My life is a little bit...strange.

As an immersive journalist, self-experimenter and self-professed “biohacker”, I do relatively unconventional things to upgrade my body and brain.

For example, I have this blood glucose monitor installed in my arm. It monitors my blood sugar 24-7. I wear a cognition-enhancing laser light helmet at work during the day, and stand naked in front of a giant red light panel while I’m replying to emails.

I give myself weekly IV’s full of a cocktail of special vitamins. I’ve also had the fat sucked from my back and the marrow from my bones to concentrate my own stem cells, and had surgery to have these cells placed into every joint of my body and mainlined into my bloodstream. I have tens of thousands of dollars of advanced medical technologies housed in my basement. You get the idea. I’m not normal.

But as a man who spends much of my life immersed in the modern health and longevity movement, attending anti-aging conferences and researching all the newfangled things people are doing these days to upgrade their bodies, I often survey the landscape of fringe supplements, biohacks, and anti-aging technologies and wonder…

...would our ancestors laugh at us? When it comes to living a long and healthy life, would their ancestral wisdom beat our modern science, hands down? After all, despite our modern infatuation with longevity and optimized bodies and brains, we are not strikingly healthier or longer-living than previous generations. In today's podcast, adapted from my recent TedX Coeur D' Alene Talk, I'll tackle this topic in detail.

You'll discover:

-Why modern medicine, for all its marvels, may not be all it's cracked up to be...4:10

• CDC reports life expectancy has dropped 3 consecutive years.
• It's a false assertion to assume we'll live significantly longer than previous generations
• "Life expectancy" is calculated by insurance, mutual fund companies as number of years after retirement, not after birth.
• We would be seeing many more 100+ year olds; not the case
• We have a better chance of surviving childhood (disease, etc.) but not necessarily living longer.
• Our ancestors didn't always live nasty, brutish, short lives

-Popular current fads to extend human lifespan...7:43

• Vampire therapy, parabiosis (young blood)
  • Ancient Greeks considered to blood a magic elixir
  • Pliny the Elder, Homer, wrote about the healing efficacy of others' blood
  • GDF11, a primary anti-aging proteins activated by young blood transfusion, is increased by oxytocin
• Stem cells
  • More accessible than in years past
  • My "biological age" dropped from 37 to 20 after my first stem cell transfusion
  • Men's Health article on stem cells featuring Ben
  • Outside Magazine article featuring Ben
  • Dietary adjustments to increase/enhance stem cells
    • Food compounds, superfoods: colostrum, aloe vera, etc.
• Cryopreservation
  • Modern day mummification
• Metformin
  • slightly modified version of a compound that was discovered in the French lilac plant (goat's rue)
  • Wired Magazine: Forget the Blood of Teens
  • Adverse side effects:
    • Lactic acidosis
    • Mitochondrial disruption
    • Vitamin B12 deficiency
    • Increase risk for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
  • Natural alternatives:
    • Bitters, herbs, wild plants, bitter melon
• Rapamycin
  • Inhibits excessive activation of immune cells via MTOR
  • Upregulation of cellular cleanup mechanisms called autophagy
  • Increases risk of infectious diseases and diabetes
  • Natural alternatives:
    • spermidine
    • Intermittent fasting
• Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD)
  • Levels markedly decrease with age
  • Natural alternatives:
    • Raw honey
    • Fermented foods
    • Sauna sessions
    • Pau d Arco tea

-Supplements and medicines used by our ancestors...19:25

-Natural ways to enhance our vision...22:45

• Ancestors trained their vision; they didn't look at screens all day
• Plant compounds known to enhance vision:
  • Zeaxanthin
  • Carotenoids (kale, spinach, bell peppers)
  • Innate ability to "see" in the absence of light or even sight

-Natural hearing enhancement...24:45

• Hunter gatherers were better equipped, physically, with their ears; perhaps because of time spent outdoors attuned to the frequencies of nature
• Turnip greens, collard greens, parsley, mustard greens, broccoli, etc. shown to decrease risk of hearing loss
• Adjusting your diet would be far cheaper and less convenient than what some self-experimenting types are doing (ear implants)

-The natural "sixth sense" within us to navigate to True North...26:42

• We possess a tiny amount of magnetite in our ethmoid bone (located between the eyes in the nasal cavity)
• Researchers suggest this built-in compass made hunting, migration, etc. possible
• We have perhaps lost this ancestral skill with the advent of road maps, GPS navigation

-Natural ways to enhance our brains...27:30

• Walnuts are rich in omega fatty acids, melatonin
• Lion's mane mushroom
• Bacopa flower (memory)
• Green tea (cognition)
• Psilocybin
• All of the above have been used for centuries, if not millennia

-Natural alternatives to things like photobiomodulation, light therapy, PEMF, etc...29:15

• Greeks engaged in "heliotherapy"; sunbathing akin to what we know as photobiomodulation
• St. John's Wort, chamomile, etc. can be used to ward off seasonal affective disorder

-And Much More!

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Got a question for me? Just leave a comment below, and I'll get back to you!