32 takeaways from the BIGGEST biohacking book ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review of "Boundless" by Ben Greenfield by @jeroseland on 3Speak
I review Ben Greenfield's magnum opus book "Boundless," exploring advanced Biohacking techniques, longevity strategies, and the importance of integrating ancient wisdom with modern science. In this...
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Hey, this is Jonathan with Limitless Mindset, and this is my biohacker book review of the biggest biohacking book, which is Boundless by Ben Greenfield. And this one gets four stars from me. I'll explain why. So I am doing this review with a sense, a bit of a sense of accomplishment. Having just finished his, it was 1100 pages on my, on my e-reader, it came out to 1100 pages. And it is Ben Greenfield's Magnus Opus. It is... It is a big book, and I do feel accomplished, having finished it. And I am something of a super fan of Ben's. I read and listen to nearly everything. that he puts out. And I do recommend this book enthusiastically, but actually I do have some criticisms of the book. Again, it only gets four stars from me, but what I'm going to do is those criticisms. I'm going to get into those at the end of this podcast, because... There's some really good stuff in the book that I want to deliver to you here, and I don't want to solely that with the reasoned criticism that I do have of it. I don't want to turn you off from something that I think could be really an edifying book for you. Because for me, it was... It was a great book. And so I'm sure that you're familiar with Ben Greenfield. He's a health fitness biohacking podcaster. He's probably either number one or number two, maybe number three, health fitness biohacking podcaster out there. And I've read, at this point, several podcasters books where, and this is something... Podcasters should think a little bit more before they put out books, because there's a lot of podcaster's books where what they do is they make a book, but it's basically kind of copy pasting transcripts of interviews that they did on their podcasts. So they have bookified their podcasts. And in my view, in my experience, this just doesn't translate all that great. If I wanted interviews, then I just go listen to interviews. So please, if you're a podcaster, stop doing this. But thankfully, Ben didn't do that with Boundless. It is a real book. It flows like a real book. It's not a bunch of interview transcripts. And it follows the compelling... format that good nonfiction should. It mostly follows this format, which is a four-part, four-part stack of first story, second theory, third, data, and then fourth, pragmatic. Takeaway. And this is the way that I really like for non-fif... This is the way, I think, it's a bit of a formula, I know, but this is the way I think that nonfiction should flow so that it's compelling and interesting, and so that you get value out of it, and so that the author is demonstrating that they have actually researched and know what they are talking about. Before we dive into the hacks from the book, I want to share something really cool and I think helpful with you, how I hack my forgetting of book knowledge. If you're going to spend hours and hours of your precious time reading nonfiction books for edification, especially a book like... boundless that's really long and information dense. If you're going to make that sort of time commitment to a book, you're ultimately kind of wasting your time if you eventually forget 90, 95% of what you read in the book. and my hack for this is an app. It's called Super Memo. And it's a flashcard app where you enter flashcards. You enter a hint and then a factoid, a, yeah, a little contextual kind of hint. and then some piece of information that you want to commit to memory permanently. And the app has this clever algorithm that over time, it tests you on the factoids that you've entered, and over time, it builds a model of when... you specifically are going to forget a particular piece of information. This is called the spaced repetition theory of memory or forgetfulness. And then what the app does is it prompts you to practice those flashcards, specifically around the time. just before you're about to forget that piece of knowledge. And you're probably aware that the way that memory works is that the pieces of semantic memory or episodic memory that you return to often are the things that you're never going. to forget. But then there's pieces of knowledge, of wisdom, factoids, that we will maybe read once, and then six months down the road, or two years down the road, we might want to recall those things, and at that point, that memory, it's actually still in there, but it's kind of... too disparate. And so I kind of buck the modern day trend of outsourcing memory. to note-taking software, or to AI, although I do use those things, but I don't want for the capacity of my mind, the palace that I have inherited between my two ears. I don't want for that part of... that most important part of myself to go unused. So I use the Super M memo app to practice these factoids. And with that algorithm, it makes your practice of semantic information, it makes it really, really efficient. You've probably tried... flashcards before, and you immediately find that you spend a lot of your flashcard time practicing the flashcards, you already know. And this algorithm hacks that. So, with books like Boundless and most other books that I read, what I do is I have the orange highlighting color, because orange is kind of like the logo color of Super Memo, and I highlight the things that I do want to remember and commit to memory. And then when I finish the book, I export those, those lines. A lot of times they're just copy-pasted passages from the book, and I put them into super memo with a little hint, and then I spend actually very little time. It amounts, at this point, I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of factoids from bunch of books that I've read, I have all sorts of foreign language, vocabulary, I have my wife's phone number, I have all these sorts of things that I need to remember that are in my Super M memo app, and I spend between 15 and... 25 minutes, a week reviewing those factoids and re-articulating them. I state them back because memory sticks a lot more when you actually verbalize it. And so what I did with Boundless was I went through each chapter of the book, and I took so many highlights, but for each chapter of the book, I said, I want to remember just one thing. and so I would get whatever I thought was the most useful factoid, put it into Super Memo, and then if you want to take this to the next level, as far as improving your memory, and in the biohacking longevity sphere, we talk a lot about improving memory, and you hear about things like ginkgo baloba, that'll help improve your memory. Well, if you're wondering what will... rapidly improve your memory, and do so in like a really noticeable way, that is stacking super memo with mnemonics, with the ancient art of memory. Because even average memories are surprisingly powerful when used properly. And the reason why you might say, oh, my... memory is kind of average, or you might say my memory is crappy. That's probably because you are using your memory improperly. And in mnemonics, you learn how to use it properly. And that's actually really fun, because in mnemonics, it relies highly on creativity. Nymonics is like weightlifting for your creativity muscles. So what I would do in each chapter of the book is I would come up with an absurd visualization that I connected using the phonetic number pegging system to the chapter number, like chapter one, two, three, chapter 17, I would connect via phonetic... alphabet, which is something you learn in books about mnemonics. And I'm going to link in the show notes for this one. The show notes below wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast, where I have all the links to all the good stuff I'm going to discuss. So I've got a couple of books in there that you should really read and you'll learn real practically how to do mnemonics. So I created like these fun, absurd, visualizations, and then these visualizations tied back to the factoid. And I practiced, again, it's like maybe 15, maybe 25 minutes a week for not just the things in the book Boundless, but for all the things that I want to remember. And so now, even years and years after I read the book, I still remember at least 20 useful things from the book. For example, I'll share with you one of the fun visualizations. Okay, for chapter three, and the phonetic alphabet character for three is M, because three, you have three fingers pointing down, it kind of looks like a capital M, right? So I think M... Ben. So I'm imagining Ben is like a BMW. You know what they call BMWs, like, the M series? So I'm imagining Ben, but he's got, like, wheels, and he's a high-performance BMW. And what he is doing is, there's, like, a crowd of, okay, of leftists and right -wingers, and they're, like, fighting each other. This is the kind of thing we see on the news, right? They're fighting each other in a riot, and this big crowd is in front of a giant nose that is sucking them in. A pretty absurd scenario, right? And that's just what I kind of came up with. That's me exercising my creativity. And so this reminds me of the factoid from the book that when you do alternate nostril breathing, when you cover up one of your nostrils, or cover up the other nostril, then you are kind of... feeding different sides of your brain with more or less oxygen, with different effects that are kind of useful for our cognitive performance optimization. That's a pretty useful factoid, isn't it? And it's a factoid that I'm never going to forget, as long as I'm using Super Memo. I'll dive right into the book with... a discussion of neutropics versus smart drugs, because I have, no doubt, said these words thousands and thousands of times to you, and there is a difference between these two things, between neutropics and smart drugs. And before I elucidate that, I'm going to take, I'm going to take some neutropics here, actually. is Zamner Juice. This is Neutropic Spray, in fact. Ooh, that tastes. That tastes real nice. And if you're not, you might want to watch the video version of this, because I'm showing you what I'm talking about. And this is a product that comes from Nutopia. actually, which is this giant box full of all these different neutropics, including neutropic mouth spray. You're going to want to stay tuned for my review of that particular product. So here's what Ben had to say, quote, if a drug is strongly felt on a consistent basis, whenever you use it, and it makes you high, wired, sedated, it is acting more like a smart drug or performance enhancer, and is likely not a natural, neutropic. Neutropics are sustainable for long-term use, while smart drugs are not. Many people use the terms neutropic and smart drug as if they mean the same thing, but they're actually very distinct. All neutropics are technically smart drugs, but the opposite is not necessarily true. A smart drug is any substance that enhances memory, mood, concentration, or another aspect of cognitive function. Neutropics target the same functions, but by definition, they must also be neuroprotective and non-toxic, and they're usually derived from natural, non-synthetic sources. So if you wanted an example of a quintessential... non-neutropic smart drug, that would be like modafinil, because modafinil, well, it's a drug, definitely, and it'll probably make you smarter, but it's really not a very sustainable kind of strategy, and it sure as hell is not even remotely natural. So that's something to think about. I think in an... as an ideal, a biohacker that was looking at being a sustainable biohacker that wanted to be a biohacker for decades or centuries, perhaps even, they would want to look at using neutropics a lot more than they used smart drugs, where smart drugs that gave them, you know, an artificial, cognitive boost, a push forward, but were necessarily sustainable, where that would end up being a... a temporary or infrequent thing that they were doing, and that usually they were stimulating their brain power via more natural kinds of things. Okay, next topic that we will look at is weight training. And anyone who has seen Ben Greenfield's Instagram or his videos, he's a real big... muscular or he's a muscular kind of guy. Maybe you might not call him a big guy, but he's a lean guy. He's a lean, mean, tough-looking, tough-looking guy because of weight training. And this is something of the book deeply delves into. And one of the major points that I took away from the book is that if you lift stuff, you're going to live longer. That's right. Quote. A 2007 study demonstrated that six months of progressive resistance training, otherwise known as lifting heavy stuff, made the gene expression of aging mitochondria appear to be significantly younger. That's good news, right? We pursue all these sophisticated anti-aging strategies, but one of the most effective ones is lifting heavy stuff. Going on, the researchers reported healthy older adults show a gene expression profile in skeletal muscle consistent with mitochondrial dysfunction and associated processes such as cell death as compared with young individuals. Moreover, Following a period of resistance exercise training in older adults, we found that age-associated transcriptome expression changes were reversed, implying a restoration of a youthful expression profile. Yes, you read that right. When it comes to mitochondria, strength training reversed nearly 40 years of aging. 40 years. That is remarkable. That is longer than I have been on this planet. But exercise doesn't only affect mitochondria. It also promotes the growth of fat, burning, fast-twitch muscle fibers, and even protects DNA from wear and tear by acting on the telomeres, the end caps of the DNA molecules. If you want The minimum effective dose of strength training, and that's a great concept, isn't it? The minimum effective dose. Because we have limited, finite time on this planet and in our own lives to do strength training. So minimum effective dose. That's an important concept to keep in mind. Okay, so that will... help you find the sweet spot between longevity and muscle. You can get away with as few as two strength workouts per week. Okay, one with slow, controlled, heavy lifting, lifting, and one with high intensity, body weight movements. And a... The next product that I'm going to be picking up that this book really sold me on is blood flow restriction bans. And this is one of the higher impact, more higher leverage, yet very cheap exercise equipment, biohacks, that is out there. Here's how he describes it. Katsu bands, also known as blood flow restriction bans, BFR, for short. or occlusion training bands, let's just call them BFR bands. Let's use the acronyms here to keep things concise. Okay, long used as potent training tools by elite athletes, law enforcement agencies, militaries, and Japanese martial artists. Much like a tourniquet, a katsu band, the name is a mashup of the Japanese words for additional and pressure cap... places pressure around your upper arms and legs. When you combine katsu training with body weight exercises, a suspension strap, or an elastic band, you can create a massively effective yet wonderfully simple workout. Take an upper body weight exercise, such as a push-up or pull-up, and a lower body weight exercise, such as a lunge or squat, and perform this movement as slowly as you can. It should take at least 30 to 60 seconds to get to the top of one rep and 30 to 60 seconds to... return, and then repeat to total exhaustion. This technique known as eccentric, negative, or super slow training, is a fast track method to build strength and mass. For an additional bonus, do this workout with BFR. Bands. Okay, that's a pretty good idea. And I look those up, I think over on Amazon, you can get a nice set of BFR bands for under 50 bucks, and that's going to make a real difference in your workouts. Okay, another anti-aging tip that I found interesting was that you should, if you want to live longer, you should endeavor to stay reproductively useful and from the book, based on the theory that reproductive uselessness can accelerate aging because we are no longer able to propagate the population. It is important to maintain regular sexual activity with age and even utilize many of the sexual enhancement. biohacks, and this is a big idea, isn't it? And it kind of makes sense that if you're not having a lot of sex, or if you're not having kids, then your genes, which are selfish, and your genes are more concerned with, your genes are more concerned with the collective of genes than they are with your individual well-being and happiness. If you're not having kids, then your genes are like, ah, okay, this person's kind of a dead end, especially if you're not having kids and not having sex. Your genes are like, this person's kind of a dead end. And then your genes are going to begin to undermine your health so that they, so that you're getting kind of removed from the collective. Your genes are kind of looking at you as a useless eater. If you are not... having sex regularly, and hopefully having kids as well, which should make the people out there that are kind of the selfish, nihilistic heedness, who are the... the people who are like saying, okay, I'm never going to have kids, because, well, I want to focus on my own happiness, and kids are too stressful, and I don't want to bring kids into this world of all these stupid problems. So I'm just going to, you know, those people are selfish, of course, usually they admit to that, and they are hoping they're imagining that they are going to, like, live a long time. But in fact, they're really... undermining themselves because of, because their genes are not going to look at them as useful. That's kind of something to think about. And this book, actually, it taught me a few things about myself. For example, if you are dopamine dominant, you are likely strong-willed, strong-willed, fast on your feet. and self-confident. You tend to be highly rational and more comfortable with hard facts and figures than with emotions and feelings. You take pride in achievement, strategic thinking, problem solving, and inventing. You are overly alert. often hyperactive, and you need less sleep than others. You likely get bored with frequent cardio, and you love explosive workouts and heavy weights. And that describes me pretty well, although I like a little bit of cardio, I like a little bit of cardio, and then I don't go insane with the heavy weights in the gym. I also learned that I am an under... Methylator from the book, quote, because it can keep serotonin levels low, under methylation can cause you to be a dopamine-seeking, hard-charging, high achiever. It can lead you to pursue perfection and achievement, and has been associated with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, a low tolerance for pain and ritualistic behaviors. If... you are prone to under methylation, you'll do well with a high intake of muscle meats. And yeah, that totally sounds like me. And sometimes we can be judgmental of people that are, that are, if we are stimulus seeking, we can sometimes be judgmental of people that are not so stimulus seeking. And if we are also people that are not so stimulus seeking, sometimes we can be judgmental of people really seeking a lot of stimulus as in my 20s. In early 30s, I was the kind of person that I wanted to go to the wildest parties, and I wanted to drive the fastest car, and I wanted to travel to remote countries that people, I wanted to travel to countries where there was a civil war going on, just so that I could say that I'd really been to an edgy place. And then when I went to those countries, I would, I would go out to a nightclub. alone on a Tuesday night and stay out till 2 a.m. I was really stimulus seeking. And sometimes I would be judgmental of people that were like, they were like, man, why do you need all that stimulus? Just, you know, I'm happy with watching a football game on TV, you know? And I would be judgmental of people…