Microplastics, Seed Oils, Bad Posture & Why You're Still Sick Despite Doing Everything Right

brand spanking new Nads underwear I have up in my closet, but regardless, I'll sit here underwear free and listen to you talk about underwear. All right, so uh so back to your story. — Sure. So, my name is Dan Baird. I am uh 28 years old. I'm a longtime health and wellness enthusiast and advocate. Uh I am an athlete. I am a brother, a son, student of life and as of lately I am a entrepreneur. I am the co-founder and CEO of a company called Nads. Nads is a men's underwear brand built on sustainable better for balls principles. We are on a mission to sort of shake up the underwear industry and provide men with organic non-toxic underwear, a home that is better for their boys below the belt. So, were you just getting dressed one day and you decided you wanted a better set of underwear or do you have an actual background in fashion or science or something like that? — So, when I was 21 years old, I had this weird accident. I actually hit my head in the bottom of a pool and I fractured my C4 vertebrae in my neck and that sent me into what was pretty much just like a world of inflammation from my skull all the way down into my glutes and it caused a bunch of muscular imbalances and I was dealing with crazy trigger points in my body and I started to have crazy high levels of inflammation and very high levels of pain that came with that. So that kind of set me out on this mission to reduce pain management. I started looking at significant ways to improve overall function of health as opposed to what I was used to at the time, which was more athletics and performance. So, I started really looking at what was going on underneath the surface. Right around the same time, I started experiencing symptoms that I thought were a little atypical for a young 23-year-old guy to be experiencing thing uh experiencing things like brain fog, chronic fatigue, fluctuating energy levels, these crazy high levels of inflammation like I mentioned. So, I finally got to a breaking point where I said, you know, enough's enough. I need to start getting some actual concrete answers that I can take action against because I'm tired of regular doctors just telling me, you know, you should just throw this band-aid solution at it or it. You know, there's not going to be much you can do. So, I met up with the functional medicine practitioner at 23. I really wanted to understand what was going on underneath the surface because I refused to believe that was the way I needed to live my life for the rest of my days. So, I met up with a guy named Joe Radic up at R3 Health in West Palm Beach who is awesome and I've been working with him for, you know, about half a decade now. Uh, and that first meeting was very eye opening because we did blood work. And what actually would come back to show that I had a host of things going on, sure enough. But the main thing that I thought was pretty alarming was that I actually had low testosterone at 23 years old. — Yeah. Well, which by the way is not uncommon nowadays. Maybe we can get into why, but yeah, it's it's shocking but not uncommon, — right? It's unfortunate. That's the reality we live in. And they're actually kind of in conventional medicine right now, they're lowering that threshold for what adequate testosterone levels are, which is a little bit alarming, but that's a whole other issue. Uh, so at 23, I had low tea. I was experiencing all these symptoms. I found out that I had a hormonal imbalance going on, and I set out on a mission to optimize areas of my life that might be contributing to this, all while trying to bring down the inflammation that I was experiencing from this injury that I had um, happened. So I started looking at things in the environment that could have a adverse response or had an adverse effect on hormonal balance. And then I started learning about endocrine disrupting chemicals and how prevalent they are in everyday items like food storage containers, cosmetic products, cooking utensils and supplies, um food, produce, you name it. — Even some healthy items by the way, including uh you know like eating higher up in the food chain, particularly from fish. — Right. Exactly. So even when you really think you're nailing what you're supposed to be doing, there's always ways where you can try and optimize more. And it's just like Pandora's box once it's open, it doesn't shut, right? So I started learning about where these EDCs, these endocin disrupting chemicals were very prevalent in my personal environment. And so I just started trying to make small switches to try and optimize my tes my testosterone production. And in doing this, luckily, the inflammation in my body and everything else sort of subsided. So, my overall system health got a lot better and I was able to make positive strides in the world of testosterone. So, about two years ago, I started looking at clothing that I was wearing to the gym because I thought, you know, the first line of defense to the part of my body that produces testosterone, my gonads, needs to be solid. And I was wearing 100% polyester compression shorts to the gym every day for the last, I don't know, 15 years. And 30 minutes of those sessions were in the 180 degree sauna. And then I started looking at what polyester was made of. And I found out that polyester is a plasticbased fabric derived from prochemicals. And really Yeah. So right in line with the whole issue of microplastics comes this whole thing about clothing specifically what we're putting our packages in. Right. — Right. Because we should we should know by the way you know heat aside increasing capillarization and blood flow to any area of the skin. We're talking about a very thin layer of skin in the testes particularly that's excellent for absorption. That's why you know a lot of men will use a scrotal cream for testosterone enhancement like an androgel. Well, similar to the way that you might use a I don't know a suppository for a medicine, you know, that that's a great delivery mechanism for better or worse for anything that's tucked up against your balls. — Yeah, exactly. The absorption rate of the genitals particularly is the highest in the body, right? So, it's one of those things where you don't get the opportunity, you don't have the luxury to just turn off what your skin is absorbing when it's in contact with things, whether it's powder, cream, lotion, or fabric, or the chemicals that are in fabrics. So, I set out to try and find a pair of underwear that was certified, organic, non-toxic, and could actually hold up to the rigors of athletic training because that's such an important part of my life and my identity. And I really couldn't find one. And my background in branding and marketing, and I had a little bit of the entrepreneurial bug, I just thought, hey, this is kind of a hole in the market right here. And I think this is something where I can come into the market and make a product that actually makes an impact on people and is in line with the whole health and wellness theme. That has kind of been the theme of my life for a long time. — Yeah. By the way, probably not the greatest tagline for your product. We plug a hole in the market. — I don't know. I like better. — Depends who you're asking, I guess. talking to. Uh but yeah, so we went out and we started doing research. Uh I contacted my co-founder Steve, who's one of my all-time best buddies, and him and I are very alike in a lot of ways, personally and professionally. So we decided that this was the opportunity we want to finally sink up on and actually kind of you know sink our teeth into and explore and we started looking at what materials might be best and we ended up settling on organic cotton as our preference. Uh mainly because of the certification and extra rigorous criteria that kind of already exists in that space which we can get into in a little bit here. But long story short, we couldn't find underwear that was capable of what we were looking for that was also better for our packages. So, we went out and we found a way to manufacture it. — You mean you mean specifically that uh that crossover between performance and cleanliness as far as the fabric is concerned? Because there is some like hippie- dippy loose fitting underwear out there, but it's not really great for active enthusiasts or weight training or something like that. — Yeah, exactly. So, we wanted to try and find that blend of health, performance, and then the third element is kind of that style aspect, right? Make something that's still something men want to wear that looks good on them. So, that was kind of the — the crash background story for NAD's inception. It started out of personal frustration in the market and then kind of just started to take off from there. Yeah, I have several questions about the actual composition of the fabric in clothing in general, but especially underwear. But before that, I was just reading yesterday, I don't know if you saw this, uh study, I think it might have even been a meta analysis. I don't have it in front of me right now, so it could have been a study of studies, but a shockingly high amount of microplastics directly linked to erectile dysfunction now being found in penile and testicular tissue uh in men. This was just news yesterday. — I feel like in the last two weeks, we have had some serious development in the world of microplastics in testicles, penile tissue, and in actual semen itself. And I feel like we're just starting to actually open our eyes to this as a very big issue. In my opinion, I think microplastics pose one of the biggest threats to human health that is kind of out there right now. I don't think it's as known, but I think we're finally starting to get to that point where this is kind of the tip of the iceberg. We're about to really uncover the actual adverse effects of microplastics in the human body. And I specifically think that this decline in men's reproductive health is directly tied to microplastics and then all the chemicals and toxins that are just everywhere in our environment right now. Next up is Katie Bowman. So Katie talks about what's touching your body to the surfaces and structures your body rests against all day and night. She shows you how the ground level of your home uh the floor ripples up into your posture, your joint health, your sleep quality, and your movement capacity. So, uh, she's always fun to speak with. Let's go talk to biomechanist Katie Bowman. — Even our sitting, like, yes, our whole body is inactive when we're sitting, but part by part, a lot of us will lean back in a chair. So, even if you're sitting, you could be more active. Like, there's more active ways of sitting than other ways. So by removing at the back of a chair, scooting forward to the front of the chair, that's a more active, more metabolically active way of sitting than completely outsourcing support to some external structure like a piece of — There's actually a there's a training a postural device someone sent to me about a month ago. It's called a back belt and you place it around the back and then there's two straps that go around the knees. Then you strap the legs together so you're kind of like internally hip rotated sitting straight up when you're in a chair. It's a cool little device and I've actually been putting it on occasionally when I do sit to, for example, eat lunch. It's impossible to have a bad posture. Kind of like pulls your shoulders back and pulls your back upright and kind of internally rotates the hips again. So, it's a fantastic device for kind of training the posture to be correct when you're a seated position. If you want to call, you know, any given position correct, well seated, but I don't recall if it was in one of your books or not, Katie. It might have been. I don't know if this rings any bells, but there's like this chart. I think you can find it online. It's kind of like the Kama Sutra of seated positions. It's like at least a few dozen different ways that one can sit that goes beyond the standard like hunched over in a chair type of position. Did was that something that you made? I forget. Are you familiar with that one? — Yeah, that's in my book movie or DNA and then we made a poster of it. We made a separate poster of it. Yeah. because people found it inspiring because it just again because we're so influenced by our environment and that includes how other people behave in a particular environment like that becomes your you know your construct of how you are to operate as a person right like so we have so many cultural cues that promote not only being still but being still in a particular shape um that I there it's

a that poster is based on research done by an anthropologist um decades ago named Gordon Hughes who was interested he was interested too in people not moving um and seeing that trend towards less movement and this was in the 50s and the 60s and he was showing how many other cultures of the world take rest you know so I know there's a lot of talk in the in um sort of the movement interested community about squatting and if you've traveled in a lot different places, you'll see that the squat for many people is the preferred way of taking rest. It's an active position, but for joints that have not grown up doing it, it's very difficult to hold a squat for an hour, you know, um or to sit on the side of the road or wait for a train or hang out and have your lunch in this active squat position. And that's just one of them. Lots of them are just still resting on the ground. But when you look at it, it looks like a handful of stretches that you would be given in an exercise class to do, which was my point. My point is we're trying to recreate through exercise what we could be getting during nonex exercise time by just positioning ourselves differently. So I just — modified my house to not promote so much. Ah, just have a seat. just relax in this one particular position. So, by not having that option, and the analogy I like to make is if you're trying to eat better, you don't stock your house with the foods that you don't want to eat. You stock them with the foods that you do want to eat. And it's the same for the way that I want to use my body. I just — put out things that — signal and some environmental cue to use me because I am here and it's easier to use me than not, — right? It's almost like chairs are the chocolatecovered almonds from Trader Joe's that are in bowls around the house when you're trying to get on a better diet. And it makes perfect sense. And you know, it's kind of funny because you talk about subtraction and obviously many people are probably familiar with the idea of subtracting shoes. You know, I know that you I think you've talked a little bit about minimalist footwear and strengthening of the feet. That's one perfect example of something that might go beyond a chair-free or a minimalist chair home would be minimalist footwear or at least taking the option to go barefoot or less shod on a regular basis. Another example that I was thinking about as you were talking about the idea of being in the same position biomechanically for long periods of time and the potentially delletterious aspects of that was the same thing for the eyes, right? you talked about, you know, sitting and looking at screens. And I think some people might notice if they were to watch the video version of this podcast, sometimes I'm looking at the camera, looking at you, but I'm often as I'm listening to you and your answers, I'm gazing out this big picture window that's in front of my office. There's a mountain, there's trees far off in the distance, there's trees on another hill that's slightly closer, there's trees right in my backyard, and then there's you on the camera. So often when I'm recording a podcast, I mean, I'm shifting my eye and my focus on a variety of different distances. So the eyes aren't in that same static position throughout the day as well. And then, you know, this is kind of related to something I also wanted to ask you about. Obviously, there's sleep too, right? Like we're in that position arguably for around, you know, a third of our lives or so. And I'm just curious how you arrange the sleeping environment. like if you're also just like sleeping on the floor with these cushions propped under to your head or what's it look like in terms of your bedroom or your sleeping environment? — Um yeah, same. So I am a a ground sleeper just like I'm a ground sitter. Um and I am happy to use chairs when they're out and about. Like I don't make it a point to only do that. But I'm just I want to make sure that I'm always comfortable to be able to sleep. — You don't you mean you don't stand for on the airplane the entire time? — No. Okay. Um although I will get up and try to walk around just a little bit. Sometimes I do I sometimes I will squat in my seat though just to stretch out you know for a longer flight. So I have been known to do that. Um only when you know people I know are sitting by the side. Um but for yeah I sleep on the ground. So we have sheep skins and so we roll them out and you know make our bed on top of that and then sleep on what would be so it's not it's firm. It's much firmer than any mattress or futon, but it still is comfortable, right? Because it's got some warmth, you know, that if you're worried about sleeping on a cold floor and you've got your cush, I find it to be nice and comfortable, but I'm able to uh get out of my position better. So like the way I try to explain it is let's say that your particular body because of its being in repetitive shapes and has a hard time getting out of essentially what is a chair shape. Um even though you can stand up if we really broke down what's happening in your joints for many people their hips really don't come out of flexion their pelvis. Like if you people deal with what's called an anterior tilt forward tilt of their pelvis that is a hip that's not standing up all of the way. the hip is still sort of in a chair. Even if you get your legs straight, the pelvis is coming forward. So, there's like just this little bit of chair residue, chair baggage. I've called it different things that's left over in your body. And for many people when they get into bed, they're not even if you lay um out on your back, I guess you lie out on your lie down on your back. Um. — Uhhuh. — Because of the cushion, you're still sort of able to keep some of those flexions in your body. the they are being coddled is not the word that I want but the cushion is sort of supporting you where your body is right now where the ground is a much more um of a taskmaster and it makes those parts stretch out which is why it's really uncomfortable for people when they first start because you can't continue to stay tense in certain areas um so I sleep on the ground in that way and then I don't have a big heavy pillow you know like I — Oh, really? — I Yeah. I I've gone down I mean and I took like 18 months to go from my neck was really stiff all the time and I was like why is my neck so stiff — and then you know as you said our sleep environment is a third of you know on the best days it's a third of your day and so I was just realizing like oh I am sort of propping myself up in a single position and keeping my neck from moving. So, in the same way, if you've been in a car ride for a long time, the hips are stiff, like my neck was stiff. And I it just didn't make sense to me. And then I just was looking around at like, well, how do human like what are other cultures doing? And I just realized like, oh, of course, like I need more movement even during my sleep time. I need more what I call pressure related movements. I need my joints need to be able to go to a broader range of motion than what my bedding will allow. And that goes for my neck, too. You know, I need to be able to be more It's like tenderizing a piece of meat. I need to be more supple. I need to be able to fold myself up. And um and that's why I sleep the way I do. a lot of my training that I would do is really just making my tissues more supple in general. Not only stronger, but more supple, too. Like that's so important piece because then you can really adapt to whatever surface you're being given as a human. — Justin Rothlin Chauffer is next. Uh he gets into his near-death diagnosis. He talks about what happens when you optimize everyone else's habits but ignore your own and how to interpret HRV and why he really relies on that metric so much. To be honest with you, Ben, growing up in Canada, um, hockey was the right of passage. And so, I was a hockey player, wanted to play in the NHL. That was my dream. And I just happened to be, uh, blessed with a little bit of talent and was playing at 12 years old with 14 and 15 year olds. And my dad said to me, uh, after a in particular tough twoe stretch, I wasn't playing well. And he

said, "Son, talent will get you noticed, but consistency will get you paid. " And that just that oneliner that he said just hit me so deeply because I was like, how can I become the most consistent version of myself? What does this look like? How do I operate differently than how I am right now? And I started to just get obsessed with the habits in which I could understand and the data in which ultimately would lead me down those behaviors. So I started to wear a heart rate monitor to train. I looked at pulse oximters while I was sleeping. I got on every medical journal I possibly could and that's what I was reading instead of comic books. And so all of a sudden, um, this is, and you have to remember this is back in 1999. Um, I came across this article that talked about heart rate variability. And I was like, hm, heart rate variability, how to optimize recovery in high um, training times. And I was like, well, this might be something that helps me. And so I just started to obsess about HRV. And so for the last 26 years, um, heart rate variability has been something that I've studied very deeply and very in-depthly. And by understanding the data and by helping to drive decisions, it brought me down to the states on a hockey scholarship. Um, it basically put my um my whole framework of uh of schooling into place. Went and got done got my master's degree. Uh, went and did my post-doal research in heart rate variability and sleep. uh went got a my massage therapy license, all the things like I wanted to learn about the body. I was just obsessed in this space. And um after stepping out of um the NCAA and into the NHL as uh health and performance coach, it was at that moment that I also realized we have all of this information. data, but we're not actually using it. We all train the same. We all eat um recover the same, we all supplement the same, but yet the ownership team, the coaches, they were all wondering why we get sick around the same time or we wouldn't see the results that were any different than any other uh teams in the league and there was no different trends in injury rates. And the moment that we started to use data to make decisions, to drive decisions, to determine how we trained, recovered, to determine what we did day-to-day, to determine how we supplemented or how each player ate differently. We all of a sudden became the least injured team in the league, the least sick and we started to perform better as a result. Well, fast forward about eight years and after having run the health and performance for the best athletes in the world, I realized myself that I had failed to do that for me. And what I mean by that was I was still fit. I was still running all these races. I was still winning world championships. I was doing all of these things, but I had brain fog. I had fatigue that I had never had before. I wasn't sleeping. Um, and it was I I deep down knew innately that something was wrong. I went to all the docs. functional medicine specialists. I went to all the natural paths. They all gave me their big test that I needed to do. They all gave me their supplement protocol. They all gave me their magic um potion that I was supposed to go off of. Everybody told me I was healthy, that they didn't know what was wrong. But I knew deep down that something wasn't right. I'll never forget I was in Chicago, had just finished a workout, picked up a medicine ball and went to go put it back on a rack. Uh it was at the hotel at the time and my mind started to spin. The room started to turn and I fell and the next thing I remember is I was laying face up on a bed. — Oh wow. — And I said to the person in the room, it was my wife and I said, "I can't continue like this. There's something wrong. " I went and I got a colonoscopy and an endoscopy. They found four p-ups, all precancerous in my colon, and they found an ulcer the size of a quarter, also precancerous in my stomach. And he said, "Justin, I'm so sorry. Had we not done this, you would not have seen your 35th birthday. " And I was 32. And it was at that moment again that it hit me. And the Lord just spoke so deeply to me. He said, "At what point are you going to stop serving the audience that you want to? " and start I've called you to. And I knew that the problem that we were solving for those NHL athletes was not an athlete problem, but rather a human problem. How do you take ownership of your health? How do you allow data to drive decisions? How do you get more versed on what's going on internally so that you can ultimately take ownership and feel confident in the actions, the behaviors that you're stepping into to just have great health so you can have longevity just like my father told me when I was 12 and I was using that in the direction of athletic performance rather than just health as a whole. — Wow. Did you have an awareness of any type of genetic predisposition to cancer or anything like that? — Nothing. It was And when I look back on it, Ben, uh even asking my parents like after I uh as having it so young at 32, I said to my parents, I said, "Do you guys have any of this? Is this hereditary? Is there um when's the last time you guys have gone? I suggest you go. " And my parents literally go, "Oh my gosh, they went right after. " Nothing. And so the docs literally um had no idea where they had come from. And when I sat back and I got real honest with myself and this is how I kind of I say this often on platforms and even talk about this in my book is you either earn your health or you earn your illness. And for me if I looked at how I was living over the course of those last eight years it was high stress, high pressure, not very good sleep. I go out and I drink on a regular basis. I would not um I wasn't Yes, I would train hard. Yes, I would push my body to the limits, but I wasn't recovering well. I wasn't focused on that because I was so focused on doing it for everybody else, which I think a lot of leaders, a lot of business owners can really relate to is because you're trying to do something that you're on mission for. And so, I want to help you own your health and have this mission without having to give up your health. Because we can have it all. It just requires knowing and understanding what really matters and understanding your body in an in-depth way. — When you said that the Lord spoke to you, you know, we had an interesting discussion in Napa Valley about the way that you sense or feel or hear that. What's that actually like when you say something like the Lord spoke to you? — Yeah. So, it's a really great question. And I I hear from him often. I when I say often, I should say daily. Um but it comes from a very deep level of intention of being still and being silent. And I always start my fir the uh the first 30 minutes of my day is sitting in a sauna and I don't listen to

music, don't listen to podcasts. um I don't even read, don't journal. I literally just open and I say, "Lord, what do you want me to hear today? " And then I become silent. And Irwin McManis says it really well. he goes. So many people interfere and conflict with hearing the voice of God is because they constantly think that it's going to be a Ben, this is the Lord talking to you. But instead, when we get on the frequency of the Lord, he just starts speaking through imagination, through creativity, through epiphies, through connecting the dots, through our neurological system, and having these mental breakthroughs. And so every single day as I'm quiet, I get these new ideas. is found understandings, these epiphies that quite frankly wouldn't hit before. And so on this particular day coming out of the hospital, I'm laying in there after hearing this news and I was like, what? Like what? First off, I was like, why me? Like why now? Like I'm so healthy in how I live. And number one, it was to redirect my path and say, hey, you can do better. But number two, it was to take me out to be I firmly believe of the arena in which I was playing, which was the National Hockey League. Because if I was actually honest with myself, being there and continuing to stay there was more for my ego than it had to do about me serving other people. And it was I found my worth in that in the NHL logo on my chest. I found my identity in that rather than truly serving up to serve people in a bigger way. And so I think that was my wakeup call and just the clarity that I had of, hey, it's time to serve the people that you were called to, not just the audience that you want to serve, the one that makes you feel good, the one that gives you this sense of comfort, the sense of meaning, the sense of pride, but put that to the side. and what does it look like to actually help serve and make an impact on a much larger scale of people. — Next up is Kate Shanahan. She's going to talk about how the base layer of your cells, the membranes themselves are built from what you habitually eat and why swapping some specific ingredients in your kitchen can change your biology from the inside out. I've heard people talk about this one um HN I think it's hydroxy nonenol or something like that. You know this one? Yeah, it's 4 H& molecule and it's an it's one of belongs to a family of very toxic compounds called alpha beta unsaturated aldahhides. Um acrylean or crolon is another one. Uh croinaldahhide from cigarette smoking is another one. And um in fact when you use these things to cook with in a restaurant situation in a deep fryer uh scientists have tested the amount of toxin that develops when so they can tell you how much you're getting when you eat fries from a place like McDonald's or Burger King. And they found that the amount of these alpha beta unsaturated aldahhides is equivalent uh to the amount in a cigarette like on a onetoone basis. One French fry equals the toxicity of smoking an entire cigarette. So if you give these to your children it's like giving them cigarettes. And it you know it's really I'm not saying this to like blame parents or put shame on any parents. It's uh shame on the folks who've been claiming that these oils are heart healthy and promoting them without any regard to the reality of their chemistry and what the toxicologists have been trying to warn for decades. — What if you just took a bunch of antioxidants? — Yeah, that's a great question. Doesn't work. Um so like most of the antioxidants that uh we can eat are designed by plants for plants. They help plants and they help protect plants from UV radiation and you know problems that plants face oxidative stress from being dehydrated for example um and pathogens for plant pathogens. So it has nothing to do with human body's needs and the antioxidants that we get from plants the once they get absorbed into our body they have almost no function and our liver and kidneys basically need to eliminate them. So while they are useful in terms of cooking like olive oil, the polyphenols in olive oil, it helps to protect the oil while you're cooking it, it also helps to protect the food that you're cooking in your olive oil. But um so it helps to prevent oxidation reactions in your food. It also probably help helps to prevent them in your gut, helps keep your microbiome from experiencing too much oxidative stress. But in terms of protecting your cells, they're worthless. Have you ever heard of this guy uh Dr. James D. Nicol Antonio who's written a few food and science books uh who says that there are certain things and two that he names that I know are spiralina and glycine and that those can somehow help to protect the cell membranes against some of the damage from oxidized oils. This is something I came across in his book and I believe this was in rodent model studies that there was less oxidative stress in response to consumption of vegetable oils with around 5 to six grams of spiralina or glycine consumption. I just wasn't sure if you'd come across that at all. I've seen so much about how this or that little thing that it can be turned into a supplement helps and sure it can but you have to look at the details to understand what are they comparing it to. to the standard rat chow which is basically pure processed food. I mean rat chow a standard lab animal chow is basically like feeding people vegetable oil, sugar, refined carbohydrates and uh protein powders and very and then some added vitamins. So this is why it's important to like think about these studies. You can't just take them as like oh therefore this means that right you have to approach any question from multiple angles. You can't just take one single study and say it showed it. It must be true. And that's what I've spent my entire career doing. So I always fact check everything and I also like probe the question from different angles. Like for example, what are they comparing it to? What are these rats eating? What is the baseline diet? And so if you add a whole food, spirulina is just it's a seaweed. So I consider that a whole food. So if you add a whole food into a diet that is purely processed junk, it's gonna have benefits, but that's all there is to it. So it's not like you need that, right? spirulina has any special properties. Any whole food has some antioxidants that like I say can be helpful during the cooking process, during the digestive process, but then that's where their utility ends. They do not magically help us recover from um a lifetime of vegetable oil consumption and processed food consumption that has promoted metabolic disease. — You talked about how olive oil is processed with less heat. A company like Whole Foods says that they use something like cold expeller pressed canola oil in like their salad bar or some of their ingredients. Yeah. Is there a way to somehow have that oil extracted from I think it's called the rape seed and have it not have as much oxidation kind of like Whole Foods is claiming to do. Yeah. So, they're kind of misleading you there in a very important way and they're kind they're um mixing up expeller pressed with cold pressed. There is no industry standard term in canola uh as there is in olive oil. cold press does refer to a specific temperature um in the olive oil world, but to my knowledge it doesn't. And I what they do use I know what they use is just your standard expeller pressed. And as I explained actually in um the introductory chapter of dark calories that is a big lie that expeller pressed organic is just means they didn't use hexane. But all the everything I said about how the crude oil is toxic and needs to be refined in order to become like something that you don't immediately throw up to become edible still applies. So of course they would mislead us. They want us to think that they're doing something great, but it's not great. — Interesting. Okay. So there's one thing I was thinking about as you explaining oxidative stress. I'm curious if you agree with me on this. We should probably clarify that you would be referring to excess oxidative stress because like I know that you exercise and I exercise and a lot of people do sauna or they'll have certain xenoratic agents from plants and herbs and spices. Some people will have a glass of wine at night. Like all of these are mild forms of hormetic oxidative stress. And you're not saying that all oxidative stress is bad. What you're referring to specifically is the type of irreversible cell membrane damage and biological impacts from the type of oxidative stress that's found specifically in processed vegetable oils. — All oxidative stress is potentially bad. And don't be confused by the fact that it some of it has like adaptive benefits. That's just us adapting to this danger of metabol of oxidative stress. But what I'm referring to is the uncontrolled like excessive oxidative stress that are when we have uh where it causes dysfunction, right? And so there really isn't a term to describe when oxidative stress goes from the expected normal amount that our biology is capable of handling to not. Right? But that that's where diseases can occur. And so, you know, if you the more that you expose yourself to oxidative stress, the more diseases you're going to get. But it is oxidative stress that eventually kills us. So, if we could just evaporate the reactions that cause oxidative stress. There weren't any. We wouldn't, you know, die any we wouldn't die in 100 years. It would take a lot longer. Um, like theoretically, right? Like it's an experiment that you just can't run. But that's, you know, what I would guess. — Okay. So, tell me if I'm thinking about this the right way. You know, this whole like mitochondrial free radical theory of aging would dictate that certain amounts of oxidative stress cause an endogenous antioxidant response, you know, such as sane, reasonable amounts

of exercise. And that endogenous antioxidant response winds up in the long run protecting you against lifestyle and stressbased oxidative stress that allows exercise to have this life extending effect when done in moderation. But what I'm thinking about here and you know this is at least the way I'm processing this as you're talking. The oxidative stress from something like vegetable oils unlike exercise is actually introducing a compound into the body that is not only causing oxidative stress but that is sort of being used as a building block for cell membranes and components in the body. that would dictate that you're actually creating a biology that's more susceptible to damage without actually sparking something like endogenous antioxidant production or something like that. — Yeah, you can look at it that way, but that I think is more complicated than um than the way I look at it. And so it is um exercise is healthy for a variety of reasons. and exercise, you know, one of the things that it does is it increases blood flow and it stimulates hormone release, but it's not all through um, you know, oxidative stress. It it's there's multiple things going on here. And if we, you know, look at it again, we can't look at all of life through the lens of just one process. Um, and oxidative stress is extremely important to understand, but there's other things going on. And so, exercise is essential for health. you really cannot be healthy if you never exercise. Um you so it's not because of the oxidative stress. It's because of the other things that are possible for our bodies to accomplish due to exercise like muscle growth and uh the generation of um necessary blood vessels and the generation of necessary hormones. So for optimal health, right? So, so that's how I look at it. — Next up is Julie Gibson Clark. Uh Julie draws everything that we've covered so far, environment, habits, nutrition into a lived example of what sustainable health transformation actually looks like. I think she holds a pretty high spot in what they call the longevity or the rejuvenation Olympics. So, she's doing something right. Let's go talk to Julie. We could walk around a bit of a longer block if you don't mind. Um because longevity I only really heard about since 2017, but my interest in health and performance and nutrition that was probably as early as um gosh I was eight or nine years old. So um and then we can get into the rejuvenation Olympics and how I got into that a little bit later if that's okay. Um — yeah, for sure we got time. — Okay. So, um, when I was a swimmer, uh, when I was younger, started probably I think my older sister was a swimmer as well, so I started pretty young. She's 8 years older than me, so I think I maybe six, but somewhere around age 8, nine, my dad would go to my swim meets with me. And he'd be like, "Okay, you know, you've got the 100 meter fly coming up in 30 minutes. Let's give you x amount of a Snickers bar and you know, you need the glycogen load for your muscles. " — I'm eight or nine. You're reminding me of me yesterday at my son's jiu-jitsu tournament. I'm like standing there with a massage gun doing his thighs and getting a little bar so he times it properly. Yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. — Yeah. So that's totally my dad. Um and you know it just but I did feel better in those races cuz obviously I was practicing all week but you know these races where I was had the sugar in me or the quote unquote glycogen load I was like whoa I can kind of really you know go faster. This is interesting. So, it just kind of impressed on me that there's some relationship between nutrition and performance. Um, and then just kind of watching him as I grew up. I mean, this is, you know, we're talking late 70s, early 80s. He's making smoothies and what I'd probably call like protein lattes. We called them concoctions then. It was like, "Oh, Dad, what are you mixing up now? " You know, and it was like, and he'd always re he was reading like newsletters on neutrauticals and things. and you know that wasn't um I mean it was part of his career but not necessarily the focus. So, um, anyway, um, fast forward to my 30s and, um, again, kind of considering myself somewhat healthy, but I had I gone through a really stressful period, 36 months. I was married, divorced, I moved about four times. I left my career um that I had gone to college for. I left I was an engineer and with not really knowing what I was going to do next. Um, I had really bad acid reflux, extremely bad. And um, what happened? I was told I had two lumps in my left breast and a man tried to kidnap me at knife point. So, I was just like excessively stressed and um, I went to my doctor for the acid reflux and she said, "Well, you know, why don't you just take an ant acid every day and you'll be fine. " And I was already on an anti-depressant that she had prescribed and I just thought it just doesn't seem right. like, you know, I think there's a better way to fix this problem. Let me at least try. I was in Portland, Oregon at the time, so this is around like 2000. And I went to see um a naturopath to just see if they had any ideas for me. And sure enough, she said, "Well, you know, the first thing she said is get off all wheat and dairy. " Oh, okay. So, 2 weeks later, acid reflux completely gone. I went to see her and she said, "You know, we could probably help you get off that anti-depressant if you were interested in trying. " and I was kind of past all the things that you know preceded needing that. So I thought yeah let's give it a try. And so that was kind of the first time I was introduced to this idea of like neutrauticals as a protocol and that they could help you know your brain and body. So um that was very successful and I went on to really kind of take my health very seriously from that point forward from age 30. So fast forward to my 40s and I'm exhausted. my hair is falling out and I'm thinking, you know, I work out every day. I um I eat what I thought was a very healthy diet, a vegan diet. You know, I was um constantly researching, you know, nutrition and what to do. Um so I was really mystified as to why I felt so horrible. And so I went to see um a friend of mine had said, you know, you should probably go get tested for heavy metals. So she had a doctor who was like more it wasn't called functional medicine doctor at that time but it's you know she was basically practicing functional medicine right and tested me for heavy metals and sure enough you know those were like there was just tons I mean everything from tungsten to lead to mercury to you know all kinds of so that's you know um was clear that was what was causing the issue and um we I went through keation therapy probably about 15 rounds of keation therapy and somewhere around like round six was cuz you do them like on a weekly basis. Somewhere around week six, I remember driving home and it was like this fog had lifted from me and I thought there really is something to what she's doing. I mean obviously I could see that the metals were kind of you know coming down to healthier levels. — Yeah. And and by the way for people might not know keation therapy like what would an average session of chelation therapy look like? Um, so they would I would sit in a chair. It was um an IV therapy with um and I'm going to get this wrong. I don't know if it was EDTA or I think it was EDTA, not DMPS. There's two chilators. And so that was day one. And then the very next day because it keates out all your minerals. So you have to go back and then have them replace um all your minerals the next day. — Right? This isn't like a di DIY take EDTA at home type of detox. You got to be careful with those type of things. — In fact, I have a I won't get into the story, but definitely please do not do this on your own. You have to do this with a doctor who's monitoring all your different levels and um because I kind of went sideways at one point and it really caused some uh hormone imbalances. Um and that was just in one session with one day, you know, how it kind of went off. So, do definitely do not do this without the help of a doctor for sure. Um, so at any rate, I that's when I really um and she was also looking at my blood and saying, you know, this vegan diet is not helping you. And so again, nothing wrong with that diet. It just was not for my body and my genetics. So, um, that's when I really kind of started taking things seriously. And once we got all the metals down to kind of quote unquote safe levels, it there was still a lot of them. I mean, you know, and I just kept thinking, isn't there like a cumulative effect of having so many different ones? So, I thought, well, enough, you know, keation therapy. Let me start just kind of naturally detoxing, looking at what are natural chelators. Um, and started researching it. And that's kind of when the ball really started rolling. My dad was an astronaut on uh Skyab 3. He was um Oh, wow. So, so back and this is like you know you got to go back to like 19 what mid60s and up until that point the space program had always been um like you know military guys and they placed an ad my mom found it in the newspaper um that NASA was looking for scientists for uh their next mission and this was the Skylab mission so uh 2,000 guys applied and of those 23 made it and one was my dad and he was just you know a scientist. He wasn't military. He wasn't although he was on the football team probably in high school and college and um but he wasn't like a military fighter pilot or anything like that. So he was always really into his health and performance and um I think that's where the motivation came from, you know, that we were always told you could do whatever you want, you know, be just got to work for it. — Okay. So you did the metal detox and then you started doing your own stuff. Yeah, I started just because now the internet is a thing and I'm like, you know, de looking up detox. I find the work of um Dr. Clinger. I he's up in Washington. I don't know if you've — Yeah, Dietra Klinger. He's great. — Yeah, he is great. And then uh Russell Bllock uh Mcola and then from Mcola all his different people that he would have on and I would go and read their books. So, you know, again, fast forward I learn about fasting through well, I was like following the AIP diet. AIP kind of led me to Rhonda Patrick. — A AIP autoimmune paleo.

— Correct. Yeah. Because my family, my mom's family has quite a bit of autoimmune diseases. So, I thought, let me follow that. And uh which is so restrictive. But at any rate, um and then um eventually was led to was it Jason Fun's fasting. And then when I heard about the fasting mimicking diet, I thought, well, this sounds great because I can actually eat a little bit, you know. So um Valter Long goes fasting mimicking diet and that's was the first time I heard about longevity and then started like ooh what is this um how can I be healthier you know have a completely healthy um lifespan so um you know eventually found David Sinclair and then I learned about sinolytics which again I thought oh that sounds like you know detoxing zombie cells detoxing let's do that you know that sounds interesting so uh that led me to I don't I'm going to maybe mispronounce this. Fisetin, that ingredient. Fisetin. — Yeah. Fisetin, ficetin, tomato, tomato. Yeah. — Yeah. So, um, and I started researching that and when in the process of researching that, I um learned about this company called Novos. It's, you know, um, and the product. When I researched their product and all the different, um, ingredients, I was like, "Oh, these are other things I'm reading about, you know, glycine and rodeiola. " And I was already taking magnesium — and Novos. Novos is uh N I think I mentioned it before on a show. No ovos. They actually have a what I would consider to be a pretty good longevity test. No age. And then they've got Yeah, it's like a supplement that covers a lot of the bases that you would expect for anti-cinsessence, for longevity, etc. I actually have some in my pantry. They have like a powder and then they have a capsule. We're going to end with inspiration from James Purat. Uh, the Spartans built an entire culture around physical mastery where environment and habits and training were inseparable. And James shows what becomes possible when every base layer from how you move to how you live is deliberately designed for human potential and legacy. — There's like it's really hard to narrow it down obviously, but you're always going to have those one or two cultures that maybe kind of speak to you a little bit more than anything else. And for me, it's pretty much the Spartans and then certain Native American warrior cultures like the Apache and the Comanche. Um, the Spartans I think particularly I find them interesting because it's I mean you could argue there's eras and you know clans within the samurai era where uh you know maybe you can see something comparable but for the most part the Spartans are really the only time that we see like in human history what is a culture completely devoted to like war and you know like physical perfection and war look like and I mean it's everything that they did for you know centuries was just dedicated to becoming physical apex predators on the battlefield and in the Olympic games. I mean I think there was something like there were entire bears that passed where no one won a pancreian gold medal except Spartan like that's just an insulin of dominance. — The pancreian was like the ancient form of MMA right? — Yeah. It literally just I mean no holds barred MMA punching kicking you know there were knockouts. Apparently the ancient records say that submissions were more common than knockouts, but knockouts were pretty common. And the thing was there were no time limits or weight classes, so you went until one guy literally physically could not go, whether it was due to, you know, he was just too fatigued to defend himself and he got pounded out or choked out, whatever. But like there were no rounds and no classes. — It sounds kind of like this football match that I took my family to in Italy. Yeah, the Kelio the Stoco Kelio. We went to it. It's basically I think it's like 25 30 guys on either side and the only object of the game is to get the ball from one end of the field to the other and throw it over the fence — and pretty much anything is allowed. Punching, kicking, holding, dropping, wrestling, grappling, anything. And it was a spectacle, man. — Dude, there's not there's a very small percentage of the population on Earth that will ever see that with their own eyes. That's awesome that you got to — Yeah. And of course there's ambulances and people getting drugged out on stretchers throughout the game. It took a good 45 minutes for the actual game to start due to riots and fights and you know that false starts. But once it got going, holy cow, it was incredible. I was just going to ask you a little bit about the way that the Spartans trained if you've been able to dig into and find out what like an average training day would look like for a Spartan warrior. So it's really interesting because the we like what we have to understand contextually is that the Spartans were enigmas and mysteries even in their own time. They spoke a different language than the other Greeks. They were from a different like wave of immigration. They were from an older population on Greece that was there the Dorian Greeks as opposed to the later Mesanian Greeks that like say you know most of the other ancient Greek city states were descended from. So Spartans really they were kind of ancient mysterious even you know in 500 BC and they didn't let people come into their country unless they were invited such as you know emissaries from other countries you know certain messengers they were very extremely xenophobic in general or worse but it was like you know they were very tribal you know clamlike in their own way but they uh yeah no definitely no open borders and uh but having said that we know what my approach like generally most people when confronted with this question would either avoid it or just kind of make some up. I that wasn't good enough for me not even as like you know as integrity as an author but just my curiosity. So I started looking at like okay let's start with what events that they won because they would compete against other Greeks right and if you're winning an event it stands to reason you know so we started there and we started with then I went to some of the visitors and some of the u people that would go like you know particularly like when the Athenians would be trying to court the Spartans to join a war against the Persians or against whoever you know what I mean they'd send messengers and they would you know they would see sometimes the Spartans would even do like a little psychological thing where they'd like arrange a training session in front of visiting dignitaries just to be like, "Yeah, this is what we this is what our guys can do. " You know what I mean? And uh and so they knew that they were like, you know, wrestling grappling were huge. I'm sure you're familiar, but many listeners might not know what a haltier is, which is like a stone bell/ kettle bell kind of they came in many different shapes, but they're kind of it's kind of a unique hand weight carved from stone. And the Spartans were big on using these for uh like traditional say dumbbell and kettle bell liftings, but their main thing they used them for was or a primary his jumping weights. They do like long jumps and high jumps carrying these dumbbells in their hands and Oh yeah. So very cool. Plyometric in short plyometrics were a big part of Spartan training and — yeah like weighted plyometrics though. — Weighted plyometrics. And so part of this and a lot of people like today will think like oh you shouldn't load your joints underweight. I mean, maybe I'm biased as a weighted runner, you know what I mean? But like it's just it's like anything else. You apply a gradient of progression just like someone shouldn't deadlift 500 lb. They've never dead or you know, squat 500 lb, they never been under a squat bar. Like obviously that would be bad for your joints, too. So, if you're, you know, you're building up to doing this the right way, then, and then of course, uh, there was a race in the Olympics by the ancient Olympics called the Hoplamakus. And this was the uh basically a it was it gener shifted a little bit but generally it was like a 200 to 400 meter foot race in full armor carrying a shield and the Spartans were dominant at this event. You know, we like there's ancient records that are dominant year after year and uh basically you're running in a breastplate and greavves with a solid aspis shield or you know an ancient like bronzecovered oak shield on one arm. And I I've never tried anything like this, but I cannot imagine how hard it would be to stabilize the asymmetry and weight from, you know what I mean? having one unburdened armed and one arm carrying like a 22lb oak shield and uh the size of it, the awkwardness and then the actual armor. Um, but the Spartans were savage at this and apparently there's some rumor that this event was actually started with an ulterior motive in the Olympic Games and that was to get the ancient Greek hoplights very good at running across a two to 400 meter range which is coincidentally the effective range of the Persian bow which was the main weapon of the Persian armies that were their main threat at the time. And so basically the idea was like some clever guy was like hey let's like create an Olympic event but let's make it really uh you know convenient for getting our guys to run across you know to neutralize Persia's biggest weapon in case it comes to a fight which it did and there are like at the battle of Marathon that was a big part of what happened they basically the two armies the Greek and the Persian army stood and looked at each other across like a beach for like two days you know they'd line up they just kind of mad dog each other and you know be out there for hours and then they'd go back to camp and no one was really willing to make the first move. And then uh on the third day there was a Greek general who just like he his omens you know either he woke up and ate his waties or the omens were right whatever it was but he just uh when the time was right he just kind of they were standing there he just like gave his men the order you know to like raise shield and he just said at them just two words at them and the entire Greek army just rushed and they just the same just a dead sprint you know 400 meters across threw the arrow fire and they smashed into the Persians you know they took you're going to take losses no matter or what, but you're sprinting across that space. It's only time for the Persians to get off like, you know, a couple ollies and then you got, you know, armored guys who are bigger and stronger than you on you, you know, with spears and you have a wicker shield and a dagger and, you know, your bow is now useless. — And uh, so — yeah, — that was pretty cool story. And of course, that's the origin of the marathon, too. — You think that that I'm just curious what you think of that 300 Spartan workout that was going around for a while. I don't even know if I've seen it, but I'm gonna guess that probably wasn't a huge a hugely historically uh accurate representation of how they train. — It's like Yeah, it's like deadlifts and I forget the whole thing. I did it with my sons. I told my sons that we could watch the Spartan movie, which I think might be based on that battle you were just describing. — It was I love that movie. — And uh I took him in the garage. I said, "You guys do the Spartan workout with me. if you can finish in an hour or under, we'll go into the basement and watch the movie. So, they did the whole workout and then we went into the basement and spent, you know, half of our time down there with their eyes covered or with a blanket pulled up over it because I kind of forgot how — how intense the violence and some of the other portrayal of graphic imagery gets in that movie. But, yeah, I think the workout probably doesn't come close to what you just described. — I hope you enjoyed that episode. All of the show notes are at bengreenfieldlife. com/rootsofhealth. Leave a rating or review wherever you find the show, YouTube, Spotify, or elsewhere. Thanks so much for listening in. Do you want free access to comprehensive show notes, my weekly roundup newsletter, cutting edge research and articles, top recommendations from me for everything that you need to hack your life, and a whole lot more. Check out bengreenfieldlife. com. It's all there. bengreenfieldlife. com. See you over there. Most of you who listen don't subscribe, like, or rate this show. 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