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Source File: BenGreenfieldAriMeisel-10tips.mp3
Title: 10tips
Ben: Hi, I am Ben Greenfield.
Ari: And I am Ari Meisel.
Ben: I have twin boys.
Ari: I too have twin boys.
Ben: And the reason that you are hearing both Ari and myself been in this special podcast
episode is that we decided we want to bring you our top tips for parenting because I
specialize in things like fitness and sports nutrition and some health concepts and Ari,
you also specialize in this stuff and also what’s kind of your gig?
Ari: Yeah. I think my real wheelhouse is productivity and so in addition to my twin boys, I
have anothersonas well sothree boysoriginallyunder the age of 1 ½ so productivity is
my obsessionandIbelieve that health is a big part of that so we really kind of meshed
our knowledge together to create something special here.
Ben: So we are goingto give youintoday’spodcastepisode ourtop10 tipsfor raisinghealthy
and smart andsuccessful kids.Andwe’re alsogoingtogive yousomething at the end of
thispodcastepisode that you are only going to get if you listen to the podcast episode
or incidentally watch the video because we are putting a video recording of this on
Youtube. Soif you are watching thison videoIam sittinghere wearing my dorky stalker
like blue light blocking glasses and sitting in my mom’s coffee shop/pub in Moscow
Idaho with a dart board behind me. And I believe Ari, is that a prison you are in Ari?
Ari: Prison or my lab or my gym, it depends whose perspective you take; the people who
work out here with me might call it the prison.
Ben: Awesome!Soyoumaywantto check thisone out on Youtube. And of course I’ve got to
my teeny,tinyPellegrino that I am drinking which is quite appropriate because we are
going to be talking about teeny tiny people today.
So whatwe are goingto do iswe are goingto kind of go back and forth, we are going to
tag team this. I’m going to give you my top five tips and Ari is going to give you his top
five tipsandwe’re justgoingto try and make this stuff super practical for you and like I
mentioned atthe end, we are going to give you guys something special. And of course
whetheryouare listening to this on Ari’s podcast or on my podcast, we’ll make sure to
put lots of resources for you in the show notes at our respective websites; Ben
Greenfield fitness.com or less during.com which is Ari’s website.

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So that beingsaid,Ari doyouwant to go aheadand jumpinwithyourfirsttip for raising
healthy smart and successful kids?
Ari: Absolutely, thank you Ben!
So myfirstone,we’re goingtokindof runthe gamuthere…We coverso manydifferent
topicsbut I thinkthatmost of us have chosensortof a good variety. My very first one is
about magnesium flake baths basically.
A lot of people listening to our podcast are very familiar with Epsom salts and
magnesiumchloridebut you can actually get magnesium flakes which are a little more
expensive but it’s a much purer form of magnesium. And what I like to do is when I
eithergive my sons baths or take baths with them, I really like put in a whole bunch of
these magnesium flakes and it’s very, very calming, it’s a very soothing experience.
Just like you use Epsom salts to deal with muscle achiness and soreness, it actually
helps.Youinfuse magnesiumbasicallythroughthe skin,throughyourbodiesandthat of
your children.Andalot of people are magnesium deficient; it’s one of those nutrients
that people reallytendtonotget enoughof.Soas a nighttime bath routine, having sort
of envelopment of magnesium seems to work really, really well for helping kids calm
downand also to help with any… Not completely but help with at least a little bit with
any possible magnesium deficiencies.
Ben: That’s really interesting. I have used magnesium flake baths myself as an athlete like
postworkout,postlong-run,posthardweighttraining.Ihave neveronce in my life or in
the six years of my children’s life, given them a magnesium flake bath. So you found
actually that this helps your kids to sleep? Do you promote we do it at night or…?
Ari: Yeah,exactlyat nightandit’snoticeable,itreallyisnoticeable.Firstof all, and I am sure
youknowthisbut youreallyhave to use a lotof Epsomsalts.It’s like one cup per gallon
so you might end up using a pretty big bag. So when you put the right amount in, I do
finditreallydoes act as a calming experience. In fact my son Ben who is two and a half
now…
Ben: I love that you named your son after me by the way.
Ari: Well yes, of course; I changed it once we started doing this together.
Ben: I’m flattered.
Ari: So whatI reallydidnotice isthatsometimes he gets into the bath and he plays around,
thrash around which is fine in itself but when we did with these like really good
magnesium salt baths he’d just lie on me and just relax and it’s just such a nice
experience.Butone thingIlearnedfromyou,whichwasthatyou reallydon’tabsorbthe
magnesium above 102° you say or 104?

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Ben: It’sbetween103 and 105. Basicallywhenyoutouchitand it’suncomfortablyhot,you’re
not going to absorb the magnesium chloride.
Ari: Right. And generally it just wouldn’t want to put your kids in a bath…
Ben: You wouldn’t want to toss your child into that environment anyways.
Ari: Exactly. And just like for reference point, most hot tubs max out at 104°, that’s pretty
hot! Anyways, that’s my first one.
Ben: Cool,I like itandthe fact that you take a bath withyourkidsisreallyinterestingbecause
it relates to the first tip that they wanted to give folks and that is that my kids are… I
make it a point with my kids to roughhouse and wrestled with them several times per
week and it’s really interesting.
The research that’s been done on this is you get this release of brain derived
neurotrophicfactoror BDNF,the same thingthat getsreleasedlikewhenhumans…Kids
are humanstooI guess…whenadultsgo for a run or something like that; this increases
neuronal growth.But they’ve done studies on roughhousing and found that rough and
tumble playdoesthissame thinginkids;bothboysandgirls and of course thismade me
thinkof this when you talked about taking a bath with your kids; Oxytocin is this other
hormone that gets released. It’s the bonding hormone that brings you closer to your
kids. You also get that say get this 1-2 hormone combo when you wrestle and
roughhouse with your kids and we have all sorts of ways that we do it.
For example one of the things that I will do is I will cut a workout short. So I will cut a
work out short from 5 to 15 minutes, take the kids out in the front lawn and tell them
that their job is to try and knock me down and then I get into all these different
positions; isometric squats, isometric lounges and I have the boys basically run at me
and try to take me down.I’ve gotanotherone where I getdown into like a low push-up
position underground and that then get on top of me and they have to just told me
down.
We’ve got another one where we play zombie where I chase them around the house
and I am wearing a giant blanket over my head and basically trying to grab them and
hunt them down. But we fight a lot, we also and I will try and find some links for folks
with them in the show notes, we also have Thai kickboxing gear. So all of us have the
special shorts that you kind of pull above your belly button and the special gloves and
we do Thai kickboxing; we just get in a corner, mom does the ding, ding, rings the bell
and theyall go at each other. Andwhatresearchhas shownisthat itdoesnot make kids
more violent.
Ari: Quite the opposite.

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Ben: Yeah, it teaches social skills, it teaches them the difference between play and
aggression,itteachesthemaboutkindof hostilityversus kindness,itteaches them how
to play by the rules, it teaches them how to deal with things like pain and discomfort
because they are going to experience that a little bit but if you aren’t currently kind of
goingout of your wayto the wrestle withyour kids,evenif yourkidsare little bitolder,I
would make the point. There’s a reason that I am picking the things I am picking in
today’s podcast. This is one of the more powerful things that I have seen in terms of
bothresearchas well aspersonal experience, to really bring you closer and to advance
the developmentof bothboys and girls. So roughhousing/wrestling/rough and tumble
play.
Ari: So I wanted to just add to that too, it’s interesting about the oxytocin issue or
connection because there is a study that... I think I shared this with you but I don’t
remember... recently they came out that said that father’s who are very involved in
childcare,it actuallyrewiresourbrainstobe more receptive tooxytocin,whichis really
interesting.Italmost makesusmore maternal insome ways.Butthere is nothing wrong
with being receptive to oxytocin, it’s the cuddle hormone basically.
Ben: Exactly and incidentallywe are alsointhe processof handinga punching bag in the gym
as well so we’re going to add that component in again, all meant not to meet the kids
more aggressive buttoinsteadteach them how to deal with other people in physically
responsible waysand help them to almost like release pent up energy and aggression.
Ari: And quite honestly, to learn healthy limits actually.
Ben: Yeah, exactly.
Ari: Because inthat situationyoulearnthe differencebetween playing around and hurting.
Ben: And how hard you can hit things before your wrist breaks.
Ari: Yeah, exactly. So my next one is about sleep actually so we have… You don’t want to
have white noise machinesrunningall night long, I know will it’s a very common thing.
And the issue with that is that just as Ben was talking about BDNF , that the brain
derived you trophic factor, white noise raises that as well for babies and you actually
don’t want that when babies are sleeping.
Ben: Really?
Ari: Yeah.Basicallyitsupposedly,Ithendon’tknow how much and I maybe can put it in this
but apparently it can lead to a lowering of IQ later on in life.
Ben: So youmeanexcessive BNDFwhile mychildisasleepfromplayinglike these windnoises
and whale noises and stuff like that, that’s what you’re talking about?

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Ari: Well no,so notthe windnoisesandthe whale noisesactually,it’smore the white noise.
Ben: Okay.
Ari: Because the white noise is almost like confusing; you really can’t pinpoint a sound.
Ben: Interesting.
Ari: Yeah. Because by the way, if whale noises or wind noises cause people to lose
intelligence, the whole world would be like in a deficit.
Ben: No one can go camping anymore.
Ari: Exactly!But of course,especially with twins, you do have to try to mitigate one waking
of the otheras much as possible oradog barking,it’sanissue and otherwise if they are
waking up all night long you are never going to sleep and that is another issue. So we
found this… There is only one company that I found that makes this actually but it is a
noise activatednoise machine. And it does the white noise but it can do ocean sounds
and it can do rain and I find the rain to be the most soothing personally and do them.
Ben: So what do you mean by its noise activated? It is activated by when they are rolling
around in their beds and stuff?
Ari: Exactly. So basically if one of them starts to like rouse a little bit or roll around or yel
basically,itturnsonand I had itset the lowesttimer,whichwas15 minutes.Sobasically
I felt very comfortable with that, very effective. They kind of like make some noise, it
turns on and it sooths them back to sleep but it’s not running all night long.
Ben: Interesting.
Ari: Yeah, so that is sort of like a little bit of a tech hack I think that has really helped.
Because again,youreallydon’twantthemrunning on a long, it’s just not ideal for their
brain development, for overstimulation and also they can get used to it basically.
Ben: What aboutadults?Do you thinkadultsshould not be listening to white noise all night
long?
Ari: No.For adults it’scompletelythe oppositebasically.Foradultsitdrownseverything out
and it actually does have that calming effect and it is almost like because of that
confusionthathappensbecause of the noise,itisbasicallysignaling your brain that it is
okay to just sort of like let go and give in.
Interestingly enough, this is completely unrelated since we like to talk about health
anyways, there is this test, and I forget the name of it but basically you put on white
noise and then you take a ping-pong ball and cut it in half and you put one on each

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eyeball; so it is sort of diffused white light and apparently, that will cause visual and
auditory hallucinations in about 15 minutes.
Ben: You put a ping-pong ball over both your eyes and you play white noise and it causes
visual hallucinations?
Ari: And auditory. It’s half a ping-pong so your cutting it in half. You are basically making
nightgogglesoutof the ping-pong.Soitisessentiallysensorydeprivation which is what
you are doing and the brain fills in the gaps and people have reported like unicorns
jumping around and colorful rainbows and all sorts of stuff.
Ben: Don’t do that to your kids people.
Ari: Don’t do that your kids, absolutely not. But if you had a really bad night, maybe you
want to do it to yourself.
Ben: I’mgoingto try this,thisisinteresting. Okay. I’m going to pull a total 180° here and talk
aboutsomethingthatwe use quite a bitinour house because we like to make sure that
our kids’bloodsugarlevelsare stabilized.Ihave personallydone genetictesting, I know
I am at higher than normal risk for type II diabetes. I have seen my mom’s lab results;
she’sgotbloodsugar levelsthatare throughthe roof, sorry mom if you are listening in.
Both of her parentshadtype II diabetessowe are reallycareful with sugar in our house
and we use coconut quite a bit and three of kind of they go to things that we make as
almostlike dessertforthe kids that have the fats that slow down the sugar release but
that alsohave lesssugarin themthanthe typical desserts that you might buy it was the
store when you’re making them yourself; one is coconut popsicles.
Andthese actuallyhave gelatine in them which is really good for kids bones and joints
and also their stomach and it’s very easy. You just need a normal popsicle mold and
then you get a can of full fat coconut milk; we use a BPA free coconut milk, a brand
calledNative Forestiswhatwe use.Yougeta can of coconut milkandyou mix that with
abouta tablespoonortwoof…what we use isa real maple organicssyrup;still relatively
sweetnutrientdensesweetener,there isnotalot of it in there. That just gives it a little
bit of sweetness and that’s for, I believe it’s an 8 popsicle mold; it might even be a 12
popsicle mold, I can’t remember but it’s not that much maple syrup okay; couple
teaspoons of maple syrup. About a tablespoon of like a real vanilla extract, you put
about a tablespoon of shredded coconut flakes; we use Bob’s Redmill, we buy this off
Amazon,Bob’sRedmill shreddedcoconutflakes and then 2 tablespoons of gelatine. So
youcan use like GreatLakesgelatine,BernardJensen is another brand and all you do is
you just mix all that together and you pour it into the mold and then you throw it into
the freezer and this makes these really tasty coconut popsicles that the kids love. So
that’s one thing that we do with coconuts.

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The other thing that will do is a coconut ice cream and it’s a very, very easy to make
basic coconut ice cream. I say coconut ice cream but it’s more like this coconut
chocolateypuddingtype of stuff thatwe put in the freezer and freeze. Basically all you
do is you blend an avocado with some coconut milk the desired texture, a little bit of
dark cocoa powder,some cinnamon, some vanillaextractand then if you want, you can
through about half a banana in there and you just blend all that up. And you can eat
that rightaway as a puddingoryou can put itin the freezeranditliterallytastesjustlike
chocolate pudding and if you freeze it, it tastes like chocolate, avocado, coconut ice
cream. So that’s number two.
And then the last thing we do with coconuts is my wife makes coconut macaroons and
these are really good. What you do is you mix a couple of eggs and a little bit of honey
into like a mixing bowl and you can put a little bit of salt in there and then you stir in a
bunch of coconut flakes or shredded coconut, one or 2 cups of that and then you just
chill all of that in the refrigerator and this makes like this coconuts flake batter. And
basicallyyoucantake that batterand the form it into these little macaroon shapes and
you just bake that in the oven for about 10 minutes, put it in the oven at about 350°,
you bake it, the macaroons turn golden brown and they are not super sweet and the
kids love them.
So I will put recipes to all three of those in the show notes for folks we are big fans of
coconut flakes, shredded coconut, coconut milk as ways to make like little tasty little
treats for the kids that slow down the release of sugars and that are also chock-full of
healthy fats.
Ari: Yeah, those all sound really delicious!
Ben: Yeah,I like themtooactually. Of all the onesI justdescribed, the one that is the least is
the chocolate avocado pudding stuff and I will make that, leave the banana out and it
pretty much has no sweetener whatsoever. You can put a little Stevia in there if you
want and I like that, it’s just like I can stay ketosis eating that, really good stuff.
Ari: Yeah, I know you like your Stevia.
Ben: That’s right.
Ari: Well so my next one is actually a food one also and it’s sort of somewhere but again I
have to go with the gadgets sometimes so there is a banana… A frozen banana ice
cream making machine, it’s a very specific thing and I we will have a link to that in the
resource of course but it’s almost like… It’s almost like a very small meatgrinder
basically…
Ben: Really?
Ari: Yeah. So what you do is you freeze the bananas…

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Ben: You peel the first right?
Ari: Yes, please peel them first, I made that mistake twice. I don’t know how I did it twice
afterlearningthe firsttime how ridiculousitisbutso youhave frozenbananasand what
you usually would do is you would buy a bunch and you have like the dozen in the
freezer. And this thing, it’s pretty hard-core is very… It’s a plastic thing but you
basically…Itlookslike ajuice pressandyouare pushingthe bananadowninto it and it’s
really grinds down to a very smooth, almost frozen yogurt-like texture and if nothing
else,thatcouldbe it.That is one ingredient,bananaice creamandyou are done andthe
kids can do it.
Ben: What’sthisthingcalled that you are using? Is it like a specific brand or it is just called a
banana ice cream maker?
Ari: Well yeah, it’s called… I’m going to have the links in the show notes because I am
blanking on the name.
Ben: Okay.
Ari: But it’s a specific one…Oh it’s called Yonanas
Ben: Yonanas, okay.
Ari: What it does,obviouslyitmakes the frozen banana but then that is sort of the base for
everything.Youcanmix inwhateveryouwantincludingdarkcocoanibsfor instance you
can put some coconut in there. What we actually do a lot of is we will put some sort of
greens in there so spinach surprisingly goes well with banana. They cancel each other
out in an odd way and it’s really delicious.
Ben: It sounds kind of horrible when you describe it.
Ari: I am surprisedtohearyou saythat! It’sreallygood!I don’tknow,it’sreally tastes good!
But youcan throwinthisintothem.I feel like youcanputa lotof stuff in there that you
may want to sort of sneak into your kids diet; not sneaking it in but sort of giving it to
them in a subtle way.
Ben: I thinkthe cool thingabout bananasiskind of like coconuts, they offer this creamy-like
texture which can really… I am joking about when I say it sounds horrible with the
spinachbecause Ican actuallysee givingitlike a creamy kind of sweet taste a kid might
like.
Ari: Yeah.But so thenthe otherthingthat youcan dowithit, and this is sort of going a little
bitdeeperonthe nutrition scale but… And I don’t necessarily think that this is for kids,
youcouldtry but usinggreenbananasand thenyoubasicallygetsortof like a resistance
starch ice cream.

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Ben: Interesting!
Ari: So whenever I use bananas…
Ben: For a child with horrible gas.
Ari: Well yeah,maybe.WheneverIuse bananasin mysmoothiesIalmostalwaysuse a green
banana forthat resistance starch,a little bitlesssugar.Butit’ssomethingthatyoucould
try if you are worried about digestive issues; although, if you follow our tips, your kids
should not have too many digestive issues anyways.
Ben: Yeah exactly. Okay.
Ari: Yonanas.
Ben: Cool. I like it. Alright so here’s my next tip.
I reallypurchase mykidsa lotof books. I personally purchase a lot of books. I see them
as veryvaluable investments in my mind and my body and my life. When I read a book
on parenting, a lot of times as I am taking notes as I’m reading that book and a perfect
example is a very good recent book I read called Mindful Parenting. And when I read
Mindful Parenting, it gave a suggestion in that book. I think during the course of me
reading that book, I came across 10 different books that you can get the child that will
helpthembecome more mindful,thatwill helpthemtomeditate,helpthemtobreathe
deeply, help them to engage in gratefulness practices and help them to do all these
things that I freaking wish my parents had taught me when it comes to…
These are the things that help people to live longer, to help people to de-stress and
frankly, you don’t have to wait until you are 30 years old and have a stress attack or a
panic attack to realize that mindfulness and meditation and deep breathing is actually
goodfor you.So the problemthough,isthatwheneverIcome acrossa bunchof books,I
also homeschool my kids so I’ve always got to these different curriculums that I am
ordering for them, it’s a little bit time consuming for me to go and find good deals on
books.
So one thing that I do is I’ve actually outsourced book buying. So I have a virtual
assistantandin mycase, I hireda virtual assistant off of Craig’s list but you can also get
virtual assistance on all sorts of different websites. And I know you talk about them
quite a bitin your book Ari and on your podcast and when it comes to productivity you
talk about Fancy Hands and…
Ari: Yeah Search20 and Fancy Hands...
Ben: Search 20 is another one and what I do is I will send my VA a list of like 10 books and I
will say, “Find the best deal on these books, I don’t care if they are used or they are

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new,andhave themsentto my house byX date.”AndI outsourcedmowing my lawn so
that I can do the things that I am good at because I am crappy at mowing my lawn,
outsource that and I outsource people mailing my mail at post office and all of these
things but book buying for my kids, that stand out oddly enough to be something that
has beenreally, really nice. Because I will read a book like this, come up with 10 books
for mykids,sendthemoff viaemail andimmediatelytheyjuststartto roll inviathe mail
at a really,reallygoodprice.Andinterestingly,kudostoAri because Ilearned about this
from Ari actually, this new app, this Fetch App...
Ari: I was hoping you would mention that.
Ben: Yeah. And you told me about this and it is this app that you can download to your
phone, it’s called Fetch. And what happens is you can just take a picture of something
that you want to buy or just type in a quick description of something that you want to
buyand somebodyfindsthe best price on it and it gets sent to your house and the app
is free, you don’t pay anything; I don’t know how they make money exactly off of it.
But anyways, outsourcing the purchasing of books specifically is a something that I do
quite a bitwithmykidsand we have tons of books.And I don’t mind; I would rather my
kids have tons of books rather than tons of toys, and we are constantly reading them
and I am not spending all my time looking for a good price on books.
Ari: And books are one of those things where you can get a huge range of pricing with
books. You get like a slightly used to book that has no signs of wear and tear excepted
there islike acorner off of one page and it’sa quarterof the price of the brand-new;it’s
really kind of crazy the range that you save with books. So if you’ve got somebody
working on that for you that’s great.
Okay my next two are going to be productivity-based. So the first one is Amazon
Subscribe and Save.Soa lotof people are notfamiliarwiththisservice becauseAmazon
doesnotmarket itparticularlywell butessentiallywithAmazonSubscribe and Save,you
can subscribe toany nonperishable itemthat Amazon stocks in its warehouses and you
pick how often you want it and how many units you want to come. They give them a
weeks’ notice and you can cancel at anytime; you get an immediate 15% discount and
you can get extra deliveries whenever you want.
So what can you subscribe to? Well so in the last four years I would say my wife and I
have not had to shop for things like paper towels, diapers, dog food, batteries,
toothbrushes,toothpaste;theyhave suchawide varietyof products now. They have all
cleaning supplies for our house and they have lots of organic options, green cleaning
products; Amazon stocks at some really great stuff and the thing is, you don’t have to
thinkaboutthisstuff anymore.We’ve literallysavedthousands of hours and thousands
of dollarsbydoingthisbecause notonly do we not have to worry about when we go to
the store and forgettingsomethingthatwe thought we needed but we also don’t have

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to come back from the store and having bought something that we already had and
didn’t need either, it’s just such a real waste of time.
Andthenthe other side of it is that things that have a timing associated with them, for
instance we don’t have one of these anymore but having a Brita water filter that you
have to change every 60 days, why set a reminder that you then have to get reminded
then go get it and then do the thing? Why not have it show up every two months? You
are supposed to replace your toothbrush every three months so I don’t even think
about it. Every three months we get an order of toothbrushes in the mail and it’s like,
“Oh okay,”throwout the oldonesor we will recycle the oldones,take the new ones.So
it’s just a huge stress reliever, timesaver and money saver honestly.
Ben: Yeah.A couple of thingsthatI have alreadymentionedwe have on Subscribe and Save;
coconut milk, BPA free coconut milk, I’ve got that on Subscribe and Save. We’ve got
Bob’s Redmill coconut flakes on Subscribe and Save…
Ari: Oh, and they have all off Bob’s Redmill stuff.
Ben: Yeah,yeahit’s pretty cool. If you haven’t yet tapped into Amazon Subscribe and Save I
totally agree.
Ari: Sorry andI want to add one more thingto that butI forgot;the newestAmazon app has
a search function called Flow, have you seen this?
Ben: No.
Ari: Okay.So you’ve alwaysbeenable to scan a barcode with the Amazon app and this kind
of gone through a lot of controversy about this because they were stealing business
from places. But with the Flow app, you put it up and you use the camera to look at
somethingandithas all these blue dotsanditbasicallyrecognizesthe product;whether
it’sa Thomas the traintoy or a bookor whateverit isand youliterallyjustgolike boom,
boom, boom and it makes a whole shopping list based on that and usually is a better
price than Amazon and you could just go add them all into your cart, it’s really cool.
Ben: Of course, I like it. Amazon flow.
Ari: Yep.
Ben: Cool. So my next tip is about essential oils. And the reason that I want to talk about
essential oils,andthisisa perfectillustration;Iwasat one of my friendshousesacouple
of weeksagoandon hiskitchencounterwasthisgiantplastic box that was full of drugs;
ibuprofen, Advil, Pepto-Bismol, kids Tylenol, Adult Tylenol, antihistamines, like you
name it.And I don’tknow how manyAmericans have a similar medicine cabinet or box
intheirclosetor intheirhome or maybe onthe kitchencounterbutit’s shocking what’s
goingon whenitcomesto kids’guts,kids’livers,kids’ immune systems and everything

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else thathappenswhenyouare dumpingthese drugs as well as antibiotics, etc. as well
which is completely turn a child’s gut and an adult’s gut into a floral wasteland.
So one thing that I really tapped into my actually came down with a staph infection a
couple of years ago. I did a triathlon out in the wilderness, I got some cuts, it got
infectedatthe gyma few dayslaterand I got this nasty MRSA staph infection. And I did
not want to go on these big gun antibiotics necessary to knock it out because I knew
whatthat was goingto do to mygut. I alsowantedtomake sure that theyprotected my
kids and protected my family because it is a fairly… It’s something that your kids can
catch, it’s kind of nasty but its skin to skin contact and that type of thing, MRSA can
spread.
So whatI didwas I startedto researchessential oils.AndinitiallywhatI did in our home
back then was to kill off MRSA and to kill off staph. I bought a cold air diffuser and in
that cold air diffuser, I put these special botanical blends. So I used oil of oregano and
thenI usedan antifungal blendandantibacterial blendof essential oils. And I will put a
linkinthe show notes to kind of like the story of exactly what I used and I ended up… I
am not part of this multilevel marketing company but there is this company called Be
Young essential oils and they sell these different blends that are very, very good for
addressing certain sicknesses, certain illnesses, certain bacteria, certain fungus mold,
etc.And it’samazingthat whenyoutake the plantextract and you concentrated into an
oil how effective that can be and how say that can be for either topical or diluted oral
use.
So inour house,some of the big ones we use, we use a lavender oil to help with sleep
and that’s something that you can put on the kid’s pillow. When our kids were babies,
my wife actuallymade itthese little lavenderoil tothose.We use oil of oregano to help
with fungal and bacterial issues and may also use that as a household cleaner.
We have anotherblendof essential oil calledThievesEssential blend and that’s a blend
of cloves and Rosemary and basically a bunch of these ingredients that are very, very
good as antibacterials, antifungal’s. They can be put in a cold air diffuser when
somebodyissickinthe house.Theycan alsobe usedorally like in a glass of water but if
you as a mother or a father have not yet started to tap into essential oils or educate
yourself on the use of essential oils as an alternative to common medicines, then you
are reallymissingoutona huge,huge partof whatthe planetEarth has to offeruswhen
it comes to health.
So it essential oil blends are really important. So we basically, we go to either this Be
Young websitesto get essential oils. There is another good website that sells certified
organicessential oilscalledMountainRose Herbsandbothof those websites have really
good resources on them that help to educate you on which essential oils are good for

13. 13
what.But I wouldrecommendthatyougo to those websitesthatyoustartto outfityour
house.
And if you open the pantry, it’s the hallway closet, the linen closet in our house, we
literallyhave thisplastic container, kind of like the one at my friends house except it’s
not full of pharmaceuticalsandthe drugs,it’sis just full of about 20 different bottles of
differentblendsanddifferent essential oil extracts. And those are incredibly powerful
for a wide variety of conditions and I highly recommend that if you’ve got kids, that
those form the crux of your health treatments rather than drugs.
Ari: Yeah and I can’t say kind that enough. And actually I really like this company called
Eden’s Garden; they have over 140 different oils. I mean it’s just kind of shocking
actually.
Ben: You said that one is called Eden’s Gardens?
Ari: Eden’sGardenand theyare a therapeuticgrade essential oilsandmywife reallygotinto
that too. I personally love eucalyptus oil for anytime I get like stuffy or anything,
eucalyptusoil isagreat butit’sprettyamazing.There isa lotthat you’ve probablyheard
of but there is way more beyond that you haven’t heard of. And as Ben was saying,
there isblendsthatthese companiesmake thatjustmagnifythe power of these things,
it’s pretty incredible.
Ben: Absolutely. And by the way I did not mention; kids get warts, it happens. Lemon oil is
awesome forwarts. It will knock out a wart in literally just like three days. You just put
them on oil on it in the morning and at night and it makes kids’ warts disappear. And
anotherone that’sreally,reallygoodif youasa parenthave like bacteria,yeast,fungus,
overgrowth, that type of thing; peppermint oil in a glass of water a few times a day is
super effective. So I am kind of geeking out on oils right now and studying them more
and I am a huge, huge fan of these.
Ari: And I know this is going to touch on another topic that you like what have you tried
lemon balm?
Ben: Lemon balm, is it topical?
Ari: No.
Ben: I have not, I have not.
Ari: So lemonbalmfirstof all hasnothingto do withlemon.It’sactuallymore likeamint but
it’s actually got neurotrophic factors to it. It’s supposed to be very helpful for calming
anxietyandstresstosome extentbutitactuallyhasmemoryimprovingqualitytoit,you
can have it as a tea.

14. 14
Ben: Interesting! So lemon balm; is this something that you can just purchased like on
Amazon or something like that?
Ari: Yeah, totally.
Ben: I have to look into this.
Ari: Lemon balm tea and even one of the blends that Onnit Labs makes, it has got lemon
balmin isand it’sreallyinteresting and there is really good evidence actually about its
memory enhancing effects.
Ben: Interesting, okay, cool. The show notes are going to be golden today for sure.
Ari: Yeah, totally.
Ben: I’ve got my 20 things written done already.
Ari: Alright. My last one is two websites which are very similar, actually they are identical
but they work with different services.
So one of themis calledIFTTTand the otherone is called Zap Your. And IFTTT stands for
If This ThenThat and as I said,theyare both identical servicesbut what they do is there
is a trigger and an action and what I mean is you have… With IFTTT, there is like 90
different Web services, so a lot more consumer-based stuff and on Zap Your, there is
more of the business side thing.
So with IFTTT, you will see things like Twitter and Facebook, Google docs, Google
calendar,Dropbox,thatkindof stuff.Andthenwith ZapYour, youare goingto see more
of the Harvest Invoice Tracking and Salesforce and Yammer and those kinds of things
which depending on what you’re doing, they are both very useful.
Ben: Okay.
Ari: But IFTTT is free and you can create these automations that it’s the kind of thing that
youwill findyourselfsaying,“Oh,butthatjusttakesme a minute to do… I do that and it
just takes a minute.” But that’s the problem. It’s that not only do you do that probably
50 times a day and those minutes really do add up but just like when you have a
stoppage of traffic on the highway, one minute of stoppage of traffic on average 40
minutes to have traffic flow return to normal. If you take a minute to stop doing what
you’re doing, that high-level thing that you really should be doing, it takes about 20
minutesto get back into the flow of what you are doing so there is a huge opportunity
cost there.
Andof course,whenyouare takingcare of twokidsand you’re goingcrazywith all sorts
of things and you have a lot of stuff going on in your life, the more that you can
automate, the better. So things that are simple as I said like if you post something on

15. 15
Twitterthenitcan automaticallypostiton Facebook.It’savery,very basic one. You can
get weather alerts, very specific weather alerts. It actually integrates with The Philips
Hugh light bulbs that can do color changing, the nest thermostats so you can change
temperatures.Personally,Ihave an alert that is set up that if the temperature gets to a
certain…We are verylike conservative buteco-friendlyaboutusingourair-conditioning
and heatingsoand I have these alertssetupso that if the temperature gets too high or
too low in the kids bedrooms, I get a text message immediately.
Ben: Really?
Ari: Yeah; which is just one of those things that you can act upon really quickly.
There is the Belkin wemo switches which is an automated or I would say Wi-Fi
controlledlightswhichthatwe have at our frontdoor.And it’sa basic lightswitch;itwill
turn on andoff the lightbasicallybutif youhookitup with IFTTT, first of all you can use
it still to do the basic stuff but if you hold of this switch for two seconds, that’s a
difference trigger.
So inmy case,if I holdthisswitchfor twoseconds,itsetthe temperature in all the boys
roomsfor basicallysleepingtemperature so 68°-69°. It can change all of their lights to a
nice low reddish light which is not going to affect their sleep and all of that just from
pushing one button. And again it’s like to these things are so… You might say like oh
well,what’sthe point,it’sridiculous.Butitreally doesaddupand save you a lot of time
and it’s just great. So there is the personal stuff there of course but then you can use
thisinyour business as well because as far as I am concerned, if you can save a minute
anywhere inyourday,itwill addup and make youmore effective andallow youtofocus
more on the things you want to do. So this is one of those things which is like a secret
weaponthat you can get so much stuff to do on a daily basis out of your hands and out
of your life.
Ben: You are like George Jetson dude!
Ari: I know, that’s crazy.
Ben: Okay.So before Igive mylasttip,letme remindyouthatonce we finishup,we’re going
to be giving you guys this pretty cool thing that again nobody, except for those people
who hang around for the end of the podcast are going to get to grab. And if you have
kids, you’re going to dig this.
Okay, so my last tip is… And this is going to sound very simple but let me give you the
specifics. I work out with my kids a lot. Recently, this morning I was practicing monkey
bars at the park up by the house now some of the things that I do with my kids; for
example,we gotoa park withsoccerballsand frisbeesandthe waythatit works is they
practice their soccer ball kicks so they will kick the soccer ball, they will both kick and

16. 16
what I have to do is I am standing behind them. As soon as they both kick, I have to
sprint and retrieve one soccer ball, Sprint and bring it back, Sprint and grab the other
soccer ball, bring it back and then we all do five burpees together.
We will dothe same thingwithfrisbeesaswell where one of them will throw a frisbee.
I’ve got to run and try and get to the frisbee before it lands and then I run and bring
back to the frisbee andthenwe all have todo five squats.Soit’s basicallylike fetch with
a dog where dad is the dog and then we just through in these special bodyweight
exercises so I get a really good workout and they get to practice their soccer skills and
their frisbee skills.
We’ve got this other one that we do where we are in more traveling and we are at a
hotel pool.Whatmy wife andIwill doiswe will dohypoxicsets,we will dokicksets and
underwatersetswiththe kidsridingonourbacks.So it’slike weightedtraining in a pool
because hotel pools are short, they are crappy, they are no good for lap swimming but
thisadds in an element that’s really hard. So what we will do is this hypoxic set where
we will swimunderwaterwithourkidsridingonour back like daddy and mommy turtle
or daddy and mommy whale and then when we get to the end of the pool we do
pullouts.
So we will dopullouts with the kids on our back and then go back hypoxic and then we
will getoutof the pool and we will do some other things like crocodile crawls with the
kidson ourbacks and push-upswiththe kids on our backs and we do overhead presses
with the squats as we push the kids but basically using your kids as resistance and
specifically using your kids as resistance in the pool; because I know we have a lot like
triathletesand stuff listening, that’s another really, really good one. And again, all the
stuff similartoroughhousing;increasesoxytocin and brain derived neurotrophic factor
and things like that.
The other thingthatI will dois since Iam out inmy garage a lot of the time doing things
like kettle bell swings and medicine ball slams, both of my kids have a mini kettle bell
and a mini medicine ball; maybe you can just get these off of Amazon or whatever. So
when I am doing those exercises, they know that it’s totally free reign. They can come
out andtheysee me doingit; mykidshave beendoingkettle bell swingssince theywere
three years old and they see dad doing it and they have their own equipment. If your
kids don’t have this equipment they are not going to do it but if you just kind of add a
fewlittle kidthingstoyourhome gym and your kids see you doing something, the cool
thing is that as a kid sees their parents exercise, they themselves, and research has
proven this, are more likely to be physically fit and active. It simply hits this switch in
them and I have found that as my kids get older, they are more and more excited to
come and join with me in my workouts.

17. 17
And I will give you one more that I do with my kids. I take them on hikes but I can hike
way faster than a six-year-old can. So I’ve got a 50 pound weighted vest and an
elevation training mask that I wear; my kids love it, it’s like hiking with Bane from
Batman.
Ari: Yeah, exactly.
Ben: But I will take themona hike.Iget a killerworkout and my kids like it because they are
gettingthe hike,they are getting into nature, they are with dad and I of course am just
gettingkilledtryingtokeepupwiththemandI will evenmake itharderbypicking them
up whentheygettiredandlettingthemtake turnsridingonmy back or having me carry
them over my head like a weighted sandbag. But basically, what I’m getting at here is
that the skyis the limitwhenitcomestoworkingoutwithyour kidsand there are some
people that think that kids are a barrier to working out; they want to get everything
done inthe morningbefore theirkids get out of bed or at night after the kids go to bed
but I foundthatI’ve beenable tospenda greatdeal of qualitytime withmykids andget
myself a very fit in the process. So everything from double jogging strollers to bike
trailerstoany of the othertips that I just gave you, I highly recommend that folks work
those in and work out with your kids!
Ari: I pulled all three kidsthree milestoday in a radio Flyer wagon and that was interesting.
Ben: Yeah, it’s tough hauling kids. We had the double bicycle stroller for a while so it was
really tough. And I remember my kids like I don’t treat them to that anymore just
because they are too big for it but they used to just shout at us and shout at us as we
were goinguphills;“Go,go, go,go, faster,faster!”Anditwas just like having these tiny
little mini bald personal trainers on the back of your bike trailer.
Ari: Those are good ones!
Ben: Shall we give folks a recap of our tips?
Ari: Yeah, perfect. Do you want to start or me?
Ben: Go for it.
Ari: Alright so my five tips were:
1. The magnesiumflakesbaths,sothatisreallycalmingtoyour kids;itgivesthemthat
sort of nice rush of magnesium.
2. The noise activatednoise machine sothatyou’re notgettingwhite noise running all
night; used to get sort of the soothing effects and the sound masking effects that
you get from those machines.
3. The banana ice cream maker from Yonanas that becomes a base for all kinds of
stuff.

18. 18
4. The Amazon Subscribe and Save service where you can subscribe to all of those
different products that you might otherwise have to spend time buying.
5. And then the last one was those two websites: IFTTT and Zap Your which will
automate an enormous amountof the thingsthatyou do on a regular basis for your
family and your business.
Ben: Sweet. And my five tips are:
1. Roughhouse, wrestle and rough-and-tumble.
2. Use coconutsand coconutproducts frequentlyforyourkids.Especiallyfor desserts.
3. Outsource and get your kids a lot of books by outsourcing book purchases.
4. Use essential oilsandeducate yourself onthemand we’ll put all these resources in
the show notes for you.
5. And then work out with your kids.
So there you go.
Ari: Awesome!
Ben: So the moment everyone has been waiting for.
Ari: Yes.
Ben: Here we go. So Ari and I,for the past three months have been working on a brand-new
online curriculum called Double Dad: The twin dad’s ultimate guide to raising healthy
and smartstwins. And in this guide, kind of what you are just listening to today, we go
intoeverything.We gointohow to bulletproof yourkidsimmunesystemto sleepingtips
to holisticnutrition,totonsmore.Ari islike a geniuswiththese productivityandmoney-
savinghacks. I have honestly learned like a ton from him in the past three months just
recording these videos and audios and transcripts that we are doing.
Creating socially enhanced children and pregnancy tips, we go into everything like it’s
pretty much of the most comprehensive course that a dad could ever have access to.
Any parent could use this. We are calling it The twin dads ultimate guide to raising
healthy, smart and successful kids frankly because we want to differentiate it from all
the other parenting products that are out there but it’s called Double Dad’s and it’s a
Udemy course.
Ari, you introduced me to Udemy.
Ari: Yeah. So I have had all my courses have been on Udemy for a while now and its really
great online learningplatformand it’s a really great platform. It’s self-paced. Once you
have access to it, you can access it forever and you can go through it as you want. You
can downloadsowhatwe’ve done iswe have the videosof ustalkingaboutall this stuff
and then we have audio and then we actually have the transcripts and PDFs of all the

19. 19
things that we talked about and every lesson has the resources that we talk about. I
thinkwe’ve gota total of 29 lectures,several hours.We put a lot into this and has been
said,we have beenworkingonitfor three months.Andalsothisisnotobviouslyjustfor
people with twins, is also not just for people who have kids. It’s for people who are
thinkingaboutcase or are aroundkidsor grandparents or aunts and uncles and singles,
multiples; we just happened to both have twins.
Ben: So here is the deal; first of all, if you are listening or you are watching us on YouTube,
youare codedthat youcan use.Firstof all,it’snot an expensive course, is 49 bucks. We
are giving you guys at $10 discount code that you can use on it and the discount code
that youcan use overat Udemy.com/doubledads,yourcouponcode ispodcastVIP.And
if you use the code podcast VIP, you’ll get that entire course for 39 bucks and it really
is… We spat out all of the knowledge that we’ve accumulated, the both of us have
accumulated trying to basically get our kids as healthy and smart and a successful as
possible. And I don’t know about you Ari, I’m actually dang proud of the course, it
turned out really well.
Ari: I am reallyproudof it.As yousaid,we put a lot of time intothisand we covered and lot
includingpregnancy and how to make them smarter and socially enhanced, fitness for
them and for you, this productivity. We’ve covered a lot.
Ben: And we sat down this afternoon to record this for you because it just went live this
morning. So this course literally just launched. So you are going to dig it, check it out,
Udemy.com/double dads. If you are listening to this episode on my Ben Greenfield
fitness.comwebsite oronAri’slessdoing.comwebsite, we are also going to have some
handy-dandyshownotesforyou for the stuff that we went over today which is kind of
newstuff,alittle bitof whatwe coveredinthe course anda lotof this stuff isnewsoit’s
almostlike alittle bonusepisode for the course. So that being said, I think that’s about
everything we wanted to cover. We did it all Ari?
Ari: Yeah, absolutely. So check out the course. We would love to hear feedback and that’s
another thing by the way, once you get in to the course, it has its own sort of question
and answerthings.If there isquestionsthatspecifically come upona specific video or a
specific lesson that we talk about, you can actually ask it right there and one of us will
probablygetin there and answer you personally. So it’s a really great value and I think
that it’s the kind of thing that you can probably share with anybody you know who
wants to help them do better with their kids.
Ben: Yeah,so checkit out,Udemy.com/doubledads,code podcastV.I.P and you can thank us
when your kids are 30 years old and you can retire because they are so successful and
healthy. So there you go.
Ari: Ben,I justwant to sayit was reallyfunmakingthe course withyousoI hope people like
it.

20. 20
Ben: It was all fun too Ari. And Ari and even recorded a special video for you when we got
together in Toronto a couple of weeks ago so you get to see both of us in the same
place.
Ari: Exactly.
Ben: So there you go!
Ari: With steel drum music in the background.
Ben: With steel drum music in the background, that’s right because we were in like a mall
and a band wasplayingbutwe still banged it out. So thanks for listening folks and best
of luck with you and your kids.
Ari: Take care!
***End***