Could 15, 2025
Welcome to Ben Greenfield’s Weekly Roundup!
On this weekly publish, I share with you my most attention-grabbing discoveries of the week, together with the most recent information on the fronts of health, vitamin, well being, wellness, biohacking, and anti-aging analysis. I additionally recap my upcoming occasions and particular bulletins so you possibly can sustain with alternatives to be taught, giveaways, reductions, and extra!
New Discoveries
🚫 Here is What Occurs to Your Mind When You Give up Your Telephone Chilly Turkey for 72 Hours 📱🧠
Say you determine to go phoneless for 3 days. No texts. No scrolling. No dopamine hits from these candy notifications. Simply you and your “primitive” self. What occurs subsequent?
In keeping with a Computer systems in Human Habits research utilizing fMRI mind scans, the outcomes are wild. Your mind mainly throws a neurochemical tantrum. We’re speaking about actual, measurable shifts in exercise in areas just like the nucleus accumbens and anterior cingulate cortex—two hotspots that additionally gentle up if you expertise drug withdrawal and meals cravings.
Right here’s the gist of what the research discovered:
📱 After 72 hours of no smartphone, contributors’ brains confirmed elevated activation in reward and craving-related areas, particularly these tied to dopamine and serotonin pathways.
🧠 The longer the “cellphone quick” lasted, the extra the mind “craved” the visible cues of a smartphone. Even simply seeing an image of a cellphone triggered contributors’ neural salivation.
🧲 Areas of the mind accountable for consideration, salience, and motor inhibition (just like the parietal cortex) additionally lit up, type of like your mind saying, “WHERE IS MY PHONE?”
😬 Regardless of all this neural exercise, contributors didn’t report feeling extra anxious or craving their telephones… but their brains advised a distinct story.
What’s fascinating about these findings is that these patterns mimic what you’d see in different addictive behaviors, together with gaming, smoking, or sugar binges. The researchers even discovered correlations with the identical neurotransmitter techniques concerned in alcohol and heroin withdrawal, like dopamine D1 and 5-HT1b receptors. So sure, the wrestle concerned in ditching your cellphone might be very actual and intense.
To sum it up, going with out your smartphone for 3 days doesn’t simply “really feel exhausting”—it has important organic results, together with rewiring your mind’s reward circuitry. Your noggin will get twitchy, your dopamine pathways get antsy, and the elements of your mind that often assist with inhibition and focus gentle up like Instances Sq..
In the event you’re attempting to wean off your gadget dependency, don’t count on your mind to be chill about it. It’ll protest—and almost definitely, loudly. However identical to a tricky exercise, there’s progress on the opposite facet.
Need to check your individual digital detox resilience? Strive retaining your cellphone fully out of sight for 72 hours and see how your physique, temper, and thoughts reply. Bonus factors when you monitor your coronary heart charge variability (HRV), sleep patterns, and cognition through the course of, which provides you with real-time suggestions about how nicely you are responding to cellphone withdrawal.
✔️ The next HRV usually means your nervous system is extra balanced and resilient. In case your HRV improves after ditching your cellphone, it’s an indication your physique is shifting out of a fight-or-flight state and right into a extra parasympathetic, rest-and-repair mode.
✔️ Fixed display screen time, particularly late at night time, wrecks melatonin manufacturing and suppresses deep sleep. Lower the cellphone, and also you’re extra more likely to expertise longer deep sleep cycles, fewer wakeups, and extra REM sleep, translating into improved psychological readability and power the following day.
✔️With out the fixed ping-ping-ping of notifications hijacking your consideration, your focus ought to sharpen. You may discover higher reminiscence recall, deeper problem-solving, and an uptick in artistic considering. (Strive journaling or testing your response time each day through the detox.)
Why put your self by means of this course of when you may even handle to tug it off?
Since you’re not simply reclaiming your time however rewiring your mind, recalibrating your nervous system, and giving your biology a reset. It is like a metabolic quick, however in your thoughts. And identical to chilly plunge or a tricky interval session, the discomfort is the place the transformation occurs.
Not solely that, however one other current research that simply got here out a couple of days in the past exhibits what occurs if you flip your cellphone right into a “dumb cellphone.” Analysis contributors put in an software on their cellphone that blocked all types of web entry whereas nonetheless permitting texts and calls to be despatched and acquired. After 2 to 4 weeks, they skilled boosted psychological well being, well-being, and a spotlight. Not shocking!
Curious how fixed cellphone use (and publicity to wifi and EMFs) may be rewiring your mind, and what you are able to do to interrupt free from the digital leash? Take a look at these assets:
- Is It Doable To Make Our Screens “More healthy”? The New Blue-Mild, Flicker-Free Expertise That Could Change the Face Of Computing Eternally, With Daylight Pc’s Anjan Katta.
- Why You Ought to Strive Sleeping On The Flooring, The “Furnishings-Free” Residence, Constructing A Higher Butt, Smartphone Options & Extra With Katy Bowman.
- The Invisible Pressure Inside Your Residence That Might Be Wreaking Havoc On Your Well being (And What You Can Do About It TODAY).
- The Hidden Well being Killer No person Is Speaking About (& 6 Methods To Shield Your self From It).
- Is 5G Actually That Harmful, Plant-Based mostly Weight loss plan Difficulties, Reversing Organic Age & A lot Extra!
- Not All EMFs Are Unhealthy: How To Use EMFs & “Digital Nootropics” To Form Your Electromagnetic Surroundings for Peak Well being, Efficiency, Sleep, Vitality & Extra!
- Searching Down EMF In Your Workplace, Bed room, Health club & Past: Is Your Residence’s “Soiled Electrical energy” Wrecking Your Sleep, Your Restoration, Your Well being & Extra? The Official Ben Greenfield & Brian Hoyer Low-EMF Residence How-To.
- The Non-Tinfoil Information to EMFs: The best way to Repair Our Silly Use of Expertise (& The Actual Analysis On WiFi Well being, Cell Telephones, Soiled Electrical energy & Extra!).
📢 This Week in Well being & Efficiency: What the Newest Analysis Says 🚀
🚶♀️Fats Loss & Cardio: A current research confirms that moderate-intensity cardio is loads efficient for fats loss in obese and overweight ladies, which means there’s not essentially any have to go all-out to see outcomes (research right here).
🔴 Crimson Mild for Imaginative and prescient: Simply three minutes a day of purple gentle remedy at 670 nm can assist enhance coloration imaginative and prescient and shield your eyes’ mitochondria as you age. A low-intensity LED flashlight like this one could do the trick (full research).
🧬 Creatine vs. Most cancers? In a cross-sectional research of practically 26,000 individuals, these with greater creatine consumption had decrease odds of most cancers, particularly adults over 50 (learn extra).
🌿 Liver Assist with Milk Thistle: Silymarin, the lively compound in milk thistle, produced a powerful drop in liver enzymes in a current research, pointing to sturdy liver-protective advantages, together with amongst individuals with non-alcoholic fatty liver illness and liver fibrosis (full research right here).
📌 Key Takeaway: Small each day habits—like including creatine, strolling extra, utilizing purple gentle, or sipping on silymarin—can stack as much as critical long-term advantages.
🔗 Need to dive deeper? Click on the hyperlinks above to discover the analysis, and click on right here to observe me on X for all the most recent well being and efficiency information sizzling off the press! 🚀
Product Of The Week
::: Drink Smarter, Higher Days After Consuming With 15% off ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic Drink 🥃 :::
In the event you’ve ever loved a glass (or two) of wine, mezcal, or a fantastically crafted negroni, solely to get up the following day feeling such as you received hit by a truck, you’re not alone.
As a substitute of simply “toughing it out,” I’ve discovered a wiser technique to benefit from the night with out wrecking the following day.
ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol is a genetically engineered probiotic designed to interrupt down acetaldehyde, the nasty byproduct of alcohol that’s largely accountable for making you’re feeling like rubbish the morning after. This isn’t your common probiotic, however a science-backed, peer-reviewed answer for one thing all of us dread: a tough subsequent day.
I take advantage of ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol recurrently once I know I’ll be elevating a glass. Simply slam considered one of these little photographs earlier than your first drink, and growth—you’re giving your physique the instruments it must deal with alcohol like a biohacker, not a frat boy.
What’s the distinction in the way you’ll really feel after an evening out with ZBiotics in your facet? It’s noticeable. In the event you’re like me, you’ll get up extra clear-headed and able to crush your morning exercise, sauna session, hike with the youngsters, or no matter’s on deck that day.
So subsequent time you propose to imbibe, don’t go away your restoration to probability. Pre-load with ZBiotics and switch your night time out into one thing your physique can really thanks for.
Use code BENG right here to get 15% off your first ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol order.
By the way in which, ZBiotics is backed by a 100% money-back assure, so if it doesn’t give you the results you want, no hurt, no foul.
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Contemplating chopping again on social media or doing a digital detox—however craving expert-backed well being ideas, cutting-edge wellness hacks, and a group that will get it?
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🥁 The Totally Up to date Boundless Is Right here! Get Able to *Optimize* Your Physique, Thoughts, and Spirit! 📚💪
During the last yr, I have been working tirelessly on one thing that I am thrilled to lastly share: the brand-new, up to date model of my best-seller, Boundless, which is lastly out there!
Like a cookbook for the human blueprint, the revised and up to date version of Boundless provides you a zero-guesswork information to becoming an entire skilled in what makes your mind tick, your physique work, your spirit comfortable, and your life fulfilled.
You possibly can flip to *any* chapter and uncover probably the most up-to-date, research-proven, trench-tested methods to construct muscle, burn fats, stability hormones, stay longer, sleep higher, have mind-blowing intercourse, and far, far more!
A couple of of the important thing subjects that the most recent model of Boundless explores are:
- Methods to optimize mitochondrial density and biogenesis for peak power and metabolic well being.
- New strategies to stimulate the vagus nerve for stress discount, sleep high quality, and better coronary heart charge variability utilizing gentle, sound, and electrical interventions.
- Up to date methods for restoring circadian stability, combating jet lag, and maximizing sleep, naps, and meditation.
- Insights on the consequences of electromagnetic frequencies on the mind and physique, with recommendations on modifying units for higher shielding.
- The newest on addressing power infections, detoxifying from mould, and enhancing intestine operate with cutting-edge testing and coverings.
- New dietary supplements, biohacks, and protocols primarily based on current longevity science, together with age-reversal insights.
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In the event you’re able to uncover a treasure trove of the most recent science-backed methods for enhancing each facet of your thoughts, physique, and spirit, click on right here to seize your copy of the newly launched Boundless.
Podcasts I Recorded This Week:
Peluva (code BEN), SuperTeeth (code BENGREENFIELD), BIOptimizers MassZymes (code BEN10), Jaspr (code BEN), MOSH
Ketone-IQ, Quantum Improve (code BEN15), BEAM Minerals (code BEN), Calroy
The Newest Content material I Was Featured On This Week:
