Customize Longevity & Biohacking Blueprint For You & Your Family

Introduction and family legacy 0:00

All right. And welcome. I'm so excited to get into this topic with my good friend Ben Greenfield. He is the world's top longevity and biohacking expert. He's one of my best friends and just an incredible, student of, the human body. Human optimism and how we can, you know, be our best. And one of the things that I love about Ben is he he goes so deep into research himself. He's written the most prolific books on biohacking, on fitness, on family optimization and systems, that you guys have got to check out.

So I'm excited to have you. Ben, thank you so much for being here. And we're going to be talking about how to customize your own longevity and biohacking blueprint for not just yourself, but also your family, which I'm excited about. Me too. And hopefully I don't get too weepy during this session because, you know, my son's left there 16 years old, and it's written into the Greenfield family constitution that at age 12, there's a rite of passage into adolescence. At age 17, there's like a vision quest out in the wilderness.

But then at age 16, any Greenfield men have to go on a solo self-supported trip by themselves, a so-called gap trip. So it's been really quiet around here. They left the house like two weeks ago. They got a used car. They're driving across a bunch of national parks eating beef jerky and oatmeal and and, stopping at springs along the way to refill on water. And I'm a little bit jealous, and a little bit lonely. But no doubt we'll talk about the the process that you, that you, you know, built into their into their, the Constitution.

Like what? What is the constitution? The family constitution. How does that even work? Yeah, sure. And you were, of course, you and Erica were featured in my book Boundless Parenting. Yeah. Which we we give a lot more detail on the structuring of things like family constitutions, family banks, etc. but the organization that first really opened my eyes to this concept was Legato Family Foundation in Utah. Rich Christensen. And, we worked with him to create things that would be woven into the family in a very similar way as one would brand a business, meaning, an entire book that describes our traditions, our legacy, our values, our mission statement, our logos.

I mean, all the way down to, like, our hex color and font sizes, our, end of life wishes for each member of the family and know my sons have done their own obituary and memorial service planning and funeral planning, which is a very powerful exercise for anyone, especially a young man or young woman. And so that's kind of like the the Handbook for Operating a Greenfield family, so to speak. And of course, it's, you know, over 100 pages long and there's a lot of details in there. But the general idea behind it is that you often see and you're no doubt familiar with this, this, this rags to riches to rags phenomenon where parents may be successful or accumulate wealth or even have a deep sense of meaning and purpose.

But there's not a structured plan in place to pass that on to the next generation, especially now that we live in an era in which, children often go off and engage in careers that are far different than what their parents are engaged in.

Building a family constitution 3:48

Right? The blacksmith's son used to be the blacksmith, and maybe the, you know, the tailor's daughter used to be a tailor. And. Yeah. And now there's not so much of that that occurs, which I think is, is good to a certain extent as far as the creation of new jobs and creativity and the fact that we're we're kind of out of a pure post-industrial, factory based mindset of work. But it does create some holes when it comes to passing on legacy and meaning and tradition to your offspring. So when my sons, leave the house, they marry, they start a family.

They will build upon this book and continuing to improve upon it, but also be able to retain the threads of traditions such as this is what we stand for as a family. This is what we do on Christmas Eve, which is what mom did on Christmas Eve, which is what grandma did on Christmas Eve, which is this deep tradition that's that's kind of woven into the family. So it's a very, I think, meaningful way to create a sense of identity for future generations. But it's also a vehicle for building family wealth and for building a family that ideally becomes successively more successful from generation to generation, because they're building upon the successful foundations of generations past.

Wow, wow. You know, this is incredible, this concept I, I've been mentored and and developed a good relationship and friendship with the founder of the Ritz Carlton, or Schultz. And I was just waiting outside of his office for him to finish a meeting before I met with him, one afternoon. And there's a book just sitting there. It's called borrowed from your grandchildren. It is actually a very profound book I've been reading, and it talks about how, that this is so fascinating. It's all the research on how families pass down wealth from generation to generation.

And this, individual looked at all of the research in respect to what creates what they call families of affinity. A family of affinity is a family that the generations to follow want to be a part of the legacy that we're essentially, you know, building. And so they said there four things that create family of affinity. The first thing is human capital. Listen to this very interesting human capital is the health, emotionally and physically of the individual, which is what we're going to be getting into today.

Right. This second is intellectual capital, which is how are we developing, learning and growing. The third is social capital. And I found this very interesting because they said that one of the biggest reasons why people collapse and why families collapse is because the social capital, can end up, you know, there can be a tax on the family or people tearing the family apart in one way or another. So there's this whole, you know, conversation about that. And then, and, but they said you obviously as you, your human capital increases, your health capital of your family increases your intellectual capital, your, your social capital increases your family is just going to continue to get wealthier and wealthier.

And then the last one was the spiritual capital, let's say, defined spiritual capital as everyone aligns to a vision, goals, values, within the family, similar to what you just said. This brain book that you created for your family, which is absolutely amazing. You know, I'm hanging out with Pierre Schmidt from Luxury Branding, who built that one and only and all these huge, brands. I'm on resort and all of these really amazing brands, and he's showing me these brand books, and these brand books are unbelievable.

Like, you look through them and you're just blown away. And the fact that you've done that for your own family, I think, just goes to show the level of intentionality around how you are building. And creating a family of affinity. And the title of the book, borrowed from your grandchildren, comes from the concept that these family offices have created around how families are thinking about building a business that they're borrowing from their grandchildren. Right. And they're planting, you know, trees on their property, knowing that the tree's going to mature at 150 years or 200 years from now.

So they're thinking about their, their, their grandchildren, their great great grandchildren, which honestly, I think is going to be one of the most impactful things when it comes to longevity. And, you know, human optimization for your own family is having the, the end in mind. But, dude, this is one of the reasons why I love you, man. My kids, every time I talk to you, there's more. But I made a very good point too, that you cannot discern tangle the family organizational structure, the business structure or the wealth structure from the health or the spiritual structure.

A very simplistic example of that, of course, is any of us who have experienced a bout of of low productivity

Human capital and longevity foundations 9:13

or low wealth creation at work because we have a health or spiritual or underlying relationship issue occurring simultaneously? I mean, everybody's experienced that. But you also made another very interesting point about this long term thinking that applies to family spills over into society and not to turn this into a, you know, Jordan Peterson political podcast. But, you know, the this is important because, you know, even in our current political climate, you hear a lot of rhetoric about rocking the vote and taking action and writing to your senators, etc..

You hear, I would say, a little bit less about sitting with your kids on the living room floor in the morning and helping to teach them about things like world view and decision making and the difference between, let's say, absolute and relative morality. You hear a little bit less of an emphasis on, well, where are your children during the day and what are they being indoctrinated with, and what kind of education is woven into the family. Because societal change, for better or worse, occurs over generations and is largely influenced by education and the parenting habits of future generations.

So the parenting habits of those raising future generations. So I think about this from the standpoint of if you want to change society and you want to live in a great country, state, community, etc., it all starts with what you're doing with your children at home. Because not to get to, to, to, to, to stereotypical, I guess with my phrasing, but, you know, our children are the future and so these habits count. 1,000%. Absolutely. Well, I would love to I would love to know what you do from a health perspective.

Like let's dive into the quote unquote human capital. Here. What do you do to maximize your longevity? And customize it for yourself, like real time? And and then what have you done for your, for your kids so we can get into that a little bit more? I'm sure this is going to be a very interesting conversation. Yeah. You know, I, I peace longevity. And it's important to understand my background is is physiology. I have a master's degree in exercise physiology and biomechanics. So I look at a human body in the very same way that one might look at an engine and sector that into parts.

And so when I'm programing my own health, I am looking at movement. And when I say movement, specifically cardio, strength, power and mobility. And I even break cardio into mitochondria, VO2, lactate tolerance and fat burning capacity and each week some element of those aspects of fitness are programed into the routine. And when I say programed into the routine, I mean it's typically me and my sons working out around 8 or 830 in the morning. At some point after family devotions and that is, that's, that's that's the structure of the actual workout program.

But then, of course, you know, there's all the things that you hear talked about a little more seldomly, thermoregulation. Right. So within 20 minutes of waking I'm in ice for two minutes. Right? 33 degrees. It's not the most enjoyable part of the day, but it makes the rest of the day feel easy. Causes mitochondrial uncoupling, fat burning, conversion of white adipose tissue to brown fat. At least three times a week. I make myself become uncomfortably hot in the summer. That might be a hot outdoors workout.

In the winter, that might be a sauna session. I pay very close attention to, air, light, water and electricity. Not only meaning that I am highly cognizant of filtering those environmental variables as far as very good air filtration quality, very good water filtration quality for building biology and EMF analysis of the home, and then, addressing the lighting in a space like an officer at home to be very circadian friendly. But then also taking that one step further, I will use things like carbon dioxide breathwork devices, hyperbaric chamber exercise with oxygen therapy.

For playing with air, I will use PMS mats, grounding mats, earthing mats, or things like shockwave therapy to play with electricity. I will use things like, red light therapy, light sound stimulation machines for shifting the brainwave into certain states during meditation, etc. to play around with light. And then I not only filtered the water, but I will structure it. I will add hydrogen to it, I will add minerals to it. And so stepping back full picture, we're talking about fitness that covers all bases of the human blueprint.

We're talking about thermoregulation via heat and cold air, light water and electricity. And when you take all of those and then combine them with eating real whole food close to nature, with as much dietary diversity and as little, dietary, myopic ness in terms of extreme food restriction, you create a scenario for really good health. That's incredible. I mean, beautifully summarized and it's so foundational. Right. But it's it's the difference that makes the difference when you get your water right and you get your electricity right when you get, the air quality right when you get your, your body moving or consuming healthy foods.

I mean, there's so much that you and I get exposed to every single day. People sending us different products, supplements, you know, the next kind of, like, hot thing for, you know, a certain element that will help you live longer, which is all great. Like, I'm flying down to have a private meeting with this peptide company that's, you know, created some insane breakthroughs that, I'm meeting with the owner around, and and it's it's fun. However, if you don't get these core elements, like. Right.

I mean, it's it's these these things are game changers. Just out of curiosity, what are some of your favorite brands around? What you just discuss, like, you know, saunas or cold or. I love this question. This is the how fast can you make people's wallets question? Sam. You know, do you do you want to really talk like, best of the best? Like what? The what the extreme stuff is? Yeah. Let's go extreme. And then we can. Okay. We can talk. Okay. On a budget. All right. For strength training, minimum effective dose strength training.

I use an machine for that. The more affordable alternative to that would be a tonal for the power training. It's all kettlebell and calisthenics for the cardio and the oxygen training.

Biohacking tools and home setup 16:48

I use a Vesper unit that is next to a live O2 machine for oxygen therapy and the, I suppose, budget version of that would be any type of airflow restrictor device that you place in your mouth, combined with something like an air dine. For the cold, I use a mirage Co forge. There are many, inflatable cold tub companies that are less expensive. I vetted and tried many of them. Many of them break though. Cheap imports from China. I've found one that's in my garage right now called the. I energize instead of energize.

That seems to work pretty well. And, the, the heat. I use just a low EMF sports spectrum sauna. The clear light sauna. I use the sanctuary because it's large enough to move around and do yoga and things like that in. And a more budget friendly version of heat would be something like a wraparound infrared blanket, like, higher dose or something like that. Yeah. Or enough, electricity. The creme de la creme, I think, is the pulse centers. PMF unit is very expensive. It's one of the highest power units you can get out there.

More affordable PMF devices, high quality ones you can find. And Doctor William Pollack's website. Look, for red light, I use Juve. I am also in the process of working with the company called ten X to try and vet their red light bed and oxygen unit. I think they're producing some pretty good stuff now. And so those are the other options. And then of course, for red light, you can also use smaller wrap around devices for joint or spot treatments like the Luma Flex or the on go. We should know this is all getting transcribed in case people are trying to section various notes here.

And then for the air, the air doctor is a good filter, but I think the creme de la creme is the jasper for a home air filtration. Total done for your Hvac unit. I think the best of the best out there. It's called the minnow air Minot air, for light, bond charge or block blue light. Our two companies, most of my home is the bond charge. Full spectrum light. You flip on the switch. Once it's daylight, you flip it on again. It's twilight. You flip it on again. It's red light. So you can use the same light bulb in the different cans of the house without having to have different light bulbs in different areas of the home based on sleeping and waking environments.

For light sound stimulation, I use a lamp called the Roxy. The lamp, which is incredible. It will shift you into this near, near nearly an in Thea genic state, in just minutes flat. And I just have that next to a gravity chair for travel, I use something called a neuro visor or a brain tap, because I think that using light and sound to meditate, it's like a cheat code. It shifts you into a deep meditative state nearly instantly, even if you've never meditated before. And for people like me who have a monkey mind, it works really well.

For hyperbaric therapy, I use a Hublot USA unit, called the VA Taurus. It's got a pretty small footprint, and it's, it's it's pretty easy to use. And those would be, for water filtration. In the past, I've used greenfield water, my brother's company, but they're no longer doing whole house filtration systems. And so in the new house I'm building, I'm switching to an O for a system of or a, for water, hydrogen ization. Like I mentioned, I use the company Water and Wellness. They make good hydrogen tablets for taking care of the water from that standpoint.

And then, the last thing would be as far as electricity and light optimization. The company I use for building biology walkthroughs of my workspaces is, shielded healing. So it's kind of funny because I actually very similar. I we have a greenfield family constitution. I have a greenfield home biohacking binder, and it's an instructional manual. So any guess I have over to the house? It has everything that we have in the house listed, because there's like a half million dollars worth of bio hacks around here and how to use it.

The QR code, just everything about it. And so people come over here and just play for a few days, leave feeling fully optimized, and then, they usually have that binder they can take along with them if they want to learn more about any of that stuff. Dude. That's incredible. Incredible, incredible. I mean, I'm, I'm I'm sure everyone was trying to fearlessly write all those down. But again, fiercely. But you know what? We've got the transcripts. Like Ben said, you'll be able to get access to all those.

Thank you so much. And one of the things that, I love is that raising Max. I mean, that thing is as serious. I put it on a a pulse, electromagnetic frequency. Matt, I'm in a zero gravity position, and I've got, like, a vibe that underneath me that, like, you know, that that vibrates to the actual music. So my whole body is like. And now let's call the Max. Yeah. The Rosie. Max. And is that one of the lights? Exactly. It's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one I use is called the Roxy. The Roxy that maybe Rosie, Max.

You can't you can connect it to, an acoustic mat that plays the sound through your body as you're experiencing the light, which is also played via headphones, but for an even more upgraded experience than that, that literally feels like a carnival for your body. It shakes your entire body in tune to the music. There's a chair called the Shift Wave, and that's actually what I have my Roxy the lamp connected to. So it will literally vibrate your entire body with future high end vibration in correlation to the light and sound.

So a lot of times I'll get up about 4 a.m. and start my day with about 30 minutes of that for kind of like a morning feel good session. And man, I just feel unstoppable when I get up from that chair. With the combination of the shift wave and the rock Siva 14 minutes. You said. No. I usually go for about a half hour around 4 a.m.. For I am tired. Because. Because when you wake, you've got all these theta and delta brain waves. You haven't cleared a lot of adenosine. If you can get up early, carve out a little bit of time to meditate or do something like that.

That helps to clear the adenosine. It just allows you to be more alert. The rest of the day. Plus is just kind of a fun, cool, and inspirational way to start the day. And, gets me ready for that cold plunge a little bit later. I love it. What is your morning routine look like real quick? I mean, yeah, wake up at 4:00. Do you go to bed at 9 or 8? What do you what was it like? Oh, I usually go to bed. I'm usually in bed about 930. Usually asleep by around ten, usually up around four. Starting off with some type of meditation or relaxation protocol or some type of, you know, biohacking protocol that's based around recovery and meditation.

Daily routine and productivity system 24:18

And then I will go upstairs to the master bathroom and do all my oral and facial care, you know, coconut oil pulling, tongue scraping, etc.. Yeah. Go into the kitchen, drink a huge glass of water, really big, about 32oz of water with all my morning supplements. And then I go do a two minute cold plunge. And after I do the cold plunge, I kind of warm my body up and stretch and do some deep tissue work for about 10 to 15 minutes. Then what time is it? Not for me. Oh, usually I'm doing that by around 530 or so, and then by around 545 I am making coffee and tea and heading down into the office where I combine red light therapy with, checking in on emails and things like that.

Not to start my workday, but I kind of use that time to triage everything to organize the day, to look at the calendar, you know, as Abraham Lincoln would say, like I spend those wee hours of the morning kind of like sharpening the ax, preparing everything for the rest of the day, because as many people know, you can prepare and have your entire week ready Sunday night. But Monday morning, the one definition of an email inbox is that it's you responding to other people's requests that you didn't know were coming in.

Right. And so I triage all that, make sure I know what the day is going to be kind of thrown at me. And then, by 645 or 7, I gather the whole family right now, it's just me and my wife. Since the kids are gone and we pray and read the Bible and or a devotional for about 20 minutes and have a morning family huddle just talking about the day, what are we up to? You know who's making what for dinner and what's the day going to look like, etc. and then, after that, I typically go have my morning bowel movement and then come downstairs.

If my sons are home, I grab them. If not, it's me solo, and by 8 a.m. I'm doing my workout. I'm usually done with my workout, you know? You know, just stretched, cleaned up everything by nine. I make a smoothie, and by about 930, I'm sitting down to my computer with my smoothie to dive into a little bit of morning work. Our team huddle for Ben Greenfield life, and I'm just working like a workhorse from that point on until about 130 or so, just about, you know, five hours, four hours of deep, deep work.

And then I'm going this far into the afternoon just to throw in one last thing. I know people are wondering, because doing the math, that's six hours of sleep. I kind of have this, I suppose, European tradition, I tell my team, I keep my calendar safely protected, and I allow nothing to be scheduled between 2 and 330 because I use that time between 2 and 330 to nap, meditate, recover, read, shut down the brain. And it kind of like gives me a second day because then at 330, I do a second cold plunge to wake myself up, and then I'll work until like 6 or 630 again.

And so that that habit allows me to get up really early, even though I'm short on sleep, get a lot of things done when the world isn't, like flying at me, and then catch up with the quick like, meditate, non sleep, deep rest protocol, yoga nidra, hyperbaric whatever in the afternoon and then I get back into work after that. Oh my god, I started that is that is such a boss schedule. I mean I cannot, I cannot even like imagine a better schedule than what you just shared. As far as just doing all the things and maximizing your overall body and energy.

So do you sleep in the afternoon for a half hour or you just chill? Sometimes it is, sleep and then sometimes it is meditation. Sometimes it's just reading a book. But it's just like turning the brain off for a while. And it's nice because if you just have your car's accelerator and gas pedal pressed down the whole day, sometimes, you know, when I dive back into family time sometime between 6 and 7, you're just exhausted. But I find that this habit allows me to kind of have my cake and eat it too.

I can get up early, have that really protected morning time, but then not be like that by dinner time. And sometimes it doesn't need it doesn't mean sleep. It's just like stopping the world from coming at you. And you know, I have this little room in my house called the Zen Den, and I just crawl in there and everybody knows, you know, we've been alone until 330. 230 to 330, right? It's about 2 to 330. Like that's the maximum amount of time. Usually I just need like 45 minutes an hour. But yeah. So you then work for a good like 6 to 7 hours.

Is that right? Oh there's that hour of morning triage. Then there's 4 to 5 hours between, you know, smoothie. And when I take my lunch break. And then there's typically about two hours after that and another half hour after dinner. So most days I'm working 8 to 9 hours. That's six days a week. Yeah. It's dude beast mode. That's incredible. And obviously you're very productive because you're so focused in the morning on what are the most important things to get done. And then you just, you know, you use the, 30 minute sprints as you work or work in respect to your actual work workday, or.

Because a lot of my work involves health consults, podcasts, etc. that range from 20, 30, 60, up to 90 minutes in length. It's highly dependent as far as when little breaks occur, but the breaks are pretty seldom. I just go into deep work mode and bam bam bam bang it all out. So my day is more like longer break in the midday than shorter breaks spread in during the work phases. And I love it. I love that. Speaking of, work schedule, I got a hard stop in four minutes is my next call, so. Okay, okay, well let's talk let's talk really quick in the last four minutes.

What do you do for your kids? What are the top supplements for longevity? Okay. That's those are two pretty good lightning round. So for my kids. They. Join me for morning workouts whenever they're home. And their schedule allows. We are all on the same workout schedule to keep ourselves accountable. So if they can't join me in the morning, they'll do their session.

Kids, supplements, and advanced longevity 30:48

That's the same session as I'm doing in the afternoon or the early evening. Then we just compare notes and hold each other accountable. At the end of the day, like River, I know you had a busy morning. You didn't do your cold plunge at 6 a.m. he's like, yeah, I did. Right after lunch or, you know, whatever, whatever the workout is. So we all just kind of do the same thing. I have a very simple word document that I send out to me and my sons on Sunday night. It kind of has the week's workouts and then, and so very, very simple as far as how we schedule and structure that when we travel together as a family, it's a little shorter.

I just do 30 minute workouts, like all grab a deck of cards and, you know, the aces are ten burpees and one through ten is, you know, the number of exercises of squats, pushups, whatever it is, deal our way through a deck of cards and then get on with the rest of the day. So I just kind of keep it fun when we travel. And then as far as supplements go, my sons have been genetically tested. They have impaired glutathione pathways, homozygous methylation pathways, and, they, both have slightly low beating production.

So they take some lion's mane, they take some glutathione, they take some liver extract. And those are really the biggies. They eat such a real natural diet that they're only taking like 3 or 4 supplements. And they just now in the past year, now they're 16. They started to get into like three workouts, which they love. So so they, you know, they throw in like, you know, creatine and amino acids post-workout and some kind of blood flow precursor pre-workout. So, so yeah. Got little, little supplement hounds on my hands now.

That's so good. That's so good. Well, what what do you think is the future of supplementation? Longevity is the last question I want to ask you. And what are you doing right now to to help you live longer? The future of supplementation and longevity is, no surprises here. Precision and customization paired with AI based diagnostics. And as far as what I'm doing for lifespan, probably besides everything that we just talked about, the biggest things would be cycling in peptides throughout the year.

Still doing stem cells and exosomes at least once a year. And, really, I mean, those would be the main things, peptide stem cells in the exosomes, in addition to the stuff that we've already talked about. Now, do you use going peptides regularly or do you cycle. Over on cycles like I'll do a cycle of mozzie or up a tail on for ten days. Twice a year I'll run, BPC 157 and TB 500 for 12 weeks. A couple of times a year I'll run a growth hormone peptide, or patch, for 12 weeks, a couple of times a year.

So they kind of cycle in and out. Dude I love it. Ben Greenfield everybody, thank you so much. I want to respect your time then. Thank you. You're a rock star, brother. And, this has been, like, insane value. I mean, watch this again. So you've inspired me. Oh, man. Well, I love you, brother. It's always fun chatting. And I'll see you soon in Nashville. All right, brother, can't wait. Thanks, man.