197. Ben Greenfield: When Biohacking Goes Too Far—What Actually Matters for Longevity

0:00Before we get started with this episode, I'd like to invite all of you to the first ever Next Self-Long Jevite Summit happening in Nashville, Tennessee, the Conrad Hotel on Saturday, September 12, 2026. This isn't all day summit where you're going to be hearing from some of the best speakers in longevity medicine, including Dr. Vanda Wright, Dr. Luis and Nicola, many of the podcast guests that you've heard here on the extent podcast. And of course, I'm going to be there curating the entire day. We also have incredible vendors coming so you can try the latest technologies and health wellness in longevity. Go to next-health.com-summit and buy your ticket today. We only have 400 spots and they're going quickly. That's next-health.com-summit. I look forward to seeing you all there. Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darjean Shah. A podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research tools and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained in

1:01board certified to the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management for achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as an interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease and most importantly, extend your health span. Welcome to Extend. I'm Dr. Shah and I'm dedicated to giving you the latest information on cutting-edge science, research tools and protocols to help you extend your health span. Today, I have a special guest. He's a pioneer in the world of biohacking and longevity, Ben Greenfield. Ben holds a bachelor's and master's degree in sports science and exercise physiology. He's a certified sport nutritionist and a strength and conditioning coach. He was voted America's top personal trainer in 2008 and he's a best-selling author of over 17 books, including Boundless

2:06and Beyond Training. He's a former Ironman triathlete, a professional Spartan racer and he's completed 13 Ironmans over 120 races. Today, we're going to dive deep into the evolution of biohacking through Ben's eyes. I've had Ben on the podcast before and it's incredible to see how he's come full circle in this entire movement of longevity. We're going to talk about his new documentary on his life and how he discovered the balance between self-optimization and having a truly fulfilling life. Get ready for an illuminating conversation with Ben Greenfield. Ben, this is awesome. Here we are again. It's good to be back, man. Yeah. Studios looking good. Thanks. It's getting more and more refined. Yeah, I'm here. Yeah, so you know, you've been, we're just talking about podcasts over 20 years. It's like my second year now doing this and I've learned so much from you. Yeah, yeah. Being on your podcast and how you do it. Yeah, I was going to say, you probably haven't learned how much about my podcasting studio because it's still pretty bare bones. It's like, you're still on

3:08a treadmill when you're watching. You're lucky if I put a shirt on. Yeah, or pants. Yeah, and I'm still I'm actually in the process of building like a real big boy studio right now. Right. In your house. Still in my house. Nice. But yeah, one where you actually sit down and you look like you actually thought it out and you know, like you chest board and plants. I love it. Yeah, make it look nice. I can't wait to see it. I can't wait to podcast with you there. One of these things. Come up to Idaho. Be a guest. I will. Yeah. I'm one of your frequent trips to North Idaho. I love it. North Idaho is beautiful though. Oh, Jesus. Especially where your house is. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's super Alpine and mountainous and then where we live, it's like out on what's called the pluse, which are all the rolling hills of life, estate and fused wheat. Unfortunately, our neighbors don't spray. But because of that, like we built this new house last year with just picture windows looking out over the prairie and you just see like freaking like God painting a sunset on campus every single night. And it is beautiful. It's big country out there.

4:14Yeah. And hopefully this podcast does not get out there far because I don't want the word to get out that I know is so cool. Yeah. Go to Southern Idaho. Go there. Go to desert potato country. Everyone's leaving California. They're going to be making a b line up to that. You know, you hear about stats like that. Like like that. It is way more expensive to get a U-Haul from like whatever California to the inland northwest than it is back the other way just based on the traffic. Come up that direction. That's absolutely. I see it happening in real time. That's crazy. So this is like a full circle moment for me with you because I remember first meeting you when you were coming out of your first boundless edition actually and we did a huge book launch for you at the century city mall here in Southern California. That was super cool. That was really cool. Yeah. That was like I think even the mall cops were like getting on the earth because we had like a line out the door. Yeah. You and me went on stage. We did a Q&A. Yeah. Yeah. I was like I was

5:16so just like you were like the biggest in biohacking and you still are like I mean everyone knew you. People came from other states and people who flew in to come to that. Yeah. The book signing that you were having. Go to the mall and get a book sign here. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And now here we both are you know sitting here in my podcast studio and you know next health has grown to the 25 locations and you're you are now today and I'm super honored you did this today because in just a few hours it's going to be the premiere of a documentary about your life. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. The film. I'm not saying that. That's that's why I'm in town. Yeah. But yeah. It is funny because I used to go to next health century city. All right. I used to go to the century say mall to go to not next health but actually no offense. Some life to get like a vegan donut or a billion dollar smoothie or whatever. I used to like look across the hallway and I'd see next health and I'm like oh looks like kind of a cool place. Yeah. I think it's almost look I think the way I described it when I did a blog post about your whatever was it looked like you walked into

6:17some spaceship you know with everything just like white washed and perfect and just so and then yeah I think I wound up coming in there at one point and getting some treatments and you and I met and yeah and now look how it's grown. It's crazy. Yeah. It's it's pretty crazy. It is it is crazy and you know I feel like we've lived in real time because this is way before COVID we've lived in real time through the entire evolution of biohacking which then became longevity and in their words integrative and functional medicine and this like everything is evolved so much so rapidly in the last 10 years or plus that we've known each other. Yeah. And throwing a little spicy looks Maxine. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. Great job. Taking crystal math. Yeah. Right. It is wild right and so yeah we'd love to get like your perspective like how is the industry evolved since you started where it was maybe five years ago and where it is now. Yeah you know I think the idea behind biohacking

7:21hasn't changed that much like how how can you science and technology and self quantification to somehow get the body to operate in a more quick or efficient way then it might have been able to do in its native state you know in the same way that a computer hacker might hack an OS. I think the number of tools and technologies that are at the disposal of not just the silicone valley billionaire but now the average consumer has increased right like you can get your hands on some pretty good red light therapy and you can you know not spend the equivalent of a sports car to get maybe like a soft shell hyperbaric chamber in your house and you can you know you can hunt down PMF and now even you know peptides are becoming increasingly accessible. I think stem cell therapies are something that are no longer considered fringe and a lot of the things that I think we would consider to be kind of along the lines of true biohacking have become more accessible. I still think that we have we've wandered pretty far from like the OG biohacker idea where you were wetware and whatever you

8:24installed in your body was hardware. You'd have like magnetic implants and your fingers to interact with screens like Tom Cruise and minority reporter what you know like a compass that vibrates when you face true north or what's that what's another one they had like the chlorophyll injected into the eyeballs like to me like when I hear biohacker still you know I I kind of sort of shy away from calling myself a biohacker because I'm like really I just like work out and use technologies in an intelligent way and now you can call yourself a biohacker if you put you know college in your lasagna or whatever but but I think the the idea of thinking beyond let's say like what we may have seen a lot in the health and fitness industry in the 80s and 90s right just like run with some weights you know eat depending on the era that we're talking about either low carb or low fat and is just like you know diet nutrition if you choice supplements and exercise is what you can do to to get by and be healthy and live a long time I certainly think that a lot of that forms

9:27of the foundation of what we need to do but there is so much more that we can get out of our body and brain when we use a lot of these these other tools yeah and that all being said I mean in you know coming full circle back to this this film you can take a lot of this too far like the whole world of self optimization at the same time that having more tools to be healthier and live longer or have a good combination of health spend lifespan are at our disposal those same tools based on their accessibility and affordability can now become pretty big distractions that lead you to self optimizing you know selfish pursuit of health unreal ideation of aesthetics and a lot of time spent in something that ultimately at the end of the day can be pretty unfulfilling or can at least be that you know a little bit of a waste of time and money if you take it too far yeah now you know and I think about your journey in particular like you dedicated pretty much all of your life now to the writing of this field and also you know discovering and speaking about and talking

10:32about it and you know you talk about this a little bit of the movie I've only seen a preview of the movie but it did have some of those negative implications for you as far as you know relationships family and maybe even your own health right like how did you talk a little bit about that and how did you eventually find balance yeah well part of it is that you know my background like my formal education is exercise physiology and biomechanics and I think I did get lucky in that respect in that my whole pursuit of health and fitness and longevity was based on a core foundation of you know part of the expression like blood sweat and tears right you don't you don't see a lot of that in the whole like biohacking industry still like people you know not to stereotype too much but they still want the shortcut they don't want to pop the pill they want to take the supplement they want to you know maybe not go you know underneath a heavy barbell to do some squats or pick something heavy up they want to just go lay on the PMF mat and let that exercise the cells for them it's like

11:36well you actually do need need a good foundation I think no matter what at the end of the day there is some hard work that needs to put it not in a in a massacistic way and I certainly got sucked down that rabbit hole but but definitely in an intelligent way you do you do need to load the body there does need some hormetic stressors now I started off in that whole world and just got deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of what else can we do to get the most out of the body and brain I've always been wired up to be a little bit nerdy about this stuff right I was homeschooled K through 12 is very auto-didactic I like to take stuff apart and now figure out the details and what made stuff tick and so when I was in college you know I I didn't just do the exercise physiology biomechanics through it right I did microbiology and biochemistry and OEM I've been so far as to take the MCATs you know I I did a lot because I wanted to know everything I could about biology and anatomy and physiology and then when I started all these personal training studios and gyms up in in the

12:40in the northwest I was kind of known as the guy who was an early adopter of a lot of these technologies right we had one of the first PRP machines back in the day where we were you know drawn blood and spinning it and doing tennis elbows and indirect calorimetry from measuring carbon fat utilization during exercise high speed video cameras for gate analysis under water video cameras for swim analysis if if there was something up there that could make somebody better stronger faster I was I was looking at it right away especially from a technology standpoint and and I think that there's definitely something laudable about the idea of coming going about getting the most out of the body in a really smart and efficient way but then like there's a fine line between that and starting to do as much as you possibly can to either grasp at the straws of immortality or pursue aesthetics or what we now call looks maxing at all costs or engage in

13:42these elaborate you know you see this in in our world like two or three or four hour routines where you're doing all the things that you heard about on the podcast and you're in the blogs and you read the books because you've convinced yourself that self optimization is the the best mountain that you need to climb I was convinced for the longest time that like iron man triathlon and in Spartan racing and adventure racing and all these adventures that I was off on the globe around the globe doing were super important and that was where I found my identity I've seen other people get get sucked into similar identity pursuit when it comes to health optimization longevity optimization etc so I think what happened to me and what the film actually gets into is I realize that you can get pretty darn close to the top of the wrong mountain right right you're your pursuit of fitness your pursuit of longevity your pursuit of aesthetics because I got pretty far up those bounds right like I was one of the fittest guys in the world I've

14:42had iron man world championships six times I was competing professionally in in obstacle course racing I was just a massive chunk of bodybuilding muscle before even got into those sports I played tennis at a high level I you know I started to get into the the self quantification world and you know really down in blood and biomarkers and and every last thing that you could optimize and I was also making pretty good money and making a name for myself at the same time I mean in 2008 I was literally like voted as America's top personal trainer and I'm like on the covers these fitness magazines and you know on all the podcasts and and my family life was kind of falling apart at the same time bike you'll you'll see this in the film like my wife and I almost got a divorce I was not very present for the first six years of my son's life I grew distant from my community from from my relationships from the things in life that we know not just intuitively but also scientifically

15:43are what really make us happy really make us fulfilled really like paradoxically in this case contribute the most to longevity and health and all of that was slipping away from me while at the same time I was deep in the world of self-observation and it took almost losing the stuff that is the most important in life to realize that all this other stuff is just filler right there's definitely something admirable about the pursuit of health and fitness and keeping yourself in good shape but there's a difference between finding that ideal combination of health spend and lifespan that equips you to go out and make the most impact with whatever it is that you've been called to do for this world and spending all of your time trying to look, feel and perform like a you know supermodel pro athlete yeah right and and and it's that latter part that I think a lot of people are starting to get sucked into yeah I fully agree with that and I think you know what is the purpose of all the things that we're doing here right as far as optimizing our health and getting

16:45getting our biomarkers exactly dialed in the purpose of that is really to have more time on this planet to spend with the people that we love doing the things that we love right and when you do the optimization at such a high degree that you sacrifice that time for what the original reason was you're doing it in the first place it gets very it's paradoxical and you end up then regretting it and that's that's sometimes I think where you know I found myself in that place too you know like with this business just going out there and doing all the things that that I wanted to learn about it I want to see how it affected me and I saw the positive effects and before you knew it my wellness routine was six hours a day right yeah yeah yeah and and then you combine that with and this is a thing now that you see I think it it almost parallels a little bit of the controversial discussion right now about the drop in masculinity that seems to be occurring you know with with men who are

17:46not going out and doing dangerous things not going out and whatever like talking to girls at a bar or you know and or or you know engaging in what might be considered dangerous or even risky activities because they're just completely satisfied with with VR and porn and their parents basement and that's just life and it's very safe and it's in this protected bubble and it's very controllable and you can kind of draw a corollary between that and health optimization you can get to the point where like you're not like out in the sun you're not swimming with the sharks you're not going out and climbing mountains or staying out past your bedtime dancing and having an extra glass of wine a date night with your wife because everything is about self optimization and anybody who stepped outside of that especially after being stuck in like this you know optimize health at all cost world for a while realizes that gosh it actually is kind of fun to just like you know throw a dinner party and have people over and stay out past your bedtime I'm I'm working on a father

18:50son adventure guidebook right now and we are skydiving and swimming with sharks and you know we're last week you know hunting hogs with knives in the middle of the night down Florida and doing things that that definitely are not going to help me live a long time and that many people would probably label as mildly stupid things that that could threaten to shorten your lifespan but man like living life to the fullest and doing so in a responsible way but in a manner that that doesn't put health optimization at the very top of the totem pole I think is a much more fun and fulfilling way to live your life than to just like be in this protected optimization bubble 27 absolutely. Criotene isn't just the most research supplements is actually proven to deliver results so whether you want stronger muscles or you want a sharper mind creatine is the energy source you're going to need to get there momentous just introduce signature spec creatine is their

19:50highest quality creatine to date it is 10 times fewer impurities and 2 to 5 times stricter heavy metal limits than even other premium creatines and it's all backed by 6 stages of testing and certification not to mention the ultra fine micronized powder makes it so easy to mix into your favorite drink or smoothie try yourself and live momentous calm slash doctor Shaw and you'll get up to 35% off your first order using the code doctor Shaw. Was there like a moment in time where you decided to make like an abrupt shift that something happened or where you said I need to refocus on my family and my relationships yeah yeah it was so my wife and I were like starting to fight more and more and this was like 10-ish years ago to the point where it was pretty obvious that things were not gonna work out and we were starting to talk about getting a divorce and you know there are a couple of times where she's just like left

20:51house with the boys and you know and when that happens and they're gone and I'm home by myself it's like gosh what the hell is going on with my life right now like I've got everything put together by you know by what the world would judge to be you know when looking at me from the outside everything's just like falling apart here at home and there was there was one day where I just like went on a long walk and I came back I remember just like holding my wife and sobbing out in the driveway and telling her that things were gonna change and they did like like that was when I really buckled up and I was like okay I need to be present for my family I had to shift the priorities instead of the priorities being health and business at the top and then my faith in my family my community at the bottom now like the actual order of priorities is my faith my spiritual walk my time with God my time with my spouse my time with my kids the family the legacy the community and

21:52then comes health and then finally comes business right and a lot of people have that ask backwards because it's very easy to get in a stereotype a little bit I think especially for men to be off slaying dragons and sending home the paycheck and justifying to yourself that you're not there just because you're like providing for the family when in fact the the thing is the most important that's right there in front of you is being neglected and it was it was almost losing that and then at the same time beginning to to schedule and calendar and prioritize the type of things that gave me the boundaries that I needed and what I mean by that is we did a lot of family legacy work we created like a family constitution and a family logo and a family mission statement and a family crest and family values and we started to implement a lot more like day-to-day comings and goings that helped us stay together as a family help me to lead better as like a father and a husband so and we still do to this day I mean my sons are 18 they're still both at home

22:57we have a morning family huddle at 7am we go gather and we sing and we pray and we read and we talk and we just have this first like 15 minutes of the day that's just like us together and then 7 p.m same thing we have like an evening family dinner time where I bust out the guitar and we sing a song together and we pray again and we bring out food that everybody has prepared to eat and we play family games and we've got one-on-one date nights with the boys that we do and one-on-one date nights with my wife and I and all of that was just like Lucy Goosey up until about 10 years ago and then and I have a I have a book that kind of flies under the radar called boundless parenting I was just going to mention about I was talking about that book a lot but it's it outlines a lot of this and like the family constitution has grown big like it's like almost 150 pages long and it has my sons interviews with me and interviews with mom my interviews with my own parents are family tree our family like end of life and memorial plan wishes are what we do on Christmas on Easter on

24:02Thanksgiving these day-to-day Cummings and goings and everything that that it means to like be a green field is in that document which will be something I can hand to my sons when they go off and start their families to kind of like pass on not just generational wisdom but also generational wealth I mean like like a lot of this if you look at for example you know wealthy families like the Rockefeller's for example there's typically a family constitution that's tied to a family trust the family trust is where the family wealth resides but the only way for an heir to actually tap into the wealth in the family trust is if they're actually adhering to what is spelled out in the family constitution so this this is all this is that I just like learned along the way but one of the one of the sparks for me to start to learn about this like well what does it actually mean to like have a really strong family and be connected with them and and to build these relationships they give you the most fulfillment in life resulted in me talking to a lot of these like legacy building

25:04experts some people who who walk in the same circles at UNIER and uh rich chrystance and is one guy with legato family foundation he was really good my family and I spent like three days at a cabin with him Garrett Gunderson I think you know him maybe so yeah yeah he's like a financial advisor but he also does a lot of like lazy based work and he has a book called habits of the Rockefeller's that's right I have another guy named Jeremy prior who's really good who who gets into the idea of the American sense of like individualism go out carver own path be whoever you want to be is good to a certain extent but it has created kind of a shift from these like nuclear families where like you know the the children grow up doing some of the things that their parents done and it did and that wisdom was passed on to them just like everybody's like scattering and going off on their own adventures and so what sparked me just like delving into all of this though was nearly losing the family yeah and then realizing hey you know what I bet life is is is a lot more than just like

26:05again like how do I look feeling perform and you know how many Iron Man Traffling's do I have under my belt and how much time do I spend in the gym and how perfect is my diet and my biomarkers it's like that stuff is important to a certain extent but man it's not fulfilling at the end of the day right and this film is about where do you where do you strike the balance you know how can you be healthy and still have like lasting meaningful fulfilling relationships at the same time yeah so true you know I think that it's easy to go down the rabbit hole of physical optimization because we have markers to track these right and we can look at our whoops and we can look at our biomarkers and we can say okay I'm headed in the right direction but unfortunately when it comes to like these fuzzy topics of family community relationship with your children there's really no biomarkers so it's really easy for this to like go in the wrong direction because you you know a lot of people like us were numbers guys like we'd like to see the numbers exactly dialed in and there's not a marker of that and what what ends up happening is it goes in the wrong direction for years and years

27:07and years just like your health does for years when you're not looking at your biomarkers and then you end up in a really bad place and you were lucky enough to be able to turn that around I actually read I think like about half of boundless parenting as well because I remember when you wrote it and you put it out there you were telling me some stories about these things that you did with your kids like you go out of the forest by themselves and find their own exactly the right to the passage yeah yeah and you know I think it takes energy and effort to be able to do those things just like it does for your own health right like to put your kids out of the forest and have them find the way home you spend hours and weeks training them yourself out in the forest with them yeah and you know without putting that amount of energy into your children you end up ending in a bad place same with your wife yeah but it's but it's messy right like people are messy like and the health optimization world is something that's really attractive because it's a way that we can control what and and that's good to a certain extent like if I have a really stressful day and I can go to the gym and

28:11just like control what I'm doing and move heavy stuff and breathe hard and direct my body in a certain way then the rest of the day goes a lot better because I've done something I can control is the same thing like if if something stressful has happened and I like go hit the sauna and jump in the cold plunge and I'm just like shifting my physiology in a way that I can control that's really valuable anyways but that same feeling of power and control that a reasonable amount of physical activity or self-optimization can give you is the same feeling of control that can result in body dysmorphic disorder and anorexia and bulimia and looks maxing to the extent to where it becomes selfish or harmful to yourself or others it's very similar to the dopamine allergic stimuli that's generated from chronic repetitive endurance sports like triathlon and marathoning and these things that we know when overdone can contribute to arterial stiffness and atherosclerosis and thyroid deprivation and endocrine disruption and joint issues and one of

29:18the reasons is that it feels good it feels good to produce forward motion it feels good to be in control when when you're moving and eating and then this is like the one thing I like I can actually control like what I'm putting my mouth on how I move my body that's great but that the same elements that make these things beneficial to a certain extent can make them harmful and addictive and selfish pursuits if you don't check yourself create boundaries and just have like the self-awareness like that's a big part of what I hope this film does is create the self-awareness in people for them to realize that oh maybe I am taking this a little bit too far and maybe this isn't where all of my happiness is going to come from right maybe maybe me going after veins in my abs is like at the end of the day not going to be the thing that actually makes me happy and you know don't get me wrong like having a strong core is great for longevity and great for you being able to help others in life but yeah it is kind of like paradoxical and I think it's it's a soft science right it's a little bit Lucy Goosey to determine like how much is too much now you mentioned wearables

30:21metrics I think that those can actually help to a certain extent right if you're if you're goal let's say let's say whatever like your readiness score your sleep score your HRV if you're trying to get those to be perfect versus like you have a certain range that you're shooting for like if like if if I can have a sleep score from like whatever like 85 to 95 but but get a few extra whatever like date nights with my wife during the month and then spend some time with my kids and then maybe get up a little bit earlier to work on some projects but short sleep a little bit that's great you look at guys like there's a lot of people I haven't done this yet but there's a lot of people who have produced metrics what I mean by that is like how long can you hang from a bar right can you deadlift your body weight plus 50 percent how long can you hold a plank what is your VO2 max which is easily calculable even at home now things like Carol bike or do you have to go to an actual physiology lab right what would be a couple other

31:26examples how many push ups can you do unbroken you know what is your what's your average walking speed or even just your step count during the day and if you have a list like that and people like like Dan John Mark Sisson Kelly starets Peter Atia like like if you start to delve into some of these like books and resources out there a lot of people have created their version of like well here's like some of the metrics that you should go after as you age if you have a list like that and I should put one together at some point I would love to and you just know okay well that's good enough like I can plank for three minutes I've made it great I don't have to get to six minutes I want to get to eight minutes I can hang from a bar for two minutes I'm good and if you know like what it takes to actually like be healthy and live a long time and then you can get there and just like all right I'm good I don't have to go farther I don't think you're shorting yourself or being lazy if that's the case I think that more people could benefit from some kind of healthy metrics that allow them to define like well have I made it do I say I'm gonna go farther have it taking

32:28this too far you know because yeah because like you know this like you you can stay pretty fit and pretty useful to the world by devoting about an hour or so a day exactly care of your body right as long as you're engaged in like low-level physical activity throughout the rest of the day and not you know not you know eating ultra-process food all day long you can do pretty well with that amount of time carved out yeah now that's such a great point so this list that you're talking about I can have one of my website a doctor shot doctor on slash fitness yeah I collected all these different metrics from like the people you mentioned and some of the ones that I like as well and I put them just in a list like and I what I love about this list is like it gives me a place for my patients to aim for right and then also you keep checking it like once a year maybe you just do the whole list and see where you're at I like to do it once a quarter just to see where I'm at it I've had to like grip strength in there with a dynamite and those kind of things and it gives people a place to aim for but I think what you're saying is opposite the reverse coming at it from the reverse angle is also valuable because now you know that once you've got there that's good

33:32enough you don't have to keep going and invest even more time right exactly yeah you've got there maintain and now the rest of the time that you have is for other pursuits like like 85% is like yeah talking to somebody the other day and they're like yeah I'm and it was a guy and he was at like 14% body fat which is great for a lot of people and and he's like and I'm naturally really lean like I eat like a horse and I just like I'm at about six and a half or seven percent body fat and that's not intentional I just like that's just that's my genetic yeah and this guy is like dude I'm coming for you I'm going after single digits and I just did a podcast where I delved into the actual research on the combination of both um attractiveness just like you know sexual aesthetic attractiveness and health from like like an endocrine standpoint or fertility standpoint and the sweet spot for guys is about 15% yeah right so yeah if you're a guy and you're listening

34:34in and by the way for women it's around it depends it's a little bit more variable but it's like 20 to 30% definitely not single digits and definitely not below 15% but like if you're a guy and you're 15% body fat congratulations like you don't necessarily have to go lower than that and you know spend an extra three minutes every day and then whatever the cold plunge they strip extra fat off your body it's like I think some people just need to understand that more is not better and you can reach a certain point and just sustain and then guess what you've got time left over to hang out with the family and pursue relationships and you know pick up guitar or piano and you know read some fiction it's like doesn't have to all be you know all day long optimization yeah exactly and also there's something really admirable about sustaining especially as you age past your 40s and 50s because it does take work to sustain right but if you know what your metrics are and you're holding to them and you've gotten them normalized for the least risk for that age of your life like you're going to work to sustain right it's still going to take like a two-point

35:36oh yeah and at least an hour a day and that's good like you should be spending that on yourself but not two three four six hours a day I just think that you know sometimes in next self we see people in there and they come in for like five hours I'm like wow that I mean that's great I love it that you have a place to go but I'm hoping you're not doing this like you know three or four days away because you're spending too much time on this you know unless it's your job like you've here for athlete or I don't know maybe in Hollywood like there's there's a few jobs where it's just like yeah part of it you're just like in charge of making your body do or look a certain way yeah because you're getting paid for it exactly exactly exactly so you know I think like this bubbles up for me the value of community family relationships in longevity right and so we know their science around this the people that are the happiest in life and live the longest even disease-free have a very tight relationship with their community right and so you know I think about all the people that are doing the looks maxing and the you know the biohacking to the nth degree but they don't have

36:37a community and they actually live less time than the ones that aren't right right so it's so important for people to make this a part of the program yeah yeah I mean you know being ostracized being excommunicated some some thing happens physiologically inside of us rise in blood pressure increase in sympathetic nervous system activity increase in heart rate increase in cortisol when we are in a situation which we feel socially isolated because that would have been a survival mechanism at one time like if you were banished from the the village like the primal village and you were out on your own in the jungle with the saber tooth tiger then a big part of your body was screaming for you to figure out a way to get back around people right and now we don't necessarily have the danger of you know in most cases you know being forced to wander around in our loin claws you know out in the middle of the forest but those same physiological mechanisms kick in when we don't have what even our subconscious reptilian brain would perceive

37:40as love and relationships and community in our lives and interestingly we can do that to ourselves like we can create that for ourselves we can have the majority of our relationships be digital which in no way replicates a real flesh and blood relationship when it comes to you know whatever the oxytocin or the pressure receptors on the skin or the eye contact or the brain in heart wave synchronization or anything else that happens when you're in the same room with somebody but we can in addition to to driving on just digital relationships go down this route of self optimization that again doesn't lead the time to build the relationships to have the family dinners to throw the community dinners to go out to concerts and events and activities with other people that take you all past your bedtime or wake you up too early and when you start to strip all of that away as you were just alluding to you remove what even Harvard's longest running study on longevity has shown to be the most important thing when it comes to lifespan and that is

38:43the quality of the relationships and the amount of love that's in your life now some people might hear that and be like so you're saying I should go be around people to keep my telemiers from excessively shortening and it's like well don't think about it that way like don't do it be like don't take your freaking like spouse on a date and be like I'm doing this because my HRV is going to be higher tomorrow because I'm with you but do it because you you really truly want to love other people and be with other people and serve other people and I think that's where the magic is I think there's there's something about um subjecting yourself to the messiness of other human beings learning how to put up with that and eventually learning how to love that and serve others and thrive on that that somehow sparks this response in the human body that that also makes us healthier and as you were just saying even healthier than the amount of time that you spend at the gym. Yeah exactly it's um it's really interesting I just had an evolutionary biologist on the podcast

39:47and we were talking a little bit offline and some of the conversation got to the emotion of love and how love is really like a bi- evolutionary advantage because when you don't have someone to love you are usually alone and being alone you're just much more likely to be you know like you said eaten by a sabre true tiger or die right yeah humans humans are have taken over the world because of our ability to really thrive in communities right yeah make those communities larger and more successful and less dangerous right and so this is built into our biology and unfortunately like many things we've evolved past our biological evolution and we've created these devices that now keep us glued to them thinking that we're having relationships that create some of these same emotions right dopamine oxytocin and it tricks us right and but our physiology still suffers is not helping at all right yeah yeah as there's things you can think about it like like two ways yes

40:48you you want love in your life because of the the amount of satisfaction and potential just like parasympathetic activation or if you give you and then there's times when you don't want oxytocin right like you know when when intraday's the oxytocin became a thing I think I've said this on the box I'm like don't go by a used car when you know right after you've had an orgasm we're done in today's oxytocin or anything like that because it actually makes you very trusting in other human beings much more likely to be in a lovable and loving state you know increased parasympathetic activity so there are some situations in which you you you do want to to to grind and be a little bit hard and avoid the oxytocin but for the most part you know having those elements in your life is the most important thing yeah absolutely so you know life is always throwing us curveballs and one of the things that happens every single one of us at some point is we end up experiencing massive grief from a loss right and I think one of the things you talk about in the movie if I'm not mistaken is the loss of your father yeah correct yeah when did that happen in your timeline and

41:53can you talk about the impact of that and how you recover yeah I think that maybe like a lot of people in in the world that we're in the whole health optimization world they really like put togetherness and sometimes almost like an obsessive compulsive fashion like and and I have for my entire life like really enjoyed you know order and and um health and togetherness and things not being broken and if if if I own something like a a bicycle or a motorcycle or a guitar to have like a little chip or a dent on it would just like drive me nuts and I still have like brain rumination thing where like if some problem isn't solved it will drive me nuts until that thing has been delegated to somebody else or written down or calendared to fix and my dad he he came down with colon cancer about three and a half years ago

42:53and you know as as my little make everything perfect brain wanted to do I just wanted to to fall on like save dad mode um because I thought that that I had to do me to be able to just like connect him with all the right people and all the right medications and all the right clinics and just like fix him and make him whole and you know get back to everything just like being in order and it was anything but that right it was it was messy and it was painful and it was super difficult to watch and you know and and witness you know the man who raised me basically just like shrink down to it to nothing and eventually you know pass away while I was right there in the room with him and that and there there's kind of a part of the philomore I'm out by his gravesite which is on my land in Idaho talking about how it's is that brokenness that we become most

43:55intimately familiar with when we're around death such as the death of loved one that is the same brokenness that exists in every human being and rather than trying to attempt to create some fake element of perfection in our life we should accept the fact that we are all broken to a certain extent like entropy happens dude like you and I even sitting here right now like we're both aging males like we we are experiencing sarcopenia and testosterone depletion and you know our brains are probably going to be more tangled in 10 years than they are right now and and there's plaque deposition and stiffness and in arteries occurring and all these things even though you and I are very healthy at the end of the day all of this is going to fade like we're all broken creatures and if we pour all of our energy into just like keeping ourselves from being broken and denying that

44:56that's ever going to happen then we're going to be pretty shocked at the end of the day when we're in our death bed and we think back and we're like gosh like well I spend so much time trying to keep the shell put together when it's that spark that eternal spark inside that's what matters most and if you look at the finite around us like the finite is the money in the cars and the homes and the sex and the health and the six back abs and the glutes and even the things that we're on top of right now like the hyperbère machines and the red light and the crowd therapy and all that cool shit like at the end of the day it's helping us to keep something together that is going to fade in the end but once you understand that it is the the eternal that is the most fulfilling right like we have this eternal yearning in our soul for something infinite and we are surrounded by a bunch of other infinite eternal beings and when we start to fill that eternal hole in the soul with that deep spiritual connection that sacred connection to other people and prioritize

45:59relationships and family and and for me as a man of faith even my relationship with God and we fill a hole with that stuff all these other things kind of paradoxically become more fulfilling and they become more meaningful than your perspective on them shifts but for me it took my father's death to reinforce even more that that pattern that I've been developing over the past several years that do like you need to check yourself with how much time you're spending on something that eventually is going to fade away and we're all going to be on our deathbed at that point like what is it that you want to look back and realize that you've really prioritized in life and for me like I want to be close to my wife I want to be close to my sons I want to be close to God I want to be close to my community like those are the things that that are ultimately just like eternal. It's so incredible to see like your personal evolutions as I've known you you're one of

47:01the people like from your background just the knowledge that you come from and you're an incredibly smart guy you've given you know you've done the deepest dive ever into all of these technologies I mean this book is like a textbook boundless behind me or so textbook I'm so glad you updated it too that's great it really shows where you are now how important it is to make this a focus of your energy because you've you've basically lived deeply in that other world of being deep in the science and doing all of this for your body and your brain and you know the the whether you want to call it biohacking longevity whatever it is and now to see what you've ended up it is kind of like a it's a lesson learned for all of us like you know listening to this podcast I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this they're deep in the self-optimization space self-quantification place but you being bog and Gavin gone through this journey to hear this from you it's just it's just really a lesson for all of us to learn and don't learn it too late. Yep exactly and that that's that's

48:02what this this film is it's a wake up call for a culture that is potentially obsessed with health and self-optimization and it's instead really meant to to shine a light on what's really important. Yeah I can't wait to watch it tonight I'm so glad I'm and by the way I still do inject peptides like just in stem cells it next self yesterday it's like I still do these things but it's a different perspective. Yeah it's a different perspective I think specifically to me it sounds like you've changed your allocation of time allocation of mental resources to focus more on family, God, community and make that the priority and then I think you know just changing that allocation and prioritization leads to you being still an extremely healthy individual but still fulfilled now which is before you were healthy but maybe not so fulfilled. Yep right yeah now so you know it seems like in this journey over the last few years that you've had you've probably like really hone down your routines your activities into what is like the most valuable

49:05right so I'm gonna take it back to you know the medical and the biohacking stuff. Yeah what do you find now from your perspective now is the most valuable four or five things that you do. Yep you know as as a good little physiologist would I chunk the body into systems. Yep and so the areas that in no particular order of importance I suppose I focus on the most now are number one mobility and what do we call young muscle right like working out facial adhesions doing deep tissue work doing foam rolling using a percussion gun getting a massage twice a month and for me kind of tying this into the whole spiritual thing like I wake up in the morning and I listen to the Bible and when I'm listening to the Bible I spend 20 minutes doing mobility foam rolling stretching and just like laying that foundation of facial integrity and mobility so that's one number two is strength the ability to produce larger amounts of force and I've found that unlike my old days that

50:10you might have labeled as like CrossFit Esk, Hirocks Esk Spartan Esk style Metcontraining I do a lot of just like super slow controlled lifting for my strength I actually have a machine called an ARX for this and I do it twice a week and I can do a full body workout in about 25 minutes and when I travel I actually kind of like to hunt down the machines I used to just like joke about like the Nautilus machines or whatever because like I can get a pretty darn good workout and say strong without injury with just like leg press or squat deadlift chest press overhead press pull down row that's it yeah that's exactly that's the failure number three would be power the ability to generate large amounts of force in a short period of time you could use kettlebells for this you could use calisthenics for this I like sports right so I play tennis I play pickleball I chase my boys around a little bit of ultimate frisbee but I find that I can get pretty good fast twist utilization when I travel and I have less access to those type of things I'll usually throw down

51:10something like a quick kettlebell workout or something where I'm producing power just because you're not getting a lot of that like fast twitch type 2b type of stuff when you're doing strength training or super slow strength training number four would be lactate tolerance the ability to be able to buffer lactic acid other converting it via the cori cycle back in the glucose or buffering it otherwise for that I'm a huge fan of to badisets and I'll often use those as a quick starter or finisher first drink training set that would be eight rounds of 20 seconds on 10 seconds off so when you're looking at lactic acid accumulation if you use like a two to one work to rest ratio if you think about it you're building up lactic acid more quickly than it can be removed and it doesn't take long here's trying to like flood yourself with lactic right another really good way to do that is with blood flow restriction bands yeah and you could just basically take your strength training workout and do that with some bfr bands on if you wanted to do the lactic training at the same time are you need to bow down the treadmill bike or just whatever you can find or whatever

52:11like I did the other day there's burpees yeah I was trying to have 10 burpees take a few breaths cranking other 10 burpees new eight rounds of that and then number five would be VO2 max a lot of people talk about that now I won't lie like the four by four you know classic you know whatever they call it the Norwegian trip basically I do the VO2 max is if if you were to do and I don't think there's ever actually been a meta analysis on this but I've just seen enough of these studies if you do about a four to six minute effort and you do that four to six times through with a one-to-one work to rest ratio then you can keep your VO2 max elevated or even increase it by doing that once every one to two weeks right so this would literally be just like hop on an airdine warm up for minutes jam hard for minutes maximum sustainable pace recover four minutes do that four times through that's your VO2 max protocol and then the last two number six and seven would be your mitochondrial health so whereas lactic acid would be more like a two to one work to rest ratio and whereas VO2 max training would be longer efforts with a one-to-one work to rest ratio

53:16mitochondrial stimuli is best achieved with short bursts followed by luxuriously long recovery periods so this would be like a 10 to 30 seconds sprint within like two minutes of really easy recovery and doing that anywhere from eight to 10 times through and then the last piece is your fat burning capacity and a lot of people like go all cardio bunion spend way too much time on this but what I mean by fat burning capacity is like I think once a week is a pretty good sweet spot for this is what I go for go and do something for a long period of time at a easy aerobic conversational pace with a minimum amount of like trail food energy bars and you know not some stuff going down the cell for me sometimes this is just like go play 18 holes of frisbee golf yeah with a bottle of water and my kids you know without having eaten breakfast and you know until you're kind of like doing fasted long fat lost alchariah it might mean riding a bike you know eight miles down the road to your favorite coffee shop having a coffee or a tea and and riding home it might mean just like

54:20going for a hike with a good audiobook or podcast in um but about once a week going out and going just like moving 90 minutes to two hours or so if you were to string all that stuff together mobility strength power lactate tolerance VO2 max mitochondrial capacity and fat loss together and do that in a week you can easily fit that approximate one hour per day of self-optimization that you and I were talking about and then the only other thing I'm throwing there is I have to give a head nod to thermal stress yeah right like I act like I do that stuff but then typically at about like four or five o'clock in the afternoon I take a quick break from work go out sit in the sauna 15 minutes is my sweet spot jump in the cold plunge go back to work uh there's there's a lot that thermal stress does for you and so I definitely weave that into in the day too right right that's awesome what a great protocol I think that you know just have all that kind of spelled out I think it's going to be extremely valuable and we'll link it all in the show notes and type it out for people but I know I've known you for many years and your workouts have changed

55:22and they've gotten more and more efficient over time yeah and um it's incredible see where you've ended up at this one hour a day I think it's perfect and uh yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna give that whole protocol a try myself at you this weekend that's what you do it I mean don't do it all at once no no no yeah I'm gonna get started on it okay this was awesome man I can't wait to see the documentary see the camera life again and yeah awesome yeah and um so for people that want to watch documentary after they see this where can they go see it um right now we are uh depending when this comes out uh probably still gonna be showing some screenings around the country Austin New York City Miami like London's on the list possibly Australia boundless doc.com is in boundless documentary boundless doc.com and then around October or so it'll probably go to streaming I love it though fantastic and um if people want to read more about some of the things you talked about with the parenting techniques and the family work that you've done I really like boundless

56:24parenting I think that's that's a fantastic book so I know it's uh under the radar book but it's a great book yeah yeah uh it's it's it's the one that I might consider to be the most meaningful book that I just have a few spiritual titles in door fits all the spiritual disciplines journal and boundless parenting and those books to me like inside based on everything we just got done talking for the past hour like those are the most meaningful so I love them and what's the next book uh father son adventure guidebook with the current working title is boundless together honestly we're all boundless together I have a son so we're gonna yeah we're gonna buy that one for sure thank you man thanks man thank you so much for listening to the podcast today please remember to subscribe if you like this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends it really helps to support all of our efforts I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice diagnosis or treatment please consult with your healthcare provider

57:29or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance