https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/qa-410/
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:34] Updates on Ben and Jay
[00:03:04] About the Anonymous Podcast
[00:07:03] Newsflashes: “Light-harvesting chlorophyll pigments enable mammalian mitochondria to capture photonic energy and produce ATP“
[00:15:46] How To Make Your Immune System Fight Viral Infections
[00:22:47] Health Data From Oura Ring Identifying Coronavirus Symptoms
[00:26:23] Special Announcements and Podcast Sponsors
[00:33:20] Listener Q&A: Tricks To Get Rid Of Allergies Fast
[00:50:11] When To Eat Carbs For A Morning Workout
[00:58:28] How To Rapidly Support Recovery For A Broken Bone
[01:10:06] Giveaways & Goodies
[01:12:26] End of Podcast
Ben: In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.
When to eat carbs for a morning workout, get rid of allergies fast, how to get bones to heal more quickly, and much more.
Ben: Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.
Well, Jay, the last time that we spoke, we were on home arrest, and based on my calculations, we still are.
Jay: I think that’s pretty accurate calculation, yeah. What we thought was going to be a lot shorter turns out to be a lot longer.
Ben: You know, we should probably clarify for folks that just based on the way that we tend to schedule and run this show, we a lot of times have podcasts in the can, so to speak. Not meaning we’re recording them while we’re on the toilet, but meaning that a lot of times, we’re recording like a week earlier than the podcast comes out, and considering in this case with the whole coronavirus thing, what was news today is like 10 years old tomorrow. So, our apologies if when you listen to the Q&A episode and we’re ranting about this current pandemic. It feels like we’re dumb and behind the times. It’s because we usually are recording a week early, just so you guys know, a little inside baseball.
Anyway, so anything changed on your end, Jay? I know we just geeked out in Podcast 409 on all of our workouts and everything we’re doing while staying at home. So, I don’t want to rehash all that, but anything new on your end?
Jay: No, man, not much new. I mean, other than just like I have completely disconnected myself from any type of media because I just–it’s just not good for my soul. I have noticed that when I sit down in the morning, one of the things I used to do is I used to love sipping a cup of coffee and just either reading through the news or watching the news before I headed off to work. And now, I’ve had to completely cease that. I just can’t take it anymore, and I know that some people may think that maybe I’m a little bit of a lightweight now, but I just can’t take it from my soul’s perspective. So, other than that, now things have largely stayed the same. How about you?
Ben: Yeah. I’m in the same boat. I’m doing as much as I can responsibly to make sure that, especially from a health and a medical standpoint, just because I’m talking with so many people and I’m part of so many different physician networks where folks are bouncing things off of me that I’m trying to stay on top of what’s progressing as far as medications, immune protocols, the state of the healthcare industry when it comes to this, but trying to avoid most media. I completely agree. And instead, just spending lots of time with the family. I did do something new last night with all this extra time that I have in my hands.
Jay: What was that?
Ben: Remember that podcast–maybe I’ll link to it in the shownotes. So, everything that you guys hear on the shownotes, if you got to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/410, that’s where you’ll find today’s shownotes. Remember how I interviewed that guy who wanted to remain anonymous?
Jay: Oh, yeah.
Ben: [00:03:22] _____/engineer, who was talking about all these crazy biohacks nobody’s ever heard of before and all these technologies and fringe compounds, and almost like strategies–
Jay: I still remember that, dude.
Ben: Yeah, particularly for anti-aging and longevity. It’s kind of a controversial podcast because he’s not like a qualified scientist, but he had a lot of little rabbit holes he was diving into.
Jay: Yeah.
Ben: One in particular that intrigued me was this idea of the Klotho protein as something that has some pretty profound effects when it comes to turning back aging. And then he talked about this product called Immortalis, which he said was like this special probiotic strain that specifically reduces the rate at which telomeres shorten and has some pretty profound DNA repair mechanisms. So, I was intrigued after that and I went and I got my hands on a bottle of this stuff. The problem with it–
Jay: Is it like crazy expensive?
Ben: Mm-hmm.
Jay: That’s what I thought.
Ben: It’s like $2,000 for a bottle of this probiotic.
Jay: Oh shit, wow.
Ben: And so, I thought, “Well, geez.” Like, there’s no way. That’s a sustainable monthly expense, but probiotics are bacteria. You can grow them, right? You can multiply them theoretically.
Jay: Yeah. Oh, I see where this is going.
Ben: I do yogurt ferments and kefirs all the time. So, I’ve been making yogurt out of this $2,000 probiotic called Immortalis with a yogurt maker. And it turns out that some of the microbes in non-heated milk can kill off some of the bacteria, so I have to boil in heat. I’ve been using goat’s milk. I boil in heat the goat’s milk, let it cool with the room temp, and then just ferment in a yogurt maker with two capsules of this stuff for about 12 to 24 hours. And the other thing that apparently helps it to remain more stable is if there’s a lipid layer on top of the yogurt as it’s fermenting. So, I add olive oil to it.
So, I’ve been making that and my wife calls it my $2,000 dessert because I’ve been having a little bit of that with some stevia after dinner. I then began to research, again because I have so much time on my hands, this idea of almost like a fecal transplant, a yogurt enema, which apparently a lot of folks in the functional gut health industry do make recommendations for colonic flora.
Jay: Right.
Ben: So, I thought, “Well, what the hell?”
Jay: I’ll stick it up my butt.
Ben: I’m stuck at home. So, I hung from my inversion screen for 20 minutes last night with a container of yogurt shot up my ass, not just any yogurt, Immortalis yogurt. And then I went to bed and slept all night with yogurt up my ass, and then had a nice bowel movement this morning. I noticed absolutely nothing different at all, but that’s the latest news from my house.
Jay: That’s incredible.
Ben: No.
Jay: Were you expecting to notice some profound change? Well, I guess when it’s 2,000 bucks, I mean, that should heal anything that you’ve got going on, plus cancer, plus coronavirus, plus whatever else.
Ben: You know, I went to the company’s website and I explored some of their recommendations on how to use it, and they did mention on there that the gold standard way to introduce as much of the bacterial strain into your body as possible was via enemy delivery mechanism–or enema delivery mechanism. So, yeah, there you have it. What do you think? Should we jump it in the newsflashes and give people more useful information than $2,000 probiotic yogurt or something?
Jay: I don’t know. I’m enjoying this conversation, but I guess for the sake of everybody else, let’s do it.
Ben: Alright. So, first newsflash I think is pretty cool. It’s something I’ve been geeking out on lately, this idea of human photosynthesis. Did you check out that book I’ve been reading on, “Human Photosynthesis,” by the way?
Jay: No, I haven’t because–oh, I tried looking it up one time and you probably linked to it, so I would just go to whatever we linked to here, but I went to–I saw like a bunch of different authors. And so, I just didn’t know which one to buy. One book was like 150 bucks. I was like, “I want to make sure I get the right one.” So, I just have to wait and see the one you linked to and then go get that one.
Ben: Yeah. Okay. So, I’m going to give folks background because this is really, in my opinion, some pretty cool shit. A long time ago, I was reading on the website of a guy who–I don’t think the podcast will have come out by the time folks are listening to this, but the guy has a really cool website called GreenMedInfo. Sayer Ji is his name. I just interviewed him. He has a fantastic new book called “Regenerate.” And he published an article about this study that was in the Journal of Cell Science that reveals that when you have chlorophyll-rich components in your diet, like let’s say cilantro is a perfect example, chlorella, like chlorella tablets or chlorella powder from these superfood bags would be another example, that the pigments in that–the actual study was entitled that “chlorophyll pigments enable mammalian mitochondria to capture photonic energy and produce ATP.” And basically, what that means is that when mammals consume a chlorophyll-rich diet that they can capture specific wavelengths of sunlight radiation or photons from any form of light, like an infrared or a red-light panel will do the same thing, and that can actually increase ATP produced by the mitochondria.
And so, basically, as we know, prevailing wisdom is that only plants can use sunlight directly for producing energy through the process of photosynthesis, but it turns out that animals can, and mammals, in this case, will have an appreciable amount of melanin, or who don’t a lot of hair on their skin can actually produce ATP if they have chlorophyll-rich compounds in their bloodstream. And I’ve mentioned this a couple times on podcast before, but the idea behind this is that there are some specific components of the mitochondria that can accept electrons that are created when photons of light are captured by something like chlorophyll or by something like melanin on the skin. And then there was another really interesting article that questioning–it was a study about human hairlessness, and whether human hairlessness allowed for greater amounts of natural photobiomodulation by allowing us to absorb ultraviolet radiation and then produce ATP.
Jay: Human hairlessness as in like because we have less hair than other animals, or if you’re just naturally like myself and you don’t have hardly any hair on your body?
Ben: No. I’m not saying bald people make more ATP. I’m just saying humans in general, because our melanin would be more exposed to sunlight radiation, would technically be capable of this so-called human photosynthesis, converting sunlight into chemical energy. Specifically, it’s via the dissociation of the water molecule. Right?
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Ben: So, melanin or chlorophyll can be used to dissociate the water molecule. And when you read this book, “Human Photosynthesis,” which I’ll link to in the shownotes, turns off or turns out that you kick off about four electrons when a photon of light hits, say, a molecule of melanin. And so, when it comes to that article that I read, it inspired me to really focus on doing things like when I’m out in the sunlight consuming a diet that’s rich in greens, or rich in chlorophyll, or adding a little bit of cilantro to the morning smoothie, especially during the spring and summer months when you’re out in the sun more.
And then in this new book, “Human Photosynthesis,” it turns out that melanin is even more powerful than chlorophyll at having this same effect. And there’s another study that looked at melanin and its ability to be able to actually–almost like absorb radiation, Chernobyl-like radiation, and convert that into again free electrons that can be produced or that can be used by the mitochondria to produce ATP. But it turns out that although that study was looking at the potentially radioprotective effect of melanin on the skin or the consumption of a diet rich in melanin, particularly mushrooms, chaga mushroom, in particular, is extremely rich in melanin, that there is a radioprotective effect. But it turns out that when photons of light strike melanin that it produces these electrons that can be accepted by the electron transport chain to produce ATP, again in the absence of calories to generate cellular energy. It’s known as the photoelectric effect.
So, I’m totally not one of these Breatharian guys who thinks that we can survive on chewing on chaga and getting out in the sunlight, but I find it absolutely fascinating. And then it turns out that yet another compound known as methylene blue, which is actually used by a lot of biohackers these days as a kind of nootropic, what methylene blue can do is it can also absorb light to create free electrons within the cell. And so, we’ve got these three things, chlorophyll, any melanin-rich food, particularly chaga, and then methylene blue as three different compounds that you can actually have as a part of your, let’s say your nootropic pantry or your healthy diet, when combined with exposure to sunlight or the use of, let’s say a red light panel, it can actually allow for the production of ATP.
And I’ve been experimenting with this. I’ve been, for example, almost like overdosing on chaga. Like this morning, for example, I put four packets of that Four Sigmatic chaga into my morning cup of cacao, and then I went down and I did my usual red light therapy for 20 minutes. I’ve got this little dropper bottle. I grabbed it and brought it into the office this morning for the podcast. I get it from Blue Brain Boost and it’s just pure methylene blue. It’s the same place I get my pharmaceutical grade nicotine. And because nicotine can increase what’s called PGC-1 alpha, which can increase mitochondrial activity as well, I combine the nicotine with a little bit of methylene blue when I’m doing red light therapy, do a little bit of the chaga. And then if you’re already eating a diet attrition greens or you could just like put some cilantro on the smoothie or chew on some chlorella tablets, you can actually produce ATP in the absence of calories, which might even be notable for people who are doing like, I don’t know, longer fasting periods or five day-fast or something like that, a little bit more energy for a workout. And again, I am not a guy who’s going to say, “Oh, this will allow you to survive without food,” but I just think it’s some cool shit like I was saying.
Jay: Yeah. No, no. That’s really cool. I was thinking during this whole time–well, I mean, I know you pointed out three things with the melanin, the chlorophyll, and then with the methylene blue, but I was thinking like, I wonder if this is to the disadvantage at least one component of individuals who go full all-out carnivore. I mean, I guess they are missing out on one of these potential aspects, right?
Ben: Well, you still got melanin in your skin, I guess.
Jay: Yeah.
Ben: And some carnivore diet proponents do consider mushrooms to be acceptable as a part of the carnivore. So, you could say that chaga or fungi could be part of that. And then, yeah, I don’t think there’s any amount of methylene blue on a ribeye, but —
Jay: Maybe not yours.
Ben: –either way, you still got some melanin to play with on the carnivore diet. So, the book is called “Human Photosynthesis.” But then Sayer Ji’s new book “Regenerate,” if folks grab that, it was one of the better books I’ve read in the past few months, and it gets into human photosynthesis, too. So, either of those books would be good if you want to take a deeper dive. And I will link to those in the shownotes.
Jay: Sweet.
Ben: Okay. I know we next were mentioning that we weren’t going to talk a whole lot about coronavirus because honestly, I’m just sick of feeling like it’s the only thing that I can talk about. However, I did come across an interesting article that Dr. William Seeds sent to me. He’s a previous podcast guest. He’s well-known as almost like the world’s leading expert in peptides, BPC-157 and TB-500, and all these crazy peptides. But he actually has a pretty good blog and he shot me over an article that he was working on that was looking at the way that the COVID-19 virus uses its specific spike protein and the host receptor ACE-2 in lung tissue to penetrate into a cell. And how lowering the pH to a more acidic state in the cellular environment allows the virus to actually activate and replicate, and only very small changes are required in a pH decrease, or an increase in acidity for this to occur.
And so, what he’s been recommending to his patients and what he wrote a great article about is this concept of neutralizing pH to a certain extent. And again, it’s only very small pH change necessary for this. So, we know the kidneys do a pretty good job regulating pH anyways, or regulating acidity anyways. But the problem is if you’re relying upon your kidneys to do all your acid-alkaline regulation, they’re still going to be drawing upon your minerals, which are stored in the adrenal glands, stored in bone tissue. So, if you’ve got a net acidic state, it’s just a little bit more stressful on the adrenal glands, and potentially a little bit more harmful for, for example, for bone density.
So, there is some wisdom to be said for eating a mildly alkalinic diet, or at least avoiding excess amounts of very acidic compounds like dairy, red meat, coffee, et cetera. I’m not against any of those compounds. They’re all staples in my diet, but I don’t overdo them because they are net acidic compounds versus alkalizing compounds, like let’s say dark leafy greens and vegetables, et cetera. Now, one of course the most alkalizing compounds that you can put into your body that a lot of research has been done on is just basic cheap-ass baking soda, sodium bicarbonate. And recent studies on sodium bicarbonate showed that it has a positive influence on the macrophages, which are specialized cells in your body that help to detect and assist in the destruction of bacteria and other harmful organisms.
And so, about the same time that Dr. Seeds sent this to me, this article that he wrote about in that’ll link to in the shownotes, I also just finished up a book called “Forbidden Healing,” which is actually written by a guy named Captain T. C. Randall. And the book, admittedly, it’s a little bit kooky. It’s like this former army captain who has a farm, who’s figuring out how to heal his animals using all these cheap-ass tactics, including among other things the use of baking soda and ascorbic acid. It’s almost like health tonics. And so, after reading “Forbidden Healing,” I began adding into my morning glass of water about a two-to-one ratio of vitamin C, or just bulk ascorbic acid and baking soda for the alkalizing effect.
And also, because the vitamin C is acidic, the baking soda kind of knocks off some of the acidic edge of the vitamin C. But there’s also some interesting data on vitamin C, like we know that adequate amounts of vitamin C are effective in pneumonia prevention, so it has some lung protective effect. We know that doses above and beyond the RDI can be effective at treating upper respiratory tract infections. And then there was one very recent meta-analysis of nine randomized controlled trials showing that vitamin C, not megadoses, but doses over and above the RDI, were effective at alleviating the severity and the duration of the common cold. And the end of that meta-analysis recommended adding vitamin C when sick or during times where you would be exposed to microbes to boost immunity.
So, I’m not one of those guys who’s full-on on the bandwagon of vitamin C is going to cure all ills. I’m not necessarily a Linus Pauling disciple, but I’ve been doing that baking soda, vitamin C mix in my morning Mason glass jar. I drink a massive amount of water right when I wake up, and then usually again around like 5: 00 or 6: 00 p.m., so I’m not waking up at night to pee. And I’ve been adding baking soda to it, and I thought this was really interesting. And Dr. Seeds notes that bicarbonate can help the cell stay at almost like this metabolic advantage, especially during high-demand aerobic situations where you slow down lactate build-up and you lower the pH. And it also appears to have some pretty good effects, like I mentioned, on what’s called macrophage polarization.
I thought it was one of the more interesting cheap tactics with all these things from, whatever, rectal insufflation of ozone to nebulizing glutathione and all these crazy things folks are doing, including admittedly myself for coronavirus. But baking soda and vitamin C in a morning glass of water, I think it’s just a prudent health strategy overall, and I thought it was an interesting article. So, I’m going to link to that in the shownotes. And also, again, that book “Forbidden Healing” wasn’t written by a doctor, but I actually enjoy it quite a bit. As a matter of fact, three books, because I know people are stuck at home a lot right now, three books, all three of which I’m going to be doing interviews with the authors of in the future that I really enjoyed from a health standpoint recently, or that book, “Regenerate” by Sayer Ji that I mentioned earlier, and then this book, “Forbidden Healing” by Captain James T. Randall, and another one was by a guy named Joel Greene called “Peak Human.” So, I’ll link to those books in the shownotes if folks need some extra reading material. But yeah, I thought that simple ingredient to take action on COVID-19 was compelling, if nothing else.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah, it’s super interesting. Even actually, while you were talking, I just went ahead and ate a whole box of Arm and Hammer baking soda, pretty tasty.
Ben: I’m going to set my clock here for about–by my estimation, I neglected to say that it gives you a glorious morning bowel movement, but you will paint the back of the toilet seat if you overdo it. I should mention dosage. I use about 8 to 10 grams of vitamin C and it’s a two-to-one ratio. So, then I use four to five grams of baking soda.
Jay: Okay. So, that’s not very large.
Ben: I would not use much more than that. And then finally, and I promise everybody this is the last thing we’ll probably say about coronavirus because I know many of you just don’t want to hear about it, Oura ring is doing something interesting. I don’t know if you heard about this.
Jay: Yeah, I saw this.
Ben: [00:22:59] ____ out there because I know a lot of our listeners use the Oura ring, and they probably saw this pop up in their app if they do use it. But they’re collecting data now, specifically heart rate, respiratory rate, and change in body temperature data to help to develop these algorithms that could predict or detect COVID-19. And I think it’s a cool idea. I mean, [00:23:22] ____ a ton of people have on anyways. You can opt to participate in the study if you open up your app and if you have an Oura ring. And they’re using this on healthcare workers, they’re using it on just people who are curious but haven’t been able to get tested. And we know that of course the data that you get, say, your readiness score, your HRV, your body temperature, all of that has been proven in the past to be efficacious for determining things like onset of injury or onset of illness before the injury or illness occurs so that you can then take adequate measures, like say rest and recover, or have a recovery day or something like that.
But it turns out that they’re now giving these rings to emergency medical workers, who come in contact with patients who may have COVID-19 to track whether or not there can be some efficacy of using wearable to detect this. And also, they have added into the app for the user of Oura ring the option to opt in to a study that helps them see whether or not your data, mostly your body temperature data, can identify earlier than symptoms arise, whether or not you have coronavirus infection.
Jay: Yeah. I’ll be super interested to see what the research data has to say about this because from all the accounts that I’ve been hearing, credible accounts I should say, is that they don’t believe that virus is just going to just be eradicated and disappear all at once. They think that it could potentially come back seasonally, like perennials. So, I would be interested to see what data they get from this so that we can use this in the future to either predict the onset or predict symptomology. Yeah. So, it’s pretty cool. It looks like they’re giving it to like 2,000 emergency workers that work in San Francisco Medical Center, is that right?
Ben: Yeah. Something like that.
Jay: Cool.
Ben: Yeah. They’re mostly doing it in the Bay Area.
Jay: Yeah.
Ben: I think I might get in trouble if I don’t say this. I’m commercially aligned with Oura because I found Oura at this tiny little biohacking conference in Finland. It was like six or seven years ago and I bought one and brought it back to the states and started wearing in all these conferences and stuff. I realized now I’m sounding narcissistic like I’m the guy who introduced it to America. But I got on the Oura bandwagon very early. Then when I noticed that they were exploding and–what’s the prince in England who was wearing the ring?
Jay: Harry?
Ben: Yeah, Prince Harry was wearing it and all these celebrities picked it up, and it really became a thing. I did throw a little money in the hat and put a small investment into Oura ring, so I should mention that just so I don’t get in trouble, or maybe that does get me into more trouble, [00:26:06] _____ like a–what do you call the pub schemes where you invested something that you talk about it?
Jay: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Ben: Alright. If I get arrested, I’m sorry. I’m on home rest anyway, so it doesn’t matter. But anyway, so yes, I did invest a little bit of money in Oura, but I like it, I use it, I bought one. So, there you have it. What do you think, a few special announcements?
Jay: Let’s do those.
Ben: Alright. Well, kind of like last week’s episode, there’s not a whole lot to say in terms of where I’m traveling because every event I’m traveling to has kind of sort of been canceled, although I am taking part in a virtual–damn it, I’m going to have to say it again, Coronavirus —
Jay: There it is.
Ben: –Conference Summit put on by Wild Health. So, if you go to wildhealthmd.com, they’re doing like a virtual summit with a bunch of doctors that I’ll take part in as well, and we’re going to livestream the whole thing. I forget the dates. It’s coming up soon, but if you go to wildhealthmd.com, you’ll be able to take part in that, or you’d be able to —
Jay: Is it like about mitigation strategies?
Ben: –view the replays. It’s like mitigation strategies. It’s detection strategies. It’s mostly doctors who were on the frontline of this thing —
Jay: Oh, sweet.
Ben: –just reporting everything they’ve learned. I think it’ll be pretty good.
Jay: Yeah.
Ben: And then we do have a few discount codes for all the listeners. First of all, at Kion, we just launched our Creatine, which is available for folks now, and that’s great as a nootropic, it’s great for staving off muscle loss, it’s good for bone density, it’s good for guys, for testosterone, a whole host of cool stuff that happens when you use creatine, unless you use too much, in which case you get water retention and cramping and bloating. So, dosage is important. However, I’ve been using five grams of creatine a day for like 20 years and I swear by the stuff, super safe, super well-researched, and everybody gives a 20% discount on that, or anything else that we have at Kion, including some of our immune-enhancing formulations like the Colostrum or the Oil of Oregano. So, the code you can use is BGF20 at getkion.com.
And then also, the good folks at Organifi are giving all of our listeners a 20% discount on their Red Juice. Now, this is like the blood building, beet powered, cordycep-infused superfood juice that I think if you use the discount code comes out to like $1.30 some cents per serving, which is amazing, considering you can make a giant Nalgene glass bottle full of red juice for about one-fifteenth of the cost you’d pay for at a whole paycheck, or probably one one-hundredth of the cost you’d pay for like an Air One in L.A.
Jay: [00:29:05] _____ of a deal.
Ben: Yeah. The Organifi stuff just tastes good. And I’m not kidding, like you put this stuff–I like to put it in a Nalgene, shake it up, drop it in the freezer for about 20 minutes so it gets icy cold and drink it. It just works. And I don’t have to chop stuff up, but I’d have to clean up, and everything, every single ingredient, they’re super dedicated to quality. Their founder, Drew Canole, is a friend of mine. He’s just geeked out on quality and they hunt down the best organic shit. So, it’s Organifi Red Juice. You go to Organifi with an “I”, organifi.com/ben. The code is BENG20. So, there’s that. And we’ll link to all these discount codes in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/410.
I mentioned chaga. If you guys want to use that stuff, Four Sigmatic is giving all of our listeners 15% discount on their chaga. Their reishi is also really good.
Jay: It’s my favorite.
Ben: If you look up the data on reishi, reishi actually has some really potent antiviral properties as well. I’ve been putting two packets. I always have a cup of bone broth at lunch and I’ve been putting two packets of that reishi in there, which is nice too because I like to take a nap after lunch and it kind of relaxes you.
Jay: Oh, yeah. Yes. I take it right before I go to bed. And actually, from an HRV perspective, it typically will increase my HRV from about 15% to 20% when I do drink it compared to when I don’t. So, there you go.
Ben: Amazing. And now, for half of you guys out there, just going to be the placebo effect because Jay said it.
Jay: Exactly.
Ben: Yup. Either way though, 15% off of any of the fine, fine goodies from Four Sigmatic if you use code BENGREENFIELD at foursigmatic.com/bengreenfield. That’s F-O-U-Rsigmatic.com/bengreenfield. And then finally, my family, in an effort to support the local economy, used Uber Eats the other night and made an order in from Wandering Table, one of our favorite local kind of like farm-to-table-ish restaurants, but they do this popcorn cauliflower. It’s almost like–I forget if they call it popcorn cauliflower or buffalo wing cauliflower, but you can make —
Jay: It sounds incredibly different.
Ben: Yeah. I think it’s buffalo wing cauliflower.
Jay: Okay.
Ben: If you do a search online, you can actually make like buffalo wings out of cauliflower instead of chicken.
Jay: Really?
Ben: I’m not one of those guys who orders like a Tofurky for Thanksgiving so I can have all the flavor of meat without actual meat, but I do like some of the things that folks do with cauliflower, like cauliflower rice or cauliflower, in this case, chicken wings with some ranch dressing and some Tabasco sauce. These things are amazing. But in their coating, they do use gluten. It’s the devil, Satan.
Jay: The bad word.
Ben: So, we use in our house the final sponsor of today’s episode, Gluten Guardian, which basically turns gluten into freaking soup. It just predigests all the gluten. Now, granted I don’t want to have this as an excuse for everybody to rush out and go to McDonald’s and Burger King and not get their lettuce wrap, but the reason for that is you still get glyphosate. So, you still need to be careful. But if you, say, want to, whatever–if you’re super gluten sensitive and you want to have a piece of my wife’s lovely slow-fermented sourdough bread, or you occasionally want to order in at this point and you don’t know if they’re using gluten or not, that Gluten Guardian stuff comes in pretty handy. My kids take it, my wife takes it, I pop a few, and it’s well-formulated. It just works. It predigests the gluten. So, there you have it, yet another way that you don’t have to paint the back of the toilet seat.
Jay: Exactly.
Ben: So, the code for 10% off of Gluten Guardian is BEN10, and you just go to glutenguardian.com/ben. Use code BEN10. So, folks are now equipped with–what? They got their creatine, they got the red juice, they got the chaga, the reishi, they can eat some bread. Alright, so grab all of your goodies, everybody, and let’s jump into today’s Q&A.
A.J.: Hi, Ben. My name is A.J. I’m a professional golfer. I’ve suffered from seasonal allergies my whole life, and in the last five or six years, they seem to have gotten worse. I’m talking, scratching my eyes out and insanely miserable. I’ve had tests done and I’m very allergic to almost every type of grass and trees, basically, the highest level of allergic you can be to where they want me to take an EpiPen on the golf course. As you can imagine, I’ve tried almost everything. Is there anything that you would recommend that may help me out? Thank you.
Ben: I feel so bad for people with allergies —
Jay: Mm-hmm. Me, too.
Ben: –because I don’t get them, knock on wood, haven’t yet, even though you can develop them later on in life. Like if you get leaky gut, autoimmune issues, et cetera, and autoimmune issues are interesting. Those things can pop up just from going through a time of extreme stress. You can develop autoimmune issues, leaky gut brought on by, let’s say a Z-Pak, or some kind of antibiotic regimen that can cause you to begin to suffer with allergies you didn’t have before. So, it’s not like just because you don’t have allergies now, you might not develop them in the future.
But I haven’t had to deal with allergies myself much. However, my son River, he’s come down with some stuff like when he used to play youth soccer, he would get pretty much exercise-induced asthma during games. And we got to the point where we were trying out a bunch of stuff. We just full-on eliminated dairy from his diet, went out overnight–
Jay: Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s cool.
Ben: –it’s gone. And he was breathing just fine, breathing like Lance Armstrong right now.
Jay: Interesting. Yeah.
Ben: During his soccer games. And then we went to Switzerland last year and we were there at that European medicine clinic where I was teaching for a couple of weeks and we were leading like a retreat for folks there, and he got super-duper allergic to all of the different flora up there in the Swiss Alps. He was miserable. He’d wake up in the morning, his eyes were bright red, and his cheeks were red, and he was itching and rubbing his eyes. And they gave him a bunch of like their homeopaths and different medicinal compounds they had there. Nothing worked. None of their little tricks worked. One of the docs came in and she was like, “Oh, I can get rid of that.” And she put one tiny little acupuncture needle on a specific acupuncture spot on his ear. I’m not in acupuncture so I don’t fully have my head wrapped around how this works, but then she put like a magnet right over the site where she had done the acupuncture after she did the acupuncture. And again, overnight, he was fine. They never came back the whole trip.
Jay: It sounds like some detox point, I’m assuming.
Ben: I don’t think it’s a detox point.
Jay: Oh, it wasn’t a detox point? Huh.
Ben: No. I think it’s like an antihistamine point.
Jay: Oh, I guess that makes sense too, yeah.
Ben: Something like that. And CNN actually did some coverage on this a few years ago where they showed that in folks–this was a report they did on a study that was published in the Journals of the Annals of Internal Medicine where for people who had pollen allergies and allergic nasal symptoms like a runny nose, they had the group divided into a group that did acupuncture treatments, and then a group that did like a sham acupuncture, which I guess–I don’t know if that’s like a rubber needle, or them pretending they’re going to put the needle, or needles placed at random non-meaningful points in the body, or what, but in a sham treatment and an acupuncture treatment, and showed a significant improvement in symptoms of allergies from the folks who had the acupuncture treatment for allergies.
And so, there’s something going on there, although the number of studies on this are pretty slight. However, if–especially during this time if you’re on home arrest and can’t go to the acupuncturist, there’s actually some pretty cool acupressure points that are specific to allergies that you can poke at yourself. They have like a spleen point, they have that ear point I was talking about, there’s a point in your head, and each of these points there is–it’s not quite as potent acupressure as acupuncture. Obviously, the puncture involves actually puncturing the skin with a needle and going with one of these tiny needles. But I’m going to link to an article that goes over seven different acupressure points that could work for seasonal allergies that would be worth giving a try. And for me, just watching what happened to my son with acupuncture and how quickly it set in, I think it’s worth a try.
Jay: Yeah. What do you use to provide the acupressure? Do you have to buy a device or something that doesn’t puncture the skin?
Ben: Yes. Yeah, it’s a broadsword. So, usually, you’d have to go to like a–what do you call those conventions where a bunch of medieval enthusiasts come and dance around? Renaissance Faire. You can go to Renaissance Faire and get a broadsword. A spear would work, like one of the Spartan spears, or maybe like a shark tooth. No, I think you just use your fingers, literally, because it’s pressure, it’s not puncture.
Jay: Right, right. Yeah. I know there’s like–you know those mats that you can buy to lay on, those acupressure mats? I didn’t know if there’s a little device like that you could buy, or you could–
Ben: Wrap that around your face and —
Jay: Push it towards the [00:38:52] _____, yeah.
Ben: –have somebody give your head a giant hug and you’ll just hit all the acupressure points at once. There we go.
Jay: There you go, A.J.
Ben: The shotgun approach. There are also some other things that may work for allergies, one kind of age-old remedy, not that I think that just because something is old, but it’s useful. But a lot of people swear by just organic unfiltered apple cider vinegar, drinking that a few times a day, probably because it has an effect on the bacteria, it might reduce mucus production, it might have a little bit of a lymph clearing effect, but a lot of people swear by that for seasonal allergies. Just drink some apple cider vinegar, like a teaspoon to a tablespoon a few times a day. So, that’s one thing.
Another one would be the use of any type of saline into the sinuses. Now, a Neti Pot is an Ayurvedic medicine, the way that this is traditionally done, literally like cleansing the sinuses or they call it irrigating the sinuses with a Neti Pot. You need to make sure you use a very sterile saline solution if you do that because there is potential for infectivity if you’re just sucking non-boiled or non-distilled or non-saline water into your respiratory tract. But a lot of people swear by a Neti Pot. I have used one before. I absolutely hate it. I don’t like to suck liquids into my nostrils. I’ll stick yogurt on my ass all day long, but I don’t like to put saltwater into my nostrils.
Jay: That’s where you draw the line.
Ben: Yeah. Although you can get, if you have a sauna, Clearlight now has what’s called a halotherapy unit, which actually micro-crystallizes salt, so you breathe salt, almost like those old-school salt mines into your lungs. And they’ve actually shown that folks who spend time in these old salt mines and use them as respiratory therapy actually have lower rates of upper respiratory tract infection and pneumonia and stuff like that. So, breathing in micro-crystallized salt could be an alternative to using a Neti Pot. And the problem is you need to be in a very small room that you’re using the salt infuser in to be able to get those effects.
And then if you go to Amazon, there’s also some company as Amazon that sell these units that you just put salt into the bottom of the unit and then breathe it in, almost like an inhaler. And I don’t know if those work. I’ve never seen any research on them, but if the Neti Pot works, theoretically, these same type of saline inhaling devices could work. And then one thing I have used in the past when I’ve been congested are–and you can get these very inexpensively on Amazon, those natural saline sprays, like intranasal sprays with xylitol.
Jay: What does the xylitol do? Is that just for flavor?
Ben: Well, cleans the teeth and your nostrils.
Jay: Right.
Ben: To my understanding, the xylitol almost acts like a menthol solution. It helps reduce tissue swelling. Actually, I think it’s Patrick McKeown, he talks about this in the book, like the nasal passages are one of the only tissues in the body that–like the clitoris and the penis actually have the same type of erectile tissue, which is one reason why breathing in through your nose produces nitric oxide, which expands that tissue, which is actually quite beneficial for congestion, like teaching yourself how to breathe through your nose. You’re basically giving your nose a boner when you do that.
Jay: It’s a great way to look at it.
Ben: So, hooray for nose boners.
Jay: Nose boners.
Ben: Yeah. And one other thing, you know what I breathe into my nose the other day? Something crazy.
Jay: [00:42:22] _____ that guy.
Ben: So, earlier, I was actually talking about how you can nebulize glutathione and nebulize N-acetylcysteine and using that as kind of like a coronavirus strategy just because the lungs are one of the few tissues that don’t have their own built-in antioxidant system. And you can get like a cheap nebulizer on Amazon and nebulize glutathione or nebulize N-acetylcysteine. I’m getting this stuff called GlutaStat from Dr. John Lieurance down in Florida, and I’ve been doing that. But he also has a nasal spray. That is called Rapé. And Rapé, I’ve used Rapé before in plant medicine ceremonies. Like when you do combo, for example, a shaman will literally blow this Amazonian style medicinal plant that has a ton of alkaloids and nicotine in it up your sinus passages and it just blasts you into this deep meditative state.
And John is now compounding it with oxytocin. So, I actually used it prior to a breathwork session the other day. I did like five sprays up each nostril and just huffed and huffed and huffed, and stuff came out my nose that I never would have expected. So, the idea is it’s a host —
Jay: Like what?
Ben: Well, it’s supposed to stimulate the trigeminal nucleus, which is the part of the brain that when activated would balance the autonomic nervous system, you’re very familiar with this, and cause more vagal tone and really amplify any type of meditation that you do. But I just had all sorts of strange dark green stuff coming out my nose. It must have penetrated deep into my sinus passages because it was burning deep, deep in there. But it’s almost like he figured out how to take this stuff you’d normally only really be able to use in the Amazon. He turned it into a nasal spray. It’s called Rapé. Actually, I think he’s calling it Zen, but Rapé is the actual stuff you breathe in. And typically, it’s combined with like combo, or psilocybin, or MDMA, or ketamine, or ayahuasca, but you can get it as a nasal spray. I would not use this for seasonal allergies per se. It’s like a fun little mental tweak [00:44:35] _____ if you like to play around with microdosing stuff.
Jay: It’s weird.
Ben: I digress, and I’ll link to that in the shownotes. He’s also compounding with oxytocin now. So, you could use it, for example, before sex. So, interesting stuff, but we digress. Anyways, so the saline spray, not necessarily that one, but like the nasal spray with the xylitol you can get off Amazon could work. And then a few other things, quercetin. A lot of people, like Dr. Matthew Cook, who’s been on this podcast before, he uses curse quercetin a ton in his practice typically as an injectable. However, as a bioflavonoid, it stabilizes mast cell production, and it’s one of the more potent ways to reduce cytokine storms and to reduce inflammation, a topic that’s relevant right now, but that’s also relevant for allergies.
So, quercetin, consumed orally in supplemental form, can be okay. Approaching a doctor and asking about getting like an injectable form of quercetin, it’s a lot more potent if you inject it. And you can also get really, really high dose quercetin, which is what they use in that recent anti-aging and longevity study. They combined quercetin with dasatinib, I think it was, and it’s like a very potent anti-aging stack for reducing senescent cell formation. The problem with that is that it appears that if you’re using high, high dose quercetin with this danasitib, and I might be pronouncing that wrong, early in life when you actually want more senescent cells, it wouldn’t necessarily be good.
So, I had my eyes on that study, but I don’t plan on implementing anything that was in that research article on high dose quercetin until I’m older, when I know that I’m getting more senescent cells. But it’s interesting, nonetheless. But either way, lower dose quercetin is really, really potent for shutting down the cytokine storm that might be brought on by allergies. Nettle, nettle tea is another one, and nettle leaves grow like weed on my property. White-tailed deer feed on them because they’re just so rich in amino acids and they’ve got some fatty acids in them and they’re very, very nutrient-dense plant, but those also are a natural antihistamine. So, nettle would be another to look into.
And then just a couple others to consider, one would be there’s a few studies that show that probiotic supplementation may actually reduce incidence of allergies. So, it could be worth not only consuming a varied diet that includes plenty of fermented foods or taking a high-quality probiotic capsule, and that’s something–
Jay: Like your $2,000 one try?
Ben: Yeah, exactly. Shoot. The Immortalis one so you can live a long time without allergies. And then I think last week’s sponsor was Beekeeper’s Naturals and they do like bee propolis, they do raw honey, they do all these different honey extracts that are very rich in natural compounds that may also reduce the incidence of allergies. But I think the best thing to do is to consume a teaspoon or so a day of a raw unprocessed local honey from as close to where you live as possible because if you get it from close to where you live, it is the pollens present in those honeys that you’re almost like microdosing with. That help to embark or, if I can use my words properly, induce protective effect against allergies. So, like a raw local honey is actually not a bad idea unless you are one of those people who thinks fructose is poison, and in which case, you should probably go hide under a rock or quit drinking Coca-Cola. But fructose from raw, unprocessed, local honey in small amounts every day is not a big deal, or you could just eat the Kion Energy Bars, which have wonderful organic honey in them, but it’s not local to you sincerely.
Jay: Shameless plug.
Ben: Yeah, shameless plug. And then finally, I’d be remiss not to mention, did you see that new study that has–it’s a drug that lowers the chance of severe allergic reaction to peanuts, in children who have peanut allergies?
Jay: No.
Ben: The pharmaceutical company has basically patented a drug that is based on peanut powder, which in my opinion is redonkulous because if you’re allergic to peanuts–and this has been proven over and over again. With my other son Terran, we did this and got rid of his peanut allergies. We microdosed him with peanut powder, like tiny, tiny little bits of peanuts for about six weeks and his peanut allergies went away.
Jay: Wow.
Ben: But now, this pharmaceutical company–it’d probably too big of a rabbit hole for us to go down right now, but they actually developed
Read More
