Ben Greenfield’s 5 Daily Supplements & the Spiritual Practice He Regrets Missing | Dr. Josh Axe

I've shared some wild experiences with my good friend Ben Greenfield—including getting beaten with branches in freezing Russian plunge pools—but today we are diving into something much deeper. Ben is one of the world's leading experts in human performance, but after spending years "climbing the wrong mountain," he realized that a fully optimized body means nothing without a fully optimized soul and family legacy. Sponsors: Sunlighten Sauna: https://get.sunlighten.com/axepodcast Manukora Manuka Honey: https://manukora.com/axe Caraway Home: carawayhome.com/drjoshaxe (Use code DRJOSHAXE) for an exclusive discount Watch The Dr. Josh Axe Show every Monday & Thursday on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@drjoshaxe?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠ 🎧 Early Access! Our podcast listeners get every episode early, and you can tune in and be a part of our exclusive listeners below → ⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast⁠⁠⁠ Pre-order my NEW BOOK, Heal Your Cells → https://bit.ly/3QJBcQ5 Watch my free training on how to naturally balance your blood sugar and reverse your symptoms → http://DrAxeDiabetesClass.com Discover practical steps you can take today to start healing your thyroid naturally → http://DrAxeThyroidClass.com If you’re ready to start feeling like yourself again and balance your hormones, take my free class → http://DrAxeHormoneClass.com Uncover what’s really going on in your body with advanced biomarker testing for hormones, thyroid, and metabolism— plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor! → http://mybloodwork.com CONNECT WITH DR. JOSH AXE Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/drjoshaxe/ Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/DrJoshAxe/ TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@thedrjoshaxeshow/ X → https://x.com/drjoshaxe/ LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshaxe Website → http://thehealthinstitute.com Sign up for my newsletter → https://bit.ly/4oE9Jf3 Ask Dr. Axe → http://speakpipe.com/drjoshaxe CONNECT WITH GUEST Website → https://bengreenfieldlife.com/ Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/bengreenfieldfitness/ Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/BGFitness TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@bengreenfield X → https://x.com/bengreenfield YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/c/bengreenfieldfitness DISCLAIMER This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Josh Axe and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Axe nor the publisher of this content takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program. MB0126CQU6MCVAC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I went through the same process that I think a lot of people go through. You climb the wrong mountain, pursuing financial wealth, providing for the family, building a business, and justifying to myself that the family was good because I was sending home the paycheck.

• 0:16Josh Axe?

  Most people think their priorities are one thing, but it's actually something different. I mean, if I take the first 20, 30 minutes of my day with God, my entire day goes differently than if I don't.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  If you read the Bible, Jesus says that the two greatest commandments is to love God and to love other people. And Jesus knew that everything else in the end would be unfulfilling if those two aspects were not the foundation of your life.

• 0:54Josh Axe?

  Hey, everyone. So I am so excited about today's podcast episode. I've got my good friend Ben Greenfield on here. Last time I was with him, we were getting a, we were at a Russian spa, sweating together, getting beat, cold plunge, plunge, all of it.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Large Russian men.

• 1:10Josh Axe?

  Yes, it was, it was a lot of fun.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  Throwing into cold plunges.

• 1:13Josh Axe?

  That's right. Today, we're going to talk about balancing your hormones. We're talking about men for you, how to really radically increase your testosterone. We're going to get into dealing with things from the spiritual aspect of things because that's one of the things I've loved, Ben, that you've started to dive into is you've dove in so much into how to start to heal spiritually and how that impacts the physical. So we'll get into that today. Please subscribe. It's the number one thing you can do to support the show. Also, in the comment section on social media, let us know your thoughts. We'd love your engagement and love to hear from you. And we've got a rapid fire for Ben today as well. We're going to talk about biohacking, the therapies that have worked for him, that haven't worked for him. Ben, welcome to the show.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  And buy some honey, some manuka. Dude, I love this stuff.

• 1:56Josh Axe?

  I know.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  The, you've probably told the whole story on the podcast, but ever since I started getting that stuff. For lunch, I'm not kidding, like almost every day, I have a raw carrot. Cause I feel like that improves digestion and it's a little bit of extra fiber and I just like slather it with manuka honey.

• 2:15Josh Axe?

  Nice. Hey, one, one thing I love, uh, every time I talk to you, there's, you're doing something new. And I think probably you have had more experience than anyone I can think of. I mean, maybe Tim Ferriss is up there, but I think, I know you're really high up there in terms of. You have tried so many different modalities and supplements and bio hacks and all, just different things. And you have a great level of body awareness of what impacts you, how it impacts you. When you think about the last 10 years. What are some of the things that you thought, hey, I thought this would work and it just didn't work? And some things you were maybe unsure of, and you thought, wow, this really moved the, the needle for you in terms of some sort of health benefit.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  Oh, man, there, there's not a lot of didn't work because I try to do pretty good due diligence on. I mean, there's, there's certain things that people do like, um, you know, I, I think it's just like shticks that are often used for, for publicity in many cases. But, um, you know, like, like treatments for, for sexual dysfunction. Like, like that's a big one these days in the biohacking industry. And people are talking about, you know, injections and stem cells and, you know, something like that. You look at the data, there is known on healthy populations, but then you can find people with Peyronie's disease or erectile dysfunction or something like that. And, and see whether or not it might have a decent proposed mechanism of action.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  And then there are others like, um, uh, you know, like, like the peptide industry as a whole, right? Like not a lot of long-term human clinical research on it.

• 3:48Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Um, but if you look into the mechanism of action, the proposed organ systems or receptors that they act on. You can say, okay, well, there, there's probably some pretty good science behind this. And so I can't think of any, like any, like crazy protocols I've done that have just been kind of like meh. Um, I would say on the flip side, the things that have worked surprisingly well. I mean, kind of depends how weird you want to get.

• 4:16Josh Axe?

  Well, I'd say we've got a lot. I mean, listen, we've got a combo of people, people that listen to the show.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  How wacky do we want to be here?

• 4:22Josh Axe?

  We've got, I would just say generally, what has moved the needle the most when you're like, okay, I did this. And I noticed a significant difference in.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:30Josh Axe?

  You know, my testosterone increasing, my digestion improving, my sleep improving, you know, those, those types of things.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Yep. Okay. So we were just talking about them. So we might as well keep talking about them. Um, peptides would be one.

• 4:44Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Yes, sourcing matters. I know the regulatory landscape is rapidly evolving right now and seems to be shifting towards. You being able to get most peptides from like a compounding pharmacist or a pharmaceutical company. And the whole like gray market sold for human research only is, I think more and more going to be a thing of the past. You'll see things, things change so quickly, but um, let's say like, uh, people who have struggled for a long time with leaky gut. And they've done everything from an elimination diet to maybe a low histamine diet to glutamine, bone broth, colostrum.

• 5:22Josh Axe?

  Yep.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  All of the things that would be considered baseline foundational principles. And then they just can't seem to move the dial. Um, you know, a stack like BPC 157 orally and then injectable KPV. Um, thymus and alpha one for modulating the immune system a little bit.

• 5:40Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  And then typically something like GHK copper peptide.

• 5:43Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  As another anti-inflammatory agent that, um, you know, for me personally, I would have like a princess gut when I travel. And that's like my travel pack now that I'll inject and take orally and night and day difference as far as gut stability. That's, that's one example.

• 6:00Josh Axe?

  Yeah. And let me jump in and say, I, I totally agree with you. I think of all the things that have maybe surprised me the most in terms of the benefits. That's might be number one because, you know, I had my spinal infection and then I also had to get on. You know, my gut got torn up. I had to take antibiotics when I had the spinal infection for a short time. And the BPC157, even orally, I mean, there's tremendous benefits there. And I just wanted to point out a few others. I love that you mentioned KPV. There's so many great studies on that for healing the gut. There's a few that are antimicrobial. There's lorazotid and LL37. So if you've got candida or dysbiosis, those are great.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Or even just like your food poisoning home first aid kit.

• 6:36Josh Axe?

  Totally. So, so I'm so glad you called that out. And I do think it was great seeing, uh, you know, Robert F. Kennedy sort of take those 14 peptides and, and kind of get those through the finish line of being, you know, generally approved. But there's gotta be a lot more that that happens. But yeah, that's a, I'm so glad you brought this up.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. So that would be one. I, I think even though they're controversial, that GLP agonists, especially the ones that target multiple receptors, they are of course now pretty difficult to get because most are, are being turned over to pharmaceutical companies. You know, obviously you can buy, sold for human research, but you never know what you're getting. And, you know, even recently, there was a big New Yorker article and someone had taken them into a lab and looked at them for purity and having the amount in them that they said they had in them. And a lot of them were pretty wonky as far as, as actually adhering to claims. Even a certificate of analysis is pretty easy to

• 7:34Speaker 00

  fabricate. So it's the wild, wild west. But for suppressing appetite, especially in small amounts, um, you know, just like, you know, full disclosure, like I have read a TruTide at home. And when I have like a long flight day or an international trip or just like a period of time where I'm not going to have access to good food, I'm going to be sedentary. I don't want to eat. I don't want food noise. Um, very small dose of that, like 0.25 milligrams and just like quiets all food noise.

• 8:03Josh Axe?

  I think one of the issues with a lot of these GLPs is just the dose is too high.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  The dose is too high. So then you get nausea. In response to just about any bolus of food, which means that it becomes impossible to eat adequate protein for muscle protein synthesis. And then that creates the vicious feedback loop where that combined with lower carbohydrate intake means you feel flat when you go to the gym.

• 8:28Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  So the weightlifting that you're supposed to be doing when you're on them to maintain muscle mass is very hard to do.

• 8:35Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  And a lot of that is mitigated. I'm not a doctor. I'm not, I'm not giving this out as medical advice. But a lot of that can be mitigated by taking a much lower dose. I mean, I just said 0.25 milligrams. And if you look at some of the studies on like cardiac muscle loss, loss of lean muscle tissue throughout the entire body, many of those studies are using eight plus milligrams of something like retitrutide.

• 8:58Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Which at those doses, like that, that's one of the GLPs that's often championed for preserving lean muscle mass. But if you're taking a standard dose, a lot of times that's not the case. You still see lean muscle loss with retitrutide.

• 9:12Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Whereas, you know, compare that to 0.25 milligrams, right? Large bolus, eight milligrams, let's say on a Monday morning and you're nauseous for the next few days and can't hit the gym versus 0.25 milligrams on like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or just on a select few days of the month where you're busy and you don't want to think about food. Very, very slight, but enough to make a difference metabolically.

• 9:34Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah. And I do think that right now, I mean, you know, it's, this is happening a lot. And I think one thing about you is you're very, you are reading studies, you have an understanding, you are listening to your body. And I think a lot of times people are watching influencers online and say, I'm going to try this peptide, I'm going to try this here and here. And I think if people have enough, if they're able to listen to their body enough, there that, there can be some benefits there. But I think for most people, I think something that they're missing, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, is this end goal and idea and actually having somebody lay out a really strategic plan for them. You know, it's like if I'm going to, if I'm going to say, I want to put on 10 pounds of muscle, or I want to lose 20 pounds of body, body fat, or weight, you know, it's, there's

• 10:18Josh Axe?

  a sense of, okay, here's the foods I should eat. I'm laying it out. I'm, I'm, here are the supplements I'm going to take. What happens a lot of times today is people just try so many things, they almost don't know what works.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:29Josh Axe?

  You know, a lot of the times as well. How, how, how have you been able to kind of decipher what works, what doesn't work? Have you ever journaled? Have you ever, you know, you, you know, using tracking? I see you're wearing a band there.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I get where you're going with all the wearables, all the apps, now the AI-driven apps, the ability to self-quantify has gotten easier and easier, and yet the noise from the information era in which you've got access to multiple stacks makes it very difficult to say, okay, so I reinvented my life last month and I started doing hyperbaric at a local clinic and I got a red light panel and I started onto a few peptides and increased my protein intake and cut these three different food groups out, you know, and shoved laser lights up my nose while I'm checking my emails every morning. What worked, right? And it is very difficult. There's not an easy answer. I don't do, if I have to start some new protocol, I'm not gonna wash everything out, right? Like, I'm not gonna, let's say

• 11:25Speaker 00

  I wanna start taking bitters, right? I'm not, I don't just like quit everything, no digestive enzymes, no probiotics, like quit consuming any fermented foods, let's just do a full washout and see what bitters do. Again, I think that if you go back to mechanism of action and understanding what a compound is actually supposed to do, and then looking for redundancy is probably the best thing to do if you're trying to leave out certain things that you might be doing to see if things that you introduced would work better. For example, let's say you're putting collagen in your coffee every morning and you're tracking

• 12:07Speaker 00

  muscle mass, body composition, and then you decide that you're going to instead shift to whey protein, or branched-chain amino acids, or essential amino acids, or gelatin, or anything, that's a little bit of a crossover, that's a little bit of redundancy, and that's where you might say, okay, so I'm gonna stop taking the collagen and see if one of these other substances works better for me for something like muscle protein synthesis. Another example would be like blood sugar regulation, right? Maybe you're already taking, you know, back to like a Bitters or a shot of apple cider vinegar before a meal, or you're doing some kind of like a cold thermogenesis protocol for blood glucose

• 12:47Speaker 00

  management. And then you want to know what your blood glucose does if you start doing a walk before and after a meal. That's a case where you might say, okay, so for three days, I'm not going to do any of these other things because they're technically hitting the same target that this new thing that I want to introduce is hitting. And so you can do like baby washouts of certain things that have redundancy as far as mechanisms of action. But it but it still gets messy to just try and track everything at once. There's not a perfect answer.

• 13:15Josh Axe?

  Yeah, you know, what I just try and do is I try and add in one thing at a time was more of kind of the thing. And so I might be still be doing quite a few things, you know, I recently, I'll tell you something that's really been a game changer for me recently was I started doing some higher doses of N-acetylcysteine. And and I went and did, and I started doing this because I had a, you know, most people are familiar with MTHFR, sort of the genetic variant. But I went and did a full genetic panel. You know, they do a, I did a mouse swab and sent that in. I actually was doing it because my daughter was having these dust mite allergies. And we were trying to figure out, why is she so, her nose is stuffed up all the time. We came out, she had a really severe allergy to dust. And it was the only thing. So we did all these things. So I'm like,

• 14:00Josh Axe?

  okay, well, I want to do, find out everything I can here on her. So we did, you know, basic blood work on her, looking for deficiencies. We did this genetic test and did it for her, did it for me. And I had some other genetic markers that came back of saying, my body has a little bit harder time with creating glutathione and glutathione recycling.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:19Josh Axe?

  And so I just went and started saying, okay, I'm gonna start doing some things for that. And it was like, whoa, like, I started noticing, I, like, I would sometimes get a little bit of almost histamine, like redness, if I would film too long or do certain, like exert myself, I almost like a little bit of that sort of response.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:36Josh Axe?

  I started taking N-acetylcysteine and do things just to support glutathione more.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:41Josh Axe?

  Hundred percent went away completely.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:44Josh Axe?

  And so I've been a lot more conscious of now of like reducing oxidative stress, boosting my own glutathione. But my point, that was something I added in recently. And I was just like, wow. And another thing for sleep is I started doing glycine. And a supplement now, people are doing a lot of times. Is that combination of N-acetylcysteine with glycine called Gly-Nac?

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 15:02Josh Axe?

  And, and I've just really noticed a superb difference.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's interesting. Those glutathione detox pathways, a lot of genetic testing services are including those in your report. And of course, you know, as you've just noted, supporting those pathways with supplementation, if you tend to be sluggish from a detoxification standpoint is good. And then you're also, you tend to be that person who's kind of like the canary in the coal mine also. Like you're super sensitive to when you're walking onto an airplane, you smell the jet fuel and you feel like crap for 10 minutes and you walk into a hotel room and you're like, man, I need to get a new room or get a heap of air filter in here and you're super sensitive to paint. Not everybody's like that, but people who have a poor ability to detox those, it's almost like a survival mechanism.

• 15:50Josh Axe?

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• 16:31Josh Axe?

  Plus, you can stack my code DRJOSHAX for an additional 10% off. Go to carawayhome.com/DRJOSHAX and use the code DRJOSHAX at checkout to get your big discount today.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  And that, that also is interesting, what you said about glycine. It is underrated, I think, for sleep in particular.

• 16:56Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  But, but there's two, there's two interesting fun facts about glycine. A, it and spirulina at anywhere from around four to six grams can help to mop up some of the oxidation that is specifically related to excess linoleic acid intake, particularly from oxidized.

• 17:12Josh Axe?

  Really?

• 17:13Speaker 00

  So it's one of those things where take one for the team and go out for burgers with the boys or whatever. Like you, you can use glycine or spirulina afterwards. And the other kind of like tip with respect to that is a couple of other things that can have similar effects are higher omega three fatty acid intake. It's like doubling your fish oil that day.

• 17:32Josh Axe?

  Yep.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  Uh, and then cold thermal stress reduces some of the enzymes that tend to cause seed oils to become more inflammatory.

• 17:40Josh Axe?

  Amazing.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  And then the other thing is that glycine lowers body temperature. It lowers your core body temp.

• 17:44Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  In higher dosages, a lot of sleep supplements will put like one, two grams. But once you start pushing four plus grams, uh, let's say, I don't know, you're like in Florida and checked into an Airbnb and the air conditioner sucks and you're used to sleeping on a, on an eight sleeper cooling mattress or whatever, um, glycine can actually lower body temperature and kind of make you a little more comfortable in a hot scenario.

• 18:05Josh Axe?

  You know, I did this whole sleep episode and I pulled together a lot of these studies and across the board, the number one reason why people wake up at night from sleep disturbances is they get too hot. It's the number one reason.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  Yep, I believe it. Um, obviously, yeah, and I have no clue. I'm just, just, uh, throwing random numbers out there or ideas, but the other two would of course be, uh, uh, hypoxic episodes during the night.

• 18:31Josh Axe?

  Yes.

• 18:32Speaker 00

  Sleep apnea, sleeping position, uh, which can be as simple as a nasal strip, can be as complex as CPAP. Uh, and then the other one, and I think this is more common now, especially with the surge of GLP agonists, back to those, is, uh, low blood sugar. Hypoglycemia.

• 18:48Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Um, because if you think about it, if you have multiple hypoglycemic episodes during the night, one of the ways that you engage in glycogenolysis or freeing up storage glycogen to raise blood sugar is via a cortisol-driven mechanism. Right? So you go low blood glucose, your body shifts into cortisol hyperdrive. That wakes you up and typically what you see is like low sleeping HRV, which a lot of these wearables do. If you were wearing CGM, low blood glucose throughout the night, uh, not a really good way to, to track cortisol right now throughout the night. But if you could, you'd probably see multiple surges in that. And then the fix, of course, is, is pretty obvious.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Like eat more for dinner, get some carbs into the body or even, and this, and this is a tip for people who are like using it because they're severely obese and overweight and just can't eat calories, including before bed. Um, ketones, right? Like, like drinking or consuming exogenous ketones as an alternative source of fuel for the brain. So that when you shift into low glucose availability while you're sleeping, your body still has another substrate to draw on. So it doesn't have to bump cortisol up, you know, remove glycogen for breakdown glycogen in the liver and then wake you up.

• 20:05Josh Axe?

  You know, it's interesting because when, when, when most of those people, I want to say there's like, there's a, it's around that three, two, three AM wake up time, you know? It's, and it's like, if you're that person and you keep waking up at two or three AM, uh, that's likely you, that, that very same thing. And so that's, that's good. You know, I was going to mention this too. It's so interesting. I, I just opened a clinic here, uh, about a month ago, the longevity clinic. And so we're now, I'm spending so much time like going through patient blood work, seeing what's going on. And you know, you know, the thing, I knew that this was happening, but I'm almost shocked at how much happens. More and more people are getting blood work now.

• 20:44Josh Axe?

  But there are so many people that come in with their prior blood work and their doctor says, "Hey, your labs are totally normal." From the standard care, but then I, when I look at it myself, and I look at it from a functional medicine standpoint, or even if I would train my AI to do the same thing, it's like, well, no, you know, 32 vitamin B is normal, but you should be, you know,

• 21:07Speaker 00

  Testosterone's at 350, bro, you're just fine, or whatever, like, you know, TSH is like hovering a little bit above 4, you'll be okay. But yeah, going beyond the reference ranges that would indicate presence of disease and venturing into the realm of actual health optimization or prevention, they're two entirely different things, and even back to the AI models, that's part of the prompt. Like you, you literally, if you're using AI to look at your blood work, you need to say, "Don't just look at reference ranges."

• 21:38Josh Axe?

  That's right.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  Give me clues about whether I'm actually close to what might be considered not fully optimized. Like, don't just look at, are you gonna drop dead tomorrow, but how are you gonna feel in 20 years?

• 21:48Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's huge. You know, I had a person recently and it was like, "Okay, we have like three or four things that are borderline," and they were all related, you know, and it's like the person's energy is absolutely in the tank, and it's like, we're looking at mitochondrial function, it's like, okay, your MMA, which is a form of B12 is off, and your carnitine is off, and your CoQ10, like, none of them are ideal. And so I do, I do think, I was even surprised with this, I'll give you an example of this. We have people bring in there, and there's so many ads for this right now, they're function labs, and they're standard.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, you mean function health?

• 22:19Josh Axe?

  Yeah, I thought they were gonna be more like optimal ranges?

• 22:26Speaker 00

  Wait, I wanna, I wanna like, I wanna read your mind right now, are you getting, do the Oz Perelman thing, guess your PIN code? Are you seeing on those labs, a lot of people who are being told that they have autoimmune issues?

• 22:43Josh Axe?

  Oh, yeah. Well, especially, yeah, yeah.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Every, every single person has ever sent me, and I have nothing against function labs, I just think it's an interesting relic. My gosh, like, they're, they're either, have a hypersensitivity on the autoimmune panel,

• 22:58Speaker 00

  or something else, because a lot of people get that test and like, "I have an autoimmune issue."

• 23:01Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I definitely am. And part of me is also like, well, it's a...

• 23:08Josh Axe?

  There are more people that have it than they think, but also it could also be it's overly sensitive. I mean, I listen, I learned this really on in doing blood work. So I, even before I graduated and started my own clinic, this is probably 22 years ago, I worked in a clinic as a nutritionist through school. And we were doing blood work panels of like fatty acid testing, nutrient testing and all of it. And the thing that I noticed really early on that I knew, I'm like, this is not that accurate was food sensitivity testing. That was one of the things.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:37Josh Axe?

  Cause I'm like laundry list of false positives. Yeah. Cause I, I kept testing myself and I'm like, this doesn't make, I'm like, it's just showing high numbers for what I eat a lot of.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Right, right. The, the antibodies that you're already producing, because these things are staples in your diet, mixed in with either an IGA or IgG or IgE response to something that you truly are sensitive towards. But it's, it's difficult to dig through what's a true sensitivity versus what's just an antibody response. Because you're eating whatever scrambled eggs every morning for breakfast. There, there are, there are tests that will look at, um, you know, like, uh, like, like an 88 test with oxidative stress added in. Um, I forget, I think Premier does that test, uh, or the mediator release test that a guy like, uh, who's the, the functional diagnostic nutrition guy, Reed Davis made that one pretty popular.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  Where you're not just looking at the antibody response, you're looking at clues that there is like a histamineergic response or an inflammatory response, or something that goes beyond just detection of antibodies. Cause like you said, that could just mean you're eating that food a lot.

• 24:42Josh Axe?

  And this is what we use now. So there's a friend of mine and you know, he's friends with Jordan Roman, Gesigoli. He's in Atlanta. He's, he's like an OG. I mean, he's been practicing functional medicine for like 30, more than 30 years. And, and so he's got a test where they're testing like five, not just IgG, but like it's like five different markers related to the food. So I think it's probably one of the better, very similar to the test you're talking about, one of the better tests out there. You know, another thing too, I started realizing as we've been looking at blood work is, um, like I like testing for nutrients. It's like, how many people have ever been tested for their zinc and their selenium and a lot of these nutrients? Most of the time they haven't. And we can do blood work now where you do intracellular nutrients. Like what's in the red blood cell or what's in the white blood cell?

• 25:24Josh Axe?

  It's so much more accurate because sometimes people have stuff floating around in their blood, but it's not getting into the cell. And so like, I'll share this for myself. Once, when I had that spinal infection. Afterwards, for the next year or two, I was just so exhausted. Like, I mean, just energy and the, and I was doing so many of the right things. And then I went and did this test to look at what my, you know, a more advanced panel, and it said my vitamin B2 was like zero. I mean, it was like, but every, literally everything else was completely normal, but it was almost zero. And I started taking, taking just vitamin B2, riboflavin, and then it was like, boom.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  Blood panel would have shown adequate vitamin B levels, but when you look at intracellular levels, they were low.

• 26:02Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Well, and the other thing is, but the most blood tests, again, they're not even testing for B2 or a lot of the nutrients out there today.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Right, right. Or just tissue levels in general. Like, here, here's kind of like the reverse version of that. When you are looking at blood lipids, that doesn't necessarily reflect what's happening on the tissue level.

• 26:20Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  So if you're doing, um, let's say your standard like ApoB, LP little A, LDL, um, particle size, HDL, um, you could theoretically be lit up like a Christmas tree, maybe because you exercise a lot and you're what's called a lean mass hyperresponder and your body is just churning out more triglycerides in general, uh, to be shuttled around as fuel and then extra LDL to fight inflammation. Um, or you just happen to be someone with really good genetics and you could go and get something like a CT angiography and be fine.

• 26:57Josh Axe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  No plaque, no calcium, um, looks great. And then you could have a pretty pristine lipid panel from a blood standpoint and go in, because I've seen this happen before, especially, uh, surprisingly in athletes who are just like beating up their hearts a lot, especially endurance athletes. You can have like 6%, 7%, 8% plaque accumulation in different areas of vasculature, in heart tissue, but the lipids didn't really tell you that. So I, I think if you have family history of heart disease, um, or if you're just a male, generally in like the 40, 45 year old age range anyways, or a woman who is perimenopause plus, it's a good idea to do a CT angiography.

• 27:38Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 00

  Just, just to see if there's any issues because lipids don't tell you the whole picture.

• 27:43Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. I think we're going to see more. A lot of these tests, they're, they're, they're, we're coming out with more and more types of testing, like guys who I was telling you about was showing me this new breast cancer screening that's going to be more accurate than thermography, anything else. And it's, it's, we're going to keep seeing more and more of this stuff. It's going to be less expensive.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:04Josh Axe?

  So I, I am really excited about, you know, the other thing I'm excited about, I, I tend to wear a, I like, wear a ring. I'm wondering if they can get to the point where, or if, like a CGM like monitor where you are looking at cortisol, not just insulin, like looking at some of the other.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:19Josh Axe?

  And that actually doesn't even look at blood glucose exactly. It's something that's related to glucose, but it's, um, yeah.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, there's some companies working on, uh, more metrics that are tested. Like there's a newer ring, uh, called, um, Signal. I think Dr. Matt Cook told me about this one recently. And that, so that one's doing like blood pressure now, which is a new metric. But as far as, um, like, just to name a few, it would be really cool to see things like, uh, cortisol variation during the day.

• 28:51Josh Axe?

  Yep.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  It would actually be pretty insightful to see what lactate is doing because there's some correlation between that and metabolic dysfunction. Uh, you can put glucose into that. And then if you're able to do cortisol theoretically, you could probably do testosterone and a couple of other hormones as well. The problem is that using, uh, like, like a photonic measurement or using a light-based measurement, which a lot of these tools are doing, is still inadequate for, for accurate detection of things like hormones.

• 29:19Josh Axe?

  Hey, so if you've ever thought something is wrong with me, but I just can't prove it, then this is for you. Now you might be eating clean, even what you feel like is perfect, working out, taking all of the right supplements, but you're still exhausted, still foggy, gaining weight, and you're not sleeping. And every time you ask for help, you hear the same thing, but your labs are normal. Here's what that actually means. Standard blood work only shows what's in your blood, not whether your cells can actually access it or not. You can give your body all the right inputs, but if your cells are in danger mode, chronically stressed or in They can't absorb or use those nutrients properly.

• 30:00Josh Axe?

  If you're finally ready to heal, go to mybloodwork.com. You'll get an at-home cellular blood work panel shipped straight to your home and reviewed on a private call with one of my senior health advisors at the Health Institute. And this will help you finally connect the dots between your symptoms at the cellular level. We'll also determine if you're a good candidate for one of our cellular healing protocols, so you can finally experience lasting healing. Once again, go to mybloodwork.com to check it out.

• 30:32Josh Axe?

  I want to totally shift gears. I want to talk about spiritual health impacting physical health. And this is something I've really respected about you. I've loved following your kind of journey in this and in terms of what you've been teaching and doing. But you know, I know when I first met you, this wasn't necessarily as much of a topic conversation, but I want to say it was probably like seven, eight years ago, where I saw you start talking a lot more about your faith and how prayer and meditation on the Bible really have impacted you in a really deepened way. What, what, had you always been like that? Was there, was there something that kind of happened and experienced or something that happened that kind of caused you to have even a greater shift in looking towards your faith and incorporating that, even in your health practices?

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, I went through the same process that I think a lot of people go through. Not that you have to take this journey, it's just something that that happens to a lot of humans. And that is that you climb the wrong mountain. You climb the wrong mountain, meaning that you spend a great deal of your life's energy, often in your teenage years, your twenties, sometimes your thirties, pursuing financial wealth, providing for the family. Building a business, um, a lot of times, and I think part of this is related to the absence of a formative ceremonial rite of passage, especially in the upbringing of a young man.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  You also tend to spend a lot of time conquering things, like doing lots of like bodybuilding or triathlons or Spartan races, or even, you know, from a secular standpoint, uh, you know, just amping up your, your body count and your sexual prowess, uh, to prove to the world that you're a man because no one actually ever like put that man stamp on you because that's just, it's not baked into Western cultures, baked into our family now, but not into Western culture. And I, I took that path, right? Like I, I was working a lot on my business. I was flying all over the world. I was obsessed with like, you know, people knowing my name and building up my, my podcast numbers and, um, and justifying to myself that the family was good because I was sending home the paycheck. And there would come a

• 32:44Speaker 00

  time when I would, you know, when, once I'd really built that foundation of business, have more time to hang out with my family or to grow the relationship between me and my wife. And of course, uh, you know, 2020 hindsight and, and most everybody knows this deep down inside, it's paradoxical to be working towards supporting the very people in your life who you hold most dear while simultaneously neglecting them emotionally or spiritually, uh, or even just from, from the standpoint of a man failing to be a good leader for the home, uh, failing to set the right temperature in the home because you're just not around. Um, in the case of me, I was just like, you know, a fun, you know, older brother type of figure that, you know, that hung out with my boys, but that really

• 33:29Speaker 00

  wasn't a true father figure because I was just too, too obsessed and too busy with other things. And then when it came to my relationship with my wife, that was very similar, right? Just like growing distant from her because I was pursuing too many other things that, uh, that I thought would fulfill, that, you know, climbing the mountain that I thought would be a good mountain to climb. And then anytime that you are pursuing things like money, or power, or fame, or sex, or cars, or homes, those are all basically, for most people, idols that tend to eventually get put ahead of God, ahead of your relationship with God. And so you grow distant from God, and you grow distant from people.

• 34:13Speaker 00

  And there is this idea that has been championed by, you know, ancient philosophers like Pences, or Augustine, or authors like C.S. Lewis, that we have this eternal hole in our soul, right? This longing for something infinite, this longing for something eternal, that I think is hardwired into us because we were created by an infinite Creator, made in God's image, given God's stamp, and because of that, we have this deep desire to be connected to something eternal. And when you rip that away, or take that out of your life, then that gnawing is never full. Because there's really, if you, if you think of having like, an infinite hole in your soul,

• 34:55Speaker 00

  or this eternal longing, what are the two things that, that in our daily existence are actually eternal, immortal elements that we interact with on a daily basis, or have the opportunity to interact with on a daily basis? I would say it would be God and people. Yeah. God and people. And you mentioned the Bible. If you read the Bible, Jesus says that the two greatest commandments, if you want to sum up all the law and the prophets, is to love God and to love other people. And Jesus knew that everything else, in the end, would be unfulfilling if those two aspects were not the foundation of your life.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  I took until I was like, thirty-three years old, to come full circle to that realization that if I was not fully present for my family and prioritizing them, and if I was not building my relationship with God through prayer, through scripture, through, through church attendance, through, um, through caring for the soul just as much at the time as I was caring for my body and my business, that, um, I would never be fulfilled. You know, now I'm, I'm happier than ever, but it took, um, kinda like, uh, um...

• 36:08Speaker 00

  It took a lot of dedication at home to be the father that I knew I should be, be the husband that I should be. And then also took a lot of just reconnecting to God through prayer, through scripture.

• 36:20Josh Axe?

  You know, I think, I mean, I think every, every male could resonate with that. I mean, I think that there's this element of it's, it's a, I, I was on a men's, I have this amazing men's group. I, I meet with monthly and we do a trip together once or twice a year. And we were in Park City and we were all having this discussion around a John Elder book. And the John Elder, John Elder kind of puts it like this, you have these sort of different phases of being a man. But once you go to one phase, you don't necessarily leave the other phase behind, but there's more of a focus on it. And he talks about going from a warrior phase to lover phase, to king, to more of the sage mentor sort of phase. And

• 36:57Speaker 00

  I think there's probably a jester in there somewhere.

• 37:00Josh Axe?

  It's probably earlier on.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  It was like college.

• 37:01Josh Axe?

  Exactly. Yes, exactly. And so it's, but it was really good and all of us shared, hey, here's, here's where we're at. Or here's what we're struggling with, with that type of, with, with being the king or the mentor or, you know, or the, or, or I'm still trying to be the warrior, you know, I'm still trying to, you know, you know, prove myself even now.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:22Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:23Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. And

• 37:25Josh Axe?

  But, but I want to go back because this is such a big thing. You said something earlier and I want to hear about how, how you now are doing this with your boys. Because I think a lot of men, I know in the, you know, when, when you're reading the Bible and the Old Testament in Jewish world, when a boy turns 13, there's this sort of, you're a man now, right? And there's a bar mitzvah, there's a ceremony around it and a lot, there's a lot of other cultures throughout history. And it tends to be the age 13, 14, it tends to be right around there. I am really grateful though, I definitely had a dad who was an old military guy, who like challenged me to do things. And my, my dad kind of just naturally did that in ways, but I can think of most men, they never had anything like that, you know.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  A rite of passage.

• 38:11Josh Axe?

  A rite of passage.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Some, some, some kind of a defined crucible that, that, that is a recognized time that you have become a man. And you know, you're given more responsibility, recognized as a more contributory member of the household or the community, or the city, or the church, or whatever body that you happen to be in. And

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Women have that force upon them by nature. Women have have a distinct biological experience at some point, usually during their teenage years, where they get onset of menses and and suddenly um they uh can uh produce other members of the human race, right? Men don't really go through that time. Like, we don't just wake up one morning and, you know, to be crass, but like, our balls have dropped and our voices have lowered and we're just like, oh, I'm a man today. Um, women, it's kind of just like, happens. Um, and I still think that in many cases, we don't go about recognizing that for women in the right way. You know, I think mom and grandma and a girl at home should actually have some kind of like a

• 39:16Speaker 00

  a ceremony or a celebration or like, hey, this is important and this goes beyond just something annoying that you have to deal with now and, you know, staying home from school a couple of days because, you know, you're you're, you know, you're cramping or having a hard time or whatever. Um, with men, nature doesn't force a rite of passage upon men in most cases, uh, unless there is an intense period of survival or famine where, you know, that boy has to go off and like kill an animal to feed the family, right? Yeah. That doesn't happen most of the time in, you know, whatever, downtown L.A. to the random high schooler. So, uh, in in our family, we have programmed specific rites of passages that occur for a green-filled young man.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Uh, specifically what we chose to do, uh, and this wasn't just like, I didn't randomly come up with this. I talked with a lot of legacy builders, a lot of entrepreneurs who had done similar activities with their sons. Uh, my sons went to a wilderness school and camp every year with a company called Twin Eagles, where, uh, the the guy who runs that that company, Tim Corcoran, is also very big on rites of passage, especially for young men. So I learned a lot and soaked up a lot along the way. So by the time my sons were 12, we and my wife had pretty much figured out what we were comfortable with and and what would would be formative for them. So what we do is at 12 to 13.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  13 years old in that timeframe is a rite of passage into adolescence. And for them, the rite of passage into adolescence was a three day wilderness excursion solo. Still supervised by, uh, in this case, the, the wilderness organization that we were working with. But a time for them to go off, face their fears, you know, start a fire, you know, um, uh, not have access to food and, and face, you know, face the wilderness and come back and be recognized afterwards. You know, we had a, a party with, uh, the family members and, and grandma and grandpa and the cousins and nieces and nephews. And had a, you know, a special fire ceremony. And so that was step one. Hey, you like, you have become a teenager now and that's important.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  And along with that, like they get more household chores. Um, they're doing a lot more with that. They started like shadow me at work in my office and, and it, it, it's basically baked into or programmed into the calendar of that young individual's timeline. At 16 years old, they, uh, and, and they knew this for two years leading up to 16 years old. Um, their responsibility was to leave the house for three months and not come back. No money from mom and dad. Um, you can choose your adventure. They originally were going to do like some kind of an international trip to Europe. And then they realized that the price of a plane ticket was going to drain most of their food budget for three months. So they, they got a used car. Um, I worked out a loan relationship with them. They have twin boys.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, they're 18 now and, um, and they're not in prison yet or dead. Should anybody wonder if this stuff actually works? And they left the house for three months in their car with a, a tent, like a roof tent on the vehicle. A little Honda Pilot and they drove from Idaho down to Arizona and back, stopping at national parks. Uh, you know, uh, grabbing chicken and beans at Walmart and, you know, sleeping out of their car. And they came back with a much deeper understanding of how it works when mom and dad aren't there to pay for stuff. And you gotta have your own budget and, you know, how to make campfire spaghetti for 10 nights in a row and, um. And they walked in the house, you know, in September of that year with a much deeper sense

• 42:52Speaker 00

  of responsibility, having left that summer, knowing, hey, like, we can't go back, so we just gotta go out and find an adventure.

• 42:59Josh Axe?

  Well, how was that on your wife? Because you have, I mean, she has these two twin boys that she's cared for, and then they go off for that long.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  And she did have the Find My iPhone tracking feature, and she would look at that thing freaking like, every morning, every night. She called him a couple times. She even, so she did get on a plane and flew to Arizona and surprised them in Arizona when they were down there, where they stopped at a friend's house to visit. She hid in the closet and jumped out. I was, I was pretty jealous. I think that was actually when, that would have been right about when you and I were in London.

• 43:34Josh Axe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Last year. And then, 18 years old, or the 17 to 18 year old timeframe is the final vision quest, the rite of passage into adulthood, at which point, when they come back from that, they're expected to contribute even more to the household, as far as like if they want to live at home. Basically, they have a certain number of chores and contribution that they need to make. They're expected to pitch in a lot more from that standpoint. We start to have deep discussions afterwards about marriage, about working towards getting the first home, about what it looks like as far as, because we have a whole, this is an entirely different discussion, a whole Greenfield Family Trust and Greenfield Family Constitution. They can technically borrow against the money in

• 44:17Speaker 00

  the trust for something like starting a business, or taking a loan out for their first home. So those discussions start to happen after that final rite of passage into adulthood, which for them was a 10 day vision quest. So kind of similar to the 12 to 13 year old rite of passage, but this was longer, more intense. And, and that was kind of like the final icing on the cake, as far as, hey, here's your stamp of manhood. And

• 44:47Speaker 00

  Even though, again, like, they're 18 years old, they're not proven models of success. But the objective here, back to the reason you would do this in the first place, is that they spend a lot less time trying to prove to the world that they're a man through conquests of, you know, money, business, power, fame, girls, whatever, and instead are set to start a family, settle down, start a business.

• 45:08Josh Axe?

  One of the things that's so powerful about this is there is a plan in place to support them growing and overcoming these obstacles and facing these things, you know, because it's like, okay, if you don't do that, it's this saying that we've had before, if, like, if you don't tell your kids about sex, the world is going to, if you don't tell your kids about how, the world is going to. I would much rather have a godly father and mother teach their kids about this than someone in the world that's going to try and take advantage of them.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Absolutely, absolutely. You educate your children about the consequences of any decision that they might make, and then let them make an educated decision or choice about what it is that they're going to do. And you're right, like, I'd rather have, I call it lazy parenting, right? When you just say, no to your kid, we don't do that. Um, no, we don't talk about porn, no, we don't eat gluten, uh, no, we don't discuss alcohol, that is for adults. I would much rather, like, a parent take the non-lazy approach and sit down and educate their child about the effects of porn on neurotransmitters and objectification of the opposite sex and the sex slavery industry, and talk about alcohol and what it does to the liver and how it's metabolized and what amount

• 46:18Speaker 00

  is the appropriate amount and what amount is too much, and, you know, rinse, wash and repeat for health choices, for nutrition choices. But it takes time. And I think a lot of parents, you know, I don't want to throw parents under the bus, but I think a lot of parents just don't take the time to sit down and educate their kids and create a responsible, free-thinking individual.

• 46:36Josh Axe?

  Yeah, well, I think, I think there's a couple reasons why, a couple of challenges. One, they've never had it done for them, and so they almost don't even know, I mean, this isn't even on some, most people's radar, so I think that's one challenge. I think the other one is, um, that... We're so busy today and have so many things filling our calendar that actually, most people think their priorities are one thing, but it's actually something different.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:00Josh Axe?

  Right? And so I think there's a lot, it kind of reminds me of that parable, the seeds, right, the sower sowing, and then there's weeds coming up around them, choking them off. Some, the soil, it doesn't get planted deep enough. So I kind of see that as being one of the reasons why, but I absolutely love that you do this. And I encourage everybody, this is something, actually, I was just talking to my mother-in-law and Chelsea about recently, is we're talking about doing a, because we had some friends of ours do this, go through and create our family values in a family crest, like really go through and kind of plan out all of this stuff and thinking about this throughout the, you know, just for our girls, the future of their lives.

• 47:34Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Bird's Eye Overview is you sit down as a family and you and your spouse and your children, if you have them, discuss what your values are, the same way as you do a business. Let's love, honor, transparency, honesty, kind of like a word cloud of family values, preferably no more than 10. You can use those to form a mission statement. Wordsmith that into a mission statement that you can hang on the, you know, family living room wall or whatever that defines like what it is that we do. Like elements of ours would be like, we are content no matter our circumstances, or, you know, we exist to help people find deeper meaning and purpose and fulfillment in life. And these are all just like elements of what it means to be, in our case, a greenfield.

• 48:16Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  And then you can visualize that mission statement graphically with a logo and/or a crest, which is an actual, like, we have a crest. Like, it's a physical, big piece of metal, like a shield that hangs in our study that, that shows all the different things that we hold dear and that we do together and that we stand for, and even has elements of the family history, like the lasso around the logo that reflects my wife's Montana rancher background, or the, you know, the big table with the chairs in the upper left corner that reflects our love for entertainment or entertaining and relationships and community building. And then in that same constitution, I mean,

• 48:55Speaker 00

  Use your imagination wherever you want. You can do what we do for Christmas, what we do for Thanksgiving, what we do for Easter, what we do for New Years, the traditions that are baked into that. Daily rituals, like we have a 7:00 AM morning family huddle and a 7:00 PM family dinner meeting. We have our end of life and memorial plan wishes in there. Each member of the family, like here's what I want my memorial service to look like, and you know, the food I want served, and the ambiance, and the music that I want played, which is a super powerful exercise for for a child or a young human being to go through, all the way down to like here are the numbers for the family insurance agent, the family banker, if you have one, or the family financial office.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  And here's a link to a Dropbox or a Drive folder with the actual family trust in there. If you want to take an even deeper dive into, you know, how we manage money and what happens when you're 18, and what happens when you're 21. So the Constitution is basically like a living document, and we come back and revisit ours on an annual basis. And then that feeds into the family trust to help define what wealth in the trust might be used for, whether it be, you know, a business, or, you know, or what it can't be used for, like a trip to Vegas.

• 50:07Josh Axe?

  Yeah, I love that. Man, I love that. I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you, continue on with the part of the spiritual conversation here in terms of what are the practices that you have that you felt like allowed you to become more Christ-like, you know, really grow in your faith? What are maybe the top three practices you've noticed have been helpful for that?

• 50:30Speaker 00

  Number one would be God's Word. What that looks like for me and for us as a family is I listen to the Bible every morning, like our mutual friend Jordan Rubin, you know, I know he does a lot of that as well. That's the very first thing that goes on. It's downloaded the night before. I do the daily audio Bible, so the phone doesn't have to go on at all. So no text messages, no distractions, but that's usually about a half hour reading. And then I finish that with my own personal prayer time. And that's literally just like five to 10 minutes of laying things out before God, thanking God for the day, laying out like any anxieties or concerns I have about the day, praying for the family.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  And then after that, I'm kind of like diving into some morning self-care rituals, you know, foam rolling and stretching.

• 51:22Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  Then at seven AM, I gather the entire family and I lead them through the scripture. We just read chronologically through the entire Bible. So.

• 51:31Josh Axe?

  So good.

• 51:31Speaker 00

  Uh, we're, but we're back in a second Thessalonians right now. I use a study Bible. I'm like a Bible collector. I've got like the, the cultural studies Bible, the word on fire, the founding fathers Bible, the ESV study Bible. Uh, and so even though we did devotionals for a long time, like the one that has really stuck for us, and we just haven't moved from for three years is just reading the Bible in the morning and I teach the family out of the Bible. And I'm learning a lot as well because I'm going through footnotes and references and here's what this mean and you know, here's what this would have meant in the cultural context of that time. And then we pray together. And once a week, we switch up and just do a worship, music, dance party, which is great. Like just raising our arms and dancing around the backyard, the patio, the living room

• 52:13Speaker 00

  to, you know, some, some epic worship song. And then, um, we all memorize scripture every night about nine, nine thirty PM. We all gather in me and Jess's room, uh, or mom and dad's room. And we memorize a section of scripture. Like right now we're memorizing Ephesians fifteen and we have done that for five years. So we've memorized a lot of the Bible and that's important, not only to train parts of the brain in an era of GPT and Google and AI.

• 52:42Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Uh, we don't use our memory as much, so I'm, I'm a big fan of like, you know, the language and music and memorizing quotes and memorizing scripture. So more importantly than that training, a specific area of our brain, it's allowing us to place God's word on our hearts, which I think is important.

• 52:57Josh Axe?

  It's so good.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Something to call upon in a time of need or stress.

• 53:00Josh Axe?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I noticed for me, when I, I mean, if somebody did to ask me, hey, what is something that just radically changes your day more than anything? I mean, if I take the first, even if it's five minutes, but five, twenty, thirty minutes of my day with God. My entire day goes differently than if I don't, you know, I noticed this in college because in college, when I rededicated my life to Christ. And so I woke up every morning, started praying and reading my Bible, just those two things together. And it was like, wow. And if I would just do that and kind of continue to have the Holy Spirit's presence with me throughout the day, it was like, man, I'm reacting differently to every single thing. I'm thinking differently. I'm walking with this greater sense of like, and you can feel this, right?

• 53:43Josh Axe?

  Like, there's a sense of even the brainwaves of like, I would call them probably theta waves, but there's this sense of like, almost more of this meditative state you're carrying with you throughout the day.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  You've cast your cares upon something that's greater than you, that's outside of you. And for people who have not started their day with God or with spiritual care, the closest approximation would be how you feel during a day when you don't do something like a morning workout or a morning sauna, cold plunge, if that's your thing, versus how you feel when you've done that thing. You may stress better and I think the best of both worlds, back to the reasons of eternality that I was talking about earlier, is to do both, like, you know, I work out, I pray, I read the Bible, I connect with family, I'm ticking all those boxes before I'm jumping into any amount of formal, deep work.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  So that's really how I manage things. And just like the rite of passage or the constitution, it's all scheduled in. Like, it's gotta be part of the routine. It doesn't just randomly happen. And you should get to the point where it feels weird not to read the Bible, listen to the Bible in the morning. It feels like you're missing something and it feels weird for the family just to have not gathered at the beginning of the day. Or weird for there to be no formal, you know, family dinner prayer or song time. Just like it would feel weird to not work out or to not eat protein with lunch or, you know, any of those other things that are part of our health routine.

• 55:11Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah, and I encourage everybody, write it down and then just start doing it, right? Write it down and then start doing it. And then also, I mean, it's the greatest urge to, you know, run to whatever the emergency is. It's almost like, I mean, there is a...

• 55:24Speaker 00

  There's always an emergency.

• 55:25Josh Axe?

  Exactly, there's a hormo-

• 55:26Speaker 00

  It's like Elon Musk, right? He says he turns on his phone in the morning and just looks for an emergency.

• 55:30Josh Axe?

  Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. You know, you're talking about your morning routine as well. I'm curious for you, you know, I, I take a lot of stuff, you know, and I know you do as well. One thing I think that my patients have appreciated is, is I kind of lay out what they should do. But in addition, a lot of times I say, listen, here, these are the most important in ranking order. You know, if you're only going to take one thing, take this. If you're only going to take two things, take this. This is hard for people like you and me, but if I gave you your top five supplements in ranking order. What are your top five in ranking order? I would let you do bonuses at the end, but I really want to let you know your top five.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  Just like dihydrogen monoxide, like drink, drink 32 ounces of water.

• 56:12Josh Axe?

  I want to get into the hydrogen. I want to get into that next for sure.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, so I do start every day with, with giant 32 ounces of water and that water has minerals in it. So minerals would be one. Um, I think all the more important, uh, considering the fact that we live in a electrical soup that causes a little bit of excess calcium to bleed into the cell. And so you can offset that with magnesium, with minerals. There's other reasons to, to start off the day with something like that, but I would say minerals would be one. I would say if we look at long-term history of good human clinical research for a variety of issues that, uh, two others, like if we wanted to say two and three, it would be some kind of omega three supplementation.

• 56:55Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Uh, fish oil or elge oil and creatine.

• 56:59Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  With, for the former, for the fish oil, I actually don't take fish oil on any days that I'm eating fish anyways. And there's like a solid, like three or four days of the week when I have a big cut of salmon, you don't have to double up. But omega three supplementation, um, and even paying attention to your, your omega quant, your omega three index is pretty important. Like trying to have that above eight percent if you're able to test it. So, uh, minerals, omegas, creatine. I'm biased on this one, uh, because I have a company that, that sells it, but I think a lot of people just don't get enough protein and you can fill in the gaps with essential amino acids. Um, and I take like, I've already had 30 grams of essential amino acids per day.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  And getting somewhere in the range of like, you know, from 10 to 40, just to, just for maintaining muscle protein synthesis when it's difficult to get quality protein. I do a lot more of it when I travel particularly because I have more access to quality protein at home. Uh, but I would put amino acids in that bucket. And then um, we discussed some different peptides. And and even though it wouldn't technically be classified as a peptide, I'm increasingly for the effect on cognition, on inflammation, on battling sleep deprivation and overall cellular health, uh, becoming a bigger and bigger fan of some form of NAD.

• 58:20Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Whether it's NMN or NR or Nicotinamide, um, getting an NAD IV today later on. Um, and so, uh, you don't have to do the IV route. Uh, there are patches. Uh, you can take it orally.

• 58:34Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  But, uh, I would say minerals, fish oil, creatine, amino acids, and NAD would would be pretty big ones.

• 58:40Josh Axe?

  That's a solid list. That's a solid list. Yeah. And and I and I think for everybody, you know, there there's a, uh, again, there there are, you and I are both into personalized nutrition. I think different things are great for different people. But that's a great list. I do think minerals, of course, we could definitely highlight magnesium on studies and what people are deficient in. That's a that's a big one. That's a big one there as well.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  It's a tricky question because it's so personalized, right? Like if you were coming to me and you just had a crappy gut.

• 59:07Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  Digestive enzymes and probiotics and and bitters, or, you know, if you had immune issues, right? We'd be focusing more on, you know, maybe I'd be pulling out vitamin D and vitamin K and thymus and alpha one. And so it's tricky, but just like sledgehammer approach. Hey, if you, you know, knowing nothing about you, if you took some of these, you'd probably feel pretty good. Um, those are a few.

• 59:26Josh Axe?

  Have you have you tested your testosterone and would you and also have you? What would you say your top things in ranking order you've noticed for supporting testosterone?

• 59:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, the the biggies most people know about, basically, nature doesn't want a human being to bring babies into the world in a time of stress or famine, right? So excess carbohydrate restriction, excess calorie restriction, excess chronic aerobic cardio, uh, and, uh, stress, whether it's lifestyle or business or circadian rhythm stress or relationship stress, uh, would be the things that would dent testosterone.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Um, the base compounds that are necessary for the Leydig cells to actually make testosterone would be minerals, which we already mentioned, magnesium amongst those, zinc also fitting into that category, um, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, creatine and boron, right? So, so addressing any of those micronutrient or nutrient deficiencies would be number two.

• 1:00:26Josh Axe?

  But boron is the one that always surprises people that are like boron? I haven't even heard of boron.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, decent research on boron and testosterone. It's not as sexy as tribulus or, you know, phojo or any of these herbs that

• 1:00:39Josh Axe?

  tongue kindly.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  Sketchy, but might work for some people. Uh, definitely work for libido and some for blood flow. Testosterone is questionable. It's like, well, do you have more testosterone because this herb made you want to have more sex? And more sex created a positive feedback loop of more testosterone? Is it actually increasing testosterone?

• 1:00:55Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  And then, um, well, more, more sex or more weight training, which will lead me to the next one, uh, lifting weights with your legs where there's a high concentration of androgen receptors.

• 1:01:05Josh Axe?

  Yep.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  Even if you don't like leg press and deadlift and squat and lunges, um, leaving those in is pretty important. So don't be toothpick legs person at the gym. Um, and then, uh, um, uh, excess heat. A lot of people get confused about that potentially dinging testosterone when it's more of the sperm count thing, right? For my son's 18 birthday recently, I actually got them the ball cooling underwear for those reasons, because I want to have grandkids someday and we do the sauna a lot. Uh, but anecdotally, there's a guy named Dr. Thomas Seeger, who sold me my cold plunge and he, he's pretty bullish on this. The idea of regular cold exposure for the testes causing an increase in testosterone. And he has a lot of anecdotal evidence on that.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  It's difficult to find anything beyond just like old Russian powerlifter lore that there's something to that. But I can tell you, uh, I feel pretty anabolic, high libido, good energy levels, crush a workout if I get cold and I specifically get my balls cold.

• 1:02:07Josh Axe?

  I, I, I've talked to several men who have done cold plunge and they've, and I've, I've had some of them say it's doubled their testosterone. I mean, I've talked to many.

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  And then going beyond the basics, all the things that I just mentioned, um, Let's, let's say, actual testosterone replacement therapy aside, which should definitely be something to table until you're at least like 35, 40 years old and, and for obvious reasons beyond your childbearing years, there are certain things that can increase LH and FSH production and increased testosterone production. Kisppeptin peptide would be one of those, and Clomiphene, HCG, or Ganadarolin, all of those would be something that you'd normally work through a compounding pharmacist to get, but they can assist with raising testosterone to pretty appreciable levels without you actually diving straight into actual testosterone replacement therapy, which a lot of guys don't need to do. Like, that's, that's getting

• 1:03:01Speaker 00

  dropped off at the top of Mount Everest.

• 1:03:03Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah, I, I agree. For me, for testosterone therapy for men, it's like, I want you to just put it off as long as you possibly can and would. You know, I ran into Mark Sisson at the gym, and we, we talked about this a little bit too, and I think even when he was on the show, we talked about, about it in terms of like, yeah, I think when you get in your 70s, you know, or just later in life, the lowest dose possible. But generally, I, I'm always a, let's do it with food, let's do it with exercise, let's lower cortisol to your point, let's do all those things, and then let's try things like peptides, you know, let's, let's not, let's do it absolutely last. I mean, and I'm seeing more and more guys jump on testosterone therapy in their 30s. I mean, it's happening.

• 1:03:40Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, cuz, cuz, cuz it's easy. It's, it's, it's, yeah, it's like, back to the spirituality thing. It's the same thing as just like vaping DMT to have a spiritual experience. Yeah, it's gonna like, it's gonna drop you straight off at the top of Mount Everest, but because you didn't have to do a whole lot of work to get there in many cases, like, is it gonna last and is it going to be as deep and profound as like, as, as a true spiritual experience, like daily on your knees with God? So with testosterone, what happens is you get on testosterone replacement therapy via a pellet, or cream, or gel, or injection, or now, you know, an oral or a nasal spray.

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  And you feel incredible and you often feel so incredible, you're like, well, gosh, like this is where I don't need to like back squat and I don't need to like, make sure I'm eating adequate fats and getting sunshine and you know, doing a cold plunge or you know, taking vitamin D. I, you know, this is just my Band-Aid for everything. So you see a lot of people on testosterone with,

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  inflammation, oxidation, poor lifestyle practices, poor sleep. So yeah, it's, it's, the testosterone is elevated, but it's kind of like a subpar elevation when it comes to overall.

• 1:04:49Josh Axe?

  Well, if you think about it too, if they go to a doctor and their doctor is like, hey, just get on testosterone and they have an underlying, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, you know, they, they've got, you know, inflammation, you know, just blowing up their, uh, their arteries all the time. It's like a lot of times it is a, a Band-Aid that's going to lead to, to death. I mean, there are side effects.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and you could make a case that, okay, once you get on it, you've got enough motivation to do all those other things. And that is true, but I think there's a greater number of people who just use it as a crutch.

• 1:05:21Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. I, we are going to do rapid fire here.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  Let's go.

• 1:05:27Josh Axe?

  Okay.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:05:28Josh Axe?

  What is the best book you've read in the past year?

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  Sahil Bloom's The Five Types of Wealth. I thought it fit into a similar category as like the Almanac of Naval Ravikant or Charlie Munger, uh, with a little bit of like a Tim Ferriss, you know, Four Hour Work Week thrown in there, um, you know, Time Wealth, Social Wealth.

• 1:05:47Josh Axe?

  People bring this book up.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think it's, I think it's a good book. Um, and we have father-son book club. So every month, me and my sons go through a new book. And then we chat for five to 10 minutes before dinner about the chapter that we read that day. And that was one of the, I think one of the books that was a highlight last year.

• 1:06:04Josh Axe?

  That's so great. What is, if you could only live off of one food, what would that food be?

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  I'm supposed to think like a scientist here or are we thinking from like purely epicurean hedonistic standpoint?

• 1:06:15Josh Axe?

  Well, let me say this. Okay, so how about this? How about you got sent into a wilderness?

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:06:21Josh Axe?

  And, uh, you know, you gotta survive for a month.

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, uh, so I would probably go with, assuming I had access to fire. I would probably go with salmon.

• 1:06:40Josh Axe?

  Yeah, I would go with salmon too. What is something that maybe your wife is doing health wise that she has said, wow, this is really helping her health?

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  Um, natural hormone replacement therapy. She's on progesterone, DHEA, uh, estradiol and, um, uh, testosterone. And it's very well and properly managed. She would be considered like still like pre-menopausal.

• 1:07:14Josh Axe?

  Yep.

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  But just as far as like her libido levels, her energy levels, um, it's, it's like, it's a game changer for her. Like we recently went to Mexico and she's forgotten everything and, and didn't have a great, you know, week down there. Which is kind of like the catch 22 with hormones, like when you're, when you're on them and then you don't have them, you don't feel so well. And then you have to accept the fact, well, if you're on them, you're probably going to be on them for life unless you're doing some pretty intense, you know, bodybuilding style cycling. But I would say hormone replacement therapy is something that's, that's pretty, pretty well ranked for her. Besides like her little, she has like a face laser thing she does every day.

• 1:07:48Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, beyond my understanding.

• 1:07:52Josh Axe?

  My wife, she loves gua sha. So she does a lot of gua sha on her face.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  She's always got something on her face.

• 1:07:57Josh Axe?

  Oh yeah. No, no, I mean, there's, there's no doubt like for me, I don't do any, like I'm, I'm very not that conscious there. My wife, I mean, she spends more time, I, I'm sure most, most women do.

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Josh Axe?

  So, um, that's probably, probably normal. One exercise, what exercise do you feel, and it could be just a standard exercise that everybody's familiar with or something not. But like, what is the type of exercise you're saying for your body that you feel like you've seen really good results with?

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um.

• 1:08:26Speaker 00

  kettlebell swings and pushups.

• 1:08:28Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 00

  Like honestly, like if that's all I had was a kettlebell and bodyweight, I could work out all year long. And those would be top to the top exercises.

• 1:08:35Josh Axe?

  How do you stay healthy while traveling? What's some, what are a thing or a few things you always try and do?

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  I carry as many elements of my morning routine at home. Uh, as I can when I travel, meaning I get up, I listen to the Bible. Uh, I don't have red light therapy when I travel typically, but I'm usually out in the sunshine within 30 minutes of waking. I have my big glass of water. I have most of the supplements that I mentioned that I travel with. I typically like, we started this podcast at 10:30 AM. A lot of times have people who want to start a recording at eight or nine or nine 30. I typically don't start anything until mid morning so that I can get my workout, my movement, my spiritual time in, take care of emails. So typically like starting the day later when I travel.

• 1:09:19Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  Um, and then I do use a higher dose melatonin, but just when I travel typically for the first couple of days to realign the circadian rhythm. And, um, I outfit my hotel room or my Airbnb with as many things as possible to make it more natural. Like I typically put a help of air filter in there. Um, and either like buying one and giving it to the hotel afterwards, or having a company like Jasper ship one out. Uh, always have a whole foods order waiting with like glass bottled water and macadamia nuts and some blueberries and just like healthy food. So I don't have to eat at the hotel restaurant or Starbucks or whatever. And then, um, typically I have like grounding shoes like I'm wearing right now.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  Uh, just for when I'm walking, get in touch with the planet.

• 1:10:07Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  And, um, yeah, I would say grounding, earthing, light, fuel, movement, uh, circadian rhythm, timing. And then just like managing stress and not trying to rush too much, especially in the morning would be some of the biggies.

• 1:10:20Josh Axe?

  Well, what do you, what do you think is the most underrated bio hack that's out there today?

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  I have been to a lot of medical clinics lately. I've been like doing a lot of consulting with a lot of medical clinics. Just like want, they want chat with me about exercise or about like, you know, the layout of the facility or whatever. And I'm still surprised at how many of them like don't have um PEMF. Like I think for like chronic and acute injuries, inflammation, I use PEMF every day at home. I have one of those like nice ones.

• 1:10:48Josh Axe?

  I have one by my bed.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  I do it while I'm like in bed. It's so good. I've got one by my desk and I'll put it on like a knee or an elbow from a workout that morning. Um, I think PEMF is pretty underrated.

• 1:10:58Josh Axe?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:11:00Speaker 00

  Like eat like if you have like a health clinic and you have an IV lounge, like why not just like make the chairs PEMF chairs? And have people like kill two birds with one stone.

• 1:11:07Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, I've been doing it on my uh, I did the, the, one of the dumbest things I've ever done. Uh, well, it wasn't intentional. I was swimming underwater. I'm trying to increase the amount of time I can swim underwater. And um, the pool was really weird to where it was kind of like uh, it was curved, all the same color. My goggles were fogged up.

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Josh Axe?

  I thought I had one more stroke.

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Josh Axe?

  I went right into the wall.

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Josh Axe?

  And I, and I've, I mean, I had like stinging pain in both palms, my arms, like my, my facets are still jammed. But I got back here and I started doing PEMF a couple of times every day. Red light a couple of times every day, started doing, you know, BPC and peptides every day, just to kind of get it to where it's needs to be. And then I'll get some, you know, regenerative kind of therapy, you know, in there as well.

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  There's uh, Therawave duos, like the vibrating peanut shaped roller that you can kind of roll up and down behind the neck.

• 1:12:05Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  It's another good one. Uh, although ultimately they're really the, the number one secret to being able to swim for long periods of time underwater. You know what it is?

• 1:12:12Josh Axe?

  Oh, what?

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  A snorkel.

• 1:12:16Josh Axe?

  Well, you know, that's one of the better jokes I've heard in a long time.

• 1:12:20Josh Axe?

  I don't know if it's a joke, but it's just an observation. It's always worked for me. Wow. And you're, and you're funny. Wow. Hey, thanks so much for coming on the show. This is so fun. I know we're gonna be together in London here at the Health sometime this year. Again, we'll have to do another Russian, you know, Russian beating slash cold plunge slash, you know, sauna session. And I want to encourage people to check out more about Ben. Ben has an amazing website. He has a great social page, a great podcast. So if you want to learn more about Ben and follow his work, I want to encourage you to just search him on all platforms everywhere out there today. He's also got a couple of great books. One is Boundless, and that book is all about upgrading your body and defying aging.

• 1:13:02Josh Axe?

  And he's also got some great spiritual books. If you just go on amazon.com and search Ben Greenfield, there are many, many books, things he's written, great products, just a number of things that he has that are out there that I think you'd really enjoy as well. And hey, if you're watching on YouTube, we'd love to hear from you. Are you a fan of Ben? Are you doing any of the biohacking or practices we talked about? And also, what do you think about his family practices with the male rite of passage and what he's done with his boys here? I'd love to hear from you there as well. So, hey, guys, thanks so much for watching. Remember, the number one thing you can do here to support the show is subscribe and share. There are millions of people that don't know the truth about how to use food and lifestyle medicine to heal your body physically, mentally, spiritually.

• 1:13:47Josh Axe?

  So, thanks, Ben, for coming on today. Thank you for watching the show. We'll see you on the next episode.