An Interview with Ben Greenfield
Interview by Sam Eldredge
Ben hit my radar because fellow members of our team listen to his podcast religiously. He has a penchant for taking things seriously, for using his life and his body as an experiment, and he therefore engages life not theoretically but with that “grab the reins and hold on” attitude that defines pioneers in frontiers everywhere. What follows is a deep dive into the multiple wells that Ben has been exploring lately—wells that I believe overlap with the interests of the And Sons tribe but that may be explored or thought about slightly differently than we typically would.
And Sons: Ben, let’s jump into what makes you you and what you’re passionate about.
Ben Greenfield: I grew up in northern Idaho, homeschooled, very intellectually driven. I played violin for 13 years, was president of the chess club, and spent most of my time with my nose in a fantasy fiction novel or writing fantasy fiction. I was kind of a stereotypical homeschooled geek.
When I was 14, I discovered tennis and just fell in love with it. And, as a result, I became very interested in physical culture as a whole, like fitness, nutrition, and training. I began to run up the hills behind my house. I bought a pair of cheap 10-pound dumbbells from the local sporting goods store and tried to figure out how to use those. I started hanging out with more of the athlete crowd and fell in love with getting the most out of the human body and brain.
I eventually played college tennis while studying exercise science. I got a master’s degree in exercise physiology and biomechanics. I considered going to medical school but pivoted to the private sector instead, opening up a string of personal training studios and gyms in Washington and Idaho. I was voted America’s top personal trainer. And that thrust me into doing a lot more of what I do now, which is speaking and podcasting, writing books on everything from biohacking and antiaging to spiritual fitness, athletic training, and beyond.
So yes my passion for the past couple of decades has been optimizing the brain and the body. For about five years or so, I’ve really been focusing on that one most important part of us that goes on to exist for eternity: the soul. I’ve certainly become as big a fan of the spiritual disciplines as I am of the physical disciplines. Silence, solitude, prayer, meditation, journaling, worship, and scripture study … I make sure to prioritize that as much or more than I do physical fitness.
In addition to that, I homeschool my twin 14-year-old sons. I’ve been married to my wife Jessica for 19 years. We met in second grade in Sunday school and we got married in college. I’m passionate about my faith and my family. I love to do a little bit of singing and songwriting on the side. You know, I spent decades of my life competing professionally in Iron Man Triathlon, Spartan obstacle course racing, and ultra endurance events. Before that, I was a bodybuilder and a collegiate tennis, water polo, and volleyball player. These days I do a lot of hiking, a little bowhunting, tennis with the family, and reading … those are things I’m passionate about.
AS: Saying you do “a lot” doesn’t quite begin to capture it. You mentioned biohacking. What is biohacking and how did you stumble onto it?
BG: Biohacking is just using science, technology, and any type of exogenous input to empower the body, the brain, or any other part of the human system to get results quicker and more efficiently than one might be able to without the use of said biohacks. For example, most people know sunlight is good for them. But many people, for various reasons, don’t have the luxury of getting out into the sunlight every single day. But you can use a red light therapy called photobiomodulation to get a lot of the beneficial effects of sunlight exposure with a 10- to 20-minute red light treatment using panels in your office or bedroom.
Another example: Extreme heat or cold can be very good for the human body for stress resilience, glucose stabilization, fat loss, and hormone regulation. But again, many people can’t be outside working in the sun all day and don’t have access to cold lakes, or rivers, or pools. So, infrared saunas and cryotherapy chambers are technology biohacks that help expose the body to the rigors of heat or cold.
This morning I exercised on a cardio machine called a Vasper, which restricts blood flow to the limbs and exposes them to extreme amounts of cold. This grounds the body, connecting it to a lot of the natural electromagnetic frequencies of the planet. And it’s all connected to this full-body exercise machine. So, I can get the equivalent of about a three-hour run in around 21 minutes using that thing. And I wear an oxygen mask while I’m using it, which simulates altitude, so I’m getting this huge red blood cell response.
So, you know, these things seem like cheating when it comes to getting better results. But nothing in life is free. The tradeoff with biohacking is there’s a dent in your pocketbook. But, for me, time is money and the more efficient I can be with my health practices, the more time I have to live out whatever purpose God has called me to in life and more time to spend with my family.
The original biohackers were called grinders. They would treat their bodies like wetware and install so-called hardware on their bodies. Magnetic implants in their fingertips to interact with screens like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Compasses embedded in the chest that would vibrate every time you face true north. Magnetic ear implants to enhance hearing. And while I wasn’t that extreme, in bodybuilding I got into the different supplements and compounds that one could put into the body to accelerate muscle gain or fat loss. In college, I put on about 40 pounds of muscle and got up to 250 pounds and 3% body fat. I realized a lot of this stuff that goes above and beyond just lifting weights and eating healthy really moves the dial.
The biohacking industry is a pretty deep rabbit hole. But it’s pretty cool what you can do with the body when you combine healthy, natural, ancestral living, a real whole food diet, time spent in nature and in sunshine, and biohacks. I like to think of myself as living with one foot in ancestral science and one foot in modern science.
AS: Sounds like a combination of science fiction, exploration, and the Elysium movie with Matt Damon. I’m guessing that some of our readers, myself included, have heard of maybe one or two of these things. Some are probably out of reach, and others may be too deep down the “rabbit hole,” so what would you point to as something to check out? What’s the best way to get into biohacking?
BG: The best point of entry is to think of the body like a battery. And there are great books about this like “The Body Electric” by Robert Becker and “Healing is Voltage” by Jerry Tennant. The idea is that each of your cells, in order to maintain property metabolism, energy, sleep, and performance, has a precise electrochemical gradient across their surface. Every single cell is negatively charged on the inside and positively charged on the outside. And frankly, living in boxes next to wifi routers and Bluetooth signals, being disconnected from the planet, and not being outside working during the day … all these things can drain the body’s battery.
The very best place to start with biohacking is to look at the things that would charge up the body’s battery from an electrical standpoint. And some of the biggest ones are earthing and grounding mats or pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, going outside barefoot, laying on your back in the yard and having a nice, intimate connection with the surface of the planet. But then you’ve got technologies that can kind of harness and concentrate those frequencies.
I sleep, for example, on a BioBalance mat that delivers pulsed frequencies that I’d normally be getting from the planet if I were sleeping in a cave. But, you know, it’s concentrated in the mattress in my bed. When I’m standing at work, I stand on an earthing mat that simulates what I’d get if I were outside barefoot on the surface of the planet.
Sunlight, like I mentioned, is enormously helpful. The photons of light charge up the body’s battery for activating the production of ATP—the body’s energy currency by the mitochondria. So, you could use the red light panels I mentioned, infrared saunas, or ample actual sunlight exposure. Different light-producing boxes that can be placed on a desk for increased energy and alertness and there are infrared light devices you can wear on your head. Just find ways to introduce a lot of natural light, particularly red light, into your environment.
A few others … regular heat and cold exposure like infrared sauna or dry sauna practice, combined with cold thermogenesis or cryotherapy, both of which pair well with some type of breathwork practice, which is like a free and easy hack.
When you step back and look at the body as a battery, some of the best things you could be doing would be earthing, grounding, sunlight exposure and photobiomodulation, water with minerals, and breathwork. And if you pair that with a healthy diet, natural movement throughout the day, occasionally lifting heavy stuff, occasionally sprinting or playing a sport, your body’s going to start firing on all cylinders.
‘I know it’s a lot of stuff, but once you start to quantify, you find out so many things that allow you to customize your training, your nutrition, your supplementation program, and on it goes.’
AS: Sunlight, quality water, breathwork, movement, heat and cold, grounding … if you isolated any one of those things, I would nod my head in agreement. Simple beginnings that you have amped up a bit and in multiple cases added some benefit of technology. I appreciate how each of those things can be accomplished without buying something, if we can be intentional. You love challenges and meeting new goals. How do you learn to give your body what it needs?
BG: A big part of biohacking is self-quantification. And fortunately, we live in an era in which the type of self-quantification tests that would’ve cost tens of thousands of dollars a couple of decades ago, like the Princeton Longevity Center, Health Nucleus in California, or one of these places where wealthy execs go to test, are now available for relatively low cost in the comfort of our own homes. I think the best thing you can do to know what your body needs is to test.
I do a really good blood panel with my health coaching clients. Companies like WellnessFX or InsideTracker offer at-home blood panels. We do a really good micronutrient panel (one that I like is called NutrEval). We also do a genetic panel to look at dirty genes or genetic things that can influence whether you’d better respond to a ketogenic diet, a Mediterranean diet, a carnivore diet, or a paleo diet, and what type of supplements might help you fill in the gaps from a genetic standpoint. I like a service called StrateGene, which tests your so-called dirty genes for that. Cyrex does food allergy panels that identify with a great deal of precision what foods spark your immune system to mount an inflammatory reaction and what foods your body processes well.
AS: I feel dizzy.
BG: There’s more. Hormones are big. Testosterone for guys. Things like estrogen, progesterone, DHEA for ladies. And although blood doesn’t give you a good hormone test, urine does. The DUTCH (dried urine test for comprehensive hormones) test can tell you a lot about what’s going on from a hormonal standpoint. I also like a stool test to look at parasites, yeast, fungus, et cetera, and see what’s going on in the gut. Genova Diagnostics does a three-day stool panel that allows you to analyze what’s going on in your gut.
Then you take that data and figure out what you should eat, what supplements to take, different nutrients that you might be missing, and things you might need to address like parasites, Lyme, mold, mycotoxins, metals, or fungus. Once you start to test, you find out a whole lot about your body that you can then with more laser-like precision go and fix.
You can also track certain things on a regular basis. I’m a huge fan of an Oura ring, a WHOOP wristband, or a wearable that helps monitor sleep, step count, and heart rate variability, also known as your HRV, which is a great metric just to see how well recovered your body is, how prepared your nervous system is for life in general, for training, etc.
A continuous blood glucose monitor, which you can slap on your stomach or arm, tells you at any point how high or low your blood glucose is. And it can tell you a great deal about how your diet is affecting your energy levels in your body. So, I would start with forms of self-quantification like that. I know it’s a lot of stuff, but once you start to quantify, you find out so many things that allow you to customize your training, your nutrition, your supplementation program, and on it goes.
AS: You’ve been willing to treat your body like a science lab, doing all sorts of experiments on yourself. What made you willing to do that? What’s an experiment you tried that has become part of your normal life now?
BG: I mentioned that when I was a bodybuilder I did all sorts of things to increase muscle gain and decrease fat. As a triathlete, I was one of the first guys to try a long-term ketogenic, low-carb diet to allow my body to burn fatty acids more efficiently and have high endurance.
But to get into specifics, an experiment I’ve tried that has become part of my normal life now is cold thermogenesis and cryotherapy. It’s one of the best things you can do for your body. It stabilizes blood glucose. It increases your nervous system resilience. It improves sleep. It sparks fat loss. There are so many benefits to getting super cold at least once a day. Twice a day, in the morning and sometime before or after dinner, I do about two to five minutes of soaking at around 33 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit.
A robust cold and breathwork practice has been a game changer for me. I do a lot of physical training with my sons. We shoot bows, hike, and play tennis, but the staple of our weekly program is kettle bells or some type of asymmetrical object that we can swing explosively. We do heat training in the sauna. We do cold. And we do breath. And those are our physical disciplines.
I lead the family through disciplines. Every morning we journal, we meditate, we have a gratitude practice, and we go through our prayer list. In the evening, we come back and do a self-examination and look at what we did well that day, what we could’ve done better, and where we were most purpose-filled. Before our evening family dinners, we review a book. Right now, we’re reading “Pilgrim’s Progress” and another book about sexual education for young men. I lead the family in a lot of these spiritual disciplines throughout the week.
I take the education of my kids pretty seriously. They were in a really nice private school until fifth grade, at which point I realized that the peer pressure, rote memorization, unnecessary test taking, and hoops they had to jump through for what was really just like a glorified version of a public education dictated that they were just getting themselves set up to be a good little factory workers who could put square pegs in square holes and round pegs in round holes. I don’t think a modern public or private education, painted with a broad brush, does a good job creating a young human who’s creative, resilient, free-thinking, independent, and a creative problem solver.
So, when they were in fifth grade, I took them to dinner, sat them down, and said, “Look, you guys don’t need to go back to sixth grade. If you want to, we can start unschooling. Meaning that you guys just tell me what passions and interests you have, and dad will surround you with as many games, tutors, activities, extracurriculars, books, and everything you need to be able to pursue those passions, interests, and desires. Their only concern was whether they’d see their friends and their peers. Because they have so much more free time now that we have made the decision to homeschool, which we’ve been doing for five years, they have a robust social life as well. As a matter of fact, at the time of this interview they’re on a three-day backpacking trip with friends in the Oregon wilderness.
We unschool. We look at everything through the lens of life-based experiences. The kids’ math curriculum a couple years ago was building a tree fort out in the 10 acres of forest behind our house. They had to work with a contractor and learn angles, geometry, and woodworking skills. An average science, chemistry, or math class for them is learning how to bake a soufflé in the kitchen. They have a cooking podcast so it’s part of their business. And they might do some type of ethnic Japanese meal, which counts as social studies, chemistry, math, and cooking.
There are certainly things we weave in that might not be their passions, interest, or desires. A core of any curriculum for a young human being should be reading, writing, arithmetic, some form of logic or computer programming, and rhetoric, persuasion, or public speaking. I weave that and financial skills into their curriculum.
But everything else is just stuff they’re interested in like art, graphic novels, theater, tennis, and Jiu-Jitsu. Any time they have an interest, I figure out a way to help teach that to them in as experiential a way as possible.
AS: How does your faith tie into all of this?
BG: Well, I get into this in my last two spiritual books, “Fit Soul” and “Endure.” Look, God has blessed me with this platform for people who want to optimize their bodies and brains. They want to get fit, lose weight, do a triathlon or marathon or obstacle course race, or a Crossfit competition. They want to think better. They want to make more money based on their productivity, their creativity, or their focus. And that’s all great. But what I’ve realized is that all of this stuff is just throwing random strategies into that eternal hole in the soul that folks like you know, and that Pascal, Augustine, and Byron Lewis stated, can only be filled with God.
‘Once you’re taking care of your temple, and you’re out on adventures in nature, engaged in both the spiritual and the physical disciplines, life is amazing.’
So now I consider my purpose and my role in life to continue to teach people about how to operate their amazing human body and brain and also to teach them that true lasting fulfillment is not derived from crossing the finish line of a triathlon, getting six-pack abs, nailing the perfect diet, fixing all of your health problems, making a certain amount of money, having the most cars, or homes, or anything else. All of that stuff is satisfying when yoked to a faith and a trust in God, and the simplicity of salvation through Jesus Christ, and a belief in his deity—his death, his burial, and his resurrection.
If that’s where your faith lies, and that’s what you fill that eternal hole in your soul with, then life can get really magical. Once you’re taking care of your temple, and you’re out on adventures in nature, engaged in both the spiritual and the physical disciplines, life is amazing. When unyoked from that, it’s just a fast track to depression, a lack of fulfillment and continually seeking all the things that you can throw in that hole.
Editor’s Note: Find Ben Greenfield online at BenGreenfieldLife.com and follow on Instagram @BenGreenfieldFitness.
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