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Biohacking Your Body Pt. 2

Let's go over a few more. Um, so I told you I would talk to you about the glasses. So let's just go ahead and do that now. So, um, when? And we'll talk about this a little bit more when we talk about circadian rhythm and sleep. But when your eyes are exposed to light, that is light from the blue light wave spectrum that can actually disrupt melatonin production. And so when we're staring at screens, computer screens, TVs, kindles, smartphones, things of that nature, especially in the evening and especially after the sun has gone down, what can happen is we get reduced melatonin production and that disrupts our sleep cycle. So if you conduce things to block blue light productive or to block blue light exposure to your eyes, it's really, really a good tool for you to enhance sleep. And it's also a really good way to reduce visual strain. For example, in the balance section we talked about your visual system and how important it is for balance. How important is to protect your eyes to tak...

e your eyes off the screen and stare at the horizon every once in a while? Well, they make glasses for gamers that reduce eyestrain. For example, Gun are is a company that makes glasses for gamers that they're designed to reduce eyestrain and gamers. That was the first kind type of eyewear that I started to use immediately noticed a significant difference. Then there's another company called Low Blue Lights low blue lights dot com, and they make a glass that's more specifically designed to block as much of that blue light wave spectrum as possible. And so these air designed to put on your face later on in the day. You actually wouldn't wanna wear them early in the day because technically, you don't want your body for disease producing a much of melatonin. Or you don't want to send your body a signal that it's nighttime early in the day, unless it's your gold to fall asleep early in the day. Or, unless say, you're on an airplane and you want to kind of hack your body so that it thinks it's nighttime when you're on an airplane because it's nighttime at the destination that you're flying to. You know that type of thing. Um, but ultimately what I found was a hack that reduces the glare from a computer screen and reduces blue lightwave intake, uh, hitting your eyes but also increases visual acuity, perception and reading speed. There's a company called Erlin that will actually take you in and test you through about a 4 to 5 hour custom fitting. I have an article about this at Ben Greenfield fitness dot com, and over that custom fitting produced a series of lens colors that are specific to your anatomy. Uh, and then what happens is you can get a frame made and I actually got a special frame that won't fall off my face when I'm doing activity. And I wear these at night when I'm working on my computer, Um, or I were them at night pretty much any time when I'm doing anything other than like going out to dinner where there, in my opinion, just not super fashionable. Otherwise, I even wear them at those times a day, But you find instantly when you put them on that you not only get sleepy at the time that you're supposed to get sleepy later on at night, but you also have this increased visual acuity, reading speed riding speed, awesome bio hack. This is a little bit more expensive. The custom frame that I put these in is about $180 frame. And then the actual fitting and the lens making everything itself was close to $500. So all said and done, I mean your urine for close to $700 by the time you produce a custom set of frames like this, but you can also use use gun are low blue lights dot com. Or if you're someone who likes to spend money on nice things, you can create your own custom set. But this is one of my favorite nighttime tools. Teoh where and I just always I'm always concerned I'm gonna lose him, Um, because I loosed up really easily. But so far, so good. So those are blue light blocking glasses. Um, there are other ways you can block blue light that we'll talk about during the during the sleep section. I'll get into some actual APs, but this is That's for example, Hack that will use another hacked that'll used to enhance sleep is called on Earth Colts. Now, during the session in which we talked about smarter science I showed you my sandals with carbon plugs in them, which help your body to dump negative ions into the ground. After you've done something like traveled on an airline, you'll also just feel better wearing these. If you, for example, go for a run or, um, walk around the house wearing these sandals, they're pretty minimalist in terms of being very similar to just walking around barefoot. But it returns this concept of grounding, or, er thing, and not Onley staying in contact with the ground or enhancing in that case, via the use of something like a carbon plug, our actual contact with the ground but also somehow increasing the natural frequency that the Earth emits. Both of these concepts can help tremendously with cellular health, with circadian rhythms with sleep cycles with recovery, those air made by a company called Earth Runners. There's another company called Plugs P L. U G Z. That actually makes one that's more of like a shoe. If you don't wanna wear like a dirty Thoma Mahar Indian style running sandal toe work, Um, but another thing that I'll use is this device called on Earth Colts and Earth Colts is designed to actually take the frequency that's emitted by the planet Earth, which is actually 7. hurts. It's called the Schumann resonance frequency, and it's a natural frequency emitted by the planet Earth that's actually used by a lot of like natural healers. Chiropractic physicians. People like that. They'll use this to actually allow the body to restore more, generate more quickly toward a front. Cyclists have been using grounding er thing mats for a long time to help them recover more quickly between each stage of the Tour de France. It's just now kind of hitting mainstream, but this is called on Earth colts, and what it is is it's a magnet that is called a pulsed electromagnetic frequency magnet or a P E M f. You place it underneath your mattress when you're sleep at night, and I've actually hacked mine with a headphone splitter, um, from Radio Shack so that I can actually use two magnets at once. So I put one near the head of my bed underneath the mattress, the other one near the foot of my bed, underneath my mattress, and this amplifies that 7.83 hertz frequency and basically Lowell's the body into your Delta brainwave production while you're asleep and it's it's pretty crazy when you actually use it, because you can set it for the amount of time that you plan on sleeping like eight hours. For example, if you want to sleep eight hours or 45 minutes, if you want to take a quick 45 minute nap and your eyes pop open as soon as it turns off, because it actually takes you from Alfa into Delta into your deep sleep and then back out, it's a really cool device. It's not cheap. It's like about $ to get one of these. But you place it under your mattress, and it's like one of those grounding or, er, thing mats on steroids on. Believe it or not, you could actually take things to the next level, Um, and starting at about $1000 for a twin size mattress or $4000 for a king size mattress. There is a company called Bio Mat and again, I have all this stuff at Ben Greenfield fitness dot com slash creativelive. There's a company called Bio Mat that actually makes a device that is just one entire magnet that emits that frequency that you place underneath your your bed. The cool thing about this is it doesn't plug into the wall at all. So any time you plug anything into a wall in your bedroom, you're actually exposing yourself to electromagnetic frequencies. Now I keep in my bedroom what's called a dirty electricity filter. It's made by a company called Green Wave, and it reduces the actual surges from the power station from hitting my body when I'm using something like an electrical pulse at night. But in an ideal situation, I'd be using something that was even plugged in at all. Um, my wife and I just haven't had had the $4000 back underneath the bed discussion, so I'm still using the Earth, the earth bolts. It's like in order of effectiveness, you've got grounding, unearthing mats, and then you have the Earth colts, and then you have, like a bio mat. It's also known as a magnetic oh, sleep pad on Then, of course, you can also wear the shoes or go barefoot while you're walking around during the day, and I'll talk a little bit more during the sleep session about other ways that you can kind of hack, grounding and er thing. But that's one of the devices that will use. The cool thing is that, um, pulsed electromagnetic frequency can improve blood flow to a joint, so this could be used this on an injury. You can hold the North Pole, end this device up against an injured area, and it works similarly to ultrasound or infrared to increase blood flow and helping area to heal. And you can find these case studies on the Internet, where they where they've shown like X rays of bone spurs. And literally, they've dissolved a bone spur within about eight weeks of use of pulsed electromagnetic frequency to just, like wear something down. So you'll find these a lot of times in medical clinics. Um, Dr David Minkoff, who's one of my physician kind of advisers. He runs a natural wellness clinic down in Florida. Um, he's and he's an MD down there, and he uses PMF uh, with a variety of other devices is one of his pain management injury removal techniques. So works really cool works especially well for sleep and for jet lag and for travel So put that one at the top of your bag if you take it through TSA because they always want to look at the magnets. If you if you get north bolts, I have a question. You said it works a lot like, um, a ultrasound. Um, is that safe for pregnant women to sleep on? Because I know that I'm glad. I'm glad you asked that question. There's no research on PMF and pregnancy. Any time. There's no research, I say No, this isn't generally ultrasound breakdown. Um, it's not necessarily a form of that, that type of radiation that ultrasound would be. But there's just there's no research on pregnant women, so I would just not use it if there's no research in your pregnant. That's kind of like my whole philosophy with this stuff is, if it hasn't been shown to be safe, I would So, yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and show one of the thing that will. That will take a few more questions. Um, because we're talking about infrared. There's a lot of handheld infrared devices. I talked about an infrared song, but those can be expensive. During the strength session, we talked about how There's some link between infrared sauna use and growth hormone and testosterone production. You can have infrared saunas built. You can also purchase there really nerdy looking devices because basically, they're like these, like, blow up devices that your head in your hands stick out of, and you just, like, sit in them and they like these portable infrared saunas, and I just I forget the name of the manufacturer makes them, but they're just really cheesy looking like if I if I would ever actually build an infrared sauna in my home, I'd want, like a nice, you know, wouldn't infrared sauna with the lights on either side. But this is an infrared device that you can actually use on, um, on areas that have been injured. This is kind of like a little bit of a cheaper model. This one's called the Kinko Wave. I've had it for a few years. One of my clients gave it to me, and I really like it for making an injured area feel kind of warm, increasing blood flow to that area. It works on a very similar concept to cold laser and cold laser is a very popular technique among like alternative medical practitioners. Chiropractic docks used these A lot. A lot of physical therapists are now using cold laser, but infrared, sauna, cold laser as well as these handheld infrared wands can all improve warmth and blood flow to an area. And they're excellent for injuries and also for post workout recovery. Something like this would be more of an injury tool. Let's say of I t Band Friction syndrome. You would work this for about 15 to 20 minutes on the side of your knee to help me out with the pain and to assist with the healing of something like I t Band Friction syndrome. You know, shining this thing, your body is not gonna, like increase growth hormone or increase testosterone. But that would be were like an infrared sauna or something like that would come in handy. The cold lasers are more expensive. It's gonna be 10 to $15,000 units that are more like something that you'll find in a medical practitioners office. But those work a lot better than these handheld devices. However, you can also get these on Amazon, and they work pretty effectively for kind of like light injuries and basic healing methods. So, um, let's go and takes more questions off the Internet. Er from you guys, um, get a lot of us have, like, multiple devices that were plugged in. So if we put it in a filter, can we put like, a power cord into that? And with that whole kind of power cord, basically be clean then, right? Well, you can if you were going, Teoh, use something like the Earth colts. You'd plug that into a dirty electricity filter made by green wave or made by, um, I forget the name of the other company makes. Basically what I did was I went to Green Waves website and bought their home unit, which gave me eight filters that I could use in different high MF areas of my house. Like where I plug my WiFi router in and places like that. It's just like this big white box that that your electoral plug then goes into. But yeah, you'd want if you're gonna use the earth Polt, you'd want to use something like that. But it's not gonna completely shut off your exposure to electromagnetic fields. So the problem is that especially in the us About 70% of our power travels back to the substation through the ground. So any time that you're plugging in a grounding Matt or on Earth thing, Matt, or Earth polls or just about anything that you're going to use, uh, say like during the night and sleep on your getting exposed to some of those pulses of electricity that are going back to the substation. So the less you can have plugged in, the better, um, and them. And the more you can use those dirty electricity filters to block those surges, the better. So now I showed the heart rate variability device. But what? I didn't get a chance to show you that, like I mentioned, there's a few different ways to test heart rate variability. And one of the methods that I showed you was the fact that you can take one of these new patch devices made by a company called Sweet Beat. You can put it on your skin. It will send an electrical signal to your phone and track your heart rate variability, and this will track during exercise. It stays pretty good when it's, like, wet, that type of thing, so you can get data all day long and you can track how you're sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system respond to things like food, the type of exercise sessions that you're doing relationships, pats. I mean, you'd be surprised at the different things that your nervous system responds to and the things that stress you out that you had no clue even stressed you out. So being able to track heart rate variability during the day is is one thing that you can dio I demonstrated the Tinky will show this again just because it is a favorite bio hack of mine. Um, and its pulse, ox symmetry, breath rate, heart rate variability and heart rate all at once through your IPhone. You plug this and it gives you a vita score, which is basically a score that indicates how lively you are full of life and also a Zen score that shows you how relaxed you are. And it's actually a really, really cool little device. I still prefer to use the sweet beat phone app just because there's there's obviously so many devices out there and so many things that you could use. But this is another one that that I would use if you didn't care for the sweet beat up or you just wanted to try out something different. Um, the thing is, though, when you're tracking heart rate variability or the strength of your nervous system, you might get to a point where you actually need to do what's called biofeedback, where you need to train yourself how to become more relaxed, how to deal with stress. And that's where something like this would come in handy. This is called an E M wave to unit. This is made by a company called Heart Math, and what it will do is one end will plug into your computer. And then this guy right here attaches to your ear lobe, and this will measure your heart rate variability where you're sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system feedback. But it will do so while you are running a software program on your computer that will respond toe What's going on with your nervous system. So if you're very stressed and you need to train yourself to relax, it's kind of cheesy, but like there's one program or you can like grow flowers and grow trees and make a landscape just based off of getting, ah, higher heart rate variability, score. I mean that your training yourself to become more relaxed and by using a device like this in getting to the point where you know the type of feelings and thoughts and emotions and breath patterns and postures that allow you to have that high heart rate variability, you can actually do Nurofen back that trains you how to decrease stress other times during the day. So I use this for about two months to really get in touch with my body and know what it took for me to become de stressed. And so now all I have to use is something that's a little more simple that doesn't require me to be like, you know, plugged into my computer with thing on my ear and everything. But this initially to teach yourself how to become less stress is really, really useful. They also make a phone app for this called the inner balance phone app, and that one's really, really good as well as far as like a heart rate variability tool that it also includes biofeedback. Because if you're just getting the number that tells you that you're stressed, but you don't know how to deal with the stress or how to fix it. That's where you need something like the bio are what's also called the neurofeedback. So there's also really cool device that would be useful if you have to do with a lot of stress, you're having a hard time doing it, and you want to use heart rate variability. But just measuring it isn't enough for you, and you actually wanna learn how toe how to control it. Also teach you some cool little techniques called coherence, techniques that you can do during our during our stress controlling session. Those are some of the main things that I wanted to show you guys. You know, I brought a Nike fuel band up here, and, of course, they've got the fuel band, the jawbone, the Fitbit, all of these different ways to track sleep, calories, etcetera. Most of them are kind of notoriously, uh, inaccurate when it comes to calorie count. But as long as it's you that you're measuring all the time and you're just comparing yourself to yourself, it doesn't really matter. So you know, if you set a baseline with with your particular band of choice. These tools can be really useful if you having a hard time kind of calculating how much you're moving and how many calories you're burning or you want to use something to keep track of of your workouts or your food intake. This stuff works really well. Um, I had a job own for a while. I had a Fitbit. I've been playing with the Nike Fuel band. Um, and I have some of my clients uses to give me feedback as well. And they could be kind of cool tools is like inexpensive, self quant tools. I would love it if there was one out there that existed that did everything like heart rate variability, pull socks, skin temp, respiration just like everything all at once. But nothing like that exists right now. That'd be really cool. Cool tool. And I'm probably one of the few geeks on the face of the planet who even cares about whether or not a band actually measures all that stuff. But it would still be cool. So So, yeah, let's go and take some more questions. Yeah, there's a great question here from Valerie, and she says. It's about 30 degrees right now in New York City, and it's cold throughout a lot of the country. Right now. It is wintertime. She wants to know what a run or a walk to or from the gym help burn fat. It's only a few blocks. I know you talked about ice Bath and being in water, but can you get the same effects just being out in the air? Sure, there's there's this guy named Ray Crowe Nice, who is recently featured in Wired Wired magazine. He's an ex NASA materials engineer who's kind of like the world's leading expert on cold Thermo Genesis. And he does what he calls Shiver Walks to burn calories. And he has a little tweak that he does with these walks, which are which are just what they sound like. Walks with, ah, lot of skin exposed in cold temperatures. You know, going out for a walk in a T shirt and shorts and cold weather, too. Increase your metabolism and burn more calories to generate heat. What happens, though, is if there are specific areas of your body that get very cold, your body down regulates metabolism to protect yourself, So if you were gonna go out on a shiver walk and let's say New York City, you would wear a T shirt and shorts, but you'd wear gloves. You make sure you wear like wool socks. You cover your face and your ears with a hat. Um, and then make sure that your crotches warm like don't don't free ball it or go combat style or however you want to put it. But you can go out and do a shiver walk, and that's actually a great method. Thio Thio Burn fat So you go to the gym and do something like that. But, like put on the happen in the running gloves, put on the I wouldn't think you'd run to the gym barefoot in New York City this time of year, but make sure the important components are covered and that allows you to burn calories without down regulating your metabolism. So great, I actually had a question for you since we're on all the gear and I was using a Fitbit and I loved it. But I found that the more I have to think about the workouts, I sort of start to get overwhelmed and then it stops becoming that positive, powerful thing That's good for you. And it starts kind of overwhelming you. And I feel like there might be other people out there that have the same feeling when it comes to I mean, all of this stuff is incredible, but you have any advice for us on how Teoh keep it under control? Yes, decision making fatigue and also kind of like technology, fatigue or certainly issues. Now, um, I race for for what's called Team Time X, which is a global triathlon team like an elite traf on squad. So I have access to all the cool, fancy training tools I can go out with two different watches and a power meter on the bike and everything else. But sometimes I do just like toe unplug, because a lot of this stuff can suck the joy out of just like going for a hike. And maybe not having your mask and you're waited vests on, and there certainly beauty and simplicity in that. So I think that you have to. You have to kind of find this fine line between finding out what motivates you. What kind of technology makes you feel weighed down and worn down and feel like you're having to track and self quantify too much. And what kind of stuff is just super simple for you to grab and head out the door like for me, like this is super simple for me. Like I'll just hop on the bike and go, I get home, I take it off I, you know, tossed in the closet and boom, I'm done. I have to go download data and look at data or anything like that. Um, something like this. I have more resistance to using because I have to plug it in and track it, and it's a chore, and I mean it is actual work. It's just like learning, you know, and some of these things can be uncomfortable. Or there could be habit barriers that you have to overcome for a lot of people that take some experimentation. Now, my personal rule is that the more E. M F that I am exposed to during a workout, the less ideal I feel that work out to be. So I try and avoid a lot of self quant devices while I'm actually working out, so I don't have my phone on me when I'm working out. Um, I do an MP three player, but I use the tiny little shuffle. Um, I don't really carry two off like, I'll use the heart rate variability for experimentation. But that's not like a regular for me when I'm working out as much as it is a quick five minute measurement that I do in the morning when I wake up, Um, so, yeah, a lot of especially the self quant tools when it comes to working out. If your choice is between moving and being ancestral and hunting and gathering and doing all your stuff versus self quantifying sucking away 45 minutes of your workouts, you got 15 minutes left to work out because you spent most of time putting on your thing and downloading your data and upload in your data and comparing your data and sharing it to Facebook and Twitter. Yeah, you gotta You gotta find that fine line for sure. So I like the bio hacks, that arm or things like just a heavy vest that you put on and a resistant master you breathe through versus the electronic stuff. For that reason, that's That's terrific. And that's really great advice. You Yeah, we have one more question here, and I know a lot of this equipment. Some of it is a little bit pricey. And Gorby Shaw wants to know in this instance compression clothing. But they want to know, Are there poor man versions of these things of compression clothing? And I know some of the compression stuff can be expensive, but is that really the same? It's just buying socks that are too small or are there, and it sounds silly. But are there any ways that people can achieve this without maybe having to buy the specific? So let's let's use something like, um uh, cold Thermo Genesis. You know, pants, for example. Let's say I want achieve those benefits of compression and called them a genesis. And I don't have 80 bucks to spend on a pair of 110% pants. You can go to your local medical supply store, and you can get the Navy Blue old man socks, the ones that they sell for like, 15 bucks. You can get those and pull him on. You can take some ice out of your freezer and you can stuff ice cubes in there and sit there and get compression and ice and makes you don't drip all over the floor. But that be one example of just, like a cheap way that you can still achieve a similar bio hack, maybe less convenient. Same thing with this I could technically just go out of my way to go outside and stand around barefoot little bit more during the day rather than, you know, buying a pair of leather sandals with carbon plugs built into them. Um, so yeah, usually the trade off when? When you go with the cheap methods, just convenience. But yeah, there are certainly many, many ways that you can. You can budget a lot of this stuff, even heart rate variability. I mean, the technically the Azumi Oh, at Azumi oh dot com. They have an app for heart rate variability. It's called the stress check app. It's like a dollar 99 or 2 99 or something like that. It uses the camera lens on your phone. It's not that accurate but will give you a ballpark. So there are ways that you kind of get in entry level and use some, like the lower tech stuff for the budget stuff that's slightly less accurate and still get some of this data. So Absolutely. Thank you. Great. Great. Calvin going back to when you were talking about all the different tests you can do. Um, so, you know, because you can, like, send it off to a lab, and they'll send you the results. But once you have the results, you know? Okay, this level of something is low words too high. But what if you don't know what to do with that information, like, how do you make it back to normal? Is it Is it okay to be kind of low? Is it okay to become a hot money? Yeah. So if you're gonna tests and you're gonna spend the money to test and you're gonna find out data about your body that you know would improve your life like, let's say you have low free testosterone levels and you know that you'd be more competitive at work and at play and in your workouts, and you'd have higher libido and you'd recover faster. If your testosterone are elevated, then it makes it a huge amount of sense. of course, toe act on that information. But yeah, maybe you don't know how toe increase free testosterone. So that's I mean, there's a few different things you can do. You can you can goto articles and resource is, for example, there are there are some really good books out there that teach you how toe how to manage a lot of this stuff in great detail. Um, I have a list of some of my favorite books. The bottom of the page of Ben Greenfield fitness dot com slash creativelive. There's about 30 books or so that I really like a sfar us things that you can use this resource is to learn more about how to fix some of things that you might find wrong with your body. There are companies like Wellness FX here in San Francisco that not only test you but also hook you up with the practitioner who who will take care of you now full disclosure. I actually work as a practitioner for wellness effect, So I spent time actually looking at blood values. They send me a lot of their cross fitters and their triathletes and their active people. And so you know there are practitioners or consultants like me out there who actually look at values and kind of help you along the way. Now for me, I don't manage disease. I don't touch any of that stuff when it comes to acting like a doctor, cause I'm not a doctor, but I can make suggestions on nutrients or foods that might help you out a little bit. So, um so, yeah, I mean, you can either self educate yourself using using some of the books that I recommended. You can get hooked up with a consultant or practitioner. They're also really good physicians networks out there again. I'm not paleo per se, but there's one really good physicians network called the Paleo Physicians Network. There's another one. I believe it's called, like Primal box or something like that. That's another really good network, if you to Google either of those, they choke in the top results and give you list of people in your area who he could probably vouch. You're gonna are gonna be on a little bit more of like the natural edge of things and also pay attention to values like not ignore a TSH that's at 3.5 and realize that even though that falls within acceptable range, it's really, truly not in that 0.5 to 2.0, ideal range. So, you know, that's that's that's something to consider as well is whether you're practitioners gonna look in detail at the results or just kind of look for references that are way out of whack. Any final thoughts for the day before we head into our little bit of rest and tomorrow our little bit of rest? Well, we're going to start off tomorrow with a lot of fun. Um, and if you are eating breakfast at home during our session, and that's probably good thing, cause you might get a little bit hungry during it you in the studio audience you want to make sure you eat before our session tomorrow because we're going to start off myself as well as Jessa are going to teach you how to fuel for performance. We're gonna have lots of tasty foods up here. I'm going to teach you how to make like one smoothie that will fuel you perfectly for the rest of your life. If you did want to eat smoothies for the rest of your life. Um, and we're just gonna use tomorrow to really talk a lot about nutrition supplements, Food. We talked a lot today about, like, movement, fitness, bio hacking.