Episode 414: Ben Greenfield: Biohacking Sleep Deprivation with NAD and Creatine

Speaker 1 Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

Speaker 2 Hey, friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self.

Speaker 2 So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

Speaker 2 Aren't these IVs really good for brain, like cognition and focus and brain function?

Speaker 1 NR ones. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, and also for the mitochondrial health.

Speaker 1 Yeah. As a matter of fact, my favorite stack for sleep deprivation is NR, NAD, or NMN, which are all just like NAD precursors, and creatine.

Speaker 1 Because when you're sleep deprived, two things happen: you get less ATP in the brain, and the creatine, the phosphagen, and creatine can help to replenish that.

Speaker 1 And then the NAD assists with the cellular repair mechanisms that should have occurred when you're sleep deprived.

Speaker 1 And so, yeah, I mean, coffee and energy drinks and all that stuff and kind of band-aid sleep deprivation, right?

Speaker 1 Using about 10 higher, higher than what you use for strength and power, like 10 to 20 grams of creatine a day. And that will give you disaster pants if you take it all at once.

Speaker 1 So, you could do like four or five gram portions spread throughout the day if you're sleep deprived. I wouldn't, you don't need to do this every day.
And then, NAD, IV, patch, oral.

Speaker 2 Okay, wait, so that's a good, that's actually a good clip.

Speaker 1 Fantastic for sleep deprivation.

Speaker 2 Okay, so say that one more time because I want to, I want to make sure people get that. So if you are sleep deprived, here is a cocktail that you should do that's very effective.
Go ahead.

Speaker 2 Say it again.

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 NR. If you're sleep deprived, then

Speaker 1 coffee, five-hour energy, green tea, like all these central nervous system stimulants can kind of like short-term jack you up.

Speaker 1 But NAD combined with creatine, that stack is incredible because it helps to simulate a lot of what you would have gotten during sleep, ATP restoration in the brain and cellular repair mechanisms.

Speaker 1 Okay, this is my question.

Speaker 2 Can you take NAD, if I just took like a truniogen supplement and a creatine, creatine scoop, that would work?

Speaker 1 A couple capsules, although I recommend more than you'd usually take.

Speaker 1 So you take like four capsules of like the true niogen and then you do 20 grams of the creatine, but you split that into four or five gram portions throughout the day.

Speaker 2 Can't that blow you take that much creatine?

Speaker 1 That's why you wouldn't want to do it every day, but you also shouldn't be sleep deprived every day. That's true.

Speaker 1 Deeper issues to address.

Speaker 2 Are you not wearing any trackers anymore because of all the EMFs?

Speaker 1 I wear this ring. Oh, you do? Yeah.
I wear a ring. Rings don't produce an appreciable amount of EMF.

Speaker 1 Like a class three Bluetooth signal is not a big, like maybe if you had it next to your head, like an AirPod inside your ear all the time, some people say it affects red blood cell flow and can cause clumping or heating of tissue, but Bluetooth is way less important of a fish to fry compared to like Wi-Fi and radio frequencies from phones, et cetera.

Speaker 1 So I use a cheapo i actually just replaced it my last one pooped out after six years but i use a cheapo like 30 timex watch and a ring and a blood glucose monitor oh so you do wear the blood i do wear a blood glucose monitor why not because i don't know by this point after using one for two years what does and does not spike my blood glucose but just because what gets measured gets managed i'm less likely to like blow through a bunch of dark chocolate trail mix on an airplane if i know i gotta look at the levels later on.

Speaker 2 I love that line, by the way.

Speaker 1 Or drink a 100-calorie cane sugar-infused caramel latte high-processed coffee. This one made me cake.
Let me kiss.

Speaker 2 Slay's going to hate me.

Speaker 1 Whitfall's advertising on the front of it. Why? It says lactose-free energy, but it's got skim milk in it.
However, they added lactase enzymes. So the lactase enzymes digest the skim milk.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, I'm going to get, I'm going to get fired.

Speaker 1 It's not that bad of it. That's good that they put lactase in there along with the skim milk.
I would rather, like, look at this one. Look at this.

Speaker 1 If I could wave a magic wand, I'd rather they be using regular milk because all the studies on the benefits of dairy tend to be much stronger with full fat dairy compared to low fat or fat-free dairy.

Speaker 1 Right. So the fats in dairy, especially for the metabolic function, for the satiety, for brain function, and for bone health.

Speaker 1 If you go with full fat instead of low fat or fat-free, so it's kind of like back to eggs. I'd rather you eat eggs with the egg yolk rather than egg whites.

Speaker 1 I'd rather you have chicken with the chicken skin and the gristle and the bone than have just pure skim milk. It's more than just calories.

Speaker 1 And obviously, if we're talking about calories, yeah, it's skimmed milk, but there is a hundred calories in this. And they do use artifacts, or they do use

Speaker 1 low-calorie sweeteners, looks like stevia. And

Speaker 1 yeah, so if I'm looking at ingredient label, I do like to see stevia or allulose or diribose or erythritol, if people's guts can handle a sugar alcohol, then like acetosulfamy, potassium, or sucralose.

Speaker 1 But when I'm looking at an ingredient label, this is actually pretty clean.

Speaker 1 I would give this like a, like an eight on a one to ten scale, but I would say if you're concerned about like fat-free milk and isolating the proteins from the fats, you know, like a, like either a nut milk, like an almond milk or a coconut milk or an oat milk without the cane sugar added, or just like using a whole milk would be a little bit better.

Speaker 2 But isn't that better than having, so by the way, Slate, Ben said eight out of 10. So that's still very good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 It is good.

Speaker 2 And for the average Joe, who's not Ben, who is a fitness fanatic, not health, you know, health phenom, it's a really good thing to have because at least it's getting 20 grams of protein into somebody who otherwise would not be having that.

Speaker 2 And it's better than having, you know, a milkshake at McDonald's. Right.

Speaker 1 I would drink this, honestly, if I weren't myself a little bit lactose intolerant. And I know

Speaker 1 if I can have dairy if it's fermented, and this is the case for many people, if you ferment the dairy, if you do like a good fermented yogurt or a kefir or those will really be the two primary delivery mechanisms for fermented yogurt, you can do better if you're lactose intolerant.

Speaker 1 You can also do better on milks that have lower amounts of lactose sugar, like goat milk, camel milk, et cetera. But if

Speaker 1 you goat milk, like a lot of, I raise goats, so we do have goat milk. Yes, we do.

Speaker 2 How about camel? You said camel milk.

Speaker 1 It's a thing. You can find it.

Speaker 1 Stop it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 Yak milk.

Speaker 2 Where do you buy camel milk?

Speaker 1 The camel milk company out of California is where I've gotten it in the past. From a camel.
Yeah, it's from a camel. Yeah,

Speaker 1 surprising. Do you drink it?

Speaker 1 I have, but it's also really expensive.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't, how much is it?

Speaker 1 How much is a liter of camel milk because I don't really buy it anymore, but it is better for the body. Why? Cow's milk.
Because of a few reasons.

Speaker 1 Lower amounts of lactose, a smaller protein that's more bioavailable than the larger protein found in cow's milk. And also, a lot of cows are bred now for A1 protein instead of A2 protein.

Speaker 1 So when you see at the the grocery store that you can buy A2 milk, that is milk that tends to produce a little bit less of an immune response in the body.

Speaker 1 And camel's milk and goat's milk are naturally more like an A2, or they have less of the A1-based protein.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 goat milk I see all the time. So are you suggesting to people that they should maybe switch from maybe even their almond milk or their oat milk to a goat milk?

Speaker 1 Would that be helpful?

Speaker 1 Well, the nice thing about nut milks, again, if you are adding a bunch of cane sugar to them and bickeners and fillers, is that that a lot of people who just don't do well with milk in general do better with that and they're lower calorie in most cases.

Speaker 1 There's some that are higher calorie, like I think macadamia nut milk is the highest. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But one issue is if you want to be careful with your calorie count, a nut milk is a better substitute compared to a dairy milk.

Speaker 2 But how about the carrageenes in them and all that stuff like that?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
And you can see on this bot, on this can, they say no carraigin, right? That is

Speaker 1 a filler that can upset a lot of people's stomachs. So, yeah.
And it says lactose-free, sucralose-free, erythritol-free. But I don't want to throw them under the bus when I said false advertising.

Speaker 1 It's technically, they have an enzyme in there, lactase, that allows you to digest the lactose.

Speaker 1 So it's not lactose-free, but it's more like they have the carrier agent in there that helps you digest lactose. So, so technically, by the time it gets into your stomach, it is lactose-free.

Speaker 1 Okay, that theoretically.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 They're going to hate me now for even breathing on this one.

Speaker 1 That I don't care about, but here's the thing.

Speaker 1 This one has erythritol erythritol in it, which can be a little bit like if people have like small intestine bacterial overgrowth.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I don't know. It's not bad, though.
It's oxygenated.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay, this is the next one.
This is Magic Mind. I love it.

Speaker 1 Hydrogen infused water. That's good.
That's good.

Speaker 2 I got that for you. Okay.
And then these Magic Minds. I want you, I'm blind, so I can't even read the ingredients.
I do know there's amazing stuff. So I ate my carrots.

Speaker 1 Let me see it. Okay, good.
See? All right. All you're

Speaker 1 pretty small. So Magic Mind, New Elixir, Matcha Green Tea, Agave.

Speaker 1 And it's a very small bottle. So a lot of people see agave and they'll be like, oh, that's just a

Speaker 1 super sweetener. And agave does have a higher amount of fructose in it.
The thing with fructose, fruit juices, fruit sugars, et cetera, is a lot of people have vilified them.

Speaker 1 You know, the idea that fructose is a poison. I think Dr.
Robert Lustig introduced that concept in his book about calories. Do you believe that, though?

Speaker 1 So it is true that fructose can elevate triglycerides and contribute to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, but only in a case in in which the liver and muscle glycogen stores are already topped off.

Speaker 1 That's at which point fructose starts to spill over and cause issues.

Speaker 1 So if I'm burning 2,000 calories a day and I'm drinking 2,000 calories a day of Coke and that's all that I'm drinking, I would theoretically not elevate my triglycerides or get a lot of the issues associated with fructose because I'm at a net calorie balance.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't advise it because you're also going to be like, you know, you're going to have low nutrient density and you're not getting enough protein, et cetera, if you're just drinking Coke.

Speaker 1 But if people see agave or fructose or, you know, high fructose corn syrup, sometimes there's some harsh chemicals and things like that used to make that.

Speaker 1 So that's, that's a whole separate side issue.

Speaker 1 But the idea of fructose in general is that if you're a physically active person and you're not overeating and you're having, you know, fruit juices, you know, fruit in a blender, agave in a drink or whatever, it's usually not an issue unless you're eating too many calories, at which point fructose can become an issue.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is the whole conversation, but like people are like, fruit does not get you fat, please.

Speaker 1 i mean this nonsense no fruit's not going to get you fat yeah if you eat nine if you eat like everything else plus you eat nine pounds of grapes like maybe i do sometimes that can be not the greatest right and and if the fruit is sweet and has a high glycemic index which grapes do long term you're getting so many insulin surges due to that right high sugar content that you could create a long-term state of insulin insensitivity and then you get some appetite control issues you get some metabolic issues that long term could cause problems, even if you're not overeating the grapes or fruit, you're just eating enough to spike your blood sugar repeatedly throughout the day.