Beyond Peptides: Biohacking Meets Regenerative Medicine

Ben Greenfield

Well, that sounds pretty exciting, I think for the 0.001% of the population who finds peptides exciting.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

It’s a small segment, but I think it’s gonna…

Ben Greenfield

There’s a few of us.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

There’s a few of us. Maybe just at kind of a high level. Tell me what your experience has been. Cause you you’ve been, I would say an early adopter and somebody that has been a great source of information and education getting it out there, but what’s been your experience using peptides over the years?

Ben Greenfield

Well, if by early adopter, you mean try new things out with reckless abandon and throwing safety to the wind. It’s possibly a fitting description. I kinda got interested in peptides simply because I spent a lot of my life competing in a sport, specifically Ironman triathlon, and then actually, obstacle course racing, and Spartan racing after that, that is kind of a sport where you’re constantly chasing an injury, right? There’s constantly like a nagging acre pain. There’s constantly like some ankle or knee or hip or shoulder that’s talking to you, but rather than just, like resting and recovering and allowing it to heal, you instead figure out a way to get it mended as quickly as possible, ’cause you’re signed up for some darn race that you paid a bunch of money for and that you’re scheduled to go compete in. 

And God forbid you should cancel that or, you know, drop out ’cause then the world will end, as we all know, anybody who’s done an Ironman triathlon knows that you have to show up to the starting line, come hell or high water. So anyways, I began to use peptides, particularly BPC 157 and TB 500 as a way to nurse soar injured joints back to recovery or to racing status more quickly. And it kinda worked, like really well, which really surprised me, like better than almost anything that I’d used. And I, you know, I was just using subcutaneous injections, either systemically, you know, kind of near the abdominals where the very, very small amount of body fat that I actually have seems to reside, or just as close to the side as possible. So, yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And then that’s, you know, that has been my experience. And so then also being somebody that exercises a lot and then having injuries, that became how I started using it. And then in COVID, I started having people with pain that were like, I can’t come see you until 2023. And so then I was like, okay, well let’s just start doing peptides and including with you. And it’s kind of amazing when you have pain kind of down by a joint. And especially for somebody like me, that was, you know, known for doing injections into joints, and then to just be able to inject subcutaneously in the soft tissue, kind of close to a joint, is shocking how helpful it is being able to do that. Would you do that? How soon around training or a competition would you start to do things like BPC and TB 500 around a joint?

Ben Greenfield

Well, when I first started using those two peptides, I alternated, one day BPC and then one day TB, they’re obviously working in two different mechanisms of healing, you know, the former more the inflammatory component and the latter a little bit more the soft tissue component, but I didn’t really have any issues with injecting all the way up to literally like the morning of the race to manage pain or to speed up healing. And I didn’t find any contraindications about using something like that. Literally on race day, I had one friend who was using TB 500, who commented to me that he injured his shoulder in the gym. He felt as though he may have torn a tendon a little bit and literally just like walked into his kitchen and injected TB, and like the next day felt really good. And my son, my 13 year old son, he did a, like a two or three hours of tennis and then lifted weights and then had a Jujitsu match. 

And this was like last week and he walked in the house, rubbing his elbow and I’m like, “what’s wrong?” And it was hurting him. And so we put some magnesium oil on it. I did a little soft tissue massage on it and put him to bed. And he woke up the next morning and his elbow was just like still all hurting. And so I said, all right, well, I’m just gonna inject it. And so I had some BPC 157 and literally just jammed straight into his elbow. And this is at like 8:00 a.m. And again, like, I don’t know if it actually works this quickly, but by noon he was like good to go. And his elbow, it hasn’t hurt at all since. So it seems like there’s kind of an acute reaction, which is pretty surprising with these. And so, I mean, and as you know, Matt, like I, after using BPC and TB just began to use a lot of other things pretty successfully, like my favorite stack, and I run this stack a couple of times a year actually, for simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain. 

And it also seems to crush sleep pretty well too, is Tesamorelin in the morning, like workout, and then CJC Ipamorelin in the evening, for kinda like that growth hormone surge. And, you know, I’ll do a couple cycles of that throughout the year. And that’s another one where I almost just like, can’t keep weight on when I use that stack, but it’s, you know, simultaneous to muscle maintenance or muscle gain. And, you know, of course there are a lot of others, but I, you know, BPC and TB are like always in my refrigerator shelf, and then for travel and stuff, I really like thymus alpha and LL-37. And then I run that Tesmorelin CJC, you know, a couple of times a year for around eight to 12 weeks or so. And that’s a pretty good stack as well.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Okay. And so I’m gonna translate for people, the Tesmorelin and generally is combined with Ipamorelin and then CJC is generally combined with Ipamorelin as well. And those basically tell your brain to make and secrete more growth hormone. And so then rather than taking growth hormone, you actually tell your body to make it. And so that’s what that stack is. TB 500 is basically a fragment of Thymosin beta 4. It’s the fragment 17 to 23. And then BPC 157 is kind of an anti-inflammatory. And then for, what he’s talking about for traveling, LL-37 is actually a fairly, significantly good antimicrobial. It’s almost like an antibiotic. And then Thymosin alpha 1 is an immune regulating. 

And then I think that that is kind of a nice, particularly if you’re out traveling, meeting people at this time when COVID is still sort of swirling around the edges, those are intriguing. And so then you can see whether you’re strategizing sort of your training, sort of over the arc of the year, whether you’re travel or whether you’re just at home dealing with aches and pains of life, suddenly, there’s sort of a diversity of ways that you can think about using these peptides to kind of regulate, basically your biology.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s kind of interesting, I had been looking into this when I was using Tesmorelin and CJC and that’s one thing that’ll increase the cell receptor sensitivity to the growth hormone surge that you get from that stack is Quercitin. And so obviously, you know, Quercitin is something I know you’ve used in your practice, Matt, and it’s actually, you know, pretty common in functional medicine for it to be used for a lot of immune protocols, whether injectable or oral, but it’s interesting that it seems to also pair pretty well with those growth hormone stacks too.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

That’s awesome. And it also is kind of a as a little bit of a senolytic. And so it was kind of nice to kind of do something for when you’re stimulating growth.

Ben Greenfield

Right, right. Exactly. Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

That’s awesome. There are some people who kind of like to cycle on and off of that growth hormone stack, and then there are some people who will kind of continue to take the CJC Ipomorelin over the whole course of the year, some people will sleep a lot better with it. And some people, it will incrementally add to sleep, ’cause sleep is one of things that if your body’s not working well, then that can be a challenge, and so,

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. But honestly, like I’ve been getting like the best sleep ever lately.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Oh, really?

Ben Greenfield

It’s so good.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

What’s working for you?

Ben Greenfield

Well, of course, like I continue with my normal sleep hygiene practices, right? Like I keep the room cold and I even use one of those ChiliPads. And then when I travel, I just like take a luke warm shower before bed and then wear socks. ‘Cause if you like warm the arteriovenous anastomosis vessels, like in the hands or the feet while you sleep, it kinda like paradoxically cools the core. So when I travel, I like do a shower and wear wool socks, but then at home I’ll just use the ChiliPad and then keep the room pretty cold, and the ChiliPad, I’ll put that at like 55 degrees. And then, you know, I still use blackout curtains and, you know, keep the room super dark, whether I’m traveling or whether I’m at home. You know, I don’t have any business books or any business activities in the bedroom, you know, the bedroom’s only for sleep and sex. 

And then the noise component is I always cover up ambient noise with some type of white noise generating device, but the things that I’ve been doing lately, ’cause as you know, Matt, it’s like, you’re always tinkering going for that extra 1% or you know, just trying to get the, whatever the sleep score on your device from a, you know, 85 to a 90 or 95 or whatever. And I’ve been like consistently just crushing like eight to eight and a half hours of amazing sleep on a regular basis. And so the changes that I’ve made, the only things I’ve changed are, I installed a really, really more intense blue light producing device on my desktop and about an hour or so after I get up, by the time I’m in my office, I blast that thing up to full capacity, and I still run the infrared lights in the morning, which I always have done to kind of simulate sunrise. 

You know, I have one of those Joovv panels, but I’ve added the really, really bright blue light. And so I’m getting really good circadian architecture, kind of started off first thing in the morning and the evening, a couple of things, oh, and then one other thing I do in the morning is, you know, it’s like the best 10 bucks I’ve ever spent on Amazon, especially for travel, ’cause, you know, when you travel, you don’t quite have as much say over the bright lights in the refrigerator or you know, or the hotel room lights or whatever. I bought just a little headlamp on Amazon, that’s a red light headlamp, right? So when I get up in the morning until the time of day has arrived at which I want to send my body a message that it’s time to get up, I’ll wear that red, light-producing headlamp, and just not have any other light sources at all. 

And I’ll also have on my blue light blocking glasses. And so, especially for me when I travel and I’m at a hotel or whatever, like it’s so nice, ’cause I’ll just have no lights until I actually want it to be light. And then in the evening, you know, I of course continue with that blue light glasses and, you know, turning off all the devices and keeping the room pretty dark. But what I do now is when I’m at home, I’m only using three things before sleep, , GABA, and then 5-HTP. So , GABA, and 5-HTP, all of which have pretty good human clinical research on them for things like sleep latency and . And then the only modification that I make to that now is when I travel, ’cause there’s a little bit more stress and a little bit more circadian rhythm disruption, is I add Melatonin and CBD when I travel, and that’s it, it’s like super simple. 

So I’m not taking a whole bunch of stuff before sleep anymore. It’s just like , 5-HTP and GABA when I’m at home, then when I travel , 5-HTP and GABA with CBD and Melatonin. And that, plus like that light hack with the super bright light in the morning and like no light at all in the evening, I guess just it’s working really well.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

What dosing are you doing of those, of the sleeps stack?

Ben Greenfield

Well, I, and I don’t want this to sound like a commercial or whatever, but you know, the main reason I started using those three was ’cause like at Kion, we worked to develop like the sleep product, and it’s got all three of those. I don’t even remember what the ratios or the amounts are, but we use basically the bare minimum of what’s used in clinical research and then just like put each of those in there. But then I can tell you for the CBD and the Melatonin, I do go pretty high in that, right? So I don’t really use it much at all when I’m at home. But when I travel, I actually do around 150 to 200 milligrams of full spectrum CBD oil and around 200 to 300 milligrams of Melatonin. Yeah. In a suppository or an oral. And so I’m super high dose on the CBD and the Melatonin. 

But again, like for me, when I travel, just be able to wake up and have slept like eight to nine hours. And a lot of people are concerned about Melatonin inducing grogginess, but, you know, in terms of the super charismatic nucleus and the ability for it to be able to kinda basically turn over that melatonin more quickly, as long as you get a ton of exposure to bright light, like bright blue light, when you wake up, like it vanishes any Melatonin-induced grogginess pretty quickly. So, yeah, I go pretty high dose of Melatonin CBD, pretty low dose on the other three, the 5-HTP and GABA. I don’t have the label of our Kion, or one in front of me, but it’s really not that much of any of them.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Okay. So then I’ve been doing the Theanine and low dose Melatonin every night, but then I’m gonna try your product ’cause I like the idea of adding that stuff in.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah, we kind of took a deep, I interviewed Angelo who I think, you know, who’s the CEO at Kion. I interviewed him like a week ago and the podcast should still be up on my channel of course, but we took a deep dive into why we chose those three ingredients. And again, like I just had, I was, you know, I was kinda at the point with sleep where I was trying this, I was trying that I was, you know, throwing stuff at the wall just to see it would stick. And then once this came out, like I just quit using anything except just like three little capsules of that. And I just keep by my nightstand and, you know, I’ll take it. And within like 10 to 15 minutes, I literally feel like I’ve had a Valium or something, but I don’t wake up groggy.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

I like the idea that you said of like sleep architecture because as you begin to design in circadian kind of architecture, if you begin to design your life around that, you get like now, like, you know, I remember I used to do like 24 hour shifts all the time. And so I was like up and down, you know, and now I go to bed every night at the same time I get like, I also get like eight hours of sleep every day.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And so that’s I think, and if you can, it’s interesting talking about peptides, if you can manage pain and then you can manage sleep, that goes a long ways towards like basically after if you manage food, that’s gonna cover like 90% of like almost everybody’s problems.

Ben Greenfield

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean like, you know, there are, I know we’re talking about peptides, sorry, but the like, you know, there’s also the DSIP which I know some people like, and I have found, I have to admit, like with DSIP, Deep Sleep Inducing Peptide, if I’ve been like traveling a whole bunch and stuff just kinda, you know, part of the expression F’d up from a circadian or ethnicity standpoint, I’ve found that Melatonin sledgehammer that I talked about works really well, like on super high dose on the Melatonin for a couple of days, but the DSIP, like three or four hours before bed, I actually have found that if you’ve had sleep issues and you just gotta kind of hit the reboot button, it seems to work pretty well. And, you know, I’ve maybe used DSIP like, maybe like 10 times, ever. And it’s usually been when I just feel like I’ve been traveling so much, my circadian rhythm’s off, just too much going on. And then I’ll just use that. And it seems to just like restore my sleep architecture really well for what it’s worth.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah. That’s how I feel too. Like, I don’t think it’s something that is a regular thing, but then if I’m out on the road and I’m gone for, you know, a week doing meetings, and then sometimes I’ll use that a little bit, like just to kind of reset from the jet lag and I’ll find it to be helpful. The other thing that kind of, and then this is paradoxical, ’cause I find better results when people take it in the morning is, the pineal gland has two peptides that are made there, Pinealon and Epitalon. And then some people will notice when they take those. And interestingly people used to take a lot higher dosing of them, but like we’ve been using kind of a lower dose, like a milligram a day of Pineolon and Epitalon, and that is helpful for some people. And then they’ll take that in the morning as part of resetting that circadian kind of architecture like you’re talking about.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. Yeah. And what’s interesting is, you know, obviously daytime energy is related to circadian architecture, and I’ve actually found ’cause, you know, you and I started talking about this a few months ago about these new peptide bio regulators, you know, based on one of Dr. Khavinson’s research out in Russia. You sent me some to try and I began to stack those, a couple of capsules of each, five days on and two days off, and you know, my energy levels went up considerably, but my libido got like annoyingly high, like super duper high on those bio regulators as well. And so, you know, I guess from an HPA access standpoint or perhaps they’re acting, you know, do directly on testicular function or something, like those from a, like energy, sexual/endocrine and libido standpoint, you know, ’cause I’ve like messed around with before, for example, and you know, that works as advertised, but if like really nothing compared to these peptide bio regulators, you know.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

I would say that the peptide bio regulators, they’re probably my favorite thing that I’ve found in the last 10 years. Probably.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know they’re working systemically on a lot more than just, you know, libido, but that’s the main thing I noticed. And, you know, before then, using that same kind of line of thinking of like supports like or doctrine of signatures, I’d been using a lot of the ancestral supplements, that’s a guy, Brian Johnson, Liver King, who’s super popular and like TikTok and stuff, he looks like a Viking, but I, you know, they make like prostate and thyroid and, you know, everything from like fish eggs and marrow to liver and kidney and heart and spleen and pancreas, everything. And I had been taking those and then I kinda like, I didn’t wanna take too much. And I started using the peptide bio regulators and kind of quit using that organ stack. And I think the organ stack’s pretty good and I felt pretty good on it. But again, like holy cow! These bio regulators, they must just be acting with even greater specificity on the cell receptor or something because they just, they freaking work, holy cow!

Matthew Cook, M.D.

So then imagine, just for people to think about this, imagine that in each organ there would be little proteins that sort of regulate what happens in that organ. And so what they were able to do, and if you wanna try these, you can call us and we can send them to you. What they do is they take an organ like the liver. And so then they will isolate the fourth segment amino acid of the bio regulator peptide out of that. And so they’re, these are all small two, three, four, five amino acid peptides. And because they’re smaller, you can take them orally and you can absorb them whereas a big, 50 amino acid peptide is too big, if you take it by mouth, your body will start to chop it up. And then by the time it gets absorbed, it won’t be able to have its clinical effect. And so then they have a bio regulator for every organ and then several for the brain, one for the cortex, a couple for the pineal gland, three for the immune system, one for blood vessels. And so we like to combine five to eight to even all 16 of them. Do you think that there was a, the timing was such that your sleep could have potentially gotten better when you started taking the bio regulators?

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. I think there’s potential for that, obviously, you know, when we’re talking about stacking a lot of things, it can be difficult cause a lot of times a little bit of overlap when you’re trying a few different protocols. I think that it probably does help with sleep. The main thing I notice of course, was the energy and libido, but kind of related to, I guess, both the sleep and the energy thing is I owe you a quick word of gratitude ’cause you actually shared with me about this idea where I think you were doing this in the morning, but I’ve actually been doing it like at night, kind of as my dessert after dinner is making the chia seed pudding where you just take a whole bunch of chia seeds and you soak them in water and make like a chia seed slurry. And then in the water, when I soak the chia seeds, I add Kinton to it. 

So I get like this hyper mineralized solution, that’s a chia seed slurry, and then I put organic prunes in there, like the equivalent of four organic prunes for the evening before I go to bed and I wake up and I just like poop like a champ. And it’s super simple, I just like chia seeds and minerals and prunes. And I realized that for people who are watching their weight or trying to do intermittent fasting or compressed feeding window, maybe you’re not gonna wake up and eat all of that so that you can have a good bowel movement. But I found just like substituting whatever I’d normally eat for dessert with that instead. I mean, it’s like incredibly satiating and it seems to work so well for just like, great, great morning poops. And you had told me about that, Matt and I was like, yeah, I’m not a prune fan, I don’t know. 

But man, I started doing that. And I guess the only thing that I add in there is I still do take magnesium in the evenings, which seems to help soften the stool as well. But since you told me about that, I’m going to return the favor and tell you about what I do in the mornings now, that’s pretty amazing for like my morning breakfast and energy levels is I do liver, like I soak liver in buttermilk or kefir for about 24 hours. And then I rinse it and I blend it in a blender and it makes like this raw, blended liver. And I pour that into moulds and then I freeze them and I keep them in a Ziploc bag in my freezer. And so in the morning, I will get ice and then I’ll take about six of these little frozen liver capsules. And I put them into the smoothie and then I do bone broth and colostrum. So my morning smoothie, and this is like top of the totem pole for energy levels, it literally feels like lifeblood while I’m drinking it, is basically liver, bone broth and colostrum. 

And you can add anything. You could add some stevia or some monk fruit for flavoring, you could add, you know, a little bit of like, you know, nut butter or something like that. If you want avocado, if you wanted even more calories or consistency or creaminess or something like that, you could top it with cacao nibs, or coconut flakes or spiraling or whatever. But the main base of the smoothie is basically frozen raw liver, colostrum, and bone broth, and it works super duper well. And my only concern was of course in people who eat a lot of organ meats, and this is kind of a thing that Dr. Perlmutter is talking about a lot now is uric acid and some of the potential physiological issues with uric acid and, you know, crystal formation and things like that. 

And he has a new book about this called “Drop Acid.” And so I actually, I tested blood uric acid levels after that smoothie, and then I tested them after just doing like a, you know, like a blueberry ice milk type of smoothie, and my uric acid levels were remarkably higher after liver smoothie, they’re like seven to eight consistently. And ideally they should be below four, and they were below four when I didn’t do the liver. And so then I asked Dr. Perlmutter and he mentioned that it’s probably smart of him, I know a lot of guys will do this, like Dr. Steven Gundry wrote the book about lectins and then, you know, designed and now sells a supplement that apparently will break down lectins. And then, you know, Dr. Perlmutter wrote a book about uric acid, and then he actually has a supplement that’s supposed to drop uric acid. But I did like, I got his supplement, which is called Drop Acid. 

And it was Quercetin and tart cherry, and some of these things that will lower uric acid levels. And I just basically dropped like four of those in the smoothie and then tested a few times. And actually when I put those into the liver smoothie, my uric acid levels, like blood uric acid levels, an hour or two later are actually lower. So, it’s one thing to think about if you are doing like a lot of organ meats and stuff like that is the uric acid, but it turns out like some of these things that reportedly will lower uric acid, at least in my own experience, seem to work for that. So you can kinda have your cake and eat it too, if you wanna call liver cake.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And you can have your liver cake. So then where do you get the liver from? Liver King?

Ben Greenfield

I get, no, like Liver King, that company’s Ancestral Supplements. And they do like encapsulated liver, which I like, but I mean, I order meat and stuff from U.S Wellness Meats, and I always have them throw some liver in. And so I am just doing like liver from U.S Wellness Meats that I freeze. But, you know, if you didn’t wanna do that, you could just use the capsules. I think Ancestral Supplements does a good job with the capsules. But one thing about them is they also do, they do like bone marrow capsules, and their bone marrow capsules, you’ve eaten bone marrow before, Matt, right? It’s kinda like that rich, salty, umami flavor. It’s like, it tastes really good. I actually had some bone marrow last night with my sons. 

We made bone marrow for dinner, But the Ancestral Supplement Company, they actually encapsulate bone marrow. And, you know, it’s in these little gelatin caps and this sounds super funky, but I’ve actually been like popping that stuff like candy, like literally, like when I have an appetite craving or like I want snack or whatever, I’ll literally just like drop like six to 10 of those capsules in my mouth and chew on them. And they taste like super duper good. Just literally, just like chewable bone marrow capsules.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Probably I’m gonna a bet that, you know, right now, we have bio regulator peptides from the liver, bio regulator peptides from the brain, realistically, there’s probably bone marrow bio regulator peptides that you’re getting when you take that. I bet.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah, probably. I don’t know. But like I feel, honestly like, I feel super duper good right now at this point in my life. Like the only thing that still bugs me, and you and I have done a podcast and stuff about this, so it’s no secret, like I have left knee issues, but aside from like a buggy left knee, like I just, and I’m sure it’s a lot of this stuff that we’re talking about right now, but I just feel amazing. Like, I feel like I’m like 17, 18 years old.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

I’m happy to hear that. When you do the liver, how much water do you add to the liver when you blend that?

Ben Greenfield

Oh, when you blend it, you don’t need to add any water. Like, so you soak it, you know, you soak the liver and I like to use kefir, just ’cause the enzymes break it down, you get a little bit of the gamey flavor out of it. Buttermilk also works really well, in a pinch if you don’t have either of those lemon juice will work okay. But what I do is I soak it for 24 hours and then I just give it a good rinse. And then from there, drop it into a NutriBullet and I don’t even need any water. Like it just blends like, you know, same way as you’d blend like an avocado or whatever.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Okay. I’m gonna a hundred percent gonna try that this week because that’s amazing. The, you know, I looked, I for some reason, Instagram or somebody showed me a picture of you and it was, it looked like you were probably coming back from like the walk that you’re on right now. And it said, “Ben Greenfield life”, and you look super healthy. And I think as you begin to hear, even in this conversation, it’s like, we’re talking and I’m literally gonna do a hundred percent of the stuff that you’re talking about, ’cause I’d love to try it. And then basically what we’re talking about is figuring out how to hack your life and figure out how to adopt these techniques and strategies into a lifestyle, because basically, you know what, you know, what we say is basically now that we figured out how to do this, that’s like the, that’s basically like 90% of the battle, you need a nice place to live and then that’s about it, you know?

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of these things that do stack that, you know, that we haven’t talked about that of course I do, and I know that you try to practice as well, you know, like regular sauna practice, some type of discomfort from cold on a regular basis, you know, sunshine, earthing, grounding, really, really careful attention paid to sourcing of water and hydration, and then also the mineralization of that water. And then, you know, and I also know that you appreciate the fact that, you know, we’re not only tuned beings electrically, and so we do need to pay attention to the electrical soup in which we bathe ourselves, but then also we’re tuned vibrationally. And so, you know, that means that the energy frequency of the emotions of the people we surround ourselves with, but then also the ability to be able to tweak ourselves using vibratory energy, you know, such as like music, singing, chanting, humming, gargling, breath work. Like I honestly think sound medicine is just amazing. And I know that you and I both love music. We have a band called “Rocky Roots” for everybody listening, just so you know, rockyrootsmusic.com.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

I’m working on a couple songs.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. Yeah. Well, me too. Like I just love music so much. Like it’s, and sometimes, I feel disconnected from it, and sometimes I don’t feel very well. And then I’ll look at my day and I’ll be like, oh, I didn’t listen to any music today, or I didn’t listen to a song today, or I didn’t play my guitar today, or I didn’t think around a piano today. And it’s like that missing vibratory energy from my life is really interesting. And like, my wife has this philosophy. She thinks that in heaven, like when people talk to each other, everything will be singing in music. Like everything we say to each other will just be all singing. I think you and me and Barb were joking about this at some point at your house or something, Matt. And we were just like, ♪ Hello, ♪ ♪ Goodbye, ♪ well basically like this idea that we’re just like supposed to be musical beings, and so many people don’t have music or singing or vibratory energy like that in their life, dictates that like, that’s a huge thing. 

And like now when I get up in the morning, my wife’s actually on a 10 day silent meditation retreat right now. So usually she does this, but I fully support it. And I do it when she’s gone is very first thing, like when I wake up after I wash my face and, you know, scrape my tongue and do my coconut oil pulling and all my stupid morning Ayurvedic stuff in my bathroom, is I go downstairs and I light an incense stick, and I just put on like amazing music. I like this channel called Elevation Worship on Spotify, ’cause it’s just like super, really like epic, spiritual music. And I just put that on, I bathe the house in burnt incense and music in the morning. And I just love that my sons can wake up to a house that’s full of like, vibratory energy and sweet smelling incense. And it’s just like a perfect way to start the day.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

They’re gonna have like, the rest of their lives, they’ll always remember that. And it’s gonna be like something that they track and hone to probably and influences them forever.

Ben Greenfield

I hope so.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Me and Barb love to send videos to our friends and you’ve gotten quite a few of these, I have a bunch of them to send you of the rerecord, ourselves singing along with like, you know, Elton John and Garth Brooks and George Strait and Jackson Brown and James Taylor and all of our favorite kind of people.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. I love that. You know, I didn’t even send you, sorry, this is nothing to do with peptides, now I’ve realized, but I didn’t even send you the, I wrote and recorded while I was on this very walk a few months ago. I like had a lot of ideas about color that I was thinking about and I wrote and recorded a new song. I put on YouTube a couple weeks ago called ” Canvas Cries.”

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Oh.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Send it to me, I’m gonna listening to it.

Ben Greenfield

I will.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

You know what’s interesting of singing, but this is a peptide thing, but this is probably legitimately my favorite thing that I’ve ever sort of figured out that I’m in kind of this process on, and what I have noticed is as I get, basically my body tuned, then I’ll start to get a vibration that I’ll feel on my chest. And so, today I haven’t done anything, but I can kind of feel it, where I can feel a sense of a vibration, almost like an type of sound.

Ben Greenfield

Uh huh.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And then when I do that, I can kind of, I can sing better. And so then, and I’ve noticed, if I dial myself in with peptides or with stem cells or exosomes, or really anything that I’ll start to feel it come in and then I’ll suddenly feel better. And then I’ll notice that I can sing better. And technically, I did give you peptides when we recorded our,

Ben Greenfield

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

In which,

Ben Greenfield

Yeah, I remember that.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

I don’t know if you felt you sang any better with them, but I have noticed that I do sing better when I’m taking them.

Ben Greenfield

That doesn’t surprise me. And I think there might be also, an effect from a vagal nerve standpoint, if it is affecting the nervous system, and particularly vagal tone, and, you know, like the vagus nerve, I don’t know how much you’ve looked into this, but there’s a really good correlation between vagal nerve tone and the health of the throat chakra, and it might just be because, you know, the way the cranial nerves are kind of sneaking down through there or something to do with the cervical spine, or I don’t know, but basically this idea of increasing vagal nerve tone, being able to help one actually interact with vibratory energy, particularly like singing and chanting and awing and think like that more effectively. 

There’s actually something to it, and what’s really interesting is there’s actually a device, I don’t know if you know about this one, but it vibrates the collarbone, and it’s a vagal nerve stem, but unlike, you know, like a, you know, something that you’d normally wear around the temples or like right around the neck area, this one actually stimulate the vagus nerve through the collar bone. And it was developed originally for like anxiety and relaxation, but it literally feels like a cat purring under collarbone. And it feels really good. It’s called a, it was developed by a guy who’s a, he’s a TCM practitioner based out of the UK, and he began to use this in his patients and found that it shifted their state of relaxation really, really well. It’s called Asensei, Asensei. And he literally…

Matthew Cook, M.D.

I have one of those.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. And you wear it around your, with like a lanyard around your neck. And technically you’re supposed to lay down when you use it, so you don’t have to use a lanyard, but you put it right over the collarbone and it vibrates. And it vibrates in correspondence to special audio tracks that you play via the Asensei app, and, you know, related to vagal nerve toning. And then also just this idea that we’re sound beings and we respond really, really well to sound vibrations and frequencies. That’s a really cool device.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

So then, I’ll tie this one together. You’re not gonna believe this. Not only is everything that you said true, but then interestingly, a branch of the vagal nerve, called the recurrent laryngeal nerve, actually goes to your vocal cords.

Ben Greenfield

That doesn’t surprise me.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And so then it’s kind of interesting, and I found that, you know, the vibration techniques and anything that will stimulate and turn up the tone of the vagus nerve, but also really, any of the cranial nerves, those are basically all where rest and relax is coming out of the brain. And then that is basically an antidote to the, basically the fight or flight side of the equation, and so if you can turn that up, that kind of helps to balance. And probably one of the big problems of our life and our era is that we tend to be too stuck in fight or flight, you know?

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. Yeah. And related to, I mean, that’s probably why the physiological, double nasal inhale followed by the audible sigh works really well. I mean, and I dunno if anybody’s tried this, but it’s either in, in, through the nose, and then sigh audibly out. So it sound like this. So it’s like in, in nasal out, audible in, in nasal out, audible, that is a really, really great way to relax yourself super quickly. Like, especially if it’s pretty intense, like an argument or, you know, or something happened at work or really disruptive email or something like that, you just step away and breathe like that for a minute, and it seems to hit the reboot button better than just about any breath work tactics.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

That’s probably incredibly helpful needed advice for a lot of people out there. Do you have a breathing technique where you do, when do cold therapy?

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. Cold therapy is just box breathing. I’ve tried everything in box breathing, just works for cold therapy. And that was, you know, like that’s what a lot of operators, you know, like the SEALs will use for increasing HRV in high stress environments, or even prepare, you know, to pull a hair trigger, you know, while sniping or, you know, being in the Pacific Ocean or cold bath for training or whatever it’s like, and that I did, Commander Mark Divines, Navy SEAL camp for civilians called Kokoro a few years ago, and that’s like the top breath work tactic that they teach for particularly, the ice bath cold component is box breathing. And it really does, like for the cold just work super duper well. 

So if you wanna really, kinda like generate a little bit of internal fire and then slip into parasympathetic mode is you do two or three minutes of Wim Hof, and then, you know, preferably like sitting next to your ice bath or whatever, and what I like to do, and you wanna be careful that you don’t get super dizzy when you stand up is I’ll just sit next to like a, you know, I’ll go like 32, 33 degrees on an ice bath. I’ll sit next to it, and I’ll do about three minutes of Wim Hof and then, you know, you finish and do that full inhale where you just shoot a little light at the top of your head, and then a full exhale. And while I’m holding the exhale, I’ll just like slip into the tub and then go straight into box breathing.

And if you wanna feel really amazing, what you do is you do about two minutes of box breathing in a tub like that, and then you just slip out of the tub, sit down next to the tub, do another two to three minutes of Wim Hof, hold the exhale, get back in the tub and do four minutes of box breathing. And three rounds of that is just amazing in terms of either like starting your day or, you know, throwing something like that in on the weekend is like a recovery breath work session, but it’s just basically three rounds of two to three minutes of Wim Hof, hold the exhale, slip into the tub, two to three minutes of box breathing. And you just do that a few times through.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Okay, I’m gonna try that. I do something very similar to that. It was Dr. Harry Mcllroy, our, you know Harry, who’s great.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And so then he came and stayed with us last night. And so then we got up early and did a sauna. And I walked out and I don’t know why, cause we were in the sauna and I thought, well, I’ll, just something called me, and then I said, I’m gonna go look over the edge of the deck. And then like five feet away, there was a deer just standing there and,

Ben Greenfield

Oh, wow.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And I just looked at it and it looked at me, and it was chewing on some leaves, and it wasn’t scared at all. And I just looked at it and I kind of started talking and I was like, “hi, how are you?” And then I just, it put me in, it was looking me right in the eyes and didn’t move and it just was chewing. And then I just, it put me into like the super chill state. And then I got, I just like, and I stood there for about a minute and then I could tell it would’ve sat there for hour. And then I went over and I just melted into the tub with that energy this morning, which was kind of, it was amazing way to start the day.

Ben Greenfield

That sounds pretty amazing. It’s, you know, if you were up here in Idaho, in Washington with all the rednecks, someone would’ve asked you, you know, whether you had the or the backs trap for breakfast with your eggs and sausage, but, yeah, I have a lot of deer up here and it is super peaceful to just watching them and, yeah. Watching nature, watching wildlife, I mean, there’s definitely something to that, you know, back to the vagus nerve and parasympathetic activation, even just like fixing the gaze on the horizon, having a big picture window that you look out at various points throughout the day, having a fish tank or having something where you can actually watch nature moving, like a lot of this stuff, like people like to hear about the sexy stuff, you know, the peptides and the vagal nerve stimulators and the, you know, the laser lights on your head. But sometimes, you know, it’s very simple things, you know, including just like watching animals in nature, and breathing and, you know, singing good music. Like it’s just, you know, a lot of this stuff is not that complex.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah. It’s not that complex. And those are the things that people have been doing for 5,000 years and anything that has that thousand year trajectory of people been doing it for a long time is probably what’s gonna work. And, you know, I love that, you know, people like you, and us, and we’re all sort of naturally coming around, basically the same ideas. And then we’re just basically filling out, you know, around basically that lifestyle design then, oh, okay, well, what can help with, how can I modify to manage my pain a little bit better? How can I, it’s amazing, you know, I’ll be exercising and something, it’s like something will hurt. And then I’ll inject, you know, the fragments, I mix the fragments of TB and BPC together and then I’ll do that. And then it’s like, I’ll forget that I had that pain, you know what I mean? But by the end of the day, it’s kind of crazy.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and this is just how I operate, you know, the whole ancestor wisdom meets modern science thing. I love the best of both worlds, right? Like I love breath work, but I also like to go and just like, you know, lay down and soak up in the hyperbaric and I love the sunshine, but I also like, like I mentioned, the big, you know, blue light box in my office with the infrared light. And, you know, I would love to be able to just wander outside and find a nice natural spring, but it’s not out there. So I have a, you know, super nice water structured filter with a double carbon block, you know, filtration unit that the water passes through before it becomes structured. That’s kinda like part of my house filtration system. And so I kind of dig the general concept, even though there’s a lot of definitions of biohacking, I like the general concept of it just being a way for us to use technology to better adjust to so-called evolutionary mismatches. And I think that’s like one of the best ways to use a lot of these technologies and, you know, and hacks, and, you know, kinda like the modern component is we use the modern to return to the ancestral almost.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Now, we’re talking about sort of and I love what you’ve done, and I love that geo thing, and that was the I’m gonna go try that. Have you tried much of the BPC 157 or KPV or the combination orally? Have you tried that at all?

Ben Greenfield

Which one’s a KPV?

Matthew Cook, M.D.

KPV is a segment of nelanocytes stimulating hormone, and it’s kind of an anti-inflammatory peptide, and it will calm down mass cell activation. And so for people with gastrointestinal inflammation, upper intestinal inflammation and even lower, that one is, you can think of it almost like a bio regulator peptide. It’s something that we do you, you can do as subcutaneously, but that one, because it’s small, you can take that orally and then you can combine that with BPC 157. And I have had myself and a lot of people who all do the chia seed thing. It’s kind of funny. 

Somebody brought me a chia seed, literally while you were telling me that story, holding it up on the screen, you didn’t see it, but I’ll have people take that peptide stack along with like what we’re talking about, fiber and prunes and stuff like that. And I found that to be fairly helpful for some people with GI problems, which is kind of one of those, if you can hack that one, if you can hack sleep, if you can hack pain basically, you’re a long way towards success in life.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. You know, I haven’t used, I’ve used oral BPC, I haven’t used that stack before. So, no I haven’t, but I do like, you know, of the few peptides that, you know, that can be administered orally, I do like BPC 157 for gut stability. And you know, for me right now, my diet’s pretty simple anyways, it’s basically, you know, like a largely, you know, like carnivore, diet with some really easy to digest, largely unfermentable things thrown in. Like I do a lot of chia seeds slurry, I do a lot of sea moss gel, I do a lot of like pumpkin puree, and I even order the baby food from Serenity Baby Foods, which is like mashed pureed, like olive oil and beets and salmon and grass fed beef. And I literally have like big, ’cause like I have a gut, you know this, Matt, cause you worked with me a gut issue. So I’m pretty dialed in on diet. 

So most of my vegetables are all steamed, mashed, pureed, like very few raw vegetables, almost no seeds and nuts, almost nothing hard, you know, no corn, no carrot slices, but basically whole bunch of like mashed stuff, chia seeds slurry, sea moss gel, pumpkin puree, baby food. And then it’s all just like salmon, grass fed, grass finished beef, seafood, shellfish, organ meats, you know, in the morning that liver and colostrum. And as long as I stick with that and go relatively grain-free as well, like my gut feels really good. And honestly, it’s like, I could eat like that my whole life, like a couple of pieces, like wild caught salmon with some sea moss gel, and, you know, and some salt and some nice olive oil, you know, and then like doing the chia seeds slurry with the prunes and the kintons for dessert. Like I feel pretty good with that. 

And some people wonder if you get enough nutrient density, and I gotta say like, there’s two, I would say like two of like my go-to condiments aside from all the primal kitchen stuff, ’cause I love like the primal kitchen ketchups and mustards and mayos and stuff is there’s a guy named Andreas who has a company called Andreas Seed Oils. And they do like pumpkin seed and hemp seed, and, you know, sunflower seed, all these cold pressed oils that are fantastic. And so I get those and I get Dr. Thomas Cowan’s vegetable powders. And so like, those are the two things that I use to amp up the nutrient density of my diet throughout the day. And so essentially I like a nose to tail carnivores diet, with a lot of super easy to digest, pureed, mashed, steamed, soaked type of items. And then I throw in the Andreas’s oils and the Cowans vegetable powders. And I just feel, I feel great on that diet.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

That’s interesting. And you know, and I think this is a little tip, like a somewhat of a, like a lifestyle tip, you think about, you’ve been working on this for a while, even since like we started talking about it years ago. And to me, gut stuff, I would say I feel better from a gut perspective than I have felt in my whole life. And it’s something that I spend a little bit of time thinking about and working on every single day. And I would actually say also, if you told me, oh, you’re going to eat like this for the rest of your life, I would go, that would be amazing. Yeah. You know?

Ben Greenfield

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

So part of it is as a promoting and getting your head wrapped around because so many people yoyo into something that is unsustainable and then they bounce back into, you know, whatever they were doing. And that’s why I think this lifestyle conversation’s so important and then starting to kinda tweak and hack around, you know, a lot of the people with bad, leaky gut that causes immune dysregulation. And so then that’s a place where you can begin to start to think about ways to regulate and balance immune system. And then peptides would be like one great place to start. You get back into a long term strategy of bio hacking and regulating and balancing your biology. But in parallel to that, it’s like an entire lifestyle thing of what you’re choosing to put in your body.

Ben Greenfield

Yeah. You’re not gonna be able to out peptide your way out of a crappy diet or no sunshine or fresh air, or grounding or earthing, or, you know, having your phone up to your head and next to your wifi router all day. And so, yeah, I mean like my view of peptides is kind of back to the whole ancestral living thing. Like they’re the icing on the cake of a properly structured lifestyle that’s as close to nature as possible.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

I 100% agree. I 100% agree. That that must be why we get along so well.

Ben Greenfield

Must be, yep. That and we’re brothers from another mother.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah. What is your new song about? Tell me about the new song.

Ben Greenfield

It’s about nature. It’s about how the divine, the creator, God, reveals Himself to us through nature. And so it’s just like all about colors of, you know, of grass and the sun and the mountains and the birds, and you know, carrot cake and shrimp and coral fish, and just like, you know, it’s all about colors in nature. It’s called “Canvas Cries”, like the canvas cries.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Well, I’m down in the San Francisco Bay Area of Silicon Valley, but if I had a transporter, like in Star Trek, I’d beem myself up and go for a walk with you. It sounds amazing.

Ben Greenfield

Well, we’ll make it happen some time.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah. Well, it was awesome to talk to you. Thank you so much for taking the time. I think this is, you’re a invaluable source of information for people, and you’re helping make the world a better place, while you make yourself a healthier person. And so I’m grateful and honored to be your friend and glad that you’re out there figuring all of this stuff out and sharing it with the world.

Ben Greenfield

Awesome. Well, I love you and I’m happy to hop on anytime, so, yeah. Enjoy your chia seeds, man.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

You too.

Ben Greenfield

All right, I’ll talk to you later.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Okay. Have a great day.