Mental Health and Happiness Hacking

March 9, 2024

When your mind is shrouded in a fog caused by chronic stress, anxiety, and unease, it can feel as though everything in your life is unraveling. From struggling to think clearly to feeling overwhelmed constantly and experiencing sleepless nights, the downward spiral can seem never-ending.

In this special “Best of Hacking Happiness and Mental Health” episode, embark on a journey to restore clarity and peace to your mind by delving into a curated collection of insights from leading experts in happiness and mental health. 

First up, dive into the world of biohacks and smart drugs for mental upgrades with me, Tero Isokauppila from Four Sigmatic, Joseph Anew from the Intuitive Warrior podcast (and the creator of RUNGA), and my friend Dr. John Lieurance of MitoZen, as we unveil natural and free ways to alter your state of mind with a focus on enhancing mental function. You’ll also explore the power of breathwork, the importance of maintaining motivation, and tips for taking care of your autonomic nervous system.

Next, Andy Triana from Go Super Brain and I uncover vagal nerve activation, visualization strategies for stress management, and simple tricks to banish anxiety and panic, along with tips for better sleep and the science behind nootropic and smart drug stacks. You’ll also discover modern-day grounding techniques and how they can help you overcome anxiety and live a more balanced life.

Moving on, I expose the impact of music on the brain and how it can be used for exercise, stress reduction, anxiety relief, and more. You’ll unlock the science behind music’s ability to reduce cortisol levels and improve focus, and also gain insights into how music can be a powerful tool for improving your quality of life.

Later, I’m joined by Dr. Dave Rabin, as he and I delve into stress, trauma, and PTSD, discussing innovative therapies and treatments like high-dose MDMA sessions and the benefits of ketamine and psilocybin therapy. Additionally, you’ll explore the impact of meditation on the brain with insights from Ariel Garten, where she and I discuss different forms of meditation and how it can improve brain health and reduce cortisol levels.

Lastly, I investigate music FM technology with Dan Clark and Dr. Kevin Woods, and how it can help you instantly shift your state of consciousness from anxiety to relaxation, wakefulness to sleep, or brain fogginess to focus.

If you feel like you’re currently struggling with your general happiness and mental health — hang in there — it can and will get better. With this show, you’ll walk away with a toolkit of practical strategies and wisdom that can help guide you out of the haze and into a state of profound mental well-being.

-Biohacks and Smart Drugs for Mental Upgrades…06:31 

Natural & Free Ways To Alter Your State Of Mind, Biohacks & Smart Drugs For Mental Upgrades, Biohacking A Healthy Home, Ben’s Top Productivity Tips & Much More!

• Make a routine and then try to get away from having a routine
  • Routine to create a habit and then switch to intuition
• The best things to clear the mind
• Breathwork – clears the mind and connects with the present moment
  • Biggest challenge — maintaining the motivation
• Taking care of the autonomic nervous system
  • Leads to a healthy and long life
• The most powerful activator of the parasympathetic nervous system is melatonin
• Cortisol activates the sympathetic nervous system
• You build melatonin by light going into the eyes
• Ben’s top 3 things for enhancing mental function:
  1. Paraxanthine stacked with tesofensine
     • Similar to Modafinil — except it doesn’t keep you up for 24 hours
  2. Nootopia Dopa Drops
  3. Quicksilver Scientific (use code GREENFIELD15 to save 15%)
• Microdosing with plant medicines
  • Psilocybin or LSD for creativity and focus
• Four Sigmatic Coffee

–Vagal nerve activation and visualization for stress with Andy Triana…13:27

Simple Tricks To Banish Anxiety & Panic, Rib Adjustments For Better Sleep, Nootropic & Smart Drug Stacks, The Science Of Getting Better In Bed, LSD For Performance & Much More With Go SuperBrain’s Andy Triana.

–Managing anxiety and improving performance

• Manual restoration of the diaphragm
• Nail beds and acupressure mats for vagal nerve activation
  • Modern-day grounding for indoor spaces
• Anxiety is like electrical input that spills into the brain
  • Mindfulness is using the five senses to quiet down anxiety
• Increase in afferent (sensory input) and efferent (motor output) signaling through our hands and feet
• Wearable devices that vibrate or produce a mild electrical sensation over the vagal nerve
  • Vagal nerve stimulators similar to a TENS (transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation) unit
  • PowerDot
• Dr. Peter Martone
  • He would relax and fall asleep faster if he avoided thinking about the future
• Podcast with Dr. Peter Martone:
• Anxiety and future processing
  • You don’t have a center in your brain for the future
• The most sophisticated anticipatory center – the hypothalamus
• Our ability to be present is good; our ability to plan the future is limited
• Anxiety is putting too much blood flow into future processing

–How to manage anxiety and panic attacks…20:03

• Recognize it’s never going away — and it’s a good thing
• Coping with “buoys of objectivity”
• Every single great athlete and businessman has felt nervousness
• They have strategies to survive in the ocean of anxiety to keep them from drowning
• In anxious moments, you should
  • Reengage with the world around you from your 5 senses
  • Be aware and mindful — the two easiest concepts to chase after
  • Give yourself a light sensation to bring you back to the present
• If you lose mindfulness, your five senses, and your ability to interact with the world around you 
  • You lose vision, peripheral vision, and behavioral decisions

–Visualization for improving performance…22:36

• Research proves that visualization is useful
• Visualization skills
  • Seeing in the present what you believe is going to happen
• How to use visualization?
  • Spatial skill training regimen
  • Manipulating 3D scenes in your head
• Visualization to deal with negative performance-related things
  • Speeding up and slowing down time
• Visualization for the average person
• Flow state
  • Dopamine and norepinephrine-driven flow states for individuals
• Ben is norepinephrine-driven
  • Has to be in a lot of pain and under a lot of pressure to get into an alpha state
• Norepinephrine people tend to have less control over their flow state because they’re typically responding to something that needs to happen
• Dopamine people oftentimes have work capacity and behavior efficiency issues

–The impact of music on the brain…33:07 

Everything You Need To Know About How To Use Music For Exercise, Stress, Anxiety, Pain, Sleep, Immunity, Intelligence-Building & More!

–The effects of stress on our bodies…45:40  

A Whole New Way To Deal With Stress, Trauma & PTSD In Just Seconds: The First Clinically Validated Wearable That Helps You De-Stress, Focus, Sleep, Stay Energized & Remain Calm.

• Preschoolers are now the number one growing demographic as far as needing targeted use of antidepressants
  • Children no longer feel safe
• Practicing techniques or strategies like deep breathing, meditation, yoga, biofeedback, and positive thinking all tend to improve HRV
• Your resilience depends on the effects of stress on the body and the ability to recover from stress
• Sleep, insomnia, and chronic pain are related to imbalances in the autonomic nervous system and low HRV
• Apollo improves balance in the nervous system and helps retrain the brain to know that it’s not actually running from a lion
• When you feel that calm, that pause, you’re able to regulate, perform, and recover at your best
• Your body is constantly under a message that it’s not safe
• A study shows that regular, consistent, smart exercise lowers HRV and increases parasympathetic nervous system activity
  • Might be that you feel more equipped to take care of yourself
  • You feel safer when you are fit

-Trauma, feeling safe, and PTSD…52:12

• Safety includes physical but equally includes emotional, mental, and spiritual safety
• For physical safety, you can contribute with good exercise
• Trauma is one or many meaningful and intense negative or unsafe experiences over time
• Every time you feel a threat, your parasympathetic nervous system starts to decrease
• If the threat continues, it will result in trauma
• Can a high-dose MDMA session help with trauma?
  • Psilocybin and MDMA can be transformative
  • It’s important to be safe
  • Ketamine is a great first step for people
  • Psilocybin and MDMA have breakthrough status with the FDA
• Trauma can manifest in different ways
  • Depression, psychosis, dissociation
• Looking at epigenetics
  • Look at the epigenetic markings before psychedelic experiences
  • Then compare that to their epigenetic profile afterward
  • And then, over time, 6 months, 12 months, and 18 months
• People are getting better from these treatments, not because of the medicine
  • What medicine is doing is empowering you to remember your innate ability to heal yourself
• Just 3 doses of medicine can be completely life-changing for people
• Apollo could give the benefits of MDMA therapy

–The impact of meditation on your brain…1:04:32

Fearproof Your Brain, Stress-Inoculation Tips, The Marriage Of Meditation & Technology, Digital Sleeping Pills & Much More With Ariel Garten.

• Meditation is not about your mind going blank
  • It is about being able to observe your mental space or observe one task very wholly
  • It’s very difficult to have no thoughts
• There are many different forms of meditation
• Attention meditation
  • You are fully engaged in one thing, but that thing is not your thoughts
  • Mind wandering off and bringing it back
• What you’re doing is building your metacognition
  • The awareness that your mind wanders, and then the choice to move your attention elsewhere
• Ben’s experience with Transcendental Meditation (TM)
• Podcast with Philip Land:
• TM mantra is a version of focused attention meditation
• Paying attention to one thing leads to incredible transformation
• Most people just go through their lives on autopilot
• Changing your relationship with your thinking
  • You become the master of your thinking rather than a subject to it
• Building metacognition — the ability to see your thoughts
  • Choosing to think a thought
• An important thought during meditation
  • Recording and using the memory palace technique
  • Writing down or giving it a number
• Walking meditation
  • You are feeling the sensation of your feet on the ground
• The impact of meditation on the hippocampus
• The hippocampus is the part of your brain associated with learning and memory
• Cortisol can cause shrinkage of the hippocampus
• Meditation practice can significantly reduce your cortisol levels
• Meditation also has an impact on your corpus callosum, which is the part of your brain that connects your left and right hemisphere
• Meditation can improve the density of your gray matter
• Muse Headband for meditation (use code BENGREENFIELD for 20% off)

–Music FM technology…1:19:24

How To Instantly Shift Your State Of Consciousness From Anxiety To Relaxation, Wakefulness To Sleep, Or Brain Fogginess to Focus With Brain.fm.

• A grant from the National Science Foundation
• May help to combat ADHD
• Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART)
  • A wandering mind leads to fatigue and mistakes
• How to make music support people with ADHD and attentional challenges
• The sustained attention to the response test
  • Very boring video game
  • Played music in the background
• EEG — looking at the brain’s response over time to the stimuli
• Much stronger entrainment with Brain.fm music versus other music
• Music with the Brain.fm technology is applied to ADHD

-And much more…

Upcoming Events:

• Boundless Family Retreat with Ben Greenfield — Crans-Montana, Switzerland: April 17–21, 2024

Immerse yourself and your loved ones in the unparalleled beauty and serenity of the Swiss mountains at an exclusive retreat hosted by me and my family. This transformative experience is designed to deepen family bonds, enhance health, and elevate wellness practices amidst breathtaking natural surroundings. You’ll get to dive into a meticulously curated program featuring scenic hikes through pristine landscapes, hands-on foraging adventures yielding nature’s freshest ingredients, and cooking classes that turn wholesome produce into nourishing meals — all at one of the top resorts on the planet: Six Senses in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. Secure your spot to embark on an adventure where wellness and family joy converge here.

• Health Optimization Summit — London: June 15–16, 2024

The Health Optimization Summit is the ultimate gathering for anyone passionate about biohacking, wellness, and living their best life. Dubbed a must-do event, it promises a transformative weekend filled with the opportunity to meet and learn from over 35 world-class speakers (including yours truly) in nutrition, longevity, mental health, relationships, and more. Learn best-kept secrets, try out the latest high-tech health gadgets, and discover the cleanest supplements and foods on the market. Don’t miss this life-changing weekend — grab your tickets before they’re gone here.

Click here for the full written transcript of this podcast episode.

Resources from this episode:

– Podcasts and Articles:

– Other Resources:

Episode Sponsors:

Limitless Life Nootropics: Are you ready to transform your health journey? Visit limitlesslifenootropics.com/bengpeptides and use the code BEN at checkout for an exclusive discount. With Limitless Life Nootropics, step into a world where health meets innovation.

Organifi: Get the restful sleep you need with the most soothing ingredients! Organifi is a delicious tea with powerful superfoods and mushrooms to help you sleep and recover so you can wake up refreshed and energized. Go to Organifi.com/Ben for 20% off your order.

BON CHARGE: BON CHARGE is a holistic wellness brand with a wide range of products that naturally address the issues of modern life. They can help you sleep better, perform better, recover faster, balance hormones, reduce inflammation, and so much more. Go to boncharge.com/GREENFIELD and use coupon code GREENFIELD to save 15%.

Manukora: You haven’t tasted or seen honey like this before — so indulge and try some honey with superpowers from Manukora. If you head to manukora.com/ben or use code BEN, you’ll automatically get a free pack of honey sticks with your order — a $15 value.

C60: If you’d like to experience more energy and mental clarity and kick brain fog to the curb this year, visit shopc60.com/ben-greenfield and use the coupon code GREENFIELD15 for 15% OFF your first order. Start taking back control over your cellular health today!

Do you have questions, thoughts, or feedback for me? Leave your comments below and I will reply!