Ben Greenfield On Sleep Health, Cortisol, Walking Pace, Red Light, Carbs, Grounding, Hot/Cold Therapy, Meditation, Parenting and The Power Of Spirituality
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Harris to 500-500. The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Hi guys, it's Mari and you're listening to The Pursuit of Wellness. Today on the show, we have one of my dream guests, Ben Greenfield. Ben Greenfield is a

He's an expert when it comes to anti-aging, optimal living, longevity, biohacking, nutrition, fitness, cognition, and so much more. I have his book, Boundless, which is basically a giant encyclopedia for all things health. And he just released the pre-order for his new book, Boundless Parenting, which I'm so excited to chat about. Ben, welcome to the show. Hey.

Hey, thanks for having me on. Yeah, got to hype you up for a sec. My husband and I have been listening to you for years and you have had a big impact on our health journey and a lot of what we do. So I know you're a wealth of knowledge in so many areas, but for anyone listening who doesn't know you, what's kind of the elevator pitch of who you are and what you do?

Yeah, my background is I got a master's degree in exercise physiology and biomechanics from University of Idaho. Did a pre-med degree down there and then wound up working in the fitness world for about a decade or so, you know, training clients and opening up studios and gyms and eventually decided I want to kind of be a stay-at-home dad and homeschool my kids. And so I moved into the house and made it my excuse to work in my underwear from home. So started to do a lot more like book writing and podcasting and a lot

What do I do now? Amazing. And just to paint the picture for anyone who's listening but not watching, Ben is walking on his treadmill right now. He's got the red light behind him, in front of him, the picture of health. I'm very inspired.

Well, you know what? I think there's even some evidence that you make more brain-derived neurotrophic factor and more of what's called vascular endothelial growth factor, which both of which are calling miracle growth for the brain. If you're moving when you're learning or moving when you're teaching or moving when you're talking. And a lot of times I'm recording a podcast or doing like a consulting call. I didn't mention this. I do like a lot of coaching for health and fitness with clients who have me go through their lab work and stuff.

I use most excuses I can to walk either outside or inside. And I lift weights a few times a week. But honestly, like, I think like the 15, 20,000 steps I take a day is so good for metabolic health and so much more ancestral. You know, it's not like those of us who work indoors can be farming and gardening and building fences or whatever all day long. But kind of simulate that by walking on the treadmill in the office and keep

keeping a kettlebell on the floor and having a pull-up bar in the door. And you just kind of keep the body moving during the day. And then I think the only issue with the treadmills is manual treadmills put out a lot of

like dirty electricity, EMF, the reason a lot of people are being careful with their phones up by their heads or, you know, turn their wifi routers off at night. Well, I mean, a treadmill is just like a giant soup of EMF. So I think if you're going to do a treadmill workstation, get like a manual, a manual treadmill. And then I got one, there's a lot of the manuals and even the, the engine driven treadmills are super slow. Like, especially the desk ones, they'll go like three or four miles an hour. But like the one I'm on is like,

Very similar to those curved treadmills that you'll see in, for example, like the CrossFit Games.

So you can run on it and it keeps your body in really good alignment biomechanically. And all I did was just took the front dashboard off the treadmill. So I've got full access to my computer. And the only thing I don't like to do when I'm on the treadmill is write. Sometimes I'll record ideas for articles or ideas for book chapters and then transcribe them either with like a manual transcriptionist or using something like Otter. But there's something about like the deep act of creative writing where I don't like to be moving. But besides that,

It's surprising how many things you can do during the day, team calls, podcasts, chats, conversations, consults, etc. while you're walking. And I have heard you mention the pace being crucial because everyone's obsessed with getting their steps in now, but you've mentioned that pace is important. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. If you look at two recent meta-analyses on walking showed that almost just as important as the number of steps you take per day

which it generally, I mean, Pam, the pretty broad brush, it's like 10,000 or more is a good goal to shoot for, which a lot of people think they're getting at. And then once they use an aura or a whoop or whatever, it turns out they're not, you know, some people think they're moving all day long and they look and it's like 5,000 steps a day.

And they just got to start parking far away in the grocery store in the mall and getting a walking treadmill workstation. And maybe all those phone calls you take while you're sitting on the couch, you take while you're walking circles in your backyard or, you know, are you waiting for a flight to take off? You're not sitting there waiting to sit some more on the airplane, but you're walking back and forth. You know, there's all sorts of ways that you can hack your environment to move more. But, yeah, you're right. It turns out that as important as that count is.

is the pace. Like your actual walking speed is heavily correlated with longevity. Like it's right up there with things like grip strength, which is another pretty big corollary for longevity or VO2 max, right? So your maximum oxygen utilization, how much you could hold, like your grip strength, both of those are really well correlated with how long you're going to live and how healthy you'll be with that life. And it turns out that walking speed also falls into that category. So

My rule is

Honestly, unless I'm on a podcast, like the conversations that you and I are having right now, like I'm not walking super fast, but if I'm just like walking, one listen to an audio book or a podcast or on a hike, I just tell myself walk slightly faster than your brain wants to walk. However, when I first came across some of that research, I thought there's gotta be some way to like cue the body to walk faster. It turns out that in cardiac rehab in hospitals, they have these like super expensive, you

they look similar like the compression boots that athletes will wear for recovery, but they pump blood from the body, but they time the pump to the diastolic phase of the heartbeat, meaning that as the heart is just getting ready to fill the legs pump and it causes more blood to rush back up to the heart. And it,

It can be really, really great for cardiovascular performance and oxygenating the body to be able to do that. But you obviously can't get like a $50,000 pair of cardio respiratory rehab boots, you know, in the average basement. So I found another device. It's called a counter pace. And I haven't used it in a while because I kind of trained my body using it and then quit using it. But what counter pace does is it plays like a beat, like a metronome type beat as you're walking.

And it comes with a heart rate monitor. And so what it's essentially doing is timing your step count to your heart rate, which allows blood to get pumped from your legs back up to your heart at the perfect moment and keeps you walking at a relatively brisk pace. And it'll say, speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. It'll even have like a little metronome option or a music option. So I use the counter pace on a lot of my walks for walking.

probably like five or six months before i thought okay i got this i don't have to i don't have to use the device anymore but that was one thing i found to really help to get the pace up and then the other thing is even though it's not as good for the butt you don't have as much ground reaction forces you don't use quite as many muscles i mean walking on a treadmill is

Really great. And this case is not a manual treadmill. So throw everything I said about Wi-Fi and EMF out the window. You know, sometimes you got to take one for the team. But treadmill with...

with an engine on it, obviously if I set that, I don't know, 4.0 for walking speed, I've got no choice but to walk at that pace or fall off the back of the treadmill. So a treadmill can be good for training the body to keep its step count up as well. Treadmills are really good for that for runners too, like people who want to do a marathon or a half marathon or a 5K or a triathlon run or whatever faster.

Using a treadmill forces you to run at a faster pace than your brain would actually want to train at. Similar to the idea of like these electrical muscle stimulation suits for fitness, right? They grab a whole bunch of muscles the brain wouldn't normally otherwise grab. And it'd be wonderful for building muscle, for building strength. Shameless break here for a second. I won gold medal for the USA in long course triathlon. I think that was 2013. And I barely ran outside at all.

I had two treadmill sessions a week that were very, very high intensity interval training, you know, like 10 all out 30 second repeats with, you know, two minute recoveries after each. I had one more like pace based 90 minute run on the treadmill. And then sometimes I'd throw in one additional outdoors run, but I almost did all my running on the treadmill. And I was the fastest runner I ever was in my life was when I did almost all my running on the treadmill. I think it was because it,

forces you to keep the cadence elevated. And do you think it's because maybe there isn't that element of like danger? Like you don't have to worry about stop signs, people, things like that. Whirls and cats and clowns and black cats and zombies and stuff like that. Yeah. Out of all the different fitness trackers, you know, aura ring, whoops, which one do you recommend to the average person? I like the aura and that's mostly because

I wear a watch. I didn't want an extra thing in my wrist. I just wear like a cheap ass, you know, $15 Timex watch. I'm pretty low tech when it comes to watches and even gadgets in general. But I like the Oura Ring because it's got really good sleep data. I mean, their sleep data is up there as far as like getting pretty close to like a professional plesmiography based sleep lab.

It'll do oxygenation now. So, you know, if you're having issues with like pulse oximetry or sleep apnea during the night of sleep, which is a huge issue for a lot of people, it does a great job with temperature tracking, which is great, especially for women who want to track their cycles or even, you know, that type of tracking can be predictive for things like COVID as well.

It does a pretty good job with heart rate variability and readiness. And yeah, like I, I think of all of them, I like the Oryx. I can wear the aura and then just have a regular watch on and it's pretty no frills. It's I, I put it in airplane mode all the time. And then whenever I want to sync up the data, I just quickly take it out of the airplane mode. So I can kind of like have one less device bombarding my body with Bluetooth or wifi or whatever. Yeah.

I like it. I think if you do want a wristband, the whoop does a great job. And then there's another device. If you just want to train breath and heartbeat variability and use it more for stress management, there's a device called the Hanu, which is like a chest strap with a pretty decent app with breath cues and a breath pacer. And that one works pretty well also, but I don't think it's as good for fitness tracking and sleep tracking as much as just for nervous system tracking.

Establishing healthy habits is so important to overall longevity. And one thing I make sure I never miss is my bloom greens.

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Are you looking for some good, clean positivity? Good. Me neither. I'm Maddie Murphy and I host The Bad Broadcast, a weekly comedy podcast dedicated to talking about everything we love to hate. I searched my whole life to find my passion. Little did I know I had been practicing my true talent every single day. Complaining. Join me every Monday wherever you listen to podcasts and be sure to follow me on Instagram at thebadbroadcast.

to answer our weekly questions and for a chance to be featured on the show. See you there. So Ben, you're obviously like living as optimally as you possibly can. 10 out of 10. Let's say someone's listening who's maybe at a 3 out of 10, 2 out of 10, who's hoping to increase that a little bit. Where do you recommend they start? All right. Well, first of all, I know some 10 out of 10s. I'm not a 10 out of 10. I...

I punish the bread basket at the steakhouse when it comes out and have an extra cocktail and stay up late sometimes just playing or being out in the town. I am a total foodie. I love to eat and I probably eat like 4000 calories a day. I love life, but I also like adventures and appreciate good food and.

really like to take care of my body and get paid to figure out stuff that helps people live a long time so you know i'm constantly guinea pigging stuff my body but at the end of the day like i'm not

I'm not like a, like a poopy faced orthorexic guy who's living his whole life cold and hungry and libido list and some quest to live till I'm 160 years old, like probably like a solid eight and a half though. But let's say you are, let's, let's say you are like you said, like at a two or three, but you're already aware of what most people are aware of, which is exercise,

and try and eat less crap. Let's say you've already wrapped your head around that and you're like, okay, I got it. I'm not going to fast food and I'm hitting the gym a few times a week and I'm walking. If there were things to do in addition to eating well and moving that would help to keep the body's battery charged, one would be the earth itself, right? Like being outside barefoot,

getting outside and going for long walks on the beach or swims in natural bodies of water. Or even if you can't get outside that much, using some of these modern tools like grounding mats or earthing mats or grounding shoes.

or even what's called pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, which is kind of like grounding on steroids. They're typically like mats or little devices that kind of concentrate the Earth's frequency that you can even sleep on. I think a lot of people don't realize how healing the natural electrical frequencies generated by our planet can be.

So that's one. Two would be photons of light. Like we were talking about light earlier, not just fancy expensive infrared light panels or infrared saunas or infrared treatment devices, which a lot of people use for collagen, for elastin, for endocrine hormone function, for wakefulness, for circadian rhythmicity, for simulating sunrise in the morning or sunset at night. And those are really good to include because those photons, particularly of red light, help to excite the mitochondria

and keep the battery charged. But of course, sunlight has a natural full spectrum of light too. So, you know, being careful not to burn, but trying to hunt down, you know, 20 minutes to two hours of natural light per day, preferably early in the day, and pairing that if you can afford it or have access to it with some form of infrared therapy or red light therapy on a regular basis, that's also fantastic for the body's battery. That'd be a second one. I think

Another thing that a lot of people neglect who might already be exercising and eating well is thermal stress, meaning stressors of heat and stressors of cold. And we see, you know, across like generations, especially in indigenous hunter gatherer societies and, you know, tougher societies like Russia or long-lived societies like Finland, robust use of heat and cold, like sauna practice three to five times a week, deep sweat jumps into cold,

lakes and rivers and oceans, the use of cold baths, the use of cold showers. And a lot of times people nowadays are doing breathwork in combination with that, which is fantastic for moving oxygen through the body, for blowing off CO2, for filling the body with nitric oxide. So, I mean, that's a key part of my program, like one of my secret weapons.

I think I have two secret weapons, actually. Secret, obviously, because I'm talking about you. But one is I fast every day for 12 to 16 hours. I wake up in a fasted state. I do some form of exercise and I finish with cold. And I think if you want to stay lean, that's a really good strategy. But then the other thing that I do, and I include my kids in this since they were eight years old. So it's like a little bit of a father son bonding time, too, is we do heat, breathwork and cold.

three to five times a week. Sometimes it's 20 minute breathwork session in the sauna. Sometimes like on a weekend, we'll go like an hour, just like flat on our backs, just sweating a ton and breathing. It always finishes with some type of a jump, like a cold plunge. And I'm usually getting a couple of cold plunges because I also will take a cold shower at some point. And

That combination of heat, breathwork, and cold are just this general idea of pairing thermal stress with the use of something that regulates your nervous system, namely your breath. That's a really great strategy. It goes beyond just treating the body as a battery. There's just so many benefits. White fat conversion into metabolically active brown tissue, better insulin sensitivity, better cardiovascular performance.

Better control of your nervous system in general, better nitric oxide production, breathing off more carbon dioxide, so alkalizing the body. Like I think kids like at school, that's part of their physical education programs should have like heat, cold and breath work as things that are included right along with, you know, burpees and running ladders. So there's that. And then.

if I could name something in addition to good relationship, getting in touch with the planet Earth or even using devices to help you do that, and then sunlight and red light and heat, cold and breath work, I would say

that a lot of people from an environmental standpoint, there's a lot of stuff they don't pay attention to, like household cleaning chemicals and personal care products and all these endocrine disruptors and eating food out of styrofoam plastics and things like that. But I think top of the totem pole is water, like really good, clean, pure, filtered water, you know, frequently throughout the day with salts added to it, with electrolytes added to it, with good salts added to the food, with, you know, some form of electrolytes coming out on a regular basis. Because if you think about it,

If you look at the periodic table of the elements or whatever, that's what carries a charge through our bodies. And so if we're picky about our water, drinking out of glass bottles, using good water filters like, say, reverse osmosis or carbon block,

And then we add minerals back to that water and also add a lot of minerals and electrolytes to our food. Our body actually has the charge that it needs to keep the cells operating the right way. And so, yeah, if you're already moving well and eating healthy, get grounding and earthing in at some point during the day, some form of sunlight, red light or both.

some kind of thermal stress. It'll be every day, but at least a few times a week. And then just be like ultra picky about the quality and cleanliness of your water and add minerals to it. And I think if people would just do that, they'd go from, you know, like a three up to like a solid seven or eight on one to 10 scale. Question in terms of minerals. So I use the Kinton water and wellness minerals every day. I don't know how you feel about those.

Yeah, those are harvested from basically like phytoplankton bloom in the ocean that's been filtered. And the electrolyte content of them is actually shockingly close to mammalian plasma so far as they've even like done blood transfusions on dogs. And the dogs have survived with Kington in their veins instead of plasma.

And if you want to stay really well hydrated with a spectrum of electrolytes, that's the closest to human blood. You know, you let you hear a lot of people will say like, Oh, drink coconut water. You know, if you're dehydrated or after a big sauna session, cause it's really close to the mineral composition and osmolality or concentration of human plasma. Well, Kington's actually even better than that. And so, yeah, you're using a good one. It doesn't taste that good. It tastes like you're drinking seawater.

It's expensive. I would say there are other brands out there that either have a flavor profile that's better and are easier on the pocketbook if people can't do the Kington. That would be like Protect is a good brand. Jigsaw Health makes one called Adrenal Cocktail. It's a good brand. Element, like LMNT, they do a good job. You don't have to use just one electrolyte. Some people get bored. I've got Protect liquid electrolytes in my pantry. I've got Kington in my pantry.

I've got element in my pantry. I've got really good salt, a couple different varieties that I use on food. So, you know, just like, you know, you kind of mix up your workouts throughout the week. I'll mix up my electrolyte sources throughout the week. And then just to speak to salt for a minute, because I think, you know, people who are in the health and fitness industry know how beneficial salt can be. But I do think there's a significant amount of people out there who don't

don't think salt is good for you. I think if you really want to wrap your head around this, there's a great book called The Salt Fix by Dr. James Nicolantonio. And I've interviewed him on my podcast before. But the long story short is that, you know, processed food or even like the typical iodized table salt, it's hefty amounts of sodium chloride. And usually, yeah, we would find sodium in a pretty large concentration in nature and in our bodies, but not all by itself.

you know, there are 70 plus other minerals electrolyzed that the body needs. And so arguably, if you're going to use salt, you want to salt with a really good spectrum of minerals that goes above and beyond just like table salt or sodium chloride. And so there are a few good brands out there. Redmond salt, they do a pretty good job. And when I say good, I mean, decent concentration of minerals without a lot of microplastics and metals.

Interestingly, like a lot of sea salt, especially like the dark pink or reddish stuff, it does have a lot of iron in it, which can build up in the body, especially in males. It does have some toxins and microplastics and metals in it. So just because the salt is spendy or foo-foo or came from France or whatever, doesn't mean it's healthy. And you can usually Google salt.

the names of most salts and there are a variety of companies that have done like mass spectrometry analysis of the actual mineral content the action toxin content or plastic and metal content and salts you can know if something you're using as a staple in your diet or on a regular basis is a thumbs up or a thumbs down i personally like i mentioned redmond does a good job celtic salt that's really good brands like a little blue bag you can find

you can find at most grocery stores and that's it's pretty clean and has a really good electrolyte profile and a good flavor profile too which is important you want your salt to taste good and then the one i use most often is called kalima c-o-l-i-m-a it's from the mexican coast it's kind of harvested by

These salt harvesting solaneros at the basin of this mountain where the water comes down and kind of collects the minerals. And something about like the flavor profile and, you know, don't laugh, but I'm super picky. Like the size of the salt crystal and everything about it I like. So, you know, those are a few good brands that you could look into Redmond or Celtic or Kalima.

While we're on the topic of all things health and longevity with Ben, I want to talk about toothpaste.

There are so many everyday ingredients we don't think about that have ingredients that may be causing issues in our bodies. Did you know we swallow 5% to 7% of our toothpaste every single time we brush? And most commercial toothpastes are filled with harsh chemicals, artificial flavors, and preservatives, not things I want to be putting in my mouth, let alone swallowing. And this is where I discovered Bite. Bite makes dry toothpaste tablets made with clean ingredients.

They're sulfate-free, palm oil-free, and glycerin-free. Plus, they're so convenient. They come in these cute little glass jars. You can just throw in your carry-on bag or put on your countertop. You pop a bit in your mouth, chew it up, and start brushing. It turns into a paste where it used to, but no plastic tube and no messy paste. I have absolutely loved traveling with these. So convenient to bring on a flight and makes you feel fresh when you come off.

The glass jars are so, so cute as well. Great for the countertop. And I just absolutely love these. Greg has been really enjoying them too. I can't wait for you guys to try them. Byte is offering our listeners 20% off your first order. Go to trybyte.com slash pow or use code pow, P-O-W at checkout to claim this deal. That's T-R-Y-B-I-T-E dot com slash pow.

One of my favorite times in the day is in the evening when I get home from work, Greg gets home from work, and we come together to make a delicious, healthy meal. It's the perfect way to wind down, and that's become even easier with HelloFresh. With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep.

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Our current favorite has been the seared steak potatoes with bernese sauce. It's absolutely incredible. Lulu is like drooling watching us eat it. It's made cooking so easy and fast and so enjoyable for me and my husband. You can go to hellofresh.com slash pow65 and use code POW65 for 65% off plus free.

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I know you've been asked about your routines many times, but I know you kind of have a new focus right now on family and spirituality. So I'd love to kind of hear an updated sleep routine with that in mind. We typically, and I typically kind of like break work at the end of the day around seven. And yeah, like for circadian rhythmicity,

you know a lot of people say you want to have dinner like five or six and give the food two or three hours to digest and it's just the fact that by the time everybody's done with their day and

we're ready for dinner it's closer to seven and we're all fuddy-duddies like everybody in our house is usually in bed by like 9 30. so obviously we're breaking that rule of finishing dinner two to three hours before bedtime but we all meet in the kitchen around seven typically everybody's pitching in to help make dinner you know i usually do like the meat you know salmon you know steak

We do a lot of organ meats like bone marrow, bone broth, heart, kidney, liver, like a lot of these super nutrient dense cuts of meat. And I figured out how to ways to prepare those and make them taste good, like sous vide or smoker or grilling or long cook times, crock pot, pressure cooker, et cetera. So even though I think my wife's way better cook than I am,

I like to cook meat, so I'm usually putting my hand up and helping out with the meat. And sometimes that means I have a home office, but I'm popping up from the office at like four to piece the chicken out and season it and put it back in the refrigerator and have it ready to put in the oven at 645. So we're ready to gather for dinner around seven. So

some pms dinner usually you know some kind of a big lovely salad or roasted vegetables you know carrot fries or sweet potato fries you know sushi rice just kind of varies but you know some form of a starch some form of vegetable some form of meat and then you know i usually have a glass of red wine or you know these days i drink actually a lot less wine even though i always drink healthy like organic biodynamic wine there's this new

cocktail like drink called ketones and you can drink ketones the ones i like are from a company called ketone aid because they make like a moscow mule flavor and a gin and tonic flavor and even just a regular flavor and you mix it all up usually pour over ice with a squeeze of lemon or lime and it has this socially lubricating relaxing

inhibitory like end of the day yes neurotransmitter type of effects but there's none of the toxic byproducts of alcohol i mean let's face it even like healthy organic wine they're still making acetaldehyde it's still ethanol it's still a little bit hard on the cells and some people will say well that's why it has a longevity enhancing effect is it's slightly harder on the cells just like heat stress or cold stress or exercise so your cells bounce back and become more resilient but

Nonetheless, whatever you want to say, I do like half the time I'll do a glass of wine. Half the time I'll do some of these ketones poured over ice, like these ketone aid, ketone drinks. We usually play games and laugh for like an hour during dinner. Just these long family dinners, a lot of times card games, board games, you name it, even like table topics, just random questions for people. And so yeah, right before dinner, we sing a song, we pray, we go through a book. I've

I play a song on the guitar and we say a prayer, do some gratitude, sometimes a little bit of breath work to settle the body down. Just a few like long inhales, longer exhales, getting in touch with the body, preparing it to receive food. So we're not eating like a rushed sympathetic state, which is often one of the reasons people get indigestion or leaky gut or heartburns. They're just eating too fast, not being grateful for their food, not saying a prayer with their food, maybe stopping to breathe before they eat. So

I make it a point to do that and make sure my kids understand the importance of that, not just mindlessly rushing into the meal. And usually, if you want to get all biohacky, I'm wearing blue light blocking glasses at night.

We use a lot of soft lighting in our home, either incandescent or halogen lighting, which are two forms of lighting that are a lot friendlier to the circadian rhythm and sleep than say like LED or overhead fluorescent lighting. So we use a really nice light, but I still got blue light blocking glasses on most of the time for those brighter things like opening the refrigerator.

you know looking at the phone things along those lines and we finished dinner around like 8 8 15 and then we all clean up the kitchen together usually we're like playing music singing laughing hanging out and then once we've done all of that we go up into my son's room and

I'll either read a bedtime story or we say a prayer. We almost always meditate or review something that we're in the process of memorizing. Usually we memorize some new part of the Bible each week. I think memorization is another kind of like breathwork and heat and cold, like a lost aspect of staying young. So we force our brains to kind of get a little smoke coming out the ears and practice what it is that we've memorized.

Supplementation wise, you know, if my wife and I are planning on having sex or, you know, or hanging out for a little while after dinner, after we put the kids to bed, I won't take someone who's going to make me sleepy, obviously. And I'll save that for right before I go to bed. But usually after we tuck the kids in, I take a little bit of Keon sleep, which is a sleep formula that I have.

I help to make that's got a bunch of stuff in it that settles the body down, but doesn't leave you too groggy the next morning. And I typically will do a little bit of CBD along with that. So I like to do CBD with Keon Sleep. And then if I've been traveling a lot, I'll include melatonin as well to help to kind of reestablish the body circadian rhythm. And I go pretty high dose on melatonin. I get suppositories of melatonin from this company called Mitozen in Florida. And they're hefty, like 300 milligrams of melatonin

And that's not something I do every night, but like, I just got back from recording my album in Nashville last night and went to bed about 1:00 AM. And, you know, I usually get up about 4:30 or 5:00 AM. So I had to get up pretty early to start work today. And I find that melatonin allows me to just like slip into sleep pretty quick, even if I'm outside of my time zone. And it does leave you groggy the next morning, melatonin does, but

If light hits your eyes and you just like get a lot of natural sunlight exposure or even just like, gosh, looking at a computer or smartphone, which generates a lot of blue light, which is the reason you shouldn't look at it at night. It'll really wake you up and get melatonin out of your system in the morning. So if you use melatonin, you wake up groggy and like, crap, today's going to suck. Just get exposed to as much light as you can. And it's usually out of your system pretty quick.

And so I'll take my sleep supplements either after my wife and I have hung out for a while or right after we put the kids to bed, if we're planning on going to bed anyways. I always have a stack of books next to the bed that are non-business, non-fitness, you know, get my mind out of work type of books. So like right now I'm studying the Torah, like the Levitical law, like Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus. So I read, I read typically for about 15 to 20 minutes. I have

I have a chili pad on my bed, which circulates 55 degree cold water underneath my body, which I find really helps me to sleep. I use a sleep mask. I use earplugs. I'm kind of a princess sleeper, right? So I put in earplugs. I put on a sleep mask. I get things nice and cold. I take my key on sleep and my CBD and will usually breathe myself to sleep.

And I like to play a little background noise because we live by a road where I can sometimes hear the cars in the morning. And so I use an app called Sleep Stream, kind of like covers up some of the noise in the background. I'm experimenting right now actually with mouth taping and I kind of like it. What I don't like is I obviously can't put it on right before my wife and I pray. And

And I felt like Kenny from South Park or something. So I mouth tape is just like one more thing I got to remember to do. But I actually, I've been getting really good sleep cycles, you know, based on my aura ring. And the only thing I've changed significantly has been mouth taping. So there's something about it that's causing my body to shift into a relaxed state better. They say you get more nitric oxide into your system. They say that it allows for the jaw to relax a little bit more. Something's working with mouth tip. I've only been doing that for a couple of weeks. I use this stuff called

Hostage tape, which is designed for men who have facial hair. I obviously don't have facial hair, but the only thing I should mention, not to freak people out too much with all the things, is the importance of earthing and grounding. I mentioned how cool that is for fighting inflammation along the body to recover faster. Well, I actually have one of those.

right underneath that cold water circulating mat. So I'm getting the benefits of earthing and grounding the whole night while I'm asleep while also staying cold. And I won't lie, like I'm pretty happy with my sleep. Another thing my husband and I started doing because of you was the red light bulbs, which I think is really helpful. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. Like I mentioned how our whole house is all incandescent and halogen lighting, but in the bedroom, it's specifically red incandescent lighting. So both of the lamps on either side, on her side and my side, when you flip them on at night, when you're reading and stuff, it's just red. So you sleep really well, you know, especially if you're doing that. And then if you're looking at a phone or whatever, maybe you're reading on a candle, you also have like the blue light blocking glasses on. You just sleep so much better when you control light in your environment.

And they're like five bucks on Amazon or something. They're super easy to get your hands on, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and like in the morning, it's actually important. Even though natural light in the morning is important.

You want to ease your body into the day because natural light produces this cortisol awakening response. And sometimes it can be a little much. It'd be almost like waking up, you've got a coffee maker on your bedside, and the first thing you do is a shot of espresso. That's kind of like how your body interprets looking at your phone, the computer, and turning all the lights in the room when you get up. So...

Like I mentioned, I get up like 4.30 or 5, but I have just a cheapo headlamp on my bedside. It's the same thing from Amazon. It's like, I don't know, 15 bucks or something. But it's a red light headlamp. So I can put that on. I want to own around the house in the morning, you know, when I don't want to just blast my body with all this light. I just use red light in the morning also. So, I mean, if you think about it, it makes sense, right? You're trying to simulate sunset at night and then sunrise in the morning. And it'd be weird for the body to just like have the sun up at noon.

which is technically what you're doing when you flip all the lights on your bedroom versus keeping the lights off and just using red light to get around for the first hour or so of the day. I feel a lot better when I do that. In the women's health space, everyone's talking about cortisol and hormone health. What is your take on working out as soon as you wake up in terms of cortisol? I think that it shifts the circadian clock backwards a little bit

and makes you sleepy in the afternoon and sleepier in the early evening if you just shock the body with a workout right when you get up. Even if you look at a lot of Ayurvedic body clock timing type of stuff, let's say you're getting up at five or six, generally you want to take the time that you get up and add two to three hours. And that's the time of day that's best for some type of robust physical activity.

Even though I have to admit that I like to do easy walk in the sunshine, yoga, sauna, cold breath work, stuff like that in the morning. And then I try to do like my harder workouts whenever I can later on in the day, like the later afternoon or early evening, because I

your body temperature and your testosterone and your grip strength and your reaction time and your overall strength, all this stuff kind of peaks at that time of day. So if you can, if you can do it in your schedule, even though of course the best workout is one that you're actually going to do, but if you have the luxury of time to be able to kind of like do something easy in the morning and then do like the harder thing in the later afternoon, early evening, it is better from a physiological and a circadian rhythmicity standpoint. Now,

The same could be said of like coffee. Technically, you'd want to wait a couple hours after waking up to have a cup of coffee unless

You, like me, love the bowel movement effect of a cup of coffee. So I personally break that rule. I typically have a cup of coffee within like an hour after I get up because it kind of helps you move my bowels. And I like to do that in the morning. Technically, you could use decaf coffee or any warm beverage, but I sometimes find a cup of coffee can help with that process. And then the other thing to think about is

I personally, even though this isn't everybody's jam, I don't eat a lot of carbohydrates until the evening. I find that if I can save most of my carbs for the evening, whether it's dark chocolate and red wine or rice or sourdough bread or sweet potato fries or whatever, because carbohydrates are a precursor for serotonin, which is a precursor to melatonin, and because it results in me not getting low blood glucose that can sometimes wake you up around 1 or 2 a.m. It's very common.

Saving my carbohydrate, the majority of my carbohydrates I have with dinner works out really well. And a lot of people will hear that and say, well, you know, a lot of nutritionists, for example, they say, well, that's bunk because you're most insulin sensitive in the morning. You're most able to take glucose and put it in the muscles and the liver in the morning.

And that's true just because of that cortisol awakening response I talked about. You are more primed to deal with carbohydrates, if you want to phrase it that way, in the morning, such as like blueberry smoothie or oatmeal or whatever. But at the same time, you can induce this temporary state of insulin sensitivity if you're doing a workout or even like a walk or a cold shower or something in the later afternoon or early evening.

Thus making the carbohydrates that you're going to have at dinner less likely to cause these wild fluctuations in blood glucose. And with that approach, you're just shifting your body into burning more fat, you know, plants, vegetables, good fatty acids, proteins, etc.,

during the day all the way up to dinner. And then you have all your carbs at dinner or the majority of your day's carbs at dinner. You sleep better. Then you wake up the next morning and you've also got some energy in your tank for a morning movement session. And so that's the way that I like to do things from a, from

from an exercise and also from like a, like a carbohydrate intake standpoint. And it seems to help a lot of the clients that I do that with, you know, they wake up women, 10 to 12 hour overnight, intermittent fast for premenopausal women, just because that's friendlier on fertility and the endocrine system. And they just feel better men, a little bit longer, 12 to 16 hours, wake up in the morning, fasted some aerobic exercise, some cold go throughout the day, eating protein, good fats, vegetables, get close to the evening and

And if possible, do a workout session. It was just like quick 15, 20 minutes, burpees, lifting weights, whatever. And then eat dinner and have carbohydrates with dinner. And that seems to work really well, particularly for for leanness and for sleep. Those are two things that seem to respond pretty well to that scenario.

That's how I like to eat as well. And I've found that it's great for cognitive function. I don't know if there's any science behind that, but I feel like I focus way better when I save my carbs for nighttime. Yeah, because ketones are kind of like a very metabolically stable fuel that are great for the diaphragm and the liver and the heart, particularly the brain.

So without a lot of blood glucose fluctuations, you tend to have better cognitive performance within reason. You know, start yourself because then you get brain fog. But yeah, limiting carbohydrates at least, it can be very helpful with that. And then in the evening, as long as you're getting enough carbohydrates in later on,

you're fine. I think the mistake some low-carb and keto folks make is they just restrict carbs way too much, hit a wall, the thyroid starts to plummet, they make it like four weeks and throw up their hands in despair and go have a giant pizza. But I think if you just basically tell yourself, all right, I'm just going to refeed on carbohydrates just about every evening and then rinse, wash, and repeat and do it again. Yeah, you're right. Your cognitive performance seems a little bit elevated as well.

So I want to jump to mental health for a second because I know you and your family practice gratitude, prayer, meditation. What kind of an impact can those practices have on our physical health? Well, it depends on which one you want to choose, but let's paint with a broad brush and say just like a spiritual disciplines practice in general. Having a time during the day when you're writing down something you're grateful for, praying,

meditation, breathwork, having friends in the local community who you might worship a higher power with or sing with or engage in some form of collective worship, nature walks without headphones where you're just talking to God or listening to God. Well, I mean, when you look at the decrease in blood pressure, increase in profile of mood state score, better sleep,

less cardiovascular risk, in some cases, lower onset of diabetes, in some cases, such as church attendance, for example, just lower all-cause mortality in general. I think there's a pretty good case to be made for the fact that having a robust spiritual disciplinary practice that's mindful and well thought out and even calendared is something that can be as good for physical function and mental function as say like exercise or eating healthy. And of course, if you look at

Books like the biology believe for the healing code. We know that trauma stress bad relationships and like tend to be something that crossover and affect you biologically, I mean even like the Bible and Chinese traditional medicine are two examples of forms of teaching that link anger to bone cancer and bone wasting and

or that link bitterness to onset of chronic disease.

Or that link, you know, and this would be all the way into Western medicine, just chronic stress in general, associated with a host of diseases. You know, this all dictates that, yeah, I mean, what we do spiritually affects ourself physically. And I mean, I haven't go so far as to say, well, you should think of yourself as a soul with a body, not a body with a soul. And the most important part for you to take care of is that one part that sadly in many people is just shrunken and neglected.

and not taken care of because you can't see it. It's not sexy. And you can't be an Instagram influencer showing off your soul, right? But happiness and love and peace and joy and all those positive emotions that arise when you're loving yourself enough to give yourself the time of day to meditate and to pray and to dive into spiritual teachings and to connect with your creator and to mend broken relationships. I mean,

That's so important. I mean, you don't hear about a lot of folks on their deathbed, you know, writing about how many burpees they could do or how much they could bench press or their body fat percentage, right? It's all basically comes down to did I love adequately and was I loved adequately? I mean, if you get into the five regrets of the dying that palliative care practitioner, Bonnie Barre has an article about in a book about basically the five things people tend to say is,

Did I keep in touch with old friends? I wish I'd stayed in touch with old friends. I wish I'd chosen to show my true emotions. I wish I'd chosen to be happier. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. And I wish I'd been my true authentic self rather than who I thought the world expected me to be. And I can't think of a single one of those instances that would not require you to have some type of spirit care worked into your routine.

for you to not have something like that as a regret. So yeah, I think it's incredibly important for lifespan and healthspan to care for oneself spiritually. And what does that look like for you and your family? What that looks like for me is I wake up in the morning. I'm typically listening to a sermon or a devotional or really uplifting spiritual song as I begin my day. And then I

at around 7:30 our entire family meets for family meditation. We're sitting on the floor outside in the backyard, reading the Bible, reading a devotional, praying together, singing together, having kind of like a team huddle, a big hug for physical touch as a family.

And then we all go throughout our day. And I already described our dinner time and bedtime routine to you. But based on that description, you can understand how we're coming together at the end of the day again and connecting spiritually. And so if you look at each day, it's kind of bookended with the most important part of the day, even before physical health and mental health and work and school. It's spiritual health and the spiritual disciplines that begin the day and the end of the day.

My husband and I don't have kids yet, but we're starting to collect all the advice we can get. And we've listened to you and Jessa speak about parenting before. If you could sum it up, what would you say your parenting principles are? Well, first, shameless plug, you got to read my new parenting book. 30 plus different sets of parents and just got tons of wisdom and advice and tips from the trenches that just came out. So that's a boundless parenting book.com. But I would say,

The most important foundational principles of our family and our marriage, I could boil a few of them down. One would be those coming together in the evening for family dinners, like I mentioned. That's so important and so critical, as are those mornings, comings and goings, like the meditation and the prayer and the breath work, both in the morning and in the evening. And then we...

have always operated with this principle what's called love and logic parenting style meaning there's not a lot of discipline in our house there's a lot of not a lot of nose there's no bands on screen time or gluten or sweets or alcohol or or anything right we just educate our children about the consequences of any decision they might make in life like what porn does to your neurotransmitters or what alcohol or marijuana might do to a young liver or a young brain or you know how

too much gluten at a birthday party they're going to might affect their cognitive performance the next day. And then we step back and let them make the decision. And if they choose the wrong decision, they can deal with the consequences of that, right? They can deal with consequences of, you know, indigestion or a poor night of sleep or, you know, or not having exercise and being embarrassed in their jujitsu match because they lost, you know, like, but we don't really require them to do anything. It's all just educate them about the consequences of the decision. And then, you know,

let them make the decision. There are obvious exceptions that like, I don't know if your toddler is going towards a hot stove and you don't want to get a third degree burn on their hand, you're going to tell them hot, don't touch. But then you might also like physically slap their hand away or pull them back because they're just not old enough to understand. But for the most part, painting with a broad brush

yeah, we don't like spank and hit and say no, no, don't do that. We always educate about the consequences of any decision and then let them make the decision. And the result is a self-actualized child

The requirement, yeah, for you as a parent to have deeper, more educational discussions with your child about the way that the world works, because it's, let's face it, it's easy as a parent to just like hit and say no and lay down the law and create a spirit of fear in the household, but to create a spirit of fear.

like cohabitated love and educated decisions about something that they might make and the present mindfulness of a parent to be able to take the time to explain something to a child and to, to, you know, lay down an understanding for why certain rules might exist. You want to call them rules and like, well, you know, we don't lie, but here's why, you know, here's what happens when you're lying. Here's the repercussions and here's the trust that you lose. And,

there's, you know, the, the braveness and the courage that you build by telling the truth. And there's dad breaking down during devotions and crying because I'm,

confessing a lie that I told the family last week. And here's what it looks like to ask for repentance and forgiveness. If you have a lie, like just a whole host of both transparency and love and education from a disciplinary standpoint is just, it's so much better than like a blanket. Yes. Or a blanket. No. And then finally, if I could throw one other thing in there, we have dedicated calendar date nights, one-on-one date nights, mom with one kid, me with one kid, dedicated date nights for me and my wife.

at least a couple of times a month, dedicated quarterly getaways with Jess and my wife and I, where we'll spend two or three days just going on walks and hiking and often like a staycation or being in a hotel room where we're just talking deeply about the things we haven't had a chance to talk about. Hopes, dreams, kids' education, things we're concerned about, things that annoy us about each other that we want to work on. And so we carve out time because you take it for granted that you live together. And once you have kids,

I mean, you can easily like have a whole year go by where it feels like you're just like ships passing in the night, unless you intentionally carve out the time for one on one time all the way down to just like those evening prayers. Like if we're skipping an evening prayer, that means something's wrong. We're like mad at each other or something went wrong. Or like, you know, just like get in bed and say goodnight and fall asleep. Now, you know, it's we always finish by connecting with God and our spirits, our souls.

Well, the book looks incredible. And I saw you brought together a whole bunch of experts. So I can't wait to get my hands on it. Ben, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find you online? Where can they find the book? Oh, geez. Thanks. So the book, I guess, is just boundlessparentingbooks.com. But then like all my books, my podcast, everything, you know, my coaching, everything.

all of it is at bengreenfieldlife.com. We do nutrition plans, fitness plans, coaching for CEOs and execs and athletes and celebrities. And we do just basically one-on-one work with people, group work with people. I got a fitness app, got a bunch of books, articles, podcasts. Everything you need, I would say, is on that hub. So bengreenfieldlife.com. Thanks for asking. Amazing. I have a thousand more questions, but we've run out of time. So we'll have to do this again. Thank you so much.

I'm honored you had me on. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Go comment on my last Instagram at Mari Llewellyn with the guest you want to see next. I'll be picking one person from the comments to send our bloom greens to. Make sure you hit follow so you never miss my weekly episodes. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to share and leave a review. See you next week.

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