Hala Taha: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] Yap gang. Imagine waking up every day in a home and a life that's engineered to heal you, energize you, and help you live longer. Joining us for the second time is Ben Greenfield renowned biohacker and health and fitness expert who's helped millions transform their bodies and their minds. In this episode, Ben shares how to design a life and a home that blends ancestral wisdom with modern science to maximize your health span.

His philosophy is anchored by family, faith, and daily movement instead of just chasing extreme [00:02:00] longevity hacks. This episode is packed with actionable tips to help you live with Ben Calls a boundless life. If this is your first time tuning in and you wanna listen, learn and profit, then make sure you hit that subscribe button before you continue.

Ben, welcome back to Young and Profiting Podcast. 

It's good to be back. Well, I put a shirt on this time. 

I know Last time, guys, if you wanna check it out on YouTube. Ben took the call while he was on a hike. Basically, we were losing in service in between. He had no shirt on. It was my first shirtless interview I ever did.

Ben Greenfield: I think it was like a hot summer day. I was outside. I didn't really know that much about you or your podcast or your audience or anything. And just picked up the phone and I think we still made a pretty good shot out of it. 

Hala Taha: It was a really good show. Yeah, it was fun. I love it. It was fun. And if you guys watched on YouTube, you really got the full feel.

And it made a lot of sense too, because you were like talking about being in the sunlight and putting your bare feet on the ground and you were basically showing us your daily life, so it worked [00:03:00] out. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. You know, the only reason that we're not doing that right now is since our last podcast I moved to Idaho.

Hala Taha: Oh. 

Ben Greenfield: And there's very little cell reception out here, so it's a beautiful, sunny day outside. But. Just gonna be me in the office today. 

Hala Taha: So last time we talked, it was 2023, we went over your life's journey, your whole story. So we're gonna replay that at the end of the week, guys.

So if you wanna hear his story, check that out. But today I wanna talk about your new book, boundless. And originally you put this out in 2020, I think it was 600 pages. It really was the Bible of biohacking. So what made you wanna rewrite this one or expand it? And what's different about it this time?

Ben Greenfield: People just needed an updated cure for insomnia. Another great big coffee table. Book to thumb through the health field in general, this should come as no surprise to people, right? It's a little bit of a soft science field once you throw in biohacking and stem cells and peptides. Longevity, anti-aging [00:04:00] gut.

Diets. There's so much new research on an ongoing basis that a book like Boundless necessitated a little bit of an update, and any author is well aware that once you publish a book, there's also anywhere from 20 to a billion things that go into your mind that you wish you'd put in the first one. So. I thought, well, I could write a whole new book or I could just update this one.

I wish I could tell you that I made it shorter. It wound up getting longer. However, I'm pretty proud of the final results. It's got a lot of juicy stuff in there. That's the newest, latest research to help people out. 

Hala Taha: In case somebody doesn't wanna go back to the last episode where we talked a lot about this. You say you live one foot in ancestral wisdom and one foot in modern science. So walk us through a day in the life of Ben Greenfield. What are you doing that's ancient? What are you doing that's cutting edge? 

Ben Greenfield: My house is an odd place. I get a [00:05:00] lot of entertaining comments from visitors because. There's about a half million dollars or more of random biohacking equipment scattered everywhere.

There are ozone, detoxification saunas, red light beds, hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers, light sound devices that literally whis you off into a psychedelic experience without having to take any drugs, full body vibration chairs to downregulate the nervous system and all manner of technologies designed for human longevity.

Yet at the same time, we grow a lot of our own food. We raise goats and chickens, and soon cattle. We live on 12 acres out here in Idaho on a little permaculture farm. We really value family and relationships and the longevity and health drive from that. We eat very close to the earth. Not only grow, [00:06:00] but also prepare a lot of our own food.

And the way I look at it is you can use a, a full body, red light bed, for example, or red light panels or something like that. And you can also get adequate sunlight within moderation. And you can go into a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, but you can also do breath work and you can go outside barefoot, but also use a grounding or earthing mat indoors.

And if you look at it from almost an environmental standpoint, I think one really interesting way to think about this is through the lens of what's called building biology. this is kind of like a term in architecture and building that is based around the idea of taking a living space, a home or an office, and making it as compatible.

To human flourishing as possible in terms of the air, the light, the water, the electricity, the chemicals, the way that people are enabled to [00:07:00] move their bodies in that environment, eat in that environment. And if you look at a lot of the concepts in building biology that we actually wove into our previous home in Washington, in this new home that we've just finished building about six months ago in Idaho, a lot of it involves taking what.

Our ancestors would've experienced and replicating that in a modern environment. So let's take flooring for example. We know that the earth touching the surface of the planet is really good for you. Have you heard of grounding or earthing, for example? Yeah. every time lightning strikes the surface of the planet or solar radiation bombards the planet.

It collects negative ions, which when our skin comes in contact with the surface of the planet, we absorb and it helps restore the electrical potential of our body. It almost like recharges our body's battery and when we are indoors on non-conductive surfaces in big, built up rubber sold [00:08:00] shoes, living in a modern home environment.

We're often disconnected from absorbing that electricity and also absorbing the low level, what's called a pulsed electromagnetic field that the earth creates, which is also highly anti-inflammatory. So for example, in our home, every floor is lined underneath the floor with copper conductive surface that makes it so that you're grounding when you're say, on a third floor bedroom, the same as you would be if you were outside barefoot.

Another example would be, we know that the sun, as it goes through the day, exposes us to the full spectrum of light that is ideal for good sleep, for what we'd call good circadian rhythmicity. In an ideal scenario, even though this is, this is not doable for a lot of people, I realize you would see some bright red light in the morning simulating sunrise.

The red light would begin to diminish and be replaced by blue [00:09:00] light as the day progresses. And then as evening approaches, blue light and that full spectrum of light begins to diminish and be replaced by more red light, almost like a, you know, a bright light sandwich. So red light to full spectrum light back to red light.

Now, in our home, we have bulbs in each room of the house that will go to sunrise when you flip them on once, and then if you flip them off and flip them on again, they'll do full spectrum daytime sunlight. And then if you flip them off and flip them on again, they go to evening. So throughout the day, depending on what time of day it is, even if we're not outdoors all day, we can use these bulbs.

And then there's a few different places you can get 'em, like block blue light is one source. Bond charges is another source. But these bulbs are designed to simulate that outdoor ancestral environment. Back to the root of your question, hala using modern science in indoor space to simulate that. Another example would be air, right?

We know that outdoor air quality in most [00:10:00] areas, maybe not deli or LA during the wildfires, but for the most part, outdoor air tends to be less stale, less moldy, lower in particulate matter. That's a very small particulate matter that's harmful for the lungs. And to achieve that indoors, you need to have some kind of air recirculation built into an office or home environment.

If you can't get that, you need some kind of hepa air filtration system. We did all three in our home. We have air scrubbers to keep mold and mycotoxins in the area where they can actually be filtered. And then we have air filters, and then we have air recirculation. So we're trying to simulate the natural outdoor air as much as possible.

And then one other example I'll give you would be electricity. So modern manmade EMF is super convenient. We're using it right now. To communicate over distance. Kings and queens of old would've killed to have the super library that we all have in our back pockets. And now [00:11:00] the artificial intelligence we can use to basically have the world's knowledge at our fingertips.

But there's a biological cost to that. There's a biological cost to just about everything. And when our bodies are constantly exposed to that high frequency electromagnetic field, that it's actually more of a, if we want to get deep into the physics, it's more of a square waveform than a sinusoidal waveform that can cause an influx of calcium into the cells.

Well, earlier I was explaining how touching the surface of the planet increases the amount of negativity brought into the body, like negative ions. Mm-hmm. And that helps to restore the body's electrical potential. Well, one of the reasons that's important is because all day long. When we're around wifi routers and smartphones and smart appliances and a modern electrical environment, we are draining our body's battery due to that calcium influx into the cells and the way that the channels are open.[00:12:00] 

So in our house, one of the things that we did was we hardwired everything right? So I'm talking to you on the internet, but it's in a room that is wired with CAT eight metal shielded ethernet cable so that I don't have to run wifi during the day. Maybe not everybody could do that, but you can, for example, turn off the wifi router at night when you're asleep.

Or another example would be during the day when I'm talking on my phone, see if I can hold it up here. I just have an ethernet adapter with A-U-S-B-C cable on the end of it, and that allows me to hardwire my phone in and use my phone. Without necessarily having my phone out of airplane mode during most of the day of work.

So even the indoor environment from an electrical standpoint, we really try and make it as natural as possible. So even though I'm using a lot of the modern biohacking technologies and going beyond that, you know, in the realm of stem cells and peptides [00:13:00] and crazy supplements and everything else, I also try to make my life and especially my environment as natural as possible.

Hala Taha: Oh my gosh, I have so many questions. So first of all, this whole concept of creating a home environment that is optimized for longevity is called 

Building biology. Now I was talking to Dan Ner. He's the guy who basically popularized Blue Zones.

I was just talking to him the other day, and he basically helps design cities to be optimized for longevity and mimic the way that certain regions live, that live to be like a hundred years old and everything like that. What kind of businesses exist that can help you modernize your home in this way? Or is this an idea that you've thought about in terms of starting your own business?

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I think that there's two different ways to look at this, and it's a great question. Nobody's actually ever asked me this question on podcast before. So the way I think about it is there's the part [00:14:00] about analyzing your current environment to see if it might be draining your battery or harming you or making you get sick more, and typically that would involve.

Having somebody do a mold analysis of your home, uh, that's typically abbreviated irmi, ERMI. You can just google that search term plus the name of where you live, and find somebody who can come through and look at mold and mycotoxins, which are pretty notorious for causing things like brain fog and poor health and sickness.

Then it's pretty common in a lot of environments. So that's one thing I'd think about. The other one would be having an actual building biologist come through and look specifically at a few things. Usually they'll have a meter where they're walkthrough your house and they'll find areas where you're spending a lot of time.

This is usually the bedroom in the office, by the way, and it's even more concerning for a kid's bedroom just 'cause they have. Thinner skulls and more rapidly dividing cells. It's a [00:15:00] bigger issue for a young human than a grown human, but an issue for both. And they'll go through with meters and look at things like magnetic fields and electrical fields behind the headboard of the bed, where your skull is resting for eight hours a night and should ideally have a little space to not be exposed to electricity 'cause you don't need it.

During that time of the night, they'll go through and look at how much EMF say certain appliances in your home are putting off, and many of it's modifiable, even though most gosh, refrigerators, freezers, some stoves, air filters, et cetera, come with smart features like let's say wifi. Most of the time that can be disabled and the more you just go through your home and make those tiny adjustments, the more natural you start to feel during the day.

It's almost like you don't notice the low level. Electrical pollution you're getting exposed to during the day until you start to turn this stuff off, and then kind of like how you feel after you've been camping for a few days. You're [00:16:00] like, whoa, this is how my body is supposed to be. I'm not supposed to like fall asleep at night, just wired up or gets to 2:00 PM and have brain fog.

So. A building biologist will go through and do that. Usually a mold specialist will go through and look for mold A building. Biologist can also go through your home and look at the lighting. Could you replace modern overhead, LED fluorescent lighting, which not only produces a lot of EMF, but also this low level imperceptible flicker that keeps your body in sympathetic nervous system mode with something that's a little more natural, like, uh, what's called biological, LED or OLED.

And those would be examples of the bulbs I was talking about earlier that we use in our home. The air quality is typically something that some type of like an HVAC specialist can come and look at and test just to see if you have good, adequate air filtration, like a HEPA filter in your home. You can outfit an [00:17:00] existing space with just a good standalone filter.

Two good ones right now are air doctor and Jasper. So usually starting off with some kind of an analysis is important and the analysis is usually gonna result in you saying, okay, there's some molder mycotoxin here that I can get cleaned up by remediation specialist. There's some light bulbs that can be changed out in these main areas where I'm working to allow for something that's more close to sunlight and that can be dimmed or shifted to a red light setting in the morning or the evening.

There is space here for some HEPA air filtration so that I'm breathing good clean air in these areas where I'm working or cooking or working out during the day. There is an opportunity to turn off a few features of smart appliances or even install a few dirty electricity filters in some corners of the office or the bedroom here and there.

And then I, I guess one last thing that we haven't really talked about yet. That [00:18:00] you should definitely take into consideration is getting your water tested. Mm. And most people right now are pretty aware, standard municipal water supply coming out. The tap isn't ideal when it comes to microplastics and metals and your neighbor's pharmaceuticals and whatever else is in the water supply.

But countertop filter. Under the sink filter. We have gone whole house filtration with both of our homes, creme de la creme. Being reverse osmosis to just get as many of the nasty things out of the water as possible is another thing to consider. So if we were to go down and make a list, it'd be electricity, light, air, water, chemicals like mold and mycotoxins.

And then you mentioned Dan Butrin, the idea of the Blue Zones. Well, you know, there's all sorts of common characteristics of the Blue Zones, right? They don't eat a lot of ultra processed food. They have a huge amount of dietary diversity. They have a lot of emphasis on family and relationships. And love.

They spend a lot of time [00:19:00] outdoors, but they also move and they move on a regular basis. We were joking how I was hiking the last time I was talking to you. I'm walking on a treadmill now. When you walk into my office or just about any room of the house, there's like bars hanging from the doors. Those gymnastics rings hanging from a balcony and there's a treadmill in front of the desk and there's kettlebells in the corner, a few of the rooms and it's hard to like walk through the house and not feel as though you couldn't at any point have a movement snack opportunity.

Mm-hmm. So I packed the home. Which is also where I work, such that a standard formal workout at the beginning or the end of the day is an option, not a necessity. 'cause I've kind of hacked my environment to be able to move all day long. 

Hala Taha: I love that idea. Movement, snack. 

 Speaking about your family, something interesting is that you've got two sons and they're really privileged to be living in this [00:20:00] biohacking life.

Most families don't live this way. So if you could compare your family with the average American family, what do you think the difference is? 

Ben Greenfield: Oh my goodness. Well, first of all, I don't want to be mean or throw anybody under the plastic. 

Hala Taha: No be mean. Like what makes your family better, stronger. 

Ben Greenfield: a few examples.

Let's say the average American family is eating out a lot and eating a lot of process and packaged food at home. Mm-hmm. And sometimes thinking that. They are making healthy choices, right? Like Trader Joe's, Costco, you know, in some cases, whole Foods, et cetera. Well, back to the Blue Zones. The reason that I think we see longevity correlated with a relative absence of processed and ultra processed foods that are largely the type of foods that we eat out of packages and containers is because when that comprises the majority of your diet, you are by [00:21:00] definition needing to consume more preservatives, more agents in that food that have been added to it to make it hyper palatable so that whoever's selling it to you.

Is able to get repeat business, which I have nothing against. I'm a capitalist libertarian. But at the same time, you should know many of these places that you shop, if you're buying out of packages, they're designed to be hedonistic, hyper palatable foods, and typically the food has less water content because when a food is packaged or there's a higher risk of mold and poor shelf life, if there's a lot of water and hydration in that product, so you wind up having food that's dehydrated, not as nutrient dense and full of more preservatives and fillers, then you would have.

If you were, say, shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store, right, where you see a lot of the produce, the fruit, the veg, the meat, the eggs, the dairy, the stuff that's a little less processed, or perhaps even growing [00:22:00] some of your food at home or shopping at the farmer's market. So when you walk into our home and you go into the pantry or the refrigerator, you don't find a lot of labels that you could scan with one of those fancy food scanner apps, right?

There's a lot of glass mason jars with quinoa, amaranth, and millet and beans. And legumes. And when you open the refrigerator, it's a lot of sprouts and fresh vegetables and fruits and you know, foods that are for sure immediately recognizable, but also don't come out of packages. So I think that even if you're shopping at a place that you would consider to be healthy, just check yourself If you're having to like open lots of packages for every meal that you can consume, and that requires some time, it requires a return to perhaps a little bit more intimate relationship with how to prepare food.

We live in a place in Idaho now where Uber Eats is even pretty difficult, but you and I started about 20 minutes late today. I went inside and I prepared a big cut of beef for dinner and I rubbed it down with salt and [00:23:00] pepper and turmeric and a little beef tallow. And that'll go on the smoker later on, and that's gonna take like a good 45 minutes out of my day compared to just dialing in and ordering food.

But I'm developing a more intimate relationship with my food. My wife will probably make a salad from the garden. One of my sons might make some carrot fries or sweet potato fries. And we'll come together at the end of the day and I'll get to this briefly and celebrate as a family. And during that time that I'm losing those minutes or precious hours preparing me, and I'm still listening to podcasts, listening to audio books, you know, having phone calls with my team members.

So. It's not as though you can't stack productivity on top of developing a more intimate relationship with your food. So that's one thing. I'll give you two more examples. Another is back to the movement piece. We weave movement into our lives all day long. My sons and I are always on Pomodoro break schedules, where for every half hour we're [00:24:00] stopping for two to three minutes to do jumping jacks or pushups or kettlebell swings.

At the end of the day, our family is playing cornhole, bocce ball. Some new game I saw in Shark Tank called Paddle Smash, pickle Ball Tennis. We have the sauna heat set up, so we're going back and forth from the heat to the cold. It's pretty rare that after about five 30 or 6:00 PM you're gonna find anybody in our family.

Sitting around decompressing at the end of the day in front of a video game or tv, we're all just piled outside playing. Even in the winter, we'll go out to a barn or we'll go to an indoor tennis facility, or we'll gather around the family room for something active. And so we weave activity into our lives.

And my goal has always been with the family to make the house from obstacle courses to an old, you know, Frisbee golf course to converted the barn into a pickleball court, to make the house such a fun place to move. [00:25:00] Video games and screen time just aren't as appealing compared to having a bunch of fun in the jungle gym that we've created.

So that'll be the second thing. And then the third, you know, and again, this ties into the Blue Zones Hall, is at the beginning of the day, you will find our entire family every day non-negotiable, no questions asked, gathered in a special morning family huddle where. We all hug each other. We talk about our day.

We're a Christian family, so we read the Bible and pray together. We talk about what people are doing that day, who's got the cars, and where, what people are making for dinner and who's bringing what, what time are we having dinner? And it's just this big coming together at the beginning of the day that allows us to all just connect with each other in a way that I think a lot of modern Western families don't do.

It's kinda like you wake up and everybody's like a ship passing in the night and just off doing their thing. Mm-hmm. We find that [00:26:00] very similar to the relationship with my wife and I. Right. If we don't calendar and systematize and structure date nights and time together, keeping your fingers crossed that it's gonna organically happen, often doesn't pan out.

So we have that. And then same thing, 7:00 PM. Light clockwork. Our whole family gathers together at the end of the day. My sons and I usually discuss a chapter of a book because we go through a new book every two to four weeks, and it's like a father son book club. So we start off with that, and then I get out the guitar, we sing a song together.

We all start to pull out the different foods that we've prepared for the evening. We say a prayer, and then we bust out card games, board games, party games, and just have a massive family party for like an hour and a half, you know, until like eight 30 or so. And then we all clean the kitchen together and listen to music and joke and hang out, and eventually wind up and one of my son's bedrooms or our bedroom chatting some more and eventually saying goodnight to each other.

And so [00:27:00] we have these bookends on the day, and it's good for the family and our connectivity. It's also good for me as like a workaholic driven entrepreneur. To know that I've got boundaries, like my boundaries are, I cannot just lock myself away in the office from 5:00 AM on, 'cause I know I have to be right there in the living room at 7:00 AM with my family.

And every day is structured around that. And same thing, like I cannot be like booking calls at 6:30 PM or banging out emails at 7:00 PM because I've built in that family gathering at 7:00 PM in the evening. So it helps put some boundaries on me. 'cause don't get me wrong, like I'm wired up like a lot of entrepreneurs.

Mm-hmm. Now I just work all day long unless I know. My family's out there tapping their fingers on the kitchen counter, waiting for me to bust out the guitar at 7:00 PM If I'm in my office on a Zoom, that's not gonna happen. So those are three things. Eating close to the planet, weaving movement, making it fun [00:28:00] into our daily lives, and then really emphasizing in the same way that we would systematize or calendar any business activity.

The activity of coming together as a family and connecting. 

Hala Taha: So inspiring, and I know you've got this book, boundless Parenting, that if anybody really wants to dive deep on your philosophy around that, they can go check that out. So you mentioned that you're making steak for dinner now. I talked to Dave aspr, he's pro beef, pro meat.

Dan who studied the blue zones, like we just mentioned, said that those regions on average typically only eat about 20 pounds of meat per year. Whereas the average American eats 200 pounds of meat per year. And so he's like, don't do meat, do beans instead. And beans have drama too with lectins. So it's very confusing.

So talk to us about your perspective around meat. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. There, there's always an enemy. It's like the dirty secret in the nutrition industry is if you wanna make good money on a book, you write about the. One perfect [00:29:00] diet for all of humankind, and typically there's some kind of villain, you know, that they need to avoid the enemy, and if you're really smart, you design some kind of supplement that will digest the villain for you and mm-hmm You've got yourself a nice little nutrition business.

You know, things just aren't as simple as that. This is such a deep question with so many tendrils into so many different areas, but a few things to think about is, first of all, there's this book I read, I think it was written in the sixties originally. I found it fascinating when I first picked it up at the library.

It's called Biochemical Individuality. And as the name implies. It kind of goes into how we humans have such biochemical diversity, such genetic diversity, different sizes of our stomach and pancreas and liver, and different vitamin D excretion rates and different abilities to digest oxalates. That we can't say that there's one perfect diet for all of humankind.

We can of course, look at Dan ER's work and say, okay, well, we know that no matter what diet you're eating, you should have meals with [00:30:00] families and not eat a lot of processed foods and have a good amount of dietary diversity in plants and herbs and spices. But the first thing to get out of the way is there's not gonna be one perfect diet for everybody.

The second thing is that when it comes to meat consumption, there can be a lot of issues with the research on the health aspects, especially regarding red meat, because. Often the source of the meat is not taken into consideration with these studies. The demographics of the population consuming the meat and what else they're consuming along with it, is often not taken into account.

And the amount is also important to bear in mind, and I'll explain why briefly, but if you look at someone who say has heard that red meat is bad for you, which is something you hear a lot these days, that might be the same person who's smoking cigarettes, drinking a lot of alcohol, probably having a lot of [00:31:00] seed oils and fried foods, and they can skew the demographic considerably, right?

There's a way to eat red meat healthy. There's a way to eat red meat, unhealthy, and I would say. A lot of people, especially in a typical Western scenario, eat red meat in an unhealthy way, depending on the source of the meat, what it's consumed with, and what else their diet is comprised of. So the second thing is that when you look at meat and you look at the meat eaten as the muscle, that muscle has a high amount of the amino acid methionine in it.

Methionine is something that can accelerate growth, and you'll find it in high amounts in a lot of supplements designed for muscle building or whatever. But if it's not balanced out with some of the other amino acids, particularly one called glycine, there can be a lifespan shortening effect because a mammal who's always in pro-growth tends to be at higher risk for things like carcinogenicity or heart [00:32:00] disease.

So if you look at the dietary habits of many of our ancestors or. Areas that are not necessarily in the blue zones, because despite how good the blue Zones is, I think there's a little bit of a bias towards areas that eat a large amount of plant-based foods. If you look at areas where there are high number of centenarians, other longevity hotspots that are consuming meat, there are often consuming meat in a nose to tail format, meaning they're having bone broth, bone marrow, liver, kidney, heart, and many parts of the animal that allow them to not just be consuming the muscle meat, the methionine in excess.

I didn't get into the nitty gritty details of tonight's recipe, but the tri-tip, I'm preparing it. It is got a very basic, you know, salt, pepper, turmeric, oregano, garlic rub on it, but then while I cook it on the grill, it's covered with layering of beef tallow. And then I have bone marrow bones on either side of it [00:33:00] that will go on top of the tri-tip as like the sauce.

So I'm implementing various parts of the animal, the tallow, the bone marrow, and the meat itself when I'm preparing that recipe. And I'm also including herbs and spices that help to combat some of the potentially carcinogenic effects of heating or charring meat. And this brings me to the third thing to think about, and that's dietary diversity.

We know that the gut microbiome based on what you eat, and typically the higher the amount of dietary diversity, the more diverse the gut microbiome and the more diverse the gut microbiome, the better you become in departments like immunity, brain health, absorption of nutrients, bowel habits, et cetera.

So if you, again, return to a typical westernized context of red meat intake. Where you might have french fries, red meat, coke, and a [00:34:00] salad might be like iceberg lettuce and a giant tomato drowned in ranch dressing. That's far different than what we see in a lot of the blue zones and other longevity hotspots where people are eating a wide variety of herbs, spices, fermented foods, fish, eggs, red meat, organ meat, a very wide and diverse array of foods.

And the reason that's important is because the more diverse your microbiome, the more you're able to handle a lot of these plant defense mechanisms that you brought up. Paula, like oxalates, gluten, phytates, plants don't have teeth and claws and antlers and horns and hooves and nails. So they've developed compounds that slightly irritate the digestive tract of a mammal.

That would then cause the mammal not to come back and nuke that plant population or cause the mammal to poop and propagate the seed out elsewhere of the plant. But if [00:35:00] we don't have guts that can handle those plant defense mechanisms, then they can also cause issues now in trace amounts. You know, and this is why a very myopic diet isn't such a good idea in trace amounts, these are known as xeno hormetic agents.

These plant defense mechanisms, they can actually induce your body's own antioxidant production that allow your body to become stronger over time, the same way as it would with small amounts of sauna. Cold exercise, cardiovascular movement, strength, et cetera. Now, the more diverse your diet, the better your bacteria become at being able to handle these plant defense compounds.

So kind of a long answer to your question, but when it comes to meat and diet in general, I think the general things to think about are where is the meat sourced from? What is the meat accompanied with? And hopefully that's not sugar. Seed oils and processed foods. Are [00:36:00] you consuming full parts of the animal in a diverse array of animals, fish, chicken slash poultry meat, liver organs, bone marrow, bone broth, et cetera.

Do you have a high amount of dietary diversity in the realm of herbs, spices, plants, vegetables, fruits, berries, seeds, nuts, et cetera, to go along with that meat? And if so, a wide ranging omnivorous diet. Is overall a pretty good idea. And then finally, of course, we now live in an era where you can get a food allergy test, a genetic test, a blood test, a stool test, a urine test.

And this is what a lot of my clients do when they come to me, they get all these tests, and I sit down with all that data and I say, okay, you don't need vitamin D. Your levels are just fine. You are somebody who needs more vitamin C and more vitamin E in your diet. You have a true food allergy towards legumes and lectins are a big problem for you, [00:37:00] or oxalates are a big problem for you.

So you aren't one of those people who just needs to have more dietary diversity to be able to digest these. They're a true allergy for you. So the data-driven approach now makes it a little bit easier to not guess, but painting with a broad brush, the devil's in the details and for the most part. None of these foods that we call poisons are truly poisonous.

It's just the amount, the sourcing, what they're combined with that you have to think about. 

Hala Taha: So I was on Amazon the other day and I got into a rabbit hole and I found these vitamins that are like beef organs and basically it's like beef liver, beef intestines, beef organs generally. And I bought Yummy a bunch of them.

My boyfriend was like, what are you taking? Like why are you taking these things? And I just thought it was really interesting. So what are your thoughts about, to me, I'm not gonna go eat beef heart. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. 

Hala Taha: But I would take a pill. What are your thoughts about that? 

Ben Greenfield: I won't lie. It's hard to make liver and heart and kidney and foods like that taste [00:38:00] good.

And it also takes longer to prepare them 'cause they tend to be more collagenous and tough. And when I cook foods like that, I even have to soak them in a dairy medium for like 24 hours. You know, like ke for a buttermilk, kind of draw out some of the gamey flavor. Enzymatically predigests, some of these organ meats.

And if that's not your jam, and back to the time thing, if that's not like your highest priority and you're like, okay, I will grill a steak for myself and my boyfriend, but I'm not gonna like spend 48 hours figuring out how to do, uh, liver heart casserole, capsules, like that can be kind of a cool shortcut.

The only thing you have to bear in mind is that when you grind up and powder something like that, you're getting pretty highly concentrated versions of these. Organ meat and organs tend to be very high in fat soluble vitamins, fat soluble vitamins. You don't necessarily pee out. Your body can store them, and so.

I recommend everybody get a quarterly blood test anyways, [00:39:00] but if you start onto a protocol that includes encapsulated organs, you should consider doing a test for vitamin A, D, and E, particularly just to make sure that you're not getting any toxic buildup of fast soluble vitamins. And in most cases, if you're following the label required instructions, not having like a quarter bottle a day.

And you're not stacking it on top of a whole bunch of other organ meat consumption, you're pretty good. And I would consider those to be kind of like nature's multivitamin. Hmm. That of course highlights the fact that if you're taking those and also taking a multivitamin that has a bunch of vitamin A or D or E or K in it, you should just take that into account and monitor your blood work just to make sure you're not getting too much of a good thing.

Hala Taha: That's good advice. Okay. So are you measuring your biological age? Do you do this? It's called a DNA methylation [00:40:00] clock. Are you doing that? 

Ben Greenfield: yeah. You can measure basically these methyl groups, these, uh, carbon dihydrogen groups. I think it's a CH two. They can be co-factors for a whole bunch of different metabolic processes in the body.

And by measuring your rate of methylation, you can get what is probably to date the. Most current gold standard, rough estimation of your biological age. So your chronological age, just like when you're born, biological age is how slowly are you aging? Now, a company called True Age Diagnostics has probably been the leader in the industry of age testing, and they've got some pretty robust large population studies and big data showing that the biological age that a methylation clock like this tells you can be pretty close to what your actual biological age is.

And the more you take care of yourself, [00:41:00] typically the lower it is. So there's something to the test, they're more accurate. The ones that you used to get like 10 years ago were just based on the rate of telomere shortening. Those weren't super accurate 'cause it was just all they looked at was the telomeres on your white blood cells from a blood spot or a blood sample that you gave.

Which aren't indicative of telomere length on the rest of the body, and they were known to be kind of wildly inaccurate. The true age methylation tests are a little bit better at predicting how slowly you're aging, you know, at the same time I raise an eyebrows, you know, for example, somebody who's 80 shows a biological age of let's say 50.

Does that actually mean they're gonna live another three years until they're one 10? Which is pretty rare these days. I mean, the longest living human on record I think is one 17, not necessarily. So I think it still needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but it can give you a decent idea of. Biological age.

I've been paying a lot more attention to tests that are looking at [00:42:00] mitochondrial health and mitochondrial efficiency because I think that's a better acute proxy for cellular health. I recently did a podcast with Versa Health and they have a screening called a Me Screen. It tests your actual mitochondrial health, and that one I think is gonna be a really good up and comer in terms of perhaps giving a little bit better indication of how well you're functioning biologically.

And I think as they roll tests on the mitochondria out like that, it'll give us a better and better idea of biological age based on something that might even be more accurate or more informative than just methylation. 

Hala Taha: Do you have some sort of age goal that you wanna reach? 

Ben Greenfield: No. No. I mean, back to the longest living human on record, when I see people say, this happens in my industry, right?

I, people call me a biohacker, so. I fit into this category. People say, oh, I man lifts off 160 or 180 or 200, [00:43:00] or someone on the planet right now has reached escape velocity or whatever they call it now, where mm-hmm. You know, they're ask about that aging, you know, only one in three quarters of a day for every two days.

So they've technically, you know, achieved some form of immortality. I think it's silly to expect that we are going to see in the next 10 years some kind of scientific development that's going to allow us to extend average human lifespan by even like 10 years. 

Hala Taha: Hmm. Really? 

Ben Greenfield: I think that's a pretty far cry.

However, I think what we can extend is health spend. I think that's a more likely metric to adapt really well to a lot of these protocols like oxygen, air light, electricity, water supplementation, et cetera. So. My plan is to live as healthy as possible, as close as possible to the day that I die. You know, if you look at how [00:44:00] long a greenfield man, my ancestry goes typically, you know, somewhere between like 70 and 80 years old, maybe by doing a lot of the really healthy stuff that I do, I might get 90, I'd be super stoked if it was 100, but my goal is to just basically be throwing a football, riding a snowboard, swimming in the ocean, lifting weights as close as possible to whatever that day is.

So it's more important to me to maintain strength and vitality than to chase a number.

Hala Taha: Let's talk about mindset a little bit. Like I mentioned, I've interviewed Dave Asprey a bunch of times. I think one of the funniest moments on the show is when I was like Dave, it was when he was 48, so you're 48 years old, and he was like, that's ages.

Don't call me that. I'm 27% of my age goal. I'm gonna live to be 160, or whatever he was saying. And he actually, in my last episode, was telling me that it's the mindset of him wanting to live to be 160 years old that actually keeps him [00:45:00] young. Any thoughts around your mind and if your mind can really control your body in that way?

Ben Greenfield: Oh, I mean, we have studies that show this. For example, when you take. Older individuals and putting them in an environment in which there was a lot of these nostalgic items of their youth, similar TV sets to when they were in their, I don't remember the exact age, but you know, let's say like twenties and similar paintings and layout of the house and colors and music.

And by almost tricking the mind into thinking that it was living in a younger environment, they saw parameters related to aging favorably respond. And I think that people who hang out with younger people who hit the gym, even when science says they're supposed to be getting weak and bone density is supposed to be decreasing.

People who go out on adventures and mini retirements throughout their life. I think on average tend to have more [00:46:00] vitality and vigor later into age. I dunno, they necessarily live longer per se. It's tough to say. I don't know that there's really, really good data we could pull on for that. But the idea of hanging out with young people, working out, doing adventures that people wouldn't normally expect you to do, introducing novelty into your life, learning new things constantly, and being a lifelong curious learner.

Never thinking because you've graduated high school or college, that learning is over, doing things that scare you every once in a while. These are all things that I weave into my own life, right? There's not a year that goes by still, and I'm 43 years old, that I'm not signed up for a bow hunting expedition or a spearfishing adventure, or a Spartan race, or a kettlebell competition, or learning how to cook 10 random new things, or learning a different finger style pattern on the guitar like I was last night to prepare for an open mic night.

Later this month, every day I ask myself, am I doing something [00:47:00] that's introducing a novel stimuli on a daily basis and on a yearly basis? Is there at least one thing that I'm preparing to do that kind of scares the hell out of me? You know, in terms of either extrinsic social embarrassment or personal physical challenges or some type of mental mountain to climb?

And I do think that that factors into keeping you young. I. 

Hala Taha: Okay. I wanna do one more question and then I wanna do a game called Boundless or Bunk. Woo. So we touched on this lightly, but I never heard of this concept before researching. There's a concept called longevity escape velocity, and it was popularized Oh yeah.

By a d Gray. Yeah. And it's that science and medicine could extend human life faster than we age, allowing us to live indefinitely. So help me understand. I used already said you, you don't really believe in it or, or you don't think it's a thing, but talk to us about it. 

Ben Greenfield: I used the term earlier, I didn't cite Aubrey, but [00:48:00] yeah, the term escape philosophy is exactly what you've just described.

And maybe I am biased because I believe in. Two elements of immortality that go beyond the idea that we can somehow by being cold and hungry and libido list hunched over in a hyperbaric chamber or cold therapy and injecting as many stem cells and young plasma into our bodies as possible. Just keep getting an extra year and an extra year and an extra year.

I don't think there's good science to show that is possible. However, I do believe in immortality through legacy and immortality of the soul, meaning. One of the best things that a human being can do, and one of the most rewarding and meaningful things that a human being can do is to have children. When you have children, [00:49:00] you all of a sudden are surrounded by little human beings who you're training and educating and teaching and developing to become the most impactful people that they can be, so they can go forward and make the world a better place using what you've taught them and do so a long time after you're dead and do so.

Also, if you've done a good job training them through your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren and beyond. So I think that we should be putting as much energy into our family and our children as we should be putting into. The science of health optimization. And then secondarily, I mentioned earlier, I'm a Christian, so I also believe in an afterlife.

And I believe that in the same way we should engage in the type of physical fitness and mental rigor I was describing earlier. We should have spiritual fitness baked into our lives that we're caring for this one invisible spark inside of [00:50:00] us that will arguably go on to exist for eternity. And so for me, that looks like mourning, spiritual time, reading the Bible, praying, connecting to my creator, singing songs, rinsing, washing, and repeating that with the family.

Going to a church where I get to sing and hang out. With other people who care for their souls. And basically placing just as high an emphasis on this one immortal part of me, as I do on all of the covering in the shell, which eventually, maybe it is gonna be one 20 or one 40, or one 60 or 200, who knows?

But eventually it's gonna be gone. It's not gonna be around forever. Physics and entropy dictate that, that just can't happen. So I think that focusing on faith and focusing on family lets me see this through a different lens. And honestly, I think it's a really encouraging lens. 'cause I don't have to desperately grasp at straws.

All I can say [00:51:00] is, Hey, be as healthy as I can be so I can make as much impact as I can. And also accept the fact that I will die someday, but I'm gonna do the best job I can while I'm here on this planet to leave a lasting impact, train my children, and also ensure that my soul goes on for eternity.

Hala Taha: That's really beautiful. And honestly, Ben, it's why so many people trust you. It's why you've been able to build such an incredible brand is because you're really out here to help people and not sell them an unachievable dream. And I just really appreciate that authenticity. Okay, let's play boundless or bunk.

Okay, so I'm going to rattle off a biohacking trend, things that we've been hearing about, and I want you to rate it one to 10, one being not good, 10 being really good. 

Ben Greenfield: Let's go 

Hala Taha: NAD plus injections. 

Ben Greenfield: Six. 

Hala Taha: Six. Why 

Ben Greenfield: there are benefit beneficial? Your pools [00:52:00] of NAD do decline with age. Younger people aren't gonna get a ton of benefit out of them and research hasn't yet shown them to be the biggest dial mover for health, but I still place them on the side of the positive scale.

Hala Taha: Continuous glucose monitors for non-diabetics. 

Ben Greenfield: Oh man. Seven. Maybe closing up on an eight. You know, I obviously wear one. I think what gets measured gets managed. It's one of the best ways to know how lifestyle, exercise, and food habits affect what is arguably one of the most important components of metabolic health. Your glycemic variability, you know how your blood glucose goes up and down during the day. 

Hala Taha: Peptide therapy, 

Ben Greenfield: kind of like NAD, I'd put it at a six based on not a huge amount of robust long-term human data on a lot of the peptides. Some long-term data out of Russia on a few for longevity like Epi or Mott Motzi.

Some personal anecdotal success with things like BPC 1 57 or TB 500 for injuries. [00:53:00] Or, uh, tesa for muscle gain or even something like my wife uses when we're gonna go on vacation to a tropical climate. Something like melanotan for tanning. However, kind of like NAD, they're not like the biggest dial movers for health, but I still put 'em on the positive side of the scale at six.

Hala Taha: What is peptide therapy? What is it exactly? 

Ben Greenfield: Peptides are short change of amino acids. Usually 20 amino acids are shorter that when injected can act on a specific organ with pretty good precision. So this morning I, I was just in LA and one of my friends who I was with down there, she texted me and she has COVID and I was with her for like three hours.

And so I injected something called thymosin alpha one this morning, which makes my body churn out a whole bunch of extra killer cells. And that's an example of using a peptide in a smart way to, in this case act on the thymus to upregulate my immune system. 

Hala Taha: Cold exposure for fat. [00:54:00] Loss. 

Ben Greenfield: For fat loss?

five. 'cause it depends. New research shows that when you do a cold bath or cold exposure, the average person goes on to eat an extra 300 to 400 calories. So if you don't combine it with actual appetite control, it's probably gonna be a wash. It is a myth that women shouldn't do it. It's not like extra stressful for women.

It won't make women fat. It's a myth that it's not good for muscles because you gotta be in there for like 10 plus minutes for that effect to set in. So overall, it can be pretty good, but only if someone is also controlling how many calories they eat. But if I can burn an extra 250 calories by doing a cold plunge and get all the blood sugar regulating and nervous system benefits and not eat an extra 250 calories that balances that out, it would actually help with fat loss.

Hala Taha: Last one, infrared sauna 

Ben Greenfield: six for infrared sauna, primarily [00:55:00] because of a lot of the longevity data reduced all cause risk of mortality, dementia, Alzheimer's, diabetes, et cetera. That has come out of Finland but not higher than a six because most of that research was done on dry saunas and infrared saunas take much longer for that heat shock protein production to set in.

And so even though you get a deeper sweat, and arguably I think long-term research will show infrared saunas could be better for something like let's say heavy metal detoxing. I think we haven't seen as much research on infrared as we have on dry saunas. And my personal protocol is I cold plunge twice a day.

Mm-hmm. I do it in the morning before my workout, and I do it in the afternoon, typically towards the end of the day just to refresh my body for the rest of the day. I do infrared sauna one to two times per week, and that's usually some type of like a flow yoga that I do in a big sauna that I [00:56:00] have that's, that's big enough for a six foot three guy to do flow yoga.

And then I do dry sauna super hot at 230 degrees for about 10 to 15 minutes every day. 

Hala Taha: Okay. So I wanna end this interview. I wanna be respectful of your time on business stuff. So I'm gonna ask you a few business questions. If you were building a startup today in the wellness space, where would you place your butts? 

Ben Greenfield: I would say a few of the trends. That I am focusing on and and would focus on would be things that are performing really well right now. On the supplement side of things, namely creatine, protein gummies, and keto, all four of those are crushing right now from a supplement.

So nutrition standpoint. And then I would say another area would be community. I'm very bullish on community and social, combined with fitness activities and workouts, any apps, any [00:57:00] communities, any websites, any services, any individuals who have a method to bring people together in an analog environment or digital environment to engage in community, tribe, and friendships along with their fitness is also gonna be something more and more important going forward as AI gets better and better at writing out the perfect workout and the perfect nutrition plan for you.

We instead are gonna see people valuing the ability to build tribe and social life and community around that. 

Hala Taha: Okay. My last question on business. So you've built this great YouTube channel, you've got an awesome podcast, you've written many bestselling books, you've got a business, you're a real creator, entrepreneur, you are one of the top five people.

When you think biohacking, you're at the top of your field. What is your advice to everybody else, regardless of industry who wants to be a thought leader in their niche category? From a creator entrepreneur lens? 

Ben Greenfield: I have a little [00:58:00] bit more of, I guess, a Tim Ferriss esque approach to this, who probably got it from Kevin Kelly's original essay, thousand True Fans.

I think that when you're excited about something, authenticity really shines through, and that if you are creating content and recording you doing or talking about something that you truly are excited and passionate about. Versus doing and talking about something that the numbers have told you, you should be excited and passionate about.

You are A going to have a good number of people who are also interested in what you're interested in sometimes simply because they've seen how excited you are about it. And B, you're gonna be happier because you're more authentic. Right? And if you look at the span of my career, I have gone from being.

90% Ironman triathlon and endurance sports content to kettlebell spartan obstacle course racing stuff to family, parenting, legacy to [00:59:00] biohacking, anti-aging longevity. While Mao, I've got, you know, if you were to look out my office window right now, I have a tractor out there working on a pond project. I've got four high schoolers down the driveway laying out mats and digging ditches for permaculture and soil and water.

And so if I could predict, five years from now, you're gonna see 60 to 70% of my content is farming permaculture and homesteading, right? And that's not because I've done hefty research and whether or not that's what's gonna perform well with my audience, I'm simply doing what I'm interested in and loving.

I'm recording it, filming it, and educating people along the way. It might actually make less money than me saying, okay, I'm going to, I'm make my entire channel a creatine keto gummies channel, but I'm certainly gonna be happier if there's a camera over my shoulder recording me doing what I love and teaching people what I love to do.

Hala Taha: Such great advice. I'd love that advice. Okay, so I end my podcast with two questions I ask everyone. [01:00:00] The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profits can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? 

Ben Greenfield: I would say identify, at least for the next week, three things each day you're doing that you don't need to be doing because they're below your pay grade, or that your skillset doesn't require those and outsource or delegate them.

My business took off as soon as I got outta scarcity mindset and hired my first va. I went on to make multiple additional hires. And any time I still do this, I find myself doing something repeatedly that is not my best calling or purpose, or that gives me a frowny face. I immediately find how somebody, either a person or a machine can replicate that.

Hala Taha: And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? And that's profiting in all areas of life. 

Ben Greenfield: Order of priorities. Business used to be first for me, and because my business is the health business, I would say [01:01:00] health was probably a close second or equal. With business now, it's way different. My order priorities from the time I get up till the end of the day is number one, God, number two, my wife, number three, my kids.

Number four, my health, and number five, my business. And that has allowed me to thrive and be fulfilled. And I would say a big reason for that is because we all have an eternal hole in our souls that longs for something eternal. And you can put all the houses and cars and money and businesses. And sex and hobbies and sports and anything else to try to cram it in that hole to fill it up.

But until you filled up that hole with something eternal, you're never gonna be fulfilled or satisfied. And the only two eternal things that I know of that we interact with or are surrounded by on a daily basis are number one, God and number two, the souls of other people. So by prioritizing God and the other people in your life as the top two things, everything else [01:02:00] becomes way more fulfilling and you become a more happy person.

Hala Taha: So beautiful. Ben, where can everybody learn about you? How can people work with you? You mentioned that you help people with their health. Tell us about that. 

Ben Greenfield: My content hub is ben greenfield life.com. You can find my book wherever you get books. And then I also do some coaching and have several coaches who also coach for me.

And that's [email protected]. And then I also travel all over the place and speak at various places. So that's at ben greenfield speaking.com. 

Hala Taha: Amazing. Ben, it's always such a pleasure to have you on the show. I can't wait for you to be back already. I had so many more questions for you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Ben Greenfield: Awesome. Thanks, holla. I'll be thinking of you while I eat the dry tip. 

Hala Taha: Fam, today's conversation with Ben made one thing clear, true longevity isn't about clinging to extreme hacks or chasing some unrealistic age, like 120 years [01:03:00] old. It's about living a life rich in health, connection and purpose. We all have the power to build a life in a home that makes thriving the default.

That starts with crafting an environment that supports movement and energy, nourishing your body with foods that sustain you and protecting the relationships that anchor you. And remember, there's no one size fits all solution for this. Faith, family and daily movement though are real non-negotiables for a life well lived according to Ben.

The beauty of Ben's approach is that it doesn't require becoming a full-time biohacker or spending a fortune on optimization tools. It's about small, intentional choices that compound over time and shape the quality of your life. So today. I encourage you to take one step toward the life that you want.

Create a space that invites health, a routine that energizes you, and connections that give your life meaning. Stack those wins and watch them transform not just your years, but the experience you have living them. If you listen, learned and profited from this episode, share it with somebody in your circle.

You never know. It could be the spark they need to [01:04:00] start living a boundless life. And if you can drop us a five star review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast. your support helps us reach more people. Keeps bringing you world class guests like Ben Greenfield. You can also catch the full video on our YouTube channel. Just search Young and profiting. Hit that subscribe button and drop a comment with your favorite takeaway from today's episode. To connect with me directly, you can find me on Instagram at ya with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search my name. It's Hala Taha. As always, I gotta give a massive thank you to the Yap Media family.

You guys keep this show at the top of its game. This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA, the podcast Princess signing off.