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#ben greenfield blood tests

drgoodenowe · 2 years

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Know The Important Tips from Ben Greenfield Education and DR. Goodenowe

Ben Greenfield was just made aware of the effectiveness of the ProdromeScan blood test by Dr. Dayan Goodenowe. You may view a video of Dr. Goodenowe describing his findings here and read about his research in his essay. One of the top 100 most important persons in the fitness business, Ben is a well-known health and fitness coach. People can gain from Ben Greenfield education , by adhering his lifestyle and exercise advice.

#Ben Greenfield education

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maryabouchardon · 4 years

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The truth behind one of the most popular diet patterns of the minute

Weight Loss: Simple Seven-day Keto Diet Plan That Helps ... Can Be Fun For Everyone

Table of ContentsUnknown Facts About 49 Keto Diet Foods To Change Your Weight Loss Goals ...The Basic Principles Of 'Best Diets' Ranking Puts Keto Last, Dash First - Cnn - Cnn.com The smart Trick of The Truth Behind The Most Popular Diet Trends Of The Moment ... That Nobody is Talking AboutIndicators on The Ketogenic Diet For Weight Loss - Today's Dietitian Magazine You Need To KnowThe Should You Try A Keto Diet For Weight Loss? - Consumer ... PDFs

There's additionally research right into making use of a keto diet to cure/prevent cancer (see Dr Seyfried's research for even more) and brain conditions like Alzheimer's (see Dr. D'Agostino's research for even more). There's typically a misconception that our body in some way requires carbs. But the reality is our body can live without carbs simply fine as long as you eat a lot of good fats and protein.

Nonetheless, our brains do need sugar (a form of carb). On standard, your mind takes up 20% of your body's power expenditure, which relates to around 100-120 grams of sugar. It sounds like we therefore require to eat carbs to provide adequate energy to our minds daily. Well, if that were the case, then humans would only have the ability to live a couple of days without food (because we can't save adequate sugar in our bodies to last for any kind of longer).

So, where does that sugar to provide our brain originate from when we quickly for a week? As Robb Wolf states in The Paleo Remedy, "Our bodies can make all the carbs it requires from protein and fat." And as Dr. Peter Attia puts it, "The reason a depriving person can live for 40-60 days is specifically because we can turn fat right into ketones as well as transform ketones right into substratum for the Krebs Cycle in the mitochondria of our neurons - blood ketone levels.

Kind 1 Diabetics Kind 2 Diabetics using Insulin Females that are breastfeeding People on specific drugs e.g., for hypertension If you come under one of those classifications, then please be added mindful when attempting keto. The ketogenic diet is a tool, however that doesn't indicate it should be utilized at all times and by everyone.

A Biased View of The Keto Diet Guide - Faqs, Tips, And Science - Bulletproof.com

Not truly (it depends on just how you interpret the Atkins diet as well as what you eat on it): Many individuals interpret the Atkins diet to be a reduced carbohydrate strategy, as well as when I attempted the Atkins diet, that's just how I understood it. I counted the grams of carbohydrates I consumed but didn't actually take note of the protein or fat quantities.

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As well as however, eating way too much healthy protein is one point that can stop your body from entering into ketosis, which is the major advantage of keto. Of training course, if you assume Atkins means a high fat diet, then what you assume of as Atkins can be a lot closer to the keto diet.

(Because remaining in ketosis is such a critical element of the keto diet,) Nevertheless, Dr Atkins understood about ketosis and also advertised it. He never measured blood ketone manufacturing by his patients, but he did utilize pee ketone screening strips "for every single person on every browse through" according to Registered Nurse Jackie Eberstein, who collaborated with Dr Atkins, and also as Jimmy Moore reports in Keto Clearness, Dr Atkins later on added a maker for analyzing ketones in the breath also to his clinic.

In some areas Paleo is really comparable to the Keto diet, as well as if I was mosting likely to offer an extremely standard definition of a keto diet, I would certainly state it's a lower carbohydrate version of Paleo. If you reduced out the wonderful potatoes, honey, starchy tubers as well as sweet fruits from Paleo, after that you're entrusted a quite healthy and balanced keto diet.

An Unbiased View of A Keto Diet Meal Plan And Menu That Can Transform Your Body

Paleo emphasizes the genealogical diets as well as taking a look at food quality (nutrient density and also staying clear of contaminants like gluten). Keto highlights remaining in the metabolic state of ketosis where you're predominantly shedding ketones for energy. Nevertheless, you can follow a Paleo strategy and also remain in ketosis. Or you can be eating an undesirable non-Paleo Keto diet filled up with inflammatory low carb or high fat foods (e - beginning ketogenic diet.g., seed oils, sweetening agents, soy).

Even if it's reduced in carbs or high in fat does not indicate it's always healthy for you. Given that the ketogenic diet has only recently ended up being preferred, there is a scarcity of reliable studies on it - strict keto diet. There's a great deal of n=1 (self-experiments and unscientific evidence) experiments like triathlete Ben Greenfield's experiment.

If you want to find out more concerning the science behind ketosis, then I highly recommend taking a look at Dr - review cbd. Peter Attia's blog site below. OK, allow's obtain down to the details. The keto diet is fairly easy in regards to the policies you need to follow. The fundamental consuming tenets of a ketogenic diet are as complies with: Eat Really Little Carbs.

Consume Moderate Quantity of Healthy Protein. to get the keto diet food list emailed to you directly. Or if you like to view it on the website, below's the link. The precise amounts of each macronutrient you need for your body to go right into the ketosis state will vary from individual to individual, and there's an entire area listed below on how to check whether your body is in ketosis or not.

What Is The Keto Diet? A Detailed Beginner's Guide - U.s. ... Things To Know Before You Buy

Facts About What Is The Keto Diet? A Detailed Beginner's Guide - U.s. ... Uncovered

For your carbohydrate quantity, Jimmy Moore recommends in his publication Keto Clearness that complete quantity has to be at least under 100g per day and also for many people under 50g. As well as for people with insulin level of sensitivities, you could need to consume under 30g or 20g daily. Jimmy has an in-depth 3-step plan in his publication to determine your carb resistance.

Jeff Volek, PhD and Dr. Stephen Phinney, MD suggest that to compute your minimum and also maximum protein intake for remaining in ketosis, you must increase your weight (gauged in lbs) by 0.6 and 1.0 to obtain the minimum as well as optimum quantity of healthy protein in grams you should consume daily.

Dr. Phinney adds, "In our experience, individuals on a ketogenic diet that think they are eating healthy protein in moderation are usually well above [the recommended amount] because of be afraid of eating fat to satiety." It is necessary to obtain enough protein, but equally important to get the correct amount of fat.

Donald Layperson recommends restricting protein totals up to 30g per dish as well as no even more than 140g per day. According to Registered Dietitian Maria Zamarripa, RD, "The ketogenic diet highlights the "fat burning" result of ketosis. The key variable in the ketogenic diet is the rearrangement of macronutrients to make fat the main gas resource." After limiting carbs and consuming a modest amount of healthy protein, the rest of what you eat ought to be healthy and balanced fats like ghee, coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, and animal fats.

The 3-Minute Rule for Keto Diet Weight Loss: Everything I Learned From Going Keto ...

Some severe athletes like Ben Greenfield and Chris Kelly discover ketosis to actually assist their athletic performance, yet there are just a couple of scientific researches that back this up. A lot of the research studies on athletic efficiency on the keto diet that I've discovered have been carried out by Stephen Phinney as well as Jeff Volek.

If you want reviewing the studies in addition to criticism of them, Anthony Colpo has actually composed quite a detailed and also instead scathing (however I assume typically rather valid) review of them below. Also Ben Greenfield puts a huge red warning on his keto diet testimonial, outlining his testing while training for Ironman Canada.

External Links : carb ketogenic diet follow ketogenic diet health benefits level ketosis body standard ketogenic diet plans keto diet addition keto diet oil benefits

from Canada Berries Naturals https://canadaberriesnaturals.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-truth-behind-one-of-most-popular.html

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zonechin48 · 5 years

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How To Keep Your NAD Levels Elevated (Without IVs) For Staving Off Aging, Cellular Health, Full Body Repair & Much More.

From pills to creams to meditations to exercises, it seems there is a multitude of oft-confusing ways to avoid aging out there. You may know I’m a bit inclined toward ensuring I research some of the more off-the-beaten-path methods of anti-aging and am happy to be the guinea pig who takes cold showers, does stem cell treatments, monitors my telomere length, and injects, swallows, and mainlines many different safe vitamins and well-researched anti-aging health supplements to see what works and what doesn’t. Of course, I also do incorporate many of the natural and free strategies I talk about here.

Among the many things you may have seen me talk about in my quest against aging is NAD (Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide) and experience with 8-hour IV drips of NAD and faster NAD push-IVs.

After all, when we talk about anything relating to aging, what we’re really talking about is cellular degeneration. Many of the signs of aging are often just the symptoms of a failing cellular mechanism or mitochondrial damage. And what do many cells need to operate at peak health? NAD. It’s crucial to many of the processes a cell carries out which benefit our bodies in numerous ways. This is why I believe increasing NAD in the body should be a top priority for anyone trying to support their health as they age. You’re about to discover why, and how to do just that.

The Signs Of Aging

There’s nothing like discovering your first gray hair or looking into the mirror and realizing even when you stop squinting the lines around your eyes stay put. The signs of aging are abundant, and yet you may not be noticing the less obvious warning signs that should be convincing you it’s time to take action to prevent the decline in health and body that occurs as you grow older. You may have already seen or are on the lookout for any of the following easy-to-notice physical signs of aging that can be determined even without the type of bloodwork I talk about here: A Deep Dive Into How To Interpret The Results Of Your Blood Testing – Ben Greenfield Reveals & Walks You Through His Laboratory Results From WellnessFX.

Hair Loss/Thinning – More hairs going down the drain than usual during showers or finding more strands in your brush or on your clothes.

Hair Graying – Transition of hair color to either gray or white depending on your genetics.

Receding Hairline – Male-pattern baldness or thinning at the temples.

Turkey Neck/Sagging Skin – Loose skin you can gather between your fingers or even just the hooded eye skin drooping its way down your eyelid.

Sagging Breasts – Your bosom may simply not quite stand to attention the way it used to.

Sun Damage – This includes everything from spots on your hands, face, and shoulders to dryness and “leathery” skin.

Fine Lines And Wrinkles – Some of them become less “fine” than others and the grooves only get deeper as the years go by.

Bunions – From years of wearing the wrong footwear or walking irregularly due to injury, risk for these tend to increase with age.

Yellowing Teeth – Even if you lay off the coffee and wine, enamel depletes with age and your teeth show the signs of a weakened state.

Decreased Testosterone & Growth Hormones – Along with this comes decreased drive, sexual dysfunction, hot flashes, mood swings, and a host of other unwanted side effects.

Insomnia and Bad Sleep – Your circadian rhythms get thrown for a loop as you produce less melatonin.

Forgetfulness and Memory Loss – Not to be confused with Alzheimer’s, dementia or any major mental illness, but a decline in cellular energy means your brains have less cognitive power and begin making errors.

Weight Gain – Usually this has more to do with a lack of energy, a lowered metabolism, and bad diet, but finding it harder to lose or maintain weight is also part of aging.

General Fatigue – This is (in many people’s opinions) the worst symptom of aging and involves losing the energy to exercise, keep up a social life, and even do meaningful work (which just feeds into the myth that we become less capable as we get older).

Everything mentioned above is only the eventual outward symptoms of what’s happening inside our bodies at a cellular level. As you age, your cells decline in their ability to be able to resist stress and damage, resulting in a gradual loss of cellular function that leads to many of the physical issues listed above. So it stands to reason that if you can prevent cellular aging, you can prevent the signs of aging in general.

A molecule called NAD can help support cellular health. Even if it can’t solve every problem associated with aging, it’s worth learning more about.

What Is NAD?

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD, is a coenzyme discovered over 100 years ago by scientists studying fermentation. NAD aids in the cell’s process of turning nutrients into the energy is necessary for metabolism. Your cells turn the energy stored in the food you eat into cellular energy (ATP). As part of the whole assembly line of operations that occur within a cell to get your organs to function, NAD is a crucial factory worker. If you appreciate your heart pumping, lungs breathing, muscles contracting, food digesting, etc. then you already have a healthy appreciation for NAD and the cellular energy it helps to produce.

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The second role this molecule plays within our cells is to boost the activity of sirtuins, which are important proteins used by cells. When sirtuins are activated and doing their jobs, they support cellular maintenance and repair. Sirtuins have been implicated in influencing a wide range of cellular processes like aging, transcription, apoptosis, inflammation and stress resistance, as well as energy efficiency and alertness during low-calorie situations. Sirtuins can also control circadian clocks and mitochondrial biogenesis.

So your cells need NAD and your body is capable of creating it, but as you age, your cells take on a lot of stress and NAD is rapidly consumed as the cells cope. Metabolic stresses such as overeating and consuming alcohol can contribute even further to the depletion of NAD. Worse still, NAD decreases as we get older – a 60-year-old is likely to have half the count of NAD that they did at 40.

So now you’re probably wondering what’s the best way to get more NAD, aside from the costly IVs I’ve spoken of already, and discuss in detail in my last two podcasts with Tom Ingoglia here and here, and also in my recent podcast with Dr. Craig Koniver here.

Preclinical research shows that exercising and calorie restriction can both aid in upping NAD levels. These are two strategies I already advocate for and just make sense as part of a holistic health regimen. However, one of the easiest ways to naturally increase NAD without an IV is via supplements, more specifically the B3 vitamins I discussed here in my podcast with Dr. Charles Brenner (but as you’ll discover later, not all B3s are created equal when it comes to producing NAD).

Through its essential role in cellular energy production, NAD contributes, in early cellular stages, to basically every bodily function we notice or don’t notice but appreciate subconsciously. Here are just a few ways our bodies use NAD each day:

Exercise Performance and Recovery – When we exercise, cells in our muscles go to work generating boatloads of cellular energy. NAD is crucial to this process. After a workout, NAD also helps restore muscles and aids in the work cells perform to build muscle. Our ability to recover from workouts, a thing that seems to get harder as we age, is reliant on NAD doing its job. And working out is essential to avoiding declining muscle mass, another common component of aging.

Processing Alcohol – NAD is required for both of the chemical reactions that detoxify alcohol in the liver. Drinking can lower the liver’s NAD resources as the liver processes the alcohol we’ve consumed. You may notice it takes less alcohol to induce a hangover as you get older or that a little alcohol goes a long way and it’s easier to get tipsy or outright drunk, even accidentally. Obviously, I recommend discretion when drinking and a healthy self-awareness of your limits, but also understanding how your cells help you to bounce back when you’ve had a bit too much comes in handy.

Skin and Sun Exposure – Skin is the largest organ of our bodies and thus requires a massive amount of cells and cellular regeneration to maintain. Your skin is exposed to quite a few stressors, the sun being our skin’s most bitter enemy if overexposure to UVA and UVB occurs. NAD activates certain proteins in skin cells to help signal when and where sun-related damage has occurred. It’s no coincidence wrinkles are among the earliest signs of aging. A wrinkle is basically a line of skin cells that have lost their ability to hold up the skin and have thus caved in. Interestingly, a recent preclinical study with mice linked the appearance of skin wrinkles directly to cellular mitochondrial health.

Circadian Rhythms – It isn’t just the earth that’s set on a very strict 24-hr schedule – your bodies also rely on daily rhythmic biological processes to keep you going. These circadian rhythms are integral to overall metabolism and health. NAD aids in cells maintaining their daily rhythms by helping to regulate circadian clocks at the cellular level. When faced with the mass confusion of facing a time zone change or spending too much time in the dark, our cells work overtime keeping up those rhythms. As long as our cells keep up the pace, everything can readjust and get back on schedule. When we don’t, boy do we feel it.

Breathing & Oxidative Stress – There are sometimes ways we can give our hardworking cells a break. After all, you do have the option of giving up alcohol or getting more sleep to rejuvenate yourself. But one thing we can’t stop doing is breathing and delivering oxygen throughout our bodies. As this oxygen is consumed by cells, free radicals can be produced that lead to oxidative stress. And the air you breathe contains more than just oxygen. Other sources of free radicals include air pollutants, chemicals, cigarette smoke and other issues I discuss in my last comprehensive article on air pollution. Fortunately, NAD and its molecular cousin NADP can arm your cells to counteract this stress and mop up free radicals.

To figure out how to get more NAD into your cells, you must first understand how vitamin B3 contributes to NAD.

Understanding The Vitamin B3s

There are actually 8 different vitamins that make up the B vitamin complex, one of which is B3. B3 vitamins are precursors to NAD, meaning they are basically ingredients that your body uses to create more NAD through cellular chemical processes. But there are three forms of B3, and the newest one to be discovered, nicotinamide riboside (NR), is the one scientists are getting especially excited about.

The B3 most people are familiar with is niacin (nicotinic acid). Niacin is available in supplement form and is also ingested in food because it is found in eggs, yeast, fish, meat, milk, green vegetables, and cereal grains. Since the 1930s people have used niacin for treating pellagra, which is a B3 deficiency caused by a lack of diet variety. However, niacin has the very annoying side effect of skin flushing and can create a red, warm face, an overall feeling of body warmth and tingly fingers.

The second of the B3s is nicotinamide, also known as niacinamide. This one’s much like niacin, but minus the painful skin flushing and without the useful cholesterol-lowering capabilities. Although it’s an NAD precursor, it deactivates sirtuins, those very useful longevity genes I mentioned earlier.

Then there’s nicotinamide riboside (NR), the most recently discovered B3 and a unique B3 when it comes to producing NAD. I interviewed the man who discovered the pathway that converts NR to NAD, Dr. Charles Brenner, on my podcast and got the skinny on exactly why NR is the superior B3 vitamin and all the benefits that it produces by supporting healthy, well-functioning cells.

NR serves as an NAD precursor and also activates sirtuins to jump in and do their job. Plus, it doesn’t cause flushing. Trace amounts of NR are found in milk, but you’d have to drink a heck of a lot of it to get the benefits of NR and in my opinion, the calories and high amounts of dairy proteins aren’t worth it.

TRU NIAGEN, The NAD Superbooster

If you listened to my podcast or read the transcript of my talk with Dr. Charles Brenner, you probably know a bit already about the supplement TRU NIAGEN, a B3 supplement in the form of NR. After Dr. Brenner discovered that cells can use NR as a precursor to NAD, interest in his work soared. Nutraceutical company ChromaDex licensed the patents for NR from Dartmouth College and asked Dr. Brenner to be their Chief Scientific Advisor.

Together they developed TRU NIAGEN, an NR supplement that has been clinically proven to increase NAD levels. By increasing NAD, TRU NIAGEN promotes cellular energy production. One capsule of TRU NIAGEN contains 150mg of the active ingredient NIAGEN nicotinamide riboside chloride, a patented and FDA safety-reviewed form of vitamin B3, as well as the inactive ingredients microcrystalline cellulose and hypromellose.

There have been over 150 scientific articles published around NR since 2004, many of them reflecting the positive effect NR has on NAD production. These include more than 100 preclinical studies published on the science behind NR and more than 20 human clinical trials published and ongoing. Specifically, the active ingredient in TRU NIAGEN, “NIAGEN nicotinamide riboside”, has been studied in four published human trials, which is more than any other NR supplement you’ll hear about.(See trials 1, 2, 3 & 4) From those trials, TRU NIAGEN has proven to safely and effectively increase NAD. NIAGEN has twice been successfully reviewed under FDA’s new dietary ingredient (NDI) notification program and has also been successfully notified to the FDA as generally recognized as safe (GRAS).

Summary

Currently, I take 1-2 capsules NR TRU NIAGEN in the morning, then again in the afternoon (it works best when taken twice a day to support normal circadian rhythm). I still do the NAD IVs too, but I use the NR in between the IVs to maintain my levels as high as possible. I also take extra NR after drinking more than two glasses of alcohol, traveling across multiple time zones, or any time I’ve put excess stress on my body.

You can get NR from TRU NIAGEN, and for your convenience, below I’m including all posts and podcasts I’ve done about NR or NAD in the past should you want to take a deeper dive.

–The Next Big Anti-Aging Drug: Everything You Need To Know About “NAD”.

–How To Get Your Own Vitamin and NAD IVs, The Truth About Umbilical Stem Cells, Peptide Injections & Much More With Dr. Craig Koniver.

–Advanced Muscle Building With Science: How To Biohack Body Composition With Stem Cells, NAD & One Workout Per Week.

–The New Darling Supplement Of The Anti-Aging Industry (& The Truth About Whether It Actually Works)

–Biohacking Alzheimer’s, Age Reversal, Young Blood, Stem Cells, Exosomes & More!

Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for me about NR or NAD? Leave your comments below and I will reply!

Ask Ben a Podcast Question

Source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/article/anti-aging-articles/elevate-nad-levels/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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driveaugust1-blog · 5 years

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Beyond 23&Me: A Deep Dive Into Ben Greenfield’s Personal DNA Results (& How To Get Your Own Genes Interpreted).

In today's episode, you're going to get an insider glimpse into how to go way beyond something as simple as 23AndMe or Ancestry and instead learn how to get truly useful health information that you can use to enhance health, performance, sleep, gut function, neurotransmitters and cognition, and much more.

My guest on this podcast, Dr. Mansoor Mohammed, has an extremely impressive background in the field of genetics. His credentials include:

BSc. Specialized Honours in Molecular Genetics | University of Guelph | Guelph

Doctor of Philosophy with Distinction in Molecular Genetics & Immunology | University of Guelph | Guelph

Postdoctoral Clinical Cytogenetics Fellowship | University of California | Los Angeles

Postdoctoral Clinical Cytogenetics Fellowship | Baylor College of Medicine | Houston

Dr. Mansoor is now the President and CSO of The DNA Company, a leading and innovative provider of comprehensive functional genomics testing and consulting and an industry first: individually customized supplements based on your genetics.

He is widely regarded as a pioneer in medical genomics and has been the recipient of multiple academic and industry awards. He is the holder of several patents in the general fields of molecular diagnostics and genomics research and is one of the most sought-after national and international conference speakers in the genre of personalized medicine.

Prior to his role at The DNA Company, Dr. Mansoor was:

Founder and President of ManaGene (2010-2018)

CEO of Combimatrix (Nasdaq traded leader in diagnostic genomic microarrays) (2006-2010)

Director of Genomics at Quest Diagnostics (The world’s largest reference laboratory with a market capitalization of over $10 billion US) (2003-2006)

Director of Research and Development at Spectral Genomics (one of the industry’s first commercial genomic microarray developers spun out of Baylor College of Medicine under Dr. Mansoor’s scientific leadership)

Dr. Mansoor maintains an active clinical practice as a genomics consultant to some of the leading executive health clinics in Canada and abroad.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-What makes each DNA test different and how to choose what's right for you…9:30

Consider the various elements of genetic testing:

SNPs (pronounce “snips”; single nucleotide polymorphisms)

Copy number variation (CNV)

INDEL (insertion/deletion polymorphism)

Understand how the various labs go about testing the elements

Humans have two identical copies of the DNA code (from each parent)

When testing for SNPs, the genetic paragraph is “read” and looks for variations between the two

The more paragraphs you try to query simultaneously, the greater risk of error (false negatives/positives)

Characteristics of a proper DNA test:

Concern is for the physical manifestation of the genes, not the genes themselves

Cellular function is key indicator

Identify the genes that influence the desired outcome

Pinpoint the specific DNA to test vs. “shotgun” approach

Avoid drawing data for data's sake

-A review of my DNA test and how it compares to my two sons…25:00

Two different reports: Genome Pulse Report and Hormone Pulse Report (looking at the GPR)

Vascular function

Cells that line the vascular system receive the most wear and tear

9P21 markers (not genes) are correlated with the lining of the blood vessels; “the heart of the human genome”

A alleles and G alleles

The more G alleles you have, the less resilient is the endothelial lining

Increase good quality vegetable matter

People with multiple G alleles benefit less from vegetable matter (like red wine) than those with none

Smokers are more likely to die of vascular disease than lung disease

Glutathione S-Transferase (GST) pathway is one of the key pathways in the body

Glutathionylation: the cellular process that neutralizes toxins in the body

What happens when someone doesn't have 2 copies of a gene…

You sometimes have genes you didn't inherit from either parent

Talking about SNPs in the gene is irrelevant;

As is epigenetics (alter the expression of the genes, not the genes itself)

3 vitally important GST genes:

Should a person only have 1 copy of a gene, they will produce 50% less than someone with 2 copies

I have 1 copy of the GSTT1 gene (as does 60% of the population)

Important to not exceed a healthy toxicity threshold

I do not have the GSTM1 gene at all

Useless to discuss SNPs for that gene

The M1 gene is a backup: it can be lost with less consequence than other genes (such as the T1)

What this means is that I have low to average glutathione detox capacity

Must be more cognizant of diet, environment, etc.

My two boys are missing the GSTT1 gene completely

-Personalizing diet and/or supplements based on DNA test results…57:25

Youtrients

Nothing compares to an optimal diet (eating whole foods)

Customized based on dietary limitations (lactose intolerance)

Ethnic and geographic factors, as well as the environment during weaning, affect how to interpret test results

Elites of Victorian-era England adjusted their lifestyle (living in Scottish highlands in the autumn months)

Reduce, not promote, supplementation, to where only necessary

Our bodies are not designed to accommodate many of the supplements on the market

“Is there a cellular function that is dysfunctional?” Then address that through supplementation

More is not always better when it comes to genetics

3 disparate aspects of cellular function:

Endothelial quality

Detox capacity

Insulin productivity and function in response to diet

-Differences between the hormone pulse report and the genome pulse report…1:18:25

BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor) is one of the most important genes in our body

First thing looking at: How does the body (male or female) convert progesterones into androgens, into estrogens

T-intersection (4 points):

How efficiently converting progesterone into androgens

3 things happen when you make testosterone:

Use it

Convert some of it into DHT

Metabolize (glucuronidation)

I have the perfect balance of the t-intersection

My boys are identical, except have a higher predisposed conversion of testosterone into estrogen

-About the ACTN3 gene and its relation to exercise types…1:28:50

-And much more…

Resources from this episode:

– Click here for testing with Youtrients through The DNA Company. Use my link to get their complete functional genomics test package for $399 USD (that’s a savings of $50 from retail price), and your test package includes both Hormone and Genome Pulse panel tests as well as a clinical report for each panel, along with full access to their webinar series, which introduces the science and interpretation of your genomic results with regards to key biological systems and processes. Click here for that special offer from YouTrients for Ben Greenfield listeners.

– My Hormone Pulse results from The DNA Company

Ben Greenfield HORMONE PULSE REPORT

– My Genome Pulse results from The DNA Company

Ben Greenfield GENOME PULSE REPORT

Episode sponsors:

–Kion: My personal playground for new supplement formulations. Ben Greenfield Fitness listeners receive a 10% discount off your entire order when you use discount code: BGF10.

–Trusii: Contains a host of anti-inflammatory, anti-obesity, and anti-allergy benefits. For this reason, I have decided to now make consumption of hydrogen-rich water an important part of my daily nutritional routine…and I highly recommend it! Enter code: BEN at checkout and get 30% off your order!

–Halo Sport: Halo Sport revolutionized physical training by being the first-ever product that can increase your neuroplasticity by putting your brain into a state that neuroscientists called hyperlearning. The fully upgraded Halo Sport 2 was just announced and it’s pre-selling for just $279 (less than half the price of the first model) when you use code: GREENFIELD.

–Birdwell Beach Britches: Quality is our Gimmick isn’t just our slogan, it’s a commitment we honor with every stitch we sew. 100% money back guarantee. Get 10% off your order, PLUS free shipping on any order over $99 when you use discount code: BENG.

Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Dr. Mansoor or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply!

Ask Ben a Podcast Question

Source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/self-quantification-podcasts/the-dna-company/

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aio11 · 5 years

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What if the ability to look, feel, and perform at peak capacity wasn’t the stuff of lore but instead was within easy reach? Sure, some of us find ways to hit peak performance in one area or another—there are professional poker players, computer programmers, and race car drivers hunched over card games, keyboards, and steering wheels with optimized minds; UFC and NFL gladiators fighting for glory on television with optimized bodies; and monks and meditators roaming the planet with optimized spirits. But in a perfect world, you would be able to have it all: complete optimization of mind, body, and spirit. In Boundless, the New York Times bestselling author of Beyond Training and health and fitness leader Ben Greenfield offers a first-of-its-kind blueprint for total human optimization. To catapult you down the path of maximizing cognition, mental clarity, and IQ, you will discover:

How to rewire your skull’s supercomputer (& 9 ways to fix your neurotransmitters)

The 12 best ways to heal a leaky brain

8 proven methods to banish stress and kiss high cortisol goodbye

10 foods that break your brain, and how to eat yourself smart

How to safely utilize nootropics and smart drugs, along with 8 of the best brain-boosting supplement stacks and psychedelics

The top nutrient for brain health that you probably aren’t getting enough of

6 ways to upgrade your brain using biohacking gear, games, and tools

How to exercise the cells of your nervous system using technology and modern science

Easy ways to train your brain for power, speed, and longevity

The ultimate guide to optimizing your sleep, maximizing mental recovery, and stopping jet lag

To ensure that you look good naked and live a long time, you will learn:

6 ways to get quick, powerful muscles (& why bigger muscles aren’t better)

How to burn fat fast without destroying your body

The fitness secrets of 6 of the fittest old people on the planet

The best training program for maximizing muscle gain and fat loss at the same time

One simple tactic for staying lean year-round with minimal effort

A step-by-step system for figuring out exactly which foods to eat

14 ways to build an unstoppable immune system

Little-known tactics, tips, and tricks for recovering from workouts with lightning speed

The best tools for biohacking your body at home and on the road

The 11 best blood tests for maximizing health and longevity

How to eat, train, and live for optimal symmetry and beauty (& how to raise kids with superhuman bodies and brains)

And to help you live a fulfilling and happy life, you will learn:

12 techniques to heal your body using your own internal pharmacy

What the single most powerful emotion is and how to tap into it every day

4 of the best ways to heal your body and spirit using sounds and vibrations

6 ways to enhance your life and longevity with love, friendships, and lasting relationships

How to biohack the bedroom for better sex and longer orgasms, and the top libido-enhancing herbs, supplements, and strategies

The perfect morning, afternoon, and evening routines for enhancing sleep, productivity, and overall happiness

28 ways to combine ancestral wisdom and modern science to enhance longevity, including the best foods, herbs, supplements, injections, medical treatments, biohacks, fasting strategies, and much more

The 4 hidden variables that can make or break your mind, body, and spirit

How to use the power of light to optimize your body and brain

The exercise that will change your life forever (& how to reverse-engineer your perfect day)

Boundless guides you every step of the way to becoming an expert in what makes your brain tick, your body work, and your spirit happy. You can flip open the book to any chapter and discover research-proven, trench-tested techniques to build muscle, burn fat, live longer, have mind-blowing sex, raise robust children, and much, much more!

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lauramalchowblog · 5 years

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Dear Mark: Synthetic Peptides

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering one question from a reader. It’s all about synthetic peptides, small chains of amino acids with potentially huge effects on your health and physiological function. In most cases, these synthetic peptides are based on naturally-occurring compounds found in the human body. Scientists isolate the “active component” of the compound and whip it up in a lab by stringing together the right amino acids. Many of these peptides are available for purchase online, strictly “for research purposes.” But people are using them.

Are these safe for humans? Are they effective?

Mark, I would love if you did a write-up on BPC-157 and LL-37 with regards to gut health. I’m surprised with all your articles on collagen peptides you haven’t written once about “synthetic” peptides. Thanks!

Sure.

Let Me Cover PBC-157 First….

BPC-157 is a partial reconstruction of a string of 15 amino acids that’s already found in Body Protection Compound, a naturally occurring healing compound the body produces. Its creators took the natural BPC and figured out the most “biologically active” section of its amino acid chain, then synthesized that section alone. You can find the real thing in human stomach juice (and presumably throughout the body doing its job). You can buy the synthetic version online.

What Does BPC-157 Allegedly Do?

It enhances healing and recovery from injury. In one study, BPC-157-treated Achilles’ tendon tissues were more resistant to injury, spread more quickly on a petri dish, and recovered faster than untreated tendon tissues.

In another rat study, their cecums—the beginning of the large intestine—were perforated. Applying BPC-157 enhanced healing, stopped bleeding, and sped up recovery.

It counteracts NSAID toxicity. BPC-157 blocks aspirin-induced bleeding and improves healing of NSAID-mediated lesions in the gut, brain, and liver.

Another rat study even used BPC-157 to improve healing from a spinal cord injury. BPC rats regained functional autonomy, had better control over their tails, and were less spastic.

It can treat periodontal disease, reversing inflammation and reducing bone loss.

It can treat colitis, reducing gut inflammation and restoring mucosal integrity.

Briefly looking through all the anecdotes online, most people are using this peptide to heal joint or tissue injuries, which seems to be the best use. Ben Greenfield swears it healed his tennis elbow and hamstring damage. I even saw one person who used it to improve brain health and function after years of stimulant abuse. Some research does show that BPC-157 can restore dopaminergic function in the brain. Some are even reporting restored sensitivity to stimulants (although using a healing peptide just to restore your ability to get high off Adderall again seems counterproductive).

What Are the Downsides?

It must be subcutaneously injected for maximal efficacy. This isn’t as hard as it looks (millions of diabetics do it every day) but some people are really nervous around needles. Orally-active BPC-157 is available, but I’m not sure how it compares.

There is the small problem of the total lack of published human studies. If there are any, I didn’t see them. The animal studies are impressive, though, and the fact that the peptide chain does naturally occur in our bodies suggests it’s relatively safe, but we don’t know for sure.

A big problem is that you can’t verify the purity of the products available online. You have to read reviews, know the right people, and do the research. These aren’t legally intended for human consumption, so there’s no testing authority regulating the safety and content of these products.

Now For LL-37….

LL-37 is an anti-microbial peptide found naturally in people. It’s heavily involved in the immune response, and its role in health isn’t very clear. It isn’t consistently “good” or “bad.” For instance, its presence can suppress tumor growth in colon and gastric cancer, but it’s been shown to promote tumor growth in ovarian, lung, and breast cancers. But it’s also able to bind to and negate the effects of lipopolysaccharide, the bacterial endotoxin secreted by many gut pathogens, and selectively target apoptotic white blood cells while leaving viable ones unaffected.

Why Are People Using It?

There are online forums populated by people who are using this peptide to heal gut issues, deal with inflammatory diseases, and treat autoimmunity—or, they’re at least buying the peptide, injecting it, and hoping that it works and not always following up with the results. I’m skeptical about using these as justification to experiment. As one recent paper put it, LL-37 is a tiny peptide with huge effects:

Some of the functions of LL-37 are anti-inflammatory, particularly those involved in blocking Gram-negative signaling pathways through TLR4. However, in the context of the inflammatory response, this peptide may also provide proinflammatory signals that can propagate inflammation, stimulate type I IFN production, and result in induction of autoimmune diseases. Further research is needed to fully understand the big effects of this little peptide on immune system function so that potential therapeutic uses can be explored.

Sticking Points With LL-37

Much of this could be a guilt by association situation: LL-37 is often found elevated at disease sites and in diseases states because it’s part of the inflammatory response. It isn’t necessarily causing the disease. But the immune response is a delicate one with huge ramifications. I’d be very careful with injecting a peptide that the body normally produces in times of acute inflammation. That sounds a lot like trying to attempt top-down regulation of innate immunity—a decidedly bottoms-up process. Probably better to wait for human trials rather than rely on positive anecdotes from unsourced forum posts. I’m not saying these people aren’t helping themselves with this compound. I’m saying the risk of complications or unwanted effects would be too high for me.

That’s it for today, folks. Thanks for reading and be sure to comment down below. Do you have any experience using these synthetic peptides? How about any others?

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jesseneufeld · 5 years

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Dear Mark: Synthetic Peptides

Are these safe for humans? Are they effective?

Sure.

Let Me Cover PBC-157 First….

What Does BPC-157 Allegedly Do?

In another rat study, their cecums—the beginning of the large intestine—were perforated. Applying BPC-157 enhanced healing, stopped bleeding, and sped up recovery.

It counteracts NSAID toxicity. BPC-157 blocks aspirin-induced bleeding and improves healing of NSAID-mediated lesions in the gut, brain, and liver.

Another rat study even used BPC-157 to improve healing from a spinal cord injury. BPC rats regained functional autonomy, had better control over their tails, and were less spastic.

It can treat periodontal disease, reversing inflammation and reducing bone loss.

It can treat colitis, reducing gut inflammation and restoring mucosal integrity.

What Are the Downsides?

Now For LL-37….

Why Are People Using It?

Sticking Points With LL-37

That’s it for today, folks. Thanks for reading and be sure to comment down below. Do you have any experience using these synthetic peptides? How about any others?

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armyhealth9-blog · 5 years

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[Transcript] – The Ultimate Guide To Freediving, Legal Blood Doping, Wim Hof Breathing, Increasing Your Breathhold Time, Underwater Ear Equalizing, Spearfishing & Much More!

Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/biohacking-podcasts/hold-breath-longer/

[0:00:00] Introduction

[0:01:18] Podcast Sponsors

[0:03:52] Meeting Ted Harty

[0:08:37] What happens to the body during free diving?

[0:12:04] Mammalian Dive Reflex

[0:18:54] The Connection Between the Spleen and Breath Holding/Free Diving

[0:24:22] The Benefits of Free Diving

[0:29:58] Tips for Increasing Breath Hold Time

[0:33:39] Podcast Sponsors

[0:36:36] What an apnea table is and the difference between CO2 and O2 apnea?

[0:38:33] The Wonka Table

[0:44:32] Would you do a table while exercising?

[0:48:39] Breath Work In Between Dives

[0:53:08] Valsalva and Frenzel Breathing Technique

[0:58:19] Demonstration of The Frenzel Breathing Technique

[1:02:31] Ted’s and Wim Hof Breathwork

[1:06:47] The Bohr Effect

[1:12:42] Exercise and Regimen for Freedivers

[1:26:21] Courses Offered by Ted Harty

[1:29:13] Closing the Podcast

[1:30:23] End of Podcast

Ted: And you talk to people that freedive and they get all starry-eyed and they’re just like, “Oh, it’s just amazing. You’d be down there.” When you’re not a freediver, you’re like, “How can being underwater and drowning and suffocating be relaxing?” Well, when you do it right, you don’t feel like you’re drowning. You’re completely relaxed. You’re weightless. It’s not like anything else I’ve certainly ever done, and you talk to people that do it and they all swear by it.

Ben: I have a master’s degree in physiology, biomechanics, and human nutrition. I’ve spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet from SEALFit Kokoro, Spartan Agoge, and the world’s toughest mudder, the 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science, search the globe for the world’s top experts in performance, fat loss, recovery, gut hormones, brain, beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

Well, hello. I had a blast on today’s episode with my buddy, Ted Harty, where we talk about freediving and breath-holding and spearfishing and a whole lot more. Even if you absolutely detest water, there are some very interesting takeaways in this particular show.

Now, a couple of quick things. This podcast is brought to you by Kion, which is my playground for all things health and wellness. What I’ve done is created this company to scratch my own itch whenever I find a cool new ingredient or some brand new molecule that can make your life better, whether it’s recovery or performance or digestion or fat loss or muscle gain or blood sugar control, you name it. I actually create these formulations. They’re the shotgun formulations of supplements, functional foods, bars, coffees. Everything is over there. It’s all research backed. It’s all real-world tested and designed to empower you to live a very fulfilling life, pain-free, operating with a brain and body that works the way it’s supposed to. So, you get 10% off of anything at Kion. Very simple. You go to getkion.com. That’s getK-I-O-N.com and the discount code that you can use over at Kion is BGF10. So, you go to getkion.com. BGF10 saves you 10% site-wide. How do you like that?

This podcast is also brought to you by Joovv. Joovv is the giant red light panel that I use in my office. I pull down my pants. I walk in front of that thing. It increases my skin health, my collagen and elastin production, warms my joints up, reduces pain, reduces inflammation, causes this big nitric oxide flush from my whole body for if I’m going to go work out or maybe in the evening go make a little love. It also, speaking of making love, increases testosterone production, guys, if your balls get exposed to this thing.

Not only that, but they have this brand new Joovv Go, this Joovv Go. It’s this tiny little handheld device that you can take, as the name implies, anywhere on the go. Same medical grade power as the bigger Joovv devices but it’s wireless, it’s rechargeable. It’s wonderful to have in your bag when you’re traveling. I actually lay in bed at night reading Harry Potter with it tucked between my balls or on my stomach. There, I said it. Those are my two favorite ways to use the new Joovv Go. You can get a nice little bonus gift with your Joovv, any of their models, if you go to joovv.com/ben. That’s J-O-O-V-V.com/ben and use code BEN at checkout.

Hey, folks. About two years ago, I wrote an article called, “How Breath-Holding, Blood-Doping, Shark-Chasing, Free-Diving & Ketosis Can Activate Your Body’s Most Primal Reflex.” I wrote that after I began to get involved with freediving and spearfishing, which I did when I discovered this book, this again was a couple of years ago, by an author named James Nestor. The name of the book was “Deep: Freediving, Renegade, Science, and What The Oceans Tell Us about Ourselves.” It was a great book and it got me so interested in this concept of freediving and spearfishing that I decided to hunt down one of the best people in the U.S. to actually teach me how to do this. So, I hired this guy named Ted Harty from Immersion Freediving in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to certify me in freediving so that I could then learn how to spearfish and also how to increase my breath-hold, get better at equalizing underwater, be able to dive more than 15 feet, which I could never do in my life without getting ear pain and I couldn’t figure out how to equalize the depth.

So, I hooked up with this guy named Ted Harty. He’s 6 feet tall. He’s 230 pounds. He’s like a big guy. He looks like a boxer not like a guy you’d expect to be diving an incredibly efficient oxygen capacity to depths deeper than most of us have ever gone. But he has cracked the code on this stuff. He opened up my eyes to a whole new world of freediving. I spent 96 hours of my life down in Florida getting trained by him in the classroom, in the pool, and eventually, in the ocean. Ted, what’s most interesting about him is, A, he holds the record for hypoxic underwater swimming in the pool. He can do seven full-lengths in the pool without a single breath, and he has anemia, which means his blood can’t deliver oxygen as efficiently to his muscles and brain as most of the world’s population. This means he has a relatively low blood hematocrit level, yet he still figured out how to crack the code on freediving with a condition that would leave most folks huffing and puffing for air after they climb a flight of stairs.

He was selected as the team captain for the U.S. freediving team at the Freediving World Championships. He’s also a scuba instructor. His wealth of knowledge is absolutely staggering when it comes to everything to do with breath-holding and freediving. Now, I interviewed him on the podcast a couple of years ago and we delved into everything from using static apnea tables to how cold and cold water could actually inhibit your ability to be able to hold your breath. We talked about his whole back story.

And today, we’re going to be diving into a lot more in terms of like the biology and the physiology of freediving, how to take bigger breaths, how to equalize properly. But if you want to hear Ted’s whole back story, because we’re going to spend more time on the freediving component than the back story component, then just go listen to my first podcast with Ted. What I’m going to do is I’m going to link to that first podcast with Ted and I’m also going to link to everything that we talk about on today’s show if you just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/freedivingpodcast. That’s benreenfieldfitness.com/freedivingpodcast.

Ted, welcome to the show, man.

Ted: I’m excited to be on the show and excited to chat with you, guys.

Ben: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I feel like I talked to you on a frequent basis because it seems like every time I’ve got the tiniest question about spearfishing gear or freediving or anything else, you’re just an email away. So, we tend to chat back and forth quite a bit, but I figured it was high time I actually got you back on the show because I’m going to be spearfishing next month down in Kona. And I know a lot of people are interested in this emerging knowledge of how good some of this stuff is for you. By the way, if you’re listening in and you just have no clue why the hell you’d want to get in the water and dive more than 15 feet and maybe grab a speargun and go hunt after tasty fish, we’re going to fill you in on the show.

Actually, Ted, I think that’d be a perfect jumping off point here or a perfect topic to dive into, pun intended, as we get going. What is it that happens to the body during freediving? Why is it that this is something that Olympic athletes are doing and people are now using to enhance their vagus nerve function? What’s the deal with the biological benefits of this?

Ted: Well, freediving is–I don’t need to tell you. It’s exploding right now. It’s getting super, super popular, so more and more people are getting into freediving. We see almost all of the scuba agencies now are jumping on the freediving bandwagon because–I mean, freediving is awesome. So, it does a lot of interesting things, like yoga is super popular. And if you go to almost any yoga class, one of the first things they’re going to do is they’re going to alter how you breathe. And guess what, we as freedivers do. We alter how we breathe. In fact, very similar to the breathing that we might do as a freediver is what you might do in yoga. So, one of the first things my students notice is when I start teaching them the breathing we use for free diving, they go to the breathing pattern for three minutes and everyone’s like, “Wow, I feel great. I feel totally relaxed,” because it works.

So, freediving is a way to access all of that stuff in the water, in the ocean, you get a chance to see the marine life, and unlike scuba, you get to be actually a part of it because you’re not this loud, mechanical thing that’s swimming through the water. You’re actually freediving, holding your breath, and it’s a lot of fun. It is something you’ve never tried. Now, it’s easier than never to get involved in the sport.

Ben: Yeah, that’s actually one of the things I like the most is I’ll fish from a boat or I’ll fish from the shore with a fly-fishing rod or a reel and you’re kind of blind fishing. You’re throwing your hook in there. You may or may not get a legal fish or a non-catch and release fish that you could actually go home and cook up. And then you put on your wet suit and you put on your mask and you dive into the water with an actual speargun, and all of a sudden, you’re down there in the coral, you have this amazing feeling of relaxation, all the worries of the world just slip away and you’re exercising, you’re cold, you’re holding your breath.

So, you’re tapping into all the benefits that we’re going to talk about when it comes to the mammalian dive reflex, which I’m going to ask you about and the spleen compression that happens when you dive deep. But even if you don’t get a fish, you feel amazing at the end of a couple of hours of spearfishing just because you’re looking at beautiful coral and seeing amazing nature and scenery and swimming with the fish that swim up to you because you’re not in your foreign-looking scuba diving gear.

And then when you do see a fish, let’s say you see a big group or that you want to go after, it’s not like you’re on the edge of the shore like blindly throwing the hook in hoping that that fish is the one that bites. You just go and hunt that fish, which is amazing. You hunt it, you get it, you bring it to the surface or you put it on your stringer and then go home and have a fish cooked.

Yeah. For me, it’s just way, way better than regular fishing. But let’s get into the physiology here. Can you talk to me specifically–let’s start off with the mammalian dive reflex? What is that and why would we want to activate that?

Ted: The mammalian dive reflex is it’s genetically coded in every human being on the planet. Dolphins, seals and whales are mammals. We, as human beings, are mammals. So, dolphins, seals and whales are full-time residents of the water. We are part-time residents of the water. So, dolphins, seals and whales, one of the reasons they can dive so incredibly deep and do all these things that they can do is because they have something called the mammalian dive reflex, and it’s absolutely something that we have, too. One of the things that I or other instructors will do in a freediving class is the reason that we can get anyone to hold their breath for two to three minutes is I know how to reach into the body, press the button, turn the knobs, adjust the dials to your actual freediving physiology and make that dive reflex come out.

Now, everyone has the dive reflex but it’s considered like–it’s graded, right? My dive reflex is much stronger than yours because I dive all the time, yet you compare me to a world record freediver, their dive reflex is going to be much stronger than mine. Now, the reflex itself is composed of several components. And so, I’ll go through those. One of them is bradycardia, which is just a fancy name for rapid onset of the lowering of the heart rate. You’ll see the heart rate drop upwards of 50% as soon as the body has a contraction. The contraction is happening. You’re holding your breath for a certain amount of time, your body is going to say, “Hey, maybe you should take a breath,” and it’s going to trigger contractions.

Contractions feel like, if you’ve never had one, it’s like a hiccup. If you hold your breath long enough, you’ll have one. It’s actually the body trying to draw that–make you take a breath, but we as freedivers are going to say, “No, not quite yet.” Now, that contraction is going to be obviously trying to make you take a breath. So, one of the things that the body does is now that it realizes that you’re not going to breathe, it’s going to say, “Hey, let’s lower the demand of oxygen.” So, it actually drops that heart rate up to 50 beats to try to beat more oxygen, conserve the oxygen. That’s a very helpful part of the dive reflex.

There are several other components. One of the things that happen is the blood vessels in the fingers and the toes will constrict, and the idea is this trying to push all the blood to our core where we need it; heart, lung and brains. That’s also why we get the pee reflex. Freedivers and scuba divers are probably familiar with the fact that as soon as they get in the water, they feel like they have to pee. Now, it’s even stronger among freedivers.

Ben: So, that’s what’s going on.

Ted: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. I mean, it happens even when you’re just cold in general. What’s happening is your peripheral organs or your peripheral extremities are constricting, and when that happens, it actually–does it cause like a vasodilation of the vessels leading into the areas responsible for urination or how exactly is that working?

Ted: Well, it’s pushing all of the fluid from the blood vessels that are shrinking are coming into the core. And then at that point, they’re going, “Hey, there’s too much fluid in here. We got to get rid of that.” And that’s going to trigger that urge to pee.

Ben: Okay.

Ted: And it’s definitely stronger with freedivers than the scuba divers. You still get it both ways but the breath-holding has access–does it as well. So, for me, if I do a deep dive, like let’s say I’m teaching a class and I’m doing 100 plus foot dive, almost every time I come up, I’ll have urge to go to the bathroom. It was just tiny but it’s like almost every time.

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: That depth exacerbates it more.

Ben: Me too. Me too. Now, I’ve talked a lot in the show before about the vagus nerve and the importance of vagal nerve tone to have a healthy nervous system response, healthy feedback to the heart, healthy balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. A lot of people track heart rate variability. Now, high heart rate variability is a good sign you’re recovered, that your nervous system is ready to train or ready for stress. And in many people who have poor vagal nerve function, one of the main reasons their HRV is low is because of that poor vagal nerve function.

Now, from what I understand, when we activate them a million-dive reflex, we somehow trigger that vagus nerve to become more tone because that’s what’s produced now bradycardia, that lowering of the heart rate that you talked about. Now, when it comes to things like heart rate variability or the vagus nerve, have you looked into that or tracked that at all yourself?

Ted: That’s really something that I don’t–I mean, I know all that you’re saying is true but it’s not something that I have a lot of area of expertise on. Certainly, freedivers, we talk about that. I know those things happen when we’re holding our breath, but it’s not something I’ve done a lot of research into.

Ben: Yeah. It’d be fascinating to see a study of freedivers and heart rate variability because I’d guess theirs is profoundly higher than the general population. I mean, people who do like Wim Hof breathing, which I want to ask you about here in a bit.

Ted: Yeah.

Ben: Breath-holding get that, but I think once you add in that cold-water exposure, getting the face under which you don’t get in like a cryotherapy chamber, you’ve got to get into the water, you see that improvement in vagal nerve tone that I think is very impressive.

Ted: It would be interesting to see if I could get some of my competitor freediver friends during our competition where they’re going to be going through this a lot, as more and more of them have the ability to track–it’s a lot easier to track that now than it used to be.

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: That would be something interesting. I would reach out to those guys and see what happens.

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: So, if I can do that, I will let you interpret the results [00:18:24] ______.

Ben: Yeah, it would be very interesting. We just get them an Oura Ring, which is the ring that will–well, you know what? The Oura Ring tracks it during sleep. It wouldn’t track it during the actual dive. We could see what’s happening during a night of sleep afterwards. The other way to do it would be the WHOOP wristband would do it. That’s one that could track it in real time. They could put on this wristband during their dives and I’m pretty sure that’s water resistant to 100 meters or so. So, that’s about as deep as most of the folks are going to be.

Now, what about the spleen? There was a research study, it’s a relatively new research study but it looked at what happens when just dry land, not even in the water, you hold your breath. In this study, they did five maximal apneas, like five maximal breath-holds without being in the water. And what they noted in these folks was an improvement in terms of red blood cell production and blood flow in and out of the spleen. So, what’s the connection between the spleen and breath-holding and the spleen and diving?

Ted: Yes. That is another part of that mammalian dive reflex. So, you’ve got bradycardia, you’ve got the blood shunting, and then the spleen contraction. I had first heard of that probably maybe 15 years ago. They had done some–they had a performance freediving, had done some studies and saw that. The first thing they did was they put Tanya Streeter in a hyperbaric chamber which simulates going to depth. They measured, I believe it was a 20% decrease in volume of the spleen, and they also measured increase in other hematocrit. So, the spleen is a reservoir for red blood cells, it’s like the hospital so when that thing compresses, it’s shooting more red blood cells in the system, increasing your oxygen carrying capacity.

So, then the researcher said, “Oh, it’s not because of breath-holding. It was just because of the pressure of being in the hyperbaric chamber that did it.” Then later, they did an experiment with Mandy Cruickshank where she literally just laid down on the table and held her breath. And just holding her breath on dry land compresses the spleen. So, the idea is this is another reflex that’s designed to increase our ability to hold our breath because, in essence, this is legal blood doping, is what it is. This is increasing that hematocrit levels so that now the body can be better, can transport and store more oxygen.

One of the things I’ve always laughed about is when I talk about this in the program, in the intermediate course, I get into the spleen and the contractions and all this sort of stuff, is I always envisioned, “One of these days, you’re going to turn on the Olympics and you’re going to see this sprinter and he’s going to have a little Immersion logo on his uniform and he’s going to be doing his warm-up just like everyone else except he’s going to be holding his breath.” Why? Because he’s trying to trigger that splenic contraction. He’s then going to win the gold medal. And then when they drug test him, they’re going to be, “Yeah, your hematocrit level is way too high,” and they’re going to test all his blood and there’s going to be nothing in it and then they’re going to be like, “We don’t know what happened.” Because it’s legal blood doping.

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: Now, what we don’t know, and I would be interested to find out maybe listeners or you or whatever, is we know that in elite athletes, just the aspect of holding your breath is going to induce a splenic contraction. I can guarantee you if one of your listeners holds your breath; their spleen isn’t going to contract because the body is going to be going, “What in the heck are you doing? You need to breathe.” Whereas in an elite athlete, they’re doing this all the time, so one of the things that happen is the more that you freedive, your body starts to work for you. It starts to do all these things to help you do better.

One of the reasons I can do what I do is because my dive reflex is strong, whereas if I’ve got a brand-new student, their body is going, “Why aren’t you breathing anymore?” That’s what I mean by it’s a [00:22:31] ______. The more that you do it, the stronger that dive reflex becomes and it allows you to perform better as a freediver.

Ben: Yeah, but before I bought that book by James Nestor called “Deep” that I was talking about earlier, what it got me interested in the first place was, I believe it was an article James wrote. It was like New York Times or Wall Street Journal or one of these accessible websites that you can read news articles on. He wrote about how Olympic athletes were actually getting into freediving as a way to enhance performance, particularly, because of the red blood cell production or the “blood doping” or the “legal blood doping” that you were just alluding to. And just so you, the listener, understand what’s going on here–there’s a long time. My background is in exercise physiology, and physiologists long believe that the spleen was like this redundant organ that shared the liver’s function of destroying old red blood cells in the liver, and it actually has this secondary function because huge volumes of blood circulate through it so it acts as like this reservoir of blood. And when you compress it, you get this big release of red blood cells.

I mean, there are other things that they could do that, like we know that getting into the sauna after a workout when you’re already hot, that doesn’t compress the spleen but it does increase your red blood cell production and your erythropoietin production. You could, and I do this sometimes, I’ll do breathe holds in the sauna to double up on that effect and get my spleen to jump into the game, too. But it still doesn’t really match what you get once you introduce the compression that occurs when you’re actually in the water and diving the depth.

Would you say there are any other benefits besides the spleen, the mammalian dive reflex, the vagus nerve, and just the freaking enjoyment that comes out of being in the water?

Ted: I mean, it’s just overall wellbeing. You talk to people that freedive and they get all starry-eyed and they’re just like, “Oh, it’s just amazing. You’d be down there.” It’s just completely–when you’re not a freediver, you’re like, “How can being underwater and drowning and suffocating be relaxing?” Well, when you do it right, you don’t feel like you’re drowning. You’re completely relaxed, you’re weightless. It’s not like anything else I’ve certainly ever done and you talk to people that do it and they all swear by it.

Ben: Yeah. I guess the only other thing to consider here would be for people who like to exercise to lose weight or to burn calories, when you combine the cold with the rigors of diving down and coming back up and diving down and coming back up, and then if you’re spearfishing, you combine that with the resistance training aspect of having to pull the big elastic band on that roller. Basically, what you’re doing is exercise in a giant liquid cryotherapy chamber. Have you ever seen any studies or anything looks like how many calories you would burn per hour doing something like freediving?

Ted: I heard or saw some study but that was like seven, eight years ago and it seemed very anecdotal, but I think it was categorized in spearfishing but it was in this report that I saw, it was one of the highest ones. But I will tell you, it is exhausting. Of all the workouts that I do when I teach a class, I come home and I’m exhausted.

Ben: Oh, man.

Ted: Three hours diving up and down that line exactly because you not only have the work, I’m doing all the dives, your body is trying to generate your body heat to keep that up.

Ben: Okay.

Ted: It’s very challenging.

Ben: Dude, I just found the study. It is 11–I’m sorry, 1,120 calories per hour that you burn freediving. I mean, to put that into context, playing basketball is 400 calories an hour, dancing is 200 calories an hour, the steeplechase is 700 calories, hunting which I love to do like bowhunting, that’s 175 calories per hour. Even boxing in the ring during a boxing match is 840 calories per hour. So, freediving is like basically–I’m looking at this list, the only thing close to it is people who are racing like running races and are doing their 5Ks and somewhere in the range 14 to 16 minutes like that matches freediving. That’s nuts.

Ted: Yeah, freediving.

Ben: That’s crazy.

Ted: Yeah. I wonder if you know. So, I understand that, 1, being in the water, your body generates a lot of energy to try to keep the temperature normal. That does a lot of work. But I guess what I don’t understand, if you have any insight on, is how does the breath-holding part of it–I mean, it certainly seemed reasonable but it makes it more difficult, but I’m not sure how that translates into a calorie burn.

Ben: I don’t think the breath-hold would translate into a calorie burn aside from a shift in metabolic efficiency like when oxygen is not present–and this is actually in relation to the ketogenic diet component of this which is very interesting. When oxygen is not present, you can tend to shift towards a little bit more glycolysis while you’re in the water. And when you do that, you can increase what’s called the glycogen sparing effect, meaning that once you’re done with the dive, your body actually becomes very efficient at sparing carbohydrates, particularly via what’s called beta-oxidation or burning of fats, and also the production of ketones to allow you–ketones are the primary source of fuel for the diaphragm, for the liver, for the heart, and for the brain.

One could argue that those are used just as much as the muscles during freediving. And so not only would you increase your fat burning capacity once you’re done with the diving, but also this would go to say–and there’s anecdotal evidence from guys like Dominic D’agostino who is able to double his breath-hold time from–he did it from two to four minutes. He didn’t do any training. All he did was shift himself into ketosis.

I don’t know if you remember, but when I went down to Immersion Freediving and took your course, I took those ketone supplements. I experiment for my breath-hold with and without ketone supplements, and I had like a 40 to 50 seconds increase in breath-hold time, not even like shifting to a high-fat diet or changing my diet dramatically but just by using ketones. And so not only are you enhancing your body’s own ability to use ketones but one could argue, and again I’ve seen long-term studies on this, that if you were to supplement with ketones or be on a ketogenic diet, you could actually increase your breath-hold via that method as well.

Ted: Yeah. That’s interesting. I’m curious if any other elite divers are playing around with that.

Ben: I’m sure we’ll get some divers listening in. So, if you do diving and listening and you’ve experimented with ketosis, leave a comment over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/freedivingpodcast.

In the absence of ketones though, what are some other ways that we can take bigger breaths or hold our breaths for a longer period of time? What are your ninja secrets for getting a longer breath hold time?

Ted: It is a couple of things. First off, one way is just take down–if you want to increase your breath-hold, whether you’re a freediver, spearfisherman, and [00:30:23] ______ or whatever you do underwater, you take down more fuel. So, simply taking a bigger breath. Now the average person, if they take a breath, it’s all from the chest. You probably remember from the class, we’re doing this thing where you do diaphragm, then chest, then shoulders, then neck, right? Your lungs are basically trapped inside of a cage, the rib cage. And everyone says, “Oh, my lungs aren’t that big.” Well, it’s not really your lungs that determine how big a breath you take; it’s the flexibility of that rib cage. So, when I teach my students to take a breath, I teach in a very specific manner and it’s designed to increase the size of that cage. So, if I could somehow mechanically grab your rib cage and pull it apart so it was doubled in size, your lungs could fill that up. It’s not the lungs that are limiting you, it’s the cage.

One, learning to take a bigger breath just by using the diaphragm, chest, shoulders will make a huge difference. Typically, about 20% to 30% is what my students will do. It’s hard to demonstrate that over the podcast but I do have a free course specifically on how to take 20% to 30% bigger breath. So, absolutely on that. One thing is, you want to hold your breath longer? Take a bigger breath.

Ben: By the way, for taking a bigger breath, is that that strategy that you talk about where–and I know you have a whole course on this that I’ll link to on the podcast show notes but in a nutshell, the quick 20-second overview, you’re basically starting by breathing in from your diaphragm and then you continue that breath going up to your chest, and then you continue that breath up into the shoulders, and then you look up towards the sky, and just like you’re sipping through a straw to suck the rest of the breath in. Is that the technique you’re referring to?

Ted: Yeah, yeah. Diaphragm, chest, shoulders. Doing that just big, big, big breath. That definitely makes a huge difference. I have students who have been freediving, who’s been spearfishing for 20, 30 years and they always look bug-eyed afterwards, “That’s the biggest breath I’ve ever taken.” Like, yeah.

Ben: Yeah. And you can do it while you’re–I mean, you taught me how to do this while you’re essentially prone in the water, looking down, floating in your wetsuit, all you do is you–and you have a snorkel in. By the way, for those of you who don’t know, you do wear a snorkel when you freedive so you’re able to breathe as you’re looking down into the water at the fish or the line you’re going to travel down if you’re freediving. You can actually do that whole scenario if you think about it while you’re prone in the water and at the very end of the breath, you’re on your stomach but you just shove your head forward and suck, suck, suck some more, right?

Ted: Yeah. That’s how it works. I always tell people, competitive freediving is–spearfishing and recreational freediving are not the same as competitive freediving. People tend to want to blow off competitive freedivers as this weird little subset and my point is like, “Look, competitive freedivers, we know how to dive really deep, we know how to stay down a really long time.” You should be very interested in how we do that. And competitive freedivers, they have very specific training methodologies they go through that allow them to do that. So, it definitely makes sense. It doesn’t mean you want to be a better freediver but if you want to improve your performance as a freediver, you should do all the things competitive freedivers do because it works.

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What about the use of apnea, like static apnea tables? I’m going to link to some CO2 and O2 apnea tables in the show notes, but a lot of people don’t know what those are. Can you explain what an apnea table is and what the difference would be between CO2 and O2 apnea?

Ted: Yeah. I’ll explain what the tables are and I’m going to explain what, in my opinion, is the most time effective and efficient way to do this. Now, so a table is–you hang out with freedivers, they talk about doing tables. Table simply means you’re doing a series of breath-holds. Oftentimes, it’s eight breath-holds in a row. A table basically has two variables. It tells you how long you get to breathe up for, and then it tells you how long you breathe for.

Let’s look at a CO2 table. Well, the reason we do tables as freediving, we have to basically deal with two issues. We have to learn to tolerate low levels of oxygen because as we hold our breath, our oxygen level drops. When we consume that oxygen, CO2 is one of the waste products that’s created. When we exhale, we’re exhaling out that carbon dioxide. So, as our oxygen level drops, CO2 level is rising. We have to tolerate high levels of CO2 and low levels of oxygen.

So, a carbon dioxide table might say something like this. You breathe up for two minutes and then you hold your breath for two minutes. And then the next one, you breathe up for a minute and 45 and you hold your breath for two minutes, then you breathe up for a minute and 30, hold for two. A minute and 15, hold for two. A minute, hold for two. You’re getting less and less time and at the end, you could only breathe up for 15 seconds, hold your breath for two minutes, repeat it again. Fifteen seconds, breath up, hold for two. What’s happening is you’re only holding your breath for two minutes every time, but because you’re getting less and less time to breathe up, your carbon dioxide level is getting–your breath-hold starts with more CO2. So, therefore, at the end of the breath-hold, you’re going to have even more CO2.

That is your typical CO2 table. That was the way I was taught to do it, that’s the way I did it, but I have definitely found I think a much better way. I certainly didn’t create this. I first heard about it. It’s called the Wonka table. I believe it was from Freedive Paradise but that might not be exactly correct.

Ben: Why’d you call it Wonka table?

Ted: Well, Richard Wonka is the guy that invented it.

Ben: Not Willy?

Ted: Correct.

Ben: Okay.

Ted: It’s what I do and it’s what I teach all my students to do. There’s an inherent problem with the traditional CO2 table, and it’s as follows. If you remember I said the very last two, I said you breathe up for 15 seconds and then you hold your breath for two minutes, and then you breathe up for 15 seconds again and you hold your breath for two minutes. Now, if you have 15 seconds to breathe between two 2-minute breath-holds, there is only one possible way you can do that and you’re going to be breathing like this–

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: As fast as you can. You are going to be hyperventilating your head off. The table is designed so there’s no other way for you to pass it than to hyperventilate. Now, hyperventilation dumps your CO2, drops your CO2 level more than any possible way of breathing out there. And let’s think back. What is the point of a CO2 table? It is supposed to teach you to tolerate high levels of CO2. Well, if that’s what it’s trying to do, why would it force you to breathe in such a way that dumps as much CO2 as humanly possible in that amount of time? In my opinion, those two things are counterintuitive. They don’t go together.

Ben: Right.

Ted: Right? Because you’re lowering your CO2 as much as possible right before you hold your breath and you’re trying to get high CO2. So, here’s the better way. Let’s walk through this. Imagine I was going to do two–let’s call it two minutes is what we’re doing, two-minute breath-hold. Beforehand, I’m going to take five breaths; one, two, three, four, five. And then I’m going to hold my breath for two minutes. But you know what? I’d like a little bit more CO2. I want to start with more CO2. So, instead of five breaths, do you understand if I took four breaths instead of five, I would start with a little bit more carbon dioxide because I had less time to get rid of it?

Ben: Right.

Ted: Well, if I wanted more than four, I could do three. And if I want more than that, I could do two. You want to get the most amount of CO2 possible? You’re only allowed one breath between the two breath-holds. There’s no way possible that you’re going to have more CO2 stored in your system than if you only take one breath in between the breaths. Okay? Here’s how this works. Now, this sounds crazy, but I can–me and entry-level students can do this because here’s all I’m asking, and this is the way that I teach them to do it. All you need is a stopwatch. You don’t need an app. You don’t need to log on anywhere. It’s very simple.

Ben: Okay.

Ted: You’re going to sit on a couch.

Ben: And what you’re about to teach us is basically this Wonka table?

Ted: Yeah, yeah.

Ben: Okay.

Ted: CO2 table, Wonka table. You’re going to sit on a couch. Do this on dry land and not on the water and no risk of–so you may do this on dry land. You’re going to hold your breath. At some point, it’s going to be uncomfortable and you’re going to feel a contraction. I don’t care if that takes you 20 seconds. I don’t care if maybe you already got some freediving experience that might go for two minutes. It doesn’t matter what is. I don’t care. But as soon as you feel that contraction, that first hiccup, that first contraction, it’s now becoming difficult. And so, you’re going to start your stopwatch, and you’re going to only deal with that uncomfortableness for 15 seconds.

Ben: Fifteen seconds?

Ted: Anyone can do that.

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: At the end of the 15 seconds, you’re going to take one breath and you’re going to do it very specifically like this. You’re going to do a slow inhale using your teeth and tongue to make that sound as you exhale. So, you’re going to go–

Ben: That’s the exhale.

Ted: And then big breath, and hold again. At some point, I don’t care if it’s 15 seconds or 2 minutes, it’s going to become difficult. What are you going to feel? Contraction. You feel that contraction, start your stopwatch and you do 15 seconds. By the way, this is going to trigger–when you do that exhalation, you are going to get a massive urge to go to the bathroom. So, if you have not gone to the bathroom before you start this, you will not be able to finish this. So, do yourself a favor, go to the bathroom before you start, then you’re good to go unless you’re going to quit. Now, the goal is when I do these–let’s say I do six. And if I’m feeling saucy, feeling good, maybe I’ll do eight. But if I can do six, I’ll still pat myself in the shoulder and say, it was a good job.

Now, what’s great about this is it’s only 15 seconds. When you took your class with me, I assure you, when you were doing statics in the pool, you went through way more than 15 seconds of uncomfortableness, right?

Ben: Right.

Ted: You’ll do probably minutes, minutes with an S on it when you’re like, “Good Lord, I want to breathe.” So, anyone can accomplish what I just laid out. And the idea is if it’s super easy for you, awesome. Do 20 seconds, do 30. You’re just moving that number and just making it bigger based on your ability level.

Now, the other thing I like about the CO2 table is when I used to do your traditional training, some of those tables would take me an hour and 15 minutes.

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: You can do this in 10 minutes. Basically, you’re skipping all the point where it’s easy and you’re just getting right at the point of where it sucks.

Ben: Yeah. No. The last time I talked to you, you said that you’re doing some of this stuff while you were exercising, like walking or light jogging. Is this something you can do, say if you’re out on a walk or is there too much risk of hypoxia and passing out?

Ted: No, you’re doing this right on the couch.

Ben: Okay.

Ted: You’re not doing anything else. Now, you can incorporate breath-holding into, in essence, any exercise. For instance, when I was really into competitive freediving and trying to train, one of the things that I noticed is I was stuck at about 200 feet for maybe a year and a half because I couldn’t equalize any deeper because that kind of depth equalizing is very complicated. And eventually, I worked through that and then I started doing 65, 70 meters, and then my limit became my legs. The lactic acid because I’m doing dives for let’s say the last two–that’s two and a half minutes that I have no access to–no other options than what I took down and that you’re generating a lot of lactic acid.

One of the things that was my weakness was my legs couldn’t do it anymore. They were done. So, I would do lactic tolerance training or I’m doing almost any typical breath exercise you would do at the gym except I do super lightweight and I’ll hold my breath for 30 seconds, and that’s as many as I can, as fast as I can for 30 seconds trying to get that extreme lactic build up. So, I would do a lot of stuff with my quads and it’s brutal because you’re not breathing. You get a lot of funny looks at the gym. I would definitely–anytime you breath-hold and stop, there is a risk of blacking out. So, I would always try to do these on seated equipment. Right?

Ben: Okay. Yeah.

Ted: So, I’m sitting down in some way because in most of the gyms, they’re going to have places where you can do that, right?

Ben: Right.

Ted: I’ve heard some nice stories from people on treadmills doing this. You can imagine that can go really bad. If you [00:46:39] ______ and do it, recumbent bike is the better option.

Ben: Yeah, exactly.

Ted: I would do things that the–I’d do apnea walks and jog. I incorporate a lot of that stuff but basically, my world is–I don’t have access to oxygen so if I want to train as–why am I breathing while I’m training?

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: Trying to get it as close to the world I operate in as possible.

Ben: Yeah. I’m a big fan of books like Patrick McKeown’s “Oxygen Advantage,” or there’s another one by Anders Olsson. I forget the name of his book. It’s “The Power of Your Breath,” I think is the name of it. And these guys go into the value of training yourself how to engage primarily in nasal breathing even up to relatively intense periods of exercise because that enhances oxygenation, humidifies the air, warms the air that you’re breathing in and keeps you from activating those baroreceptors in your chest that can tend to cause like a sympathetic nervous system cortisol response.

And so, a lot of times, what all do is I’ll go on a walk and I’ll have certain periods where I hold my breath for as long as possible, but the entire walk is breathing through my nose. And even the recoveries after my breath-hold are through my nose. I find that that alone, just going on those long walks seems to do a really good job with my breath-hold time, even the absence of regular apnea breath-hold practice. But I need to try these Wonka tables that you’re talking about now. Maybe I’ll make that part of a sauna session or something like, but that’s very interesting. I hadn’t heard of these tables before.

Ted: Yeah. It’s effective. It’s time efficient. I always tell people in the class, is whenever you see me clap my hands, I get really excited about something and say, “This is going to be awesome.” Eventually, you learn that when I do that, I’m about to do something–you’re about to do something awful. These Wonka tables, they’re awesome. They are awesome.

Ben: Yeah. Now, what about when you’re actually in the water? Let’s say somebody is out there in the water. They either want to dive deep or they’re spearfishing and they want to go down after a fish, maybe it’s–let’s say someone is used to being able to go 12 to 15 feet deep and they want to now go like, let’s just say 15 to 30 feet deep. Now, when they’re there on the surface of the water looking down on their stomach, in addition to that breath that we’re talking about where you start from your diaphragm and move your way up all the way up to your shoulders and suck in every last bit of oxygen, is there any type of breathwork that you can do in between dives or in between going down to fish that allows you to prepare for that dive in a manner that would allow you to hold your breath for a longer period of time, like is there a frequency? Like how many seconds in, how many seconds out or anything like that?

Ted: Yes. I would say the most important thing is when you–every freediving instructor is going to teach you a different way. Some instructors, they’ll teach you–argue that, “Oh, it should be this way and this way is better than that way.” And I’ll be honest, I don’t think there really any way is that much different than any other way as long as you’re doing one thing, any freediving instructor is going to teach you diaphragmatic breathing. So, that’s absolutely what we want to be doing. And the other way to put it is you want to be conscious on how you breathe. The average person hasn’t taken any training, freediver, spearfisherman, they’re just breathing, however, they think they need to breathe. And I’m going to tell you that diaphragmatic breathing is going to be a huge improvement over that.

So, the idea is when I say diaphragmatic breathing, you want to–when you’re breathing in and out, if you’re going to put your hand on your chest and your hand on your stomach, the only thing you should feel moving is your stomach goes out and your stomach goes in. Your chest should be absolutely motionless. When I have students try this in class, no one can do this at first because we all are chest breathers. I mean, every infant is–you will look at an infant on their back and watch how they breathe, their belly goes up and down. They didn’t have to take a yoga class or a freediving class to learn diaphragmatic breathing. That’s just the way we are. As we get older for societal pressures, we are taught to never stick your stomach out. In fact, you’re supposed to walk around your stomach sucked in all the time so we lose that natural ability of diaphragmatic breathing.

But if you can teach yourself to do diaphragmatic breathing, the way you test is hand on your chest and hand on your stomach. You want to do a slow inhalation a couple of seconds, take a good breath and then just exhale. I like teeth and tongue to make this sound–so that I’m regulating how much air comes out.

Ben: And you can still do that with a snorkel in your mouth.

Ted: Snorkel. Yeah, absolutely.

Ben: Okay.

Ted: Snorkels in the mouth, teeth and tongue. I make that exact same sound and you just exhale to what’s comfortable, if it’s 5 seconds, 10 seconds, whatever. The main thing is to do where it’s comfortable. But what we’re doing is we are on purpose slowing our breathing down that’s going to slow our heart rate down. I can, when I’m out freediving, whatever I’m doing, I can 99% of the time breath like that. Now, can I sprint around like that? No, but if you’re doing things right, you shouldn’t be doing that because the more you raise your heart rate, the more you lower your bottom time. I’m breathing like that the entire time. I’m out there on the surface the whole time, slow, relaxed, diaphragmatic breathing just like what you would do at a yoga class. You walk out of a yoga class and you’re like, “Oh, my God, I feel so relaxed.” Why? Because you did diaphragmatic breathing for 15 minutes. That’s why you feel good.

Ben: Do you have a certain period of time where you’re doing the inhale and the exhale? Is it 5 seconds in, 10 seconds out or have rules like that?

Ted: It doesn’t matter. I mean, I typically do 2 seconds in, 10 seconds out, but what’s more–

Ben: Two in, 10 out.

Ted: Yeah. But what’s more important than the numbers is that it’s whatever is comfortable for you and that you are controlling your breathing instead of not thinking about it. Because if you’re not thinking about it, you’re going to be–having the tendency to breath more like that, which is going to increase the heart rate and just not be relaxing.

Ben: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Now, what about when it comes to the idea of getting down to that depth that you want to get to? A lot of people do, and this is what many of us are taught when we’re in the pool when we’re kids or whatever and we figure this out on our own, this whole Valsalva maneuver where you just plug your nose and go–trying to equalize that way. Why doesn’t that work when you get–I mean, for me once I get to about 15 feet or so, that doesn’t work. So, why doesn’t that work and what should we be doing instead?

Ted: Yeah. Valsalva is the way most people are taught to equalize. I, as a scuba instructor, that’s the way I teach people to equalize and it’s very simple. The reason scuba instructors do it is, one, they don’t really understand the difference between Valsalva and Frenzel and it’s very simple to teach. I’ve got a 12-year-old kid in a scuba class and I’m like, “Hey, little Johnny. Can you equalize your ears?” “Uh-huh.” “Okay. Can you pinch your nose, Johnny?” “Uh-huh.” “Now, blow your nose real hard.” He’s like, “Oh, my ears.” Exactly, right?

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: It’s called the pinch and blow method. You pinch your nose and you blow your nose, that equalizes your ears. Now, here’s where things get confusing, especially because we get a lot of scuba divers take the class. If you use Valsalva as a scuba diver, you can scuba dive to 200 feet using that. It’ll work fine. We run into issues–I’ve had scuba instructors take my class and get stuck at 15 feet. I’m trying to explain to them, “Look, man, you need to be doing Frenzel.” And they’re like, “Yeah, Ted. I’m a scuba instructor. I can breathe through my ears just fine,” and then they get stuck at 15 feet and they’re like, “Alright, what is this whole Frenzel thing?”

There’s another method of equalization called Frenzel that as freedivers, we have to be doing. Valsalva will typically stop working for a freediver around 50 or 30 feet–I mean, 15 to 30 feet.

Ben: Okay.

Ted: Now, you’ll see people go, “I can do Valsalva down to 50 feet.” Yeah, but they don’t dive down straight like a laser. They dive at a 45-degree angle and then every time they equalize, they have to turn their head up until their head’s at the surface then they can equalize and they turn back down. What a terribly inefficient way to get down to depth. If you want to go down straight like a laser just boom, boom, boom, pinch your nose and equalize every time, you have to be doing Frenzel.

Now, I’ll answer your question. Why doesn’t Valsalva work? Here’s why. When you’re doing a Valsalva–like imagine a scuba diver. So, scuba diver, when they go down to depths, typically they’re head up feet down. That’s the way that they go down. So, their head’s facing the surface. Every time you take a breath off your regulator as a scuba diver, your lungs are fully inflated. When your head is facing the surface, the air naturally wants to go to your ears because air rises. So, when you’re scuba diving, you’re in this position where your head up, the air naturally wants to go that way and so it’s very simple to equalize your ears. Now, as a freediver, we turn around. Now, our feet are facing the surface and our head is towards the bottom. So, when we started diving down, the air wants to go to our fins but we want it down here by our head. And what’s happening to the supply of air as we go down? It’s shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.

That’s why Valsalva doesn’t work. It’s squeezing the air. It’s squeezing and ever and ever-shrinking supply of air and trying to push it the way it doesn’t want to go. And that’s why it typically doesn’t work ’til around 15, 30 feet. If I remember in your class, in the beginning, you were doing Valsalva and you were stuck right at that depth. It didn’t matter how hard you pushed, didn’t matter what you did, you’re just stuck, right?

Ben: Right.

Ted: Freedivers need to be doing what’s called the Frenzel method of equalization. Valsalva takes the air that’s in your lungs, your throat is open, you’re compressing your chest and lung and stomach and you’re pushing that air into your ears. You can tell if you’re doing Valsalva very simply. Put your hand on your stomach, pinch your nose, equalize five times in a row. Boom, boom, boom. If you feel your chest compressing every time you’re doing that, you’re doing Valsalva. Frenzel, completely different animal. Frenzel takes the air that’s in your mouth and shoves it directly into your ears, and your throat is shut so your lungs are not involved or whatsoever and you’re doing this whole thing. They always say use your tongue as a piston and push the air into the Eustachian tubes. So, Frenzel doesn’t have that depth limitation.

Ben: By the way, that’s F-R-E-N-Z-E-L, right?

Ted: Correct.

Ben: Yup.

Ted: Yeah. And so that’s the method that freedivers have to do. It’s tricky to teach.

Ben: When I interrupted you, you were beginning to say how Frenzel would differ from Valsalva.

Ted: Well, yes. I mean, Frenzel, it takes the air that’s in your mouth as opposed to the air that’s in your lungs and you’re using your tongue to push that air into the Eustachian tube instead of compressing your chest and stomach and shoving that air into the ears.

Ben: Okay. Alright. So, the way that you would actually learn the Frenzel technique, and I know that you have courses on this online, you do one-on-one Skype sessions with people like you did it with me leading up to that freediving course that I did with you, but what’s the basic overview of what the Frenzel would sound like or look like or be accomplished?

Ted: It’s very, very, very tricky to teach. That’s why you should spend an hour with every student on Skype. Now, as you know, I don’t do that anymore. They get the online program and I love it. They just walk in the door and they can do Frenzel. It makes my life so much easier. I don’t have to do another 500 hours of Skype sessions. But the simple explanation–and sometimes it works, sometimes literally, they take it up instantaneously. So, if you want to try that, put your tongue in the position like you would make the T sound–if you think about that, the tip of your tongue is on the back of your teeth. The sides of your tongue are down the molars.

Frenzel is you put your tongue in that position, and if you can imagine what that does, is that creates like a sandwich. The tongue is the bottom part of the sandwich, the bottom loaf of bread, and the middle is the air that’s trapped in between your tongue, and then the top slice of bread is the roof of your mouth. What you’re trying to do is you put your tongue in that position, you shut your throat, you pinch your nose, and you try to push your tongue up to the roof of the mouth. So, what that’s going to do is it’s going to compress that air that’s stuck in there and it’s going to try to make it come out your nose, but your nose is pinched so it can’t go out that way. That’s why you’ll see the nostrils flare and then it will go into the ears.

So, you can try it with what I call the T Block, doing it like that. Another way you can do it is what’s called the K Block, when you make the K sound. The middle of your tongue is on the roof of the mouth. So, again, the same thing. You can start to make the K sound where the middle of your tongue is on the roof of your mouth, but instead of making the K sound, you don’t let that air go forward. Right when the middle of your tongue hits the top of the roof your mouth, the back of your tongue pushes up while you pinch the nose. And you can do it that way. So, those are two ways that people do that is the T Block or the K Block. And some people who can just–I tell them that and they’re like, “What’s the big fuss?” Some people pick it up quite easily but what’s difficult is if you’re a life-long Valsalver, then that explanation probably isn’t going to cut it. It’s the people that have been doing it one way for a long time. It’s difficult to transition them over.

Ben: Yeah, especially when you’re stressed out and maybe have a speargun in your hand, you’re going after a fish, you have to make it almost like second nature. That’s what I’d found. Like I thought I had it nailed when I did dry land training and then once I got in the water and have all these other things going through my head, I just lost it. So, it takes a lot of practice to learn, but man, now that I know Frenzel, it’s easy, like you go down and you just do it.

Ted: You’ll never think about it. Once the light bulb goes off–like beforehand, it seems like, “Good Lord, there’s like 13 steps I have to do with my tongue. I’m not going to ever freedive. I can’t even do it sitting on the couch.” Then once the light bulb goes off, you’re never going to think about again.

Ben: Yeah. The best tip I can give to people is go do it in a pool first. Even if it’s just like your local YMCA pool or whatever, which might go down to 15 feet, you can at least play around with it without having to worry about the ocean and distractions and the cold. You just go down and practice it in the pool. And especially people who might be at the gym anyways, doing a lap swim session or lifting weights or whatever, that’s simple enough to just hop in the pool and do it. I find that that works far better than practicing on dry land because once you’re in the water, it’s a little bit different. It feels different and it works differently.

Now, I also want to ask you because this is obviously extremely popular, this whole idea of Wim Hof and Wim Hof breathwork where you do like a whole bunch of power breaths. Then after you’ve done like 30 power breaths, you breathe off as much oxygen as possible and you just hold your breath for as long as you can. I mean, it’s essentially almost like hyperventilating followed by a breath hold. What is your take on that for increasing breath hold time or doing like Wim Hof does, which is where you’ll do that and then you’ll get in cold water and sometimes go underwater and cold water?

Ted: Okay. I’ve heard about Wim Hof breathing. I’ve had other freediving instructors talk to me about it, and in essence, what it seemed like to me was you just hyperventilate your head off. And I did some Google and I saw I am teaching people to do it, and in essence, it’s a lot of hyperventilation before breath-hold. So, I don’t know anything about cold. I’m assuming it’s really good for that.

Ben: Yeah. Well, I mean the cold component, I think, is just that you’re inducing vasodilation through that power breathing. So, essentially, you’re actually shoving blood to your extremities that could allow you to withstand the stressors of cold a little bit more. But I’m interested in comparing and contrasting that breath-hold technique to your breath-hold technique.

Ted: Yeah, for sure. What I was getting at is as a cold person, maybe that’s great for cold. As a breath-holding tool, there’s any freediving instructor from any agency on any continent would tell you, you don’t want do that because hyperventilating before a breath-hold increases the risk for blackout. Now, most of his stuff he’s doing in dry land, as I understand it, but this is extremely dangerous.

Ben: Well, I think Wim himself–and he’s been a podcast guest a couple of times. I think he’s almost passed out like underwater, like under the ice doing this.

Ted: Yeah. So, I mean, as a freediving instructor, and this is not me, you ask any freediving instructor, they will tell you absolutely under no circumstance–I mean even freediving instructors that hate each other will say, “Don’t hyperventilate before breath-hold because it absolutely increases the risk of blackout.” That’s why every freediving agency teaches that. So, let me explain why that’s happening.

Now, hyperventilation, as I mentioned earlier on top of the CO2 tables, it drastically lowers your CO2. It makes it so that when you start that breath-hold, your CO2 is as low as possible. One of the biggest triggers for your urge to breathe is your carbon dioxide levels, right? Your physiologist will say 80% of your urge to breathe comes from rising carbon dioxide and 20% of it comes from low oxygen. So, hyperventilation has a pretty obvious advantage.

Since you start with lower carbon dioxide, it’s going to take longer for that CO2 level to get to where you have an urge to breathe or a contraction. So, if you have a breath-hold where you just hold your breath normally and you wait ’til you have a contraction, let’s call it two minutes, and then you go backwards in time and you hyperventilate a bunch, then you hold your breath again, now you might not get that contraction until 230 because you started with less carbon dioxide. So, hyperventilating absolutely delays your urge to breathe. I will not deny that it does that because it certainly does. This why so many beginners like me when I started, I remember freediving down to 20 foot of water and I’d stay there for like 20, 25 seconds and I felt like I was going to die and then my captain told me to hyperventilate. Then I went to that same spot, I could stay down there for like 45, 50 seconds because it’s delaying the onset of the urge to breath.

Now, here’s the other thing that it does that people don’t understand, and this is why every freediving instructor says don’t hyperventilate. Not only does it delay the urge to breathe, but it also physically reduces the amount of oxygen available to your body. This is a bad combination.

Ben: The Bohr. Can you get into the Bohr effect?

Ted: When we hold our breath, our blood is becoming more acidic. As our blood is becoming more acidic, that’s changing the pH levels of our blood. So, when we hyperventilate, what that does is it’s increasing the strength of the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen. So, if I’m holding my breath, I’ve got all these hemoglobin molecules running around through my bloodstream, the hemoglobin molecule has little oxygen molecules attached to it. That’s how it transports the oxygen, and then it pops off the oxygen and gives it to the muscle tissue so I can use it. If the strength of the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen is too high, that oxygen molecule can’t pop off and be used as fuel. So, it’s stuck to the hemoglobin. So, when we hyperventilate, it’s altering the pH levels of our blood and it doesn’t allow that oxygen to be used because it’s dropping the pH level before the breath-hold.

As the blood becomes more acidic, the strength between the hemoglobin and oxygen gets less and then we can actually use that oxygen because it’s shifting it so much the wrong way in the beginning, now at the end of the breath-hold, there’s still oxygen stuck on the hemoglobin that we can’t access. That’s why it’s limiting the amount of oxygen available to your body, but it’s confusing especially for beginners because they hyperventilate and they can instantly hold their breath longer. And then you get people saying, “Oh, yeah. Well, you just got to hyperventilate and it lets you access all the oxygen.” They say that because they’re holding their breath longer so it seems logical, but the facts are it’s not.

Ben: Yeah. Essentially, you have less oxygen available to the tissue but also a lowered urge to breathe, and that’s why when you’re doing the Wim Hof breathing, you can hold your breath for a longer period of time, but it’s also why you get the lightheadedness and the tingling and the potential for passing out. And I personally have found that when I jump into a cold pool–all right, I have cold bath protocols I do and I have some of my clients do this. Like one of our workouts we do is you get three minutes in the ice or a very cold bath but you precede that with Wim Hof breathing. You slip into that bath while you’re on your breath-hold. You’re not in deep water. You’re in a tub. You’re typically with someone. And in that tub full of water then you get out and you do another round of breathing to warm yourself back up, and sometimes a lot of people hit the bike for a few minutes then get back in the water. But I’ll never combine that with actually going underwater or deep water. I’m pretty remiss to even do the Wim Hof breathing with the breath-holds and be near water unless somebody else is there, even if it’s shallow water.

Ted: Yeah, it is. It absolutely increases the risk for blackout. Take a look at competitive freedivers. They do the exact opposite. So, basically, if you understand what I was getting at is the more acidic your blood gets, the lower the strength of bond between hemoglobin and oxygen, meaning oxygen is more accessible. Well, this seems like a good thing, right? If you look at like a competitive freediver world record holder, they’re saying, “Carbon dioxide is my friend. I want as much carbon dioxide in my blood as possible so that I can more quickly make that shift to where the oxygen becomes more readily accessible.” So, if you watch a competitive freediver breathing up, they might be doing what I would call minimal breathing where they’re breathing out–just like they’re sitting on the couch doing nothing. That’s the way they’re breathing because they want to keep every amount of carbon dioxide in their blood as possible so they can shift that way.

Now, thanks to the wonderful world of the internet. People will be like, “Oh, Ted. Well, why don’t you teach the way these top freediving world records do it? Why are you teaching different clearing methods that don’t work?” I said, “Are you a world record freediver?” “Well, no.” “Well, then you shouldn’t breath like one because what they do, they understand, they’re trying to get that extra little bit of advantage. They certainly get an advantage of doing that, but what happens? Because they start with more carbon dioxide, the contractions come way earlier. The dive becomes way more terrible, way more difficult of all these other things. Yeah, if you’re a world record freediver, your goal is to dive deep as humanly possible. You don’t care how terrible you feel because you’re going to train that out of it. But the average Joe–I mean, Ben, do you want your 80-foot dives to feel harder than they were?

Ben: No.

Ted: Than what you did? Probably not.

Ben: It’s already hard as it was.

Ted: Exactly. People have access to information on the internet, and sometimes, they don’t understand how it’s most applicable.

Ben: Yeah, yeah.

Ted: So, you want it middle ground, which is what I teach.

Ben: That was a gnarly adventure. When we’d got in the ocean, remember, like a tornado but we had sharks circling around us that you showed us how to point our–I think you were–we weren’t spearfishing. So, you have a gun but you had like some kind of a long pole or object in your hand and you showed us how you could point it out and the shark would go away. So, I burst one of my eardrums, still trying to learn Frenzel. So, I’m bleeding. I didn’t burst the eardrum but I was bleeding out my nose and I thought I’d killed off half my brain. And then we finally get in the boat to go back. We’re all shivering. We’re starved. We’ve gone through that rite of passage in the water and then this tornado blows in off the Fort Lauderdale Coast and we’re like racing in a boat to get back.

Ted: That was an unusual trip.

Ben: Yeah, but it was fun. I don’t want to scare people away but it was actually pretty cool. It made my other dives feel easy.

Ted: Well, I was just so ecstatic when you finally got Frenzel because the first two days, you’re stuck at 15 feet and I’m like–but I could tell you were that close to being like, “No, I’m not coming out the third day and I’m not coming.” And then the light bulb went off and boom, you got it.

Ben: Yeah. No. To nail 80 feet, it felt good. I can’t fish at 80 feet but it felt good to just be that deep in the water and know I’d been that deep. How about how freedivers exercise? I remember you showed us, and I’d love for you to get into this, like how you exercise the diaphragm. You have like the number one stretch that you recommend for freedivers, but are there any other things that–like in the freediving community that people have–because you’re very connected to that community, ways that people exercise or ways that people stretch any typical like gym routines. What’s the training protocol look like when you’re out of the water?

Ted: Well, you look at most competitive freedivers, they’re all going to be extremely fit. They’re athletes, so that’s not their–they do whatever they do to get fit. But competitive freedivers has this very weird thing. Certainly, because we’re athletes, you want to have a high VO2 max. It’s like almost any athlete would. Now, high VO2 max comes with hard training, which does watch our metabolism, raises it. As a freediver, do we want a high metabolism?

Ben: No.

Ted: No. We want the lowest.

Ben: That was why you wouldn’t even let us drink a damn cup of coffee before we got up.

Ted: So, there’s that weird thing, and I’ll be honest, we don’t–I don’t know the perfect answer but the idea is so they might have–if you look at training progression leading up to a competition, there’s going to be some point where they’re going to be doing all your typical cardio, however they want to do it. And then as they’re getting closer and closer to the event, they’re going to be doing more apnea, more breath-holding work. And then towards the end, maybe the last two weeks, they turn into a sloth. All they’re going to do is hold their breath on the couch, or maybe do some workouts in the pool where they’re trying to lower that metabolism.

It is a very tricky thing to train at at a high level because I don’t know of any sport where that’s important where you have those two competing issues. The other thing that’s tricky about it is we don’t know the answer. Now, if you want to become the–if you’re a U.S. speed skater and you’re like top speed skater in high school, they just put you on some campus and there’s a whole program and there are doctors and there are researchers and they just–they know how to make the best speed skater. They just put you through the program. We as freedivers, there’s no money in the sport, so we don’t have all of that. Not only we don’t have that and what we’re trying to solve is incredibly complicated.

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: So, it’s tricky.

Ben: Is there any type of gym routine or any type of stretching routine or anything like that? Because you showed me that one stretch and I’m curious when people go to the gym, are they doing like high rep/low weight, low rep/high weight or any insight into that?

Ted: In most circumstances, you’re not going to see big, bulky freedivers, in most circumstances. There are some that are actually pretty built that do very well. [01:16:00] ______, he’s a big guy, right?

Ben: Right.

Ted: But most, kind of you jokingly talked about, the then mild-mannered freediver. You’re going to see a lot in that way. If you’re looking at the world record static guys that they’re doing the maximum breath-holds, they’re very extremely skinny. They’re going to be not eating. They’re going to be fasting to do everything they can to put their self in starvation mode. But as far as typical gym training, I don’t think there’s anything super special in particular to what they’re doing. Most of them are just–they want their good cardio and they’re not trying to bulk up on muscles.

Ben: So, it’s almost like cycling where a cyclist is going for a very good power to weight ratio and a lot of cyclists don’t do a lot of strength training for that reason, at least traditional hypertrophic strength training. But you could make an argument that you want low amounts of muscle mass but the muscle that you want would be like lean, wiry muscle that doesn’t take up a lot of space, but that’s very efficient metabolically.

Ted: And in the areas that you need it. Like if you’re doing constant weight of the ocean, you’re going to need some power in the quads to get yourself back up from 200, 300, 400 feet or whatever you’re coming from. I would say the biggest thing, the thing that they will all do is that idea of diaphragmatic stretching which is really, really critical. So, I can do a very quick exercise all your listeners can do to prove the power of that diaphragm.

Ben: Okay.

Ted: Okay. So, all I’m going to ask them to do is just follow my instructions for just a bit. You only have to hold your breath for 15, 20 seconds maximum. I alluded to this earlier. Your physiologist will tell you that 80% of the urge to breath comes from high carbon dioxide levels and 20% comes from low oxygen levels. I always start with that story in the class and we’re going to pretend that physiologist is sitting in the back and he’s going to be doing the same exercise with us.

Here’s the exercise. We’re all going to do it together. You want to be sitting down. You want to make sure there’s space in front of you so if you bend down and put your head between your legs, you’re not going to bunk onto anything. Here’s the deal. You’re going to take a big breath.

Ben: Pull over the car.

Ted: Alright. So, biggest breath you can. Now, we’re going to exhale the air out. All of it. You’re going to bend over and push out every bit. Push, push, push, push. Now, you’re going to hold your breath, sit up, and we’re going to hold our breath for 10, maybe 15 seconds. Keep holding your breath if you can. If you’ve already breathed, that’s fine. Alright. Five, four, three, two, one, take a breath.

Ben: Oh, I got to pee. There comes the pee.

Ted: Right. So, if you guys did that, you’d probably say that was one of the worst feelings that you’ve ever felt, especially if you actually exhaled all the air out. If you didn’t exhale all the air out, do it again. I promise you, it’ll be terrible.

Now, let’s look at what just happened there. The physiologist will tell you 80% of the urge to breath comes from CO2 and 20% comes from low oxygen. Alright. And I’ve done this. I wrote an article in Spearing Magazine just recently, and it’s going to be coming out in a month, actually, in a couple of weeks, about this exact same thing. I used a pulse oximeter in the middle of that exercise. So, pulse oximeter measures my oxygen level in my blood. And when I did that exercise, it started at 98%, and when I was done, it was 98%. So, the oxygen level of my blood didn’t alter at all, which means that the urge to breathe didn’t come from oxygen, but we expected that because 20% comes from oxygen, 80% comes from carbon dioxide. So, it must be the carbon dioxide.

Let’s look at that. How is carbon dioxide created? It’s created by consuming oxygen. How long do we hold our breath for? Fifteen, 20 seconds. So, that means we created 15- or 20-seconds worth of carbon dioxide. The exact same amount of carbon dioxide was created in that exercise than if you just held your breath for 15 seconds normally where you would get no urge to breathe. So, this means the low oxygen level didn’t trigger the urge to breathe, and the high carbon dioxide didn’t trigger the urge to breathe because both of those are absolutely normal. So, now the physiologist in the back of the room is scratching his head like, “Well, why did I feel like I wanted to die?” It’s because I would say 80% urge to breathe comes from carbon dioxide, 20% comes from low oxygen, plus there are other factors. As a freediving instructor, I’ll put in that there are other factors, and that’s the diaphragm.

Your diaphragm, now unless you’re a freediver who trains or a competitive freediver, you have never exhaled all the air out and then sat there. Your diaphragm got stretched in the way that it has never been stretched before. So, in essence, as you exhale all that air out, your diaphragm–as your lungs shrink, your diaphragm gets sucked in to fill the void. So, your diaphragm is getting sucked in up, up, up and it’s a muscle just like your hamstring and it got stretched in a way that it has never been stretched before. So, what it did–if you stretch your hamstring too far, you’re going to get a signal that says back off. Quit bending forward, bend backwards to loosen that because the hamstring can’t take it.

When your diaphragm gets stretched too far, guess what it does? It says, “That’s too far.” So, how would that diaphragm go back to normal? If you took a breath. So, it’s triggering an urge to breathe to reset your diaphragm. So, that urge to breathe in this particular example had nothing to do with your oxygen levels, had nothing to do with your CO2 levels, was completely triggered by the inflexibility of your diaphragm. It’s the inflexibility of the diaphragm that’s causing that. That’s also why as a freediver if you have somebody who maybe have freediving experience, like my students, they’re freedivers already and I say, “Look, every student in my class has some depth where they go to and they feel fine. Maybe it’s 15 feet, maybe it’s 30, 40 feet. They get to the bottom, they feel no urge to breathe, they feel totally calm and relaxed. Every one of those students has a depth where you put 15 foot under that, 15 foot deeper, they get down there, they feel antsy, they feel uncomfortable. “I got to get out here. I can’t handle this. I don’t feel good.” But why is that happening?

It’s because when they went down deeper, their lungs got compressed more, their diaphragm got sucked into the point where “That’s too much. I’m not comfortable with that level of stretch.” and that why it triggers that urge to breathe. That’s why every competitive freediver on the planet stretches their diaphragm because it makes you more comfortable at depth. It helps [01:23:01] ______ and does a lot of stuff. That’s something that most people don’t understand. And I’m always talking to my typical student who’s a spearfisherman and they tend to want to poo poo on all this. They’re like, “Competitive freediving has nothing to do with spearfishing.” I’m like, “Look, we dive really deep. We stay down a really long time. You should learn exactly how we do that and then do it for what you’re doing.”

Ben: Yeah. Interesting. By the way, returning back to the piece about stretching the diaphragm. I think that one other thing people should consider would be in many cases, there are like fascial adhesions, there’s immobility in a lot of the muscles around of the diaphragm. Paul Chek talks about this in some of his videos about foam rolling the diaphragm. I have my massage therapist actually do massage therapy especially on either side of my rib cage. And you can do some of this yourself like digging your fingers up underneath the rib cage while you’re taking your breath. But it’s shocking to me how many people will get their IT bands massaged or their calves or their traps but not do any work on the fascia that surrounds the abdomen and the diaphragm.

So, I think that that’s a very important component. And the other thing that I wanted to bring up, returning back to the training was, you know what I think is probably the best form of training that someone interested in freediving could do? I’ll assume by your silence that you’re just waiting with bated breath, pun intended, pun intended. Would be what Laird Hamilton does at his training pool where he’ll have a bunch of people over and they do this Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in Malibu from like 8:00 to 11:00 a.m. They’ve got a whole bunch of people over. Everybody’s got a buddy. There’re people monitoring the whole program but you’re in the water with dumbbells, carrying the dumbbells back and forth under the water. You’re swimming with the dumbbell-like treading water with a dumbbell between your legs. You’re doing jumps from the bottom of the pool while hoisting the dumbbell upwards. And you’re basically doing an entire workout in the water.

And what I like about that is Laird developed it for being able to survive the mental and physical rigors of being under the water for long periods of time when the surf tows you under or you’re thrown off your board and in the waves. Also, what I like about it is you get this amazing cardiovascular and breath flow workout but you’re not sore the next day, meaning that you’re not inducing muscle mass or hypertrophy. It’s exhausting. You’re cold. You’re tired. You’re hungry afterwards just like a freediving session. I actually interviewed him, and in that interview with him–I’ll link to some articles with like samples of their workouts and stuff like that, but I was thinking as you’re talking about the diaphragm stretching, I’m like, “Gosh, I think more freedivers should know about the kind of stuff Laird is doing in his pool because man, not only is it a blast but you’re not sore, you’re not building a bunch of muscle mass but you’re training blood and lungs tremendously.” I’ll link to that in the show notes as well, my podcast with him, but I think that could be a good way to go for some people.

Ted: Yeah. I’m pretty sure he went through the big wave surf program that PFI does.

Ben: Yeah.

Ted: Where we go through all that sort of stuff. So, it’s pretty cool.

Ben: Very cool. Very cool. Well, I know we’re getting towards the end of the show but I wanted you to really just walk us through quickly here the different courses that you teach. I mentioned that you have one on breath-holding and these are just courses people can take online. You’ve got one on the Frenzel technique. What else do you have?

Ted: The one I’m honestly the most excited about is, I launched it from the [1:26:47] ______ Recording four or five days ago. It’s freedivingsafety.com. Alright. So, the idea of this course is it’s an online resource that teaches people safe freediving practices from a trusted and reliable source, and it’s free. My whole taking is this. For the past 10 years, I’ve been teaching these classes and you sat through my class. You know I’m passionate about freediving safety. And the reason is there are 50 to 75 fatalities per year in this sport of freediving, mostly incurs in spearfishing, but we’re getting growing, growing number of people doing stuff in the pool because they saw some YouTube video, some guy telling them to do something in a pool but they don’t have safety. They don’t understand.

For 10 years, I’ve been dealing with the spearfishing community and what I always hear is, “Ted, I love taking those courses, but my boss, man, he’s such a pain in the–I can never get the time off,” or, “I can’t afford the course.” So, the way I look at it is you want to get better at freediving? Yeah, you’re going to pay and take a course just like anything. But if you want to learn how to be safe, if you want to learn to not kill yourself, there’s no barrier to that.

So, the idea is it’s an online course. It’s got basically an hour worth of videos. You’re going to learn the rules, safe freediving practices. You’re going to learn the myth of, “I don’t push myself. I know my limits. I would know before I blackout.” Because the reality is most circumstances you wouldn’t. I have a video footage of a spearfisherman with 30 years of experience. He’s spearfishing at 50 feet, which is a total number of depths for him. He did seven dives at that exact same depth and you see him coming up from a dive and 10 feet in the surface, he has no idea what’s wrong. He blacks out. He exhaled all his air out and you see him start to sink down.

Now, the video recorder was a friend of mine and an instructor, [01:28:28] ______ Chapman took care of him. He is fine. But I always have been trying to get across this point that when you’re diving in the ocean, people say, “I’ve never had a problem. I don’t push myself. I’m not that worried about it.” The physics of it is that on most dives in the ocean if you were to have a blackout, you’d feel 100% fine the whole time. So, saying that you don’t push yourself, it’s going to explain that. And then it also has video. I hired two camera guys at multiple camera angles on what to do if you have a [01:28:54] _______, what to do if you have a blackout at the surface. I’ve launched the course just four or five days ago. I’ve already had 150 people on it and people are–the response has been very good and I’m very excited about it.

Ben: And that one’s freedrivingsafety.com?

Ted: Safety.com. Yeah.

Ben: Okay. I’ll link to that in the show notes and then you’ve got all these other courses like how to make the mammalian dive reflex work for you and the spearfishing checklist, the guide on how to mitigate the risks of freediving, the guide on equalizing, the guide on taking a 30% bigger breath. I’ll link to all of those so that you guys can just delve into all of Ted’s knowledge, and that is all going to be over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/freedivingpodcast. That’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com/freedivingpodcast.

You got me excited, Ted, because I’m headed down to Kona to do some bow hunting next month. I’m going to throw in a couple of days of going after a tasty fish. So, thank you for opening me up to this whole world of freediving and spearfishing, man. You’re my guru in this department.

Ted: I enjoyed working with you and I’m excited to hear how the trip to Hawaii goes. And if you want any suggestions for who to hook up with there, definitely let me know.

Ben: Sweet. Alright, folks. Well, I’m Ben Greenfield along with Ted Harty signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening to today’s show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I’ve ever recommended for hormone, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also, know that all the links, all the promo codes, that I mentioned during this and every episode, helped to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. When you listen in, be sure to use the links in the shownotes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

In my article entitled “How Breath-Holding, Blood-Doping, Shark-Chasing, Free-Diving & Ketosis Can Activate Your Body’s Most Primal Reflex,” I mentioned the fascinating book by James Nestor, entitled “Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves.”

After reading it two years ago, I hired Ted Harty, from Immersion Freediving in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to certify me in freediving so that I could learn how to spearfish.

At over six feet tall and 230 solid pounds, Ted is a big, bold, loud, extroverted character. He looks like a boxer and not like a guy who you’d expect to be diving at incredibly efficient oxygen capacity to depths deeper than most human beings have ever ventured.

But it was Ted who was about to open my eyes to a whole new world of freediving and who I spent nearly every waking moment of ninety-six hours of my life with learning every possible closely-guarded breath-holding and deep-diving tactic.

Ted began his underwater career in 2005 as a scuba instructor in the Florida Keys. Over the years, Ted became a Scuba Schools International Instructor and a Professional Association of Diving Instructors Staff Instructor.

But whenever Ted was on the boat and did not have students to take care of, he’d jump in with mask, fins, and snorkel and play around on the reef, sans scuba equipment. As Ted highlights in this fascinating, quick video about his life:

“Sometimes I’d have just five minutes to swim around without all of my scuba gear. I loved it. I could swim down to the sand at Sombrero Reef and hang out for a bit at 20 feet. I wanted more. I wanted to learn how to stay down longer and how to dive deeper.”

So, in January of 2008, Ted took his first Performance Freediving International (PFI) course.

“I couldn’t believe how little I knew about freediving at the time. As a scuba instructor I knew more about diving physiology than the average Joe, but quickly realized I knew nothing about freediving. At the start of the course I had a 2:15 breath-hold, but after just four days of training, I did a five-minute hold! I couldn’t believe it was possible.”

Next, Ted signed up for instructor-level courses at Performance Freediving. He was soon offered a job teaching with Performance Freediving when he moved to Fort Lauderdale.

Then, in 2009 Ted went to PFI’s annual competition. At the time, he was about an 80- to 90-foot freediver and weighed 230 pounds. He wasn’t in good shape at all, but after three weeks of training under the tutelage of world-renowned freedivers Kirk Krack and Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, he did a 54 meter (177 -feet) freedive.

“I was blown away by what I was capable of.”

Ted spent a year working with Kirk and Mandy while traveling around the country teaching the Intermediate Freediver program. Then, in 2010, a much more fit Ted went back to PFI’s annual competition. That year his new personal best was 213 feet, and currently, he’s managed to up that to an impressive 279 feet.

In June 2012, Ted was selected as the Team Captain for the US Freediving Team at the Freediving World Championships, and in 2013 he attained PFI Advanced Instructor and PFI Instructor Trainer, becoming the first and only PFI independent instructor to receive this rating.

Oh yeah, and Ted also holds the record for hypoxic underwater swimming in the pool, having done 7 full lengths (175 meters) without a single breath.

But most impressive?

Ted has anemia.

This means his blood can’t deliver oxygen as efficiently to his muscles and brain as most of the world’s population. This means he has a blood hematocrit level of 34, easily 1/3 less than most athletes. This is a condition that would leave most folks huffing and puffing for air after climbing a flight of stairs.

Obviously, anemia hasn’t stopped Ted. In our last podcast, which you can listen to here, Ted and I covered:

-Why being cold and cold water can actually inhibit your ability to hold your breath…

-How to use static apnea tables to enhance your ability to tolerate high levels of CO2 and low levels of O2…

-Why training your mammalian dive reflex is so useful, even if you have zero desire to do long breath-holds or freediving competition…

-Why you should avoid hyperventilation and “blowing off CO2” prior to a breath hold…

-The difference between Ted’s breathing techniques and Wim Hof’s breathing techniques…

-And much more…

Today Ted is back, and we take a deep dive (pun intended) into:

-What happens to the body during free diving…9:30

Similar effects as yoga

Alter how you breathe

Interact with marine life

Stress release

-What the “mammalian dive reflex” is and why we would want to activate it…12:25

Genetically coded in every human on the planet

Dolphins, seals, whales possess the mammalian dive reflex

We all have it, but at different levels depending on experience

Several components:

Bradycardia; Body lowers demand for oxygen

Fingers, toes constrict

Pee reflex – peripheral extremities constrict

We don’t have conclusive data on how free diving affects HRV and the vagus nerve

The connection between the spleen and breath holding/free diving

Another component of the mammalian dive reflex

Simply holding one’s breath on dry land compresses the spleen

Legal blood doping

In elite athletes, holding breath compresses spleen; an ordinary person, not so much

In free diving, your body becomes more accustomed to these changes

Large amounts of blood circulate through the spleen; compressing it leads to a large release of red blood cells

Breath holds in the sauna activate the spleen; not the same effects as diving

-The benefits of free diving…24:37

Overall well-being

Q: How can drowning and suffocating be relaxing? A: You don’t feel that way

People swear by its efficacy

Comparable to training to lose weight

How many calories are lost during free diving:

It’s absolutely exhausting

Generate tremendous amount of body heat

Study: 1,100 calories burned per hour

Breathwork wouldn’t translate to burning calories

Glycogen sparing effect

Ketones increase the ability to hold breath

-Tips for increasing breath hold time…30:10

Take a bigger breath

Diaphragm, chest, shoulders, neck

Flexibility of rib cage determines the size of your breath

“Sipping”

-What an apnea table is and the difference between CO2 and O2 apnea…37:30

Table: series of breath holds

How you can breathe up for

How long you can breathe for

Learn to tolerate low levels of oxygen; CO2 levels rising

Carbon dioxide table: breath up for 2 minutes; hold breath for 2 minutes…

Wonka table

You want higher CO2 levels

Hyperventilating discards CO2 faster than anything

Sit on couch, hold breath

You’ll feel a contraction, start stopwatch; deal with discomfort for 15 seconds

Take one breath

Go to the bathroom before doing this!

Would you do a table while exercising?

No, but you can incorporate breath exercises into your training

Risk of blacking out; do on seated equipment

Book: The Oxygen Advantageby Patrick McKeown

Book: The Power of Your Breathby Anders Olsson

-What kind of breath work one would do in between dives to maintain maximum breath hold time…49:30

Remember diaphragmatic breathing

Only thing you should feel moving is your stomach moving out and in

We’re all chest breathers

Control, be conscious of your breathing vs. not thinking about it

-Why the Valsalva breathing technique is not optimal for free diving…53:22

Pinch and blow: equalize your ears

Can use Valsalva scuba diving

Frenzel technique

Pinch your nose.

Fill your mouth up with a little bit of air.

Close the epiglottis.

Move the soft palate to the neutral position.

Use the tongue like a piston and push air towards the back of your throat.

Valsalva is optimal for scuba diving as you dive head first; air rises

Frenzel is optimal for free diving because you dive head first; opposite of scuba diving

-A demonstration of the Frenzel breathing technique…58:30

-Similarities and differences between Ted’s breathing technique and Wim Hof’s…1:02:45

Hof’s methods are good for cold therapy, not necessarily breath holding

Hyperventilation increases risk for blackout

Drastically lowers CO2 levels

Carbon dioxide levels trigger urge to breathe

Physically reduces amount of oxygen available to your body

Bohr effect:

When we hold our breath, our blood becomes more acidic; changes ph levels

Hyperventilating increases strength of the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen

If strength of bond too high, oxygen molecule can’t be used as fuel

Hyperventilating initially increases ability to hold breath, but there’s the risk of blackout

-Exercise and stretching regimens specific to free divers…1:13:30

Paradox: Free divers train a lot, which leads to high metabolism, which you don’t want as a free diver

There is no set regimen on how to craft the “perfect free diver”

Problem seeking to solve is very complicated

Similar to training cyclists would undergo

Diaphragmatic stretching is critical –

-Some of the courses Ted teaches online…1:26:30

-And Much More…

Resources from this episode:

–Click here to see all of Ted’s courses, including how to equalize, how to take a 20-30% bigger breath, how to freedive safely, and much more!

-Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves

–The OURA ring – Save $50 with code: GREENFIELDOURA

–The WHOOP wristband

–Spleen volume and blood flow response to repeated breath-hold apneas.

–CO2 and O2 apnea tables

–The Wonka table

-The Oxygen Advantage book by Patrick McKeown

–The Power Of Breath

–My podcast with Laird Hamilton about underwater workouts

–FreeDivingSafety.com

Episode Sponsors:

–Kion: My personal playground for all things having to do with health and wellness. You can get 10% off your entire order when you use discount code: BGF10 at checkout.

–JOOVV: Everything from enhanced muscle recovery to increased sexual performance to improved skin health, and much more. After using the Joovv for close to 2 years, it’s the only light therapy device I’d ever recommend. Use my link and use code: BEN at checkout and receive a cool bonus gift with your purchase.

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Ask Ben a Podcast Question

Source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/transcripts/transcript-hold-breath-longer/

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jamesmsolari · 5 years

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12 Small Business Tips from Podcasts Used by the Pros

TechMyBiz for all things “IT”

Not all the advice that a budding business leader hears on a podcast will be particularly actionable or beneficial. There is, however, some very good information and perspectives out there. To help newer leaders be more aware of things they can and should do in regards to their business, we asked members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following:

“What is the best actionable tip you’ve gotten from a podcast? Why did it strike a chord with you?”

Actionable Business Tips

Here’s what YEC community members had to say:

1. Double Down on Successful Channels

“From a risk management standpoint, I’ve always been tempted to diversify early on until a ‘Marketing School‘ episode. Doubling down on channels that work extremely well is a great idea. With scarce resources, it’s best to maximize the ROI opportunities of your most impactful channel, and branch out before the point of saturation. That doesn’t exclude limited tests in between, of course.” ~ Mario Peshev, DevriX

2. Scale Up Systems

“I am a dedicated listener of the ‘Smart Agency‘ podcast and the tip that struck a chord and that I also find actionable is the creation of systems for employees to scale up your agency. In my agency, a lot of growth came about when I shifted my focus from building a stronger client base through sales to building systems and processes to help the team grow. Growth in clients will come with system growth.” ~ Matthew Capala, Alphametic

3. Create an Evergreen Sales Funnel

“Pat Flynn’s ‘Smart Passive Income‘ offers listeners a variety of interesting information. I think he has solid advice when it comes to building evergreen sales funnels. We often think about our sales funnels as something temporary that is used to bolster a specific product or service. The idea of building an evergreen funnel really caught my attention and forced me to think about how I drive sales.” ~ Blair Williams, MemberPress

4. Get Over a Creative Slump

“‘Copyblogger FM‘ recently had an episode that provided five actionable ways to manage a stress-induced creative slump, including knowing the steps in advance of a project or task to reduce the amount of decisions you have to make. Those tips really struck a chord with me because I was feeling exactly that way when I found the podcast episode and it was just what I needed to hear to get me out of my slump.” ~ Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms

5. Stay True to Your Brand

“Pretty much everyone knows who Tony Robbins is. His podcast is vastly popular and has tons of great advice weaved through every episode, but something that stood out to me was how much emphasis he put on building your brand authentically. This way, everything afterwards follows suit through authenticity and nothing feels disingenuous to your audience.” ~ Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights

6. Keep Moving to Increase Productivity

“The best actionable tip I received was from the ‘Ben Greenfield Fitness‘ podcast. Throughout my work day I find small ways to move and keep from feeling sedentary. I take short breaks, go from sitting to standing, stretching, and doing calisthenics whenever I can. Taking a walking meeting or phone call has kept me feeling fresh and keeps the blood moving to my brain. This is the ultimate productivity hack.” ~ Matt Wilson, Under30Experiences

7. Work on Increasing Your Empathy

“In his podcast, Tony Robbins discusses that it’s important to recognize and deeply believe that everyone you meet is truly doing the very best that they can with the resources that they have. Knowing this about others encourages deep empathy, and helps you approach difficult interactions (with clients, employees, bosses) with a better mindset, fostering much better outcomes.” ~ Rachel Beider, PRESS Modern Massage

8. Focus on Self-Awareness

“Self-awareness has been a staple to my success mindset ever since I’ve heard it from Gary Vaynerchuk through his ‘The GaryVee Audio Experience‘ podcast. This actionable tip is so important when it comes to entrepreneurship as it determines what your weaknesses and strengths are. I’ve capitalized on more opportunities when I started being more self-aware to my strengths and weaknesses.” ~ Fritz Colcol, ABN Circle

9. Resolve Guilt by Forgiving Grievances

“I learned about the relationship between guilt and grievance from a podcast interview with Eckhart Tolle. In it, he stated that the reason some people feel strong internal guilt is that they also bear strong grudges against other people. After realizing these two habits are connected, I made a point to forgive people who treated me poorly in the past and resolved my own guilty feelings.” ~ Bryce Welker, Beat The CPA

10. Embrace Competition to Improve Performance

“‘HBR IdeaCast’ is one of the best podcasts for business owners. They discuss everything from how to spot white-collar crime at your company or how to fix your hiring process, to innovation capital, and more. One of my favorite recent episodes was on how having a rival improves performance. It made me think of my competitors in a whole new way.” ~ John Turner, SeedProd LLC

11. Get Used to Failure

“The podcast ‘StartUp‘ interviews different businesses to get a look at their strategies and what worked and didn’t work for them. The best thing I learned from this podcast is that you’ll see several failures before you see success. This is completely normal. It’s important to normalize failure as part of your business endeavor so you’re prepared for anything.” ~ Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster

12. Keep Doing What’s Working Best for You

“The best tip from podcasts that I’ve digested was a broad-strokes takeaway from ‘How I Build This‘ with Guy Raz. Listening to Guy interview various entrepreneurs, something hit me: I realized that there’s no one tried-and-true, guaranteed path to success. He’s interviewed folks from all walks of life that approached business in totally different ways. Double down on your unique position and skill.” ~ Keith Shields, Designli

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, “12 Small Business Tips from Podcasts Used by the Pros” was first published on Small Business Trends

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cribcrate22-blog · 5 years

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The Renegade Pharmacist: How To Increase The Effects Of Psilocybin, The Secrets Of Colostrum, Fixing Constipation With Breathwork & More.

Niraj Naik, my guest on today's show (and the same guy who invented the crazy holotropic-style breathwork protocol I do in my sauna) comes from a background of working long hours for several years as a community pharmacist. Becoming a certified “legal drug dealer” at the ripe age of 24, he got to witness first-hand, many clients going home with shopping bags full of drugs each month, rarely getting better and usually going on to suffer from other diseases. He also learned of the debilitating side effects of the prescription medications which drove many of the patients to have to take more and more drugs to ease the side effects.

Curious to find ways to improve his own health, he attended several health seminars and discovered an in-depth approach on how to reach optimum health and vitality by understanding the true origin of disease and how to prevent it. After experiencing great benefits with his own health, Niraj was motivated to devise a scheme to see if he could also help his suffering patients. He incorporates a lifestyle plan called his “healthy shopping lists” that includes simple food swaps, tools and websites to support their specific conditions.

Within two weeks he received testimonials from patients who were starting to get better and within a few months some being able to lower their dosages or completely come off their medications. After an arduous battle trying to get his novel approach accepted into the mainstream that resulted in a lot of stress and disillusionment, in 2010 he was diagnosed with a stress-related illness, ulcerative colitis, that left him housebound for over 10 months. He was told by doctors and nurses there existed no cure and he would need to be on medication for the rest of his life.

Like his patients, Niraj suffered from side effects of his medication to the point he felt completely hopeless and even suicidal. He was then left with a choice that would be a major turning point in his life. Test out a new drug or have his colon removed. He decided to choose option 3, a path not yet known by conventional medicine.

So began his search to learn from people who had great success with either curing themselves or others from chronic illness. He learned a combination of natural treatments including Ayurvedic practices and dietary recommendations from Paleo and Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD). He studied healing methods through meditation, yoga and mind power techniques like self-hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). He even discovered the powerful techniques of sound and music therapy as tools for reducing stress and promoting self-healing. Niraj finally broke free from the burdens of his illness, without medication.

The experience of illness has allowed him to completely reinvent his life and discover a new passion for helping others to do the same. His specialty is helping people recover, prevent or reduce the dependency for longterm medication for the metabolic diseases of diabetes, heart disease and obesity as well as autoimmune disease where stress is an underlining factor in the cause.

Niraj is now a professional musician, holistic health expert and entrepreneur. He runs several successful websites that help others who suffer from stress-related, chronic diseases through his self-composed, captivating meditation music and online courses. Niraj has composed music for healing centers, spas and therapists worldwide.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-The story behind Niraj's famous infographic on how a can of Coke affects the human body…7:10

Was friends with a world-famous psychic

“Only one thing worse than bad publicity, and that's no publicity.”

Saw a conspicuous link between sugary drinks and metabolic diseases; doctors weren't aware of it (in 2005 timeframe)

Frustrated with the “dumbed-down” state of the healthcare industry

First published by truththeory.com; Became #1 trending article on Facebook within a few weeks

Firms literally pay millions of dollars for the type of authority the infographic gave Niraj

Follow up infographic on Diet Coke was equally successful

-How Niraj used alternative medicine to heal himself of some serious health issues…16:45

Very little awareness of the effects of diet to overall health (2009 timeframe)

Created “Healthy shopping lists” as a pharmacist in the U.K. (employed by a major pharmacy chain)

Niraj's boss and biggest supporter left for another job, was left to fend for himself; his practices were deemed by corporate as “too controversial” – they watered down everything he said

Negative emotions/thoughts manifested as physical symptoms; became very ill (ulcerative colitis)

Severely depressed; considered suicide (31 years old)

G.O.D. “Gift of Desperation”

Met a mentor who encouraged him “You'll get over this and change the lives of many people”

Combination of colostrum, breath work, and a change in perception

-Examples of ayurvedic principles used to heal the gut…25:22

Colostrum

Efficacious for improving digestive health

Health of the mother (including mental health) affects the quality of the colostrum

Cow colostrum translates perfectly to humans (produces 4x the amount a calf needs)

Proper dosages:

You need whole fat colostrum

Big doses in the beginning (2-3 heaping tablespoons)

Take it raw

Use powder (a lot of it is absorbed by the gums)

Suck it for 5-10 minutes and then swallow it

Regain emotional balance

Yoga

Diet protocols

Ayurvedic means “balanced”

Modern medicine not aligned with human nature (scientific approach, averages)

Ask Lots of questions, “Know thyself…”

There is no pill for every ill; but there is an ill that follows every pill

Most important question: “Do I wake up every day enthusiastic about a hard day's work?”

Prof. B. M. Hegde

-A unique breath protocol Naij specializes in called SOMA…51:00

SOMA is referenced over 50,000 times in the Rig Veda, the oldest known religious manuscript

Physical elements:

amanita muscaria mushrooms

kush cannabis

blue lotus (full of DNT)

Tantra has its roots in SOMA

Use it purposefully, for therapeutic purposes; don't use it recreationally or habitually

Hatha yoga incorporates breath work

We can “wake up” the internal pharmacy. We have everything that might be prescribed to us within us; breath work releases it

-Why the medical industry doesn't advocate for SOMA therapy…1:02:34

“Unconscious capitalism”

“Cholesterol myth” is good for big business

-A practical example of using breathing to change one's physiology…1:04:30

-The true intent of yoga and how the “yoga industrial complex” has twisted it out of context…1:10:40

Turned it into a fitness or aerobic routine

Meant as a “route to the divine”

SOMA Awakening:

Rhythmic breathing

kumbhaka breathing (breath retention)

-What it's like to go through Niraj's SOMA protocol…1:13:30

Bhastrikā, followed by kumbhaka rechaka

Rhythmic breathing

Fallacy of a scarcity of oxygen; the opposite is true

Pranayama means “energy control”

Body adapts to having less than normal oxygen

Stimulates production of red blood cells

Better blood flow to the heart

-The 21-day protocol and webinar Niraj has developed…1:25:26

Click here for more info.

-And MUCH more…

Resources from this episode:

–What Happens After Drinking One Can Of Coke (and here's the one for Diet Coke)

–Feeding You Lies: How to Unravel the Food Industry's Playbook and Reclaim Your Health

–The Renegade Colostrum that Niraj uses and discusses in podcast

–The Age Of Aging Documentary Ben mentions

–Ayurveda Over Western Medicines | Dr. B.M HEGDE | TEDxMITE

–Essential Oil Wizardy for Blue Lotus

-Study: Effects of Cold Exposure and Breathing Techniques on Immune Response

–My interview with Patrick McKeown on breathwork

-Soma Breathwork 21 Day Protocol – use code: BEN for 20% off

-SOMA Awakening Breathwork Meditation Webinar – this is completely free

-SOMA Breathwork Instructor Training – use code: BEN for 20% off

–Prof. B. M. Hegde

Episode Sponsors:

–Kion – Tian Chi Extra nourishment to help you navigate the storm of stress, work, and life. Mix it with Kion Aminos, and you're literally in heaven. Well, not literally, but it's a good combo ;)

–Trusii Groundbreaking. Potent. Comprehensive. The next revolution in health is here. Use my link and get 30% off your order . Get an additional 10% off a subscription when you use discount code: BEN at checkout.

–Organifi delivers quality nutrition to the world with delicious, easy-to-mix superfood drinks. Use discount code: GREENFIELD at checkout to receive 20% off your purchase!

–Clearlight Saunas Advanced technology. For your good health. See why Clearlight jacuzzi saunas are unsurpassed. Mention discount code: BENGREENFIELD to save $500 off your order AND get free shipping!

Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Niraj or me? Leave your comments below, and one of us will reply!

Ask Ben a Podcast Question

Source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/soma-breathwork/

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dramabus2-blog · 5 years

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Radical Metabolism: How To Cleanse Your Gallbladder, Increase Your Metabolism, Burn More Fat Without Exercise & Much More!

She first joined me on podcast episode #29: “How Many Critters Are Living In YOUR Gut, Making You Fat, Tired, Lazy, Bloated and Sick?”

Now, she's back on the show. Ann came to my house in Spokane, WA to talk about her new, amazing book “Radical Metabolism: A Powerful New Plan to Blast Fat and Reignite Your Energy in Just 21 Days“. This new book reveals the secrets to reviving a sluggish over-40 metabolism – secrets that work even faster if you're in your 20s and 30s, or you suffer from liver, gallbladder or thyroid issues.

You'll discover which “forbidden fats,” forgotten flavors, and fat-busting beverages you can eat and drink in order to increase your metabolism, protect against autoimmunity, address gallbladder issues, type II diabetes, and other devastating health problems.

The Radical Metabolism program consists of:

-a 4-day Radical Intensive Cleanse designed to rest your digestive tract and detoxify your body -21-Day Radical Reboot where you'll learn exactly what combinations of foods to eat for results you can feel and see -a Maintenance Plan for a healthy life

A Columbia University graduate, Ann Louise Gittleman is often called “The First Lady of Nutrition”. She is a nutritionist and internationally recognized as a pioneer in dietary, environmental, and women's health issues. She is an award-winning New York Times bestselling author of over 30 books on health and nutrition including diet, detox, women's health, men's health, perimenopause, menopause, beauty and the environment.

As one of the world's foremost experts in functional and integrative medicine she holds an M.S. in Nutrition Education from Columbia University, has the title of Certified Nutrition Specialist (C.N.S.) from the American College of Nutrition and a Ph.D. in Holistic Nutrition. Ann Louise has also served as the Chief Nutritionist of Pediatric Clinic at Bellevue Hospital and is the former Director of Nutrition at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica, CA. She has won numerous awards, including The American Medical Writers Association Award for Excellence.

In 2016 Ann was presented with the Humanitarian Award from the Cancer Control Society. She currently sits on the Advisory Board for the International Institute for Building-Biology & Ecology, the Nutritional Therapy Association, Inc. and Clear Passage, Inc.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-Why the gallbladder is such a crucial component of the Radical Metabolism program…8:40

Women in the U.S. are FFF: Fat, Forty and Fatigued.

Gallbladder removal is one of the most common procedures in this country.

It's not a “throw away” organ; we need to do everything we can to keep it.

The “unholy alliance” between the gallbladder and the thyroid.

If people do not have free-flowing bile (which they don't if they don't have a gallbladder) they can't convert successfully convert T4 into T3.

Because the thyroid is so intimately connected to metabolism…

People with sluggish bile are 7 times more likely to suffer from hyperthyroidism.

Ben struggled with decreased thyroid activity while training for triathlons.

People who do keto or paleo diets with high intake of fat are at risk; you need to be able to digest the fat and essential fatty acids.

-Ann's thoughts on why the gallbladder and bile issues are so common among American women…13:00

Lack of choline.

Study: 500 mg of choline 3x a day for 6 weeks will decongest a fatty liver.

Choline is a lipotropic nutrient.

We don't eat foods with natural lecithin; stigma surrounding soy products.

Lack of bitter herbs in the diet.

Natural sources of choline:

Lecithin

Eggs (if you're not allergic)

Walnuts

Sunflower lecithin supplement

Bitter herbs Ann recommends: Grapefruit Diet (very popular in the 70's, with a resurgence in the 90's)

Grapefruit extract influences mitochondria.

Bitter melon extract.

Ben's favorite cocktail: Bitter herbs, on the rocks, with a splash of gin. “Ben and Jitters”

-How do we test for gallbladder function?…20:43

GGT

High liver enzymes

If light colored stool, dizziness, hearing problems all part of gallbladder meridian.

Glutathione doesn't affect gallbladder.

A bitter and resentful personality indicates gallbladder issues. Anger is associated with the liver; resentment is associated with the gallbladder.

-Is Ann a fan of any of the cleanses out there that increase bile levels?…23:00

No. Because of congested bile, they can get stuck in the gallbladder duct and create serious problems.

The use of choline and bitters, then following Radical Metabolism…

-What is the “correct” way to do a coffee enema?…25:25

Depends on the individual.

Ensure the coffee is organic.

Keep it inside you for 20 minutes; lay on your left side.

Hazel Parcells: The grand dame of health.

Blackstrap molasses.

-The balance of omega 3 and omega 6 fats and why there's such a thing as “too much fish oil”…27:45

We need a 4:1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fats.

Watch out for bad omega 6 fats. Parent oils.

You'll get more omega 6 fats from parent oils.

Toasted sesame oil – Has lots of Vitamin T.

What is Vitamin T?

“Sixes are Sexy.”

-Ann's thoughts on Udo's Oil…35:37

Uses unrefined, raw sunflower oil.

Uses proper antioxidants.

-The role of Gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) in the formation of brown fat tissue…37:15

It actually “activates” the tissue.

Evening primrose oil;

GLA helps people to lose weight without watching their calories or exercising.

-Why Ann is a fan of essential amino acids…39:15

We need more protein, not less.

Has more to do with metabolic rate than the gallbladder.

The right kind of coffee can prevent you from losing lean muscle.

It's a way to get more concentrated amounts of proteins.

-The best way to test for toxicity in your body…42:00

Non-invasive: hair tests; tissue analysis.

Urine provocation test can be very hard on the system.

Lots of toxicity in cooking tools and utensils.

-Why Ann would rather have a poisonous serpent in her kitchen than aluminum foil…45:48

-Ann's 4-day and 21-day intensive cleanses…47:37

Lots of watercress soup, which contains cancer-fighting phytonutrients. (Buy it at Trader Joe's.) Can also eat watercress as the green in a salad, as opposed to kale.

Juices that are low-glycemic. No pulp.

Not uncommon to lose 8-10 pounds during the cleanse. Water weight.

You start with the 4-day, then take a week of maintenance and then the 21-day.

Why A2 is far preferable to A1 (found in most milks).

Click here for the full written transcript of this podcast episode.

Resources from this episode:

Episode Sponsors:

–Kion Lean Support for normal blood sugar levels and healthy energy metabolism, even after large, carb-rich meals. Use discount code: BENLEAN10 and get 10% off your order!

–Goshas Organics is a recognized leader in Innovative PHYTO Herbal Honey Infusions. Use discount code “ben10%” to get 10% off your order!

–Zip Recruiter takes the headache out of hiring the right people for your business! Use my link and get started with Zip Recruiter for free!

–Organifi Try their Gold juice: Pain-soothing herbs, antioxidants, & phytonutrients all in one delicious, soothing “Golden Milk”. Use code: GREENFIELD and get 20% off everything in your cart!

Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Ann or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply!

Ask Ben a Podcast Question

Source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/nutrition-podcasts/cleanse-your-gallbladder/

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waxeight06-blog · 6 years

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The Weekly Roundup: Your Go-To Guide For Everything You May Have Missed This Week & More! 12/01 – 12/07

Welcome to Ben Greenfield's Weekly Roundup and Cool New Discoveries!

Ben Greenfield's discoveries from the latest news from the fronts of fitness, nutrition, health, wellness, biohacking and anti-aging research. I also recap my upcoming events and special announcements so you can keep up with giveaways, discounts, and more!

New Discoveries Of The Week: Cool New Things I'm Trying, Books I'm Reading, And More!

– A Crazy New Essential Oil I'm Using For Sex/Dreams/Euphoria

Ultrasonic Damiana: My friend Dr. Nick Berry (previous and fascinating podcast guest here) occasionally sends me crazy brews and blends from his secret lab in Oregon, and the latest is quite intriguing. It's called “damiana”. The ingredients of his so-called “Ultrasonic Damiana Tincture” include organic honey spirits, filtered water and organic damiana extract. It is described as slightly euphoric, uplifting and warming to the digestive system and also stimulates the abdomen, sexual organs and solar plexus.

I've definitely gotten pretty euphoric, and quite horny, several times when using this tincture. There's a more thorough description of the product and if you wish to dive into Dr. Berry's thoughts/feelings on his Ultrasonic Damiana Tincture here (where you can also read about the synergy of high dosage damiana and mugwort if a night of really pleasant vivid dreaming is your thing).

– Sensory Deprivation/Sleep Biohack

David Delight MindAlive PRO: Even though I've owned a David Delight for over a year, I've recently been breaking it out for long airplane rides, naps on the most stressful days of the week, or to initiate sleep/beat insomnia and…holy hell. I'd forgotten about the potency of this thing (and am kicking myself for forgetting I had it tucked underneath my couch with a few other biohacks I'd forgotten about). It is a small, phone-sized device that uses pulses of auditory and visual stimuli to alter your brainwaves, and it does so quite dramatically. It also contains a built-in cranial electrical stimulation feature that plummets your cortisol and puts you into relaxation very quickly.

I consider it, from a sensory standpoint, to be the technological equivalent of a float tank. You simply put on the glasses, attach a clip to each earlobe, place headphones in each ear and you're “dead to the world”. It also comes with a handy connection that lets you pipe in sounds from your iPhone if you want to combine it with binaural beats, white noise, music, etc. Well worth owning, in my opinion. You can get the exact model I own on Amazon here. It's a bit of a trip too when combined with psilocybin, LSD, the damiana oil above, or marijuana (for those of you who are more hedonistic).

Podcasts I Recorded This Week:

Articles & Podcasts I Was Featured In This Week:

– No Proof Energy Drinks Harm Blood Vessels, Unhealthy for Other Reasons

– MindBodyGreen podcast: Daily Biohacks ANYONE should try that are minimal effort and affordable

– Why I Started Training with Ben Greenfield

– Keys For Brain Health and Cognitive Function with Ben Greenfield

Special Announcements:

::: My Mindvalley Quest Course for Optimizing Beauty and Longevity is Finally Live! :::

My obsession with longevity started when I recently took a telomere test, which gives you a measure of your biological age by analyzing your DNA found in your white blood cells. I took the test when I was 34, and discovered despite my best intentions that my body was actually aging faster.

My motivation to reverse the clock was fired. Research, self-experimentation, analyzing my fitness and nutrition, I was delighted upon retesting my telomeres again earlier this year to discover that I managed to shave 17 years off my biological age.

What surprised me most was that I was able to achieve this through protocols and biohacks that were EASY. No fancy equipment. No wildly complex or long workout sessions. No expensive pills or creams.

So here it is. In my first Mindvalley Masterclass, I disclose the most powerful protocols you can apply in your life now to elevate key pillars in your wellbeing (namely your health, fitness, beauty and longevity). Sign up, free, today, here.

::: Take Your Productivity and Focus to the Next Level in 2019 :::

Join me in this free masterclass for enhancing your cognition, focus, and memory where you'll learn the proprietary Superhuman Brain Methodology: simple checklists, step-by-step solutions and little-known protocols that invite healing, brain upgrades and next-level performance.

Whether you're in need of healing or simply enhancing your brainpower, you are going to learn practical wisdom and next-level hacks to enhance your brain function. These tips are priceless and will last you a lifetime. The Superhuman Brain Masterclass is online and begins Monday! Register here today.

::: Save $30 on the WHOOP Self Quantification Wristband :::

Know someone who's ready to start tracking their health insights in 2019 so they can make informed choices about their diet, supplementation, exercise and recovery routine? WHOOP could be the perfect gift…

Monitoring recovery is, in my opinion, the main thing that sets WHOOP apart from other wearables, aside from the simple, personal preference of wearing a wristband, waistband, ring or other. “Recovery” is basically how well-prepared WHOOP predicts your body is for taking on more ‘strain.' It also gives you a very accurate heart rate variability (HRV) measurement that is taken during the last 5 minutes of your slow wave sleep (aka deep sleep) each night, unlike other wearables. Get more information on WHOOP and take a deep dive into their fascinating patented, technology, here.

Upcoming Events:

– December 2 – 8, 2018: RUNGA Retreat, Dominican Republic. You're invited to join me at RUNGA in December 2018. Join me in the Dominican Republic, one of the most beautiful places in the Caribbean, for this retreat. In all RUNGA activities, RUNGA invites you to come home to yourself. To see everything you'll be getting into, just click here. Use code BEN when you register so you get your gift when you arrive! I'll be there, too. Join the waitlist here.

– December 14 – 16, 2018: World Congress 2018 Hosted by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, Las Vegas, Nevada. If you attend any conference this year, make it the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine’s 26th Annual World Congress. The fact is, in an era of andropause, low drive and deteriorating men's health, it's shocking that both practitioners and the public aren't aware of ancestral wisdom and modern scientific and medical tactics that can be used to optimize male physiology. It's time that changed, and I'll be teaching exactly how to make men, men again. Join me!

– Jan 20 – 21, 2019: Serious Business Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana. This conference is going invoke thought and insight and expose you to new ideas and thinking on self-development and business in the beauty industry. Register here.

– April 6 – 7, 2019: FitCon Summit, Salt Lake City, Utah. FitCon® encourages everyone to Find Their Fit. It does not matter whether it is powerlifting, Crossfit, bodybuilding, roller derby, or even axe throwing. Be sure to visit the Kion booth in the expo!

-View the Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Calendar Here

This Week's Most Popular Instagram Pic:

This Week's Most Popular Tweet:

https://t.co/3YFkusMvWS

— Ben Greenfield (@bengreenfield) November 27, 2018

My Most Popular Facebook Post This Week:

Big takeaways from the ketamine journey at BioresetMedical.com: 1) Love More, Give More;2) God Is, Love Is;3) Jessa, Ben, River & Terran live a life of helping others and spreading peace, love and joy – I as a leader must be an example for my family of how to do that;4) I have a very high amount of yang, physical, carnal, sexual energy that I must channel and pray to God to help me direct into yin, loving, giving energy, especially if I am to avoid the constant temptation to achieve, impress and satisfy the flesh.5) I am a King, a Leader & a Lover.

Posted by Ben Greenfield Fitness on Saturday, December 1, 2018

This Week's Most Popular Pin from Pinterest:

Ben Greenfield Fitness saved to “Ben's Nutrition Advice.” Read the article here.