Ben Greenfield Podcast 236
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Transcript of Ben Greenfield Podcast 236
Podcast # 236 from
http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/04/236-does-the-pill-make-you-
gain-weight-how-to-stop-leg-cramps-are-earthing-mats-safe-and-more/
[0:00:00.0]
Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast: Does
the pill make you gain weight? are earthing mats safe, how to
stop leg cramps and spasms, how to breathe the right way during
exercise, are minimalist shoes okay for flat feet, how much
protein should you eat during exercise, and natural remedies for
strokes.
Brock: So, are you feeling very Paleolific?
Ben: Yeah. I’ve got a bone in my nose now.
Brock: Awesome!
Ben: For those of you who are wondering what we’re talking about, I
actually just got back from Paleo FX. Even though I’m not Paleo
and I do indeed eat (I don’t really eat milk, I drink milk)
fermented milk. That was fun. There were some good folks down
there, some familiar voices in the podcasting community that I
got to spend time with like…I posted a few photos up to the
Facebook page of me and Jimmy Moore, wrestling. We did an
outdoor primal play class. It was actually pretty fun. It was called
Fitness Exploring. But Jimmy and I got a chance to go head to
head and do some wrestling.
Brock: When I saw those photos, I was worried for Jimmy.
Ben: I actually had to carry Jimmy Moore around the park, which was
interesting and for those of you who don’t know who Jimmy
Moore is, he’s lost a great deal of weight by adopting a low carb
lifestyle and he used to be over 400 lbs and he dropped.
Brock: Almost 200.
Ben: Yeah. He dropped a lot of weight but he’s still significantly over
200 lbs so he was a load to carry around. And I got to hang out
with Abel James, my fellow videocaster over at the Lean Lifestyle
Insider at leanlifestyleinsider.com/b, where we did MTV cribs for
fat loss kind of thing. It’s fun. And yeah, just a lot of familiar
faces. It was fun to see some listeners down there hang out and
partake a little bit and yeah, it was good.
News Flashes:
Brock: And as always, this is when Ben takes a moment to explain to us
what the heck he was talking about when he was Tweeting,
Facebooking and Google+ing all week with all the newest studies
and things like that.
Ben: That’s right and I guess, we’ll jump right in to something that I
was just talking about, and that was the consumption of milk. I
stumbled across an interesting article over at slate.com and I’ll
link to it in the show notes but it is about the most spectacular
mutation in recent human history. Brock, what do you think the
most spectacular mutation in recent human history is or was?
Brock: The invention of…I can’t even…is this the appendix?
Ben: Yes. The appendix. No. Good guess, though. It’s actually the
development of something called the lactase production gene and
the fact that several thousand years ago, it appears that we
experienced a genetic mutation as humans that kinda jammed
our lactase production gene permanently in the “on” position. So
usually, after a child had kind of been weaned off their mother,
that child would naturally lose its ability to produce lactase,
which is the enzyme that allows mammals to digest the lactose
sugars in milk. And so what actually appears to have happened
after several thousand years is that this mutation for being able
to tolerate lactose kind of began to spring up among many many
humans and so not only does that mean that kind of the
argument that maybe humans are not designed to be able to
digest milk or something like that might all by the way side a
little bit, but it also means that you may actually be able to train
your body how to tolerate lactose sugars more efficiently. That’s
certainly something that I’ve done. I used to be severely lactase
or lactose intolerant and I’ve gradually began to include more
and more raw and often fermented dairy products into my diet
and now, I can tolerate even just a regular glass of raw milk that’s
not necessarily fermented. And fermentation is one of the ways
that you get lactose out of something.
[0:05:15.8]
But I can tolerate a glass of milk just fine now, whereas that
would have sent me into grabbing my stomach and making a big
mess later on in the bathroom back in college. So, kinda
interesting article. I’ll link to it in the show notes. And one
interesting thing in the article is the fact that when you get to a
point where a dairy source has been fermented to where it’s been
fermented so long it’s a hard cheese like a parmigiano cheese or
something like that. It’s literally just lactose-free. It’s pretty
much gotten the lactose left in it. Did you know that?
Brock: I didn’t know that.
Ben: Yeah. So you can have parmigiano cheese if you’re lactose
intolerant. There you go. The next thing that I wanted to mention
was about how exercise simulates pot and pot smoking
specifically. This kind of delves into the whole idea behind why
exercise can be addicting. The way that I tweeted this was, I said
“here’s why single speed junk mile training is addictive.” It turns
out that in this study, in which they looked at different levels of
intensity for running that very, very high, high intensity exercise
and extremely low intensity exercise like walking, these didn’t
have this effect but kinda like a mid-zone threshold-ish run had
this significant effect in altering the circulating endocannabinoid
levels and these are the endocannabinoids the same type of
compounds that are ingested into the body or inhaled in the body
when we’re doing something like smoking pot. So, there’s a
reason why this kind of threshold training can be addictive and
why, in addition to just being a painful trick to the pain cave high
intensity interval training doesn’t have the same type of
addictiveness as just going out and pounding the pavement for
an hour.
Brock: That also explains why I feel so munch-y when I finish my long
slow runs.
Ben: Yeah. Here, it turns out that you could indeed, perhaps replace
those endocannabinoids that you’re missing with high intensity
interval training by just smoking a joint after you finish a few
repeats on the treadmill.
Brock: Best of both worlds.
Ben: That’s right. Speaking of running, there was another really
fascinating study that came out on running pace and what
happens when you’re running a marathon. And the title of the
study was Running Pace Decreases during a Marathon are
Positively Related to Blood Markers of Muscle Damage. But
there is a ton that I glean from looking over this that I think
really any runner or anyone interested in what goes on when
your body is doing endurance exercise might find fascinating.
What the aim of the study was, they wanted to see why people
fatigue when they’re running and in particular, this marathon in
which they ran the study, was performed during a race in a warm
environment, so they also were looking at heat and hydration and
how that affects your time to fatigue as well. And there’re some
really interesting findings. One thing that they did was they
measured the levels of muscle breakdown specifically, one thing
called myoglobin, another thing called creatine kinase, and then,
lactate dehydrogenase. And all of these are markers of muscle
fiber damage and they’re also markers that can go up in the
bloodstream as you rapidly deplete carbohydrate stores or use
glucose as a fuel source to a greater level. What they found in
this study was that there is a significant correlation between
whether or not someone slowed down more as the race
progressed and the rise of these biomarkers in their bloodstream.
So just in 2 things: One, that the more muscle that you break
down while you’re out there doing a marathon, the slower you’re
gonna be. And two, the more carbohydrate and glucose that
you’re dipping into and utilizing, the slower you might also be.
That second observation is a little bit of an extrapolation because
it’s tough to differentiate between biomarkers like that that are
put into the bloodstream for muscle damage vs. biomarkers like
that that are put into the bloodstream from metabolic use.
[0:10:03.4]
But there’re 2 important take-aways from this part of the study.
One would be: do everything you can, if you’re getting ready for
an endurance event, to put your body into a state where it’s not
going to be engaging in quite as much muscle damage. So I
would encourage anybody who’s training for marathon to include
strength training and include plyometrics. Those would be the 2
biggest things that you’re gonna train your body to have a little
bit more efficiency and economy and less muscle damage during
something like a marathon. And then number 2, train your body
to run on fatty acids more and carbohydrates and glucose less.
And both of those things are gonna help you avoid some of the
build-up of biomarkers that are significantly associated with a
drop off in running pace. That was one interesting thing.
Another thing that they noted was that there really was no effect
on the hydration status of runners and a correlation with a drop
in pace, and this is something I’ve talked about with Tim Noakes
before in this podcast. There’s all this information out there that
if you lose more than 2% of your body weight, you’re gonna slow
down significantly and it’s gonna affect your performance. Well,
it turned out that the people who were slowing the least during
this marathon ended up being the most dehydrated by the end
and there really was no significant correlation between
dehydration and the suggestion that it might slow your pace.
And so, most of these folks were at least up to 3% dehydrated.
Interestingly, the people who were at those greater levels of
dehydration actually slowed down less. And it could be because
they were taking less time to stop and drink. It could be because
of potential for fluid overload in the stomach and blood going
into the stomach and getting diverted away from exercising
muscles ‘cause of all that fluid you have in your gut but
ultimately, this whole hydrate, hydrate, hydrate during
endurance performance in hot environment and avoid
dehydration at all cost, once again, has been shown in this
particular study in addition to a bunch of others to really not be
something that anything but perhaps propaganda from sports
drinks.
Brock: Sales pitch.
Ben: Right. The evil Gatorade. What else was in this study that was
interesting? Those were some of the main take-aways. Main
thing would be lifts to plyometrics. Do some of the stuff like that
we’ve talked about in this podcast before in terms of training
your body how to be metabolically efficient fat-burning machine
and then, don’t get obsessed with replacing everything that
you’re losing when it comes to hydration. Cool study. We’ll link
to it in the show notes if there are some marathoning geeks who
wanna geek out even more. And of course, like anything that we
go over in this podcast, you can feel free to leave your comments
over in the show notes. What episode is this, by the way?
Brock: Number 236.
Ben: 236. So there you go.
Special Announcements:
Brock: Okay. This episode and a number of other episodes is brought to
you by Audible. Make sure you go to audiblepodcast.com/ben
and if you are a new member, if you’re not a previous member of
Audible, you can sign up and get yourself a free book and also
know that you get the pen as getting a little kickback. Just a little
thank you from Audible.
Ben: That’s right. I think it comes out to about a penny per download.
But I get the personal satisfaction that you are making yourself
smarter or even entertaining yourself using something other than
the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast because Lord knows your life
probably sucks if this is all that you ever listen to. My apologies if
this is all that you ever listen to because at Audible, you can
branch out and you can check out a bunch of other stuff. What
do we have there at audiblepodcast.com/ben, Brock?
Brock: There’s all kinds of awesome stuff. I actually looked through the
best sellers before the show just to see what’s selling and I was
amazed to see Fifty Shades of Grey is still one of their top sellers
currently. People love their smut.
Ben: Yeah. Especially when you can be listening to it and people can’t
actually see that you’re reading it.
Brock: I’m afraid that they would be able to see if I was reading it.
Ben: Yeah. Exactly. So that’s one of those books you’d probably wanna
digest on Kindle or via audio. Anything else of note?
[0:15:01.7]
Brock: Speaking of smut, A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire
Book I is also on there and a friend of mine described as the
book’s and also I guess the TV series as being exactly what a 15
year-old boy would write ‘cause it fluctuates between battles and
boobs.
Ben: I am overly out of it. What is A Game of Thrones?
Brock: It’s kind of a Lord of the Rings kind of time magical land of yore
kind of setting.
Ben: Interesting.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: So for all those World of Warcraft folks out there…
Brock: Exactly. Yeah.
Ben: Nice. I used to be a real nerd with the world of warcraft as I just
offended anyone who reads A Game of Thrones but I wrote a
400-page fantasy novel that I finished when I was 14 years old. I
think I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy over 10 times. I was
big, big time in the world of war craft medieval fantasy stuff for
the longest time.
Brock: You’d like the Game of Thrones, then. So maybe you should go
to audiblepodcast.com/ben and sign up.
Ben: There we go. So audiblepodcast.com/ben, grab a free book, A
Game of Thrones if you’re into that kind of stuff. What else for
special announcements? First of all, ton of articles this week over
at bengreenfieldfitness.com and I must say some interesting stuff
that I pushed out on smart drugs and biohacking. I would highly
recommend you check those out as well as the next chapter in my
most recent book, which is not about dragons or princesses but
it’s about the best way to build endurance as fast as possible
without destroying your body. I released my next chapter in that
book. It goes into everything from how crossfit endurance might
not be the best answer to how exactly to do high intensity interval
training to how to become what I call an ancestral athlete. Really,
I’m putting a lot of work into these chapters and I would say that
any endurance athlete that’s following this series is going to find
a great deal of benefit from some of the stuff I’m putting out
there on these articles. And you can check those out over at
bengreenfieldfitness.com.
Brock: I’m just afraid Bryan McKenzie is gonna hunt you down and beat
the crap out of you.
Ben: Actually, I quote him out in that chapter and said, “if you’re
gonna use crossfit endurance for your triathlon training or for
your endurance training, use his book, because…”. And actually,
I was writing that chapter while I was down at Paleo FX where, at
the Victory Belt Publishing table, Bryan’s book was on display
and I spent a good 20 minutes just standing there perusing his
book and looking at his training programs and everything that
was in there and decided that it was something I could get behind
vs. the people who are going in and doing a crossfit WOD 5 days
a week and trying to pile a bunch of triathlon training on top of
that, that type of thing. I think Bryan’s program does a decent
job making sure that there is enough rest and recovery worked in
and there is a good balance in terms of the training so if you’re
gonna use crossfit endurance, use his Power Speed Endurance
book. Even though my book will still be better when it comes out
in terms of getting in the trenches stuff but ultimately, good stuff.
A few other things: This weekend, Jessa and I are teaching the
How to Raise Superhuman Kids. That’s gonna be Saturday night
at 6:00 PM PST for any of our Inner Circle members. If you’re
not part of the Inner Circle, go hop in. It’s 10 bucks a month easy
peezy. Some of the biggest archives of the hidden secret stuff
we’re doing behind the scenes at bengreenfieldfitness.com you’ll
ever gonna find along with a really cool super active forum.
There is tons of stuff going on in our forum right now in terms of
discussions on everything from what kind of deodorants to use to
how to cook spinach and broccoli and how long is too long, and
just all these stuff.
Brock: That’s what I really like about the Inner Circle. It’s really your
day-to-day kind of stuff. We tend to cover a lot more of very
specific kind of information but the Inner Circle really…It’s tough
like you said like cooking spinach, putting on deodorant, things
that you do on a daily basis that everybody does so it’s really
helpful for pretty much everybody.
Ben: Yeah. And then also, at the end of this month, we’re doing a
workshop on “Ask Me any Questions You Want about Minimalist
Triathlon Training.”
[0:20:07.4]
Again, we do all of our workshops through spreecast, live, you
can watch me on video. Interact, ask your questions, get pulled
up on video. It’s fun stuff. The Inner Circle is the place to be,
especially considering that I’ve checked out with a lot of the other
people in our “industry” or charging for website like that is
usually 50-100 bucks a month. I wanted to be more accessible to
people so, 10 buck a month, you can hop in, check out the Inner
Circle. The risk of this becoming a monster special
announcements, there are still a few other things. First of all,
Brock and I are hosting the Jimmy Moore Living La Vida Low
Carb show and this is the same Jimmy Moore I was talking about
earlier. If you have a low carb question, go to
bengreenfieldfitness.com and use the tab that’s right there to
leave your low carb audio question if you want it answered on
Jimmy Moore’s Living La Vida Low Carb show that we’re guest
hosting in May and we’ll play your stuff on the show or you can
call toll-free number 1-877-2099439. A video, everything you
know about the confusing world of nutrition supplements and I
really geeked out this video. We’re gonna put a link to it in the
show notes for number 236 over at bengreefieldfitness.com. It’s
about a good hour and a half worth of nutrition supplement
advice, information and how to dig through all the crap that’s out
there but useful video. You can always download it, convert it
into audio, listen to it while you’re out riding your bike or
whatever. It actually will clear up quite a bit in terms of the
confusing world of supplements. There is one last thing I wanted
to mention.
Brock: Is it the Lean Lifestyle Insider?
Ben: You can go to leanlifestyleinsider.com/b and watch me and
fellow podcaster, the fat-burning man, take you through our
homes and show you everything that we do to keep our bodies
lean and in fat-burning mode 24/7 – a lot of the underground
stuff that we do when it comes to everything from biohacks to
supplements to daily lifestyle choices – breakfast, lunch, dinner,
that kind of thing. So, you’ve got that..
Brock: I know what it was. It was Essential Guide to Becoming
Superhuman.
Ben: That’s right. I forgot about that. Everything you need for
performance, recovery, fat loss, digestion, brain and sleep
optimization. I put together a 213-page manual with 14 CDs and
we’ll put a link in the show notes that allow you to access that. I
realized that this was a super long special announcement and I
went over some stuff pretty quick but just go geek out on the
show notes and you’ll be able to link to all that stuff and waste
lots and lots of time that works and get fired and there you go.
So enjoy.
Audio: Hey folks! It’s me, Ben Greenfield and this is Abel James. You
may recognize me, Ben, from Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast or
me from the Fat-Burning Man Show. And today, Abel and I
wanna tell you the number one workout that we’re doing right
now to burn fat. So Abel, I’ll let you take it away first. What is it
that you’re doing right now when it comes to exercise to get your
body as lean as possible?
Abel: All right. So the first thing that I do that a lot of people skip is a
warm-up. I do about 5 minutes of shadow-boxing and light
stretching then I go straight into doing some pull-ups to failure,
doing some burpees, and then I do some heavy squats and heavy
deadlifts in my shed in the backyard and that’s it. It’s easy and I
love it right now.
Ben: Did you just say, a shed in the backyard?
Abel: That’s right. I workout in my shed. Usually, I workout actually
in my backyard in the sun because it’s just that nice in Austin, the
sun here.
Ben: I was gonna say, the shed’s about as masochistic as you can get.
You see after your doing your squats and deadlifts…
Abel: That’s where my punching bag is.
Ben: I’ve got this thing that I’m doing. It’s called a Litvinov sprint.
Abel: I love how you geek out all the time, Ben.
Ben: I’ve no clue what Litvinov even means. Anyways though, what I
do is I’ve got this 50-lb dumbbell and I take it out to the hill
beyond my house and I do 15 dumbbell swings and then sprint
400 meters up the hill. I drop the dumbbell and hold the
dumbbells still in mid-air dropping to the ground while I’m off
sprinting.
[0:25:05.4]
I do that 8 times through and man, when it comes to fat-burning
workout, that is about the most potent thing that I found yet.
Abel: So you sprint back and forth before the dumbbell even hits the
ground, right?
Ben: Exactly. It’s like a road runner from Looney Tunes.
Abel: That’s a fat-burning workout right there.
Ben: Exactly. I guess folks are probably wondering why Abel and I are
here geeking out about fat loss. It’s because we’ve got a new
website.
Abel: That’s right.
Ben: And it is basically, Abel and I following each other around each
other’s houses with a camera, virtually, of course, since Abel is in
Austin and I live in Washington and we are basically showing you
everything that we do from the time we get out of bed in the
morning all the way up through lunch through our workouts,
through dinner, through bedtime to live what we call a Lean
Lifestyle.
Abel: Yeah. And you’ll learn things that are kind of the more advanced
strategies a lot of times on our podcasts, our shows, our blogs.
We’ll talk about things that are kind of generalized to the public
but these are the things that we literally do ourselves everyday –
all of the secrets of what we’re cooking, what we’re eating for
breakfast or not eating for breakfast for that matter, what we may
or may not be putting in our coffee depending on the day, pretty
much any supplement that we’re taking and tons more. Ben has
all sorts of crazy gizmos that you’ll be able to see. It’s a blast to
watch.
Ben: And Abel’s house is much cleaner than mine as you’ll also find
out. Anyways though, here’s what you do if you want to get inside
the Lean Lifestyle Insider right now. All right. So Abel, what is
the URL that people can go to if they want to get in on the Lean
Lifestyle Insider right now.
Abel: That would be leanlifestyleinsider.com/b.
Ben: That’s leanlifestyleinsider.com/b and I’ll put a link in the show
notes for URL, too. Hey, Abel, thanks for coming on the show.
Abel: Anytime, Ben.
Listener Q & A:
Anonymous: Hey Ben and Brock! I have a question about oral contraceptives
and weight gain. I have recently switched over to a new type of
oral contraceptive and I know I’ve heard a lot about saying that
they think they’ve gained weight being on the pill and I don’t
know if it’s just psychological or what but I have gained a little bit
of weight since I switched to a higher estrogen dosage. I’m just
wondering if this is something that is thrown around and doesn’t
really have any merit or is there really is something to it. A little
background is that I have been tested that I have very low
estrogen which is why I switched to a higher dosage pills. Thanks
for all the help. I love the themes of the podcast. You guys are
great.
Ben: You know what, Brock?
Brock: What?
Ben: It’s kind of a myth. This whether or not oral contraceptives can
make you gain weight.
Brock: That’s what I would’ve guessed.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: If you just ask me but I’m excited to hear why.
Ben: First of all, it could indeed…much would be psychological and I’ll
explain why here. When you look at weight gain, normal healthy
women gain weight during their entire years of fertility, whether
or not they’re using contraception, whether or not they’re on the
pill. When the typical American female, when she is 20 years
old, average weight is about 125-130 lbs and by the time the
average American woman is 55 years old, she is gonna be closer
to 165 lbs. This is on average depending on the Broad Brochure.
That’s an average gain of 35 lbs over the years of fertility and this
can be borne out by everything from estrogen dominance and
exposure to the toxins and pollutants in the environment to
eating to the metabolism naturally slowing to life, to stress, to
lack of sleep to having kids and it’s really, really tough to tease
out how much of a role that contraceptives could play in that, if
you’re just looking at the actual data from that standpoint. But
when we look at studies that have been done on the pill and
weight gain, there is really broad analysis that was published and
was called the Cochrane Data Base of Systematic Reviews and it
looked through a bunch of randomized trials that compared
contraceptives like the pill with placebos.
[0:30:17.9]
And there was zero evidence from any of these studies that
women who were using the contraceptives gained any more
weight than those given a placebo. There is another really big
study that they did at Umass Medical School as well and this was
done in female athletes. They studied about 150 female athletes.
They randomly assigned a group that took oral contraceptives,
the rest were serving as controls and they found zero correlation
in either weight or body fat to the use of birth control and gaining
weight. The question, then, becomes is the pill something that
you should take and could it cause some people to gain weight.
First of all, this comes down to whether or not you wanna worry
just about your weight or whether or not you wanna worry about
some of the other issues that might go hand in hand with being
on essentially, what is synthetic hormone replacement. And
there is certainly less estrogen in some of the current pill than
there was in previous versions of the pill, in some cases. But
there are also some issues, for example, with breast cancer, and
there is data from over 50 studies that suggests that the pill
increases the risk of breast cancer by anything from 10-30%.
And again, the pills that have more estrogen in them are the
bigger issues here but that’s certainly something that’s worth
considering. Cervical cancer is another issue. There is some
evidence that the birth control pill introduces major risks for
cervical cancer and that is because the pill and especially the pills
that are the higher in estrogen can cause full body inflammation.
And much of that inflammation is going to play its role in the
cervix, in the development of cervical cancer, especially the type
of contraceptives that are implanted devices like an IUD that
releases a systemic dose of hormone. Even though it is releasing
something like progestin locally or some kind of an estrogen
compound locally and there’s a little bit less of a full body effect,
you’re still getting a pretty big dose around your cervix at a local
level that can increase your risk for cervical cancer. That’s
another thing that women using the pill should be aware of.
When you’re increasing estrogen especially from any of the pills
that are gonna cause a bump up in estrogen that can irritate your
stomach lining, it can aggravate gastroesophageal reflux disease,
it can aggravate stuff like Crohn’s disease. A lot of women who
are getting on the pill start to complain of depression, moodiness
and a lot of that is due to the fact that most of your
neurotransmitters are made in your gut. So if your gut is
inflamed, it’s gonna affect a lot of that and so there’s something
to consider as well. Cardiovascular risks are another issue. I
believe we’re talking about blood pressure and strokes later on in
this podcast and the pill especially anything that’s got estrogen
and progestin in it can raise blood pressure pretty significantly
and may even slightly raise the risk of stroke in women who have
previously not had stroke risk factors and it actually gets fairly
significant in terms of the risk of stroke and also with a newer
kinds of progestins that they’re putting in to birth control pills,
blood clots. There are some other issues there as well on a less
significant level but still something that has been observed in
studies. You’re looking at a potential for increased risk of
prostate cancer in your partner when you’re on the pill.
Brock: How does that work?
Ben: I’m not quite sure of the exact mechanism of action on it but it
was a study you can find it in Pub Med. I’ll try and remember to
link to it but it was in 2011 so relatively recent. It was titled Oral
Contraceptives Uses Associated with Prostate Cancer. I only had
the chance to read the abstract of the study. I didn’t get a chance
to go through the full discussion to look at mechanism of action
but it is likely due to some kind of a progesterone or estrogen
exposure on the part of the partner when the woman is using
contraceptive or an oral contraceptive like that. You get a drop in
antioxidant so you get lower blood levels of vitamin B6,
coenzyme Q10, magnesium, a lot of these things that are relevant
to your metabolism.
[0:35:08.6]
You can get impaired thyroid function. Estrogen can influence
the availability of thyroid hormone because it increases the levels
of a thyroid-binding protein and then you also get, as I
mentioned before, just over-all higher levels of inflammation and
that’s specifically via measured levels of c-reactive protein.
Brock: Do you think that might be where the myth was started from,
then? That people are gaining weight if you’re getting kinda puffy
if you’re inflamed generally and retaining fluid, that could
certainly convince you that you are gaining weight?
Ben: What I suspect here is that just like many things, something as
simple as creatine, for example, you’ve got responders and non-
responders. And I think that there are probably some females
that despite what studies say, the females who are making noise
about this and who do gain weight when on an oral
contraceptive, are probably women who are responders and who
are who are gonna gain weight and perhaps, they are outliers
indeed but there are still probably a fair share of women who are
gonna gain weight on the pill and most likely, it’s due to them
experiencing at a greater degree, many of these adverse side
effects that I talked about. And for me, if I were having to make
this decision and fortunately, I don’t personally have to make this
decision but I would avoid them like the plague. And part of that
is also I’ve read this book and I’ll link to it in the show notes. It’s
called the The Pill. If you read this book, The Pill, it’s gonna
scare you away from wanting to use the pill. But it also
introduces a lot of measures that you can take as alternatives to
contraception. That go above and beyond like an intra uterine
device or an implant and get into the tiny method and some of
the really, really natural ways that you can use contraception.
Basically, just natural family planning that goes above and
beyond something as crude as abstinence or something of that
nature. It’s certainly something that I would stay away from.
There’s another really good book written by someone that I’m
gonna get on the podcast here in about a month or so. Her name
is Sarah Godfried. It’s called The Hormone Cure. And that also
goes into some pretty scary details about what happens when you
introduce synthetic hormones into your body.
Brock: Not to drag this question out too much longer ‘cause this is going
on a little bit but our caller did mention that she was diagnosed
with severely low estrogen that’s why they gave her a larger
estrogen dose in her pill. Is that a good way to be handling the
low estrogen?
Ben: No. I would be seeing, and again, we gotta be careful about
medical advice here, but I would, for example, go back and listen
to the interview that I did with TS Wiley on the Wiley Protocol.
You can go find a Wiley practitioner in your area by going to the
Wiley Protocol website. Just google it. We’ll try and put a link in
the show notes for you as well but you can work with a
compounding hormone replacement therapy specialist, who is
going to allow you to naturally increase your hormone levels
without introducing synthetic hormones into your body just
because of the variety of metabolic milieu something like that can
create something very similar to what I already described.
Whether you’re using the pill or whether you’re using synthetic
hormones for some other reason, it’s just something that I’d be
super careful with and I’d stay away from. You’re not gonna grow
a third arm or anything like that but it can create some pretty
significant issue.
Brock: That would be an awesome mutation, though.
Ben: That would be a mutation that goes way above and beyond
lactose tolerance.
Avi: Hi Ben! This is Avi. I recently listened to the podcast where you
interviewed the creator of the Earthpulse product and I was
wondering if you can talk about the similarities and differences
between that and the Earthing Mat that Dave Asprey uses. There
is a huge cost difference between the products but from the
descriptions, it sounds that they both can be used for similar
ways. Thank you.
Brock: Well, there is a large cost difference and I know the one that you
use is like $600.
Ben: The Earthpulse. Well, if you get an Earthing Mat or Grounding
Mat, I will explain why you’d wanted that in a second or why you
wouldn’t wanna do it. It’s like 50-70 bucks, in that range.
Whereas to get what I use, which is called Pulse Electromagnetic
Frequency, it’s like $400-600 so it’s significantly spendier to use
a Pulse Electromagnetic Frequency device vs. using an Earthing
Mat.
[0:40:11.2]
But the whole idea behind grounding or earthing is that, it
normalizes your circadian rhythm by introducing you to the
natural magnetic field of the planet earth. The earth actually puts
out this frequency. It’s about 7.8 hertz. It’s called the Schumann
frequency and both animals and humans rely on it for a variety of
benefits, in particular, normalization of circadian rhythm,
meaning that people who never get in contact with the ground,
who never walk around outside in their bare feet, who rarely look
at sunlight or get exposed to sun, what happens is, you lose a lot
of your natural circadian rhythm, which is tied not only to sleep
but also to hormone production. And so you can really reduce
inflammation and improve sleep and increase energy levels and
reduce stress and even improve blood pressure and release full
body tension by getting yourself exposed to those natural
frequencies that are emanating from the planet Earth. The other
kind of cool thing is that you disperse a lot of the build-up of
electricity within your body from using computers and talking on
phones and all these other ways that you get exposed to what are
called EMFs or electromagnetic fields. This Grounding Mat,
which is also known as Earthing Mat, it is a mat that you plug
into the grounding wire port of a regular three-pronged outlet.
So you put this next to your bed.
Brock: So you could put this into the one little round, not the 2
elongated…
Ben: What happens is you get a flow of electrons coming up to through
the ground if you’re doing this in a grounded home.
Brock: If your house is grounded probably.
Ben: Yeah. Exactly. They flow through the ground wire and on to the
mat if you’re on a high rise apartment or skyscraper or something
like that. And so you’re getting exposed to the same type of ions
and the same frequencies that the earth is releasing. And this is
something that’s been used by, for example, Tour de France
cyclists for almost a decade to enhance their recovery and sleep
in the evening and it kinda flies into the radar but it’s been fairly
popular in alternative medicine for a while. Now that relatively
famous biohackers like Dave Asprey are selling these things on
their website, they’re kinda beginning to get more popular among
the general population. I get asked why I don’t use an earthing
mat or grounding mat and there’s a reason that I use something
like the Earthpulse, which is achieving a similar effect rather
than an earthing mat or grounding mat. And the reason for it is
because of the way that US Electric Utilities here in America have
set up their electrical infrastructure. What happens is, unlike
Europe, about 70% of the electrical current in the US is returned
into the ground via face wires as it travels back to the substation,
so pretty much everything that is in physical contact with the
ground gets bombarded with this extra energy. But especially, if
you’re plugging yourself into a grounding mat that you’re gonna
be sleeping on and earthing mat in your grounded wire in your
house, what you’re doing is amplifying that effect even more.
You’re exposing yourself to more electrical pollution when you
use a grounding mat or an earthing mat compared to if you didn’t
use one at all. This isn’t the case if you’re gonna use it if you’re
professional cyclist or if you’re doing the Tour de France using
one of these in Europe. We’re wired way differently. They’re
wired way differently over in Europe. And so it’s not that great of
an idea to be using an earthing mat or grounding mat and there
are some people who use these types of mats in their office
setting to mitigate a lot of the effects of electromagnetic
frequencies in the office setting. A lot of people don’t realize you
can get the same effects by literally putting aluminum foil
underneath your feet or stopping work and going and standing
on aluminum foil after you’ve been working on the computer for
an hour or two.
Brock: I thought you’re gonna say, filling your shoes with dirt.
Ben: Or doing as Brock does and making a special little aluminum foil
tiara and wearing that while at the office, whatever you wanna
do. But seriously, you can achieve many of these many
electromagnetic reducing effects through doing something like
that and there are some other things that you can do as well. For
example, I have Greenwave filters installed in every outlet
throughout my house.
[0:45:07.5]
What these filters do is they eliminate a lot of what’s called dirty
electricity or the surges that go into homes as power is traveling
back to the substation. So I’ve got one of these installed in every
single one of my outlets in my house and they are called
Greenwave filters and you basically plug them in and they can be
very, very effective at reducing dirty electricity in your home. A
few other things that we do is, we don’t have any fluorescent light
bulbs installed in the house. Preferably, you should use what are
called low blue lights or even LED lights and they don’t emit the
same amount of radiation as a regular fluorescent light bulb and
you’re not gonna get as much EMF exposure. You wanna unplug
as much as possible in your house. When we go to bed every
night, we unplug the wireless router. A wireless router in the
home is one of the biggest ways that you produce a bunch of EMF
when you’re sleeping and we just unplug that. Anything in the
bedroom especially, we unplug. The only thing that’s plugged in
when I’m sleeping is the Earthpulse, which is plugged into one of
these dirty electricity filters and it is not grounded in the same
way that a grounding mat is so I’m still getting all of this
generation of that Schumann hertz that that electrical frequency
or that natural magnetic frequency that the earth puts out but
I’m getting that kind of unsteriods without the same type of
electrical pollution as a grounding mat or an earthing mat
introduces.
Brock: I remember David Minkoff, at the Become Superhuman event,
was talking about how he actually turns the breaker off to his
bedroom before he goes to bed every night and how he’s noticed
that makes a huge difference so that’d be even a step further than
unplugging everything, turning off the current to that room.
Ben: Yeah. Another thing that we do is, we actually don’t sleep in our
house anymore. We get a tent and we take out to the back…no,
I’m just kidding. We don’t go that far. ‘Cause I knew there are
some people listening in there laughing. You can actually really
notice a difference when you unplug your microwave. That’s
another big one. If your house has a microwave in it, a) don’t use
the microwave; b) unplug it. Our microwave is built-in to our
house and if we took it out, there’d be like this big hole in the
kitchen wall and since we plan on selling our house here in the
next couple of years, we’re not getting rid of the microwave but
it’s unplugged.
Brock: We even don’t have a microwave for almost 3 years now. Once
you adjust there really there’s very few things that I think I’d
really like to have a microwave for this.
Ben: Yup. Garage door openers – those create a standing
electromagnetic field that radiates literally hundreds of feet. So
don’t keep your garage door open or sitting in your house
especially in your kids’ rooms or anything like that. Put it out in
the car where it’s at least a little bit farther away from your
house. These are all little things that you can do but ultimately,
the answer to the question is yeah, I’m a fan of grounding but I
achieve it by making sure that I go outside barefoot every once in
a while. I actually do it everyday. I use an Earthpulse rather
using a grounding mat or an earthing mat and then , I really
mitigate my EMF exposure by doing some of these little things
like unplugging the wireless router at night, unplugging the
microwave, keeping the garage door opener out of the house and
just trying to reduce electrical flow especially, as much as
possible at night, when it’s not necessary for you to be using the
stuff because by doing so, if you’re sleeping 7 hours a night, that
adds up over the course of the year in terms of how much EMF
mitigation you’re getting when you’re sleeping. There you go.
Brock: And of course, you could do like I do and fill your shoes with dirt
and wear the tinfoil tiara.
Ben: Fill your shoes with dirt and wear the tinfoil tiara. Yup. There
you go.
Colin: Hi Ben and Brock! My name is Colin. I’m interested in finding
out if there are any supplements which may assist in stopping or
reducing muscle spasms. I’ve been having a lot of trouble over
the last 12 months running downhill and my upper leg gets a
sudden and painful twinge to the point where I can’t continue. A
sharp twinge usually starts in the medialus near the knee and
then on the femerus near my hip. It starts in my left leg but my
right leg gets a similar twinge shortly after. If I take to limping
very slowly for a better kilometer, I can start shuffling again but I
need to be very careful not to extend my pace much. I’m 59 years
young and I’ve been shuffling over long distances for many years
and I don’t want to stop. Thanks for your podcasts. They’re very
informative.
Brock: I know Colin said muscle spasm but it kinda sounds like cramps.
Ben: Yeah. And it’s tough to differentiate between the 2 really.
[0:50:03.2]
What we’re talking about is, the muscle is shortening. Whether
it’s shortening because it wants to protect itself or it’s shortening
because it is being overused or it’s shortening due to an injury
recall type of scenario. Fascial adhesions can be another issue.
Very, very occasionally, dehydration but way, way less than what
sports drinks companies will have us to believe. And same goes
with electrolytes. It’s pretty rare that it’s a salt deficiency. Most
of us get enough minerals and electrolytes in our diets to at least
ensure that we’re not going into spasms or cramps. I’ll touch on
that in a second. There are a few kind of a caveats there.
Ultimately, if I were Colin, I would just stop running, probably.
Take up swimming. What I would say is one biggie that I just
mentioned is fascial adhesions and that’s when you get a lot of
cross links in this sheath that surrounds the muscles. It reduces
mobility in the muscle and the muscle tends to go into spasm or
cramp when that happens. That’s very, very simple to work on
and eliminate through a combination of trying to meet a few
times if you can initially, as you’re just getting rid of this problem
with a massage therapist to get some really good deep tissue
massage and teeth grittingly pleasant massage that’s really
freeing up a lot of adhessed areas in the muscle. If you really
wanna do this and take it to the next level, you find what’s called
an MAT practitioner or an IMAT practitioner. These are the folks
who can actually find areas that are going into this protective
spasm or cramp due to you, having a pre-existing injury in that
area or in the muscle that opposes that section and doing a lot of
really tough trigger point therapy to get rid of that. Active
Release Therapy or ART would be another example of a
technique that can be effective for that type of thing. Once you’ve
got those issues cleared up, you would go into maintenance mode
by using a foam roller, a really good foam roller. I use one called
the Rumble Roller. It’s got a bunch of ridges that stick up out of
it. Every Tuesday and every Friday, I do the Rumble Roller – full
body rumble rolling session without fail and that really helps me
move pretty freely. The other thing that I do is I’m, usually a
couple of times a week, doing some mobility drills – side to side
mobility drills, dynamic stretching drills, leg swings, arm swings,
stuff like that. Interestingly, these extreme isometric exercises
I’ve been doing recently based off of the Minimalist Triathlon
Training Protocol that I’m doing and my work with Evo Athletes
Jay Schroeder, a lot of these extreme isometric drills I’m doing
are actually improving my range of motion as well. And they’re
exposing my body to having to kinda move through a full range
of motion very, very slowly and hold that range of motion. And
I’ve noticed quite a bit of enhanced mobility just from doing
isometric holds as well – deep squats, deep lunges and then
holding those moving very, very slowly can be effective for this
type of thing also. When it comes to the whole electrolyte issue,
which I mentioned ahead on, biggest thing here would be
magnesium deficiency. I would experiment, if I were Colin, with
direct delivery of magnesium to the area that’s spasming by using
a Transdermal magnesium like a spry-on magnesium, rubbing it
in. I’ve talked about it on the show before. We’ll link to it in the
show notes to this episode, but basically, rubbing something like
that in would work out quite well. The other thing that you can
use to make sure that you’ve got really, really good mineral
balance would be something like a Trace minerals supplement.
The one that I use is called Natural Life Minerals. It’s over 70
different trace minerals and if any of these minerals are kind of
imbalanced or deficient in your diet, they can all contribute to the
efficiency of the muscle contraction or the propensity of the
muscle to spasm or cramp. So those are 2 things that I use and I
also really increase my use of as I’m going into a really hot race.
I’m racing in Vietnam in about exactly 14 days (exactly 2 weeks
or so) and I’ll kinda step up (it won’t be super hot there) my use
of magnesium oil and minerals for sure when I’m over there
racing. Those are some of the things that I’d work on if I were
Colin. Colin, if you’ll implement this stuff, I’d encourage you to
come back to the show notes and let us know if any of that works
so we know if, for the sake of others, any of this stuff actually
panned out for you.
[0:55:21.4]
Brock: I actually get a cramp especially on my right side in about the
same area that Colin’s describing and I’ve noticed when he says
that he limps for about half a kilometer and then is able to start
running again. I’ve noticed that if I just change my gait a little bit
if I feel it coming and I actually change my stride purposely like
shorten my stride, maybe pick up my cadence a little bit, I can
actually make it go away. I’ve did that a few times during the 30k
run I did a few weeks ago, I felt it coming, purposely changed my
gait a little bit, it went away, another 10 kilometers went by, it
started to come back, did the same thing, made it go away. So
sometimes, it’s just a matter of changing what you’re doing a
little bit.
Ben: Yeah. And if this is only happening in one side, it could be similar
to what you’ve experienced in the past, too, Brock, which is
sacroiliac joint hypo mobility anything that your SI joint just isn’t
moving well and you can go and get that adjusted by a sports
chiropractic. If you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and do a
search for “SI joint”, you’ll find a bunch of stuff we talked about
in the past about that as well as even like a video that we
embedded in one of the show notes on doing a self-adjustment of
your SI joint and that’s another thing to consider doing. Brock
makes a good point. You could just start changing up your gait.
Start galloping like a horse, neighing a little bit…
Brock: Do the Gangnam style?
Ben: Bunny hop, little Gangnam Style…
Fred: Hey Ben and Brock! It’s Fred from Long Island. I’m currently
doing the Beach Body Insanity workouts and in every workout,
he is encouraging us to use your core and engage those abs and in
one of the workout in particular, I see the ladies pulling in their
belly buttons as they’re doing these exercises and at first, my
question to you was am I just supposed to go through the normal
range of motion and engage my abs that way or am I supposed to
really pull it in like that for every exercise. I’m wondering how
this would affect deep breathing where you’re supposed to pull
air into your stomach and bulljack your stomach a little bit while
you’re engaging your abs. It seems like they’re kind of in
opposition there. Thanks for your help.
Brock: This is a great question when Fred asked…I saw this on Twitter,
he put this out and it made me really think ‘cause yeah, do you
suck your stomach in? Do you just tighten it? Do you sort of
bear down like you would on the toilet or what do you do?
Ben: If you’re a model on the Beach Body Insanity video, you suck
your stomach in so that you really enhance that six-pack because
you know you’re gonna be getting a break in 2 minutes as the
video cuts and you just look good and increase your chances of
better modeling gigs in the future. Other than that though, if
you’re not a Beach Body Insanity video model, you do not wanna
suck your abs in if you wanna engage your abdominals and
engage your inspiratory and expiratory muscles properly while
you’re exercising. There are a few different problems when it
comes to breathing. There are things that you can look at in your
own body when it comes to seeing whether or not you’re
engaging in a dysfunctional breathing pattern. One would be
chest breathing and if you just look down as you’re breathing,
your chest is the first thing to move, then that’s a sign that you’re
engaging in shallow breathing or what’s called upper chest
breathing, which a really poor way to deliver oxygen to your
muscles. Another thing that you can look at is if you put your
hands on either side of your rib cage when you breathe, your ribs
should move your hands out about 1 ½ to 2 inches and you
should feel your trunk widen as you breathe and if that doesn’t
happen as you’re breathing, that’s another sign that you’re doing
shallow chest breathing. You should be able to breathe nasally
like suck air in and out from deep within your nasal cavity and in
most situations other than really, really hard threshold efforts
like when you’re lifting weights, for example, you should be able
to not only not breathe from within your chest but also avoid
mouth breathing. And if you can avoid mouth breathing, that’s a
pretty good sign that you’re doing a decent job being able to
engage your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. A lot of times,
you try and compensate for that by breathing more air into our
mouths. A big reason for that is because of shallow chest
breathing.
Brock: I’ve suddenly become very aware of my breathing. I don’t know
if everybody that’s listening at home right now is doing the same
thing.
[1:00:03.5]
Ben: If you can hear a loud thump, that’s Brock hyperventilating and
passes out there a little bit. You can take your resting breath
rate. Some of these biohacking devices or self-quantification
devices that I’ve talked about on the show before like the tinky,
for example, that will…it’s this little blue dungle that plugs into
the bottom of your iPhone and among other things, one of the
things that it does is it tracks your breath rate. There’s a watch
out there called the My Bases watch that you can also wear and
that’ll measure breath rate as well. A normal relaxed resting
breath rate should be about 10-12 breaths per minute.
Obviously, that’s gonna go up during exercise. But if at rest,
you’re exceeding 12 breaths per minute, that’s a pretty good sign
that you’re either doing really quick and shallow breathing or
maybe, you’re a tinny tiny person, a really small person like a
squirrel or a mouse. We’ve got a lot of rodent listeners right now.
The other thing is, if you tend to slouch a lot and your upper neck
and your chest and your shoulder muscles are tight, all of that is
gonna inhibit your ability to engage in deep breathing. And so if
you do carry a lot of tension in those areas and you’ll know. A lot
of times, if you just do a body check, you’ll know. I find that a lot
of times during the day, when I get really carried away or
whatever, e-mails or writing an article, or something like that, I’ll
find that a lot of those upper body muscles tend to tighten up and
I gotta do a breath check and remind myself to breathe deeply
and relax and do some of the deep abdominal breathing. If I
start my day off by doing that, (I do. I start every day with 5
minutes of deep breathing while I measure my heart rate
variability.) I find that I tend to continue to breathe deeply
throughout the day. Let’s say you wanna train yourself to do this
while you’re exercising, a few things you can do: One is to
actually practice blowing up a balloon. This encourages you to
contract your diaphragm and your core muscles. And if you really
wanna teach yourself how to do this effectively, you get into a
crunch position or sit-up position, you press your low back as
hard as you can into the ground to see you really engaging these
diaphragmatic muscles and your blow up a balloon by inhaling
through your nose and exhaling through your mouth and all the
time, you try to maintain pressure against the ground with your
low back. That’s a really good way to train yourself how to do
deep breathing. It’s also a good way to get funny looks at the
office if you’re doing it there. The next thing would be to do
planking exercises, in which you’re also practicing deep
breathing. Get into a front plank position or get into a side plank
position and rather than just focusing on how long you can
maintain that position, see if you can take, for example, 10 deep
breaths from deep within your belly button as you’re holding that
plank position or side plank position. It’s actually pretty hard to
do but it teaches you, once you get into the more complex
exercises like a deadlift or a squat or something like that, to be
able to actually engage your deep abdominal muscles while
you’re also working some of your other muscles. So that’s
another really, really good thing that you can do. One of the
other things (and I’ll do the schedule in just a while) I am sitting
on an airplane or in a car or standing and waiting in line
somewhere, is you just put your muscles, like I mentioned,
around your core like wrap your hands around your waistline as
much as you can and then just, as you’re breathing, try and feel
your hands move like your abs are moving your hands out and
away from your waist and back. That’s a really good way to train
your body how to breathe from deep within the abdominals.
Those are some of the things that I do. If you do hyperventilate
and pass out, my apologies but don’t suck the abs in. If anything,
the abdominals should be relaxed and moving in and out quite a
bit when you’re breathing the right way.
Gabriel: Hi! Hello! Love the show. This is Gabriel. Two quick comments:
First, after you apply topical magnesium after a run, you apply
topical magnesium all over your legs or whatever, make sure,
very, very important, make sure you wash your hands very well
before you rub your sore nipples. Just trust me on this one. Do
not try that at home. The other thing I wanted to comment is I
have flat feet. When I go to a running store, they usually try to
recommend to me very heavy shoes or shoes with a lot of support
but those shoes just hurt my knees. I have found that even
though I have flat feet, I seem to run better on vibram shoes and
very light shoes. I was wondering about your comments on that.
Maybe the flat feet or high arches consideration is not as
important as form or whatever. Anyway, I love the show. Bye.
[1:05:14.5]
Ben: Wow! I guess the whole magnesium issue comes out to how
often you’re touching your nipples.
Brock: Yeah. I have never done my nipples. I have rubbed it on to
some chaffing between my legs before like putting on my calves
and my thighs and I actually got it on the chafe flexor in the chub
there.
Ben: Yeah. Gabriel, you may want to consider taking up a different
activity than the whole nipple-touching and self nipple fondling
type of thing unless that’s what make you happy. In which case,
by all means, we don’t wanna impede your personal happiness or
pleasure. But as far as the magnesium goes, yeah, it’s gonna itch
no matter what. There are a very few cases where some people
have super hypersensitivity to magnesium and they actually get a
release of antibodies and histamine in response to topical
magnesium. And that’s a full on rash you’ll notice right away.
It’s like a red, red rash. Big difference between that type of
sensitivity that causes hives or rashes and this normal itching
sting that can happen when you’re using magnesium on your
skin. By the way, that sting typically goes away after about a
month or 2 or frequent use of a topical magnesium.
Brock: Unless you put it on broken skin. No matter how long you’ve
been using it, if you put it on broken like I’m assuming Gabriel’s
nipples were chafed from running or something like that, that’s
why it’s stung so much.
Ben: Gabriel’s nipples would be a great name for a band. Anyways
though, on to the meat of Gabriel’s question about flat feet and
whether or not you should wear built-up shoes for flat feet.
There are varying opinions on this. My opinion is that if you have
difficulty running in minimalist shoes or bare feet and you have
to wear overpronation orthotics or built-up running shoes, then
you have hip and core or biomechanical movement patterns that
need some serious addressing. I think that anyone should be
able to run in their bare feet or any pair of minimalist shoes
whether or not they’ve got flat feet or valgus knees or any of these
other issues. And I’ve seen time and time and time again folks
who gradually transition out of these motion control and heavy
overpronating shoes into a minimalist shoe or a vibram or a
barefoot approach begin experience less and less and less hip and
knee and back pain. The issue is that many folks and especially
folks who have flat feet or foot issues, they try and make that
change from a big shoe to a minimalist shoe too quickly, too
impatiently and that causes a foot injury or it causes something
like Achilles tendonitis especially in folks who have flat feet
‘cause they tend to have really, really tight Achilles tendons.
There are some things that you can do to make that gradual
transition into barefoot running. I wrote an article about how to
do this and I’ll link to that article in the show notes for this
episode over at bengreenfieldfitness.com. But some of the main
things that you wanna do to strengthen your feet is, first of all,
for about the first month or so, usually takes about 4 weeks or
around there for biomechanical adaptations to a change in
training such as barefoot running to take place, you just want to
stay unclod. (Big difference between that and unclad, by the
way).
Brock: You may unshod.
Ben: Unshod. Take your shoes off, keep your clothes on. That’s what
I’m trying to say. But you go unshod as much as possible
throughout the day – barefoot, especially when you’re standing at
work or at home. And you just do that for a month. You don’t
run barefoot or run in minimalist shoes but you pretty much do
everything else that you can barefoot or in minimalist gear. And
then once you’ve got a month on your belt, for about the next 2
weeks, you start to run barefoot but for very small distances on
soft surfaces like you run on your shoes to a park, take off your
shoes and run back and forth a few times, do some repeats, put
back in your shoes and you run home. And you gradually
increase over the course of generally about 6-8 weeks, the
amount of barefoot or minimalist running that you do. And then
you start to experiment with harder surfaces like cement and
pavement and stuff like that. Remember, we’re talking about… in
many cases, folks trying to strengthen feet that have been made
weak after 20+ years of wearing shoes and you don’t eliminate all
of that over a month-long transition into vibram, something like
that. This takes a little while and you gotta be patient with it.
[1:10:17.0]
You can do things like bouncing on one leg, doing some
plyometrics on one leg, you can stand on one leg for any exercises
that you do at the gym like overhead presses. If you got access to
a mini trampoline or a vibration platform, doing single leg
exercises on either of those can be effective. But basically, as
much as you can do is strengthen those tiny foot muscles. That’s
all gonna accelerate your results a little bit when it comes to
getting your body more and more used to being in your bare feet
or wearing minimalist shoes. Like I mentioned, if you got flat
feet, your Achilles are gonna get super tight, your calves are
gonna get super tight. Do lots of foam rolling and lots of
stretching for your calves and the back of your legs and lower calf
and your Achilles region and that will help out a bunch with this
as well. I personally used to be convinced because of the way that
my knees collapsed and tend to go bow-legged a little bit when
I’m running because of what I’ve seen on high speed video
cameras and fancy biomechanics labs that I gotta…I’m an
overpronator and I should be on overpronation orthotics blah,
blah, blah… I used to wear overpronation shoes all the time when
I was convinced that was the way for me and I would get knee
injuries and hip injuries and SI joint mobility issues. I made that
transition over the course of a good year into minimalist shoes
and then barefoot and it has made a huge difference in terms of
my biomechanics, my comfort. Now, I use 3 things: I use the
shoes from Skora Running down in Portland.
Brock: I’m actually waiting for a delivery today from them. I’ve got 2
pairs of shoes coming, I’m so excited.
Ben: Yeah. They actually look good. You can wear them with street
gear and stuff and they’re just a cool looking shoe so you don’t
look like a chimp quite as much as when you’re wearing a vibram
5-finger.
Brock: Which is fun, too.
Ben: Yeah. I wear the vibram 5-fingers a lot as well. I like to use those
for some trail runs. I like to use them when I’m just like…I’ve
been starting to get into more parkour mov nat type of stuff. And
I like them for that as well and give you a little bit better feel for
the ground.
Brock: I’ve seen your wearing those with a suit.
Ben: When I’m at conferences, where this type of thing is considered
acceptable like the Superhuman Conference or like recently,
Paleo FX, I’ll wear them with just my jeans and stuff, too. And
then I’ll do Skora Running shoes and then other than that, I just
go barefoot. And a lot of times, I will just go for a run. I can run
down the middle of the street now barefoot and be just fine
although I’d rather run on the side of the street without any cars.
I don’t why I just said middle of the street but you know what I
mean. Anyways though, that’s the deal with the minimalist
footwear and that’s the way that I would go about doing things.
Just make that slow and gradual transition but I think that if you
can’t run in minimalist shoes, then, your body is broken and you
need to fix it.
Brock: So basically, it doesn’t matter flat feet or not, that’s not really the
shoe like if a shoe store is trying to tell you have to wear this or
you won’t be able to function, it’s not a hard core case like that.
Use what works for you and try to work towards strengthening
those parts.
Ben: Yup.
Brock: Is that a good summary?
Ben: Yeah. Strengthen your feet, strengthen your nipples, you’d be
good to go.
Matt: Hi Ben and Brock! This is Matt from Wisconsin. I’ve a follow up
question to response I heard you during this podcast or one on
Endurance Planet regarding the use of soy protein and Hammer
Nutrition Perpetum. First, they claim they purposely avoid using
whey, specifically glutamine to avoid the overproduction of
ammonia. What are your thoughts on this? Secondly, I’ve also
heard you recommend the necessity of fueling with protein
during longer endurance events. So if not soy, what products
would you recommend that contain a good carb source with a
good protein source or would you recommend a combination of
something similar to the UCAN Superstarch next with a
secondary protein source. Also, how much protein per hour
would you recommend for a longer race such an Ironman?
Ben: Wow! A lot of protein questions.
Brock: Yeah. So Protein 101.
Ben: It’s very nitrogenlicious question. Let’s tackle these one by one.
First of all, soy protein during exercise. You look at something
like Hammer Nutrition that uses soy protein in their perpetum,
which I actually used to use quite a bit.
[1:15:01.6]
They use that instead of whey to avoid the overproduction of
ammonia and it certainly is true that soy, partially because it’s
not even absorbed and digested quite as well, results in less
ammonia build up during exercise compared to using something
like a whey protein. However, and this probably isn’t gonna
surprise anybody to hear me say this: I’m not a fan of soy and
especially of soy protein isolate because that isn’t unfermented
form of soy and not only does it have lots of isoflavones in it
which mimmick your body’s own estrogens and I’ve seen guys get
men boobs and bigger bellies from soy and I’ve seen them get rid
of that by cutting tofu and soy milk and soy protein out of their
diet but you’ve also got anti nutrients in soy that block a lot of the
enzymes that you need for digestion. You’ve got phytates in soy
that block the absorption of a lot of essential minerals especially
for vegans or vegetarians who eat soy as their main source of
protein or like for women who are in menopause, who, a lot of
times, are using these supplements that have lots of soy in them.
This is very, very worrisome. Whether or not it’s a GMO soy,
which, by the way, most soy is, or it’s non-GMO or an organic
soy, like Hammer Nutrition uses, for example, there are issues
about soy that go way above and beyond a whole GMO type of
thing. A lot of people also, incidentally, have an allergic reaction
to soy, an immunoglobulin reaction to soy where their body
mounts an inflammatory reaction against it. You’ll find a lot of
people have a lot of difficulties with this perpetum stuff form
Hammer Nutrition and that’s one big reason why. Now, before I
go about completely crucifying Hammer, I use a lot of their
products. I use Hammer’s REM caps when I’m traveling to
enhance my sleep because they’ve got some melatonin and some
valerian root in them. I use their Hammer Balm and their Seat
Saver as like these good natural topicals for doing things like
eliminating seat sores and stuff when you’re cycling. I use their
Recovery Bar. They’ve got …
[1:17:22.4]
They’ve got really good recovery bars that got a vegan one. They
got a grass fed whey one and they do have a lot of really good
products. But I’m not a fan of soy unless it’s fermented soy like
Miso or Natto or Tempeh or something like that. So as far as soy
goes, I would really stay away from it. Let’s put it this way.
There are some evidence that most of these studies have been
done in Israel, that soy is not that big issue unless it’s the staple
in your diet like it must be something you’re consuming everyday
of the week once a day at least, like we’re talking about
unfermented soy and the extent to which it can cause digestive
inhibition. For me, I’m trying to get every advantage possible in
my diet and I’m not about taking in just enough soy to where I’m
tearing a line. I’m really super careful about it and I encourage
folks to be careful with soy and unfermented soy whether or not
it’s GMO. So what do I recommend in terms of protein during
exercise? Well, it may not come as a surprise to many folks but I
don’t recommend a whey protein isolate such as what you are
going to find in a paleo supplement like Tree Fuel. I don’t
recommend a soy protein isolate such as you are going to find in
something like Hammer Nutrition. I recommend pre-digested
amino acids and using an essential amino acid supplement
compared to anywhere from 3 to 6 hours before digestion of soy
or whey protein. You’re looking at literally about 20 minutes to
actually get full absorption in the small intestine and using amino
acids rather than whey or soy protein. We’re looking at whey-
less metabolic toxic waste. We talked about the ammonium build
up being more in whey than in soy. When you look at both of
those, you get significant ammonia build up because of the
nitrogen, the catabolites that are formed when you break down
any dietary protein or any protein supplement. And you just
rather not have that type of acid poured into your body when
you’re already beating at your body during exercise. So you look
at what’s called the net nitrogen utilization of a dietary protein or
protein supplement and you compare it to something like amino
acid supplement and you literally get close to a 100% net
nitrogen utilization when you’re looking at an amino acid
supplement versus anywhere from 15-30% for dietary protein or
protein supplement which again is not that big of an issue when
you’re at rest when you’re looking at an all mudder steak for
protein.
[1:20:15.4]
But when you’re exercising and you’re trying to deliver as many
high-quality amino acids in your blood stream as possible, you’re
going to be better served by using an amino acid supplement.
Now, in terms of dosage, you can choose to use a branched-chain
amino acid supplement which is not going to give you all of the
amino acids you need but it’s still going to give you a decent dose
of them. You’d be looking at about 15-20 grams of branched-
chain amino acid per hour and I think it’s silly that a lot of these
gels in sports terms include branched-chain amino acid and it’s
like 2-3 grams like you got to use a good dose of branched-chain
amino acid to notice a significant difference during exercise. So
you don’t want t0 play around with little gels that have these
micro doses of BCAAs in them just they can sell them for $1.50
more than regular gel. If you’re using essential amino acid
supplement which is going to deliver to your body pretty much
every amino acid that it needs during exercise, you’re looking at
about 5-10 grams an hour. And so when I’m using something
like the Master Amino Pattern capsules that map protein that I
use, that’s an essential amino acid. I do ten of those before a big
work-out or a big race and then I maintain my blood levels of
essential amino acids by doing 5 an hour after that. And in my
preparations for Ironman Canada, I’m going to experiment with
10 capsules which should come out to be equivalent of 10 grams
an hour when I’m getting into that scenario. Granted this stuff is
expensive, you’re looking at around 50 bucks for a bottle of it, but
if you’re wanting to get every advantage possible during exercise,
this stuff is like steroids. I mean it, not that I frequently use
steroids or know what it feels like, but you know what I mean. I
did use one of those supplements where you literally notice
instant difference while you’re out there exercising and I just
came in a zip black bag in my jersey cotton bag and do it that way
during the race or during a long work-out.
Brock: Okay, so our last question comes from Stew and it’s actually a
written question. Stew says, “I have a good mate who’s
recovering from a mild stroke. Now, I was wondering if you have
covered this topic in a previous blog or podcast. What advise
would you give in relation to nutrition and is there anything in
particular that can improve his health?
Ben: Oh yeah. I mean, yeah. It’s kinda interesting; the same stuff that
can help you to reduce your risk of stroke or to bounce back from
stroke more quickly. Hello to Stew by the way. Stew’s one of our
listeners down in Aus where I’m hopefully going to be doing a
little tour and race vacation here in 2014. But more on that later.
So as far as stroke prevention and stroke recovery, a lot of things
you do for this can help you out with all sorts of different
neurological conditions or blood pressure conditions like
Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Dementia and mood disorders like
depression and blood sugar issues like diabetes because what
you’re looking at is wanting to take care of the type of energy that
you’re giving your neurons to burn as a fuel and you’re also
taking care of a lot of your predispositions to blood clotting and
blood pressure and just your cardiovascular efficiency. So stroke
happens when a blood clot blocks artery or a blood vessel breaks
and any of these can interrupt the blood flow to an area of the
brain. When that happens, your brain cells begin to die and
brain damage starts to occur and that’s why you want to come at
this from two different angles. One, to improve cardio-vascular
efficiency and blood flow and two, to heal a lot of brain cells and
to help out your neurons in your brain. So one of the very, very
first things that I’d steer your friend towards, Stew, would be a
ketogenic diet and ketones are a form of fatty acid but they are
metabolized like fats. Most fats actually need an amino acid to
transport those fats into mitochondria so that fat can get burned
for energy. Now with ketones, they don’t work that same way.
They can be used without having to get shuttled by that amino
acid into the body. They provide readily available and very useful
energy.
[1:25:01.4]
And they’re very important to your neurons because your
neurons can burn glucose for carbohydrates or they can burn
ketones. But when you give your neurons ketones to burn, they
have to go through a lot less energy doing so and so can really
really be a good energy source. A ketogenic diet, in terms of
giving your neurons the fuel that they need, prepare for recovery
and for optimum efficiency. So there are several studies out
there that show that you actually get a protection of neurons
when you get the extra energy that you have circulating in your
body when you use something like the ketogenic diet. You don’t
have to do the whole low-carb thing to be in a ketogenic diet.
This is something a lot of people don’t realize. You can take in,
for example, and this is reasonably low for a lot of people, but
you can take in, for example, 50 grams of carbohydrates a day.
And if you are taking 50 grams of carbohydrates per day,
sometimes that is enough to throw your body out of ketosis. This
is something I may have to deal with because I’m using a full on
ketogenic diet in my build up to Ironman Canada in August but I
need more, at least 50 grams and often more than 50 grams of
carbohydrates during the day. So what you do is you add a bunch
of coconut oil or medium chain triglyceride oil and what this does
is overpower some of the glucose that is getting introduced in
your body from the carbs, keep your body in ketogenic state and
give you a bunch of extra fuel. So ….
Brock: Just so before you get too far away, how would 50 mg or 50
grams be of carbohydrate in the equivalent of real food?
Ben: That would be about the equivalent of two pieces of fruit.
Brock: So…
Ben: Yeah, so you’re going to add in like close to 10 tablespoons of
medium chain of triglyceride oil or coconut oil per day if you
want to keep your body in pure ketosis especially if you’re doing
it for clinically relevant reasons like this like you’re really wanting
to make sure that you’re not straying out of ketosis. You want to
make sure like I talked about, there’s essential amino acids. I
would add some of those into the mix just to allow your body to
be able to utilize the ketones more efficiently. Those will help
you out a little bit and help you out from cannibalizing muscle
tissue and and stuff from not getting enough of carbs. So that’s
one thing that I’d do is ketogenic diet. The only thing that I
would do is really go after your blood pressure and keeping your
blood pressure down. The biggest thing and most simple for
blood pressure is potassium deficiency. Even though you can get
potassium in stuff like bananas and tubers and things of that
nature, obviously that flies in the face of keeping your body in
ketosis. So you can just use like a potassium supplement; and
generally potassium supplement, you’re looking at, it depends,
but it’s going to be in the range of 200-400 mg of potassium per
day that you want to add into your diet to help control blood
pressure. The other that can really really help with blood
pressure is Hibiscus tea. There’s actually a bunch of studies out
there that show that Hibiscus tea is really effective at lowering
blood pressure. So you can do that.
And then the last thing I consider that comes like a lifestyle
decision in addition to ketogenesis, getting enough potassium,
and drinking some of this Hibiscus tea on a daily basis, would be
acupuncture; and just doing a few acupunture with an
acupuncturist who is doing it specifically to lower your blood
pressure can be really really helpful especially during something
like dealing with the after-effects of stroke or going after stroke
prevention. So control your blood pressure and give your
neurons the right type of fuel to use. You can also use
supplements. There are a variety of supplements that can help
you reduce the risk of stroke and also improve your ability to
recover more quickly from a stroke. For example, a lot of stroke
victims have really depleted body source of what is called the
ATP which is the primary source of energy for your cells. And
when you deplete your ATP, one of the things that can help you
to restore your natural balance of ATP is ironically
carbohydrates. But there’s a specific carbohydrate molecule that
you can supplement without actually dumping a bunch of glucose
in your body which take care of ketosis and that’s called D-
Ribose. So 5-10 grams or so of D-Ribose per day can help to
restore something of that ATP-based energy. Another thing
would be co-enzyme Q10 and this can really really help your body
manufacture its own ATP and if you take this hand in hand with
something like D-Ribose, you’re looking at about 200 mg or so of
co-enzyme Q10 on a daily basis. You can get either of these very
easily from a health food store or from the health food section of
the grocery store.
[1:30:21:8]
You want to get a full spectrum of Vitamin B complex. Vit B
helps you synthesize hemoglobin which can be really helpful
especially if you’re a stroke victim trying to bounce back getting
enough hemoglobin back into your body in building your body’s
hemoglobin levels. Vit B12, that’s really important because of the
role that Omega-3 fatty acids play in the health of your brain and
your nerve tissue and Vit B12 helps you to absorb these fatty
acids a little bit more efficiently. Of course, hand in hand with
that would be the use of fish oil, like a good really high quality
triglyceride-based fish oil. That 1-2 combo of a fish oil with the
Vit B complex is something that if you listen to my Smart Drugs
podcast that I just did with Steven Fowkes is one of the best ways
to improve your brain health and decrease brain information and
it can also help quite a bit with kind of stroke bounce back. Few
of the things that can increase blood flow to the brain, one would
be ginkgo biloba and that’s an herb that you can use generally
looking about a hundred to 200 mg per day of ginkgo biloba.
The other thing that can really help out are any of these different
types of compounds that you’ll find a lot of times, again, in smart
drugs, so these are the things to increase mental agility in your
memory and your stamina and your awareness but they can also
increase or replenish neuro-transmitters which tended to get
damaged by stroke or by head injuries so using something like
the tianchi which has something called huperzine in it which is a
derivative of club moss and that is one of the things that can
really help to not only improve blood flow to the brain but also
increase the levels of these neuro-transmitters. There’s another
like kind of derivator, something called periwinkle, and it’s called
tempostatin; and that will be another one that you can use--
tempostatin; and that also will have similar effect to something
like tianchi even though tianchi has a bigger anti-inflammatory
brain-boosting effect on a more natural level than using like a
strait of smart drug. Those are the pretty the last thing I’d
mention. One thing would be taurine. Taurine is another anti-
oxidant that especially acts as a potentiator for the hypothalamus
region of your brain which can tend to get injured or weakened
by a stroke and it helps to increase oxygen intake in your brain.
And taurine is another thing you can find in the form of a tablet
or pill. I don’t recommend you going out sucking about your Red
Bull which would be included in Taurine but that would help out
as well. So I just want heard a ton of stuff as we do with
everything you guys listening in because everything I just went
over is really great for anybody from a blood pressure or stroke
perspective. We embed what’s called “My List” in every episode.
So for episode 236 from bengreenfieldfitness.com, you’ll be able
to find the “My List” for this episode. We’ll kind of give you a
helpful link to all these stuff, but we also just generally put as
many resources as we can in the short notes for you. Just
because we’ve nothing better to do with our time….
Brock: Not so.
Ben: We spend the after news sitting around creating incredibly
complex short notes. So hopefully that helps you out still. And
speaking of “My List,” as soon as we finish this podcast, I actually
got a My Lister interview coming up and I’m going to be talking
to a fellow named Tim who has created the “My List” about
coming back from an eating disorder. Some of the tools and
techniques that he’s used to bounce back from an eating
disorder, we’re going to play that after the next Ben Greenfield
Fitness podcast episode next week. But for anybody interested in
kind of dealing with anorexia and stuff like that, we’re actually
going to do a special “My List” episode based on that. If you ever
personally got involved with paleo list on Facebook, you can do
that over at mylist.com/bengreenfield or just go over the Ben
Greenfield Fitness Facebook page at facebook.com/bgfitness and
click on My List symbol there. You’ll be able to create your own
My List symbol for anything you like from supplements and
work-out gear to your favorite fancy novel, like Game of Thrones,
the podcast brought by audiblepodcast.com/ben.
So the last thing I want us do today for you guys as we get the
music cranked out here and play out this, I want to give you this
shout out to a few of our folks who have left reviews over in
iTunes. I really appreciate your reviews so if you could shout out
here. Here’s one from a fellow named Arthurian Legend: He
authors “This is a teasome day in health and fitness. Awesome
podcast, always ‘Brockful’ latest info and delivered in Ben’s
soothing subsonic tones.” Oh, am I subsonic? Here’s one by
Teapot Boy. He says, “Actually, we’re now in better shape on the
inside and out. Major kudos to these guys who have researched
and put on the broadcast listener Q&A. Keep it up guys and
praise the Lord! Hmm, digging digging the fact apparently. So
here’s one I like. Here’s a five-story review by Salty Traitor. He
calls this …
Brock: Salty Traitor!
Ben: …this afternoon podcast. “Ben and Brock are very helpful giving
sound advice, helping my whole family eat better and get
stronger, leaner, and faster. I advise listening at 1 ½ speed
because Ben tends to be long-winded and speaks like he just
smoked the fatty.” Love it. So there’s a review. If you want to
leave a review maybe you could get a thread on the show. Be
creative. Get a review over on i-teach page for Ben Greenfield
Fitness, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com, check out the show notes
and when you check out the show notes, you can always leave a
quick little donation over there. Put a few coins and that will
help keep this thing going. So that being said, what do you think
Brock? Should we call it a day?
Brock: Absolutely!
Ben: Alright folks. This is Ben and Brock signing out from
bengreenfieldfitness.com.