Yeah. Pan is like breaking bread with someone companionship, you know, excommunication is getting thrust out of that banishment.

44:32Yeah. I think that's a French word, baneer, to send away, to expel, to push out. So if that happens to a human, we go into this sympathetic nervous system back to the running from a lion mode because we become hypervigilant. We no longer have anyone around us to protect us. And that would have served us very well in an ancestral environment in which we had no one around us. So we had to have our guard up in order to not get eaten by a bear, you know, alone out in the forest. Now there's even a term called the paradox of loneliness. And the paradox of loneliness is similar to the paradox of obesity, for example, right?

45:13We have built in calorie conservation mechanisms that have served us really well thousands of years ago. If we didn't have access to ample amounts of food and we came across, let's say, a kill, I don't know, a woolly mammoth or whatever. we would want to eat as much as possible to store away as much fat as possible for when the times of need arose again. And now with 24 seven access to hyper palatable food and like a Ben and Jerry's like two blocks away, those same calorie conservation mechanisms cause overweight or obesity, which is paradoxical. With loneliness, it's also paradoxical, right? Because when we're away from people or even perceive that we're away from people, because there is this idea of not just subjective loneliness, right?

45:55Being lonely, but also subjective loneliness, seeing whatever friends and followers and fans and likes somebody else has comparing that to yours and suddenly feeling like you're not keeping up and you're subjectively lonely, whether it's objective or subjective loneliness, those same biological mechanisms that we were talking about, increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, increased cortisol. Well, what's that make you? Like nervous, anxious, depressed, irritable. And here's the paradox part, being the type of person who's exactly the type of person that nobody wants to hang around with.

46:29So you almost create like this vicious cycle of loneliness. So, you know, that's why I think it's, it's so important to check yourself and, you know, ask, Hey, have I been by myself all week? You know, am I in loner mode? Am I keeping in touch with old friends or making new friends? You know, am I taking my earbuds out and maybe, you know, foregoing a podcast and just going on a hike with somebody and having a chat? you know these are things underrated it's under people need to think about yeah just as much as

46:54Dr. Mark Hyman:whatever red light bed or yeah or pmf or whatever it's one of the key things around longevity and i remember traveling a lot to the blue zones when i was writing my book young forever and i you know just striking to me how there wasn't loneliness how everybody even if they're you know they didn't have kids they'd be taken in by a niece or a nephew when they got older they'd be yeah somebody's wife died they'd be all their kids would move in with them there was just a whole network in the community where everybody was part of it and there was community celebrations community connection and it was pretty remarkable and i think there was um you know dan buehner's talked a lot about this but it's definitely underrated like you can do all these fancy things and take all the supplements and eat all the great food and exercise and do all these biohacking things but if you don't have community huddled up and lonely inside a hyperbaric chamber sucking on a b propolis lollipop with your binaural beats and and yeah i mean you're still by yourself i mean you know back to moscow idaho my my mom who doesn't exercise and eat as healthy as she knows her son would like her to welcome to the club is actually in pretty good health because she has a coffee shop in downtown moscow it's like the hub of the town and she's like the grandma of the community you know just hanging all these college students and pouring beer and you know walking all over the coffee shop and visiting with people and i am so glad that she has that outlook because i know after having seen a lot of these you know studies and data and the blue zone stuff on loneliness that you know even if she's not exercising and eating as healthy as i'd like like she is she's up to some very good activity when it comes to her longevity her happiness right that's a like the what's the article uh five regrets of the dying you know it's an article in the book by the palliative care practitioner where she talks about what people expressed on their deathbeds.

48:44And it was basically, I wish I'd chosen to show my true emotions more. I wish I'd chosen to be happier. I wish I'd work less. I wish I'd been my true authentic self instead of who I thought the world expected me to be. And the last one was, I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. Yeah. And it wasn't, I wish I answered all my emails. Right. I wish I got to zero inbox every Thursday. Um, no, cause, cause I mean, everybody knows like your work will eat you alive if that's the highest order of priorities. You know, it probably took me till I was like 35 years old to figure that out that, you know, my order of priorities is God and my spiritual health.

49:20And then my wife, cause if you and your spouse don't put your oxygen mask on first, you can't be there for the kids and then the kids and then my health, which isn't hard for me because it's an industry that i work in and then business comes last you know i used to think you just you got to make the money first and then once you've made enough money you'll be able to take care of the kids and have enough time to go on adventures and have mini vacations and

49:51what made you kind of flip in terms of your your priorities almost getting a divorce like like Literally, I was such an unpleasant father and husband traveling all over the world at the time, not just for speaking in conferences, but also racing, you know, in Ironman. And I was really not putting my family first. my wife for the first five years of my son's existence was basically raising my sons almost by herself you know because i'd pop in pop out you know go out and give myself the excuse that i was just out you know slaying dragons and providing for the family yeah um and it took a pretty rocky patch with her for me to buckle down and start to put family first and i mean i I literally, I'm kind of like an all or nothing guy.

50:40So I jumped into it pretty hardcore. And we started to build like a family constitution and a family mission statement based on a family core set of values. We all went to a cabin in Utah for three days and developed a family logo, which then led to a family crest and family flags and a giant family logo sign and logos on our pickleball paddles and our hats and our shirts that we wear out. um we started doing a morning and a family meeting where every morning i gather the whole family at 7 a.m and we sit around the living room and we talk about our evening we talk about the day we read the bible together we pray we have a big hug and just this super happy coming together in the morning and then the same thing and you get your teenage boys to do this oh yeah 7 p.m like clock work we all gather in the kitchen we sing a song together i bring my sons through a book that we year typically going together with you know each month i bring them through a book so we have our chapter discussion before dinner and we have like a whole game closet full of hundreds of games and we play games for like an hour and a half and so every single day i've almost like guarded me from being a workaholic because i bookended 7 a.m no matter what i'm doing i have to be on the living room floor with the family somebody's going to wonder you know where i am or what's going on 7 p.m.

52:00same thing like clockwork that's my ending because i have to be there with the family get to be there with the family because it's like this amazing party that we have and we've been doing that for 10 years that's incredible and so not only do my sons have a real identity of what it means to be a greenfield and what we stand for and what we hold dear and what each little portion of the family crest means but they feel a real sense of belonging you know and i think there's a far less chance of creating like a you know rags to riches to rags mentality or silver spoon mentality in a young man or young woman who really identifies with a sense of pride in the family name and wanting to build generational health and generational wealth and continue to to build upon what you've started as a parent you know basically legacy so that's incredible that that is an incredible that that's true biohacking that's like yeah that that and it's so meaningful i mean i I miss out on work.

52:58Like I work less than I used to. I probably make money at a far slower pace than a lot of my friends. But, you know, it's kind of like the, a little bit like the old adage of, you know, mom ain't happy and nobody happy. If my whole family's happy. Well, you've rejiggered your priorities to understand what matters.

53:14Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. And it takes a long time for people to figure that out. If ever, you know, if ever. And, you know, all the things you probably do in your day, my guess is that's probably the thing that keeps you the happiest and the healthiest it's it's it's the best i mean it's you know not to get too esoteric or woo but i mean you know if you think about the two most eternal things that we are surrounded with every day of our lives it's either other souls or god everything else is going to pass away you know all of our books and homes and money and sex and cars and everything yeah there's this this idea that comes from ancient philosophers like Pence's or Augustine or more modern authors like C.S.

53:55Lewis of this hole in the soul, this eternal hole in the soul that will always feel empty unless you fill it with something eternal. So all material wealth, our business, even our health, all of that is material and temporary. But if you're able to fill that hole with a relationship with a higher power and relationship with other people, then all the other stuff becomes even more fulfilling. It's almost like the icing on the cake. And I think a lot of people just miss out on the part of starting with the eternal and then all the other stuff becomes fulfilling and instead chase money, you know, chase cars, chase houses, chase women, chase men, whatever, thinking that that's what's going to make them happy when it's, you know, it's family, it's community, it's God.

54:45Dr. Mark Hyman:For me, it was similar. I mean, I went through many years of just, you know, focusing on my career and work and and i had to kind of rejigger things and realize what was important and now you know i just went through this pretty serious health crisis back surgery and almost died and it was pretty intense wow an infection in my back and you know what was so meaningful and powerful was the amount of people that were there for me who were in the hospital with me who came and visited me who there was like i think a whatsapp thread of like it was sort of a hundred and plus people um there was there was healing circles and people praying for me and you know it made me realize that you know i've invested a lot of time and energy in building connections and community and friendships that are deep and yeah that are not related to who i am but in terms of in the world but just more who i am as a human being yeah and in terms of you know my soul friends i call them it's a powerful yeah memento mori-esque exercise this idea of asking yourself and actually there's there's an author named john ortberg and i think he puts it like this he's got he has a book that says his book is called i'd like you more if you were more like me he has a lot of books but this is a great book and he has a part of that book where where he lists kind of like the five regrets of the dying all of the questions you might be asking yourself when you're at death's door towards the end of your life and the last question that he lists there is who will cry at my funeral yeah who will cry at my funeral yeah and even in even in digital community like i know like i probably have like thousands of people who follow me on instagram or facebook or whatever who really are not gonna give a crap about my funeral and move on to the next expert or author or podcast or whatever if i were to pass away but my local network of community and friends and family members and people who have built you know again IRL flesh and blood relationships with those people will yeah and you know back to the loneliness piece it is kind of sad that we do live in a time when it's so easy to build those super digital shaky digital relationships that unless they blossom into something else are kind of flat at the end of the day that's amazing and you know when you when you have you know that kind of structure that you put in your day around connection and family and just even having the thought of creating you know family values and what your mission is and how you take care of each other how you relate to each other what's important and what you focus on it it's um it's something i think you know just so few people ever think of doing yeah and and you're my guess is your kids are pretty well adjusted they're probably not addicts they're doing okay in school they're yeah you know probably happy we give them a lot of drugs and hanging from cages and um kidding i think if a child is given time and love and presence that's one thing and i think most parents and people are aware of that but i think it's time and love and presence and this deep sense of belonging like knowing that they're part of a movement or part of something greater i'm not saying like turn your family into a cult or something like that but this idea of like having in the same way that you would brand a business and in an ideal scenario in a successful business, all your employees know what the business's values and mission statement and core purpose is.

58:06You essentially brand your family the same way as you would brand a business all the way down to the freaking logo and the sign on the wall. And that's what we did for our family. And it's, it's incredible.

58:17Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, you're sort of like, uh, kind of touching on this concept of like rules to live by, like what are the simple principles and rules to live by? And most people probably don't know this piece about you. And I think that's a, it's such a gift that you shared it because it's something that i think most people probably hopefully take away from this and understand that that it makes them reflect on where they have done it or haven't done it in their own life and hopefully it'll inspire people to actually lean into this yeah and and i wonder you know given all the things you know you you talked everything from your soul to you know pmf mats like after years and years of experimenting and and optimizing and at every level, obviously your body, your mind, your spirit, your soul.

59:02I'm wondering what you kind of are down to

59:05Dr. Mark Hyman:and still down to in terms of key practices that you want to keep. Like what are the, let's say, if you only keep three practices, what would they be? Or five, whatever you think is that sort of stood the test of time and you want to carry forward going forward. Key principles, move well, and as we've established, not too much at too high in intensity, but I think movement is underrated and it's very easy to not move. I'm shocked at the number of people who get a movement meter or wearable and think they're taking 10 ,000 steps a day and they're taking 3 ,000. So move more, eat well, which I think most people are aware of.

59:42And you have many books about this and you don't have to follow a special diet, but back to the blue zones, you know, eat in a mindful state, eat a wide variety of plants and herbs and spices, you know, throw a little bit of hormesis in there occasionally from plants and herbs and spices and maybe even alcohol, avoid ultra processed foods and eat well. I would say thermal stress or discomfort is underrated. We live in a temperature controlled climate. So subjecting yourself to like the ancestral rigors of heat and cold on a regular basis. That's why I think we've, we've, we see a growing body of research on things like a sauna practice.

1:00:16And I think we'll see more and more coming out on cryotherapy and cold immersion because very similar to exercise, you know, we need to be throwing stressors at our body, you know, even down to the hypoxia that we were talking about for mitophagy, just for cellular autophagy in general and cellular resilience, you know, you need to do uncomfortable things within limit, you know, as we were talking about earlier. So it's a move well, eat well, uh, stress our bodies thermal stress. Yeah. Or just discomfort in general. And if I could name a couple of others, I would say take care of your personal environment.

1:00:51We touched on air, light, water, and electricity. So pay attention to quality of your air and the cleanliness of your air, your water filtration system, and what kind of water bottles you're drinking out of when you travel, your lighting environment, especially how much LED, high flicker, high EMF light you might be exposed to on a regular basis, and sunlight on the good side of things, and then the electrical environment that you live in. Even my house, there is no Wi-Fi. You pull up to the bar at the kitchen and you peek under the bar and there's six little Ethernet ports there where anybody can plug in if they want to, but they're not going to get a Wi-Fi signal.

1:01:31I didn't want a house where it was inconvenient and they'd have a bunch of upset visitors who could never get on the Internet. So I literally have Cat 8 metal shielded Ethernet throughout the entire house so you can just plug in. You don't have to go to those extremes, but little things. Unplug your Wi-Fi router where you're sleeping at night, for example. personal environment, discomfort, move well, eat well. And I would say the last thing is something that we just got done touching on. It would be the fifth thing I'd name, and that would be your spiritual health, which I think includes your spiritual practice and your relationships slash community.

1:02:06And those would probably be the five that I would distill it down to. Yeah.

1:02:10Dr. Mark Hyman:Pretty sage advice. Pretty solid. And I think the one part I think people might not completely understand, and it's worth diving more into your work about this, you know, is this piece around how do you control your environment to support your health, whether it's, you know. How do you build your own blue zone? Yeah. A lot of people feel pretty bad most of the time. And it's often the result of things that we're not aware of, like the quality of our air, the quality of our water, or the... Yeah, they're exercising, they're eating healthy, and they still feel like crap by 2 p.m. And so what I'm hearing you say is that some of these technologies that have helped us in many ways, live better, more fun, or interesting lives, also have a dark side.

1:02:51Dr. Mark Hyman:And that there's ways to mitigate that dark side and rejuvenate your body in many different ways. So lastly, I just kind of want to sort of hear what your thoughts are about the latest longevity trends. What are the things that are popping for you that you think are worth leaning into? And what are the things that maybe are like misconceptions or things that are misunderstood or maybe not? We talked about some of the beauty trends. Salmon sperm. I'm going to take that away. Salmon sperm. And yeah, we didn't touch on this, but another thing the same clinic does is they do Botox injections into your sexual organs, which apparently relaxes the muscle tissue and allows for better vascularity.

1:03:36My wife was very concerned when I told her I was going to Austin to get a paralytic toxin injected into my man piece. Um, but, uh, you know, they just had this health optimization event down here and it was a lot of, you know, the things that you would expect to see lots of different kinds of, you know, the 18 flavors and variants of beef tallow and beef jerky and energy bars. And I think a lot of the, the cool technologies, like we discussed, you tend to see those more like, uh, a four M in Vegas or something like that, that, that are kind of like the cool things coming down the pipeline. For me personally, that I have been getting super into, and I briefly mentioned this to you as I was looking at your biohacking setup here, the idea of combining different modalities to relax and kind of downregulate the nervous system.

1:04:30Namely, haptic sensations, light and sound in some kind of combinatorial environment. So what I mean by that is, um, when I travel, I have one of these Apollo wristbands or ankle bands that will vibrate and then a neurovisor, which is a headset that you wear that produces light and sound. And there's something about light plus sound plus vibration that will knock me out on an airplane or after a busy day at a conference when I have too many central nervous system stimulants in me. um and at home i have this vibrating chair called the shift wave which is kind of cool just vibrate your whole body you can wear a fingertip sensor and it'll kind of do it in combination with your actual heart rate variability as you breathe in and breathe out but then right above the shift wave chair i've got this lamp called the roxiva and that also does light sound therapy so i've got a travel setup the neurovisor plus the apollo and at home kind of like the big guns the the shift wave plus the roxiva and you know so you don't wear an eye mask when you do the shift wave the shift wave you can wear an eye mask if you're just doing the shift wave but the way i do it is i've got eyes open and there's like an av cable that comes out of the roxiva because they've got about 20 different sessions that are built for haptic sensations and haptic is like vibration yeah like vibration the roxiva comes with this teeny tiny little like bass speaker that you put under a table or to vibrate your body so i thought well why not look up to the freaking shift wave so i plugged the av cable into the input of the shift wave so now when the lights come on they're just blasting off to outer space which is incredible if you just need to like check out at 3 p.m and turn your brain off you're getting blasted with light you have the headphones in so the sound is doing the thing in conjunction to the light and then that's feeding into full body vibration yeah and it's pretty cool to essentially just knock stress flat out of your body like i I feel incredible when I do that or the Apollo.

1:06:27For 10 minutes. Oh, I'll run it. My scheduling team knows that you don't schedule anything for Ben between about 2 and 3.30 PM because I finish lunch and I go into my little lounge and I'll spend just anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. It's kind of part of my job, if you want to call it that, to try out all these new devices. So the other day I was trying to have the new Muse has some new Athena headband that detects blood flow and brainwomen. waves or I'll be messing around with the shift wave or what happens if I plug this into that or if I take my neural visor into the hyperbaric chamber so that's my relaxation experimentation time yeah and uh it I'm not in there for an hour and a half but usually you know well that's a little bit of padding time on the other end to come out and you know and get back into the emails

1:07:14Dr. Mark Hyman:and stuff what I found is that stress is is an incredibly exhausting thing in your body and if you have ways of discharging the stress now tony robbins talked about changing your state whether it's just jumping up and down or breathing or whatever and this is a state prey animal would relax after being chased by a predator by shaking by shaking right and so there's there's these devices or tools you can use to help reset your nervous system you can do it with breath work you can do the meditation you can do with you know stretching there's a lot of ways to do it yoga but this this technologies are pretty cool because they it is kind of we all are living in this heightened state of cortisol.

1:07:49Dr. Mark Hyman:And so how do you kind of drop out of that? And so these technologies are pretty important. And it's a routine thing too. Like I'm typically up between 4.30 and 5 a.m. because I like to have that time when the world doesn't expect me to be up and I don't have to be guilty about having my phone off so I can do my morning routine and get ready for the day and have my time with God and have my coffee and just have my morning to myself because I also have a family and we have these wonderful, glorious family dinner parties. I'm usually not in bed till 10, right? So I'm getting maybe six hours of sleep a night, but I find that if I can program in 30 to 60 minutes of relaxation in the afternoon, it's almost like time hacking.

1:08:25Cause if you add it up, you know, that's still only like seven hours I'm supposed to be getting, you know, depending on the research you look at seven to nine hours, but I can be super present for my family at dinner as long as I have that afternoon checkout time. So I'm, I'd much rather get up super early and nap, then sleep in, not have my morning and just bang out the rest of the day. So I would say that's what I'm excited about. Just the use of haptic sensation, light and sound. And then what'd you ask me? What is overrated?

1:08:52Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. What are the things that you like are like, ah, that's kind of like misconceptions. I would hate to cause people to think that they shouldn't prioritize something like, you know, like the whole CECO calorie in calorie out equation. Cause I do think that trumps a lot, but I think there's a lot of people, maybe this is similar to my reply to you about exercise who are overdoing the whole intermittent fasting keto thing there's you know i talk to a lot of for example especially like pre-menopausal women who are doing like 16 hour fasts and they're seeing you know these intense hormonal imbalances and down regulation of fertility and you know they're essentially treating themselves as men when women especially pre-menopausal women do better on like a 10 to 12 hour intermittent fast and, you know, strength training and adequate protein and all the, you know.

1:09:43So, you know, I see a lot of cardio bunnies, you know, not to stereotype who are doing excess intermittent fasting. So that's one, one thing that I think is overrated. And then look, I am all about controlling glycemic variability. You know, a lot of times I wear a blood glucose monitor. I am aware and cognizant of my carbohydrate, starch and sugar intake, but I think a lot of people now, especially with the surge in CGMs, they're just scared of carbs, scared of sugar, and often equate what would be considered traditionally a therapeutic ketogenic diet, right? Like 30 to 40 grams of carbs or whatever a day that you'd use to, you know, in a situation of TBI, concussion, Alzheimer's, et cetera.

1:10:26And they're saying, oh, well, this is like my new cognitive enhancing superpower. And you tend to see, you know, back to what I was saying earlier for me back when I did that when exercising a lot, you know, impact on the thyroid, impact on testosterone impact on joint health the way that i do things now after experimenting with a lot of different approaches is i kind of think you can have your cake and eat it too i don't eat a lot of carbs and sugars most of the day right i save my carbs until the evening which is typically the the meal that tends to be the most social the most difficult sometimes to control what you're eating because you're out at restaurants you're with friends you're at a party whatever yeah so i eat like low carb relatively keto most of the day and then i'll have like 250 to 350 grams of carbs at night which is great because you sock away a little bit of liver glycogen and muscle glycogen for a great workout the next morning so we do a little bit of a serotonin melatonin response it's not gonna be like white flour you're not eating no sweet potato purple potato uh yam beet eat parsnip, dark chocolate, yogurt.

1:11:32So, you know, good carbohydrate sources. Um, you know, do a lot of like carrot fries, sweet potato fries. So, um, not a lot of grains or beans, not a lot of grains or beans. Besides my wife does really, really good fermented sourdough bread. She makes those crunchy cannonballs, which are pretty good with a little bit of honey and sea salt on them. I'm basically in a pretty, uh, glycemically stable state the entire day, Quick feeding at night that because I'm usually doing something active before dinner, playing tennis or pickleball with the family, doing a sauna cold plunge, going on a quick walk or even using bitters, for example, before the meal, I'm inducing almost like a temporary state of heightened insulin sensitivity prior to the evening carbohydrate feeding.

1:12:19So I'm not getting a huge blood sugar spike that lasts till midnight and then a hypoglycemic drop that wakes me up at 1 a.m. or whatever. So I'm active around dinnertime. I have some bitters with dinner, which kind of act as glucose disposal agents. And then I sleep like a baby and then get up the next morning and rinse, wash, and repeat. And I see a lot of people who just like go for way too long restricting carbohydrates. Whereas I think more of like a carb refeeding approach works way better. And that's the way I've eaten for like probably more than a decade now.

1:12:52Dr. Mark Hyman:And you're talking about carbs like sweet potatoes and things that are much lower glycemic and have lots of fiber. I avoid non-nutritionally dense carbohydrates. I generally avoid, period. Ice cream? Yeah. Well, it depends on the ice cream. We get brands out now. And we have goats. My son's make some pretty good goat milk ice cream. That's amazing. But yeah, it depends. But yeah, most ultra-processed starches and sugars you should avoid in general. But especially in like the health world, I just see people being carb phobic. Well, you see fat phobic, carb phobic. Exactly. And then we're all - Hopefully it doesn't become protein phobic soon.

1:13:31Yeah. That'd be the worst. Well, that's interesting.

1:13:33Dr. Mark Hyman:Protein is something we've talked about in the podcast and other guests like every online. But we seem to be in a protein craze right now. And all the natural food expo, all the meat bars and protein bars and protein snacks. Actually, yesterday I tried a new bar that was made with whey protein and beef collagen and beef tallow. And it was actually pretty good. There's a lot of them. They're super tasty. And I was like, wow, this is like really lots of good fat, lots of high-quality protein. What's your take? Are we kind of going overboard on the too much protein side? I mean, depending on the studies that you look at, I mean, there's some that go for like three grams per pound.

1:14:15and some studies on bodybuilders on protein intake. I'm kind of a fan of the one-ish gram per pound sweet spot. Which is twice as much or more than the RDA, which is the government sort of minimum amount. Exactly. And I think if you're not physically active, you might be able to get away with a little bit less than that. I would rather people be prioritizing protein than running from it. But I think with protein, it's the quality that matters. You know, because if you, you know, let's say you're plant-based and you're, you know, rotating legumes and grains and, you know, eating a variety of, I don't know, like quinoa and peas and maybe some seeds and nuts, et cetera.

1:14:59The issue on that side is unless you're taking the time to properly prepare, soak, sprout, ferment, slow prepare those foods, it's going to do a number on your gut and you're not going to unlock a lot of amino acids from those protein sources anyways, so you're probably going to wind up a little bit protein deficient unless you really go out of your way to do a plant-based diet correctly. And then on the omnivorous or carnivorous side, you see people who a lot of times have more of the IIFYM approach and they're just like, Hey, if I'm getting enough protein, I don't care if it's from a, you know, McDonald's big Mac with the, maybe the bun removed or something like that, or a, or a Costco steak or a Rosar steak, or, you know, or, you know, hopefully, you know, grass fed grass finished, good pastured sources.

1:15:45So I think the cleanliness of the animal from which you're getting the protein is really important, not necessarily because the protein is going to be that different, but because of all the other things that are getting along with it, you know, whatever, what might be concentrated in the fats or something like that. Although there may be, but there may be good things.

1:16:02Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, you know, there's Stephen Van Villez has some interesting studies looking at bison and bison just that are purely fed on regenerative methods using kind of multiple wild plants that they eat versus a bison that's, you know, mostly grass-fed, but then is, you know, feedlot fed at the end with corn and grains. And they did very detailed metabolomic studies where they looked at not just, you know, things that were bad, because, you know, they probably weren't giving these bison hormones and antibiotics and things like that, but they were still eating like a grain diet, that the metabolites in the meat of the fully regenerative bison were really quite different and had all sorts of phytochemicals that weren't in the other meat, all sorts of, you know, fatty acids that weren't in there and other benefits that you wouldn't expect.

1:16:52I'm not convinced the amino acid composition would be different. You know, if we're talking about purely the proteins, but yeah, I think, you know, as much as you can go out of your way to ensure that the quality of the protein source is superior, you know, the better. If you look at some of the people who are, you know, waving the red flag on protein, typically it's around potential for something like gluconeogenesis, you know, where you get excess protein causing some type of an insulingenic reaction or a glucose spike. Yeah, I met a guy who's a carnivore recently and he's like his insulin levels were pretty high and i'm like that's interesting because he's yeah yeah exactly what you can do you also tend to see uh folks in the longevity camp who raise concerns about excess stimulation of mTOR which could theoretically result in impaired longevity um from uh excessive methionine intake right the amino acid that you find in a lot of meat, especially if you're not eating a nose to tail source and balancing out methionine with glycine.

1:17:56So I think the variety of your protein intake matters, you know, getting sources that are rich in glycine and collagen and gelatin and not just eating meat is important. I think, yeah, I think, I don't like the term lean protein for the most part. You know, I think that a fatty cut of salmon and the egg with the yolk and, you know, getting as long as the animal's been fed well, a little bit of the, you know, the, the CLAs and the saturated fats from, you know, well-fed pork or cow. I think that's a good idea. Um, but yeah, I, I think that you could make a case that if you get too much methionine and too high a protein intake to the point of like acidity or excess mTOR activation or gluconeogenesis or something like that, like it could be bad, but I don't think many people are reaching that high level of protein intake.

1:18:46Dr. Mark Hyman:yeah i agree i agree i think you know it is the only macronutrient we need in gram amounts yeah you know essential fatty acids we need milligram amounts of carbohydrates we don't need them although they help us in different ways but there's no essential carbohydrate yeah um so it's interesting it's an interesting moment like we've got this low fat low carb high protein now i think the world just kind of keeps spinning around the nutrition confusion yeah i think uh people need to just like focus on very dogmatic you know nutrition is very dogmatic and it's also an easy industry to make money in because people want a perfect solution that's right right so if you can come up with a perfect bar or the perfect book or you know the perfect diet or whatever like you're gonna rake in some cash for a little bit and then people will move on to the next big thing once they realize that one isn't working for them that's right i mean it's obviously don't let your ideology run over your biology yeah like pay attention to how you feel and what's going on in your body don't let your ideology run over your biology you know because they gotta listen into your body is basically the bottom line.

1:19:45Dr. Mark Hyman:It's generally the smartest doctor in the room. And Ben, you know, your work's been so great. You've really helped bring so many of these ideas into public consciousness. And I think I really encourage people to check out more of your work. And you've got a new book coming out that's sort of an update of your older book, right? The Boundless is just coming out April. So where can people find you online? My hub is bengreenfieldlife.com. Ben Greenfield Life. and you can connect to everything you're doing there. Pretty much, yeah. That's great. And thank you so much for being such a sort of pioneer and thinking about tools and practices and things from a scientific perspective and kind of separating the week from chaff and helping us sort of navigate what are often very strange and controversial topics with humor, intelligence, and grace.

1:20:35Dr. Mark Hyman:Thank you, Ben, for being on the podcast. Thanks, man. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate review and subscribe to the dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts And don't forget to check out my youtube channel at dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the dr. Hyman show This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the ultra wellness center My work at Cleveland Clinic and function health where I am chief medical officer This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.

1:21:11Dr. Mark Hyman:Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra UltraWellnessCenter at UltraWellnessCenter.com and request to become a patient.

1:21:41Dr. Mark Hyman:It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast.