Zack Arnold

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Ben Greenfield, All Around Badass

About Episode

In this episode I have a rapid-fire conversation with nutrition and fitness expert Ben Greenfield who is an ex-bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, Spartan racer, coach, speaker and author of the New York Times Bestseller “Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health and Life”. In 2008, Ben was voted as NSCA’s Personal Trainer of the year and in 2013 was named by Greatist as one of the top 100 Most Influential People In Health And Fitness. We discuss all kinds of health related topics listed below.

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Transcript

Ben Greenfield: Let’s do this.

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Ben Greenfield, who has been just a tremendous resource for me. And although you may not know it, he’s actually one of the brains behind Fitness and Post. He actually doesn’t even know it, but a lot of the information that I’m getting about this program is coming from Ben Greenfield himself. So thank you so much for being on the show.

Ben Greenfield: Cool. I learn something new every day.

Zack Arnold: Yes, you do. So, for those who don’t know, Ben is the author of countless fitness and wellness books. You run from what I can count at least what four, five different websites. You’re the host of more podcasts than I can keep up with. There’s Obstacle Dominator. There’s the Get Fit Guy, and then there’s the podcast that I pretty much listen to religiously, and that’s the Ben Greenfield podcast. So, needless to say, you are a very prolific guy.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I’m actually recording that Ben Green for Fitness podcast tomorrow morning. So, every Wednesday morning for the past six years, I’ve recorded that thing.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, you’re. It’s it’s amazing because I know that each of your shows. It’s not like you have 10 episodes of each show. Like Ben Greenfield, you’re about to hit the 300th right?

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I’m not a fan of starting things and then quitting them. Yeah, no, well, well, that I think that’s one of the

Zack Arnold: Reasons why you and I have a lot in common and why I’m really excited about this. And you and I had scheduled this call a couple of months ago, and I’ve been racking my brain about what we can talk about because there’s so many different things that you have knowledge of and that you just talk about in all your different shows. I didn’t even know where to start, so I thought to myself, I think one of the best resources that you can give to my audience is just starting from the basics of what in the world has happened to the diet in our country and food in our country. Because one of the way that I found you was the interview that you did with Dave Asprey on the Bulletproof Radio podcast, and I found your superhuman food pyramid. Of all the people that have told this story, you tell it the most succinctly. Can you just tell the story from the beginning all the way back with the lipid hypothesis? What the heck happened to our diet in this country? Where the food pyramid came from and why it’s wrong.

Ben Greenfield: Sure, I mean I could do that, or you could just go watch the most recent South Park episode on gluten being the devil, or yes, gluten being poison, in which the entire cartoon ends with the the resolution that what you need to do, in fact, is turn the food pyramid upside down, and then that saves everyone from what they call Ebola gluten. But if you want to venture outside of cartoon land and delve into what happened here in the U.S. is that an entire pyramid is kind of based off of research that was pretty flawed. It was research done by a guy named Ancel Keys, where he investigated fat consumption and saturated fat consumption in a variety of different countries. Kind of cherry picked the evidence and showed that in seven of those countries, there happened to be a correlation between fat intake and cardiovascular disease, in my opinion, kind of like there’s a correlation between like you know shark attacks and and summer, but essentially what happened based off of that was that Ancel Keys heavily influenced the original dietary guidelines issued by the U.S. government and multiple other governments as well. A lot of people don’t know that, like you know, Sweden and China and Greece all look relatively similar to our food pyramid or what used to be our food pyramid. And anyways, the result was that a lot of things that are subsidized heavily in the U.S. and elsewhere, like corn and grain, those are at the bottom of the food pyramid. And then we work our way up from the six to 11 servings of corn, grain, and other carbohydrates at the bottom of the food pyramid to fruit and vegetables above that. Not that big of a deal, really. Even though I think that vegetables should take more room on the pyramid than than fruit, just because of their superior nutrient density to to sugar ratio. And then you’ve got milk and yogurt. You’ve got meat, and you’ve got like your fats and oils that you eat sparingly at the top. And when I look at that food pyramid, there are a variety of kind of issues with it. For example, dairy is really overemphasized, and you know a lot of vegetable and meat sources have plenty of calcium to the point where the argument that dairy should be emphasized for calcium intake is a little bit flawed, they don’t differentiate between good fats and bad fats. Like, yeah, there should be some fats such as oxidized vegetable oils like canola oil or safflower oil. Like those should be at the top of the food pyramid, but other things like avocados and extra virgin olive oil should be at the bottom. They don’t differentiate between the types of carbs and grains because some can be quite damaging to people and and some not. And you know the I kind of talked about this a little bit, but as far as the fruit goes, I mean they are recommending two to four servings of fruit per day. You talk about like you know you just talked about how you heard me on the bulletproof show. And you know Dave Asprey, I’ve heard him say recently, like fruit is candy, and it kind of is right. Like fruit is nature; it’s candy. It’s this bright, sweet stuff that hangs from trees. It’s good in moderation, but at two to four servings a day, I’ve actually seen that really affect people’s triglyceride levels and their storage fat levels. So you know, ultimately, when I set about to create a new version of the food pyramid, I wanted to set it up with some of those flaws in mind, and basically, you know, you can you can go download the food pyramid. It’s for free on my website over at BenGreedfieldFitness.com. But in a nutshell, pun intended, it’s got fats at the bottom, and basically those fats are oriented from eat to avoid. Right. So on the right side of the pyramid are all the good fats, and as you move towards the left, are the ones you should avoid. Vegetables are above that, and if you look at my personal diet, it kind of looks like I eat a ton of vegetables, I drench them in fat, and then I add a little bit of protein.

Ben Greenfield: You know, for example, dinner for me just now that I finished 20 minutes ago was two huge carrots chopped up onto a big bed of spinach with some parsley thrown on top of that, and then the the topping on that was liver pate and a ton of olive oil, and you know that that was that was dinner. And then as you get towards the top of the food pyramid, like grains and legumes, those are up there, but they’re not as emphasized as they are on the traditional food pyramid, and then fruit towards the top of the food pyramid, along with herbs and spices and sweeteners, you know, like sugars. And then I’ve actually got a separate circle next to my food pyramid for for drinks.

Zack Arnold: So then, when people come to you, and that this happens to me all the time, and maybe you hear this as well, and somebody says, “Well, but but it’s whole wheat pasta, and it’s a whole wheat bagel like that. Once I learned all this information, because to me this is kind of like the Matrix, where you take the red pill and all of a sudden you can’t go back and you learn all this information and you just start to see things in a different way. Like, how do you respond when people that are still looking at it from the old perspective and the way that we have for 30 or 40 years? How do you approach that?

Ben Greenfield: Boy, a lot of times I’m lazy, and I tell them just go read a book that’s you know going to cover a lot more than I could in in a couple of minutes. You know, like I tell them to go read the book Grain Brain, or another really really good version of that Wheat Belly, and both of those books show respectively what consumption of concentrated sources of gluten and concentrated sources of lectin, such as you find in commercial grains that have been bred for high yield crop, what you’ll find is that those actually wreak a lot of havoc on both neural tissue as well as gut tissue. Meaning that they can cause brain fog and bloating, gas, constipation, all sorts of things like that, but a lot of people are walking around with a lot of those issues, like subpar cognitive performance or subpar digestive performance, and they don’t realize that these you know quote unquote healthy whole grains that they’re eating are in fact concentrated sources of modern corn and grain. They aren’t the same grains, breads, pastas, etc. that your great great grandparents might have been eating, you know, 200 years ago.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that’s the other thing that I keep learning is that I used to think, well, you just look at a type of food and say, well, that’s good and that’s bad. But even when you look at something that could inherently be good, you have to kind of keep digging and digging and digging. Like for example, they say, oh, well, red meat causes cancer. Well, that’s true if you’re talking about grain-fed, full of antibiotics, full of hormones, slaughtered in a really horrible, unnatural way. But if you go towards the the realm of grass-fed meat, that’s totally different. So, just talk a little bit about how things go in layers, whether it’s meat or whether it’s fat or you know whatever it is, there are just all these different layers to nutrition.

Ben Greenfield: Sure, you know, and like I mentioned, like if you look on my food pyramid, it starts green on the right side and then goes to red over on the left side with kind of eat moderate avoid as you as you move over in the actual category. See the example that you gave of of grain fed, you know, protein, you know, based off of beef and cow compared to grass-fed, you know, organic pastured cows. Yeah, that’s a perfect example of what’s going to be a clean protein versus a metabolically damaging protein. You know, the example I gave earlier of you know safflower oil versus extra virgin olive oil is another example, and we can even do this. I mean, if you really want to get nitpicky, you can even look at vegetables, and you know a higher amount of nutrient density in some vegetables, as well as a higher amount of calorie density in some vegetables. You know, and so if you look at like you know, and a lot of people know this about both vegetables and and fruits, for example, like kale, pomegranates, blueberries, bok choy, mustard greens, spinach-like a lot of these chlorophyll-rich and colorful vegetables are often and and fruits are often superior to say like iceberg lettuce or like white cabbage or say like you know you know an oversized. Genetically modified apple versus a nice dense organic blueberry. So, you know, yeah, there’s there’s certainly a very wide spectrum, and and it’s just a matter of using a combination of of common sense and educating yourself.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I mean, I could sit here and literally just ask you question after question after question, but all the audience needs to do is go to your website and look up whatever it is, and they’ll find that specific food. They’ll probably find a podcast about it. They’ll find an article. So I’m not going to drill you all day. What I really want to go to next is probably one of the most fundamental things that I have learned from listening to your show is that I don’t need glucose all day long every day to keep my brain moving and keep my body moving, and I’m a Spartan racer. I’m not, you know, at the level that you are, Hunter. Are you know, I’m a weekend warrior. I’m in front of a computer for 60 hours a week, but I do, you know, P90X workouts and I do hard hikes on the weekend, and I wear weight vests, and I do a lot of the stuff you talk about. And I was always popping the gel packs over and over and over and over and doing all the nasty drinks until I started hearing some of your seminars and your podcast about why that’s not such a good thing and why your brain and your body don’t constantly need to be fed by glucose. So, can you just talk a little bit about glucose versus ketones and how people can start making this shift?

Ben Greenfield: Sure, it’s a very simple concept, and that’s the idea that if you look at what most mammals and, of course, humans are first exposed to naturally when they’re born, it’s a fuel that’s usually about 50 to 60% fat, which with a good deal of what are called triglycerides in that fat that elevate the body’s ability to burn fats and turn them into this really metabolically active source of fuel called ketones, and that that natural food that we eat when we’re first born is of course breast milk. And so, when you look at at an average human being, somewhere along the lines, like one to three years into life, sometimes earlier, if they’re just fed on soy formula, they are shifted into Cheerios and Gerber baby food and mashed up fruits and a lot of of candy and sweets and starches and carbohydrates and of course many of us spend the rest of our lives or a good deal of the next several years, you know, consuming cereals, grains, corn, sports drinks, energy bars, etc. So we turn into sugar burners. And when you look at it from a metabolic standpoint, you know there’s there’s a good author named Nora Gedas, and she describes sugar as like the kindling and fat as the log, right? So from a metabolic standpoint, we get short spurts in energy followed by energy drops, and chronically, the problem is that that can create a lot of metabolic damage. It’s a more acidic state. It creates what are called free radicals, which which can, you know, wreak havoc on cell walls. And you know, there there are a lot of things that go above and beyond just the potential for you know maybe getting a cavity from sugar. And then when you look at fats, they’re very slow burning. They offer a very dense source of fuel. So what this comes down to is just a totally different metabolic fuel. And if you can retrain your body, I actually just spent an hour recording a podcast that’s going to get released this Saturday. At least at the time that we’re recording this this Saturday on my website about like all the different steps that you have to take into consideration if you’re the average human being raised on carbs who needs to shift themselves back into fat burning mode and it involves everything from you know subtracting carbohydrates and adding more oils and fats into the diet to doing a fasted morning workout every day to shift the body into fat burning utilization, to limiting yourself to three and no more feedings per day until you get to the point where you’re fat adapted. You know a lot of different strategies. What it comes down to is that fat is a metabolically superior form of fuel for both energy stabilization as well as overall health.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, but if I’m eating grass fed butter and olive oil and all these fats, all they aren’t going to get heart disease and all this cholesterol and just have a massive heart attack by 40 years old.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, if you are consuming them in the presence of elevated blood sugar, absolutely. They just did a study in kids that showed that if they consumed saturated fats and fats and also had sugar at the same time, that it glycated and oxidized those fats. The same thing happens in adults. That’s why if you decide you’re going to whatever start to pick up the trend of drinking bulletproof coffee or eating a bunch of wild caught fish and grass fed steak and butter, et cetera, you need to make sure that you’re also not simultaneously grabbing a handful of M and M’s here and there and you know sneaking in some whole grain tortillas and maybe a few scoops of ice cream at night because what happens is you you can derail yourself from that standpoint too. So the answer is is no. Fat has never been shown to cause cardiovascular disease in any studies at all, ever, unless it is present with other. Factors that cause it to become oxidized and inflamed. But if you’re living a healthy life and you’re not eating a lot of sugars and you’re shifting your diet towards a natural intake of fats, then no, there’s no risk for heart disease. And if you are concerned, there, I mean, you can get a cardiac echocardiogram. You can get what’s called a calcium score. You can just do your bloods and check out what your what your LDL particle count is or the size of your LDLs. Like it’s not like you’re shooting in the dark. You can try a diet for a year and check in and see what it does to your bloods, and that can give you a pretty good idea of whether or not it’s doing you any metabolic favors.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I can say for a fact I actually did exactly that. Where at the beginning of this year, I did a blood test right before I had started on this journey of going high fat, low carb, and got my cholesterol checked. Did all the numbers. Did the same thing about two months ago after doing this diet. My doctor said to me, “He’s an integrative medicine specialist, so he’s not just like a traditional Western doctor. He said, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it because your cholesterol is the best that it’s looked in over 10 years, my triglycerides plummeted, my LDL went down, and my HDL skyrocketed. So I now have the numbers in front of me that say, “Hey, eating a bunch of grass-fed butter and avocados and olive oil and nuts all day long isn’t going to make me have a heart attack by the age of 40. Because people see me make my lunch at work and they’re like, oh my god, you’re having all this butter, you’re gonna die. It’s like, well, not really, but it’s just, it’s like you said, it’s such a long conversation. I was like, just go read a book, you know. So I, I can, I can’t even imagine what it’s like for you because I know very, very, very little, and I would guess everybody’s got to come up to you and be asking those questions all the time. So I, I can’t even imagine.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I try and avoid talking about fitness or health at any cocktail parties.

Zack Arnold: I can just turns

Ben Greenfield: Into turns into working. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: Exactly. It’s the same thing when people come up to me and they’re like, “Oh, so what’s it like editing a TV show or a feature film? And have you met this person and that person? I’m like, “Let’s just talk about things that aren’t what I do for seven years a week. Yeah, this is exhausting. Exactly. So, what I want to go to now, which is kind of along the lines of the whole glucose burning thing, is one of the things that I know is kind of one of your pet peeves. I want to talk about Gatorade because what people will say to me a lot is, “Oh, yeah, I know all these other things are bad, but but Gatorade was made at the Gatorade Science Institute, and professional athletes are using it. So, Gatorade’s a good source of energy for me to have in front of my desk, right? So can you please help me explain to people why Gatorade is basically battery acid?

Ben Greenfield: Gatorade was originally developed by the Florida Gators, actually, for their football team, and it was given to football players, you know, doing two a days in the heat, burning an enormous number of calories, and needing both electrolytes and hydration replacement due to that crazy amount of training that they were doing, and lo and behold, when they when they added in some electrolytes and sugars to the water, no surprise there the athletes lasted longer. You know they probably would have done that on on almonds and sea salt as well, but either way, it led to the development of Gator, and a lot of college football teams picked this up, and it kind of trickled from sports into recreational exercise, and you know now it’s used at gyms, et cetera. But the problem is that you know well, it relates back to what we just got done talking about, right? The the crux of it is this fast burning sugar that is designed for people who are sugar burners, and if you’re a fat burner, you can get away with a lot less of those potentially damaging carbohydrates. And then, of course, when you’re talking about something like Gatorade, like I can take whatever, like some sea salt and maybe a little bit of fresh squeezed orange or lemon juice, and you know I could put in a little bit of coconut water in there, and you know maybe if I wanted to to settle the stomach, a little slice of ginger or mint, and I can put all that into a water bottle, and have a really nice energy drink that doesn’t have any preservatives or colors or anything like that in it. But Gatorade, in addition to using sugar as its primary macronutrient in the formula has added a lot of colors and oils and preservatives, and those have potential for both destroying some gut bacteria and also being a little bit carcinogenic. The other thing a lot of people don’t realize is your body stores some things that it can’t metabolize in fat cells, like toxins. So if you’re if you’re consuming a lot of things that your body can’t metabolize, you end up creating more fat cells to shove those into as well. So there’s a lot of issues with it. I mean, like if I and and I’ve certainly had Gatorade before, right? Like I did a a week long gig with like the Navy SEALs training down in Encinitas a few months ago, and we were just pretty much like out marching, and all we had access to was like MREs and Gatorade. I probably drank a good like couple liters of it per day. Like I’ll do that. Like if I gotta survive, or I’m just in a situation where that’s all that’s available, and I know it’s that, or completely run out of energy and cramp. But unless that’s the case with you, and you’re just like stuck with no alternative, there are there are better options.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, absolutely, and this was something that when I was using the gel packs and decided to switch, I thought to myself, “There’s no way that I’m going to be able to do a Spartan beast for hours, and obviously it’s going to take me way longer than somebody like you or Hunter because I, you know, take my time and you know I’m not racing. I’m just trying to finish. And I said, “All right, I’m just going to try this. So I made up these three or four water water bottles that I just had around my belt, and it was nothing more than an amino acid powder in coconut water with some chia seeds and a little bit of honey. All recommendations that came from you. I didn’t cramp once. I never bonked. I was obviously tired because it was a long race, but I never got exhausted and my muscles never hurt. And I didn’t have any sugar, and I felt great. And I was like, “This is amazing. And since then, I just threw out all the the cliff gels and all the all that other junk because you know just all the GI distress and just the cramping, and it’s I mean it’s literally like eating cake batter while you’re out you know racing. It’s just disgusting. So it really doesn’t make a huge difference, and I felt that firsthand. So

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Zack Arnold: So, where I want to go next, since I know I have you for an extremely limited amount of time, you obviously are one of the foremost experts in the country on personal training and fitness and endurance training and triathlons and Spartan races. But for my audience, I want to know if somebody has been sitting in front of a computer for 15 years, completely sedentary. They’re maybe not morbidly obese, but let’s say they’re 50 pounds overweight. The thought of them joining a challenge group and starting up an exercise program is too much. So what? What are? And I know that you love like top three, top five. What are some recommendations that you would give, not for the endurance athlete, but for somebody that literally has had no fitness in their life for over a decade. Is overweight, but has decided I want to make a change. But I’m so intimidated, I just don’t know where to start.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I do. Your biggest bet would be three things. That’s where I’d start. And I’ve got if you go to quickanddirtytips.com, I’ve got a an article over there called “Unconventional Techniques for fat loss, or something similar to that. I don’t remember if that’s exactly what it’s called, but it’s a really good primer on a lot of these things. But three things, if you just need to get off the couch, the the first is pretty obvious, and that’s move. Right, they did a recent study on women and fat loss, and found that over 10 weeks they were able to lose 8% body fat doing nothing but light movement five days a week for 60 minutes, and they and they were not exercising per se. It was all aerobic. I don’t remember if they were like cycling or walking or what, but either way, move. Don’t feel the pressure to go join a CrossFit gym or you know jump into a spin class. Just move every day, preferably before breakfast, if you can. Number two would be to clean up inflammation, and even when someone switches to a healthy diet, the two biggest sources of inflammation I see that can inhibit the ability of fat cells to be destroyed is number one, your personal care products like your shampoo, your soap, you know, your cologne, your fragrance. Get rid of all that stuff. It’s going to keep you fat. The other thing is inflammation from exposure to a high number of electromagnetic fields: constant TV, cell phone, Wi-Fi router, airplanes. You know X-ray scanners, whatever. Limit that stuff as much as possible, and that also will help with inflammation. And then the last thing is to be okay with being cold. Cold is really a shortcut to fat loss, and it’s one of the better ways to burn fat. You know, literally while you’re sleeping, keep your house a little cold, keep your bedroom a little colder, take a cold shower every now and again, and that really upregulates your body’s ability to be able to tap into its own fat stores to create heat.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, that’s something I’ve talked about a little bit on a couple of shows and just over social media is that concept of cold thermogenesis that you talk about a lot. Because I’d never heard about that until I discovered your show, and it’s it’s really kind of counterintuitive because most people think, well, if I want to lose weight, I need to wear 12 sweatshirts and I need to go jogging in the desert in 100 degree heat. When you’re doing that, all you’re doing is sweating out just sweating out water, but you’re not actually doing anything. Can you explain just a little bit about the science behind what’s actually happening with just light, cold thermogenesis, and why you would suggest taking a walk in a t-shirt if it’s 60 degrees out, or taking a cold shower, and why that’s actually burning calories?

Ben Greenfield: Sure. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of minutes here before you’re going to hear my kids walk in the door and start screaming. I’m not in my office tonight. I’m actually relegated to the dining room.

Zack Arnold: Oh, you’re not on the on the Samsara treadmill that I just so walk on. Oh my god, I want

Ben Greenfield: My my office is under construction with a some new cupboards and stuff. So it’s a it’s a mess in there. Anyways, though, to answer your question, your body, when it is subjected to cold, creates more brown adipose tissue, and that’s a special type of fat tissue that burns calories to generate heat, and then it also increases its production of what are called endothelial nitric oxide synthase. And those basically cause your blood vessels to be able to constrict and dilate, make you more cardiovascularly efficient. And then the last thing it does is it increases the levels of a hormone called adiponectin, and that’s a hormone that allows you to basically unlock the energy stores in your own fat cells, like the fat in your adipose tissue, like on your belly or your hips or your butt or your thighs. So I personally do a cold shower at the beginning and the end of every day, and spend most of my time with my house, my my like main working area temperature somewhere around like 64 to 66 degrees, and then the bedroom is typically around 60 degrees.

Zack Arnold: And I just want to let everybody know I didn’t give Ben any notes before the show, and he had no idea was going to ask it. He just knows those words. You just know them. That that’s what I think is so cool is that you just you know this stuff intrinsically. Like you’re you’re not one of these people that just reads it off a card. So I I have a lot of respect for that.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I actually was reading all that off of a flashcard. Yes, of course, I made them. One of your 700

Zack Arnold: Flashcards, considering the amount of information that you had, and that’s one thing that that I warn people about in the opening is that not only are you into fitness, but you’ve got a giant propeller hat too. You know, it’s something you always talk about. Is all right, time to put on the propeller hat, and I love that. Is that you have both sides? You have the brawn and you have the brains, and that’s what I respect.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, and tin foil hats too.

Zack Arnold: And tin foil hats, exactly. Whatever it takes to block the EMF, right?

Ben Greenfield: That’s right.

Zack Arnold: So actually, on the the subject of EMF, that’s something I get asked about a lot. Is people in my industry we spend literally all day in one tiny room, not just in front of a computer, but we have multiple computers. We have two giant computer monitors. We have a television. We have an audio mixer. You know, we might have a server in the next room. We are just surrounded by all this stuff, so you know. Once again, can you just go ahead and give like the top three tips for how do we make our office space healthier? Whether it’s EMFs or just getting more activity, just if we have to live in this tiny little room all day long, what can we do very quickly?

Ben Greenfield: Sure, I’ll give you three tips, and then I’m going to have to boogie. So my three tips are number one: your Wi-Fi router is the biggest producer of EMF in your entire home and/or office. So either keep that bad boy off if you have the option, and if not, hardwire into it with an Ethernet cable, and then make sure that the radio signal on the Wi-Fi router is off. You can Google how to do that, or you can go to 192 dot 168 dot 0.1 You just type that into your browser, and that’ll connect you to your to your router, and you can turn off the radio signal on it. Number two would be to get yourself a nice pair of glasses that will block the blue light that comes off of screens and monitors and things like that, because that can disrupt your circadian rhythm, especially if you use that stuff after sunset, which means it can disrupt sleep, and that has a lot of downstream issues. And then the last thing that I would say when it comes to your your office and mitigating EMF there, I would probably say one of the things that’s kind of cool that I do now is I’ve got what’s called a negative ion generator that produces negative ions, very similar to what you get off of like forests and trees and waterfalls and stuff like that, just plugged into the wall in my office. So, so and and that really helps just mitigate a lot of the effects of the the electronics exposure. So those are three little things I do.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I’m I’m looking at mine right now. I have one plugged in right in front of my computer at home, and I have one plugged in next to my computer here at my office, and they’re cheap too. If somebody’s listening, thinking, “Oh my God, how much is a negative ion generator? It’s like 15 bucks on Amazon, and they’re tiny. Nobody even notices it, so they’re they’re great. So, do you have to go now? Are you? Have I lost you officially?

Ben Greenfield: We are gonna have kids walking in the door. They’re in the garage right now. They’re gonna be opening the door. So it was a pleasure to come on the podcast, man.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show. I hope that I can rope you in sometime soon. And I’m actually going to be in Malibu this weekend. I live about 15 minutes from the race site, so I’m going to be there with a team, and hopefully, hopefully, I can grab you.

Ben Greenfield: I’ll be there both days. Are you going

Zack Arnold: To be doing the the elite heat right away in the morning?

Ben Greenfield: Yep, both days.

Zack Arnold: Okay, well, I think I’m running at like 915 so I may end up missing you, but I’ll I’ll do my best to to try and find you because I’d love the chance to shake your hand and say thank you in person. But wish you the the best of luck on your Spartan race, and this has been tremendously helpful. And you know, gonna go back to listening to you every morning on my way to work stuck in the car.

Ben Greenfield: Sweet man. Well, I’ll catch you later, and I’ll hopefully see you in Malibu.

Ben Greenfield, All Around Badass

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