Interview with Ben Greenfield on optimizing training, recovery, and health

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews from most of a life. com. And in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing Ben Greenfield. Ben is a bestselling author. He has a book that just came out recently called beyond training that I liked and that I [00:03:00] recommended. One of my cool stuff of the week posts.

He’s also a coach, a speaker, and an Ironman triathlete. You can find him over at bengreenfieldfitness. com. And also you might be familiar with his podcast, which is pretty popular, called the Get Fit Guy Podcast. Ben’s a consultant for a company called Wellness FX. And also nutritionist and kind of head coach over at Pacific Elite Fitness.

And as you’ll see, he knows his stuff. And also I like that he lives this. I mean, he’s a competitive athlete, so he’s trying all kinds of things. And in a lot of cases it takes time for, for scientific research to catch up with people that are kind of on the, on the cutting edge of, of trying everything that they can get their hands on to improve recovery, improve performance, and that also you know, that track their performance.

So and track their, their health quantitatively, which we’re going to be talking about in this, in this podcast. Hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you do head over to Ben’s website and you can get on his list and start [00:04:00] checking out his stuff as well. Thank you. All right. Hey Ben. Thanks for coming on the show.

Ben Greenfield: Hey, thanks for having me on Mike. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, sure thing. I look forward to Going over some of this stuff mainly where I want to focus on some of the stuff that you talk about in your latest book Which is doing really well called beyond training. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Yeah for sure 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, so so in the book you talk a fair amount about overtraining and kind of under recovering and I I’ve run into that quite a bit.

I, I, I’ve run into it sometimes with my body, but I run into it a lot with people that I speak with. So I thought it’d be a good subject for us to talk about. So let’s talk about the overtraining side of that equation first. So what are some of the kind of easy to spot, reliable indicators of overtraining that we can watch for in our bodies that don’t require fancy gadgets or you know, Jedi sixth sense or something.

Ben Greenfield: You know, if, if you’re not paying attention to actual, you know, self quantification using something like heart rate variability or, you know, like [00:05:00] one off. 

Mike Matthews: one. I mean, at least that’s an easy, I know that there are some fancy machines out there that, you know. Okay, alright. So, so if 

Ben Greenfield: that, if that counts, because I was going to say, you know, that, that’ll cost you, I mean, you could literally get apps for like 4.

99 off of iTunes that’ll test heart rate variability. Yeah. Like Azumio. makes it one called the stress check and it uses the little camera lens on your, like your iPhone. So it’s, it’s infrared. And it’s not quite as accurate as wearing like a wireless heart rate monitor, but a wireless heart rate monitor is going to be 60, 70 bucks and something like that.

Mike Matthews: Even those fit, you know, the activity trackers, I think a couple of them on the market right now also have a heart rate monitor and people tend to like those. 

Ben Greenfield: No, none of them have heart rate variability that I’m aware of. Because what you’d have to have is an infrared measurement that, that goes through the through the skin.

And there, there is the ability to do that on your fingertip with the camera lens on your phone. It’s a little bit inaccurate, but the only Way to get it otherwise would [00:06:00] be using a pretty fancy infrared sensor. And there’s, there’s a group out of Tel Aviv that’s working with the United States Air Force, actually, to develop heart rate variability tracking for pilots to monitor stress in pilots.

But their technology isn’t really available to the masses yet. Once it is, they’ll be able to start putting heart rate variability tracking into stuff like, you know, Fitbits and, and wearables and even like bike helmets and stuff like that. But it’s, it’s still kind of in its infancy. I see. Maybe it’s 

Mike Matthews: just my ignorance of what heart rate variability is exactly then.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, it’s that honestly like that’s the number one way that I keep track of my own training status and whether or not I need to kind of like take a few days to supercompensate and recover or whether I can kind of throw a few more curveballs of my body on any given day, but it’s essentially the amount of time that occurs in between each of your heartbeats.

Okay, and and technically that amount of time that Delta should vary [00:07:00] Slightly from heartbeat to heartbeat. There should be slight little variations in heart rate variability meaning a high amount of variability is a good thing And if that’s not occurring Then what that means is that your nervous system is not that robust, that the actual vagus nerve feeding into the the, the SA node in your heart, causing like the, the pacemaker activity in your heart to take place, the tone in that vagus nerve is off.

Either due to sympathetic nervous system overtraining or parasympathetic nervous system overtraining. So what that means is that your heart rate variability is either going to be suppressed. And you’ll typically see that in like aerobic athletes, endurance athletes who are just like doing too much training, just like, it’s just straight up like aerobic overreaching or overtraining.

And then sometimes like. You’ll tend to see some, some decent heart rate variability measurements in terms of high amounts of heart rate variability in like crossfitters and athletes who are [00:08:00] over training with intensity. A lot of times their heart rate variability is high enough, but it bounces around a bunch from day to day.

Meaning that the sympathetic nervous system is a little bit out of whack, to use the highly scientific term. It’s super easy. Wait, I mean, like our variability, I would say, would would be my number one. And how does 

Mike Matthews: that play out? So we get the app, we, you know, check it. Does the app have it all built in?

It would just tell us or do we need to interpret the result? 

Ben Greenfield: There are some apps like the Omega wave and the bio force and those will just like, they’re, they’re like green, yellow, red apps, right? Like green is like, go, you’re good to train. Yellow is kind of be careful today. Maybe make it an easy day where, you know, you’re, you’re going to either reduce weights or reduce intensity or reduce volume.

And then red is just like, don’t train today. You know, go. Take a bath or whatever. So 

Mike Matthews: that’s useful. Also for just recovery purposes. Cause I find that you know, the majority of my, of my [00:09:00] exercises, intense weightlifting, and that’s, it would be a lot of the, a lot of my crowd, you know, are, are weightlifters.

And every couple of months, depending on what I’m doing, it could be every four weeks or so. And it started to every four and eight weeks, I just start to get. A bit run down. I feel a bit, you know fatigued in the gym. My weights go down a little bit less energy and I always just kind of played it, you know, by that.

And then I have to take a few days off and then I feel good again. Yeah, but I definitely pick up one of these apps and, and I want to see how that correlates to, to actual numbers, you know? 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. And I’ve used my heart rate variability to really be able to pinpoint the fact that I can, I can keep it pretty high.

With one full rest day per week and then one day of really active recovery and by active recovery I mean some of the active recovery methods I talked about in the book like cold Thermogenesis and hypoxia and sauna and things that that are still making your body better But that are are not as intensive as weight training or road work or something [00:10:00] like that I also like a pulse ox, like you can, you can get a fingertip pulse oximeter at any drugstore and you want to look for a number, preferably that’s about 96 up to 99 percent for your, your oxygenation.

Levels, right? And that’s again, cheap, easy, simple. You roll over, you put that thing on, you check in the morning and if it’s suppressed, typically it’s because you drank too much the night before or you’re, you’re overtrained or overreached. And that’s another decent sign that you should take a recovery day.

Those are two pretty simple self quant devices, devices. And then just like qualitatively you know, you, you can always look at the things that you see about, like, I don’t, I don’t want to preach this stuff that that you’re reading about everywhere. Anyways, these days, like, you know, how much sleep are you getting?

And are you in a good mood? And is your appetite dysregulated? Like all that stuff’s pretty intuitive. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Ben Greenfield: Honestly. Yeah. Like if 

Mike Matthews: the net, the net effect is you just kind of feel like shit. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. You should check out. There’s one website [00:11:00] I like that kind of pulls in a lot of that intuitive stuff and actually gives you a pretty good running algorithm, like a daily score and you just log in each day.

It’s like, how do I feel today? How did I sleep last night? How are my soreness levels, et cetera. And that one’s called rest wise. It’s another one I talk about in the book in a little bit more detail, but it’s just like 11 things that you kind of say each day, and you know, it takes up about 10 minutes of your day, and it gives you this running score.

Yeah. Eventually they’re going to put heart rate variability into their algorithm too, but it’s not in there right now, but pulse oximetry is. 

Mike Matthews: Cool. That’s great. I’m going to start doing that myself. Just because I’m, like I said, I’m curious on just putting some numbers to how I feel. Cause I’ve always just kind of done it by feel or Yeah.

I mean, I guess there’s also been like, you know, with, for instance, on, on my bigger than or stronger program, it’s, it seems most people, except for people that are brand new to it, seem can, they can go a bit longer, but as once you get grooved in, it seems every eight or nine weeks or so, that’s just when it’s time to take three, [00:12:00] four days off or, or, or do it more like a deload where you’re dramatically reducing the intensity of your workouts for, for a week.

And then. You feel good again, you can get going. So it would be interesting to put some numbers to 

Ben Greenfield: that. Yeah. And I mean, like for event based athletes, you’re, you’re going to be doing those deload weeks during a taper week, typically, you know, for, for me, I’m competing every four to six weeks. And so I’ve always got naturally worked into the competitive cycle, anything from a four to seven day taper going into an event, but for, for long periods of time, like let’s say a winter off season where I might have three months without an event I personally find that I do better.

With one to two deload days a week, and then consistent training with no full deload weeks, rather than hard training, digging yourself into a super deep hole with daily training and then a full deload week. So I, I like a little bit more of a micro cycle with, you know, like a, like a you know, three day on one day off.

two day on one day off type of type of approach. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. [00:13:00] Yeah. I mean, I I, I do that as well where I’m not training seven days a week. There’s just no way that I could my normal week would be five or six days, depending on what I’m doing with my diet. Of course, if you’re in, if I’m in a calorie deficit, I’m gonna be training a little bit less just overall.

I have to reduce frequency and reduce volume a little bit. But, but you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re training me. Are you doing, are you talking both weightlifting and endurance or just endurance? 

Ben Greenfield: Well, yeah, I mean, I, most of my training really is a, is a pretty concurrent training approach just cause I’m right now I’m training for obstacle racing, so, you know, typical workout for me I’m carrying stones and tire flipping mixed right in with hill sprints and, and plyos.

So so, so for me, it’s, it’s mostly a combination training. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Cool. Cool. Okay. So that’s that’s great. That’s on the, on the, you know, overtraining side. Now, what are some of your favorite ways to speed up recovery? I mean, obviously there’s rest and proper nutrition. Everybody knows that. But what else have you found is helpful for, for just getting your nice, not just your muscles, but like you said, it is your nervous system.

And, you know, there are various theories out there [00:14:00] regarding, you know, is, is, is overtraining just as a more of a mental thing or is it a central governor type thing? But I dunno, from what I’ve read on that, it seems like it’s still just a bit confusing right now. And all we know is. Over time, as you push yourself, if you’re not recovering adequately, you’re not going to feel very good and you’re going to have to take some time off.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I mean, let me, let me first clarify that most people aren’t over trained. It’s very rare that I run into a truly over trained athlete and usually when you are over trained you are dug deep into a hole. Most people are over reached. So you’re, you’re to that stage where the adrenals are still producing high amounts of cortisol.

If you were to get a blood or a salivary cortisol measurement, you’re still pumped up with cortisol, but you’re to the stage where You’ve got chronically elevated cortisol levels, which, which are going to do things like decrease your cell receptor sensitivity to thyroid hormone. And they’re going to decrease the ability of total testosterone to de bind from sex [00:15:00] hormone binding globulin.

So you have lower levels of free testosterone and kind of a little bit of a blah feeling, less drive, sometimes a dip in metabolism from the thyroid issue, but it’s not true over training where the adrenals are no longer even producing cortisol. And you can’t, like, you can’t, for example, mobilize liver glycogen unless you dump a bunch of caffeine into your body.

And you can’t get your blood glucose levels up enough to even feel like getting out of bed unless you’re actually eating, like, higher amounts of carbohydrates. So you start to get, like, Chocolate cravings and sugar cravings and fruit cravings and, you know, all sorts of nasty stuff happens when you’re truly overtrained.

And in a case like that, I mean, it, it takes four to six full on deload weeks and everything from like Tai Chi to nine to 10 hours of sleep a night to digging into things that actually. Cause the adrenal glands to start producing cortisol again, like ginseng and licorice root and all these herbs. So I mean like most people honestly are smart [00:16:00] enough to stop before they get that far into a hole.

Some of the things I like though, to keep yourself from getting there in the first place One from a, from a gear standpoint I’m a big fan of cold thermogenesis gear or just cold thermogenesis in general. So for example, like I’m wearing right now compression pants and they’re just like these super duper tight compression pants.

Cause I spend most of my day at a standing workstation, but I can pack these with ice. So, when I pack them with ice, that helps with with removal of inflammation. Right. And enhances recovery. Yeah. But it also I’m sure you’re 

Mike Matthews: familiar with Hyperice and their products. 

Ben Greenfield: No. 

Mike Matthews: Oh, really? Yeah. It’s, it’s, I, you’d like it.

It’s a iced compression wraps. Yeah. And, and actually you 

Ben Greenfield: really, you really shouldn’t ice without hydrostatic pressure from, from underwater icing or else ice with compression sleeves because otherwise the vasoconstriction that you get from ice can, it can cause [00:17:00] some lymphatic backflow, which can actually inhibit recovery.

So I should always be combined with either. Hydrostatic pressure from being in water or, or under a really steady flow of water or basically like the, the compression sleeves. Like you should never just like ice your joints with like a Ziploc bag full of ice or some frozen vegetables or whatever.

So compression with ice. I’m a big fan of that. I’m a big fan. That’s 

Mike Matthews: the hyper icing. You should check it out. You’ll like them. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I just made a note to myself to go check it out. Another one that I like is electrical muscle stimulation. Like using a Mark Pro or a Compex, like if you’re in a car or an airplane or you’re sitting around.

Like, my wife and I watched a movie last night and I had the Mark Pro running on my legs during the movie. And you know, I, I had a tough rock session yesterday afternoon with a weighted vest and, and you know, just knew I could use that extra recovery since I was going to be sitting around anyways.

So I like electrical muscle stimulation. Another one I like is inversion. Inversion tables are super easy to use, [00:18:00] super easy to get your hands on. Those can help drain the legs really, really well. And like you hang from an inversion table for five to 10 minutes, then can be a night and day difference, especially in any workout that you’re doing like speed for, or running for.

So from a, from a gear standpoint, those are some of the ones I like, like inversion, cold, thermo EMS. There’s some things that I do for sleep to like I, I sleep with, you know, using like this grounding method or earthing method. You know, a lot, a lot of tour de France cyclists were the, were the first athletes who use that to recover in between stages.

And what is that 

Mike Matthews: exactly? Just to explain for everybody. 

Ben Greenfield: Basically, what you’ve got is an electrochemical gradient that tends to be best kept in balance when you’re touching Earth. Because you get a release of negative ions from natural geology and, you know, from the Earth’s magnetic field. And when you aren’t in touch with Earth, or you’re flying, or you’re standing inside on concrete, you’re not really getting a lot of that [00:19:00] natural recovery that would occur.

From a restoration of a normal electrochemical gradient. So you get that when you’re sleeping. And you get this release of negative ions when you’re sleeping. I use something called an Earth Pulse. Just goes underneath my, my mattress. Another thing that I’ll take naps on in the afternoon is something called a Biomat.

And that’s you may be familiar with like infrared saunas releasing or for enhancing release of growth hormone and accelerating temperature and recovery. Yeah. I talked about saunas 

Mike Matthews: in, in, in a podcast with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. If you’re familiar with her. Yeah. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. And yeah, we, she, she’s kind of more into like the, the heat shock proteins and cardiovascular effect of, of saunas.

When you look at things from like a hormonal standpoint, there are some cool things that you get from infrared sun exposure that you don’t get from like a dry sauna or a wet sauna or just the pure heat. 

Mike Matthews: I’ve heard that. I just haven’t looked into the research. I just, you know, whenever I hear anything these days, I’m just like, well, it sounds good, but I don’t know.

Who knows? I have to see what kind of research is out there. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, so I [00:20:00] sleep on an infrared mat. Okay. I don’t sleep on it. I nap on it. And then I just, I just tuck it away and I don’t sleep under the night cause it actually can get kind of hot. You wake up at like 1am just covered in sweat. So but I, but I do take naps on that.

And then the other thing is from a dietary standpoint, I’m a huge fan of either nutrient dense supplements or nutrient dense food. So by nutrient dense supplements, I mean things like phytoplankton. That’s a bit like I do a few drops of phytoplankton every day. Just as a super, super dense source of cells.

I’m also a fan of egg yolks, grass fed beef. I do a lot of liver to, to maintain levels of fat soluble hormones. Do a lot of dark, dark leafies, a lot of coconut oil basically really, really nutrient dense foods. It’s pretty rare that I, that I eat a calorie rich nutrient poor food. Like I don’t do a lot of, a lot of bread, a lot of rice, things of that nature.

Mike Matthews: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I talk about cause you know, in the, on in the bodybuilding or in the fitness [00:21:00] world, if it fits your macros is all popular these days. And a lot of people, you know, they really, when, when they learn that when you’re talking body body composition, it’s mainly just calories in calories out and then making sure you get enough protein.

And then they use that as like, Oh, well, I guess I can eat a box of pop tarts a day and, and get lean without ever giving thought to. The health side of things that food isn’t just a food isn’t just protein carbohydrates fat that the micronutrients are Just as important in the long run and yeah sure you can lose weight And you can get lean and you can look okay eating junk food, but let’s see how you feel in six months Let’s see how your performance is.

Ben Greenfield: Two perfect examples for that would be like, you know, high levels of chronically elevated blood glucose levels that you would get by just paying attention to macros and perhaps not paying attention to food quality can actually adhere to cholesterol particles. And when you get glucose adhere to cholesterol particles, that allows a particle to become oxidized, which allows [00:22:00] it to dig into an endothelial cell wall.

So that would That would result in something like atherosclerotic plaque formations in you know, coronary arteries, for example. Right. And that’s been shown in various 

Mike Matthews: research of high carbohydrate diets, especially high simple sugar diets. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, which is, which is one reason why you can see athletes get blood clots even though they may be extremely healthy on the outside.

Another result of that same type of glycation, which is what happens when sugar attaches to proteins or attaches to fats in your body, would be the formation of advanced glycation end products in neural tissue leading to early onset Alzheimer’s and neural deficits that again can occur no matter how strong or lean you are.

Right. So. So yeah, I mean, there, there’s some definite kind of health versus performance trade offs when you look at things from, you know, that, that type of stuff is not just influenced by your macros and food quality, but also by, you know, [00:23:00] other, other health choices like stress and the amount of sleep that you get and the amount of, of electromagnetic field exposure that you expose yourself to during the day and toxins and pollutants and all sorts of stuff.

So yeah, I mean, if you really want to be a healthy athlete and that, that’s why, right. The title of my book is beyond training. There’s a bunch of stuff that goes above and beyond training because like I acknowledge in the first chapter of the book, like you can, you can be a fantastic athlete and not pay attention to many of these variables, but that doesn’t mean that the quality of your life from about 40 or 50 years old onwards is not going to totally suck.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I think of a, what is it? He was an NFL player. Maybe as a wide receiver who. A buddy of mine, I don’t really follow football much, but a buddy of mine said he got traded to some team and he eats McDonald’s every day and his joke was like, they’re like, oh, how, how are you liking it over there? And he’s like, they have McDonald’s everywhere.

I love it here. And it’s just like a genetic freak that at some point though, his body’s not going to, you know, it’s just not going to be [00:24:00] doing be able to do what it does. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I mean, you, you, you see deficits that begin to, I mean, like, let’s, let’s say like, like impotence or erectile dysfunction, like that’s a total canary in the mine.

That’s an indicator of a eventual decrease in your production of endothelial nitric oxide and your ability to vasodilate. And the reason it’s a canary in the mine is because erectile dysfunction often precedes heart attacks because what you get a little bit of vasodilation to, to, to those blood flow regions in the crotch.

And that’s just a sign of the same thing going on up in the heart. And, you know, that, that’s something that’s influenced by food quality. It’s something that’s influenced by, by the amount of nitric oxide you’re able to release. And, you know, it’s, it’s one of those things that, you know, you can still be a great athlete with erectile dysfunction and then have a heart attack 10 years later.

So, you know, bad sex and then death, you know, despite your performance or your, or [00:25:00] your body comp. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good point. So another thing book you talk about is kind of customizing your diet to fit your body and performance goals. And you talked a little bit about that in terms of how you eat.

Is there anything else that you can tell us kind of more about that? 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, that, that particular section of the book is basically about, you know, for example, older athletes, younger athletes, females, vegans, et cetera, how to customize your diet. Like, let’s say I don’t know, a lot of people are talking about vegans and stuff these days.

So let’s talk about like senior athletes, for example, like as you, as you get older. So, you naturally produce less hydrochloric acid as you get older. And hydrochloric acid is what’s necessary to actually activate. pepsin, which is the enzyme that breaks down proteins. And so you tend to see low levels of blood amino acids and inadequate protein absorption in older athletes.

Yeah, which is why 

Mike Matthews: research has shown they need more protein or that’s one way of going about it. I guess if you’re not going to improve the digestion, they got to eat more. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, you, you either eat more or you improve digestion or, or [00:26:00] preferably do a little bit of both. Right. You know, along with just chewing, chewing your food more completely incidentally, it, it, it helps to, to take more time to eat as you get older.

Yeah. So, so ultimately, you know, customizing the diet for a senior athlete, that would mean doing something like, you know, eating lemons or taking, taking a digestive enzyme prior to your main meals of the day when you may not have needed to do that when you were a younger athlete. Right. And, you know, I personally do a gut test once a year and I’m starting to notice mild deficits in my pancreatic enzyme production and also a little bit of an elevation of fatty acids and triglycerides in my stool.

And one, and one of the things that can cause that are the, just the gradual enzymatic deficiencies that can occur as you age. Right. So I’m being a little bit more careful. You know, I, I buy lemons now whenever I go to the grocery store and I have a little bit of lemon, like lemon juice and some lemon wedges before I eat.

And I’m even starting to include digestive enzymes with some of my big meals. Just to help me along with that. And, and that’s one of the things you take into account when you’re a [00:27:00] senior. Another would be minerals. My parents 

Mike Matthews: do the same thing. I mean, they’re, I wouldn’t say they’re athletes, they’ve been in exercise in their whole life, but they found as they aged that enzymes, where they would have, they would have never done anything for them, or they never would have noticed it when they were younger, now they definitely notice it with certain types of foods, and 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Minerals would be another just, just the basic loss of osteoblastic activity and, and, and bone mineral loss as you age. I’m a big fan of like trace liquid minerals sea salts, kind of going out of your way to get extra minerals in your diet like that. Phytoplankton stuff I talked about and any other sea vegetables are really good sources of minerals, but kind of going out of your way as you get older to include a lot of those things in your diet is also a pretty prudent move to make.

And you know, just, just getting on enzymes, using lemon juice, getting on minerals, like those are some of the things that you should think about doing as you age is just one example of, of a way you can customize your diet. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s great. You had mentioned veganism. We don’t have to dive into it, the, the whole [00:28:00] subject because we’re kind of, I know you’re, you have to, you have to be on another call soon, but I, I get asked about it, you know, semi frequently.

And what are your thoughts on, on vegan eating and performance? Because, I mean, there are, of course, inherent Drawbacks than inherent micronutrient deficiencies that you’re going to have to account for and then there, you know It’s hard to balance macronutrients like try to try to get enough protein without using a supplement and without exploding your carbs and fats You know what?

I mean? 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Yeah, I would say like like there’s there’s a lot I go over about 12 different kind of deficits and issues that vegans need to address in the book I would say some of the, some of the biggies would be you know, and I, I test a lot of athletes. I work for Wellness FX. So I look at the the lab profiles from a lot of athletes, both vegans and meat eaters.

Vegans, I, I tend to see vitamin B12 deficiencies almost across the board. Yeah. So. So that, that’s one biggie is, is getting on, on a good B12 supplement and preferably something that’s got a really absorbable form of folate in [00:29:00] it. Another one would be creatine, like five grams creatine a day. You know, like, and, and you can find good vegan sources of creatine too.

There’s one actually I, I’m taking creatine right now. I use Creo2 from from Millennium Sports. That’s a pretty good one. It’s got some, some cordyceps in it as well. So creatine and B12 would be a couple carnosine. That’s another one that’s, that’s found only in animal foods that if you’re going to be a vegan athlete, you should consider supplementing with and then DHA is another biggie for, for neural system.

Integrity DHA is huge for neural tissue. It’s also really, really important for myelination. And you know, if you look at the plant form of omega threes, ALA, that’s pretty inefficiently converted a DHA. Exactly. Yeah. So like you using, using like 

Mike Matthews: with fish oil or what do you do? 

Ben Greenfield: You can use algae.

You can use like chlorella, spirulina. There’s some, some pretty good, like, 100 percent organic sources of that type of stuff. You want to be really careful not to go to the bargain bin at the, at the super supplement store for, for those things [00:30:00] because, like, they, they can be really laden with with Heavy metals and toxins and stuff like that.

So, make sure you go organic if you go with a spirulina or chlorella. But that can be a pretty good source of DHA. If you can convince a vegan athlete to use like a, a fish oil or something like that, that’s also, you know, a pretty good way to go. Like, you’re trying to hunt some down. I was just curious if 

Mike Matthews: you use it.

Cause I take fish oil everyday. And spirulina as well. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah I, I do take fish oil. I do about four grams a day. You know, I, I use chlorella almost every morning in my smoothie. You know, I usually have a can of sardines over a big ass salad at lunch. So, you know, I, I really go out of my way to, to get the DHA in.

But yeah, I’d say creatine, carnosine, DHA vitamin B12. Those would be some of the biggies. Vitamin D would be the last one, but you know, you never want to take vitamin D unopposed without adequate amounts of vitamin K2 and vitamin A. And that’s one of the issues is that vitamin D can cause calcification and there can be some risks of vitamin D toxicity.

[00:31:00] If you’re taking high amounts of vitamin D, so 

Mike Matthews: I think the basic right like this. Simplest recommendation is just get your blood tested to see where you’re at and vitamin D levels and get him up to, I guess these days that now the minimum you’d want would be a 30 NG. What is it? NG? Yeah. A milliliter. I think it is.

And then you want to, but then newer research shows that being upwards of 50 is actually probably optimal. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. And in athletes, I like to see 40 to 80. And then you know, most folks and, you know, even vegans can get around there with somewhere in the ballpark of 2000 international units of D a day.

But that needs to be accompanied in about a one to two ratio with a. So you, you should be shooting for around 4,000 of a Okay. And then the other thing is vitamin K two, a hundred to 200 micrograms a day of vitamin K two. Right. That’s kind of like, that’s kinda like the holy trilogy of fat soluble vitamins, right?

There is a, that two to one vitamin A to vitamin D ratio along with a hundred to 200 vitamin K two. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s exactly how I’m coming out with with my supplement company Legion or multivitamins coming out. And that’s [00:32:00] exactly what we have in it. 

Ben Greenfield: Oh, that’s perfect. Nice. Yeah. Cool. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Okay. So last but not least, you talk about in the book about improving brain health and brain function.

What are some easy ways that we can do this? 

Ben Greenfield: Neural plasticity is, is a big one in making sure that you introduce a variety and novelty and challenge on a regular basis. And that can mean straying outside the comfort zone of your sport a lot of the time. So, you know, for, for me, for like obstacle training I’m, I’m getting.

You know, some, some walls and ropes and carries and stuff like that thrown at me, but I try and challenge myself and other physical and mental ways as well. So I play tennis twice a week so that I’m engaged in a ball sport that requires eye tracking and peripheral vision. And some of those skills I’m not developing with obstacle training.

I took 

Mike Matthews: up golf recently again. So yeah, golf, golf frustrating. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, exactly. Another, another thing that can help out with that is brain games, brain aerobics. So I like Lumosity [00:33:00] and NBAC. Like when I’m standing in line at the grocery store or you know, waiting at the airport, I’ll whip out something like that rather than surfing through the emails on my phone just for a quick little brain training.

I’m also a huge fan of music for that. It, just listening to music and complex music can be pretty helpful for brain training, but I actually go out of my way to learn music. So I practice piano with my kids two times a week, and then I play guitar three times a week. And that helps me having to, it improves your visual perception and your eye tracking, having to basically look at the notes and go back and forth from the notes to where your hands are moving.

It, it’s also incredible for learning and attention to detail memory, things of that nature. And then the last thing that I do is I memorize stuff. So the way that I personally do it is I’ll memorize like a quote or a Bible verse or something like that every morning. And I go back and try to remember that a few times during the day.

Just to, I mean, it’s just like [00:34:00] your body, right? If you let your body sit in atrophy and you don’t send it a message that it’s got to stay alive if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. And same thing with the brain. You just send your brain a message a few times a day that you’re going to challenge it outside of what it’d normally be expected to do.

And, you know, it’s, it’s a very, very good way to keep your brain alive. And, you know, I, I get into a bunch of supplements and apps and hacks and stuff like that in the book. But I mean, like, you know, you look at things from a simple perspective, just like some of those brain training apps, like lumosity, doing some music and then making sure you don’t get stuck in the comfort zone from a physical activity standpoint or whatever sport you’re training for.

Those would be some of the biggies. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. I think that’s great. I think it’s similar with training where you’re going to get the majority of your benefits from things like that. You can’t just take pills. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, there are different nootropics and things that you, that, that can improve cognitive function.

But just like with training, it’s, you got to do the work and with the brain that is doing the work. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. And I think that’s freaking ridiculous. Like [00:35:00] the people who are infatuated with smart drugs, but won’t go out of their way to just be uncomfortable. It’s, it’s the same, you know, it’s the same concept as the people who take the fat burning pills and don’t exercise.

It’s like, yeah, it’s exactly one, one weird 

Mike Matthews: trick. 

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. Great. Well this is awesome. Tons of good information here. I highly recommend you the listener that you check out Ben’s book, as you can tell, he’s very smart and he knows what he’s talking about and there’s all kinds of cool stuff in this book.

I actually recommended it on, I do a weekly series, like cool stuff, the week thing where I recommend a book every week and some other various things. And I recommend it. Yeah. When it came out. 

Ben Greenfield: Nice. Yeah. Nice. So, 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, thanks a lot. I know you got to run to another call. So thanks a lot for taking the time, Ben.

And I’d love to have you on again sometime. I like speaking with people that know what they’re talking about. 

Ben Greenfield: Killer dude. Thanks for having me on Mike. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Sure thing. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness.

Also, head over to my website at www. [00:36:00] muscleforlife. com, where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written. I release a new one almost every day, actually, I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife.

com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.