Greetings, SuperFriends!

In this episode, we are joined by Chris Ashenden, the founder and spokesperson of Athletic Greens, the all-in-one supplement that industry experts Tim Ferriss swear by as their nutritional insurance policy. In addition to that, our guest today is a food blogger and nutrition expert who shares his wisdom with people all over the world.

In this episode, my goal was to learn more about athletic greens, supplementation in general, and hear my guests’ fascinating story. We really covered a TON of ground on this episode… We discuss supplementation, superfoods, nutritional disorders, learning, depression, entrepreneurship, elimination diets, and the incredible story of how my guest became one of the closest people in the world to Tim Ferriss. Stick through to the end, because our guest shares some really solid actionable tips and diagnostic tools that can help you stay on top of your health in case things go wrong!

This episode is brought to you by SuperLearner Academy – home of my exclusive masterclasses. Check out a free trial using the link above today!

In this episode, we discuss:

• Probiotic experimentation, digestion, and why it might be worth playing with
• Sleep deprivation, stress, and how they can affect you long term
• Chris' background, his stories of entrepreneurship, and how he got to where he is today
• What is the “90/10” principle, and why is it wrong?
• What dietary template does Chris Ashenden endorse most?
• Why did Chris feel the need to develop Athletic Greens?
• Why is it that many people don't get the right nutrients all the way to the cell?
• What is the biggest revolution to happen in the last 5 years in the world of nutrition?
• How did Chris Ashenden learn so much about health, nutrition, and supplementation?
• How did Chris develop the Athletic Greens formula?
• What is in Athletic Greens that makes it so powerful and effective?
• How much time does Chris spend learning every week?
• Why is supplementation necessary if food is first?
• What's the big deal with spirulina?
• A discussion on Vitamin D, Vitamin K, sun exposure, and why its so important
• What supplements does Chris recommend for his own family?
• The hilarious story of how Chris became close friends with Tim Ferriss
• A discussion of Tim Ferriss, his work, and his relationship with Chris Ashenden
• Chris' personal motto, what it means, and why it came to be
• How did Chris Ashenden deal with his own depression and extreme stress?
• Which books have most influenced Chris' life?
• What can you do if you don't feel well, but doctors say everything is fine?
• What 1 message would Chris Ashenden like you to take away from this episode?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Athletic Greens Daily Superfood Supplement
• The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss
• BrainQuicken, Tim Ferriss' product from the early 2000's
• Our previous episode with Dr. Kirk Parsley
• The Business of Happiness by Ted Leonsis
• Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
• The First Billion Is The Hardest – T. Boone Pickins' Biography
• Genova Diagnostic Labs
• Our previous episodes with Robb Wolf and Loren Cordain

Favorite Quotes from Chris Ashenden:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming Superhuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: This episode is brought to you by my all-new SuperLearner Academy. The home, not only of the all-new, Become A SuperLearner 2.0, but also of my exclusive masterclasses and audiobooks, digital books, and tons of exclusive content only available to members of my masterclasses or my masterclass bundle where you can purchase multiple courses and save.

A ton on getting all of that great content. So to check it out and to see all this amazing new content that we've recorded exclusively for SuperLearner Academy, visit becomeasuperlearner.com and use the coupon code: podcast to save.

Greetings, SuperFriends, and welcome to today's show. In this episode, we are joined by the founder and spokesperson of a company called Athletic Greens.

It's an all-in-one supplement that industry experts like Tim Ferris swear by. As their “Nutritional Insurance Policy”. Now, in addition to that, our guest today is a food blogger and a nutrition expert who shares his wisdom with people all over the world. He's a digital nomad like myself, really an inspiring entrepreneur, and someone that I just had so much in common with.

You can really tell that we hit it off during the episode. So. My goal for this episode was really to learn more about the product Athletic Greens, which I've tried and really often makes me feel so much better and so much healthier when I take it. So I wanted to understand what's in the product.

Understand a little bit more about supplementation. And then also here, my guests really truly fascinating story of entrepreneurship, health, sickness, recovery, and so on. So we covered a ton of ground in this episode, we really went wide with it. We discussed supplementation, superfoods, nutritional disorders, learning, depression, entrepreneurship, elimination diets, biome testing.

I mean, you name it. If it's related to health or entrepreneurship, we talked about it and we covered it. We also even covered the incredible story of how today's guest became one of the closest people in the world to one of my personal idols, Tim Ferriss. So stick through to the end because this episode delivers a ton of actionable and really useful nutritional and entrepreneurial advice.

So without any further ado, I want to present to you, my new SuperFriend, Chris “The Kiwi” Ashenden.

Mr. Chris, the Kiwi. Welcome to the show, my friend. I'm super excited we finally managed to catch one another. I know we both have busy and interesting calendar arrangements.

Chris Ashenden: Jonathan, I'm great to be here. Thank you very much for the invite and yes, you do good to have a very interesting calendar arrangement.

I like it.

Jonathan Levi: So, Chris, you were telling me before we hopped on the recording, that you're experimenting with some very interesting probiotic stuff and that you might have to duck out for a second. Tell me a bit?

Chris Ashenden: The first course of discussion should be how's your digestive system. I'm currently experiencing experimenting with some like really strong probiotic and some new formulas mixed up together in a pretty evil concoction, just to see how my body goes and has been. Very interesting so far.

So most days I feel a lot better than I did the previous day. And then it's like every now and again, I have maybe five minutes notice to make it to the bathroom, maybe 30 seconds. So that's why I said if I suddenly just said that, I got to go, don't worry. I'll come back in a little bit, but apologies that that's too much information

Jonathan Levi: No, that's fine, I love it. What's the reasoning behind that? Are you dealing with some health issues or just curiosity, improved energy? What kind of prompted it?

Chris Ashenden: Well, man, I always experiment. And I think the gut biome is that next big frontier. And in this instance, uh, largely at my diet's very spot on, but largely due to for long periods of insufficient sleep.

And even though, as guys hate to use the word stress too much stress or not enough recovery and response to. Just sort of a, like a prolonged through typical for an entrepreneur, like sort of chronically elevated cortisol level. And it's very, very common. And that actually leads in itself to a whole host of health problems.

One of which can be a bit of gut dysbiosis so I'm enjoying that. And as part of the process, I figured, well, if I'm going to kind of aggressively get after this and I'll be very aggressive indeed. So I've got a whole bunch of goodies going on.

Jonathan Levi: I love it. Chris, I bet you, our audience is wondering who is this guy and why he's, experimenting on his gut microbiome.

So tell us a little bit about your background, you know, high stress, entrepreneurial background, how it is you came to be where you are today. Experimenting with having to run to the restroom. Tell me all about it.

Chris Ashenden: Sure, man. And I saw your bio as well. You have a very interesting bio, Jonathan. So I appreciate you having me on the show.

Basically, I am a guy who has been entrepreneurial my whole life. I ended up studying for a Bachelor of Science in Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Oakland. I had my first startup start and fail when I was 20-21. And felt sorry for myself for a few years before getting back into business, but not in the health and fitness sphere, which is something I ended up regretting.

I always kept sort of some of my certified nutritionist, although that's a long lapse, but I've always got my foot in the pie in terms of being a trainer and, and coaching both for athletic performance for aesthetics, typically with ladies and also on nutrition for fat loss and health. And, uh, I've always kept my foot in the door with that.

And so when I had the opportunity to, to sort of kick-off and you. Uh, you know, when I was at with pivot, I guess, a career pivot towards my next business venture, I was very much in favor of doing it in the health and fitness space. And about the same time, I had just had been eating sort of in that 90-10 principle, which is, you know, as long as you do 90%, right.

And the 10% doesn't really matter. And it turns out that's actually very incorrect for a significant proportion of the population. So I got sick. Really sick and ended up looking for a solution, which led me to a very expensive clinic in the US and a huge amount of money. And blood tests, saliva tests, urine tests, fecal tests like nonstop, and they found a whole host of things wrong with me.

And it challenged a lot of my assumptions about what I thought had been correct eating about how our bodies assimilate nutrients about health and wellness in general because I had been a pretty good rugby player. I'd been a good athlete. And I kind of looked at the part, even though I had sort of dark eyes and I just didn't really feel amazing.

And I kept getting sick all the time. So, before I'm in the clinic, I, I sort of looked the business but had an always felt the business. And after the experience in that clinic, they put me on a customized, my biochemistry, a hundred dollars a day supplement regime that was five or six, depending on the day, different individuals sealed plastic baggies full of multicolored horse pills and basic man, it pushed me heavily into a re-education process about nutrition. I ended up becoming a pretty strong fan and advocate of a paleo template at least to start from in terms of eating. And I went looking for a whole food source version of getting all the horse pills and the evolution for that man was that I paid a lot of people, a lot of money.

And formulated a product that sort of met my needs and decided to roll with that as my next business venture. And I had a whole bunch of Guinea pigs try that product. One of them was quite famous as called Timothy Ferris who loved it and became a sort of frequent daily users. And it took me a long time as an entrepreneur to launch that business.

And to the point that actually I had some extreme financial difficulties and I ended up parting ways with my original largest financial Becca who was frustrated with me. And it took a lot of learning to go from being a guy who could sell very well face-to-face to trying to figure out how to persuade someone, to buy.

What ultimately will be the lowest margin dietary supplement on the planet, but still a premium-priced product. And anyway, we figured it out, man, we're sort of the number one skew in the sort of green drink space. And that product sort of evolved into a business called Athletic Greens. And I've been operating as the CEO and spokesperson for that business, sort of full-time since 2009- 2010.

Jonathan Levi: Incredible. Incredible, so I have a lot of questions, uh, to bounce off of that. The first is what was in the bag of horse pills. And why did you need it? I mean, did they identify what was wrong with your diet before and why you needed the bag of horse pills to kind of get right.

Chris Ashenden: Yes. Well, it, everyone. What's the right way of tackling this. Few manage in a tie tube. And you sitting inside that and faded it in a tie tube, and you're cruising down the pool. You go inside the tube, but you're not actually inside the tube. You kind of get what, I mean, you're sitting inside a closed ring of material, but you actually haven't crossed the barrier into the air. That is that, uh, that in a tube.

And unfortunately, many people eat things and put something in their mouth and think I've eaten this is a good thing. Well, I've eaten this thing that I think is good for me frequently. It's not a good thing. And therefore, it's going to go into my system and everything's going to be hunky-dory and frequently.

It does not either pass correctly from the digestive tract into our bloodstream, or it passes into the bloodstream, but it's not assimilated correctly by the cell. And that could be from any one of a number of problems, but you could, we could go right on the rabbit hole with that, but nearly man, a lot of people put a, not getting enough nutrition to the cell and uh, that could be because they're have got dysbiosis, they've got, could be torn up and in disarray and that they don't know a feeling, the thing, at least from sort of in terms of how they experience life. And it could just be, they don't get enough of the nutrients in their mouth to even get there in the first place.

So what this particular clinic had done is all the testing I've done that met all the inherent vitamins and minerals, neurotransmitters, and other bits and pieces that my body was extremely low in either as a symptom of not absorbing well that nutrient or as a symptom of sort of what's happening in my body as a result of being in this beaten up phase of life.

And I definitely felt better over a period of time, but I mean, it was a lot of horse pills and I was just like, there's something really wrong with this cause I'm just playing fluorescent yellow the whole time. And I think sort of the biggest evolution in terms of how people are thinking about nutrition as it relates to supplementation over the last 10 years.

And it's, you know, has really been this change from synthetic isolates to whole food source nutrition, and we haven't beaten nature yet, or even come close when it comes to matching the goodness that is inside the food. Um, from some synthetic fabrication plant, uh, where they're just putting a couple of chemicals together and cooking them.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. So here's my question, right? You come into the medical establishment and you know, you're this guy, you look good, you feel crappy. They give you this, this bag of horse pills. I love how you described that. And that's point A, point B is you have this whole food supplement, which as you said, is one of the most cost-effective supplements out there on the market, which does pretty much the same thing for significantly lower costs.

There's a lot of learning between point A and point B and a lot of research, a lot of understanding. So me as someone who's interested in accelerated learning says not wow, what an amazing businessman, but rather how incredible is it that you've become an authority on health and nutrition. Tell me how you went from point A to point B.

And how is it that you approach learning to where you could become a respected authority among respected authorities?

Chris Ashenden: Okay, well, it's a multi-faceted question. A good question. I think I thought I knew quite a lot when I turn up to that clinic, sick and got asked do you eat vegetables? And I said, yeah, why?

And they said you have some of your vitamins and minerals are in like the 12th percentile. And I was like, okay, that's random. Cause I eat like 6-10 cups, a day of vegetables. And they said, do you eat meat and protein enough at all? And I said, yes, heaps like a cow a day, like why? And they said, well, you have amino acids, way in this lower percentile as well.

And that really challenged a lot of my thinking, man. And I spent maybe 15 to 20 hours a week reading for two years, three years to get that base knowledge up. And what I realized after reading pretty quickly is that probably the fastest way to jump a huge leap in terms of the assumed knowledge is go to the people who've been preaching, whole food source nutrition first, and pay them to help you finalize your formula.

That's exactly what I did, man. I had, two natural positive being very, very experienced guys. I can't use their names, unfortunately, because of a deal. They subsequently signed with another company, but very experienced guys. I medical researcher, a couple of PhDs, and a doctor who really specialized in sort of functional medicine.

And they gave me their 2 cents and then I would listen to the 2 cents and go and read and it led to. You know, sort of the formation of what a conglomeration of a bunch of different products into one. But I like to think it's a shotgun approach, right? We haven't done your bloods. We're not going to put therapeutic levels of a lot of those verbal extracts into an ingredient, into a formula designed for someone to take every day, because that should be done under medical supervision, but we'll put them in there and adequate dosages for daily dose and inherently, if and I can still say this very proudly. There is not a formula in the world right now that I'd recommend that does as good a job at that shotgun, most likely to fit all as a one a day than what we currently do. So at least for now, typically with the barriers as it relates to margins because we operate on much lower margins than everyone else in the support.

When we get away with that only because of the volume of subscription customers that we've built up over the years. There's a barrier there. So I became an expert through necessity. I hired experts, vastly more experienced and smarter than myself, ask them to present their case. I then looked at their summary and checked it.

And if you get to natural paths, they can be a little bit quirky. These guys weren't against the medical research. So you got one crowd who say we've seen the science and we've seen it work with our clients and the other crowd that say, I don't care unless it's been really proven multiple times with double-blind studies, right.

This meeting of the worlds and, yeah, and it was interesting, man, because there was some pretty funny email conversation.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, I bet. So I want to dive a little bit more into the product. I've tried it because it was handed out at Summit at Sea where I actually met Liana your sister and I've tried it.

It's my kind of go-to, yeah, go-to bounce-back product.  What's in it that makes it so powerful. I mean, you keep saying whole foods, you keep saying that this product has kind of, I like how Tim says, like, it's my cover all my bases, you know, in case I miss something nutritionally kind of supplement what the hell is in it. Why is it work so well?

Chris Ashenden: Just to cover off, so just go ahead and ask the second part of your question last time is, I think if someone would have read 10 hours a week on a given topic, and at the end of the year, they know more than nearly everyone at the end of two years, they know vastly more than nearly everyone at the end of three to five years, they will be legitimately one of the absolute world experts in that field.

So in terms of the, and this is something I got down that path, and then my reading has actually dropped off dramatically on the dietary side of things, as I've focused more on being a boss, but I still. I'm still pretty happy with myself. I don't get four or five hours of listening and education as it relates to health and fitness at a minimum per week and typically considerably more.

But what makes  tick I think is we have so much stuff in there and we would be able to replace as a best practice, multivitamin best practice, multimineral a best practice liver detox formula. We address chronic fatigue of you know, your chronic adrenal fatigue, at least to some degree, we focus on making sure that the co-factors and the other elements that are required by the body to absorb nutrients are present.

We look heavily at antioxidants, but not overboard on the others. We do them only through herbal extracts primarily, and then we have all the gut elements of having prebiotics and probiotics there. So I think between those and the nearly eight grams of straight superfood sort of dried goodness that we get on top of that because we are a big fat, 12 grams serve.

There's no one that comes close to us from a straight dietary. Some I haven't thrown in like a big scoop of cheap powder or something to try to flesh it out that comes close. And I think literally it's that chocolate approach, man. You may maybe. Maybe like the woman the other day who told me sort of sleeping without trembling legs at night for the first time in four years and without three or four ibuprofen, which is a really bad idea, six days after taking a product.

And I know for a fact that there's 99% likely a magnesium deficiency on her case, but like we have a nice chunk of the best, most bioavailable form of magnesium in there, but it might not have just been there. Maybe that bisque, like in it, it's in glistening. Yeah. I like glistening for that. I think most of the other forms, man, if you started to take them regularly, they nickname for same in these, in citrate is Consta Rhea, right?

So you just gotta be careful cause something that people take every day and we ask something that many people take more than once a day and that does impact. You know, there's a big difference. I weigh what 90 kilos. I'm very active as a bit of between myself and say, someone's grandmother who weighs 48 kilos and is barely active in terms of what their daily nutritional requirements are.

So we wanted to try to cross both those populations, but leave scope for someone to take more if they so desire without. Like you have to really go through an absolutely staggering amount of toxicity and on any ingredient and you just wouldn't you'd get diarrhea first. I'm just being honest, right? I mean, like you could go 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 servings a day and you wouldn't get toxic on any of those.

So I think that the key element is understanding that our bodies are incredibly complex and our sole mission is the cornerstone of it all. And if you can get those cells working better either because you've just helped your liver detoxify or maybe because you've finally presented in an absorbable manner, sufficient sort of B vitamins for your mitochondria to work.

So it can just tick along better, you know, like it doesn't really matter what, where the magic's coming from. I would argue that if someone eats really well. And it considers intelligent supplementation that over a period of time, just through the tissue regeneration and how our body creates new cells, et cetera, whether you have some significant deficiencies such as the lady with the trembling legs, who like literally felt better on four or five days, or you simply go through this process of creating a better body because we are what we, and you might hear as well.

You are with your foods, but inherently we turn tissues over, Jonathan, so it can take a while. So we have kind of two camps of people. There are those like the lady from the email the other day. And then there are others who might take us for three or four months and then say, you know, I don't feel any crazy difference in energy or anything, but I don't get the colds that everyone else does want me to go flying.

And if I stopped taking it, I started to get those colds again. Wow. It's literally an insurance policy and I don't want to rave on a better product cause I I'm really very heavily in the camp that food is first and there's no magic bullet. There's no magic bullet.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, I'm going to ask you about that, I mean, why supplementation, if you're going to eat, you know, a paleo diet you're going to really invest in your health and nutrition.

Why is supplementation as a whole important?

Chris Ashenden: I think man, the correct supplementation is the right idea. And I would, I do that. There are very few of us who live. And have lived our entire lives, which is also the other important part in a manner that is cognizant with our genetic makeup and how we sort of have evolved.

We've kind of jumped the head pretty quickly in the last 10, 20,000 years. And we pay for it with a whole host of things, but just being sitting around all day, I think is a killer. So I think unless someone's really doing everything right. Most people would be wise and you should try to do everything right with some, except that, you know, humans are humans and socializing, socializing, and fun is fine and everything else, and go knock yourself out with all that.

But I think most of the time, most people should be trying to give their body the best fuel that they can. I personally found that an actual fact, you can be doing that to a pretty solid degree, but, um, modern lifestyle and stresses of the modern lifestyle. And just to change food supply over time, I think is the reason why we've had the success we've had, because I think there are very few people who don't do better when they just kind of top-up a little basis.

And the problem with that approach in the past as people were topping up the basis with isolated synthetic ingredients presented in a format that we aren't really designed to ingest. And it didn't make any sense to me to say like a natural whole foods-based diet and have your food come healthy. But then top up with something that's very synthetic and artificial.

And I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with taking bottoms. I don't think about that the format that they're presented. And needs to be done in a way that actually makes sense based on being healthy.

Jonathan Levi: Right now. What's the big deal with Spirulina because you know, anyone who's consumed your product, the first thing they notice is it is Athletic Greens. Hence the name it's very green. And I assume that comes from the Spirulina. What's the big deal with Spirulina?

Chris Ashenden: Uh, it comes from a couple of the grants span that deep dark green is one of the little secrets in that we source our ingredients from the best places.

We can find them all over the world. That product is blended and manufactured in New Zealand, but some of those key ingredients are from New Zealand. And luckily for me, so am I, so I kind of have control of the supply and that's where we get the deep, deep gray. Spirulina is basically it's called a superfood, which is a terminal band-aid to very regularly around.

And really, if you just consider something that had nothing but goodness in it. And a lot of goodness, a lot of micronutrients, so many people forget the importance of micronutrients, and those are the vitamins and minerals that people just don't realize that that literally are involved in nearly every single chemical process, the billions of processes that are happening every second in your body that require these micronutrients to function properly.

So Spirulina is just nature's way of delivering you. A whole lot of that in a concentrated format. And it's also surprisingly high protein. So I think it's one of the superfoods that we have in there happened to be one that I very much like. And do, I think, you know, you should run off and say eating like five grams of spirulina or growing it in your backyard like that, it's up to you.

But I do think as an adjunct to a regular diet, it's one of the foods that I think is very, very potent from terms of what it delivers per gram.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. So essentially just very rich in micronutrients.

Chris Ashenden: Yeah. Great. Full of micronutrients, full of chlorophyll. Like it's just a lot of health in a very small. Yeah. I mean, to get down to that in a couple of grand has been dried and carefully called process. So we keep, you know, the chemical structure and tech, there's no point cooking it, it can change things over time. So it's just, nature's concentrated goodness and arrives in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

And I think variety is huge. The ancestral humans ate 200 to 400 species, you know, and, and in every calendar year. And now if you consider how many different animal and vegetable species. Do you really eat in a year? And that's where I think herbs and spices and superfoods are dance can become so important cause they can give us that variety.

There are differences in these chemical structures, depending on where the plants from and you know, what sort of ponder this, so.

Jonathan Levi: Now Chris, I noticed on your blog that you've written quite a bit about vitamin D and vitamin K and I have to admit that's a kind of a gap in my knowledge. So I was wondering if you could kind of elaborate for us.

Why are those vitamins important? And why is it that we might be missing some of them? I mean, I know vitamin D because we're not in the sun as much as we used to be, but vitamin K I don't really know so much about.

Chris Ashenden: I will say that the number one format to get both your vitamin D and one of the top three or four things you could possibly do in the world for health, the respect of a vitamin D is to make sure you get adequate sun exposure on your skin and natural light exposure to those eyeballs.

And it's embarrassing studies coming out now on health impacts of sun exposure that are not related to vitamin D, but vitamin D is technically a, it's called a vitamin is really a pre-approach hormone. It's utilized in nearly every single cell in our body. And to be deficient in vitamin D is to be correlated and other two correlations and causation, but to be correlated with an increased risk of, well over 200 diseases now, including 16 or 20 cancers, including melanoma, which is the one that surprises many people who probably don't realize that indoor office workers get melanoma more often than outdoor, like farmworkers to the site.

Yes. Wow. There are other types of skin cancer, right? The outdoor worker gets more and freckles, but less melanoma. The indoor worker gets more melanoma. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, vitamin D you need it for nearly every function, your body. We have receptors for it, at least on nearly every cell in the body. It's gained a lot of popularity for its immune-boosting of fix in recent years that people have realized that, you know, that helps stop you from a sort of succumbing to the, you know, the flu or whatever else that's getting passed around.

And it's also received a huge amount of sort of research and interest from its effects to sort of essentially pull calcium in the right direction. So the way, and this is the part sort of change the last couple of years is the understanding that you need, what's the right analogy. I always get this confused. One's a traffic light, the other one's the crowd control, but inherently your vitamin D is telling your body to start to push calcium in certain places you need the K2, which is a vitamin that's present in mainly fermented vegetables, but in a host of different vegetables and different from the K one, that's in say green leafy vegetables. It's frequently sort of found and solve. Those two work synergistically as it relates to particularly the calcium usage. And what you don't want to have is a whole host of calcium cruising around your bloodstream and excessive levels. And you want to make sure that it's being directed. Not into plaque formation in your arteries, which is what can happen.

Right. But into bone formation. And what they've found is that there's no real danger to supplementing D3 by itself, but the two together just seemed to amplify, particularly the calcium sequestering and bone health. And therefore with the calcium sequestering, the heart health elements of each other.

So like, again, man, they should as works in synergy almost the whole time. And those two together. I only recommend them, my parents, I take three supplements there. One, my dad sent me to my mom's 66 and the athletic greens every morning, bring that up, but you start to feel a little bit crook omega-3 and the dethroned K2. And if they're getting sun, they have a very low dose to D3 and K2. If it's been a good chunk of time without any sun and they're in New Zealand, suddenly tryna do winter now, then, you know, bring up the D3 and K2. Those two together are very synergistic.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, awesome. I was actually gonna ask you because my mother's recently been as many, you know, people in their sixties diagnosed with osteoporosis.

And so I was going to ask you, you know, that becomes so much more important. And I was also going to ask you, you know, what else do you recommend people to supplement on top of the Athletic Greens? So two or three questions answered with one stone there.

Chris Ashenden: Well, my that's how I'd run it. And I, I think in the West, many people pound the milk and other, they might even take like a big tablespoon of calcium.

It's a lot less important than not eating a pro-inflammatory diet. And exercising regularly, ideally outdoors, and making sure that what calcium you do have is being directed in the right direction. So if your mother has been diagnosed with osteoporosis, I'd start on a paleo elimination diet, then she can add in the foods that she tolerates well, and I'd get him moving as much as possible and ideally loaded, loaded men.

Jonathan Levi: I love it because that's exactly what we've been doing over the last four months. So this kind of gives me a vindication, if you will, of the steps that I've been, kind of guiding her through.

 Chris, I wanted to ask you actually, you know, though, I did meet your sister at the summit, she actually read about you in the 4 Hour Body as you mentioned, Tim's a big fan of your product.

How did that, come to be? How did you get the product in front of him and, uh, what resources education? I mean, I know he looks to you as an expert. So tell our audience a little bit about what it is he refers to you for and why it was that you were written up in this book.

Chris Ashenden: Okay. Well, I have tried very hard to keep my personal relationship with Tim and these arrows. Who's one of the guys are a spic most on the planet.

Jonathan Levi:  I'm right there with you.

Chris Ashenden:  From our professional setup. And I met Tim when I was traveling in Buenos Aires in early 2006, I'd gone to play rugby for a little while and then Spanish.

Jonathan Levi: Oh, how funny?

Chris Ashenden: I was sitting in a cafe having a Spanish lesson and I see this white guy walk in and he's just so obviously not from Buenos Aires. And so when my teacher got up to go to the bathroom, I just wandered over and introduced myself. And I think one of the coolest things about traveling, particularly for long-term overseas as you just become very good at just approaching people and making friends, and then they don't have to be from any similar culture.

Most of the world is very friendly when they're away from their local favorite nightclub and we just hit it off and became really good buddies. And it was interesting actually because we agreed to go meet for breakfast the next day.

And he said, just do me a bell in the morning. And he is a very much he's different now. But back then he was an extreme night out like he'll do all of his writings, sort of 11:00 PM onwards.

Jonathan Levi: Right.

Chris Ashenden: And good just out her work on this little book, but Tim and I was training really hard. And so I'd sit and wait for this guy for breakfast.

I started calling him at about 9:45, 10 messaging him. It gets to like 1:00 PM and my last one was like, dude, just going to come to eat, I'm dying. And he's like, I'm sorry, man. I'll meet you in like 20 minutes. I just slipped in and we went and sat down and discussed various adventures in life. Up to that point.

And I had mentioned the book that he mentioned Brian Quicken, and I was friends at the time with the New Zealand distributor BrianQuicken. So I pulled out of my bag. He said, you know, we never would have heard of it, it's a small brand. I said, Oh, you mean this stuff? And Tim literally fell out of his chair.

It was pretty funny. I had a bottle of Tim's product and went inside it. So, you know what I mean? We became good friends. And he knows about, obviously, my educational background also like him. I have a very strong reading interest in health and fitness and athletic performance. And he's seen what I've done to particularly the girlfriends I've dated in the nine years, that were 10 years now that we've known each other.

And, you know, he knows that I had a lot of experience training girls and he also knows that I read a lot. So it's just the interest element from Athletic Greens was me saying, Hey man, try this and tell me what you think. And when we got towards the end of December, it was probably October in 2010, we sort of soft launch our names, Athletic Greens because I'm an athletic guy and it's kind of green space.

And I regret those two decisions profoundly. From a marketing standpoint, I dropped him a line and said, Hey man, I've decided to, that I have to change the name of this product because it pigeonholes us against these muppets. It just put dried grass in there and they're like 20 bucks or like a hundred bucks.

It's just never going to work. And he said, no, don't change the name. I put you in the four, I bought it in. It's going to print. And that was the first I knew of it.

Jonathan Levi: Wow.

Chris Ashenden: And it was a huge lift for us. We don't know that we drove a huge number of orders from the Four Hour Body, but the credibility element of having appeared in Tim's book, uh, was very huge for us, particularly when looking for, for people who may be interested in sharing their love of us with the audience.

So, wow. We've been mates for a long time. I will ask him questions, random questions. He's way ahead of me in certain areas, I read more than him on other areas. And most of us have a network now of health and fitness kind of weirdos that we know. So typically most of our conversations now are, you know, how's dating life, how's training.

How's how. How's the biz and then it'll be some completely random, sorry, I forgot this way. A completely random question out there about some element of health or performance or hormones or this or that. And between the two of us, we typically know someone who can give a pretty strong answer.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, I bet incredible. I'd love to be a fly on the wall of one of those conversations. Cause you guys are two people that I very much look up to in the health space and obviously who know just about everyone worth knowing in the space. I think that's an incredible testament to just the power of serendipity in a random cafe in Buenos Aires.

Chris Ashenden: He's gone on to do amazing things. And there's been no financial transaction ever, ever until, uh, last year where, you know, we started paying for advertising on his podcast on occasion.

Jonathan Levi: I didn't realize you guys were sponsoring the show.

Chris Ashenden: Oh, we didn't, haven't done a huge number, but we sponsored a bunch to actually reach out to us. And I mean, you have an interest in sponsoring the show because I've got a couple of other supplement companies and this is the one like I'd like to stand behind. So I said yes, for sure. And it actually ended up being again, an outstanding decision because of how it's driven their credibility with other people of influence.

So most your regular punter doesn't really know who Timothy Ferriss, your average entrepreneur absolutely does. Yeah. But we reached out to these other businesses to talk business and they say, Oh yeah, I love your product, man. I started taking it, you know, years ago. And then I hear about it now on at Tim Ferris Podcast and Ferris man, like Ferris is unbelievably smart and unbelievably driven.

And when he gets dialed and is unbelievably focused in terms of how he drives his own productivity. I look at what he's done is written. You said a great little business that drove the lifestyle you want. He's written three bestselling non-fiction books in three different genres, which not many people have done, maybe very like one or two ever.

And now he's driven his podcast too, you know, is going up into the heights. And I think he's really set of sites very, very high there and he'll get it. So,

Jonathan Levi: right. I think he has one of the top podcasts on the planet. It was just funny because he actually makes most of his money in startup investing. So I think just an incredible, incredible guy.

And if anyone in our audience hasn't heard of him, I'm not sure what rock they're living under.

Chris, tell me a little bit about your motto. I thought that was really interesting. A hundred percent focus on happiness. What does that mean to you?

Chris Ashenden: Sure, man. Well, basically when I was originally launched Athletic Greens, I had been involved in some other business ventures that had gone heavily south and dragged me down with it.

I had gone through bankruptcy. I've had my name trashed through some litigation. I've been unable to defend myself. I'd been really fighting for personal solvency. At the same time, as I'd raised a huge amount of money trying to launch and, you know, get through the R and D and get ready to go a greens product.

And I actually had, at the time, a couple of other sort of business opportunities presented to me in the dietary supplement space. And. I went and I've been trying very hard to get off the ground and start selling the fit cranes. And I'd been just failing miserably mainly because I went into it with this idea in my head that I was great at selling face-to-face therefore I'd be great at selling online because surely it was all the same.

Yeah. And I would ultimately in the middle of all that started dealing with significant amounts of depression and didn't really want to face it. And I remember sitting down with my sisters who had gone to meet briefly in London at the time, and them sitting me down and saying, look, other people wouldn't notice this about you, but you're not the same guy.

You're not the same brother. You're very different. You're through withdrawing, you know, we think you're dealing with depression. I knew I'd been facing this man. And I, I wasn't like that at the time I was drinking like more on the weekends than I should have. I wasn't in a happy place and I was very miserable in and a whole host of areas. And I said, okay, I'll go speak to a doc. I went and spoke to a doc. I knew very well, you know, great respected mental health doc. And she doesn't want to say, Oh yeah, you got all the symptoms. What do you want? I think she thought I was turning up for a prescription. I just said, no, no, no, no.

I think I'm going to go have a look at this. From the other side and like, not just like a chemical side. So I began to have this focus on my own happiness. And I started reading all these books on what drove happiness, particularly for entrepreneurs. I was very curious because I knew I was an entrepreneur, wanted to stay in business, but realized I was sort of miserable in my own head.

And as part of that evolution, I ditched the other product suites because they did not make me happy. I said to my then financial partner, look, I've been trying to do this for 10 months. I still believe that that's the way we need to do it. And the format that I sort of decided on it, but I'm miserable.

And one of us has to go. And he was a very gracious guy by wealthy businessman from Sydney. And he said, look, man, I'll exit his effective investment in the kitchen. He converts that from equity and debt. And I personally guarantee the debt. So, which was very gracious of him. I actually don't think he didn't want to be lifted, trying to recoup a couple of million dollars by itself, but we made that agreement.

And then I sat there with no money, no nothing, and a focus on happiness. I just realized that if this is what's going to drive me, then I need to live it. And that led to dropping off the other brands, which were higher pain points, but I just wasn't in love with them. And focusing on Athletic Greens product, which I thought had the most power to do something in the world.

And it was sort of the business venture I was most proud of and have always still now is the business venture I'm most proud of. So it just became the catchphrase when I didn't initially want to be the voice or the personality behind the brand. And when I started writing emails to people. From the company, I just signed off as a hundred percent focused on happiness.

I decided I'm just going to live this. And I mean, it's just evolved to the point that it's on the label. It's on every email I send out to a couple hundred-thousand people on varying degrees of frequency and it just sort of has become my motto. And I would like to say I've lived it very, very well, but I will have to say it in the last two or three years, I have lit the balance of lifestyle.

Equilibrium between health has been treated in the favor of really focused on growing the business. Not so much through stress, but for realizing that prolonged levels of low-level stress will affect your sleep. And if you don't sleep well, you're just in a spiral and I've been in a spiral for about two years.

I had the hard landing and the last couple of months. So literally man, it's that its sort of okay, great. Who cares about having a decent size business? If your health isn't up to pie? Not like again, man, I looked apart from the outside and I'll crush most people in the gym, but then I'll just start coughing afterwards.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. I noticed you had a little bit of a cough throughout the interview. I think you and I are going to be fast friends. Yeah. Sorry.

Chris Ashenden: Have you had troubles with the same? Cause the gut dysbiosis is messing with my system and. And I'm not going to go the whole medical history, but right now my diet compliance is 100%.

But my gut biome being completely out of whack is plus the sleep component, like ahead in my ass. So like I said, like if I took my shirt off on the beach, now you wouldn't know. That, but I thought I was fit. It's like, no, man, I don't feel superhuman. And normally I feel very much superhuman, but like I said, it was at the two year, no sleeping spiral and even with the right diet and you know, better meditation.

Some, I get a message a couple of times a week and plenty of time outdoors and the world's best dietary supplement. And I say that with no qualms at all, mate, the sleep is still enough to crushing you. Wow. And I'm good friends with doc Pasley's. Oh yeah, yeah. He's a good buddy of mine. So yeah, if it's under the man.

Cause I did some blood tests with him two years ago. He said you need to fix this. Your fasting blood cortisol is 50% above the testing range. Uh, you need to sort it out. You're going to have a high landing. And I was like, mate, I'm fine. And I wasn't, he was right. And I was wrong. So dammit. Correct.

Jonathan Levi: He's a rock star. He's also my go-to sleep expert. We've had him on this show and just, if there's something about sleep that he doesn't know, I'd be surprised.

Chris Ashenden: Yeah. It's my personal doctor is a very, very good guy.

Jonathan Levi: Oh yeah, absolutely. Chris, you mentioned some books first. You mentioned books about nutrition and health and stuff like that, but you also mentioned some books on happiness.

What are a few of the ones that have most impacted you?

Chris Ashenden: I read the Business of Happiness and Delivering Happiness. So from the entrepreneurial angle, both of those I found quite interesting. Both for Weinman who's realized that makes them happier to be like, it's not so much the whole book, but both those guys just making relatively early in their career, a recognition that they wanted just growing a business wasn't enough for them.

And they wanted to grow and be part of something that made them happy. Right. And it was the same for Tony's Jay and it was the same for Ted Leonsis, right. And they're both billionaires, these guys. And I just thought it was very, very interesting to hear that perspective on business from these two guys.

So those two are two of the first ones I read and they stuck in my head most says all the self-help guys and everything else, most of those guys get paid to be self-help guys. These were written by guys who the book was really just, yeah, yeah a Pat effect. And it's because they wanted to write it. It's no, these guys are entrepreneurs first and self-help guys second.

So I resonated better with them. I read a lot of biographies and it was interesting. The billionaire biographies T. Boone Pickins was a funny guy, three of his biography, and just consider these are guys who have gone through life. And there are some blenders that are, I think, who are very happy. And there are some, I think who are really not happy.

And I have some friends in the medical world who are either. Not Kirk who do blood testing and blood work and other things for some of the balloon is, and they're put in is that most of them are not particularly happy. So I think that that element of just focusing on the elements that make you happy over important, and I think probably the best sign that man, I'm going to butcher this guy's name because I always get it wrong. It's, he's the founder of Paul Mitchell?

Jonathan Levi: John Paul DeJoria.

Chris Ashenden: John Paul DeJoria. Yes. And he's also obviously the founder of the Tron and he sent it up. Basically goes, look, love what you do. Love who do it with food. Do it for. And I'd probably put in it. I love how you do it because I think a lot of guys chase fast money and that can really bite them in the ass later and then say, have fun while you do it.

And I'm like, dang.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely it's funny you say that. And as I say, I think we'll be fast friends after I sold my business in 2011, I happened to meet JP DeJoria and happened to hear his lecture and it completely change the course of my life for exactly that reason. I was like, man, what am I doing? Like chasing these business opportunities that make a lot of money, but don't make the world a better place.

And don't make me a better person. And, you know, complete 180 into doing what I do now, which is just trying to help people be their best selves and learn and overcome their challenges in life. And I think in that sense, I identify with so much of what you said and the focus on happiness and focus on spending your life, doing things that you really love doing and that really bring you joy.

Chris Ashenden: Absolutely, he is an interesting guy. And typically they use them in the photos as Paul Mitchell, even though he passed away, I just found that his entire approach to business, it was very refreshing to me. And in the last six months, we've had a lot of changes in terms of how I'm structured with some of the people I'm working with, what we're focused on in the business, and then making those changes wasn't itself stressful, but you know, I'll take a compression of revenues for greater personal happiness in little in the last two months now where this little cough started is actually a result of a gastrointestinal candida overgrowth. Well, relatively rare guys.

Jonathan Levi: It is. Yeah.

Chris Ashenden: Um, you know, the bottom of what happened there. And I basically think it was way too carved for too long in conjunction, which in the South isn't necessarily a bad thing in conjunction with big sleep and stress problems, which combined led to essentially gut dysbiosis and an environment where the candida can start to creep a hold. And the candida actually really like ketones. Most bacteria do not, obviously candida and not actually bacteria. And may this allowed them to flourish. The point that I've met that systemic level. Wow. You know, it's pretty bad. And some of the viruses that I had, the, if some back Coxsackie viruses that had crushed me, present entire population at like 96% worldwide.

Jonathan Levi: Right.

Chris Ashenden: You almost sure as a traveler have these and they're immune-suppressing viruses that your immune system just keeps completely under control. And what happens is when our immune systems get a significant challenge, such as you go back in a pool and you drink some dirty water and you get cholera for two weeks like you adjust in a bad way, and then you get better.

And then that person in Western medicine is now suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. And this is exactly what happened to my cousin who runs a foundation up in the Hindu Kush. And most doctors say, you just need to wait a year and get it over and done with, they don't go to the level of testing that I ended up going to a, that clinic in the US which literally said you have Coxsackie, Epstein-Barr like off the charts and that's, what's making your immune system depressed.

And at the same time, but in my case, it hadn't come from being some hash challenge. It came from the massive amount of damage I was doing to my GI tract by eating foods that I just didn't do well with. So I was tearing all these little holes in my GI tract. Which so many people do and maybe don't realize it.

That was sort of the immune kickoff that got the virus its headstart. So I have that same back and can be there. And with the predominant sleep, I have the free testosterone of like a seven-year-old guy at the moment. My top one testosterone is okay. And Kirk was right two years ago. And it's the interesting mix, man.

Not enough sleep, carrying stress for too long. I need to take some more big breaks and the eventual gut dysbiosis and the gut dysbiosis that's causing all the big problems, but they're all tied together. So I think for entrepreneurs, you probably have, if you're a dynamic guy, my sister loved you. I think you're not going to get on.

Oh man, because I don't normally do these that often, but it's been great chatting to you, but I was amazed because she said, now you've got to talk to this guy. He's absolutely awesome.

Jonathan Levi: So that's awesome. I'm honored. And I was totally impressed by her as well. You know, we completely hit it off.

I have a question for you, Chris. You know, I've been feeling a little bit low on the energy and motivation department, myself. Part of it is, yeah, I haven't been sleeping enough, but you know, I got my normal blood tests, all that stuff, pretty normal. Tea is slightly low, nothing jumping out, you know? And I think maybe a lot of people are in that position where they're like, look, doctor says I'm fine, but I don't feel good.

Or, but I have this little cough. What are the next steps? I mean, what do you do if you know your blood work looks fine. Uh, how do you go about determining what's wrong?

Chris Ashenden: Um, I do a GI, a full GI panel. I like the one by Genova, which was called formerly pedal random name, like a mountain or great plains or something like that.

But now it's called Genova labs. I like the gut panel. That's the, it's nowhere near as expensive as back in the day. When I was trying to test for each of these individually with a clinic, I don't know what that would cost you depending on where you are in the world, but I'd try to find something like that.

And I'd also have a look at what is happening? How are you eating? Is there some element, have you ever done a paleo elimination diet? If you haven't, you should, because it's the only real gold standard and it's a wake-up call it every single person I know who's done that. It has been a wake-up call at least to some degree.

Some of them listening to the wake-up call, some of them don't. And it really varies over who ends up with sort of what actually ends up being a problematic food or class of foods for you. Obviously the sleep, obviously the sun. And I'd be curious to see your blood smear. I don't know how comprehensive that panel was, but a local to say I got blood and my testosterone did they measure free testosterone, which is the Bible testosterone.

Did they measure serum testosterone? Did they look at your sex hormone? Six competent one in Langhorne is BGH and. There's GBH because you can have like your nostalgia, like what were your estrogen levels like? And Kirk's like the King daddy of that hormonal profile. I think you need to do the elimination diet.

The full panel of bloods and that GI panel at a minimum. Well, and I think that the, I do the combination dark, regardless of anything else. So you don't have to wait for any buds to start that. I'd just go do it. Yeah. Maybe on the other side of, I think you go into something like a burning man pretty soon.

And I mean, the other side of that.

Jonathan Levi: I try to stay paleo all the time though. I mean, I don't even do the elimination diet. I just went full swing with it. We've had so many of the paleo guys on the show, you know, Rob Wolf and Loren Cordain, and I'm completely sold on the data as a whole, but I didn't think to get the microbiome test that I should do that again. It's been like a year.

Chris Ashenden: Yeah, I'd do that, man. I mean, Rob Wolf was one of my favorite guys. He's one of the other guys I really, really respect out there. Agreed. And he's doing a lot of great work for the greater good without ever bothering to try to get Accolades for it. So, absolutely. He's a good boy. I haven't met him face to face.

I've had a bunch of phone calls for them, but I would do the GI tract I'd even considered going auto-immune for a period. I don't know how old you are, but I'd try an auto-immune protocol and just see maybe, unfortunately, in my family, I think we have a problem with nightshades because I have found that I do, and eggplant was like my favorite vegetable for a long time, especially living in Japan for a bunch of years.

I do some great things with eggplants and eggplants and curry and all sorts of stuff, but not in. I would try that if you've already done paleo, then I'd go the automotive protocol, protocol, paleo, and then I'll do the gut biome. And if you've been in extremely low carb for a while, I'd also consider are I'd do the gut panel first.

And then I consider a significant reintroduction of some carbohydrates timed, right. Depending on what your gut panel came back and. Potentially doing something like I'm just currently experimenting with, which is pretty crazy levels of probiotics.

Jonathan Levi: Love it, love it. All right. I'm going to play with that. That gives me some good homework. When I get back from the burn. We're running a little long here. You've been very generous with your time. I want to ask you, I mean, we'll link everyone up to Athletic Greens. We'll link them up to your website. If they just visit the blog post, what is the major message that you want people to take away from this episode?

What do you want them to learn from the time that they've spent with you today?

Chris Ashenden:  I'd say like anything else when you get to hear someone's experiences or anything else like food is absolutely first. Don't assume that just because you've thought it is healthy, your whole life, that it's healthy for you.

Cause that's the trap I got myself into and realize that you can have your food dull then across the board and nutrition development across the board. But if you're not sort of looking after yourself from a more holistic level and I'd put sleep and stress in the same boat there, and then the entire thing can come screeching to a halt on a runway.

You know, with no landing gear and I'm not like that bad. I just have a cough that won't go in. I don't feel as awesome as I normally do, but I don't like it. So why get to this position? Cause quarry out of this hole is, is a mission. And I think if people could take it away and say food is first, but it's not everything asleep and other elements are just as important.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. That's a wonderful note to end on. Chris, it's been such a pleasure and such an honor chatting with you. It sounds like you and I will certainly be in touch. I look forward to chatting again next time.

Chris Ashenden: Yeah, man. Thank you very much for having me on. I appreciate it. I hope your listeners got some value.

Jonathan Levi: I'm sure they did. And the pleasure was absolutely all mine. Take care of Chris.

Chris Ashenden: Cheers mate.

Jonathan Levi: All right, SuperFriends, that's it for this week's episode. We hope you really, really enjoyed it and learn a ton of applicable stuff that can help you go out there and overcome the impossible. If so, please do us a favor and leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher or however you found this podcast. In addition to that, we are always looking for great guest posts on the blog or awesome guests right here on the podcast.

So if you know somebody or you are somebody, or you have thought of somebody who would be a great fit for the show or for our blog, please reach out to us either on Twitter or by email, our email is info@becomingasuperhuman.com. Thanks so much.

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast for more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.