Health & Fitness

In his new book, "Boundless: Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body & Defying Aging," Ben Greenfield details his best longevity hacks. "Boundless" is a great title, as the object of longevity isn't just about tacking on years of life, but finding ways to remain healthy and vibrant for as long as possible. In other words, it's about quality and not just quantity of life.

Greenfield's goal with this book was to share his best tips for how to improve your energy in every sense of the word. At 640 pages, it's a hefty book with a higher price to match. For those looking for true and tested advice, though, it's a treasure trove well worth the price tag.

As Greenfield notes on his website,¹ it's "a complete guide to optimizing the human body, mind and spirit — written with no stone unturned, no fluff, no 'watered down' drivel — just pure, hardcore, practical, from-the-trenches content."

The original manuscript was 1,200 pages, and deleted sections can be accessed on Greenfield's website (access details for each chapter are included in the book), where you'll also find all of the references (about 3,000 of them), which also didn't make it into the printed book due to the sheer volume of information included.

"I wanted to write the kind of book that I like to read, a big, meaty book that you don't just read and toss aside, but that you use as a reference for a long time, maybe keep on your coffee table," Greenfield says.

"I wanted it to be pretty, have good illustrations, be fun to thumb through. And also, unlike previous books I've written, not just focus on things like athletic performance or six-pack abs, muscle or fats, but a lot of the stuff that I think is more important: your relationships, anti-aging and longevity tactics, spirituality and purpose in life.

I kind of snuck in and tried to dump some of the woo-woo stuff onto the whole fitness, wellness crowd as well, because sometimes I think we're striving to feel good and to look good, we think that that's what's going to bring us happiness, when in fact … it's relationships and big family dinners and optimizing your purpose in life — things that, I think, sometimes get neglected in this whole chatter about wellness."

Mitochondrial Capacity and Lactic Acid Tolerance

One of the best features Greenfield brings to the table is his commitment to staying fit and the strategies to achieve that. Having reserve muscle mass is a widely-underappreciated benefit in case you get sick or hospitalized, and the risk of that certainly increases with age. Greater muscle mass actually improves your chances of survival. Greenfield notes:

"Yes, muscle is important … We know that, for example, grip strength is associated with longevity and other elements of fitness, such as walking speed or maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max) … Staving off sarcopenia and staving off the osteopenia or osteoporosis that might come with sarcopenia is absolutely important as well.

It is something that is much easier to accomplish before you begin to get into your senior years, although research has since kind of dispelled the notion that you can't build muscle as you age. You can maintain muscle as you age and can actually increase muscle ...

The main elements you want to focus on that I explore in more detail in the book, are mitochondrial density and biogenesis, which we know are best achieved through very brief spurts of exercise … followed by long rest periods, or like a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 rest-to-work ratio.

We're talking about one single session a week where you might do 30 seconds all out, followed by four minutes of recovery. You could do that for several rounds. Another [target], in addition to the mitochondria, would be [lactic acid] tolerance, which is often in physiology called muscle endurance.

This would be your ability to buffer lactic acid … Probably one of the better examples of [exercises that improve your endurance] would be the classic Tabata set, a 2-to-1 work-to-rest ratio. This is something that, unlike mitochondrial workout, would be something you would need to do about two to three times a week.

You could use it as an introduction or as a finisher to a strength training workout, for example, if you want to really prioritize your time. But a Tabata set is just about four minutes in length. It is eight rounds of 20 seconds as hard as you can go with 10 seconds of recovery, preferably using a full-body modality, like an Airdyne bicycle, burpees or one of the elliptical trainers, where you're using both your arms and legs …"

Maximal Oxygen Uptake and Power

A third parameter, in addition to mitochondrial capacity and lactate tolerance is your VO2 max. To target and improve your VO2 max, you'll want your training sessions to be longer, about four to six minutes in duration with four to six minutes of recovery in between, for a 1-to-1 work-to-rest ratio.

"In my opinion, this is the hardest of them all," Greenfield says. "Going hard for four to six minutes then recovering for four to six minutes, then going hard for four to six minutes. You do that about four to six times.

You're talking about exercising for at least 30 minutes and sometimes for 45 to 50 minutes for your VO2 max session. But if you really want to improve it, that's the way that you get your maximum oxygen utilization up.

We've got those three parameters of your physiological fitness. And then you also have a few others. One would be your power. The power is going to be different than the muscle mass because if you're looking at your fast twitch muscle fibers, mass is not necessarily synonymous with power.

Mass is good for bone density. It's good for strength. It's good for being a glycogen container. But you also want functional power.

The best way to do that in my opinion, if you want to stay injury-free for life, is … bodyweight training done in a very fast explosive manner or with a very light medicine ball [or] sandbag a couple of times a week. Kettle bells are wonderful for this as well. A perfect example would be The New York Times seven-minute workout.²"

Strength and Stamina

Two additional fitness parameters that need to be addressed in a targeted manner are strength and stamina. Stamina basically refers to your fat-burning efficiency: your ability to exert yourself for long periods of time.

For stamina, Greenfield recommends taking a 1.5- to three hour-long walk, bike ride or paddle session — anything where your body is engaged in chronic repetitive motion for a long period of time — preferably in a fasted state, once a week. Alternatively, do 20 to 30 minutes of fasted cardio followed by a cold shower.

To improve muscle strength, Greenfield favors super-slow weight training, advocated by Dr. Doug McGuff. Alternatives include elastic band training systems and blood flow restriction (BFR) training, which is my personal favorite. Greenfield likes to combine BFR with super-slow training once or twice a week. More recently, McGuff has also embraced BFR in combination with super-slow training.

"When you add all that stuff up — [the exercises for] mitochondrial density, lactic tolerance, the VO2 max, the stamina, the power and the muscle building, it sounds like a lot. But really, you can do all that with the time commitment of about 45 to 50 minutes a day, plus that one longer session on the weekend.

It's a sustainable scenario for life, for busy people, that hits all those different physiological parameters. You're not leaving something off the table, whether it's your VO2 max or mitochondrial density or what have you. And then … if you really want to put on muscle, I found … a lot of nutrients that I think help quite a bit.

In the evenings, I always do a 12- to 16-hour fast so I get the autophagy. And then I do other things for [to trigger] hormesis or autophagy, like a lot of sauna, a lot of cold [exposure], those long-fasted walks in the morning."

As for nutrients, three supplements Greenfield recommends for optimizing muscle growth are:

While these may sound like supplements a pro athlete might use, aging individuals who want to put on muscle can reap equal benefits. The same goes for the exercise routines described above. Greenfield notes:

"That entire workout routine that I just described is in no way something I'll give to a professional athlete. I've trained marathoners and triathletes and they're out on two-hour hardcore bike rides and crushing track repeat workouts that last an hour or so. What I just described is actually very close to what you would want as a stay-fit-for-life-type of routine."

Breath Work for Health

In the interview, Greenfield also expounds on the benefits of breath work and breath holding. For all the details, please listen to the interview in its entirety. Why would you want to practice holding your breath? Greenfield explains:

"I do holotropic breath work, similar to what Stanislav Grof developed as an alternative to LSD for merging left and right hemispheres of the brain and taking you to a very cool place, the highest you can get without psychedelics really … I can hold my breath forever. It used to be about three to three and a half minutes on the exhale during holotropic breath work.

I'm up around six minutes now. Same thing when I do my breath hold walks. I'm walking and every time I pass a telephone pole, I see how long I can hold my breath.

I play with all these different breath devices when I'm walking. I have one called the Relaxator, which is based on Patrick McKeown's work in 'The Oxygen Advantage.' It trains you to retain simultaneously elevated levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Based on the Bohr effect, you get more oxygen delivered in the tissue when you do that. Essentially, all it means is that you exhale for a far longer period of time than you inhale.

The Relaxator [device] that you put in your mouth is basically like a resistance device where you breathe in through your nose, and then as you breathe out through your mouth, it's almost like you're breathing out through a straw or through very pursed lips.

You can go for a whole walk where you have this thing in your mouth … Your breathing just feels clear, crisp, clean and full when you're using that thing on a regular basis. I certainly noticed a dramatic effect from that."

The Oura Ring and Other Fitness Devices

Certain technologies and wearable devices can be quite helpful and motivating when you're changing or trying to improve your lifestyle and health. Greenfield was one of the first to adopt the Oura ring, which he purchased at a biohacking conference in Finland.

"I was looking for something that would track my sleep cycles and also be able to be put in airplane mode," he says. "I wound up buying one there at the conference and travelling with it back to the States. It was shortly after that that I wore it to some conference … where a lot of people asked me about it …

I like it. It gives me good data. What I use the most is the sleep data, and I find the step count data to be very motivating … I take at least 15,000 steps a day, because that's my marker for myself and it's very easy for me now to check at the end of the day.

If I'm at dinner and I look at my ring, which I do, and I haven't had my 15,000 steps, I go for a walk after dinner. I find it highly motivating. It sounds silly, but for step counts and for sleep tracking, I find it to be very useful.

For heart rate variability (HRV), it gives you decent data, although I still like to get my HRV measurement in the morning using the gold standard Bluetooth-enabled chest strap, lying in my back. I use an app called NatureBeat. It sends both my low-frequency and high-frequency, my sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system scores to the app.

It allows me to track [my HRV) in real time for about five minutes as I breathe. Since I wake up in the morning and lay there and do a little bit of journaling and breathing anyways, it's a much more accurate way for me to check my HRV.

But the Oura ring does take a multitude of five-minute readings, when you're prone in bed overnight. It's not electrical, so the accuracy is somewhat questionable, but it will give you a ballpark."

Boosting Mitochondrial Biogenesis With Cold Therapy

Another strategy Greenfield advocates is cold therapy, which stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis.

"I'm a big fan of cold thermogenesis, especially in a fasted state so that you're able to maximize the conversion of white adipose tissue to brown fat," Greenfield says. "A little bit of caffeine, capsaicin or green tea in the system beforehand can upregulate that process even more. I'm using cold for two to five minutes almost every day …

I always jump in [cold water] after a workout. Everybody says, 'You're going to blunt the hormetic response to exercise.' But research has shown you've got up to 10 plus minutes to do that in order to decrease muscle temperature to the extent where you actually blunt that hormetic effect.

Most of my workouts, because I do a cyclic carbohydrate diet, where I save all my carbohydrates for the evening and my workouts typically occur between about 4 and 7 p.m. … so I'm very insulin-sensitive going into that evening carbohydrate feed where I'll have my pumpkin, sweet potato, yam, dark chocolate, red wine or what have you.

But when I finish that workout, of course I am aware that working out close to bedtime, the increased core temperature decreases deep sleep cycles, so I always go jump in that cold pool when I finish the evening workout."

More Information

Greenfield details hundreds of biohacks in "Boundless: Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body & Defying Aging," so there's no shortage of alternatives to pick and choose from. It's bound to become a staple reference you can go back to again and again in years to come.

We also cover far more ground in the interview than I've summarized here, such as his views on stem cell therapy and how he uses hyperbaric oxygen treatment, so to hear more about Greenfield's personal longevity routine, be sure to listen to it in its entirety.

Greenfield's website, BenGreenfieldFitness.com, is also an excellent resource for all things health-related, as is his cutting edge podcast, where he interviews a wide variety of leaders in the health and fitness fields.

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Marc Sorenson, who has a doctorate in education, and who is the founder of the Sunlight Institute,¹ has written an excellent book, “Embrace the Sun,” in which he reveals why sunlight is foundational for optimal health and longevity.² While vitamin D supplements clearly have their place, you cannot obtain all the benefits you get from the sun when you swallow it.

For example, many of the benefits of sunlight, such as a decreased risk of heart disease, have to do with its ability to increase nitric oxide (NO) production in your body.³ Ultraviolet A (UVA) and the near-infrared light spectrum both increase NO, so you’re getting that benefit from both ends of the light spectrum. Fifty percent of sunlight is near-infrared.⁴

Near-infrared also increases cytochrome c oxidase (COO),⁵ the fourth cytochrome in the mitochondria, and neither of these benefits can be had from swallowing a pill. It’s really important to realize that your body is designed to benefit from sun exposure, and if you’re diabetic or have heart disease, it may well be one of the missing factors. As noted by Sorenson:

“When we get out in the sun, the research is incredible. The risk of heart disease and the risk of myocardial infarction drop dramatically in the summertime, and go up dramatically in the wintertime.

Meaning, there’s something there that has to be beyond vitamin D, because the vitamin D supplement studies with heart disease haven’t worked out well. What we know now is the main mover to prevent heart disease is probably NO, which is a potent vasodilator. It opens them up.

Blood pressure can go down dramatically with regular sun exposure, which it does. Among people who are getting sunlight on a regular basis, the risk of dropping dead of a heart attack goes down rather dramatically ...

You can produce 20,000 international units (IU) in 20 minutes of ideal unobstructed sun exposure on both sides of the body …”

How the Sun Avoidance Conspiracy Was Born

Importantly, for every death caused by diseases related to excessive sun exposure — such as common skin cancers (basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas) as well as some other uncommon diseases — there are 328 deaths caused by diseases related to sunlight deprivation,⁶ according to Sorenson’s data.

According to a 2013 study,⁷ for every skin cancer death in northern Europe, between 60 and 100 people die from stroke or heart disease related to hypertension alone. Knowing your risk of dying from heart disease or stroke is 80 times greater on average than from skin cancer should really put things into perspective.⁸ Clearly, sun avoidance is hardly the lifesaving strategy dermatologists make it out to be.

I’d always wondered why there was such an avid aversion of sun exposure within the dermatology community. It just doesn’t make any sense — until I read Sorensen’s book, in which he dissects the motivation behind this illogical stance. He explains:

“The powers of darkness, as I call them, are very highly invested in the sunscreen industry. About 70 percent of the funding comes from the sunscreen industry. Of course, with a dermatological society, they back those who produce sunscreens.

We’ve got a vast conspiracy with the sunscreen industry. That’s one of the main things. Besides … medicine in general is not that interested in keeping people well, because if they do get people well — and sunlight will do that to a great extent — they’re out of business. There is a conspiracy out there. I’ve written a very large chapter about that and how they used their anti-sun [propaganda] to keep people sick.”

On Skin Cancer

There are two basic types of skin cancer: melanoma and nonmelanoma. Importantly, 75 percent of all melanoma occurs on areas of the body that never see the sun, Sorenson notes, and indoor workers have double the rate of lethal melanoma skin cancer than outdoor workers.⁹ A primary risk factor for melanoma appears to be intermittent sun exposure and sunburn, especially when you’re young.

According to data presented in his book, in 1935 about 1 in 1,500 people contracted melanoma. As of 2002/2003, that rate was 1 in 50. Between 2006 and 2015, melanoma rates increased 3 percent per year,¹⁰ so rates just keep going up.

“The more we use sunscreen, the more melanoma we get. Australia’s proven that for many, many years,” Sorenson says. “They use more sunscreen than any people on Earth, yet they have the highest prevalence of melanoma …

Melanoma increased by 3,000 percent between 1935 and, let’s say, 2002 to 2003. That’s a tremendous increase. Sun exposure during that time, by my government figures, has gone down by over 90 percent. We have a 90-percent decrease in sun exposure and a 3,000-percent increase in melanoma.

How does that add up for their theory? It doesn’t add up at all. They’re now beginning to realize that, I think, little by little. But still, they’re in that hip pocket of the medical schools that promote sunscreens and such.”

As noted by Sorenson, the sun actually protects you from melanoma. It does not protect again the more common skin cancers, though. However, protection from those can be had from a diet high in antioxidants.

Sun Avoidance Kills Far More People Than Sun-Related Diseases

Nonmelanoma skin cancers are primarily divided into basal cell and squamous cell cancer, and sun exposure does increase your risk of those cancers. The thing to remember is that these are typically nonlethal. The relative safety of skin cancer is craftily hidden, however, by combining statistics for nonfatal and fatal skin cancers.

Most of the deaths attributed to nonmelanoma skin cancers (basal and squamous cell), which number around 4,420 per year, according to cancer.net,¹¹ are in those who have severely compromised immune systems. Melanoma, meanwhile, kills an estimated 7,230 people per year in the U.S.^12,13 It’s also important to realize that common skin cancer does not turn into the deadlier melanoma.

When you consider the statistics, it seems clear that sun avoidance is actually increasing your risk of deadly skin cancer, and that by exposing your skin to the sun, you will decrease your risk of melanoma.

What’s more, sun avoidance will also raise your risk of internal cancers, along with a long list of chronic diseases, the mortality rates of which are far more alarming than melanoma. As mentioned earlier, for every sun-related death there are 328 deaths from sun-deficiency-related diseases.

Sorenson’s book also cites Iranian research showing women who cover themselves completely have a 10-times higher risk of breast cancer compared to women who don’t cover themselves completely. That’s a 1,000-percent greater risk of breast cancer. Yet women are being told to avoid sun exposure at all costs to protect their health.

You Can Benefit From Sun Exposure Year-Round

During wintertime at latitudes above 22 degrees you’re not going to be able to get enough ultraviolet B (UVB) exposure on your skin to significantly raise your vitamin D level, unless you are at high altitudes in the mountains.

However, you’re still getting other photoproducts such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), NO and others. They will be produced even in the winter when the sunlight is too weak to trigger vitamin D production.

“I tan every day in St. George, Utah,” Sorenson says. “It may be 40 degrees F. outside; I step into the garage, so I’m protected from the breezes. I get out in the sun every day. It’s not doing me a bit of good for vitamin D, but I do have my own tanning bed. I can go into that tanning bed and it produces a dramatic amount of vitamin D.

So will a good vitamin D sunlamp … Sometimes I fudge and take a vitamin D pill, but I would rather [use my tanning bed] because it’s a lot more natural than taking a vitamin D pill, in my opinion. That’s the way that I do it …

Of course, tanning beds have been much maligned, [yet it] dramatically increases bone strength. It dramatically increases vitamin D levels. It reduces the risk of psoriasis and eczema. It does many other things that they never give any credit for …

I was just thinking about the new study on Parkinson’s disease, [which] showed people who are out in the bright sun daily, regularly have 1/50th the risk of ever getting Parkinson’s. That’s fairly new research. I was stunned by that research.”

Avoid Sunburn at All Costs

Naturally, regardless of the season, you want to make sure you do not get sunburn. Once your skin turns the lightest shade of pink, move into the shade or put on clothing and a hat to cover up your skin. Beyond that point, there’s no benefit, only the risk of skin damage. As noted by Sorenson:

“Your body shuts it down at that point. In fact, your body will shut down your vitamin D production, along with anything else, that it doesn’t want. There is a very interesting piece of research … that shows people who use sunscreen have anywhere from three to six times the risk of sunburn.

Another one was a big meta-analysis, which showed there was no benefit whatsoever in using sunscreens. None at all. In fact, there was a slight increase in the risk of all skin cancers together.”

Sun Exposure Decreases Risk of Autoimmune Disease

Aside from lowering your risk for a variety of cancers, including melanoma, sun exposure also radically decreases your risk of autoimmune diseases. (Diseases in which your body identifies proteins and other structures made by the body as foreign and destroys them.) Two classic examples are multiple sclerosis (MS) and Type 1 diabetes.

Sorenson cites research from Finland showing vitamin D supplementation decreased the risk of Type 1 diabetes by five- to sixfold. When compared to Venezuelan children, who get ample sun exposure, Finnish children had 400 times the risk of Type 1 diabetes.

Researchers have also found an inverse risk between vitamin D status and MS risk,¹⁴ and studies have confirmed MS is far less prevalent in areas near the equator, such as Ecuador, where prevalence ranges from a low of 0.75 per 100,000 inhabitants in the South, to a high of 5.05 per 100,000 in the capital city of Quito.¹⁵

What’s a Healthy Vitamin D Level?

Science has shown 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L), which is typically considered the cutoff for vitamin D sufficiency, is still grossly inadequate and dangerous to health. For optimal disease protection, you need a vitamin D blood level between 60 and 80 ng/mL¹⁶ (150 to 200 nmol/L).

Once you get above 60 ng/mL, the risk for cancer and other chronic illness declines dramatically — in the case of breast cancer by more than 80 percent.¹⁷

There appears to be variations in the ideal level, however, depending on the condition in question. Sorenson cites research showing that athletic performance, and the risk of injury due to falling among nonathletes, improved until they reached a level of about 63 ng/mL (158 nmol/L), at which point performance and risk of falling started to slightly decline again.

On the other hand, in the case of breast cancer, which is a major concern for women, levels upward of 80 ng/mL (200 nmol/L) appear to be the most protective. When aiming for those higher levels, though, I believe getting your vitamin D from sunlight becomes all the more important, especially if you’re seeking protection from diseases such as heart disease.

Because, remember, swallowing a vitamin D pill will not trigger NO production like sun exposure does, and increasing NO appears to be a significant way by which sun exposure lowers your heart disease risk. Sunlight also boosts your serotonin level, a neurotransmitter thought to play an important role in depression.

In his book, Sorenson cites research showing that spending the entire day in bright sunlight increases your serotonin level by 800 percent. A precursor to serotonin — melatonin — is also crucial for sleep and cancer prevention.

Sunlight and Visual Acuity

Myopia, with people needing glasses at an early age, and presbyopia, which is when you need reading glasses, are also on the rise, and this too may be a side effect of insufficient sun exposure. Sorenson explains:

“One of the studies was done comparing people in Singapore to people who grew up in Australia. They had the same ethnic background, basically Oriental-Asian background. Those who were playing in the sun in Australia had about one-sixth the risk of getting myopia.

It is so important. If we don’t get out and we don’t focus [our eyes] in the sun, [if] we don’t look into the distance — that may be one of the reasons we don’t get enough vitamin D, we don’t get enough serotonin, NO and any of the other photoproducts produced by the sun.

There is a pandemic of myopia. We’re seeing it here in the United States with the Asian kids. In many cases, as they get older, it will lead to blindness. Of course, they always talk about macular degeneration and so forth, but there’s a dichotomy here, because if you have macular degeneration, they tell you to totally stay out of the sun.

It does tend to relate to sun exposure. At the same time, vitamin D levels that are high tend to reduce the risk. So, what do you do? Stop getting your sun and take a vitamin D pill? I don’t think so. I think if we’re in the sun the way we ought to be and eat the polyphenols and so forth … that’s probably the way to prevent most of the older-age diseases.

Now, as far as presbyopia … I’ve had it since I was about 40. I just take some reading glasses and I can get along with reading my fine print. I wasn’t able to escape it. It runs in my family. I think there must be some genetic component there, because I was out in the sun and I never had any myopia.”

As for age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), which is the leading cause of blindness among the elderly, research by Dr. Chris Knobbe, an ophthalmologist who wrote a book on the risk factors of ARMD, whom I’ll be interviewing on this topic, has compiled massive amounts of data showing that ARMD did not exist before 1930 and this appears largely due to the consumption of processed foods, especially processed vegetable oils.

Sugar, of course, does not help either. That combination causes massive degeneration of your vision, which is very difficult to reverse in its advanced stages. But if you catch it at an early stage, you can reverse it using dietary changes.

For presbyopia, I recommend not wearing sunglasses and avoiding reading glasses. As you age, there’s a tendency to want to make that font bigger to see text better, but I recommend resisting that temptation, as it’s only going to make matters worse.

Also, avoid squinting and simply blink instead. Blink multiple times until the text becomes clear, then relax your eyes to refocus. Brighter light may also help you read without increasing the font size on your tablet or computer, or using reading glasses.

Sunlight for Bone Health

Sorenson also recounts some of the historical data supporting the idea that sun exposure benefits health in important ways and boosts athletic performance. Aside from breast health, research shows sun exposure also helps prevent osteoporosis, which is yet another significant concern for women in particular. Sorenson says:

“In Spain, women who were sun seekers, those who were always outside, trying to tan … as much as possible, those women had 1/11th the risk of ever having a hip fracture as women who were avoiding the sun. That one point alone should get every woman out in the sun, because all women are afraid not only of breast cancer but also of osteoporosis.

Women need sunlight to prevent it. Whether vitamin D pills will work, I am not convinced. They don’t give them enough vitamin D so they can’t really tell in the research. But we know that sunlight works to prevent hip fractures. Boy, that’s a big one to me …

[Higher] vitamin D levels also dramatically help your brain … People think better … You are 3.5 times more likely to end up in a rest home [assisted care facility] if you do not have a good vitamin D level … [If] you’ve got a mom, dad, uncle or whoever is in danger of going there, I think it can be prevented … They can stay at home, maybe with a son or daughter, and they wouldn’t need to worry about them injuring themselves every other second.”

More Information

To learn more, I strongly recommend picking up a copy of Sorenson’s book, “Embrace the Sun.” Strongly emphasized in the book is the importance of sunlight for the prevention of cardiovascular disease — again, by way of boosting NO, which lowers your blood pressure and increases blood flow, more so than raising your vitamin D.

Sorenson believes erectile dysfunction (ED), for men, may be a related problem that could be addressed through improved sun exposure, as one of the major reasons for ED is lack of NO. Cialis or Viagra is not the answer. Sunlight is.

“I think … we have to have holistic sun [exposure] again,” Sorenson says. “We need to have every single photoproduct produced. I have written down about five more photoproducts I haven’t even had the time to study. We don’t know what they do yet.

But why would you go for a vitamin D pill when you could get out in the sun and get all of the available [photoproducts] that we don’t even know [the benefits of] yet? For optimal human health, we need to be in the sunlight.”

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Business entrepreneur, model and mother-of-two Elle Macpherson credits this approach with transforming her health and getting “the body” back on track, but how does the diet actually work? Laura Bond finds out. 

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In 2013, the world produced 299 million tons of plastic, of which polystyrene — one brand name is Styrofoam — is one part. A report by the Worldwatch Institute showed that this number increased by 3.9% from the year before.¹ As demonstrated in this short video, polystyrene currently may account for one-third of the contents of landfills; worms may be one answer to the problem.

Expanded polystyrene foam (EPF) was first discovered in 1839,² becoming popular during World War II in material used to build military aircraft. Production grew at a phenomenal rate during this time; in 1946 Dow Chemical Company began working to make it more flexible. This resulted in the polystyrene product we now know: It’s moisture resistant and light weight because 98% of it is air.

Unfortunately, polystyrene doesn’t decompose. It does degrade somewhat, but not enough to keep marine life from eating it, filling their stomachs with plastic so they essentially starve to death for lack of nourishment. The chemicals in polystyrene harm wildlife on land, too, as they leach out and eventually make their way into the food chain.

Despite this knowledge, some sing the praises of this plastic, citing an overall life cycle assessment that has a lower footprint than other types of packaging material. However, despite the accolades, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio did not agree and, in 2015, he announced a law to ban its use in all five boroughs,³ “removing nearly 30,000 tons of … waste from our landfills, streets and waterways.”

The ban was not enforced until July 1, 2019,⁴ making New York the largest city to ban the product from use. Miami Beach, Seattle, San Diego and Washington, D.C., also have bans in place, while the states of Connecticut, Maine and Maryland are in various stages of legislation to ban use.

Polystyrene Responsible for One-Third of Landfill Content

In 2017 Metro New York reported that New York City’s department of sanitation handled 12,000 tons of garbage every day.⁵ On a nationwide scale, EPA data⁶ from 2017 showed that the U.S. generated 268 million tons of waste, of which 13% was plastic.

While that doesn’t tell you how much of the city’s or nation’s trash is polystyrene, researchers at Stanford University⁷ found that Americans dispose of 2.5 billion plastic foam cups every year.

That represents only a small portion of the plates, takeout containers and building materials in which polystyrene is used. But to give you give an idea of how serious this issue is, the Los Angeles Times⁸ reported in 2017 that, of the 9.1 billion tons of plastics ever produced, 5.4 billion has ended up in landfills or somewhere else in the environment.

The ban on polystyrene in New York was triggered in part by its physical properties: It is easily carried by the wind and difficult to remove because it is brittle. It develops an electrostatic charge causing it to cling to other material. The ban in New York affected 850,000 students served lunches on foam trays.

To give the product other attributes, the foam can be laced with chemicals such as flame retardants and other endocrine disrupting chemicals. But, exposure to flame retardants during pregnancy is associated with a lower IQ in children⁹ and neurodevelopmental disorders.¹⁰ One way this might happen is the influence flame retardants have on thyroid hormones.

Environmental Impact of Mealworms May Be Profound

In a detailed 45-page report, Styrofoam critics presented evidence rebutting multiple arguments that polystyrene has a smaller carbon footprint and that society could not continue to function without it. The researchers concluded:¹¹

“Though Styrofoam is relatively inexpensive to produce, the social costs of its production involve the use of hazardous chemicals, fossil fuels, and the emission of greenhouse gases.

The lightweight yet durable nature of Styrofoam that makes it good for single-use consumer products also yields it not readily recyclable and leads to its accumulation in landfills and as litter in waterways and highways. Finally, though Styrofoam itself is unreactive, the compounds used in its production have been identified as harmful to human health.”

To say this is a serious issue is an understatement — however, there may be hope in a recent study by Stanford researchers who found that little mealworms may hold part of the answer to the giant plastics problem facing the Earth. In past research,¹² data showed mealworms could eat through the foam and other forms of plastic.

In January 2018¹³ a published study revealed the optimal conditions for consuming plastic happened at 77 Fahrenheit (25 Celsius) with 6% to 11% of bran supplementing the polystyrene. This same study found the second generation of mealworms fed a bran and polystyrene mixture could degrade more plastic, faster.

A new team¹⁴ looked at whether the same species of mealworms could eat polystyrene laced with toxic chemicals and still be safely consumed by livestock.¹⁵ The researchers sought to determine where the toxic chemicals would be deposited after the mealworms consumed the plastic, hoping for a proof of concept to derive some value from the tons of plastic waste littering the planet.¹⁶

In this study the worms were fed a steady diet of plastic infused with HBCD, a chemical the EU plans to ban because it is a neurotoxin and an endocrine disruptor. After eating the plastic, the worms excreted 90% of the HBCD in 24 hours and the remaining after 48 hours.

What’s more, the worms appeared as healthy as those fed a normal diet, and the shrimp that ate the experimental worms also appeared to remain healthy. One of team member commented: "This is definitely not what we expected to see. It's amazing that mealworms can eat a chemical additive without it building up in their body over time."

The mealworms were able to degrade the plastic during digestion. They also were able to separate the toxic chemical from the plastic and concentrate it, possibly making it easier to control.¹⁷ The researchers note while this may be helpful, it is not nearly as effective as eliminating the use of neurotoxic chemicals.

The mealworms are easy to cultivate and are known as an agricultural pest, as they eat nearly everything in their path. The scientists pointed out that it was the population of bacteria living in the worms’ guts that actually degraded the plastic, not the mechanical digestion in the mealworm — so you can see that, even for a little mealworm, their gut bacteria is important.

Flame Retardant Chemicals Remain Hazardous After Eating

The mealworms may be one strategy to help reduce plastic pollution, but the danger of toxic chemicals within the plastic remains. In the mid-1970s, certain household items were required to be treated with flame retardant chemicals, including furniture, carpeting and children’s clothing and toys.

Legislators may have believed they were helping preserve public health, but they failed to account for the damage the chemicals would have on children and adults as they leached out of the products into the environment.

The form of flame retardant currently in use is terribly dangerous, since it may be inhaled, swallowed and absorbed through the skin, accumulating in your fatty tissue.¹⁸ The earlier flame retardants were from a family of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which were replaced with organophosphate ester flame retardants (OPFRs) when the PBDEs were phased out.

Scientists have found OPFRs are often at levels 10 to 100 times higher in water, air and dust than were PBDEs.¹⁹ Additionally, they were also found in nearly every person who participated in research studies. In several, data showed the OPFRs were at levels high enough to negatively affect healthy brain development in children and fertility in adults.

It was expected OPFRs would be less persistent then PBDEs in the environment. However, predicting their presence is difficult to measure based on the compounds’ physical and chemical properties. You'll find a more in-depth discussion of the dangers related to flame retardant chemicals currently in use at "Experts Fear Flame Retardants Are Triggering a Health Crisis."

Gut Bacteria Doing the Heavy Lifting

As mentioned, the researchers in the most recent study pointed to the bacteria inhabiting the mealworm gut as crucial to the process of degrading the polystyrene based on work published in 2015.²⁰ In this study scientists were able to demonstrate the eradication of specific bacterial species in the mealworms' gut eliminated the ability to degrade polystyrene.

The researchers were able to stop the ability to depolymerize the plastic by feeding them gentamicin. By analyzing excrement, they found a bacterial strain, Exiguobacterium sp. strain YT2, in the gut of the mealworm was essential to the biodegradation of the material.

Importance of the Gut Microbiome

Evidence from small mealworms more than adequately demonstrates the importance of gut bacteria. The composition of your gut microbiome may be as distinct as your fingerprint and plays an enormous role in your health and disease prevention. It influences your immune system and a variety of internal organs, such as your lungs, breasts and liver.²¹

One study by the National Institutes of Health showed the gut microbiome could alter immune cells in the liver and trigger tumor growth.²² Your gut microbiome also has a strong influence over the development of intestinal conditions such as celiac disease or food allergies.

However, it also influences obesity,²³ depression,²⁴ chronic fatigue²⁵ and Parkinson's disease.²⁶ One factor may be the bidirectional role the gut plays in sleep. Research data show a link between insomnia and depression, that may be altered by the composition of the gut microbiome.²⁷ Alterations in sleep cycles may increase your risk of health damage.

Although it is impossible to determine the exact diversification of an ideal microbiome, researchers have been able to change the composition in some with Type 2 diabetes to reverse the disease.²⁸

While most experienced a short-term improvement, this may have been related to the state of the gut microbiome before transplantation and the care and feeding of the new bacterial species after transplantation.

Changing Small Habits May Reap Big Rewards

An effective means of protecting the health of your gut microbiome is to provide a rich source of probiotics by eating fermented foods. You can easily and inexpensively make these at home as I demonstrate in this short video. Fermented foods can be an outstanding source of essential nutrients, such as Vitamin K2.

They help to boost your immune system and may be some of the best chelators available. As potent detoxifiers, fermented foods draw out toxins and heavy metals from the bloodstream. Fermented foods also provide a natural variety of microflora, much wider than you can receive in supplement form.

In addition to adding beneficial microflora to the gut, eating prebiotic foods can help them thrive. Prebiotics are found in fiber rich foods good bacteria prefer. On the other hand, pathogenic disease-causing microbes thrive on sugar and carbohydrates. When you focus on a whole, natural foods diet plan you support the growth of beneficial gut bacteria and help keep harmful bacteria in check.

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When it comes to improving your health, some of the simplest strategies can have a tremendous impact. Sweating in a sauna, for example, has many great health benefits, including expelling of toxins, improving blood circulation, killing disease-causing microbes and improving mitochondrial function.

The key word here is sweating. Just because you are in the sauna doesn’t mean you get the benefits. The sauna has to heat your core temperature up a few degrees, your heart rate needs to increase and you need to have a river of sweat, otherwise you simply will not get these benefits. This is important as many infrared saunas fail to heat you sufficiently to achieve these benefits.

Research has even shown that regular sauna use correlates with a reduced risk of death from any cause, including lethal cardiovascular events, and may help stave off Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

For example, researchers in Finland — a country where most homes come equipped with a sauna — found that men who used a sauna four to seven times a week for an average of 15 minutes had a 66% lower risk of developing dementia, and 65% lower risk of Alzheimer’s, compared to men who used the sauna just once a week.^1,2

How Sauna Bathing Promotes Good Heart Health

Another long-term study^3,4 by the same Finnish research team, published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2015, revealed that men who used the Finnish-style, dry heat sauna seven times per week also cut their risk of death from fatal heart problems in half, compared to those who used it only once a week.

This held true even after confounding factors such as smoking, blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels were factored in. In regard to time, the greatest benefits were found among those who sweated it out for 19 minutes or more each session.

Both the duration and the frequency had dose dependent effects, so the longer the exposure time of each session and the more frequent the sessions, the better the outcome.

One mechanism for this effect is thought to be related to the fact that heat stresses your heart and body similar to that of exercise, thus prompting similar effects. This includes increased blood flow to your heart and muscles (which increases athletic endurance) and increased muscle mass due to greater levels of heat-shock proteins and human growth hormone (HGH).

In the video lecture^5,6 above, Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D., reviews how sauna bathing can be used as an exercise mimetic (i.e., an exercise-mimicking tool) to increase your longevity and health span. As noted by Patrick:⁷

“Several studies have shown that frequent sauna bathing (4-7 times per week, 174°F for 20 min.) is associated with a 50% lower risk for fatal heart disease, 60% lower risk for sudden cardiac death, 51% lower risk for stroke, and 46% lower risk for hypertension.

Just a single sauna session has been shown to lower blood pressure, improve heart rate variability, and improve arterial compliance. Some of the positive benefits of the sauna on heart health may have to do with similar physiological changes that also occur during physical exercise.

For example, there is a 50-70% redistribution of blood flow away from the core to the skin to facilitate sweating. You start to sweat. Heart rate increases up to 150 beats per minute which correspond to moderate-intensity physical exercise.

Cardiac output (which is a measure of the amount of work the heart performs in response to the body’s need for oxygen) increases by 60-70%. Immediately after sauna use, blood pressure and resting heart rate are lower than baseline similar to physical activity.”

What Studies Show

Patrick reviews several studies in her lecture. In addition to those already mentioned, a study⁸ published in 2018, using the same Finnish cohort, looked specifically at stroke risk over a follow-up period of 14.9 years. As in previous studies, benefits were dose dependent.

Compared to once-a-week sauna use, those who had four to seven sessions per week had a 61% lower risk for stroke. A similar association was found for ischemic stroke but not for hemorrhagic stroke. As noted by the authors:

“This long-term follow-up study shows that middle-aged to elderly men and women who take frequent sauna baths have a substantially reduced risk of new-onset stroke.”

Heat stress from sauna bathing has also been shown to lower your risk of high blood pressure. In one such study,⁹ which had a median follow-up of 24.7 years, the hazard ratio for high blood pressure in those using the sauna two to three times a week was 0.76, compared to 0.54 for those using it four to seven times a week.

In other words, using it two to three times a week may lower your risk of high blood pressure by 24%, while using it four to seven times a week can push your risk down by 46%, and this is likely one of the mechanisms by which sauna bathing helps lower your cardiovascular mortality risk.

Even a single sauna session has been shown to reduce pulse wave velocity, blood pressure, mean arterial pressure and left ventricular ejection time.¹⁰ Here, systolic blood pressure decreased from an average of 137 mm Hg before sauna bathing to 130 mm Hg afterward. Diastolic blood pressure decreased from 82 to 75 mm Hg, mean arterial pressure from 99.4 to 93.6 mm Hg and left ventricular ejection time from 307 to 278 m/s.

Different Types of Saunas

Most studies on sauna use involve wet Finnish saunas. Traditionally, rocks are heated to a temperature of about 174 degrees Fahrenheit in a wood burning stove, and water is then poured on the rocks to create steam.

But there are several other types of saunas to choose from as well, including far-infrared saunas and near-infrared emitters and lamps.¹¹ Most sauna makers would have you believe that the difference between an infrared sauna and the traditional Finnish-style saunas (whether wet or dry) is that the Finnish-style sauna heats you up from the outside in, like an oven.

But this is simply untrue. The wavelengths of a far-infrared sauna only penetrate a few millimeters, so if you have a far-infrared sauna, unless the temperature in the sauna is around 170 degrees F, it is unlikely you will be getting many benefits.

That said, near-infrared saunas have several additional benefits over other types of saunas, including far-infrared saunas. For starters, it penetrates your tissue more effectively than far-infrared because wavelengths under 900 nanometers (nm) in the near-infrared are not absorbed by water like the higher wavelengths in mid- and far-infrared, and thus can penetrate tissues more deeply.

When you look at the rainbow spectrum, the visible part of light ends in red. Infrared-A (near-infrared) is the beginning of the invisible light spectrum following red. This in turn is followed by infrared-B (mid-infrared) and infrared-C (far-infrared).

While they cannot be seen, the mid- and far-infrared range can be felt as heat. This does not apply to near-infrared, however, which has a wavelength between 700 and 1,400 nm. To learn more about this, see my interview with Dr. Alexander Wunsch, a world class expert on photobiology.

Near-Infrared Radiation Is Important for Optimal Health

My personal sauna preference is the near-infrared, as this range affects your health in a number of important ways,¹² primarily through its interaction with chromophores in your body. 

Chromophores are molecules that absorb light, found in your mitochondria and in water molecules. (To make sure the near-infrared rays can penetrate your skin, avoid wearing clothing when using a near-infrared sauna.)

In your mitochondria, there's a specific light-absorbing molecule called cytochrome c oxidase (CCO), which is part of the mitochondrial electron transport chain and absorbs near-infrared light around 830 nm.

CCO is involved in the energy production within the mitochondria. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — cellular energy — is the end product. ATP is the fuel your cells need for all of their varied functions, including ion transport, synthesizing and metabolism.

Most people don’t realize that light is an important and necessary fuel just like food. When your bare skin is exposed to near-infrared light, CCO will increase ATP production.

Near-infrared light is also healing and repairing, and helps optimize many other biological functions. (Its absence in artificial light sources like LEDs and fluorescents is what makes these light sources do dangerous to your health.)

We now know that mitochondrial dysfunction is at the heart of most health problems and chronic diseases, including many signs of aging. For these reasons, I strongly recommend using a sauna that offers a full spectrum of infrared radiation, not just far-infrared.

Just keep in mind that most infrared saunas emit dangerous electromagnetic fields (EMFs), so look for one that emits low or no non-native EMFs. You need to look beyond their claim and measure them, as many state they have no EMF but have only addressed magnetic fields and still generate off the chart electric fields. Ultimately, you need to independently validate any claims, as some of the biggest names in the business are doing this.

Far-Infrared Sauna Benefits Chronic Heart Conditions

All of that said, in her lecture, Patrick discusses the benefits of Waon Therapy or far-infrared dry sauna, which has been used in some studies. Far-infrared saunas typically have a max temperature of about 140 degrees F (60 degrees Celsius). Because it’s not as hot, the recommended duration is typically around 45 minutes, and the frequency is daily. Two studies looking at Waon Therapy for heart health include:

How Your Body Responds to Heat

As mentioned, one of the reasons sauna bathing improves health has to do with the fact that it mimics the stress your body undergoes during exercise. While “stress” is typically perceived as a bad thing, intermittent stressors such as exercise and temporary heat stress actually produces beneficial physiological changes.

As explained by Patrick, once your core temperature reaches 102.2 degrees F. (39 degrees C), blood is redistributed away from your core toward the surface of your skin to facilitate sweating. You can easily get an inexpensive ear thermometer to measure and confirm that your temperature is reaching this level.

Your heart rate increases from about 60 beats per minute to about 150, equivalent to moderate intensity exercise, and your cardiac output increases by 60% to 70%. This process is the same whether your core temperature is raised by exercise or sitting still in a sauna.

As demonstrated in a June 2019 study,^15,16 spending 25 relaxing minutes in a sauna has the same physical effects as bicycling on a stationary bike with a load of 100 watts for 25 minutes. Heart rate and blood pressure were found to be identical for both activities, with blood pressure and heart rate increasing during the sessions, followed by a drop below baseline levels afterward.

This prompted the researchers to conclude that “The acute heat exposure in the sauna is a burden comparable to moderate physical exercise,” and that “The sustained decrease in blood pressure after heat exposure suggests that the sauna bath will have a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular system.”¹⁷

Sauna Bathing Improves Autonomic Nervous System Balance

Recent research¹⁸ has also demonstrated that sauna bathing helps modulate your autonomic nervous system, which governs your stress responses.¹⁹ To examine the acute effects of a sauna session, the researchers looked at the participants’ heart rate variability (HRV), which is an indicator of your body’s capacity to respond to stress.

Your autonomic nervous system has two branches: the parasympathetic branch (“rest and digest”) and the sympathetic branch (“fight or flight”). HRV is an indicator for how these two branches are functioning. Higher HRV means your body is better equipped to handle stress. As reported in the abstract:

“A total of 93 participants … with cardiovascular risk factors were exposed to a single sauna session (duration: 30 min; temperature: 73 °C; humidity: 10-20%) and data on HRV variables were collected before, during and after sauna.

Time and frequency-domain HRV variables were significantly modified by the single sauna session, with most of HRV variables tending to return near to baseline values after 30 min recovery. Resting HR [heart rate] was lower at the end of recovery (68/min) compared to pre-sauna (77/min).

A sauna session transiently diminished the vagal component, whereas the cooling down period after sauna decreased low frequency power and increased high frequency power in HRV, favorably modulating the autonomic nervous system balance.

This study demonstrates that a session of sauna bathing induces an increase in HR. During the cooling down period from sauna bathing, HRV increased which indicates the dominant role of parasympathetic activity and decreased sympathetic activity of cardiac autonomic nervous system.

Future randomized controlled studies are needed to show if HR and HRV changes underpins the long-term cardiovascular effects induced by regular sauna bathing.”

Sauna Bathing Improves Longevity

Seeing how sauna bathing protects and improves heart and vascular health and lowers your risk of Alzheimer’s, it’s no major surprise to find that it also increases longevity. In fact, it’s precisely what you’d expect.

The 2015 JAMA Internal Medicine study²⁰ mentioned earlier in this article also looked at all-cause mortality, in addition to sudden cardiac death, fatal coronary heart disease and fatal CVD.

Sauna bathing four to seven times a week lowered all-cause mortality by 40% after taking into account confounding factors such as age, blood pressure, smoking and other variables, while two to three sessions per week lowered it by 24%.

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Source: JAMA Internal Medicine 2015;175(4):542-548, Table 2

How Sauna Bathing Increases Longevity

As explained by Patrick, the life extending benefits of sauna bathing are related to the workings of heat shock proteins, which respond to stress (be it heat stress, exercise or fasting) by:

• Protecting protein structures, i.e., maintaining their proper three-dimensional properties inside your cells, which is crucial for their proper function
• Preventing protein aggregation (which is a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s)
• Slowing muscular atrophy

Heat shock proteins have also been shown to play an important role in human longevity. Patrick cites a 2010 study²¹ showing the heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) gene plays a functional role in human survival and life extension.

This makes sense considering Hsp70 is an anti-inflammatory protein involved in cellular maintenance and repair mechanisms. So, whether you have one copy, two copies or are a non-carrier can influence your longevity.

If you are not one of the lucky carriers of this allele, you can boost your survival range by taking regular saunas, as it increases your heat shock proteins regardless. According to Patrick, heat shock proteins stay elevated for up to 48 hours after you’ve finished your sauna.

Another way by which sauna bathing increases longevity (and health span) is by lowering systemic inflammation, which not only plays a significant role in the aging process but also underpins virtually all chronic diseases that ultimately take a toll on life span. Sauna use has also been shown to increase anti-inflammatory biomarkers, such as IL-10.²²

In one 2018 study,²³ people who reported more frequent sauna use had lower C-reactive protein levels, which is a blood marker for inflammation. Sauna frequency of use and mean C-reactive protein levels were as follows:

• Once a week: 2.41 mmol/L
• Two to three times a week: 2.00 mmol/L
• Four to seven times a week: 1.65 mmol/L

A Sauna Can Be a Great Health Investment

As you can see, sauna bathing can go a long way toward improving your health and increasing your life span. Here, I’ve focused primarily on heart and cardiovascular health, but there are many other health benefits as well, including improved mood, pain reduction, increased metabolism, detoxification, skin rejuvenation, stress reduction and immune support, just to name a few.

To learn more, listen to Patrick’s lecture. You can also find more information in my previous articles, “Sauna Therapy May Reduce Risk of Dementia and Boost Brain Health,” “How to Achieve Superior Detoxification with Near-Infrared Light,” and “Are Saunas the Next Big Performance-Enhancing Drug?"

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