Podcast #255 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/09/255-how-to-get-

strong-as-a-bull-and-then-get-ripped-cold-thermogenesis-quick-tips-how-often-

should-you-poop/

[0:00:00]

Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: How

to get strong as a bull and then get ripped, how to get better

results from cold thermogenesis, what to do about excessive

sweating, how often should you poop, the best natural skin

care strategies, and how to get rid of a bone spur without

surgery.

Welcome to the bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. We provide

you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon, and

wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So

whether you’re an ironman triathlete, or you’re just trying to

shed a few pounds, get ready for non-run-off-the-mill, cutting

edge content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Ben: I’m gonna interrupt Brock before he even has a chance to say

anything at all because he usually is the first person to talk in

these episodes.

Brock: I do, I usually blurt something out.

Ben: But I gotta tell you, just to give you a little insider sneak peek

of what goes on before we record. I so far have been filled in

that Brock took a giant dump this morning as he has almond

skin in his teeth and he’s drinking decaf coffee right now.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: So, just to paint a picture for you guys.

Brock: That was nice of you, aired my shame for me.

Ben: Yes, no problem. Anytime my friend, anytime. Hmm, awkward

silence in the podcast.

Brock: Is that the ....

Ben: I guess that was our awkward silence moment. Speaking of

awkward silence, I’m about .....

Brock: There’s gonna be a serious awkward silence when Ben goes up

into the wilderness to practice his zombie apocalypse skills.

Ben: That’s right.

Brock: You’ll leave tomorrow, right?

Ben: I’m going total AWOL, so for all of you podcast listeners and

folks who ask me questions online and stuff, you may notice

some amount of absence on my part especially from

responding to personal emails because I’m going to a 5 day

wilderness survival camp in the back woods of Colorado

somewhere with no phone and no internet and I’ll come back

out with squirrels growing out of my beard. I guess squirrels

would be more appropriately living in my beard not growing

out of my beard.

Brock: I’d like the image of them growing out of your beard. It just

seems more like just sort of .... I can see their little arms

pushing their faces out of your beard.

Ben: Giving my face over just squirrels. So, there’s another intense

visuals for our listeners and we have a jampacked podcast this

week because we’re gonna just be doing a special episode next

week considering the fact that I can’t record too well and I’m

living at bear cave or wherever I’ll be. So .....

Brock: The squirrels will bat at your microphone too much.

Ben: We’ll be sure to give you a special report though if I’d be sad I

wanna return to post industrial America after I spend a few

days in the trees.

Brock: Yeah, what if you never come back?

Ben: It could happen, it could happen.

Brock: Yeah, it could, I guess I’ll take over.

Ben: Yup, you can, you can .....

Brock: Look out everybody. Bad if I scamming every out everywhere.

Ben: You can have my kids, you can have my wife, you can have my

dog and I will .... I’ll be out in the cabin in the woods

somewhere so there you go.

News Flashes:

Brock: Alright, go over to audiblepodcast.com/ben and you can sign

up for your free audible membership and get yourself a free

book and I know Ben, you talked about this book over at daily

apple.

Ben: Yeah, I did, I did. I recently wrote a blog post over at Mark’s

dailyapple.com.

Brock: dot com.

Ben: Which is marksdailyapple.com. A really good website, Mark’s

cool.

Brock: Half and bending.

Ben: It’s called Top Ten Rules For Becoming an Ancestral Athlete

and in that article I talked about this book called Antifragile by

Nassim Taleb who actually have the .....

Brock: Antifragile, so that’s strong – not fragile. It’s an interesting way

to phrase it.

Ben: It’s the ..... subtitle is Things That Gain from Disorder and it’s

pretty cool. It just teaches you about how things like air

conditioning and heat and modern living and health and

biology and medicine and all of these stuff is basically making

us weak and how you make yourself strong.

Audiblepodcast.com/ben describes it as erudite and witty and

.... what is erudite mean again?

Brock: I think that word basically sums up making us weak.

Ben: Ah wait, erudite does that really?

Brock: Well, not really. Erudite is somebody who’s well read, well

learned, very clever and .....

[0:05:02.6]

Ben: Yes, well erudite and witty. I’m not going even to pretend that I

came out with that phrase. Taleb’s message is revolutionary,

that’s what audible says about it.

Brock: Cool.

Ben: So, either way good listen for you check it out it will be a good

book that will just blow your mind and speaking of blowing

your mind, an article came out, I think it was on the New York

Times websites although I also saw it on a ......

Brock: Hey, wait a second. Are we doing this on the wrong order, do I

jump in to special announcements and then on to news

flashes?

Ben: You did but ....

Brock: Oh man.

Ben: You make mistakes, we all make mistakes.

Brock: You know, I’m glad now that you told everybody that I was

drinking decaf coffee ‘cause that explains what’s going on in

my brain .... which is very ....

Ben: and I love how to make .... on to this podcast. I love on today’s

podcast we’re doing zero editing we’re just kinda like talking

over all our mistakes so. We will just do that the whole time.

Brock: Sometimes we realized we’re doing something wrong and we’ll

actually go back but ah, yeah, I don’t think this week.

Ben: Nah, not ...

Brock: This isn’t one of those weeks.

Ben: Not gonna happen. I actually have to go to the doctor right

after this podcast for a special heart scan to see .....

Brock: Oh yeah, your stress test.

Ben: Yeah, I’m gonna go see what 10 years of extreme endurance

exercise has done to my heart. So, stay tuned for some

feedback on that but anyways that means that we have to

churn out this podcast in time for me to hop in my truck and

drive to the doctor’s office.

Brock: Okay, so let’s go back to news flashes and then continue on as

if I didn’t put us on to special announcements.

Ben: Meanwhile, chopping wood boosts your testosterone more

than playing sports and this was pretty cool study. A guy

named Dr. Ben Trumble studied a bunch of forgers/farmers in

the Bolivian Amazon. I’m not really sure exactly what a

forger/farmer is but I can only imagine and they tested....

Brock: I’m sure he has squirrels growing out of his beard.

Ben: He must. They tested these guys saliva after they played soccer

and then after they had chopped down trees where clearing the

jungle to grow crops and at that point I’ve kinda realized while

reading why they chose this group because how many people

on the face of the planet both know how to play soccer....

Brock: Do both of those things....

Ben: And chop down trees to clear jungle to grow crops. Hence,

Bolivia. So, what they found was that there was a significant

higher released of concentration of salivary testosterone after

chopping the wood specifically doing something that would

kinda be considered providing for the family or something

engaged in food or economic productivity vs. simply playing

sports. Both result in a spike in performance but the spike

from chopping wood is higher. So ....

Brock: What it didn’t mention was that they were playing soccer

against ten year old girls.

Ben: That’s right, that’s right. This actually inspired my workout last

night though that’s why I’m sore right now. I have one of those

battle mazes from Onnit which is designed to really give you a

really good workout that’s similar to what you get from like a

kettlebell workout but one of the exercises you can do with the

giant battle maze is wood chopping against a giant rubber tire.

And so, I swing the battle maze up over my head while my 5

year old boy stand there watching me and cheering me on and

I hit the big rubber tires many times as I can and that is a

really really good workout I gotta tell you. If you just gonna go

and do one thing and ..... it’s a little bit cathargic too. So ....

Brock: Uhm, I bet. Do you switch sides, like one side one chop on the

left, one chop on the right? Just back and forth?

Ben: I’d go 5 and 5 just to kinda spread the workout through my

body evenly and this is also why, I’m actually in the process of

building a home right now that’s kinda out in the middle of

nowhere, on 10 acres in Washington. More hippie action from

Ben and I’m putting a wood stove into that home and when I

was at the Paleo FX Conference last year I listened into a really

interesting discussion by a biohacker named Josh Whiton who

actually lives as ancestrally as possible I think in the ....

somewhere in like Brooklyn, somewhere in New York City -ish.

He is a huge fan of these modern wood stoves where air enters

the burning chamber from multiple conduits that are kinda

build through and throughout the stove and they have these

panels that reflect heat back at the wood and into the room.

They’ve got this tight fitting doors that keep particulates out of

the air and you can put this intake into them that uses air

that’s piped in from the outdoors into a combustion chamber.

[0:10:09.4]

So, I at first didn’t want to put a wood stove in my home ‘cause

their really inefficient and then once I listen to him talk and

started to research this a little bit more, and I’m going to put a

link in the show notes for anybody listening in who’s interested

in this stuff. It turns out that wood burning stove like modern

wood burning stove can actually be really green and really

efficient plus you’ll get higher testosterone. So, what’s not to

love.

Brock: Yeah, my guess if they can keep the soot out of the room that’s

awesome ‘cause like my biggest problem with burning stuff

was the smell and the dirt.

Ben: I actually want, I want soot and dirt all over my living room so

that after I’ve chopped wood I can go in with my jack-upped

testosterone levels and just like roll around on the bare skins in

my living room making love to my wife with my huge

testosterone levels and then stroking my beard and sitting in

front of the fire as it crackles away.

Brock: You’re totally not coming back in this building to search your

heat. I ‘m just ..... I’m gonna be stuck with everything. Ah, jeez.

Ben: Let’s move along.

Brock: Alright.

Ben: So, let’s move on and talk about high heels. I’ll put a link to this

in the show notes. What is this? Episode 255?

Brock: 255.

Ben: So, in the show notes, the episode number 255. I’m gonna put

a link to this really disturbing 3D scan of a female foot in high

heels and they have this new way to use a $340,000 scanner at

an orthopedic hospital to do a 360 degrees scan of somebody’s

foot in about 60 seconds. And so they’re studying high heels

now and when you do the full scan with the high heels, it’s

really nasty what goes on with the foot so that the toes get

squashed inside the shoe and the more stiletto shapes that the

high heel is the worst that is. The toes gets squashed and then

they become clawed and the base of the big toe kinda becomes

deviated outwards with forms this bunion and then the bones

actually become rotated and dropped out of position and so

you’re not only looking at creating some serious foot problems

when you wear high heels especially if you wear them you

know, for like 8 hours a day but it’s also, it creates a lot of

upstream issues in your low back that kinda turns off your

ability to use your glutes just, it’s bad news all around and for

any of you women who need more convincing that you should

save high heels for situations in which you preferably not

putting much weight on your feet at all and you’re only get a

half month for a short period of time. Go check out the scan,

It’s pretty not so. So, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes

and I’m sure Brock at this point has taken off his high heels.

Brock: I did. I threw them out the window when we first start talking

about this.

Ben: Moved on to skates or something?

Brock: Yeah, but I’m always in hockey skates really. It was just my

high heel skates I was just wearing before.

Ben: Gotcha! Well, one more, one more article. I’ll link to that, I’ll

put out on Twitter that I wanted to explain a little bit more and

this was a study that they did in mice. Well, they have this mice

exercise for 90 minutes in a fasted state and I’ve written

articles before about how cellular death can be initiated when

you exercise in a fasted state. I think a lot of people get a

sharpen and take their breath and take that as a bad thing. It’s

actually a good thing, it’s called a autophagy or cellular

turnover or .....

Brock: Autophagy.

Ben: Autophagy as they say in Canada or as they say anywhere other

than Ben Greenfield’s head.

Brock: I believed you pronounced it autophagey once. That was

uncomfortable.

Ben: Slightly, In PC or cellular apoptosis. Anyways, we’re talking

about cell death and when you actually allow your cells to

turnover a little bit more quickly, you clean up the trash in

your body so to speak, you remove a lot of cellular garbage and

so that’s one of the benefits, it’s why exercise in a fasted state

can be potentially longevity enhancing or increases longevity

and also improves the actual muscular response to the

workout. You also get what’s called increased mitochondrial

fission which means that you can improve your mitochondrial

density or your ability to potentially use things like fatty acids

to make ATP base energy more quickly when you are actually

exercising in that fasted state. A lot of people hear about this

though and then they go out and they’re idiots and I’m sorry

but when you look at the study, the mice were doing the

equivalent of what basically comes out to a brisk walk in

humans for 90 minutes....

[0:15:09.2]

and people see this research and then they go out and they

head out to their cross-fit box or they grab their hardcore

master swim workout for that morning or whatever and .....

Brock: They just go to this stuff.

Ben: Yeah, and then you do that day after day and it sends a

message to your body that you’re asking it to dig deep into it’s

energy stores and basically a catabolic state and you get muscle

wasting and you get huge amount of cortisol formed and you

get a drop in your testosterone, you get a lot of nasty

downstream metabolic issues so when we’re talking about

exercising in a fasted state like when I’m sitting down or

writing down a fat loss workout for somebody for example, I

actually do in both males and females, kinda use that fasted

workout approach but it’s always easy stuff like it’s 20-30

minutes of easy aerobics, and I don’t even flirt with that with

that 90 minute range more often than about once a week as far

as like a long fasted workout and it’s always aerobic and

always easy so that there’s not too much muscle that

deconstruction that’s going on.

Brock: And we’re talking about a real fasted state too not just like not

just havin’ eaten for a couple of hours but actually eat dinner

rather early didn’t eat anything again until well after the

workout the next morning kinda thing, right?

Ben: In my case, it’s 8 hours so, yeah ....

Brock: But I guess, mice has a tiny stomachs .....

Ben: That’s why I was thinking, perhaps that’s the equivalent of 16

hours in humans who knows but either ways some cool stuff

about fasted workouts, about chopping wood to boost your

testosterone levels and

Brock: Mice on treadmills?

Ben: And high heels. So there you go. Go chop wood and don’t do it

in high heels and be careful doing it fasted and you will have

benefits from every news flash in today’s episode.

Special Announcements:

Brock: I’m not gonna say anything about audible because I already

did. So I’ll remind you to do is go to audiblepodcast.com/ben

and that is all I’m going to say about it.

Ben: Yeah, the freakin’ time to shine. So, I’m headed to London

after the wilderness trip. I’ll turn around and fly to London to

speak at The Global Triathlon Conference and .....

Brock: That’s jolly old! Isn’t it jolly old. Not London, Ontario.

Ben: Jolly or Arkansas as we mentioned earlier. There’s a facebook

page though because I’m gonna do a meet up in London while

I’m in there for all the Ben Greenfield fitness listeners and we’ll

put a link in the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/255.

We’re gonna do a day of playing in the park followed by nice

healthy primal paleo whatever you wanna call it style dinner

that is put on by a guy named Darryl Edwards who runs this

fantastic primal workshops around the world and he is the guy

who also creates workouts at thefitnessexplorer.com which is a

fantastic website. It’s a ton of fun. He’s offering this special

early bird discount, the time of this podcast recording that

early bird discount is good for another about 48 hrs or so for

you to squeeze into that primal workshop where basically it’s

fun, we climb trees, we crawl around like animals, we do it like

some park or move nuts style, you know, play basically.

Brock: And you bathe bunch of bobbies that are chasing you through

high park.

Ben: Invade those bobbies, that’s right, so if you want .....

Brock: Actually they only have like night sticks so you don’t worry

about a new shot.

Ben: Yeah, so no permanent risk of death or anything like that. Not

if there’s any temporary form of death. Anyways, bobbie

evading, so if you want to enhance your bobbie evading skills,

check out the link in the show notes and come out to that and

then just a couple other things. Everybody’s asking about

Ironman Canada and what went on with ketosis and my race

report and everything. Published that on Monday, a couple of

days ago. Anyone who is part of our 10 dollar a year premium

podcast at bengreenfieldfitness.com/premium can grab that

and run away with all the blood lab results, the nitty gritty’s of

what happened with the nutrition and everything that shook

up as far as whether or not ketosis actually worked, whether I

plan on continuing that scenario for Ironman Hawaii, pretty

much everything you’d ever wanna know I geeked out for

about an hour and before Ironman Hawaii, for any of you who

are part of the premium podcast, I’ll be doing it again

essentially kinda feeling in on all the little things that are

getting added into the protocol and just some of the big take-

aways for you whether you’re an ironman triathlete or you’re

wanting to experiment with, you know, ketogenesis or blood

work or biohacking or minimalist training protocols or any of

that jazz.

[0:20:18.3]

All of that is worth the premium.

Brock: And head over to Youtube and do a search for Ben Greenfield

fitness and you’ll see there’s a couple of videos that make great

compendiums to that podcast episode that Ben did to.

Ben: That’s right. Brock and I went nuts with the video camera

because he was up there as well and .....

Brock: And I have nothing else to do but chase him around at the

video camera which is actually really fun.

Ben: We did shoot, the next time that you listen to the podcast stay

tuned for a special url that we’re gonna give you because we

did actually shoot a cool little 5 minute video for you where

Brock and I are messing around so stay tuned for that and last

thing I want to throw into the special announcements here just

real quick was that, we did have a one slot open up for

Thailand for the Thailand Triathlon Adventure that I’m taking

everybody on from November 15th to December 4th or

November 21st through December 4th depending on when you

decide to jump in to the adventure. But we’ll put a link in the

show notes to that, it’s gonna be a ton of fun and if you wanna

escape to Asia this winter and go and race and train and do

some clinics and stuff like that, definitely get in on that we

have one slot open up so there you go.

Listener Q & A:

555: Hi Ben, I was wondering if you are familiar with the strong lift

555 program. I know the 555 has been around for a long time,

but just for somebody who’s wanting to strengthen up the

workout a little bit, is it a good program and is it effective? I

appreciate the work you do and look forward to hear from you.

Thank you.

Brock: Now I’ve never heard of strong lift 555 I’m hoping that you

have Ben.

Ben: 555 is actually something that’s been around since the 70’s to

tell you the truth.

Brock: Uhm, maybe that’s why I don’t know about it.

Ben: So, quick overview here for people who are wondering about 5

by 5. So, if you wanna get strong and you wanna get mass and

you just want to make yourself strong like bull, 5 by 5 is a good

way to go.

Brock: Or was it 5 by 5 not 555?

Ben: Well, this 555 workout is based on the original 5 by 5 training

system and that was designed by football strength coach back

in the 70’s, this guy name’s Bill Starr and 5 by 5 is just 5 sets of

5 repetitions of specific exercises. So the original 5 by 5

program was published in this book called The Strongest Shall

Survive and it was designed simply to bulk up football players

to add mass and some amount of strength to football players.

So the way to the 5 X 5 workout goes and this something that

men or women can do who wanna get strong fast and I’ll

explain in a minute how this is actually very similar to

something I am personally gonna be doing in the off season for

my training this year. But each workout in the original 5 X 5

workout has 3 primary exercises that you do and the 3 primary

exercises are squats: so a basic barbell squat with a bar in your

back, power clings which is kinda more of an Olympic weight

exercise and then the bench press which is actually an exercise

that I hate and I think it’s a silly exercise. Anyways though,

unless you wanna add a bunch of mass, mass to your chest and

it’s not that bad silly bench press. So, these 3 exercises

basically work every major muscle in your body once you

actually put all three together. So when you do the 5 X 5

workout the original 5 X 5 workout, what you do is each

exercises rotated so that 1 of the 3 exercises is performed with

a maximum load each week or the other exercises are

performed with a sub-maximum load.

[0:25:15.7]

So let’s say you’re gonna do your 5 X 5 on Monday,

Wednesday, and Friday and that’s pretty typical you’re usually

doing something like this 3 days a week and following it for

around 6 weeks or so. So, Monday you’ll be doing really heavy

squats, 5 sets of 5 squats and then medium intensity power

clings and bench presses but you’d also been doing 5 sets of 5

reps of those. And then like Wednesday, squats you’d use a

medium weight power clings would be as heavy as you could

go 5 by 5 and then bench press you do 5 by 5 but it would be a

little less intensity. And then on the last day like a Friday, the

bench press would be the heavy exercise that you do. Now, it

works really well for mass there, a bunch of really cool

variations of the 5 by 5 workout too and one of the best books

that I would point you towards if you wanna see some really

cool variations of the 5X5 workout including a variation of the

5X5 workout called simple strength which is a variation that

I’m actually gonna be doing in the triathlon off season this year

to make myself strong and build mass and kinda get my body

to the point where it’s ready to start getting my goals to put on

a lot of muscle and I need to get strong first. So I’m gonna use

this book ....

Brock: I believe the number 30 lbs. has been thrown around.

Ben: My plan is to put on 30 lbs. of muscle during the first few

months of 2014. Yeah, anyways though, the book

“Interventions” by Dan John there are some really good

variations of the 5 by 5 protocol in that book and another very

very good book if you’re not accustomed to throwing around a

barbell or you don’t really know how to move a barbell right,

and you don’t necessary have access to like a weight lifting

coach to work with is the book “Starting Strength” by Mark

Rippetoe. If you were to read Starting Strength by Mark

Rippetoe and the book Interventions by Dan John, you would

have access to all the information up inside your head that you

need to get mass and get really strong, really fast, I still think

that a lot of folks need to get in touch with a personal trainer or

certified weight lifting coach and actually learn how to do

specific moves properly if they’re really gonna seriously make

some inroads in the strength like the power cling for example

in the original 5X5 workout, if you don’t know how to do a

power cling and you’re trying to do 5 max weighted reps of

power cling, you’re gonna screw yourself up fast. So, that’s why

you need to be careful with this stuff. Now .....

Brock: Books aren’t very good at correcting your form.

Ben: Yeah, I mean I kinda got my chops doing this 12 month

internship with the University of Idaho football team where we

have 2 certified weight lifting coaches and I was in the weight

room 3-4 hours a day watching them teach and then assisting

with the actual instruction for the football team. And then also

doing all of that myself, so, I spent a year in the trenches

learning the stuff and that helps a lot to hook up with an expert

who knows how to move and to not just have your head in a

book but as far as some of the variations, some of the

workouts, some of the programming, these books are really

good Intervention by Dan John and Starting Strength by Mark

Rippetoe. So this 555 program that ....555 ask about, they’ve

left themselves anonymous didn’t they?

Brock: Yes, yeah, I don’t think it was on purpose it was just so excited

to ask a quick question and he forgot to say his name.

Ben: 555 is a variation of 5 by 5 program. It uses the lift squats,

bench press and barbell rose on one day of the week and then

it uses the exercises squat over head press and deadlift on the

other day of the week. So it does eliminate the power cling

which can be one of the more kinda injury creating exercise in

a traditional 5X5 protocol but it’s pretty much 5X5 just a

variation of it. So, my issue with this 555 program and they’ve

got a website for a kinda typical internet sales website is it

promises to get you ripped and burn up body fat and that’s

bull. 5X5 programs don’t do that. All they do is give you mass

and make you strong and if you’ve ever seen a football line

back there with their shirt off most of them aren’t ripped, they

are just kinda fat with a lot of more muscle and they’re kinda

puffy.

[0:30:00.7]

So this would be something that you would be prior to

launching into like a more traditional body building style

program or launching into a more kinda met con style program

like a beach body insanity or crossfit or P90X or something

along those lines or you know, another really good one would

be like an MMA style training routine like Martin Rooney has a

good book called The Warrior Workouts something like that,

you know, Cardio for Warriors I think but anyways, you have

to follow up a mass program like this, let’s say you’re gonna do

a 5X5 for six weeks or eight weeks, perhaps 12 weeks would be

about as long as you go through something like this. You’d

want to follow it up with another 6 months or 9 months or

even a year of just a specific met con or body building style

workouts to get you ripped after you put on the mass so I’ll put

a link to the book Interventions by Dan John, the book

Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. I’ll link to the Strong lift

5X5 program in the show notes but then I’m also gonna put a

link to a 9 Month Men’s Muscle Building Program. It’s one that

women could use too. I designed it, I named it Men’s Muscle

Building Program just because I wanted to appeal to the dudes

out there but if you’re a lady and you wanted to kinda get toned

or ripped or whatever, you could use a program like this. It

would be something that you follow up, the starting strength or

the any 5X5 variation with and if you we’re to follow that

program, it’s all programed into training peaks which is the

online software that I use to deliver workouts to the phone to

the email whatever, it’s all really specific. I spell out the exact

exercises, workouts to do, so really cool scenario would be, you

pick your 5X5 variation, what you’d gonna do the stronger 555

or simple strength or one of the variations in the book

Interventions by Dan John and then you’ll followed up with

something like this 9 month men’s muscle building program

and that would be like if you’re gonna target 2014 to just turn

yourself into a freak of nature during that year, that would be

how to do it, that would be what I would do.

Jenna: Hello Ben and Brock, I have a question regarding cold

thermogenesis. I was hoping you could discuss or contrast the

effects and benefits of pure cold exposure, all cold water for

example vs. a hot and cold alternate contrast. I’m inquiring

specifically as it pretends to a shower protocol. Is one better off

to use only cold water or to cycle between hot and cold water or

is this dependent on one’s goals for example for a recovery type

goal is it advisable to use the cycling up hot and cold water as

opposed to a metabolic goal in which you would be advisable to

use a purely cold shower? Thank you very much for your time,

I appreciate you answer my question. Bye.

Brock: There are a lot of different reasons to use cold therapy for very

different things and especially the difference between a

contrast therapy than not necessarily not just a shower and

just straight up chilling the bones, so yeah, what’s for what?

Ben: Or if you just want to make some good jokes on a Seinfeld

episode cold thermogenesis comes in handy for that too.

Brock: I guess so.

Ben: I forget what the exact line is. Something like I was cold, I

don’t remember. You know the episode I’m talking about

though.

Brock: No. You know, I never watched Seinfeld. I’m one of those

people but I don’t know what you’re referring to like with some

sort of shrinkage ....

Ben: Yes, one of those called shrinkage jokes so this is something

that at the Become Superhuman Live Event, the world’s expert

on using cold thermogenesis to lose fat as quickly as possible

talked about and that guy’s name is Ray Cronise. I have

interviewed him and also that entire talk that he gave at

Become Superhuman is available inside the Ben Greenfield

fitness phone app. So if you go to

bengreenfieldfitness.com/app you can actually watch the

whole thing and grab the, actually I think the way that we have

it set up is the, you can listen to the whole thing. If you wanna

watch the video and grab the pdf and the slides, you would

need to be on the premium version of the app but either way

like you can get access like this first hour of his talk just blew

my mind because he’s talking about rates of weight loss in

terms of like 15-25 lbs in a month using contrast methods of

cold thermogenesis. So, specifically what Ray Cronise uses to

get the body to burn fat as fast as possible is he drinks about a

gallon of cold water in the morning, sleeps without covers,

does hot/cold contrast showers that are not done with super

duper cold water but fairly cold water and then he takes mile

long walks in the cold (in a cold enough environment where

he’s shivering).

[0:35:14.3]

So I believe that he has a kind of a biohack lab or he’s doing

those on a treadmill on a cold room but you could also do them

outdoors on a cold if that were something you had access to.

Now, the hot cold contrast showers are 5 minute long showers

that are 20 seconds of cold water followed by 10 seconds of hot

water or warm water basically ten times through. Okay, so you

go cold water to warm water ten times through 20 seconds of

cold to 10 seconds of warm. That is the actual protocol that is

most effective for metabolic goals when you looking at fat lose.

There’s some amount of blood circulation right like

vasodilation followed by vasoconstriction in your blood vessels

when you’re doing a hot cold contrast shower like that which is

why you could also use it for recovery. So it’s the reason that

they’re have like hot tubs and cold tubs in athletic training

rooms of professional training facilities and athletes who go

from the hot to the cold to the hot to the cold. You get better

recovery, you actually can really help with like hangovers and

detox and stuff like that to you can actually feel like a million

bucks after you do hot cold contrast. I remember my wife and I

did it for about 45 minutes when we were at this special sauna

in Jamaica and this was after a night where we’ve been out on

the town kinda doing the margarita ville thing and you know,

we did a hot cold contrast like 45 minutes and walked out of

the sauna just feeling like a million bucks like we had touched

a drop of alcohol so there are benefits that go above and

beyond simply fat loss and muscle recovery. Anyways though,

there are also other things that you can do. I’ll put a link to a

big article that I wrote about cold thermogenesis, it’s called

The Cold Thermogenesis How-To and it talks about how you

can do something like when you’re sitting at your desk, use one

of this vests that you can get from coolfatburner.com and this

vest from coolfatburner.com wrap around your collar bone and

your back and the areas where you tend to have a lot of brown

adipose tissue and they cause that brown adipose tissue to

burn calories, to create heat to keep your body warm. You can

also get compression tights like the 110% compression tights

and put ice sleeves into those if you wanna do a similar thing

for your lower body with the added advantage that when you

combine compression with ice, you actually enhance recovery

and you stop a lot of potential what’s called a back flow of some

of your lymph fluid when you’re icing and you’re not

compressing at the same time. So a lot of kinda ways that you

can use cool temperature but to answer Jenna’s question about

like which one is better for recovery and which one is better for

fat loss, the contrast showers are better for fat loss and they’re

more comfortable and they’re more doable too like one in the

morning and one in the evening. The cold water immersion,

I’ve personally found to work better for recovery in terms of

lowering inflammation and lowering post workouts soreness

and also something that I’ll use a lot of times during or before

workout to pre-cool the body especially before a hot workout.

So the issue is that, that is a total and equals one statement

because the evidence goes back and forth about whether or not

cold water immersion really truly does work to reduce soreness

or enhance recovery or if’s kinda all up in your head. So, you

kinda have to go out and try it and I know it’s kind of a cup out

answer but I’ve personally found that cold thermogenesis in

terms of cold water immersion for me, when you compare to a

hot cold contrast showers or like putting ice on area or even

using compression tights with ice in them nothing for me beats

going out and going out shoulder deep down into the cold

Spokane river behind my house and just like standing there for

15 or 20 minutes or treading some water, nothing I have found

beats that when it comes to my muscles feeling or recovered

so, there’s that.

Mike: Hi Ben, a big fan of your shows, 44 years old worked out my

whole life, the last ten years seems like I react differently to

humidity when it’s really hot and humid I sweat, I sweat a lot

whether I’m working out or not it’s obviously just very

embarrassing in social situations, I just feel like it looks like

I’ve come out of the pool and wonder if you can kinda help me

out give me ideas on other way to tolerate the heat better other

than shutting down the air conditioner off when I’m inside it’s

just embarrassing, it’s inconvenient and you know, I’ll have tell

my people I just finished the workout like 15, 20 minutes

before so if they’ll ask or I’ll go out and say it’s really hot out,

you know, so anyway I can do about better let me know, there

you take out sweat glands, help.

[0:40:37.5]

Brock: This is again every time somebody brings out the excessive

sweating, I’m always all ears because I’m a very heavy sweater

and I like the way Mike is thinking here someway to shut it

down by always being hot which is completely against what

Jenna has to it and Mike said that he, should he shut off his air

conditioning, so I’m thinking yeah, maybe just get being more

conditioned to the heat.

Ben: Heat acclamation actually causes you to sweat more. It makes

you more efficient at sweating unfortunately.

Brock: That’s right, it increases the blood volume and stuff doesn’t it

so you can sweat more efficiently.

Ben: It’s actually a biohack that I used before like the, for example

for the next month before Ironman Hawaii I’ll be using this

product called Sweet Sweat that I can put on my skin and it

increases the temperature of your skin. It’s got cayenne pepper

and a bunch of essential oils in it and then you go sit in a sauna

after you put this .....

Brock: So it’s a marinade.

Ben: It’s a marinade, a juicy juicy marinade. You put it on your skin

you go sit in a sauna and it jacks up your body temperature or

your skin temperature specifically even higher than you get if

you weren’t wearing it and so you just, you pour buckets of

sweat and it really amps up your body temp but what you find

is that you start to pit out and sweat more ‘cause your body just

gets so efficient at cooling itself that the sweat flows even more

so in Mike’s case, if he’s a heavy sweater already, heat

acclamation protocols would probably not be such a hot idea or

intended for him. Hyperhidrosis is something we’ve talked

about on the podcast before though and hyperhidrosis is a

condition characterized by abnormally increased sweating or

perspiration if you’re a lady since ladies don’t sweat as we all

know, they simply perspire, they glow.

Brock: Of course, they glow.

Ben: So, hyperhidrosis - it could be something that’s caused by

genetics so it could be congenital, it could be acquired and I’ll

explain in a second what I mean by acquired but either way

you sweat more and there is, part of it is increased nervous

system activity like sympathetic fight or flight nervous system

activity, part of it is greater density of sweat glands some of it

can be exacerbated by nervousness or excitement and I really

try not butcher saying the word exacerbate right there because

I almost turned it into a different word. And foods and drinks

and caffeine and smoking and even different kinds of smells

can trigger this hyperhidrotic response of excessive sweating.

In many many many people what I have found to be the issue

when it something that kinda pop up at some point in your life

and you really weren’t a heavy sweater before typically it’s

because you have gone through a period of stress in your life

that has created a little bit of an autoimmune situation

meaning that for example, someone who I know very closely

went through a personal relationship issue, kind of a divorce

type of scenario and within several weeks they were allergic or

intolerant to a variety of foods that they would normally have

been able to consumed just fine in the past and for this person

it manifested in hives, rashes, sweating, some gut issues –

bloating, constipation things of that nature. But this is a

situation that can be brought about by stress increased

sympathetic nervous system or fight or flight activity from that

stress and then increase gut permeability and kind of an

imbalance in the neurotransmitters produced by the gut and

some of the issues we’ve talked all about an episode 154 when

we talked about just like how gut issues can be the precursor to

a lot of other issues. So, autoimmune protocol and I’ll put a

link to the autoimmune protocol, the autoimmune ebook that

I’m a fan of, it’s a 4-8 week autoimmune protocol that you

could use to see if your high amount of sweating is indeed due

to an autoimmune reaction and it just cuts out common

autoimmune triggers like soy and wheat and dairy but actually

provides you with some meals that allow you to do something

other than just like, I don’t know, sip, yeah, chew on cardboard

or just eat icy’s from 711 or whatever.

[0:45:13.7]

So you’ve got that, the autoimmune protocol something that

you can definitely try but there are some other natural kinda

home remedies for excessive sweating that you can also try. So,

some of the things that are effective natural remedies for

hyperhidrosis include number 1- using apple cider vinegar and

actually consuming it about 3 times a day on an empty

stomach, you can also soak some cotton balls in apple cider

vinegar and you can rub it into your underarms to get rid of

some of the odor that’s produced from excessive sweat,

coconut oil instantly also works very well for that but as far as

actually .....

Brock: That doesn’t sound that it would smell better though putting

apple cider vinegar in your armpits like that, that’s not gonna

smell good.

Ben: Well, it has an anti-bacterial action remember that sweat

doesn’t stink it’s the bacteria that are in your armpits

metabolizing sweat.

Brock: Yeah, I’m just saying that the vinegar itself smells and even

when you’re in your kitchen with vinegar, it’s smells like

vinegar for a few hours so you wiped it on your armpits and

sure you’re not getting b.o. but you’ve got v. o.

Ben: Similar to cleaning a house though, you could wipe it on your

armpits and then you just do like a soap and water cleanse

afterwards if you wanted to get rid of the vinegar smell. So, you

could do that.

Brock: Uhm, good point. Next.

Ben: Coconut oil would also work. Another thing that may help in a

similar manner and this would just be basically away to kinda

shutdown a little bit of sympathetic nervous system activity in

a similar way that eating vinegar on an empty stomach would

be to have a glass of tomato juice and you can do just a fresh

glass of tomato juice preferably not the v8 stuff but just like

regular old tomato juice several times a day and that’s another

thing that has traditionally been used as home remedy for

excessive sweating. So, that’s another thing. There are a couple

of herbs, one is witch hazel, the other is sage and both witch

hazel and sage tea can help to get rid of excessive sweating.

They help to reduce the sweat gland activity though activate

the para sympathetic nervous system a little bit to reduce

underarm sweating so that’s something else that you could try.

It’s an herbal tea made out of like sage or witch hazel those are

two of kinda traditional herbs. As far as some other things that

you could try, that go above and beyond just like an

autoimmune protocol, sometimes iodine-rich foods can

aggravate sweating and that would be specifically some of your

cruciferous kinda stingy foods like broccoli or asparagus or

onions those would be some things that you could be careful

with and some of those can kinda cause sweating and also

cause sweat to stink a little bit more. The other things that can

cause that would be foods that are rich in nitrate or foods that

are also rich in purine based proteins. So having a lot of like

beef and liver and dark poultry meat and stuff like that can

also aggravate the issue and I know that these stuff is just kind

of like you know, it might be tricky for some people to

eliminate but if you’re trying to get rid of sweating and you just

wanted to try out a few things, these are the things that are

traditionally used as like natural remedies if you didn’t wanna

go in for surgery to have your sweat glands cut out. So, last

thing is wheatgrass and wheatgrass juice can actually be an

effective home remedy for excessive sweating. We actually

grow wheatgrass on our counter and .....

Brock: I thought that was something new and fancy I haven’t heard it

before.

Ben: Wheat jazz. Wheat jazz juice. Anyways, wheatgrass juice, we

grow wheatgrass and just drop it into smoothies you can just

cut it with scissors after it grown in your counter and toss it

into a smoothie or just you know, I guess you could eat it if you

wanted to you can blend it to make wheatgrass but having a

glass of wheatgrass a day similar to like having a glass of

tomato juice a day or drinking some of these herbal tea or

using the apple cider vinegar, all of those are things that you

can definitely try for excessive sweating if you don’t just wanna

go and get the sweat glands snipped so to speak.

Brock: Is that really a thing?

Ben: That really is a thing sweat gland removal or destruction is a

surgical option or .....

Brock: I’ve heard of giving the botox injection....

Ben: Botox is another one but it’s very similar to like a liposuction

with lasers, it’s called lasers sweat ablation and you can also

use a similar technique that you’d use for liposuction or

sucking fat out and it’s called sweat glands suction. So, ....

Brock: I just worry that keeping all that sweat inside you just explode

at some point.

Ben: At some point your head is just gonna like swell up and you’ll

explode in one nasty stinky pile of sweat.

[0:50:06.9]

Brock: Exactly.

Ben: I’m sure that they have looked into that and .... they did a little

bit of research before the surgical procedure which approved

by the FDA or not, so there you go.

Brock: I’d be the first.

JustWondering: How many times do you poop in a day?

Ben: Well, that was short and to the point.

Brock: It’s right to the point and I like it.

Ben: Speaking of stuff building up inside of you and exploding. So,

how many times do you poop in a day? Well, I can go right out

there and tell you how many times I poop in a day and it’s

once. So, I have one big bowel movement in the morning

where I’m typically, I’ll sit on my squatty potty and I sip my

cup of coffee and usually I read my kindle for a few minutes

and do my big bowel movement for the day and that’s it and I

really don’t go back to the toilet other than to pee after that so

I’m a one a day-er and I used to be more of like a 2 or 3 day-er

until I decided that I wanted to be 1 a day-er and so I just kinda

stay in there in the bathroom until I kinda eliminate everything

in the morning and then I just don’t go back in the rest of the

day, I’ve kinda trained my body to just go once in the morning

and that works out pretty well for me. How about you Brock?

Brock: I’m extremely similar, I did the same thing a few years ago.

Actually when I started racing it’s when I started start doing

marathons that I just decided, okay well this is, I’ve got my

protocol down, I have my big glass of water, I get my cup of

coffee (have a couple sips of that) and badabing badabang, it’s

all done!

Ben: Your para-sympathetic nervous system is pretty active in the

morning and it’s really conducive time to just get everything

out if you’re able to, if you have the luxury of not waking up

and being in a stress hectic rush to get to work and you know,

skip a morning trip to the bathroom and that kinda thing. If

you can make some time in the morning, you can actually train

your body to get in to this kinda one a day scenario and if you

need some help getting that along, you should listen to my

podcast episode I did with the guy named Troy Casey.

Brock: With the poop expert.

Ben: The poop expert, who’s also a male model. He’s a male model

and a poop expert. So, there are 2 unique populations that

we’ve discussed, the soccer playing wood choppers and the

male model poop experts in today’s episode. I will link to that

one in the show notes but he’s got a, Troy has a what’s called

his better pooping regimen which is a combination of

something called Dr. Schultz’s Intestinal Formula, clay literally

the edible earth clay and then a high fiber herbal colon cleanse

and I think Troy and I talked about this in the episode but I

talked to Troy a little bit about how I feel like the high fiber

cleanses cause more potential damage to the small intestine

and long term build up in the gut rather than really helping

you to poop long term and actually there was an article that

came up today Brock and I were talking about it before the

show about how too much fiber may also be bad for your

sexual performance. So, I’m not a huge fan of high fiber

supplements, I personally recommend if you want to kind of

get your body into a state where it initiates that bowel

movement a little bit easily in the morning. Two things that I

like: one is called mag07 and that is like an oxygenated

magnesium and compared to all of the other forms of

magnesium out there this is the stuff that I think has the most

potent stool softening effect. So, that would be one and then

the other one is called the Colorectal Recovery Program and if

you have a lot of issues with your colon and your pooping

mechanics and all that jazz it maybe due to some kind of a

bacterial imbalance in your large intestine or something that

needs to be addressed from like a fatty acid or a mineral

standpoint in your colon and the colorectal recovery program

is something that I successfully used when I got pretty severely

constipated after a bout of antibiotics and this kinda rescued

me. So I talked about all of those and linked to all of those both

choice better pooping regimen and also Ben’s better pooping

regimen in the How to Poop Episode so I will link to the How

to Poop episode in my response to her, but yeah, I’m a one day-

er and it’s just a combination of the Squatty Potty and just

kinda wakin’ up in the morning and I don’t even use anymore,

I don’t use a stool as often or anything like that in the evening,

I just kinda get up and go but initially when I was poop

training myself, so to speak, I started off by using some of

those evening stool softeners and occasionally if I’ve had

something that I know constipates me such as too much

alcohol, I’ll still do that.

[0:55:12.7]

Brock: I remember the guys who invented the specific carbohydrate

diet, the SCD when they were on the show they were talking

about how especially the one fellow, I can’t remember his

name, he was having like what basically what we were refer to

as poo emergencies quite often during the day and he cured

basically while he was inventing this specific carbohydrate diet

so isn’t it often like people who do have to go more than once a

day, it’s likely because there’s something going on that isn’t

quite right that they need to sort to figure that out a little bit.

Ben: Yeah, it can be infections, irritable bowel syndrome, it can be

like an allergic reaction, like an autoimmune issue. Anytime

you’re going more than 3 times a day, that would be a case

where you should be definitely look into using something like

the specific carbohydrate diet, eliminating what are called

fodmaps which you could go do a search for at

bengreenfieldfitness.com ‘cause I’ve talked about them before

there just fermentable foods that can cause issues with going to

the bathroom too much or becoming constipated. And yes,

going less than once a day or going like 3 plus times a day are

both issues that you may need to address some kind of a

bacterial imbalance or kinda dig a little deeper when it comes

to figuring out what’s going on, Interestingly the other thing

that you need to pay attention to is color and there’s something

called the Bristol Stool Scale which shows you the proper

texture that poop is supposed to be but there are also charts

out there that show you different colors of what an ideal stool

should be and you’ll notice a lot of times in athletes that the

color of poo is more brown sometimes a little bit even

borderline black and that’s because of bilirubin which is this

pigment that’s generated when you breakdown red blood cells.

A lot of times once you start exercising or during a period of

time when you’re exercising heavily, your poop gets darker and

that’s something I’ve noticed because my kids forget to flush a

lot, it’s that their poop is like really light colored compared to

mine which is very dark and it’s because of my levels of

exercise and that bilirubin formed by the breakdown of red

blood cells. So, all sorts of interesting things that you can delve

into and we could probably talk about poop for really a long

time but ultimately one a day is in my opinion a really

convenient way to train your body to go and then if you’re not

even going once a day, or you’re going more than 3 times a day,

something is probably up and I’d get that checked out.

Brock: And as Dr. Kellogg used to say “Never resist the urge to

defecate”.

Ben: Never resist the urge ..... that’s actually really good advice, you

should, if you need to poo, go poo because when you resist the

urge it actually can damage the nerves that are up inside of you

and it can also cause an impact and some issues with

restraining hemorrhoids stuff like that so when the urge to poo

happens, go poo. So, that’s being said, I’ll be right back. No I’m

just kidding.

Kelcey: Hi Ben, hi Brock. This is Kelcey calling. Since I have been

listening to your podcast and reading some of the great articles

that you’ve written and doing the superhuman coaching thing

and I’ve gotten kind of into checking the ingredients on

everything especially like cosmetics and skin care products. So

anyways, there’s a company that I’ve been buying skin care

products from for years it’s called Hydron and so I was reading

the ingredients list and they were using BHA as a preservative

in one of their products that I really like. So, I sent them an

email, you know, with my concerns, they sent me an email

back saying well you know, we really need our products to be

shelf stable and vit E and rosemary oil would probably cut

down the ton that these products would stay fresh. So, I sent

her another email with a link to a couple of articles. One was

about a new preservative called Rosamox made from rosemary

that is good for skin care products and.... anyways, to make the

long story short, she sent me an email back and she said,

“thank you for the great articles, I’m forwarding these articles

to our chemist and she said because of your email we are going

to start testing this Rosamox in our products, you know,

maybe we’ll see if we can switch over and get rid of the BHA in

our products”. So that was just really cool to get that email to

actually make a difference to a company and that company

would actually listen to me, that’s pretty cool, anyways, thanks

for everything you do.

[1:00:05.8]

Brock: So that was a really great story and you know, there isn’t really

a question in what Kelcey said but I decided that we should put

it in the show anyway because I sort of have the question now

after hearing her story of successfully getting this company

that actually looking to switching to something else. Is that

actually better, as Rosamox going to be better than the BHA?

Ben: Sure. They’re just both anti-oxidants. So BHA is something

that gets added to a lot of foods and supplements and skin care

products because it’s a fat preservative. So we all know that

like fish oil if we get fish oil and it’s not packaged with an

antioxidant and it’s not cold processed and it’s not in its

triglyceride base form it’s doing more harm to your body than

good to consume that fish oil but if the antioxidant that they

add to that fish oil is say a BHA derivative antioxidant then

that also turns that fish oil into something that is potentially

carcinogenic and something that has more oxidative stress

producing properties potentially because that is a synthetic

chemical that BHA so what you’re seeing the better companies

doing now are choosing natural antioxidants that preserve fats

in both supplements and nutraceuticals and skin products

using natural antioxidants that are extracted using a different

form of chemistry specifically in the case of this Rosamox stuff

it’s extracted using super critical carbon dioxide and that’s

totally solvent free, it’s green, it’s sustainable and it results in

an end product and an antioxidant that actually doesn’t have

those same type of carcinogenic properties and chemical

properties as traditional BHA. So, that’s fantastic that a

company which used to use something like Rosemox instead of

BHA and this is something that I’ve kinda have my head into

recently anyways because as I think as I’ve mentioned on the

show before, I am in the process of developing a supplement

line that specifically designed for kinda like hard charging

people who wanna get the most out of their bodies and out of

their minds and I’ve had to look at ton into the actual

ingredients that are used and you know, how we can generate a

formulation that allows you to have just 1 pill bottle in your

fridge and kinda get everything done in 1 fell swoop and yes

I’m subscribing right now to all these natural supplement

insider magazines and it’s mind blowing and mind boggling

how many different labs and ingredients source materials are

out there that you could use and I’m sure that there are many

many companies out there making these decisions based solely

on price and not on long term effects so you certainly got to be

careful. My wife actually has done some webinars inside the

Ben Greenfield fitness Inner Circle where she not only talks

about how to make your own sunscreen and your own natural

skin protectants but she talks about how to protect your skin

by avoiding chemicals, how to choose the right products, she’s

got a bunch of videos in there like the lotions that she uses and

everything. I talked to her last night though and I actually

asked her, you know, if I wanted to tell the listeners to the

podcast tomorrow some of the little things that you do, can you

tell me and so some of the things that she does is she dry

brushes her whole body everyday. And we don’t have lot of

time today to get into what dry brushing is but essentially it’s

kind of a removal of a lot of dead skin cells and you could go

google dry brushing and you’d find a lot about it.

Brock: I found it’s exactly what it sounds like.

Ben: Yeah, it is.

Brock: So it’s kinda a lot of mystery there.

Ben: Yeah, so she dry brushes everyday, she uses a mineral based

make up made by a company called Ferro that’s F-E-R-R-O.

She washes her face with a very hypo-allergenic soap and it’s a

goat milk soap and I believe she gets that goat milk soap from

the local health food store and then she also uses coconut oil a

coconut oil rinse as an oil cleansing method to cleanse like

bacteria and stuff off of her skin. Once a week she scrubs her

skin with baking soda for about 5-10 minutes and she doesn’t

do that anymore often than once a week because it can really

be very drying to the skin to use baking soda too often and she

used to really have to deal quite significantly with acne and

actually that’s one of the things that initially kinda tuned us

into some of this.

[1:05:05.0]

you know, kinda westerner price ancestral paleo primal eating

was kind figure out how to get rid of some of her acne about 6

or 7 years ago or so and we bought one of Loren Cordain’s

books called something like The Dietary Cure for Acne and she

picked up a lot of kinda natural dietary tips from that but she

has great skin now, if she does get a breakout, she does a honey

mask, she makes a honey mask that’s another thing that you

could look into using against ....we won’t get into on the show,

she does talk about her recipes though inside the Ben

Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle and when she gets kinda like a

freak pimple, she dubs just like a baking soda based toothpaste

on it overnight to draw the infection and then she makes most

of her own stuff aside from the mineral based make up and

puts all those recipes into the inner circle. So we’ve got a lot of

listeners I know, I think we have about 800 listeners who were

inner circle members so for those of you who are inner circle

members, I’ll just kinda put the link to the 2 webinars if you

don’t wanna go search for them in the Inner Circle, I’ll link to

them straight from the show notes for this episode, episode

number 255. And if you’re not an Inner Circle member it’s 10

bucks a month so it’s pretty cool. We actually just did a

webinar 2 nights ago called Dieting Sucks where we talk about

why dieting sucks, why we don’t diet and how you too can not

diet. So, there’s that shameless commercial for the Inner Circle

and yeah, that’s what I’ve got for you.

Brock: That’s interesting though that just I had skin problems before

‘cause having just spent 4 days straight with you guys, she has

really great skin now. I saw her first thing in the morning and

she looks great.

Ben: Yeah, and let me say this too. I don’t want to take my own horn

too much but I personally get a lot of complements about my

skin, about the color of my skin, the texture of my skin, and

when I don’t have my squirrel flowing beard essentially the

youthfulness of my skin and what I use on a daily basis is I use

olive oil as my moisturizer, just a regular extra virgin olive oil

which is chockfull of healthful skin protectants and

polyphenols. I take about 6 mgs of astaxanthin per day and

that’s a natural skin protector. I don’t even use sunscreen, I

didn’t put a single drop of sunscreen under like something

Ironman Canada and I used to use super essential fish oil

which has astaxanthin packaged along with it. Another really

good source of astaxanthin is from the big island down in

Kona, I forget the brand but it’s called like Kona or big island

astaxanthin or Hawaii astaxanthin or something like that. And

then the only other things I do is I use all natural personal care

products. So I use hair pomade that’s made of coconut oil and

hemp oil, I only use Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap which is again

hemp oil and I think olive oil and a few other natural

antibacterials, I used Br. Bronner’s shaving cream for my

shaving cream and that’s again just made from natural oils you

could literally eat the stuff and you’d be just fine, doesn’t hurt

you and then I use a little bit of coconut oil occasionally in my

armpits as a deodorant and that is about the extent of my own

personal care product line and so essentially my rule for what I

used on my face is if I could eat it without dying or if I could

eat it without getting sick or getting a tummy ache then it’s

probably okay to put on my face or on my skin so that’s the

rule that I follow. Just recently we put out a video over at

youtube.com/bengreenfieldfitness about that too. So that’s

how Jessa and I go about our own care for our skin and

hopefully that gives you listeners some ideas as well.

Brock: Pretty much the first thing that people ask me when they found

out that I work with you is, first they ask, how old is Ben? And

then the second thing they ask is, how much money does he

make? So of course, I answer, well he’s 67 years old and I think

he makes about a 100 bucks.

Bob: Hey guys, I’m Bob from Wildwood, New Jersey. I’m a long

time listener and show supporter. My question today regards

bone spurs. I have a serious bone spur near my big toe and it

just keeps getting worst with every run, I’m hoping to learn of

some magic pain treatment or recommendation to fix it. I wish

I know surgery is inevitable but I had to reach. I’m curious at

all what causes bone spurs and is there any non-surgical fixes

that you can recommend. Alright thanks and keep up the great

work, I look forward to hearing from you.

Brock: You know, Bob needs to just go over to the website and do a

search for bone healing or (what else could he look for) we’ve

talked a lot about how to heal broken bones or fractures and

stuff like that, I’m assuming it’s a similar type of answer here.

[1:10:16.8]

Ben: Well, specifically with bone spurs though. The problem with

bone spurs is you know, that’s an actual physical spur, I mean

a lot of times you talked about stress fractures and how you

can use like lactoferrin and electro magnetic stimulation and

you know, glucosamine chondroitin from something like

Capraflex and like ways you could heal stress fractures or even

broken bones more quickly but a spur is actually a literal

growth mean it’s an ______ [1:10:44.1] it’s a boney growth

that typically forms on the back of your heel or on the front of

your toes in response to stress in that area and it’s kind of a

different situation right ‘cause it’s not something that needs to

be melded or welded or fixed, it’s something that almost needs

to be kind of like broken down or removed. So .....

Brock: Ah interesting, I was thought that bone spur was actually part

of the bone head sort of broken, not completely off but it’s just

separated and was sort of sticking out like a spur but it’s

actually growth eh.

Ben: It’s an actual growth so if you look out like everybody’s got the

little bump on the front of their knees and I thought this was

really interesting in Anatomy back in the university when we

look at the bones. In specific places where tendons that you use

a lot attached to bones or where ligaments attached to bones

and pull on those bones, you have bumps that’s why you have

that bump on the front of your knee it’s because of the weda

patella tendon attaches and in areas where bone is stressed its

response by growing and in some places where there is

repetitive injury or repetitive stress such as you know, in

runners we’re putting repetitive stress on our heel or repetitive

stress on their toes, you actually..... you can observed this

osteophytes forming and pain develops eventually from this

spur. So if you just wanted to control the pain, you just use a

natural pain killing anti-inflammatory and a lot of people

that’s enough. Like you can use something like a high dose

curcumin extract like I use phenocane. So phenocane, it’s a

turmeric, it’s nato kinase, it’s pheno alanine, it’s a bunch of

stuff that works in my opinion just as well as ibuprofen or advil

with zero side effects. Now phenocane is something I’ll use for

hang-overs, it’s something I’ll use for muscle pain and I use

about 8 a day for a week after Ironman to reduce my risk of

blood clotting......

Brock: I took a bunch of them before I went to the dentist once

because I knew it was going to be a painful procedure.

Ben: Yeah, so curcumin is a pretty potent brain anti-inflammatory

as well so anytime who have brain fog interestingly can kinda

help to clear that up too. But that’s what I would use for the

pain killing part of this. If I personally ever gotta bone spur

though I can tell you the very first thing that I would

personally do before I even consider going in for surgery which

is an option (survival option) you can have it removed and

that’s not dangerous surgery. I would consider using pulse

electromagnetic therapy. So, you’ve perhaps heard me talked

about that earth pulse device that I placed underneath my

mattress, it’s like grounding or like earthing on steroids

meaning that it amplifies the natural frequency emitted by the

planet earth while you’re sleeping and you basically soak up all

those beneficial frequencies into your body. Very very low

frequency is very different from like a cell phone or microwave

or something like that as you’re sleeping.

Brock: And you shrink your testicles down to the size of .....

Ben: No, okay. And if it does you can just go and chop some wood.

Anyways though, you can also take....it’s a magnetic, you can

take the north end pole of a pulse electromagnetic frequency

device like the earth pulse and you can place it against an

injured area and it can enhance blood flow to that area. Now in

the case of a bone spur there is actually..... there’s really

interesting study online that shows some of the PDM after

results on breaking down areas of excessive osteophyte

formation but there’s a really interesting x-ray where within 6

months of this PEMF treatment there’s new elimination of a

bone spur that’s almost penetrating the spinal cord in

somebody’s back so it’s essentially a frequency that kinda

breaks down a little bit of that bone. So what you do is you’d

hold it against the area where the spur is for about 15-20

minutes a day, north end pole would go up against the bone.

Don’t worry it doesn’t like break down bone in that when you

hold a hinge of bone you gonna like make a bunch of weak

bones in your foot. It doesn’t work that way.

[1:15:07.8]

It’s just essentially working on that area, the excessive

osteophyte formation it’s a frequency that’s emitted by the

PEMF device fortunately also has a little bit of a pain killing

effect. So that’s what I would use at least for a little while I

would use it for a good couple of months and then if nothing’s

happening, then go in and schedule your surgery, and get the

bone spur removed and go do a search on

bengreenfieldfitness.com for surgery so you know about all

ways to bounce back faster like using proteolytic enzymes and

all that jazz. That’s what I would do, I would use phenocane, I

would use pulse electromagnetic field therapy and if you are a

runner or a jumper or somebody who’s concerned about

potential for a heal spur or a toast for reformation, the best

recommendation I could give to you would be to a) strength

train so that you are training your body to not have to put

excessive stress on a joint but instead training your body how

to weight bear a little bit more evenly and then be make sure

that you are using footwear that’s really design very very

properly for your specific foot and this is actually a blog post

that I’m working on because I just personally had some

customed fitted cycling shoes designed and they’re really cool

and I’m working on a blog post about the kind of the closest

thing that you can get to barefoot running for cyclist. They’re

made by a company called Rocket 7 so I’m gonna be writing an

article where .....

Brock: It doesn’t sound like a good idea.

Ben: What’s that?

Brock: That they just seems kinda sort of counter intuitive to wanna

be, why would you be wanna be barefoot on .....

Ben: Oh no, they’ve got like a carbon foot plate and everything like

the power transfer ______ [1:16:55.2] and they’re developed

by professional cyclists but they’re literally molded to your

foot. Like you do a casting of your foot, you send into this

company, you put on the shoe and you can’t tell you’re wearing

a shoe when you’re riding your bike but you still have the

power transfer and everything. So it’s not like using those

cheesy barefoot plates, I actually raise the Wildflower

Triathlon in those once the..... I forget what they call but

they’re not cycling pedals they’re actual platforms like I think

they’re called pyro platforms and you.....

Brock: Oh that’s snap into your where your clips would go?

Ben: Not a good idea. They’re my transition during the triathlons

like 5 minutes long and my feet were killing me for like weeks

so yeah, true traditional barefoot cycling I don’t recommend

but using customed fitted cycling shoes, holy cow, if you’re

planning to be a cyclist long term, ah awesome, awesome stuff.

Those are made by Rocket 7.

Brock: Well, maybe you can get some branded with the BG Fitness

logo.

Ben: That’s right. I’ve got my name on mine. They’d say, “Be Green

Field” ‘cause I don’t think Ben Greenfield would fit along the

entire..... or just probably didn’t like Ben Green.

Brock: so I was just actually joking about that ‘cause I wanted to find a

way to segue to asking you if you have your Ben Greenfield

fitness swag on all lined up to give away to our awesome

ITunes reviews.

Ben: Yes, you and your tricky segues. No, no, I don’t but I’m still

sending out cool care packages for reviews. I should have that

swag on by about mid-September so all of hats and I’ll have

water bottles and I’ll have shirts like not croppy cotton shirts

that look like tens but actually like nice fitting tech t-shirts for

all of our muscly ripped listeners.

Brock: All the people who do silly bench press.

Ben: That’s right, all you silly silly bench pressers. So, if you want to

leave your review on ITunes, what we do is if we read your

review on the show then you can let us know that you heard

your review being read and you give us your address and we

send you a care package. So, it might be a canned of Campbell

soup or maybe some crackers, some .....

Brock: Some of those Oreo cookies with the double stuffing,

everybody goes upset about it lately.

Ben: That’s right, that’s right, that’s right or perhaps if you give me

this week a survival kit maybe I’ll send you some beef jerky and

some .....

Brock: Oh, maybe one of your home grown girls.

Ben: astronaut capsules that need to add water to get a turkey

dinner. Anyways though, today’s review is left on ITunes by

Try Buddha who only gave our podcast 4 stars not 5 stars. I

have no clue why but anyways (I’m gonna read it anyways).

Brock: Try Buddha, not cool Try Buddha not cool.

Ben: But he says, “A great kick in the pants” so Try Buddha says.....

Brock: I’ll give him a kick in the pants 4 stars worth.

Ben: “Ben and Brock do a fantastic job each week bringing you

everything you need to know about health, fitness, nutrition

and holistic living. His tips and tricks on how to hack healthy

living motivate and inform me on how to live a better life. It is

one of the few podcast that actually bases all the

recommendations on actual science and not tin hat conspiracy

theories. Even the poop discussions have a (ready for this)

nugget of truth in them”. Try Buddha you are such a kick in the

pants and because you only left 4 stars, I think I may actually

just send you a nugget if you catch my meaning. Anyways, a

dark bilirubin colored nugget. So, there you have it.

Brock: Nice.

Ben: So anyways, yes, if you wanna leave your review go over to

ITunes and of course if you want a special website that allows

you to give the gift of Ben Greenfield fitness to your friends,

your family, your loved ones or your extremely annoyed co-

workers, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love and at

bengreenfieldfitness.com/love you can share the wealth and at

bengreenfieldfitness.com/255 you can get the show notes for

this episode and if you’re lucky, I might actually show up next

week or a couple of weeks and a, if not, goodbye everyone it

was nice knowing you.