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

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Aren't these IVs really good for brain, like cognition and focus and brain fog? The NR ones? Yeah. Yeah.
And also for the mitochondrial health. 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. Because when you're sleep deprived, two things happen.
You get less ATP in the brain and creatine, the phosphagen and creatine can help to replenish that. And then the NAD assists with the cellular repair mechanisms that should have occurred when you're sleep deprived.
And so, yeah, I mean, coffee and energy drinks and all that stuff and kind of band-aid sleep deprivation. Right.
But using about 10, 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.
So you do like four or five gram portions spread throughout the day if you're sleep deprived. You don't need to do this every day.
And then NAD, IV patch, oral capsule, whatever. Okay, wait, so that's a good, that's actually a good clip.
Fantastic for sleep deprivation. Okay, so say that one more time because 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.
Yeah. Say it again.
The NR. If you're sleep deprived, then coffee, five-hour energy, green tea, like all these central nervous system stimulus can kind of like short term jack you up.
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. Okay.
This is my question. Can you take NAD, if I just took like a truniogen supplement and a creatine scoop, that would work? A couple capsules, although I recommend more than you'd usually take.
So you take like four capsules of like the truniogen and then you do 20 grams of the creatine, but you split that into four or five gram portions throughout the day. Can't that bloat you to take that much creatine? 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.
Deeper issues to address. Are you not wearing any trackers anymore because of all the EMF? I wear this ring.
Oh, you do? Yeah. I wear a ring.
Rings don't produce an appreciable amount of EMF. 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, you know, heating of tissue, but Bluetooth is way less important of a fish to fry compared to like wifi and radio frequencies from phones, et cetera.
So I use a cheapo, 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 glucose monitor. 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 got to look at the levels later on.

I love that line, by the way.

Or drink a 100 calorie cane sugar infused caramel latte, high protein iced coffee.

This one made me hate, let me, Slay's going to hate me.

With false 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.

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

It's not that bad of a, like, that's good that they put lactase in so the lactase enzymes digest the skim milk oh my god i'm gonna get i'm gonna get fired i'm just kidding it's not that bad of a like that's good that they put lactase in there along with the skim milk i would rather like this one if i can 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. The fats in dairy, especially for the metabolic function, for the satiety, for brain function, and for bone health.
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. 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. And obviously we're talking about calories.
Yeah, it's skim milk, but there is a hundred calories in this and they do use art or they do use, um, uh, low calorie sweeteners looks like, uh, stevia. And, uh, yeah.
So, so if I'm looking at ingredient label, I do like to see stevia or allulose or D-ribose or erythritol. If people's guts can handle a sugar alcohol, then like acetyl, sulfamide, potassium, or sucralose.
But when I'm looking at an ingredient label, this is actually pretty clean. I would give this like a, like an eight on a one to 10 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 a, 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 whole milk would be a little bit better. But isn't that better than having, so by the way, Slate, Ben said eight out of 10.
So that's still very good. Yeah, it is.
It is good. And for the average Joe, who's not Ben, who is a fitness fanatic, 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.

And it's better than having a milkshake at McDonald's.

Right.

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

And I know 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 really be the two primary delivery mechanisms for fermented yogurt, you can do better if you're lactose intolerant.
You can also do better on milks that have lower amounts of lactose sugar,

like goat milk, camel milk, et cetera.

But if- Hold up, what did you say?

Goat milk, like a lot of,

I raise goats, so we do have goat milk.

What do you do?

How about camel?

You said camel milk.

It's a thing.

You can find it.

Yeah.

Stop it.

Yeah.

Okay, exactly.

Yak milk.

Where do you buy camel milk?

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.
Surprising. Do you drink it? Camel milk goes from a camel.
I have, but it's also really expensive. I wouldn't.
How much is a liter of camel milk? I don't know because I don't really buy it anymore. But it is better for the body.
Cow? Cow's milk because of a few reasons. 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. So when you see at 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.
And camel's milk and goat's milk are naturally more like an A2 or they have less of the A1 based protein. Because goat's milk, 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? Would that be healthier? Well, the nice thing about nut milks, again, if you are adding a bunch of cane sugar to them and thickeners and fillers, is 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. There's some that are higher calorie, like I think macadamia nut milk is the highest.
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. But how about the carrageens in them and all that stuff like that? Yeah.
Yeah. And you can see on this on this can they say no carrageenan, right? That is 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. It's technically, they have an enzyme in their lactase that allows you to digest the lactose.
So it's not lactose free, but it's more like they have the carrier agent in there that helps you digest the lactose. So technically by the time it gets into your stomach, it is lactose free.
Okay. Theoretically.
Thank you. They're going to hate me now for even bringing you on this podcast.
That I don't care about. But this one has erythritol in it, which can be a little bit...
Like if people have like small intestine bacterial overgrowth. That's not for my phrase.
I don't know. It's not bad though.
It's oxygenated. Yeah.
Okay. This is the next one.
This is Magic Mind. I love...
Hydrogen infused water. That's good.
That's good. I got that for you.
Okay. And then these Magic minds, I want you, I I'm blind.
So I can't even read the ingredients. I do know there's amazing stuff in there.
I ate my carrots. Let me see it.
Okay, good. See all your, it's pretty small.
So magic mind, new lixer, matcha green tea, agave, and it's a very small bottle. So a lot of people see agave and they'll be like, Oh, that's just a hundred percent for a 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.
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? So it is true that fructose can elevate triglycerides and contribute to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, but only in a case in which the liver and muscle glycogen stores are already topped off.
That's at which point fructose starts to spill over and cause issues. So if I'm burning 2000 calories a day and I'm drinking 2000 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.
I wouldn't advise it because you're also going to be like, you're going to have low nutrient density and you're not getting enough protein, et cetera, if you're just drinking Coke. But if people see agave or fructose or high fructose corn syrup, sometimes there's some harsh chemicals and things like that used to make that.
So that's a whole separate side issue. 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 fruit juices, 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.
Right. I mean, this is the whole conversation about like, people are like, fruit does not get you fat, please.
I mean, this nonsense. No.
Fruit's not going to get you fat. Yeah.
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 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 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.