Podcast #210 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2012/09/episode-210-
what-is-detoxification-and-how-can-you-detox-your-body/
[0:00:00]
Introduction: In today’s podcast, what is detoxification and how can you detox
your body? Also, how to get rid of a keloid, muscle twitches and
cramps? Should children do endurance sports? Multivitamins for
kids versus adults, how to increase reps quickly and is cold
exposure before a workout beneficial?
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 or non run-of-the-mill cutting edge
content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.
Brock: Good day and welcome to another episode of the
bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. I’m your host plus sidekick,
Brock and of course, Ben is here too. Ben, what’s happening’?
Ben: Not much. Just got done and make a little love to my foam roller.
So, yeah the teeth-gritting love-hate relationship with the Rumble
Roller took place this morning.
Brock: Yeah, it’s like if it hurts so good.
Ben: Stuff happens in the living room 4. Let’s put it that way.
Brock: Oh dear.
Ben: Yeah. No, I’ve lifted weights the past couple of days coz I’ve kind
of been neglecting the weight training routine thing with my
triathlon last week and that’s one thing I always got to do after I
go through a bunch of endurance geekiness. It hit the gym so lots
of squats, lots of dead lifts, lots of power lifts and I’m pretty raxed
today. So, I’ll get the foam roller I’ll be jumping in the river later
on and should be right as rain by tomorrow, I hope.
Brock: Yeah, so you’ve like just using the river solely now or are you still
doing ice pads and using the vest and the compression gear and
stuff?
Ben: I still use compression gear for recovery and especially that 110%
stuff that you can put the ice loose in. I don’t take ice pads
anymore. The river by my house is so cold that all I gotta do is
just, you know, bounce in there for, you know, five to fifteen
minutes and good to go. I’ll be at the shrinkage aside from that
it’s so good.
Brock: I don’t mean to turn this into a big conversation about this but
I’ve heard that 110% compression gear with the ice sleeves it
doesn’t actually get that cold. Is that do you find that?
Ben: I’ve found that it depends on the direction that you put the little
ice packets in that come with the gear. If you put it black side
facing in it tends to be colder. When I first got it I intuitively put
the white side which is the side of the ice packs facing in.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: But yeah for people out there who have that gear, it’s the black
side facing in seem to be colder so there you go.
Brock: There you go.
News Flashes:
Brock: Okay. To get all of these interesting little tidbits every week hot
off the press, just make sure you follow Ben on twitter at
twitter.com/bengreenfield and there’s also some pretty good
stories that you put out on google+ as well and you can find those
links at the website bengreenfieldfitness.com
Ben: Cool! and the first thing that I noted was actually I think a study
that you sent me or not a study that you sent me, Brock but an
article ….
Brock: Oh the article about sleep.
Ben: ….on sleep in the New York Times. And I thought it was pretty
interesting because we’re always talking about the importance of
sleep on this show and this particular article was entitled Re-
Thinking Sleep and it came out a couple of days ago in the New
York Times. And what it talked about was how this infatuation
with getting the straight seven to nine hours of sleep in our
culture is actually relatively new phenomenon. And particularly,
you know much of it arose in the early 90’s from study done over
at the Virginia Tech in which they looked at basically the amount
of time that folks were sleeping and you know reported that eight
hours seem to be something that was somewhat useful. But the
fact is that in you know, traditional sleep habits of various
cultures, we don’t actually find that a full night rest is quite as
important when it comes to you know, mental and physical
alertness compared to just like total cumulative sleep that you’ve
gotten over an entire day. So this kinda returns to something we
talked about on the show before which is kinda like that. I believe
it’s called like the Ubermann sleep method or the sleep cycling
method or polyphasic sleep where, you know, if you only get six
hours of sleep during the night or five hours or whatever, you
know, you’re on and off with the baby crying or you know,
something waking you up or something like that. Ultimately, you
know, if you can squeeze in a nap here and there and try and get
your cumulative sleep over a 24-hour cycle to be closer to you
know, seven to nine hours even if it’s not cumulative sleep or I’m
sorry, sleep that’s unbroken.
[0:05:37.2]
Brock: Consecutive sleep.
Ben: Yeah yeah, consecutive. That was the other C word I was….It’s not
consecutive sleep but cumulative sleep over a 24-hour cycle you’ll
probably be okay. Although I gotta throw in there that I
personally still find that my very very best days in terms of
physical and mental performance occur when the sleep is
cumulative and not racked up with say like a you know, a 6-hour
sleep cycle in a one-hour nap. But it’s an interesting article and
we’ll link to it in the show you know, there’s people who wanna
geek out on that a little more.
Brock: I like how they pointed out that in some like medieval literature
and stuff they actually refer to first sleep when they woke up from
first sleep or I’m off from my second sleep. I like the idea of
having a second sleep because that means a second breakfast.
Ben: haha…You would think that way, Brock.
Brock: ‘Because I am a hobbit after all.
Ben: Another interesting study looked at the effects of uphill versus
level grade high intensity interval training. This is one that
Graham Turner sent over and Graham’s been on this podcast
before the talk about running drills and the interesting thing
about this study which appeared in the National Journal Strength
Conditioning Research was that when you’re doing hard efforts on
a treadmill, particularly efforts that you’re doing to increase your
maximum oxygen capacity. It appears that when you compare
running uphill on a treadmill versus running on a level grade, that
level grade training actually produces greater gains in your VO2
max which to me seemed counter intuitive because it always
seems like when you’re running uphill on a treadmill that it’s
much more difficult but when you match intensity, you know, let’s
say we compare running on a treadmill at a 7.0 speed and a 5.0
grade versus running at a 9.5 speed and a 1.0 grade. The lower
grade I’ll be, you know, higher speed is going to be a better
stimulus for improving particularly your maximum oxygen
consumption. So, I thought that was interesting and a bit counter
intuitive but that’s the way that the die seem to be rolled on that
particular study. So…
Brock: Yeah. The only thing that that study didn’t seem to indicate was
whether or not it was if they were watching your heart rate like if
you’re actually exercising at the same heart on an incline versus
the same heart rate on a flat surface. They would do you think
that would have an effect on things that you are actually taxing
your body to the same amount of its heart rate was?
Ben: Well, heart rate is just one component of your maximum oxygen
capacity. Your VO2 max or your maximum oxygen capacity is
influenced by the amount of blood that your heart beats with each
pump but also by the amount of oxygen that you actually consume
as well as the ability of the muscles to grab oxygen from the blood
stream as the blood rushes past. So, controlling for heart rate
would be important but it wouldn’t necessarily take into account
all the variables involved such as muscle contraction or perhaps
changes in inspiratory or expiratory function as you are on a grade
but ultimately the take away for me was that it’s, you know, uphill
treadmill running is definitely not the “cuts me out” when it
comes to getting good bang for your buck at an intensity.
Brock: Gotcha.
Ben: And then the last thing I wanted to note was a case study that
looked at nutrition and training in elite marathon runners. And
what the study did was simply follow these three elite
marathoners and look at what they ate, what their training
volume was, what pace they ran at, there were several interesting
take aways from the study which I linked to. One interesting
thing was that they tended to do a high high percentage of their
training. Almost 75% of their training are basically a fairly low
intensity and I know that a lot of folks might run with that
unintended and say “wow, look at these elite marathoners, they
don’t do a lot of high intensity interval training or a lot of the
things that we’ve talked about on this show before when it comes
to endurance sports”. One thing to remember is that these folks
are training for long periods of time, not something that I’ve
mentioned before. If you’re gonna do like a traditional aerobic
training protocol and not do a lot of high intensity intervals, you
need to have a lot of time on your hands. And that’s where, you
know, like a Maffetone type of training method or primarily
aerobic type of training method can actually work if you’ve got,
you know, several hours per day to train like an elite marathoner
would. The other thing that was interesting in the study was that
these folks were implementing a low carbohydrate protocols or
low carbohydrate strategies. Specifically, they noted that there
was anywhere from about 2-4 low carbohydrate training bouts
taking place each week. Meaning that these athletes are getting
up in the morning and doing their runs in kind of a fasted state or
doing some periodic low carbohydrate availability training to
basically get their bodies to burn fatty acids more efficiently as a
fuel and possibly do a little bit of a body weight control as well.
But it was interesting that, you know, despite the popular belief
that most elite endurance athletes or elite marathoners are still
kinda steeped in like a traditional higher carbohydrate intake type
of protocol, that these particular marathoners and usually,
Canadian marathoners, Brock, really were implementing lower
carbohydrate protocols during their trainings. So, I thought it was
a cool case study and I’ll link to that as well from the show notes
for this episode which is Episode #210.
[0:11:47.5]
Special Announcements:
Brock: Okay. So, I’ve been using this My List thing now for a few
different things and I have to ….they probably don’t like to be
compared to Pinterest but it’s sort of an inevitable comparison to
make. But my list seems to be, this is my assessment of it. It is
for people who don’t craft. The non-craft book people.
Ben: I’m definitely a non-craft book person myself but I have been
making these lists and for folks who don’t know what this is, we
mentioned it last week. But what we’re doing for all the podcast
episodes now, because we inevitably talk about a ton of different
kind of items and tools and things that you can use as a resource
to answer a question in a podcast, we’re putting together lists for
each podcast. So, if you go to facebook.com/bgfitness or just
follow links in the show notes that we’ll put over to the facebook
page, you’ll find the list for last week’s episode – Episode #209.
And in that list is basically kind of a picture and a link to all the
different things that we talked about. And I’ve also got a bunch of
other lists over there, you know, like lists on everything from
weight loss to hormonal stabilization to sexual performance to
basically just kind a little collections of things that you can find
around the web to help you a little bit, you know, the
supplements, tools, gear, things of that nature. So, yeah, that’s
definitely something to check out and as Brock noted, you don’t
have to be a crafthead. The other thing we should mention is that
for those of you who follow the posts over at
bengreenfieldfitness.com, I did a triathlon over the weekend
called the Leadman.
Brock: You did a triathlon, you kicked ass in a triathlon.
Ben: Well, I won it and one of the new nutritional strategies that I’ve
spoken about a little bit before in the show, I used in that race and
it was particularly The Use of a High Molecular Weight
Carbohydrate called UCan. And I did that for a variety of reasons
that I kinda geek out on in the podcast or in a recent post over at
bengreenfieldfitness.com. I think it’d be a very interesting post
for any of you who are out there, either wanting to avoid use of
traditional gels and sports drinks are maybe dealing with bloating
or constipation or diarrhea or anything of that nature while you’re
out there competing or racing or working out. So, I highly
recommend that you check that post and as a related anecdote
this weekend, I’ll be interviewing the guy behind this specific
carbohydrate diet website and we’ll be talking a little bit more
about how the types of carbohydrates that you consume can affect
your gut. So, check that out. It’s over at
bengreenfieldfitness.com. It’s one of the more recent posts over
there.
Brock: Yeah and I guess while you’re over there, check out the podcast
that came out over the weekend with the fitness for geeks fellow.
You guys had a interesting and fun conversation about all the neat
apps you can have on your phone or on your watch or on your
computer or all three places to keep track or I don’t know, give
you some ideas how to work out and track it, all that kind of good
stuff.
[0:15:23.6]
Ben: Yeah and I’ll throw one more phone app, cool phone app out there
for you folks. There’s a new app called Lift. If you want to create
a habit, lift is a free app that you can put on your phone that
basically uses kind of a power of social accountability to allow you
to create a habit. So, I downloaded lift to my I-phone and I’ve got
a few different habits on there so along with a collection of other
people around the globe I would be able to stop biting my
fingernails and picking my nose.
Brock: Yeah. In the comments section for that post, we had the..There’s
a little bit of chat about different kinds of apps and I noticed a few
people are using a website and apps that I’m using as well called
Strava. And I found that’s pretty cool ‘cause I actually spend most
of my time training alone so this actually allows me to compete
against other people here in Toronto or wherever I have to be
training at the moment and it’s sort 0f an interesting little twist on
training alone but still competing against maybe people you know
but people you don’t know. So, maybe I’ll put my Strava name in
our username in there so and if anybody’s interested in competing
against me, let’s go do it.
Ben: Yeah. What I like to do with Strava because it allows you to go out
and compare the times that you took to run a particular course or
bike a particular course and then compare it with other folks and
see who wins as I just try around with my GPS watch and in my
car and all the different courses. So, I look like a freaking rock
star.
Brock: You’re going 35 miles an hour!
[0:17:08.8]
Listener Q and A:
Becky Hi Ben! This is Becky Beltre in Iowa. And my husband and I just
want to say thank you. We achieved our run with constant dream
and your quality over quantity approach made it possible for both
of us to train together around 3 busy kids and our work schedules.
Without your guidance we would still be sitting on the couch, Ben,
we could never find time to do that. I’ll finish it in 1411 and I
made it in 1606. Despite some bike issues, TI issues and nerves
that had us over tired on race day, we were so happy to do it. We’ll
be back next year to try to improve it on time, hopefully, with you
guiding us day by day and week by week, we tell anyone now that
with the right guidance and a determined mind, you can finish
Ironman. We didn’t set new record but our kids saw us to come
Ironman. And that’s worth a whole long year. Thank you again.
Brock: Okay. So, for those of you who don’t know that Ben actually does
custom training plans for anybody. You don’t have to be special
or even be a member of any of the Pacifica Lead or a Rockstar
Triathlete Academy or any of those. I’ll put a link in the show
notes so you can go and get your own custom training plan just
like Becky did.
Ben: There we go.
Brock: And that brings us to our first audio question. It comes from AJ.
AJ: Hey Ben! AJ Chirac here. About a year and a half ago, I was
playing indoor soccer and my legs got supped out from
underneath me and I ended up with a fairly large bruise on the
side on my hip. It was sticking, I don’t know, it’s probably swelled
up to at least half an inch, maybe three quarters of an inch
sticking out. And after it healed, it left behind like a, I’ll take the
size of a quarter, a bump in diameter, in the area of my hip. I can
move it from side to side and up and down but it always stays
within about an inch of that same area. So, I did some research
and it kinda what I determined was a probably was a keloid. I
have had it x-rayed, it turned out negative as far as bone
fragments go. I haven’t had an MRI. So, I guess my question to
you is what can I do to minimize the pain? Because when I do that
with x-ray a little over a year ago, it was my first 40-mile ultra
marathon. And it didn’t bother me there in the race but after the
race it was pretty sore. But then, this year, on the same 40-mile
ultra marathon, in about mile 24, it locked up and was, I mean, I
could barely run at that point in time. So, I guess what kind of
strength exercises or what would you recommend for this type of
an injury and fixing it for next season? All right, thanks for this
show. Hope you can help me out.
Brock: So, a keloid is what? It’s like a hematoma? I’m too
______[19:46.6] use all the medical terms here. Gotta clarify it
for everyone. Keloid is a hematoma, everyone.
Ben: Something that sounds like it that’s making AJ very sad. He’s a
little depressed.
Brock: He does.
[0:20:00]
Ben: Yes and you know, a keloid is a it’s kind of a scar and basically, it’s
an overgrowth of the granulation tissue that can occur as an injury
heals like a bruise or a skin injury. And what happens is that the
tissue basically gets slowly replaced by collagen and it’s very firm
and kind of rubbery and you can even get these nodules and
differentiation in color and sometimes it can produce a pretty
narrowly scar when you have ketosis you know. If you are to go
and do like a google image search for ketosis, you’re gonna see
some or keloid, sorry, you’re gonna on the word ketosis.
Brock: We talk about ketosis so often.
Ben: It’s another “ke” word. In keloids, you’re gonna see some pretty
interesting and early photos. I’m not necessarily completely sure
that that is what AJ has but let’s just say that that’s the case – that
this is a keloid and it is an overgrowth of tissue underneath the
area where that hematoma or where that bruising and initial
trauma occurred. In many many cases, you’re going to find that
kinda not going after the alternative medicine route is gonna give
you some pretty quick results when it comes to something like
this. And you can get everything from like a laser treatment to a
cortical steroid injection. There’s kind of a variety of different
ways to treat these things. And this would be something that for
example a dermatologist would be best qualified to treat. But
laser treatment, specifically, is one that I’ve heard has been fairly
efficacious against these keloids. Now, there are if you didn’t
want to go after that type of modern medical routes, some
alternative treatments for something like a keloid and one that
tends to be quite popular is the use of apple cider vinegar. Apple
cider vinegar is actually a cool thing. It’s useful for a lot of
different remedies, you know, for example, I’ll just gargle with it if
I’m congested or I feel like I’ve got a little bit of scratchy throat
coming on and it can be quite useful in a situation like that. I just
keep some Braggs apple cider vinegar around. But what you do
with apple cider vinegar is you can literally just like wet a cotton
ball or wet like a wrap and you can keep that thing basically
treated with apple cider vinegar a few times throughout the day
and you can even apply a wrap with it as you sleep during the
night. And what the apple cider vinegar does is it kinda denature
some of the epithelial tissue or the top skin layer and essentially
kinda peel away some of that keloid. And that’s something that
may help. Anyhow, I don’t want you to misconstrue this Ben’s
medical advice. It can definitely irritate your skin when you apply
apple cider vinegar to your skin. And the other thing that can
happen and this is something that I personally experienced with
the MRSA or with this staph infection that I had. If you can get
kind of this dark discoloration of the skin that tends to stay for a
long period of time after this keloid goes away or in my case, after
my staph infection had cleared up. And you can get some decent
sized scars with this type of stuff. I ended up needing to do some
research on how to get rid of some of these skin scars just because
I didn’t wanna be stuck with these dark spots at the back of my leg
for life and something that I’m using that seems to be really
clearing up the scar, you know, whether AJ decides to go with the
laser or you know, using something like apple cider vinegar or
whatever he may also end up with scars I’ve been using this type
of essential oil called the helichrysum oil. And I’ll link to in the
show notes I just it form Mountain Rose herbs which is where I
get most of my essential oils but for skin scars, this stuff can work
really well and I’m already noticing after just a couple of weeks
that some of the scars at the back of my leg are beginning to really
clear up nicely. And I just diluted it with some flax seed oil and
applied on daily basis to that area. So, that’s something else to
consider is it’s kind of post treatment scar formation.
Brock: I’ve heard of some people using that for tattoo removal. I mean
actually, not for tattoo removal but for after the tattoo is removed
because it often leaves scars.
Ben: Okay, that would keep away from my tattoos. Fortunately, the
backs of my legs are not tattooed yet. So, I don’t have to worry
about that but yeah, the helichrysum oil work pretty well, too. So,
these are some of the things I would look into. But you know, if
this is for me, I would go after more of like a modern medical
routine and go check in to get into the thing you know, like
lasered and then just get some of that like helichrysum oil on
there to treat the scar and get on with life, so…
[0:25:13.6]
Brock: Yeah. But I agree with you that it’s I’m not entirely convinced that
that’s where the problem is like even that he actually said that he
was barely able to run after a race. It doesn’t seem like something
as topical as a keloid would be that would cause that much
problems.
Ben: Well, those things I mean when you’re looking at that type of
granulated tissue, it can be very very immobile and you know, it’s
like when you’re running post serious ankle strain and you got a
lot of scar tissue in the ankle, there can be some serious
immobilization that goes on there. So you know, I don’t want this
podcast to necessarily turn into like a medical management
podcast. So, I do recommend that AJ go and visit a dermatologist
for sure that make sure he gets the same sort. It sounds like he’s
going after some modern medical imaging just to check and see
what this really is. But it’s certainly possible and probable that it
could be this keloid.
Brock: All right, let’s leave it at that and move on to the next question
from Cathy.
Cathy: Hi Ben and Brock! My name is Cathy and I have a question today
about cold therapy and or versus sweating. I’m really interested
in the cold therapy that you’ve been talking about a lot and I’ve
seen the benefits of bathing in cold rivers and swimming in cold
oceans and it does make me feel great. However, in my situation,
I have a condition of being kind of I have a toxic overload and I’ve
recently found this out through years of trying to figure out what
was my problem and my doctor, my naturopathic doctor has
recently really kind of hit the nail in the head and that I have a
very toxic overload because my detoxification pathways are not
open. And so, I cannot really shed off the toxins out of my system.
Amongst various therapies including acupuncture, some herbs,
he’s recommended that I do saunas to increase my sweating.
Now, the problem is it’s very difficult for me to sweat. It’s got to
be over 100 degrees for me to actually start sweating so he has
encouraged me to do saunas. I still don’t sweat in the sauna
unless I’m jumping rope or something. But my question is, how
does this work with cold therapy? I love the idea but I’m
wondering, is cold therapy for everyone? Should I maybe not use
it in my condition since I’m supposed to kind be doing the
opposite and I also have Raynaud’s syndrome and poor
circulation. So, would cold therapy be beneficial for me or do you
have any ideas about how I can increase my sweating since it’s so
difficult for me to sweat? Thanks a lot. Loving the podcast.
Brock: Okay. It seems to me that if you had Raynaud’s syndrome and
you went in a cold bath, you’d probably freak out, wouldn’t you?
Ben: Well, yeah. You know, Raynaud’s syndrome is basically kind of a
circulation issue with specifically of the extremities like the hands
and the feet and yeah it can be uncomfortable when you’re
exposed to cold. I mean, you know, in this race and I talk about
this a little bit in my race report. That race I did over the weekend
was extremely cold starting off the race and I didn’t wear gloves. I
kinda went rushing out of the swim-to-bike transition and I was
really watching my hands kinda turning blue as the bike portion
progress and I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t drink ‘cause I couldn’t
get my water bottle out. And it was really uncomfortable and I
would imagine my wife also has very poor circulation in her hands
and her feet and it’s not a full-blown Raynaud’s but yeah, it can
make cold exposure quite a bit less comfortable. But it sounds
like in Cathy’s case that there’s multiple issues going here and I
wanted to just mention a few things that are gonna be important
for folks to realize. And the first is this concept of detoxification
pathways and how some people can actually have some
limitations in terms of the detox pathways. So detoxification,
which by the way, I think it’s an overused term but it’s certainly
something that’s relevant. It’s just a process via which your body
eliminates or neutralizes toxic substances. So, as you know, we
can get toxics from the air, from our diet, from pharmaceutical
drugs or even supplements in some cases from alcohol, from
smoking, and just from the by-products of normal everyday
metabolism. Even more so if you’re very physically active person
who exercises a lot. And eventually, if you do get a build-up of
toxins, there can be some cellular damage that occurs and there
can be even higher risk of chronic disease, you know, like diabetes
and arthritis and things of that nature. You know, some of that
does have to do with some kinds of toxin build-up. And the body
has several routes of detoxification. One route is the skin.
Another route is respiration via the lungs. Another route,
especially for like protein by-product breakdown would be the
kidney and the urine pathway. The liver is the major
detoxification pathway and the gut is another one. And when it
comes to harmful substances, there are kinda two major detox
pathways and they’re called phase one and phase two pathways.
So, when we look at the liver and we look at chemicals, whether
chemicals that are made through our internal metabolism or
chemicals that we encounter in our environment, the liver is one
of the primary areas where these detoxification pathways take
place. So, every single minute, every 60 seconds, about a third of
your body’s total blood flow gets pumped through your liver. And
the liver filters the blood and it removes harmful substances like
drugs and bacteria and toxins and form proteins and things of
that nature. Which is one of the reasons that I think if you’re
gonna include like animal liver as a part of your daily diet, you
wanna make sure that you’re consuming a liver of an animal that
has been raised quite naturally. You know, like pasture raised
cattle, for example, because the liver is a detox organ. So, you’ve
got two primary detoxification pathways in the liver via which
these chemicals get eliminated or get neutralized and these are
known as phase one reactions and phase two reactions. So, a
phase one reaction primarily processes chemicals or converts
toxins via several different chemical, you know basic chemical
reactions. Back to Chemistry 101, for those of you who took it,
there is this kind of three different types of reactions that take
place in a phase one detoxification - oxidation, hydrolysis or
reduction. So, we’re either adding an electron to something,
taking an electron away from something, or using H2O to
essentially like hydrolyze a toxin or chemical. Most common is
oxidation, of those three different pathways and there’s a specific
class of enzymes in your body called the cytochrome mono
oxygenates or cytochrome P450. And that’s what you use as the
actual oxidant enzyme in the liver. And it’s very very important.
There are some things that can alter the metabolism of drugs or
other chemicals through almost like a down regulation of that
particular enzyme. Interestingly, grape fruit juices is one of those,
you know, drinking a ton of grape fruit juice can actually kinda
shut down some of the detox pathways. It’s pretty interesting.
But we’ve got those phase one reactions – oxidation, reduction
and hydrolysis that take place in the liver to process chemicals.
And then typically, you get a phase two reaction and that kinda
follows the phase one reaction and that’s the pathway via which
these molecules undergo a process of something called
conjugation in the liver. And so that’s where actual metabolism
occurs and these molecules that are formed via oxidation or
reduction or hydrolysis, they get converted or they get bound to
different components in your liver like sulfates or glycine or
acetate. And this basically makes them water soluble. So, this
water soluble metabolized can then get excreted from the body via
your urine, or for example, in the bile, in the digestive tracks, and
kinda move on. So, we get this phase one to phase two
detoxification that takes place. Now, there’s also, in addition to
the liver, a fairly important role of your GI tract - your
gastrointestinal tract and your gut when it comes to
detoxification. And the reason that I say that is anytime you have
increased permeability in your gut due to a poor diet, maybe high
intake of gliadin protein from wheat or a low intake of amino
acids or simply a poor diet high in processed foods, in time you
get increased gut permeability. You get increase absorption of
toxins or also kind of another environmental component called
the xenobiotic. And when you do that, all of these toxins that are
coming in due to the increased gut permeability must be
processed and removed by the liver. So, you really increase
demands on your liver’s detoxification system. If your
gastrointestinal health is poor and you can certainly do some
things in terms of addressing your gut to make sure that your liver
doesn’t have to work quite so hard. So, when it comes to
detoxification, I think that a very very important and often
neglected component is addressing kind of the food. We’re gonna
talk about this a lot in the upcoming podcast this Saturday that I
do with the guy from the specific carbohydrate diet. But, you
know, there’s a few things that you can take and that can help, like
for example, while I don’t think that fiber is necessarily great for
you in high amounts, dietary fibers do bind things like
carcinogens and bile acids and other potential intoxications. So,
making sure that you have adequate dietary fiber can be
something that can help and that can be done just through a
moderate amount of vegetable and fruit intake. Balancing your
intestinal micro flora through proper prebiotic and prebiotic
would be basically fiber and also probiotic like fermented food
intake can also be incredibly helpful. There are basically these
acids called short thing short chain fatty acids and those are what
result when dietary fiber ferments in your gut. And these short
chain fatty acids can also help with detoxification and in kinda
activating a lot of these enzymes that are part of the detoxification
pathways. That’s another reason why completely fiber-void diet
wouldn’t necessarily be something that would help with
detoxification and it’s one of the reasons that a lot of like detox
diets include like juicing in high amounts of vegetables and things
of that nature would be to help with the formation of the short
chain fatty acids and also the ______ [0:36:57.8] to help the
fiber to bind to toxic agents or carcinogens or things of that
nature. So, ultimately when we step back and look at this big
picture, what we wanna do is support the gut and heal the gut but
then also make sure the liver is equipped for this phase one and
phase two detoxification. And there are certain detoxification
processes in the liver that are gonna require certain nutrients.
And this is why like if you go, you know, we mentioned like the
My List page on the facebook.com/bgfitness. And if you just go to
the Bengreenfield recommends page, what you’ll find is that there
are certain supplements that I recommend in terms of like
clearing the liver or helping out the liver with detoxification. One
particular reaction that your liver uses is part of its detoxification
process is called glucuronidation and that uses a particular acid
called glucuronic acid. And glucuronic acid is coupled or what’s
called conjugated with different drugs and hormones and
pollutants and bile acids. And you do actually need to have
adequate levels of calcium D-glucarate and glucuric acid in order
for this to actually take place. One of the things that I
recommended before for liver support is milk thistle extracts
which inhibits the enzyme that breaks down calcium D-glucarate.
So, that’s one of the things that can help out quite a bit. You’re
also going to find calcium D-glucarate and glucuric acid in a lot of
different fruits and vegetables. So, making sure that you’re
actually eating real raw foods can be quite helpful as well in terms
of activating that particular component of the detoxification
pathway. Another thing is glutathione. And glutathione is an
antioxidant that’s also involved in detoxification in the liver
particularly of what are called xenobiotics or foreign chemicals
and also carcinogens as well as heavy metals. So, getting adequate
glutathione in your diet is also important. Some of the things that
are gonna be used to make glutathione are amino acids. So,
making sure that you got enough protein in your diet is really
important and vitamin C. And obviously, if you got adequate fruit
and vegetable intake and maybe you’re taking some type of an
antioxidant supplement, you’re gonna get some adequate vitamin
C. So, that’s another kind of component – glutathione antioxidant
compound that you wanna make sure is present to really support
the detoxification pathway. Acidulation is another process and
that’s basically the process in which the toxins are conjugated to
another type of component particularly one called acido
coenzyme. That particular process can really be enhanced again
by adequate vitamin C as well as adequate vitamin B. So, these
are another couple of vitamins that you wanna make sure are
present in your diet and you can easily get screenings to find out if
you don’t have enough of a vitamin like this by doing something
like a spectra cell analysis. That’s probably one of the better ones
out there. You could just go google “spectra cell” or talk to your
doctor about getting a spectra cell analysis and you can find out
whether you’ve got enough vitamins on board to support that
particular component of the detoxification pathway. Amino acids
are used in many many cases to conjugate toxins or to bind the
toxins for neutralization. Glycine is one example of a very very
important amino acid for particularly this phase two of
detoxification in the liver. So, again, making sure that you have
adequate amino acids and that you’re not unlike a super low
protein diet typically vegetarians and vegans need to be a little bit
more careful about their amino acid levels. And again, you could
get a blood amino acid levels test to see what your amino acid
levels are like. If you’re deficient in the amino acids, you know, I
take that Master Amino Acid capsule as a supplement particularly
to support my workout. But it’s also really really good in terms of
ensuring that I’ve got decent levels of amino acids. Another
component of the detoxification pathway is methylation and
methylation is the addition of a methyl group to pretty much
anything and many of these toxins are gonna require some type of
a methyl donor in order to be neutralized. Anytime we’re talking
about methylation you usually are going to need adequate levels of
vitamin B in order for that to occur. So that’s another situation
where having adequate vitamin B levels, in particular, vitamin B12
is very very important when it comes to methylation. And that’s a
red flag especially for like again, vegans and vegetarians or people
who are getting adequate vitamin B in their diet. Another
detoxification pathway and the last one will be sulfation or
sulfoxidation and that’s the addition of sulfur-containing
compound to any of these toxins to eliminate, in many cases,
hormones. This would be an issue or something like estrogen
dominance or getting exposed to a lot of hormones and what
happens is that allows the hormones to be carried away in the bile
acid. So, getting adequate levels of sulfite in your diet can also be
something that can help out a little bit with this as well. And
sulfur-containing compounds a lot of time you’re gonna find in
like meat and proteins and eggs, fish to certain extent, things of
that nature. Those can all help to support.
[0:42:52.2]
Brock: A sulfite or a sulfate?
Ben: Any sulfur-containing compound, really.
Brock: Oh yeah?
Ben: So, and a little range between sulfates and sulfites. You know,
even a little bit of red wine here and there is gonna get you some
sulfates. So basically, you’ve got these nutrients that are required
for phase one and that’s in particular like your vitamin B complex
having adequate levels of vitamin C and then something like a
milk thistle extract along with really good fruit and vegetable
intake can all help with that phase one detoxification pathway.
For the phase two detoxification pathway, you’re usually looking
at wanting to have adequate levels of amino acids and then
adequate levels of, for example, sulfur. Another thing I didn’t
mention as far as sulfur goes is cruciferous vegetables. Those are
really really good for that too, like onions and broccoli and
cauliflower and stuff like that. And you combine that with taking
care of your gut and that’s how you really set up your body to be
able to detox more efficiently. That’s kinda, you know, when we
look at detoxification pathways and trying to support them, what
we’re looking at. But some people just don’t really secrete quite as
well and there’s actually a test. I mentioned this a few weeks ago
in the podcast. So, there’s this test by Peter D’Adamo called the
secretor type test and my naturopathic physician had me actually
do this test to see what kind of secretor type I was. And this was
after I got the MRSA or that staph infection because we were
looking into some just basically various parameters in my body
that might make me predisposed to infection. And he wanted to
see what my secretor status was. And one thing he wanted to look
at was whether I was what’s called the non-secretor. And a non-
secretor is basically someone who has a little bit more trouble
excreting toxins and a lot of times they need a little bit more
adequate detoxification support. Sometimes, they need to be on
higher dose antioxidant and taking, you know, eat milk thistle
extract on a regular basis but also doing some of the things that it
sounds like Cathy’s physician’s recommended to her, particularly
like sweating and opening up the pores and trying to detox
through the skin and other methods over and above using the
liver and the urine pathways. As far as finding out your secretor
status, there’s this very simple test that you can do. It’s a salivary
test you can order online. I can link to it in the show notes for
people who wanna find out if they are non-secretor or secretor.
But depending on what you find out, you may want to engage in
some of the practices that Cathy’s doctor has recommended to
her, particularly, the sweating or you know, doing like a sauna or
spa type of treatment. Of course, the issue with Cathy is it sounds
like she’s having trouble sweating.
Brock: Yeah, make me envious because I’m the opposite.
Ben: Yeah, yeah.
Brock: I just think about doing something and I’m sweaty.
Ben: Hyperhydrosis and hypohydrosis. And if you’re like Brock and
you got hyperhydrosis, you’re gonna be pitting out quite a bit.
Brock: I sweat drinking coffee.
Ben: Yeah and hypohydrosis is basically the absence of sweating. And
hypohydrosis can be caused by a bunch of different stuff. It’s also
known as anhydrosis and sometimes it can occur after the skin
has been injured. It can be genetic. It can be the side effect of a
medication. I think one thing that should be paid attention to in
Cathy’s case is that it can also be due to some autonomic nervous
system dysfunction. And in many many cases, autonomic nervous
system dysfunction can be because you’re over-trained or you’re
stressed out or you’re not getting enough sleep and that’s often
the case. I don’t wanna paint with too broad of a brush here but I
tend to see situations like that. A lot of times in like females who
worry about their health and it sounds like Cathy could certainly
fall into that category. No offense, Cathy. I mean, it’s not bad to
worry about your health necessarily but sometimes, you know,
people can stress themselves out just almost becoming
hypochondriac like in worrying too much and a lot of times that
can really throw your nervous system into a tissy. So, as far as
alternative medical routes go to take care of your autonomic
nervous system, acupuncture is one thing that can come in handy
and it’s also something that alternative medicine has used in
situations such as anhydrosis. And then biofeedback or
neurofeedback, you know, working with a biofeedback
practitioner is something else that may help a little bit with
something like autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Now, in
terms of some other things that you can do to get yourself to sweat
more if that’s not the case, there is this product that I use and I
think I’ve mentioned that on the show before, when I am in a spa
or in a sauna setting and I’m really wanting to sweat a ton, and
really increase my skin temperature. This stuff will increase the
skin temperature by about 10-15 degrees and it’s called sweet
sweat. It’s a mix of coconut oil and some capsaicin compounds
and some other things that really draw a lot of blood flow to the
surface of the skin and I’ll link to it in the show notes and also in
the My List for this episode but it’s called Sweet Sweat. So that’d
be one thing that you could check out and you could try. So, you
basically just like put it on your body before you put it on your
skin before you get in and step in to something like a sauna or a
spa.
[0:49:00.0]
Brock: It’s also handy for when you’re racing in cold conditions, you can
put that on right before the race starts and feel a little bit warmer
for a while anyway.
Ben: Yeah. That’s something that I know is too fun so I got some of
that on my skin when I go and do something like jumping to the
river. I’m definitely… I stay much much warmer when I’m out
there swimming. So, that’d be one thing that I’d look into is using
something like that, that sweet sweat stuff that you can put on
your skin. And the other thing that you can do and this is
something that I know really ump my sweating when I step into a
sauna is just making sure that I go in there cold, you know, I’ll
even go just like run on a treadmill for 10 minutes before I hop in
just something that gets the circulation going before you get into
like a spa or sauna or something like that. So, and I just wanna
work ton of information but I would certainly make sure that you
take care of your detoxification pathways by supporting the liver
and the gut using some of the methods that I just mentioned and
then certainly, if you’re non-secretor type, using the skin
detoxification pathway can also be useful if you have anhydrosis
and you’re not sweating, you may want to consider that. You’ll
wanna look into some stress control methods, some acupuncture
and you can even, you know, that stuff is really not relevant to you
, just make sure that you go into the sauna with your temperature
already elevated and try some of that sweet sweat stuff on your
skin. So…
Brock: And have a big ball of curry before you go in as well.
Ben: That’s right. That’s right and make sure that nobody else is in
there with you.
Brock: Okay. I think everybody should take a moment, take a deep
breath, shake your head around a little bit and we’ll jump into the
next question from Charlie.
Charlie: Hey Ben! This is Charlie from Georgia Vermont and I have a quick
question for you. I appreciate your guys’ podcast. My question is
I’ve been training for a couple of marathons over the past 68
months. I noticed recently that after every run, my muscles begin
to twitch involuntarily on their own. It’s not just after the run but
even sometimes days later and my quads and down in my calves,
my muscles just again, twitch and I don’t know if this is
something that’s normal or if I’m like in some sort of nutrition
that‘s causing this to happen. I really appreciate the insight and
wisdom on this and I look forward to hearing from you guys soon.
Thanks again for all you do.
Brock: Okay. So, we actually have a question from Chrissy that is very
very similar, wasn’t an audio question but she’s asking pretty
much the same thing. She says, do you know anything about a
popcorn sensation in the calf muscle after running followed by
severe muscle cramps? She said, this started happening to me
about 2 years ago after running a half marathon and it occurs
after running even short distances, a couple of miles, and
sometimes, after a bike ride. And the cramping gets so severe that
I did an intense calf workout.
Ben: Yeah. I used to get this during water polo practices and sometimes
during games from all the egg beat taking you do combined with
kind of a cold in the water, my calves would cramp and sometimes
they just stay that way and that’ll be like super super hard for days
and it’s pretty annoying and it can be painful and debilitating too.
Brock: I like the way Chrissy actually explains this being a popcorn
sensation or at the end of the question, she says that it feels like I
have aliens living in my calves.
Ben: Yeah. Hopefully, that would actually pop out. Hire a couple of
guys and machine guns to follow you around just in case.
Basically, you know that the popcorn-like sensation, that’s just an
elongated spasm like a Charlie horse but that is an involuntary
contraction. The cramp is an involuntary contraction but what
can tend to happen is that if that cramp occurs and it’s very very
strong, you can get an inflammation or you can get an area of
inflammation and blood swelling. And I’ll address the cramping
issue here in a second but if you get that post cramp knot, a lot of
times, just a combination of deep tissue massage or even light
massage and ice can help out a ton. If you have access to one of
those type of machines or like a game ready that can combine like
compression and relaxation like a pumping action along with ice
like a game ready circulates like ice cold water through a pumping
and relaxing sleeve that you can put over a leg or something like
that, that can get rid of that stuff super quick. And you can
simulate something similar to that. For example, if you have one
of these like electro stimulation units and you can get those for
like 75 bucks on Amazon, you know, they’re up to a thousand
dollars too. You can put on electro steam unit on your muscle and
then cover that up with cold like a cold pack or an ice pack and do
electro steam plus ice and that can get rid of those really really
quickly too, that combination of a blood flow from the electro
steam along with icing. So…
Brock: And that’s to get rid of the twitching?
Ben: No. That would be to get rid of this like the knot…
Brock: Okay. The balled up muscle, yeah.
Ben: Yeah. It’s actually interesting because I had a knot this morning
in my back that just kinda creeped up on me. I’m not really sure
why it occurred. Probably from all these weight training I was
doing in the past couple of days and I used another method that’s
slightly less comfortable but also works and that is I had my wife
just basically get on top of me with her knee and her full body,
this is on my back. She spurs full knees body weight into my back
and then I follow that up with a little bit of topical magnesium to
relax the area. But that’s another thing. It’s just like deep tissue
pressure like point massage can help out with these things as well.
Brock: You should probably mention that your wife is not 300 pounds.
Ben: No. She’s not but she’s got some danged bony knees. So, yeah. I
just basically walked in and interrupt her and told her to kneel on
my back. So….
Brock: Nice.
Ben: Anyways though, as far as this like twitching and cramping goes,
let’s talk a little bit about like a post marathon, post race, post
hard workout type of twitching that Charlie says that he’s getting
because I get the same thing too and it’s super annoying. So, the
medical term for it is fasciculation. But it’s basically this tiny little
involuntary muscle contraction and relaxation and you can sit
there after a race or something and just watch your muscles
contract just like they have a life of their own and they’re
twitching and moving around and I’ve certainly seen that
especially in my quadriceps. And the way that an actual twitch
occurs is you’ve got these motor neurons that connect your spinal
cord to your muscle fiber and they bring the nerve impulse from
your spinal cord and to your muscle fiber. And what happens
with these motor neurons is they depolarize and they cause what’s
called an action potential to propagate along the length of the
neuron or the axon to the neuromuscular junction where a bunch
of acetylcholine gets released that causes the muscle to get
signaled to contract. And that’s the way that a lot of like
neuromuscular blocking drugs actually work is they either
increase the level of what’s called the acetylcholinesterase which is
the enzyme that can break down acetylcholine inside the synapse
so it basically keeps that message from propagating into the
muscle and they’re basically like depolarization blockers. Because
when your muscle gets triggered to contract like that, it’s called
the depolarization. And so if you could somehow block that
neuron transition or transmission, the muscle can’t really
contract. When you finish up like a hard triathlon or a hard
marathon or something like that, you still got basically a bunch of
this acetylcholine still getting released by this nerve ending. You
still got your brain telling your spinal cord which is transmitting
this message with this motor neuron into your muscle that it’s still
working, that it still needs to be activated and you continue to get
this acetylcholine kinda like pump and surge into these motor
neurons and it crosses the synapse and causes these muscle
contractions whether or not you’re telling your muscles to
contract or not. And so eventually, it goes away and it’s not a big
deal. It’s not harmful. It’s totally normal. But the issue is that it
can lead to cramping especially if you’ve done something really
really hard because the other component of this, the other
component of this contraction is that when that action potential
from the nerve arrives at the muscle, what you get is a calcium
influx through these calcium channels into the muscle. And when
you get that calcium influx occurring, that’s what causes your
muscle fibers to basically contract. But if the calcium is sting
bound to the area inside the muscle that calcium basically binds to
its called troponin, on the acting part of these little filaments
inside your muscle, you can get basically like a cramp, like the
calcium isn’t getting released. So, that can also occur when you’ve
done something really really hard because you got a big big
calcium build up and that’s one of the things that can lead to post
workout swellness as well as calcium build up. So, one of the
things that I recommend that you try, something that can offset
the calcium and basically kind like restore that electrical gradient
in the muscle and that’s magnesium. You can use like a topical
magnesium oil and I’ve found that to be really really helpful with
like post hard hard effort like twitching and cramping like when I
got to a triathlon or some kind of an event like that, I’ll make sure
I’ve got some topical magnesium in my finish line bag or like the
post race baby you can get in the finish line just like in smear
thump on my legs and my calves and stuff so I get rid of a lot of
that twitching and potential for cramping and getting hubbled up
cause I’ve been walking around after a race before and had one of
those cramps that literally did leave me with a big long knot like
Chrissy was saying that she’s getting. So, that’s what I
recommend and I’ll link to the magnesium oil that I use in the
show notes but that can help out quite a bit is the magnesium oil
and if you do get a cramp that results in this knot like Chrissy got,
try the ice and if you got electro simulation, try to combine the
electro sim along with the ice.
Brock: Awesome! Let’s move on to our next question from Jeff.
Jeff: Hey Ben! Hey Brock! This is Jeff down here in Texas. I’m a 38-
year-old A3 triathlete that lives a lifestyle and everything
triathlon. This is a follow up to a few shows back that you talked
about a young girl that was doing half marathons at a very high
level and the concern that Ben had about that. I have a 10-year-
old son that is training for his first triathlon in a few weeks. He’s
really short with a 50-meter swim, 2 ½ mile bike and a half-mile
run. I’ve been keeping his training short and fun with mixes of
intensities. He came home from school the other day and told me
he ran 3 miles during PE and was really excited to tell his mother
and I all about it. He chose to run along with 3 other boys. He
sees me train a bunch and says he wants to be like dad. It makes
me feel great to his getting into endurance for he wants to share
the same interest as his old man. I was really happy that he’s so
excited and told about your podcast and the young girl. He’s now
training 3 plus miles in a regular basis but if he continues, is this
something that I need to reign him in on? I don’t want to
discourage him but is there anything from a developmental
standpoint that I should be concerned with letting him go longer
distances in a time where great kids more interest in TV and
video games than sport. I feel like I should keep encouraging him
but don’t want to hurt himself or get burned out. What are your
thoughts on youngsters and endurance sports? Also, anything
from a nutritional standpoint that we need to concentrate on? I
look forward to hearing back from you guys. Keep up the great
work.
[1:01:52.1]
Brock: You know I got to say, Jeff sounds like an awesome dad. I love his
approach to his respecting his son in that he doesn’t want to hold
him back but he also doesn’t wanna push him into something that
might hurt him. Good work, Jeff!
Ben: You know I wish I could’ve dug it up for Jeff but I wrote a big
article on this at Lava magazine. You might be able to find in
their archives at lavamagazine.com but it was about kids doing
triathlon and some of the important considerations that needed to
be thought about when you have someone who is young, say like
pre-puberty are basically out there doing endurance sports cause
there surely are some considerations. I wanna trotted that my
kids have done a couple of kids triathlons and they love them and
I love watching them and I think it’s fantastic to have this type of
competitive opportunities available for kids. But then, there’s
certainly that catch 22 that a kid that crosses the finish line of a
tiny little kid sprint triathlon where they’re out there for 10 or 15
minutes running around might start eyeing some of the things
that their parents are doing. You know, like 2-hour long races up
to 10-hour Ironman events and possibly begin wanting to compete
in those longer distances. And some of the issue and these are
issues which I spoke about in the article that you have to consider
when it comes to kids doing long distances like that is one. The
bone density and growth plate issue in the same way that you
wouldn’t want a kid lifting heavy weights because it can stunt
growth if the growth plates aren’t fully formed. You can have also
a similar growth-stunting effect with impact-based exercise,
specifically, long periods of time spent running. You can also,
because kids do tend to have a little bit lower density, tend to see
much much increase risk for stress fracture and that’s one of the
more common injuries that you see among youth who are doing
endurance sports is stress fractures because that bone issue. The
hormonal factor’s another issue and in most cases with sports you
see a surge in testosterone in kids. But of course, with endurance
sports, you do risk that law of diminishing returns where you
eventually get that pregnenolone steal where a lot of hormonal
precursors that would normally be used to form things like
testosterone or estrogen instead gets shuttled to form cortisol.
And because there’s so much cortisol being produced from the
body being in this catabolic state of being broken down from
chronic repetitive motion from chronic endurance sports
participation, you tend to see that more often in a situation where
it’s just a poor training program and there is inadequate recovery
being provided. But that’s certainly another issue especially in a
kid for whom hormones are so very important to growth and very
crucial to proper development.
Another issue would be that of ventricular hypertrophy which
would be the growth of that left ventricle in the heart. And you
tend to see this in all athletes and exercising individuals but it
certainly can put a little bit of added stress in the heart and I’ve
not seen ever any long-term studies that have looked into whether
or not there’s a greater degree of ventricular hypertrophy in
individuals who started off doing endurance sports at a younger
age. But there maybe a little bit of a cardiovascular risk factor
there as well in terms of kinda prematurely asking the heart to
work much harder than it may be adapted to from like an
evolutionary or an ancestral health standpoint because I certainly
don’t think that we can find many examples in our ancestral roots
of kids going out and doing long long hard efforts. Traditionally,
you’d want to probably protect the child from doing something
like that if you’re wanting to propagate your seed or basically,
grow your family. You wouldn’t want to be subjecting your
children to hard labor per se.
And then, there are some other issues that I talked about in that
Lava article that I can remember. One was the social
implications. You look at something like a…I read Andrei Agassi’s
biography last year. And one of the big big issues of Andrei Agassi
and his rebellion and all the trouble that he got into was that he
was a little bit bitter about having never been able to experience
many of the things that his peers were able to experience that
went above and beyond tennis, things as simple as going to the
prom or playing baseball or doing some of the things that he
wished that he would have been able to do. And so, there was like
this bitterness or resentment present because there was so much
time spent in this one single sport. And of course, there are the
other social implications of the fact that endurance sport tends to
be more introverted individualized sport that may take a child
away from learning how to cooperate in a team environment or
play well with others, so to speak. And so, there’s also that
thought about how much teamwork and cooperation is being
learned by a child if they are engaging in very individual isolated
form of endurance training like going out for long runs by
themselves.
And, you know, the final component here would be kind of a
psychological component. The fact that in many cases, endurance
sport has a big focus on weight loss, weight control, on body
image and on a lot of issues that if a child is not developed to
think about properly or handle properly can cause things like
eating disorders especially in female athlete. You can get that
female athletic triad which is the combination of loss of the
menstrual period or menorrhea along with osteoporosis or
osteopenia or low bone density and any eating disorder like
anorexia or severe caloric restriction which of course, leads to a
lot of nutrient, mineral and vitamin deficiencies down the road.
So, there are certainly some potential dangers if you don’t go
about this carefully. In my case, the way that I’ve gone about
things is I simply exposed my children to as many different sports
as possible. And granted they do probably, they’re skewed
towards playing tennis. You know, we play tennis 3 times a week
and just cause I play so much and I think it’s a great sport for my
kids plus they’re left-handed and right-handed twins and so I
wanna have the doubles world championship team in a decade.
But basically, getting kids exposed to as many different activities
as possible both in the arts as well as in the sports I think is super
important in terms of making sure that they don’t become
obsessed with one single activity that may end up harming them
long-term especially something like endurance sports because of
some of those physical and anatomical issues I just got talking
about. So, I would not necessarily focus as much on reigning your
son in as much as I would exposing him and encouraging him to
participate in as many other sports or activities as possible. And
then, as far as nutrition goes, I believe we have a question in this
podcast about vitamins and nutrients for children. But I would
certainly make sure that you’re giving that kid a lot of food and
definitely not,we’re on the side of overfeeding a kid rather than
underfeeding a kid when it comes to someone who’s got as much
interest in endurance sports as your kid seems to have just
because you wanna make sure that you don’t set up any type of
like eating-disorder type of psychology or weight-control type of
psychology because when combined with endurance sports and
the young person, that can be kind of a recipe for like overtraining
hormonal depleted disaster. So be careful with that too and feed
them well.
Brock: That sounds good and that actually, like you said, it brings us
really well into our next question from Keith.
Keith: Hi Ben! I’m in the market to buy some liquid multivitamins that
you recommended on you podcast but I noticed some of them are
marketed as liquid multivitamins for children and liquid
multivitamins. Now, are there any differences other than
flavorings to make them more palatable for children? I wonder if
there’s any extra supplements that you would recommend
specifically for children to take beyond what you’d find in adult
product or if there’s any danger in giving an adult product to a
young child?
Brock: Okay. So, the difference between adult multivitamins and kid’s
multivitamins.
Ben: Yeah. First of all, my kids do take the kids liquid calm
multivitamin and we’ll link to that in the show notes. But the
reason that I chose that multivitamin in particular is because the
DHA and EPA levels in which are those biologically active omega
3 fatty acids that especially when you’re growing are really really
crucial for brain and vision and nervous system development. It’s
also why my kids get a lot of fat in their diet and eat lots of things
like avocados and sardines and all of these and things of that
nature. That particular multivitamin also has decent levels of
magnesium and calcium which are also important for…the
magnesium in particular is important for a lot of enzymatic
reactions that are used as a kid is growing. And then, aside from
that, it’s just a basic nutrient and multivitamin profile but of
course, it’s less than what you would get in adult multivitamin.
Basically, the general rule is that kids should get no more than
about 50% of the adult RDA of the major vitamins and the major
minerals especially the fat-soluble ones because those can tend to
be toxic because they are fat-soluble and that body can store
them.
Brock: Okay. What’s RDA?
[1:12:23.7]
Ben: Recommended daily allowance. So vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin
E, vitamin K, those fat-soluble vitamins, those are the ones you
wanna be careful especially no overdosing to your child. You
wouldn’t wanna give your kid like 4 tablespoons of cod liver oil a
day. You’ve known in many cases from adult you know, that’s not
too much of the fat-soluble vitamin. Typically, you’re looking at in
most cases, right around 12 years old that kinda being that
approximate cut-off to where a kid could start to use something
closer to an adult dose of vitamin supplements. But my hope had
with this issue is that vitamin supplements should not be regarded
as a substitute for whole foods and for healthy eating. And I think
that a lot of times, parents will use a fallback of like a Flintstones
multivitamin to justify ice cream and pizza and candy bars as
being the basic diet of a kid. So, I would definitely make sure that
the formation of your child’s diet is comprised with real whole
food. And then, just supplement with some type of a multivitamin
has been designed with the kids’ needs in mind which is why I use
that kids calm multivitamin. If we’re giving an adult product to a
child, basically, you’d wanna cut it in half. And when our kids
started taking that kids calm when they were one. And in that
case, we simply give them a half dose of the kid’s dose. And now,
they’re on a full dose of the kid’s dose but you could use an adult
dose and like cut it down but you generally….the general rule,
you’d want them to begin in no more than 50% of an adult dose so
you’d wanna cut it in half. If you were, for example, getting like a
liquid multivitamin and not wanting to buy both the adult and the
kids, you could like use half a dose of that – that adult multi, for
example. But it does have a little bit lower levels of the EPA and
the DHA in it relative to the other components just because you’re
generally gonna need more of that during something like a child’s
neural development.
Brock: I’ve read a study not that long ago like just do go back to a point
you are making about making sure the diet is there as well that
they actually found a people who took a multivitamin whether it
was like one over-the-counter special or anything like that. They
actually took more risks like they didn’t eat as well, they exposed
themselves to colds more regularly or readily and all of that kind
of stuff because they felt that they were protected by these
vitamins that they were taking.
Ben: Yeah. And that’s a good point too is that you won’t necessarily
wanna give your kids a multivitamin if they’re more likely to run
around the neighborhood with a stick of dynamite and chasing
after the neighborhood cats.
Brock: I’m going to go to the doctor and get every vaccination I can
possibly get so I can be god-like.
Ben: I heard that you had that plan for Thailand so hope to keep you on
the list down there.
Brock: Okay. So, that brings us to our next question from McKade.
McKade: Hey Ben! This is McKade. Currently I’m in the military and right
now, I’m trying to increase my body weight exercises primarily my
push-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups and sit-ups. I was wondering if you
have recommendations on how I can increase those numbers at a
faster pace. I heard you mentioned greasing the groove a few
podcasts ago so, if you recommend that or maybe the traditional
military view where you do a few hundred of these exercises per
day or maybe I should skip days and give myself time to heal up.
Anyways, I’m interested in what you have to say and I appreciate
any help you can give me and I love the podcast. Thank you.
Brock: Okay. You wanna know my advice is to McKade?
Ben: What’s your advice?
Brock: Talk and give me 20 Make it!
Ben: Was that an actual megaphone?
Brock: You know, I’ve had it sitting on my desk actually all week waiting
for this question.
Ben: There’s a really cool book out there for McKade and here’s the
book that I read a long time ago and I got a whole “greasing the
groove” idea from it’s called the Naked Warrior by Pavel
Tsatsouline. He’s kind of a pretty well known like a MMA type of
coach or strength conditioning adviser and the whole idea behind
greasing the groove actually Pavel was a Soviet Specialist Forces
guy. It’s that you combine specificity meaning doing the exact
motion that you’re going to be expected to do for example, in the
______[1:17:04.6] that you’re doing with frequent practice. And
so you’re not necessarily training to failure but you’re instead,
doing for example, like what I do, keeping a pull-up bar in my
office and everytime I walk underneath that pull-up bar, I gotta do
about 5 pull-ups. Well, I can easily if I’m not ill, it’s so tough but I
can go to the gym and I can bang out 25 body weight pull-ups. I
never do 25 body weight pull-ups like on a daily basis as part of
my training routine or whatever but I’ll easily do anywhere
between like 30 and 40 pull-ups, sometimes 50 in a day just by
doing 5 pull-ups everytime I walk under my pull-up bar and that’s
the concept of greasing the groove. You can do the same thing.
You can do everytime you take a pee, you can do 20 perfect body
weight squats. Everytime you eat something, you can drop and do
20 push-ups. I mean, there are, that’s really the best way to use
the greasing-the-groove philosophy is you just set yourself up
these triggers throughout the day that you’re gonna use as triggers
and don’t make them in frequent triggers. Don’t say, okay I’m
gonna do 20 sit-ups everytime I eat lunch cause I got to be doing
20 sit-ups a day in those cases. I’m sure like Brock and you eat 2
lunches.
Brock: Sometimes 3.
Ben: Sometimes, 3. That’s right. But basically, that’s what the whole
greasing the groove philosophy is. And he gets into a hard core in
his book The Naked Warrior. But you can easily grease the groove
by not working to failure and I think it’s less stressful and you get
better results with less risk for injury when you go about things
that way. And so that’s what I would do is I would just set up
triggers throughout the day. I would, the actual exercises that
you’re doing are the push-ups, the pull-ups, the sit-ups and the
chin-ups. Obviously, pull-ups and chin-ups are gonna be a lower
frequency. I would have a pull-up bar in your house or outside,
somewhere nearby. You gotta have something accessible when
you’re using this greasing the groove philosophy. But you know,
anywhere between like 5 and 10 pull-ups or chin-ups at a time and
then for your push-ups and your sit-ups typically, you’re gonna be
closer to like 15-25 at a time – a little bit higher frequency. But I
would literally, every single day, be greasing the groove with all 4
of those activities and to grease the groove generally, you’re gonna
hit each of those exercises about 5 times during the day. When I
will be shooting for close to like 5 to a maximum of 10 range in
terms of just like dropping and doing those and having certain
triggers throughout the day.
Another really good book that I recommend that I own and a lot
of times like I’ll break this out during the triathlonal season. The
past 2 years I’ve actually used it over the holidays like kinda from
the early Christmas season onwards to a little bit after the New
Year just because I’m always traveling and I’m in places where
sometimes I don’t have access to gyms and life is hectic and I just
need to get in quick workouts during there. It’s called the
Ultimate Warrior Workouts. It’s by Martin Rooney and I’ll link to
it in the show notes for you. But it’s basically like workouts
derived from all the different mixed martial arts and martial arts
practices from around the globe like Judo and Karate and things
like that, rich with fantastic photos and this really really good
workout program that’s just all body weight stuff like this but it’s
just super hard. It increases mobility. A ton of these like push-
ups and sit-up and pull-up variations and that whole book is
basically just like a bunch of crazy variations of those exercises.
But that’s a really good one too and one that I had a little bit of fun
with in terms of pulling some workouts out of that. So that one’s
called the Ultimate Warrior Workout and then the other one is
called The Naked Warrior. I think “warrior” seems like it’s a
pretty popular.
Brock: It does. I was kinda wondering about that. Why is everybody so
angry?
[1:21:12.3]
Ben: We should write a book about warriors. We could do the podcast
warrior workout, the travel warrior, that’d be a good one. I’ll buy
a book called The Travel Warrior. I’ll write that down – write a
book called The Travel Warrior. Somebody’s gotta buy a
travelwarrior.com now.
Brock: Now, I’m doing it right now.
Ben: You’re gonna sell it to me. Yeah, even lunchtime warrior.
Brock: I’m actually, I’m gonna be in Boston early next week. If anybody’s
listening to this podcast when it first comes out from October 1-3,
I’m gonna be in Boston. I’m actually doing a talk at a software
conference there just giving hints and ways for people to get little
more fit and not have to give up their entire lives of sitting at a
desk all day long and it’s very similar to the greasing the groove
idea, just getting up once an hour and doing some squats, doing
some sit-ups doing some push-ups, anything like that and then
getting back to your chair and getting back to work. So, if
anybody’s interested, come down to the Business and Software
Conference in Boston.
Ben: The software warrior.
Brock: Yes. There you go. Register that.
Ben: There we go.
Brock: All right, let’s move on to our final question from Scott.
Scott: Hey Ben! This is Scott from Columbus, Ohio. I know you
addressed in past podcast the use of cold thermogenesis for both
fat loss and muscle recovery. However, I’m doing some self
experiment and wondering what your thoughts were about using
cold exposure pre-workout. I’ve noticed some anecdotal results of
increase strength output in both number of reps and weight and
I’m very interested in your thoughts on whether there is any
research out there on using cold to actually gain strength.
Something along the lines of delayed or numbing the muscle
fatigue leading to greater work capacity. Thanks again, Ben for a
great show. I really appreciate your input.
[1:23:03.6]
Brock: Well, you’ve been totally geeking out on all these cold exposure
stuff lately. So, you’re the guy to ask for sure.
Ben: Yeah. I mean, the quick answer is, yes, and the basic principle
behind this is pretty simple. When you’re exercising, a lot of your
central organs get hotter, like your liver and your kidneys and
your intestines, all of those tend to rise in terms of their
temperature. And when that happens, you got water and blood
that leaves your muscles and it goes to the skin to try and cool you
down so that these organs don’t fail. So, if you can put yourself
into a situation where you don’t overheat as fast, you can control
body temperature, that can help out quite a bit. And NASA has
been studying this stuff ever since the 80’s in terms of pre-
exercise or pre-exertion cold exposure using everything from like
cold pools to like cold wraps and cold applications. Because one
of the best ways to cool the core from the outside is by cooling
areas that have blood vessels close to the surface of the skin.
Cooling vest is another example of something that could be used
in a situation like this. Cycling teams have used this. I know
garments surveilla was doing some of the like pre-race freezing
their butts off type of stuff including like even the consumption of
ice slushies pre-race or pre-event. I know that Craig Alexander
was doing a little bit of this cause I read about it. It was last year
in triathlete magazine or something like that about some of the
like the drinking cold water or drinking cold slushies, trying to get
as core temp down pre-workout by doing stuff like that. I know
that I personally had fantastic runs like later on in the day if I’ve
done some type of like sitting around in the cold river doing like
some cold showers earlier in the day. So, basically, anything that
you can do like that to basically kinda shut down the core
temperature prior to activity so that your body takes longer and
longer to actually get to the point where it tries to drive blood
away from the muscles to the skin to save your organs can help
out. So, ultimately, the answer is yes, cold exposure before a
workout can definitely help. As far as assisting with strength
output, I have not necessarily seen any studies that have looked at
strength and power output per se. Most of what I’ve seen has
looked at exercises of attrition like running to fatigue or
something of that nature. I guess my only concern would be if
that cold exposure affects the actual pliability of the muscle,
specifically by reducing its elasticity to the extent that it may
increase your risk for injury, you’d wanna be careful in a situation
like that. So, I would make sure that if you do something like a
cold bath prior to a strength training workout that you get in a
really good dynamic stressing routine like some lunges and some
swings and circles and things like that to make sure that you’ve
got good range of motion or enough range of motion to take you
through the activity that you wanna do prior to like going into a
set of power cleans after you’ve frozen your butt off. That seems
like it might be a little bit dangerous as anybody who’s tried to
exercise when they’re really cold might know. You know, there’s a
little bit of loss of flexibility in some situations.
Brock: I love the story of Simon Whitfield the year that he won the
triathlon at the Olympics 2004, 2008. Before the race started he
was just sitting there with ice vest on while everybody else was
like moving around and jumping around and getting warmed up,
he was just sitting there like in this little ball with his ice vest on.
And everybody thought that he was playing mind games with
them because he was just sitting so still and like staring at
everybody in there and flipped the vest on and basically just went
to town and won the race. It’s pretty cool but yeah it is, that
makes me worry about being too cold, just going straight into like
he said like trying to lift some weights or something with really
tight cold muscles.
Ben: Yeah. I’d just be careful with that but ultimately, it’s definitely
worth cooling your body prior to exercise if you’re able to do so if
you can also do it without reducing your range of motion. So,
yeah, I think that that about wraps today’s podcast.
Brock: It doesn’t if it was obvious today that majority or all the questions
are audio questions lately because of that new -little feature on the
website, we’re getting a lot of audio questions and don’t fear if you
did send in a question like weeks and weeks ago. We do so have
them in cue, all the text questions and we will get to them when
that happens but if you’ve been waiting for a long time, the best
way to get your question answered these days is to really do the
audio question.
Ben: Or just send a check to me, to my address. No but seriously, it’s a
good point. We’ll definitely prioritize the other questions cause
we’d love to hear people’s personality and voices.
Brock: Do try to keep your questions a little bit short, though. Otherwise,
you fall prey to my scalpel.
Ben: Yes, yes, Brock will cut you.
Brock: I will.
Ben: Not physically but digitally.
Brock: No, I’ll cut you physically too. I’ll cut you, man.
Ben: All right, let’s shop rack down before you train yourself. So,
bengreenfieldfitness.com the show notes for this episode are at
Episode #210. And you also get a list of some of the
recommendations that I made over at facebook.com/bgfitness in
our My List section. Thank you everybody for listening in. For
those who are gonna be in Kona, Hawaii for the Ironman World
Championships, that will be the next place that I’m headed so I
might see some of you down there. Best of luck to those of you
who are listening in and preparing for that event. Make sure that
you’re ready to sweat. And till next time, this is Ben and Brock,
signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com.
For personal nutrition, fitness or triathlon consulting, supplements, books or DVD’s from Ben Greenfield, please visit Pacific Elite Fitness at
http://www.pacificfit.net