Episode #137 – Full Transcript

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Podcast #137 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2011/03/episode-137-dr-two-fingers-reveals-his-teeth-gritting-body-healing-secrets/

Introduction:           Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield sitting here in Spokane, Washington getting ready next week to head down to the Caribbean actually, to do a try out one down there called the Tri-star, Tri-Star Nevus. It’s a 1 k swim, a 100 k bike, and a 10 k run.  So, lots of time in the bike saddle should be fun. In today’s interview, I got Dr. Craig Buhler, also known as Dr. Two Fingers is going to talk about advanced muscle integration technique, really cool stuff from an injury prevention standpoint. As a matter of fact, I got to tell you, it rings close to home to me, because just last weekend, I went over to Coeurdalene, Idaho, which is about only forty-minutes from my house, and I visited a guy there who is kind of infamous among local Iron man try out athletes and folks who exercise a lot for being able to kind of being able to fix just kind of any thing going wrong with your muscles. He calls himself a body mechanic. His name is Bryan Sanders. As a matter of fact, if you happen to be a listener, and you live in Coeurdalene, if you haven’t seen him yet, you need to. E-mail me Ben at bengreenfieldfitness.com and _____0:2:10 you up with the body mechanic. We will fix you for sure. If you haven’t been to bengreenfieldfitness.com lately, then you would be interested if you are a coffee-drinker and checking out the two-week job of judgment that I’m doing. I’m trying up two different kinds of coffee. One is a drip coffee substitute, lowers acidity; it’s basically actually a coffee extract mixed with a black tea extract, called super coffee and I’m trying that for week and then I’m also trying something called teacchino, which is a mix of a bunch of different herbs and spices, kind of almost like tea but it tastes coffee designed to be brewed like coffee and I’m going to be reporting on my experiences with those two healthy coffee alternatives. Be sure to check that out over at bengreenfieldfitness.com.  And then finally, of course, if you want to donate to the show, then I will send you a bag full of goodies and a nice _____3:03. My personal trainer told me to eat more fat at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, t-shirt and  a special thanks to Robin this week for sending in a t-shirt donation, and your shirt is on the way, Robin. Finally, be sure to, if you haven’t yet, follow us over on Facebook or I guess it’s technically a “like”. Like BenGreenfieldfFitness over facebook. Go to facebook.com/bgfitness. I’m doing a stuff over there that I’m not doing on the blog or on the Twitter feed. And the next thing that’s going to be happening over there is a live video debate. Stay tune for more on that and you can so by going to facebook.com/bgfitness. I guess I just kind of rocked at all the special announcements, but I’m not getting into the special announcements section. So we’re going to go ahead and jump right in to this week’s listener Q & A. I listened to your request and decided to continue take more questions rather than fewer questions on the Q and A. So, here we go.

                                    Remember, if you have a question, you can ask it by calling toll free to 877 2099439, you can Skype, username Specific fit, you can ask a question via a Twitter.com/bengreenfield or you can use the _____4:58 bengreenfield form at BenGreenfieldFitness.com for any of the podcast show notes. And this particular show is show # 137. Richard Rights is with the first question.

Richard says:            I’m thinking about having a vasectomy. I’m wondering if you have any information concerning recovery. I ventured on the number of try out ones this summer and I’m concerned about how long the operation may put me off the bike.

Ben Greenfield:       Well, I kind of share your frustrations Richard, because if you were to go, say like the Internet for vasectomy recovery, what you’re going to find is that the time is very hugely. You’re going to find some people tell you, you can return to exercise after 4 days, some people will tell, you can return the exercise after a few weeks, and the reason for that is because there are so many different types of vasectomy surgeries. Conventional vasectomy involves an incision and is somewhat invasive but there are less invasive forms of a vasectomy. You can get a no scalpel vasectomy; you can get what’s called a vast clip implantation.  There are variations of the conventional surgical vasectomy, so all sorts of different ways to do it. Ultimately, what it comes down to is, you will want to listen to your physician to _____6:15 on the type of vasectomy that they do and the no scalpel vasectomy is going to be the one that will likely have the shortest recovery time. What you are looking at is for conventional vasectomy, typically somewhere in the range of 2-4 weeks. The less invasive vasectomy maybe able to run, after as few as 3 days. I would highly recommend that whenever you return the activity, you wear a cup or jockstrap; you wear some supportive boxer briefs, maybe some like your shorts. Definitely, take advantage of  the pain medication that you’ll be getting after the vasectomy, something like a _____6:53 because that will certainly help that recovery come along _____6:57 nicely. And then, you would want to have some bags of frozen peas or frozen corn or some type of ice in your freezer to put into that area to really help with some of the pain and the discomfort that will stay with you for few days up to couple of weeks after the surgery takes place. But ultimately, it’s going to depend on the type of surgery that you do and again, the no needle, no scalpel vasectomies, you can usually get back to things within a few days but in terms of actual pressure in your scrotum, because basically, that’s almost like a balloon, and it can fill with blood if there’s any of trauma down there. I would be very, very careful to be 100% sure that you are healed and ready for exercise and then, cleared by your doctor for exercise before you get back specifically on to a bike saddle because that’s going to put direct pressure on the scrotal areas. And then, of course, swimming is something else, in terms of the water that you would want to talk to your physician about as far as letting water in there after the surgery and sometimes, that can be up to week and more before that can take place. So, I hope that helps out with your question. Ultimately, it’s going depend on the type of vasectomy that you’re getting done.

Jennifer says:           When my husband sweats a lot after doing a workout, he starts to smell fishy. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens often. He says, it happens when he takes a certain supplement such as omega-3 or fish oil, but I notice that it happens all the time. I was wondering if you could know why, and if you can offer any solutions.

Ben:                            Well, this is interesting because there is actually a condition that causes fish-odor syndrome or causes you to _____8:44 like a strong body odor that smells like fish and it’s called the trimethylaminuria.  And the reason that it happens, is because you actually, have this metabolic disorder that causes you not to produce enzyme, called the flavone-containing monooxygenase that actually breaks down another amino in your body called trimethylamine. And this trimethylamine is building up in your sweat, in your _____ 9:17, in your breath and so, you tend to get this fishy odor because that’s what the trimethyl compound actually smells like. What you can do about it, well as matter of fact, your husband is right that the consumption of protein powders, fish oil and pretty much anything that contains nitrogen or sulfur-like compounds is going to compound this problem. And anything like eggs or legumes may also do it. So in terms of supplements that can help on something like this, there has been study done on this, and  supplementing with activated charcoal, which is a supplement that you can find in almost_____ 9:57 or copper chlorophylline, that you can also find in_____ 10:01 food stores could help with actual odor.  But if your husband has this condition, then, it may just be something that he is going to have deal with and may have to go through like a low protein intake or looking to a real, real smart vegan or vegetarian diet. So that maybe some real vegetarian lifestyle changes that need to be made. He could actually get tested for this via standard screening blood test that looks into that enzyme and whether or not there’s a deficiency of the enzyme responsible for breaking down the trimethylamines. So that is a very interesting question. Thanks for bringing it up and for anybody out there, who has a fishy smelling body odor, incidentally, I, actually, do not encourage the use of deodorant due to aluminum compounds that are there in the deodorant. Your skin can basically suck those up, just like your mouth can and I would actually recommend you use something called action wipes. There’s a spreader, they’re called action wipes that I’ve talked about before on the show if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and do a search for action wipes. That’s a really good spray good made from some really natural essential oils. Another thing that you can use is just a baking soda. You can apply the powder into your armpits; not kill bacteria, it helps to absorb perspiration and the other thing that you could use instead or mixed with baking soda, is cornstarch. So, those are couple of things you could use as an alternative to the deodorants or anti-perspirants, yes, they may attract women like flies according to the Axe body spray commercial but they also may not be all that healthy for you, your skin or your body. So let’s go ahead and move on to the next question. And this is from listener Michael.

Michael says:            My question for you on ultra running. I’m currently in Afghanistan trying to keep up my running in preparation for the _____11:54      hundred miler. With very limited to run, what you suggest for a running regime that will maintain fitness for this ultras when I get back three weeks before _____12:04. I have access to treadmills, ellipticals and many kinds of weight lifting equipment machines. And he also has a follow-up question, he says, there’s a ton of dusts over here. What is the good way to protect against inhaling all the dust especially that I’m forced to run while being passed by convoys every morning.

Ben:                            First of all, from the dust perspective, obviously, that cowboys did it and you can do it, too, a bandana that was the original dust mask, anything from a bandana to a scarf tends to work really well at filtering out some of the dust if you want to go with something a little bit more streamline. There’s actually a mask out there, called a U2 sports mask. You can check that out, u2sportsmask.com. They don’t pay me _____12:46 the reading like that but they make a mask that is designed to be worn in extreme sports and block dust out and that’ll be really good one to look into. It’s kind of small and more low profile than a scarf or a bandana, the U2 sports mask. But onto your training question, in terms of maintaining fitness with limited time, for running ultra endurance efforts, it really comes down into getting your body to recruit as many motor units as possible with as little training as possible. And I’ll be talking about this more with Tim Noakes, Dr. Tim Noakes from South Africa, who’s an Exercise physiologist down there, and does a lot of research on Central Governor mechanism because what he proposes is that typically, fatigue is due to the brain’s inhibition of muscles due to pain and _____ 13:41 send to perception of pain, and one of the ways to override that is to actually get your brain to be able to recruit more, more motor neurons and more muscle units before it actually starts to shutdown the body. And so, one of the ways you can do that of course is to do high intensity intervals or exercises that incorporate a large number of motor units or activate a lot of muscles. So if you’re going out, for say, like 10 mile tempo run because you send me your routine and I see you do 10 mile running each morning with upper body and lower body weight training six days a week. I would keep up with the upper body and lower body weight body training that will make sure you’re doing very short explosive sets, so nothing endurance based on the weight room. So all of your sets should be in the range of 5-10 reps about 3-4 sets really overloads your body. You know, for example, my weight lifting squat routine for running right now is 6- 7 sets of 3- 4 reps of squats, very heavy, just like I have to activate as many muscles as possible. When the process of writing a book about the style weight lifting, it’s a little bit kind of a new _____14:49 for endurance athletes. But then, the other issue is that during your runs, right on doing a 10 mile run every morning, I would highly recommend that you get rid of a couple of those 10-mile runs and replace them with a track work or speed work preferably one session that kind of targets about that 30- 90 second range and then another session that targets the 90 plus second range, so kind of going after the short powerful explosive session and then also, the longer, still fairly intense interval based session and then also include a lot of  work. So if you can do a short-steep hill day or a long semi-steep hill day that will help tremendously. So doing a 10-mile run everyday is going to keep endurance up but it’s really not going to get you the most pain for your back in terms of motor neuron activation and getting some of the beneficial effects of intense interval training, which is also going to do some of the things, same things as aerobic training because it can increase your heart stroke capacity; it can still improve what’s called your mitochondrial density; your ability to use oxygen, then, it can still improve your ability to oxidize fat. So I would highly recommend that you kind of ditch that 10-mile run each morning or replace it or most of those sessions with the interval sessions and it’ll work.

Gerry says:                Hi Ben, I just recently turned 45. I’ve been a try out athlete for about two years. About three years ago, I led a sedentary lifestyle and I was overweight. I’ve had excellent lab result on my blood work the last three years that I’ve been fit. I noticed in the last two physical exams that my BUN to creatine ratio is slightly higher than normal. I know you’re not a doctor, but what do you know about this ratio and its significance to athletes?

Ben:                            Okay, so let’s kind of explain what this is. The BUN to creatinine ratio is basically a measure of your blood urea nitrogen, which is something that is being filtered by the kidneys. Nitrogen, being a breakdown of certain metabolic process like digesting food and metabolizing fuel for energy and creatinine is waste molecule that is generated from muscle metabolism. So what happens is creatinine is produced from creatine, which is one of the sources of energy production in your muscles. And about 2% of your body’s creatine is converted to this creatinine everyday and more than that, in athletes and people, who are exercising a lot. So this creatinine, that’s a by-product of creatine breakdown, it’s transported through your blood stream and into your kidneys. And the kidneys filter out the creatinine and the dispose of it in your urine. So if you just wanted to find out how much  creatinine is in your blood stream, you could just do blood creatinine test. But this other test is BUN to creatinine ratio is a little bit different, because, here’s the deal, your kidneys are always going to filter just a little bit of creatinine, so there’s basically what’s called minimal creatinine absorption. So if you think about the ratio is being like the top in the bottom number, in this case, creatinine is the bottom number and blood urea nitrogen is the top number, then the bottom number that creatinine is going to stay relatively constant. However, if your level or your ratio goes up, it’s going to indicate that blood urea nitrogen is rising and there’s a few different things that could cause blood urea nitrogen to go up. Heart failure would be one of them. Not something you see quite common in athletes. Dehydration would be another thing that can cause that and that would be something that would be more common.  A diet high in protein could also cause blood urea nitrogen to go up as well and that’s something that a lot of times would people switch to say like a healthier diet, sometimes their protein tends to go up. So that’s another to look for is, has that happened in your diet? If you actually have a blockage in your urinary tract, like from a kidney stone or even something like a tumor; that could actually restrict the loss of urea and that could cause the high ratio. That could also be caused by diabetes or some type of issues with your kidneys, some type of renal failure. There’s also a disease called Addison’s disease that could cause high blood urea nitrogen value and interestingly, that’s something that we’ll talk a little bit later when it comes to adrenal fatigue. However, you’d have a lot of the other symptoms of adrenal fatigue like weight loss, usually a lot of bowel problems, weakness, of course, fatigue and that’s something you’d probably know if you’re experiencing. And there’s some medication that could cause high blood urea nitrogen. I don’t know what medications you’re on but ultimately, in very active, healthy individuals, usually _____19:43 in dehydration or very high protein intake. So, I would look at those as being a culprit and then, go from there. So, a great question. And speaking of adrenal fatigue, here’s a question from Cindy who’s actually, she talks about, she’s just diagnosed with adrenal fatigue. She says, “I want to heal my body but I also want to continue on my training. Any advice?, I’ve heard people with adrenal fatigue have to be careful about bananas, sports drinks or supplements that too much potassium in them because it throws the sodium balance off. Is that true?

Ben:                            Well, from a nutritional standpoint, there’s basically two things that can stress out your adrenal glands, which are the glands right on top of your kidneys. The first is, your adrenal glands make a hormone called aldosterone and that controls your blood sodium and your blood potassium levels. So if your potassium levels get jacked up and they became really high from a high potassium intake, something like eating a bunch of bananas or taking a supplement that’s really high in potassium, your kidneys are going to secrete a bunch of aldosterone and that’s going to cause your kidneys to excrete more potassium and retain more sodium. So if you have real, real low sodium intake or real, real high potassium intake, it’s going to put stress in your adrenal glands because you’re going to have to increase their production of this aldosterone. So lots of fruits, whole fruits, vegetables and juices are going to have a lot of potassium, so diet really high in fruits and vegetables may not be the best thing for somebody with adrenal fatigue. So the other thing that could cause a little bit of stress when it comes to adrenal fatigue, is the other thing produced by the adrenal gland, is cortisol. And cortisol stimulates the breakdown of proteins and fats and it also allows the conversion of the amino acids in your body into glucose which is also known as gluconeogenesis. So basically, cortisol is used for this breakdown of some this energy into something you can utilize and make into sugar but if your diet is really low in protein or if you’re not digesting protein adequately to some kind of digestive insufficiency, your adrenal glands have to make a bunch of extra cortisol because it’s going to breakdown your muscle tissue to turn that into amino acids, because there’s not enough dietary protein coming in. So real, real low or inadequate protein intake could also cause adrenal fatigue, so we combine this high fruit and vegetable intake with a low protein intake, can we by say, vegetarian or vegan diet and you’re kind of setting yourself up nutritionally for adrenal fatigue or if you have adrenal fatigue, you’re setting yourself up to continue to stress your adrenal glands and keep yourself from healing properly. Now, there are other things that can fatigue the adrenal glands. Since they produce your adrenaline _____22:36, energy drinks, lots of caffeine consumption, interestingly tons of aerobic exercise can also cause a lot of stress in the adrenals and that some kind of constant state of dehydration, and that Addison’s disease that I’ve mentioned earlier is basically just a disease that’s really combination of high potassium, low sodium and adrenal insufficiency. Any those are some of the classic symptoms of Addison’s disease. So, what this comes down to, is that you have to correct the high potassium diet could be an issue, low protein diet. From a healing standpoint for adrenal fatigue, this is something I’ve talked about many times before in the podcast if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and do a search for adrenal fatigue. Just last week, I talked about a bunch of things you can do to really control like cortisol production and bring yourself back in alignment, everything from sleep to really backing off the aerobic training to some nutritional adjustments that can be made and some supplements you can take. So, got to bengreenfieldfitness.com and listen to the podcast that I did on adrenal fatigue and you’ll be able to find out a bunch of different things that you can do. So, I hope that helps and next we have a question from Gallop,

Gallop says:               I broke my talus about 15 years ago water skiing.

Ben:                            Talus is a bone in the foot ankle area, for those who don’t know what that is.

Gallop:                       I got it screwed and it’s near 100% _____24:02. I do get pretty sore in this area every time I go for along run. The soreness is any of those ligaments around the outside of the joints. I take Ibuprofen and topical ketoprofen, sometimes, ice. What would you recommend for an injury like this?

Ben:                            So basically, you’ve got this screw in your ankle or possibly several screws in your ankle and typically, when you’re getting a lot of referred pain like that, there’s either two situations. Either, there are muscles or tendons around that area that are being overloaded and those are actually stressed and inflamed. And that’s something I learned about a little more in actually today’s featured topic interview with Craig Buhler or there’s actual _____24:44 between the screws of the heart, whether it’s in your ankle and the soft tissue. So the plates of the screws are irritating a tendon or something in your ankle. And obviously, that would require you to go, visit with the surgeon and have those screws removed and that’s what a lot of folks do, and it actually helps a bit when they do that. So, there’s kind of two words and one would be like a manual therapy using some of the suggestions that are going to come up in the day’s featured topic. The other one would be, that get the screws taken out. But it also really cautions your frequent use of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, _____25:20 topical ketoprofen, which is going to release it through the skin or like the oral Advil or Motrin or Ibuprofen, because those are going to block prostaglandins. And prostaglandins will block pain but they also protect the stomach lining. And so you’re going to get a real risk of GI bleeding, you got a real risk of leaky gut syndrome, and you can actually get a lot of things that stimulate toxic shock syndrome when you’re exercising especially in heat and taking in Ibuprofen. There has been several medical studies done on this and the effect of Ibuprofen on muscle damage during exercise, muscle soreness and some of the markers of inflammation and muscle damage, and they’re always to the _____26:04 when folks are taking Ibuprofen. So, I really recommend that’s kind of like the emergency thing that you take when you simply half to get through a workout session or race and you have no other alternatives. I’d highly recommend that you go with these safes alternatives, something like Phenocane. I’ve talked about Phenocane on the show before. You can do a search at the bengreenfieldfitness.com for Phenocane. Also, look into a topical analgesic. There’s a lot of topical analgesics. There’s one called rock sauce, if you got a rock tape. They make something like rock sauce, that’s a really good, strong analgesic. There are some things you could use, in addition to some of the manual manipulation techniques that you’ll hear about in today’s interview. So, great question. Our next question is from Alberto.

Alberto says:             I have a concern about my knee. In November, I did my first half Iron man and six miles_____26: 59 my knee started to occur a lot. I couldn’t bend my knee for three days. After several exams, the doctor said, multiocculated synovial cysts, which is located medial, to the medial head of the gastrocnemius muscle bundle, with minimal joint fluid and a chondral softening within the lateral of the patella facet without a focal high grade condyle defect. If you heard of this certain type of condition on tryout athletes, actually, the big mouthful of words that I’ve just spit out, which I’m assuming you just copy from your medical records, yes, it’s basically, a multiocculated synovial cysts, is a cyst and this chrondral softening within the lateral of patella facet, that’s basically, chondral malacia, which is also known as runner’s knee. So let’s talk about the cyst, basically the way that a cyst forms is any type of joint swelling or excess fluid within your knee from inflammation, which could be due to overuse, which can be due to tendon irritation, which can be due to some type of muscle injury sustained during the race. Basically, all of that can bulge to the back of your knee and form a cyst, where all the synovial fluid collects and basically, stays. So you get this fluid spaced sac, that’s called a cyst. I’m surprised that your physicians do not offer you this option but many times, you can get that excess knee fluid removed literally with a needle and then that, in combined or in combination with cortisone injection to shut down the inflammation often is ______28:40 up and runny gain from a cyst within a matter of days. So, drainage followed by cortisone injection is something I’d be asking your physicians about when it comes to the cyst. When it comes to the chondral softening of that facet on your patella, that’s basically, chondral malacia, and what chondral malacia is, think about it as a blistering on the surface of the cartilage on your knee. And usually, you can get it arthritic degeneration but you can also get it from some type of improper movement of your kneecap. Because what happens is, normally, the underside of your kneecap is covered with this layer of smooth cartilage, and it glides across your knee when you bend your joint. But what happens is, in some people, that knee cap or your patella start to rub against one side or the other of your knee joint and as that surface that is rubbing against got irritated, you got knee pain. You can also get swelling and inflammation. It’s likely that this is what caused that cyst to form in the first place. Typically, it’s caused by your kneecap not properly tracking. And typically, that’s caused by a weak quadriceps muscle or the inability to actually control movement of the kneecap. And if you’re doing strengthening right now, a knee strengthening, about over at one in the other podcast that you do at _____30:01Academy. Carrie Sullivan, my partner over there, talked about this quite a bit, in terms of some of our favorite exercises for strengthening the muscles _____30:11 the kneecap, and although we talked about  large number of different exercises, I mentioned one of my favorites, especially for runners. It’s to simply _____30:20-21, how about a test in your ankle and do standing straight leg kicks, almost like your kicking a soccer ball, but you keep your knee almost completely locked and turn your toes slightly out, so your toes are actually externally rotated and you just kick about 20 times in one leg and you move on into the other leg and go back and forth, 4-5 times really focusing on that  kind of tear drop shape muscle in your leg, it’s called  the vastus medialis, that’s the one that tends to be the most weak especially in runners and so, you got tight _____30:51 bands and a weak vastus medialis, and what happens is that the kneecap gets pulled_____30:56 outside of the leg and rubs against the area that your rotation in. So, combination of draining cyst, getting a cortisone injection to shut down the inflammation and then, completely shutting off any type of running or cycling until you can strengthen your quads sufficiently though your kneecap is tracking properly. Focus on some hamstring flexibility as well, that will help up quite a bit, and that should help you out. That’s what I would do, like you say, I’m not a doctor, that’s not suppose to be a medical advice, that’s just what I would do if I were you.

Greg says:                  Do you know of the possible adverse effects of long term fat deprivation. I did this for a two-year period and my energy regulation is completely screwed. I’m frequently weak, _____31:40 headache and poor concentration. My blood glucose levels are consistently within the normal range, so endocrinologists have told me, there’s nothing they can do. The only thing that seems to decrease the symptoms, are hot weather, intense high rate exercise, and eating complete meals like protein and fat saturated carbs.

Ben:                            First of all, I don’t know why your endocrinologist had told you that there’s nothing that you can do if your blood glucose levels are consistently within the normal range. The reason for that is there are multiple risks for a long term fat deprivation and I’ll go over them but basically, fats are crucial for the formation of hormones in your body and not o mention your brain tissue, and so, when you’re not making your testosterone and a lot of the hormones that are responsible for anabolic recovery, you can break down a muscle mass, you get lower moods, low energy and one of the best ways to fix is that is to get on some type of natural hormone replacement therapy, combined with the high fat diet and you’re off to the_____ 32:55. So, when you have fat deprivation, what happens is first of all, there are fat-soluble vitamins like fat-soluble vitamin A, D, E and K. Because all these nutrients are fat-soluble, your body has to have dietary fat to utilize them. So all those vitamins get stored in the liver, get stored in the fat tissue; they’re important to your growth, to your immune system, your cell repair, your blood clotting. If you’re not getting enough fat to get those vitamins absorbed, they’re going to be excreted by your body. They’re not going to be stored and so, you get risk of vitamin deficiency, from vitamins A, D, E and K. So in combination with upping your fat intake, I would look into upping your intake of fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E and K, especially D, I would look into high dose vitamin D, like 10, 000 IU plus. The fat intake, because like I mentioned, in terms of mental health and brains, essential fatty acids are very crucial for brain chemical regulation, especially Omega-3s and Omega 6s which play huge role in your mood and your behavior. If you’re deficient in those fatty acids which you’re going to get from things like fish, seeds and nuts, then, you can actually have lot of depression symptoms and those fatty acids also help _____34:13nerve cells in your brain and help the nerve cells to communicate with each other, so, because those maybe damaged or deficient, you could be at risk for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, eating disorders, tons of other mental disorders as well; colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, all of those are correlated are correlated with low intake of essential fatty acids. So, that’s another reason that pop up, your fatty acid intake, research has shown that high Omega-3 fatty acid intake can slow prostate tumor and cancer cell growth, so again, I’m going to tell you about cancer risk, as far as cholesterol and heart disease, if your fat intake is low, your high density lipoprotein cholesterol are going to be low. And that is the protein that is responsible for transporting cholesterol into your liver to be excreted and that specifically is very important in getting rid of a lot of those small pieces of cholesterol that can get oxidized through a high carbohydrate intake  diet and lead to heart disease. So, HDL is low, with low fat intake, so you’re increasing your risk of heart disease. A lot of times, if you’re not eating fat and you get a ton of excess carbs and protein as well, and so, that carbohydrate-rich diet is of course, going to increase your chance of diabetes. Then of course, fat is very satiating as well, so if you’re depriving yourself of fat, so you’re probably going to have a higher appetite than you normally would. So lots of things going on there, when you cut yourself off from fat _____35:50. If I would be you, I would get into a high fat diet, I would get on a fat-soluble vitamin diet and I will also go, listen to any interview that we’ve done on natural hormone replacement, specifically in your case, as a male, I would definitely be looking into going to an endocrinologist and _____36:11-12 to testing your blood sugar but I would have your _____ 36:13 your testosterone. If it slows, you think I’ll put you on some thing like _____36:17 path or and testosterone injection to get that back-up and get the full range of hormone testing and _____36:23 that within range, right away. And we could talk for hours about that, but that’s where I would start if I were you. The fact that when you eat complete meals, _____36:34 bunch of protein and saturated fat that helps to decrease the symptoms, the fact that intense exercise helps to decrease the symptoms while both of those activities can increase the level of your anabolic hormones and the hormones that are responsible for giving you the energy that you are lacking. So, that makes sense. Our last question here is from Paul.

Paul says:                  I’ve recently started training quite heavily doing mix of weight training and I recently heard that training too much can lead to a drop in testosterone. And I heard that one way to bump the testosterone up is to take Zinc and vitamin B6. However, I drink a lot of milk, and I heard that Calcium in milk decreases the effect of the Zinc. I really like milk, but I was thinking of giving it up. I know milk is good for you. Also, for your information, I’m _____37:26 asthmatic, so I’m worrying about  milk causing a build-up of mucus in my chest.

Ben:                            Okay. Just if we’re going to the last sentence, if you’re asthmatic and _____37:38 milk causing build-up of mucus in your chest, that is a worry, milk can increase mucus production, I would just consider that maybe genetically, you might not be the best person to be drinking a bunch of milk, and you may also want to look some alternatives like almond milk or rice milk. Because frankly, growing individuals, people are trying to put much of weight to those of  the type of people who really need all that in some like growth factor hormones that _____38:06. The average person who is trying to lose weight _____38:09-10 by drinking milk. But when it comes to your question about Calcium, Calcium can inhibit the absorption of milk. Now, when it comes to how much Calcium can actually inhibit the absorption of milk, in studies they’ve done in humans, specifically in post-menopausal women, which I know is not you Paul, I’m assuming because of your name but we can at least use that a baseline. When the total Calcium intake is about 1400 mg per day, which was enough to reduce Zinc absorption and affect the Zinc balance in women. So that’s _____38:50 1400. If you look at the average glass of milk, the average glass of milk has about 300 mg of Calcium in it. So you’d have to be drinking several glasses of milk plus doing a lot of other like yoghurt and dairy products, also dark, leafy greens, seeds and nuts, things in that nature. You could easily get up to about 1300 mg of Calcium or more and that would absolutely a fact that Zinc absorption and the reason that Zinc increase testosterone levels is that Zinc is an aromataze  enzyme inhibitor. We talked about this a little bit on the show before but basically, testosterone can be converted or broken into estrogen like compounds and Zinc can keep that from occurring and so, especially as you age, as your testosterone production decreases a little bit anyways or as you increase in the propensity of your body to convert testosterone into estrogen, the intake of Zinc becomes more important. We talked about the _____40:00 supplement on the show before. Prostalons, it’s for example anything that I take every morning. It has got Zinc in it, it’s got pollen extract in it. And those are couple of things that can really help in terms of aromataze inhibition. However, if  you really want to keep drinking milk, there are others that you could do, in addition to Zinc to increase your testosterone levels. And I did a huge video seminar on this. Just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and do a search for testosterone. There’s been multiple podcast, the most recent being the video seminar that I did tell you exactly how to increase your testosterone. And if you wanted to kind of have your cake, you needed to keep on drinking milk, taking in 1300 mg of Calcium per day and then not really have to worry about decreasing your Zinc absorption. There are some other things you can do in addition to Zinc for aromatize inhibitors. So, I hope that helps your question, and that wraps up the questions for today. So we’re going to go ahead and move on to this week’s interview with Greg Buhler after a week special announcement.

Ben:                            Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield. And with me today, is Dr. Craig Buhler. Dr. Buhler, you may know most recently from being featured in Tim Ferris’s 4-hour body. There was an interesting anecdote in that book which Tim Ferris nick named Dr. Buhler, Dr. Two Fingers because of the unusual approach that he has to isolating and reactivating individual muscles that have been injured or deactivated. And it’s a very interesting procedure I will let Dr. Buhler introduce the advanced muscle integration technique, which is, what he calls the procedure that he does, tell you a little about how it works and also how you may be able to implement if you want to work on an injury or improve performance. Dr. Buhler, himself, received this Doctor of Chiropractic back in 1978 from Western States Chiropractic College in Portland Oregon and he has worked with many, many individuals since then, including several professional athletes. One, actually, right here in my hometown, Spokane, Washington, John Stockton and other people that he has worked with include _____43: 14 who is a four times super bowl star linebacker. He has worked with Karl Malone; the Alpine Ski star, a peek-a-boo street and a handful of other professional athletes. So, we are very honored to have him on the call with us today. Dr. Buhler, thank you for coming on.

Dr. Craig Buhler:     ______43:33 thanks for the opportunity.

Ben:                            So, the best place to start, I think, would be for you to kind of lay down an explanation of what exactly advanced muscle integration technique is.

Dr. Craig Buhler:     Well, it’s a very elegant approach to the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of conditions that people deal with. Really, the advantage to this is that we can assess every single muscle in the body for function. _____44:12 in the body has a specific motion that is responsible for, and what we discovered here is the _____44:19-20 if a muscle is overloaded beyond its ability to handle stress, _____44:23 because of lack of conditioning or because a trauma is too severe, if the integrity of that muscle is exceeded, the little nerve centers contained within the muscle shut the muscle down propioceptively.

Ben:                            When you say propioceptively, what do you mean when you say that word?

Dr. Buhler:               Well, all the tissues in our body are endowed with _____44:48 receptor sites _____44:50 attention pressure. There’s some receptors that are only active during inflammatory process but their centers that give feed back to the brain about the status of different tissues and their little fibers called sharp C fibers that _____ the muscle and the bone, and the little fibers are loaded with receptor sites _____45:12 and if the integrity of that muscle exceed of those little fibers trip, just like a circuit breaker. Now the other fibers in the tendon that can be inhibited as well, _____45:24-26 but their built in to the system that protects it, but one set of muscle is overloaded, and the muscle is shut down, it will fire on the passive- range of motion, that if you load it, it gives away. If you continue to load it, the body creates pain to protect it. Now, at what point, the central nervous system _____45:46 the strategy by using the muscle next to it, so the joint angles would change slightly to accommodate the muscles that are working and avoid the muscle that is inhibited. And if you’re successful in that adaptation, there’s no longer any pain and you think _____46:06 better. But if you know mechanically, there’s a shift in your form, and _____46:13 of tissue becomes the next site of injury, so we go from one entry to the next, next before long we end up with an area where there’s so many muscles that are inhibited. There’s nothing left to adapt with and _____46:24 to chronic pain. So, we find that if when muscles don’t fire appropriately, then they don’t absorb the shock efficiently and so there’s more stress placed on the connective tissue _____46:38 in the joint. And so the joint becomes inflamed, and the longer you’re inflamed, the more you put down the joint _____46: 45-47 sort of cascade effect that occurs over time and then we treat pain with anti-inflammatants or pain scales or basically asking the body’s alarm system to protective mechanism and we actually, accelerate the breakdown process.

Ben:                            Go ahead.

Dr. Buhler:               So as a result we don’t treat symptoms in this model. We look at function or distortions from normal functions, so let’s say a person comes in, with shoulder pain. A _____47:20 motion causes you pain _____47:23-27 where I get pain, but if you understand anatomy, and know what muscle is responsible for that motion, then you know exactly what muscle is inhibited. So you isolate _____47:35-36 and challenge it, it’ll be weak and painful. And so, that pain must define the source of the pain, and then we get a whole series of therapies that allow us to reactivate that muscle, so, in 10 minutes, we can take a muscle that’s weak, painful, and bring it to level where it’s strong and no pain. And _____48:01-03”the pain is gone.” So, its difference between when treating symptomatically and treating functionally, and as a result, we see miraculous changes, _____48:13-14 we can treat acute injuries, in the matter of 10-15 minutes _____48:20-21. Chronics are more difficult.

Ben:                            That sounds simply amazing. It does make sense that the body will take action to protect itself ____48:35 isolate in, and I guess the way that it seems to make sense to me, almost from a wall or around an injured or strained or stressed area. But before we kind of go into what you do with the chronic injury, with an acute injury, you know, let’s say someone’s sprained or strained their ankle, they’re listening to you talk about what happens on this central nervous system level when they do that, is there a way to ensure that central nervous system response doesn’t happen in the way that you’ve described it or simply something that we’re stuck with when we get injured.

Dr. Buhler:               I’ll give you an example, on my website there’s a video of John Stockton’s _____49:18 an ankle. It’s a severe sprain that _____49:21 which is unusual. We went back in the locker room, we evaluated him, I treated couple of muscles that _____49:31 in his ankle and he went back out and played the first quarter, pain free. Now, the next day, it was purple from capillary hemorrhage that occurred due to the trauma. But standard medical care would say _____49: 47 for a week, then start _____49:49 working the passive range of motion _____49:51-53 you increase the activity to work 4-6 weeks out of your back to normal function. Well, in this model, we look at what happens during the trauma. In _____ 50:03 sprain, which means your ankle rolled out when you’re in full plantar flexion, which is on your toe, usually come down somebody’s shoe and you roll the ankle, it distorts the joint within the ankle itself, so it displaces slightly. The receptors _____50: 24 create a protective splint of the muscles around that area, in addition, but you also overload the lateral support muscles and they shut down, so they don’t fit on support shoe at that point. Walking becomes an irritant. What we do, is evaluate the muscles and find out which ones are shut down, adjust the articulations of the joint back in the position so they move_____50:53 they suppose to and then we have a _____50: 56 get-up or a _____50:57 get-up and walk. And the first two steps is painful. Each step there after gets less, less painful _____51:04 run up and down the locker room, pain free. So we ____51:09 them and they’re backed out in the field and they’re backed out in the court. At that pint, running and walking actually becomes therapeutic because you’re facilitating lymphatic drainage, so better circulation and so the body can start the healing process a lot sooner. So, when resettles those joints back in the position, then a little pain receptors that are firing because of the trauma become deactivated. And so, you have pain free joint motion and stability and it’s pretty miraculous, people are shocked.

Ben:                            Interesting. It sounds a bit different than the traditional rest-ice compression-elevation when it comes to an injury.

Dr. Buhler:               Yes, _____52:58 with so much controversy about this technique it’s because it defies the standard medical care. But I’ve used it, _____52:07 professional level for 30 years. And it rarely failed. If after I adjust the ankle and I reactivate the muscles, it’s still unstable, then, we got a tear somewhere, which is usually a surgical situation. We rule out a fracture and _____52:27 to make sure that there’s no problem that way but once we rule out fracture, then we go ahead and treat. But I would say an 80% of cases, 85% of cases , athletes are backed out competing within 10, 15 minutes but being treated, which _____52:48-49 feel that ankle strained on my website, that’s severe but when you think _____ 52:53 come back out in that 15 minutes later, and play a full quarter, he must not have been hurt that bad. Really, it does defy but it’s a different paradigm, and there’s always, through out history, a different paradigm that shift to the technology and _____53:15-20 if you can’t produce consistent result, _____ 53:19-20

Ben :                           Now let’s shift focus  to the person who, when I just keep going on with this ankle-sprain analogy. Let’s say someone is competing on a sport now, like they’re doing a marathon in a try-out one or distance running and back when they were in high school and college, they played sports like basketball or football or baseball or something like that and sustained ankle injuries in sports like that and now they’re having pain in their knees or pain in their hips and you know, it sounds from your explanation that this type of pain  could be related to muscles being shut down or protected because of previous injuries. Now that person comes into you and what can they expect what happens.

Dr. Buhler:               Well, in acute injuries, you treat the local area. But if an acute injury is not solved within 6 weeks, the central nervous system is forced to adapt and the other tissues. And so in chronic problems, you never treat the local symptom area. You actually, treat away from an injury site. So let’s say for example, you sprained an ankle in college, and _____54:34treat it medically. Golden balance is still in place. If you stand on two scales, one on one scale, one on the other, _____54:42 put more weight in the non-trauma side. Even though, the ankle is strained a year ago doesn’t hurt because your body is accommodated, so you’re putting more stress _____54:55. Now, if you’re still active, you _____54:58 what’s called _____54:59 the stress injury or you’re putting more stress on that opposite knee joint or hip joint and you start getting pain in those joints. Well then you might injure your knee or injure your hip. Now, you got_____55:13 injury on top of the _____55: 12 chronic problem. And so, a lot of times when people come in with knee pain, let’s say they have left knee pain and their history shows that they sprained their right ankle a year or two ago, you treat the right ankle and the left knee pain goes away and then everybody has been treating the left knee. So it’s a matter of are we treating the cause of the problem; are we treating that_____55:36 to the problem. So_____55:39-40 kind of complicated and the assessment process is really critical to define the source of the problem rather than really treating the symptom.

Ben:                            And what is that assessment process involve?

Dr. Buhler:               It’s assessing all the muscles in the body. So you start from the ankle_____55:58 to your neck. There’s 740 muscles in the body, and so, you know, we don’t test commonly every muscle because you got a small _____56: 11 muscles _____56:12 fingers and the toes. We don’t test those unless there’s a problem in those areas. But we are going to grade and assess in people, we take in patients; for example, we took about a football coach and I said “I don’t want to know anything about your history. I’m going to do my exam on you, and then I’ll tell you what your problems and what your injuries have been. So I went to the assessment, when I’m setting down and explain to him what I found. I _____56:41-44 high school and college football.

Ben:                            Wow.

Dr. Buhler:               The way I look at that is, okay, if those injuries healed back in high school or college, how come I’m _____56:53 forty years later. And the answer is _____56:58-60. And what we find is people get older and then there’s 60’s and 70’s, those old injuries that occurred when they’re younger start to show up again. But again, if they healed, back then, how come they’re showing up again now? And it really validates the concept that we adapt_____57:18 those errors and never really truly balanced them.

Ben:                            Interesting. Now, from an innovation perspective and muscle tightness or cramping or spasm in perspective, I noticed that in your website, you explained how when the body or when a body is actually shut down or inhibited in the way that you’ve explained, you know, due to the injury that it actually loses its ability to inhibit an opposing muscle like if you have _____ 57:52 squads for example. Can you explain how that actually works to people who are having to deal with tight muscles, maybe those tight muscles aren’t the muscles that were injured?

Dr. Buhler:               Tight muscles are symptoms and so in this model, we never treat tight muscles. I’ll give you an example. I can talk about this because it was reported in the media. We had a basketball player _____58:16 Utah Jazz and he had been out for the first part of the season with the chronic hamstring tear. And they went through all the therapies _____58:30-32 stressed it, they pulled again. So they went through the same process again and he pulled it again. Well, up to the third time, he came into my office _____58:44-46. Everybody has been treating the hamstring. When they get my evaluation, I found that the quadriceps were shut down. So when we walk, when we get to a certain point in our gait, the hamstrings engaged and they send inhibitory impulses to the quadriceps to cause the quadriceps to relax. Then _____59:07-08 all that changes, and so the quadriceps contract and inhibit the hamstring. That’s how we move. Now, no muscle has ever totally shut up but they relax and contract _____59:21-22. So if the quadriceps muscle groups are inhibited propioceptively because of injuries that we sustained, they lose their abilities to _____ 59:34 inhibit their antagonist muscles which are the hamstrings. So by reactivating the quadriceps, it allows that inhibition to take place and so the hamstrings will release without even touching the hamstrings. So, _____ 59:49 even as an athlete come in with tight pull injured hamstrings, they bend down as far as they can, and they might get down to the near part of their sheen before the hamstrings start to hurt. _____1:00:03 the quadriceps and with no more tension or pain. Now, that’s just one example of this inhibitory process that we see and why we don’t treat tight muscles because most people, they think about their strands of pulled hamstrings, they never get better. And they never get better because they’ve been treated the wrong way. They get temporary relief _____1:00:35, a little bit of therapy on it _____1:00:37 get better but the next day after competing, they’re tight again. And eventually, it tears them.

Ben:                            I have a question for you in terms of what people can expect when they actually come in to try out this MIT technique. Does it hurt or is it uncomfortable? I’ve , myself, been to see various, you know, Chiropractic physicians and kind of use myself as a guinea pig for few different types of treatment and what I’ve experienced is that sometimes, there’s a little bit of teeth gritting involved. Have you seen that or is that something that people can expect when they come in?

Dr. Buhler:               Yeah, they can, but it’s not that extreme. When you have a muscle that shut down, the muscle attachment becomes painful and inflamed. So, if you start stimulating all_____1:00:39, we do, they’re uncomfortable but the longer you stimulate, the better it feels. I mean, I treat kids, they don’t like it, but it’s not so extreme that they’re like saying “I don’t want to do this.” But anytime you have a acute problem or chronic problem, and you start treating a various of inflammation and pain, it’s going to be uncomfortable, but the outcome is so phenomenal that people will say “ I’m going to do whatever I need to because this stuff works,”

Ben:                            Right. Okay, so let’s say that people listening in wants to get this done. They want to find the practitioner in their area where they want to find some type of resource that they can use to try this technique or to have someone perform this technique on them. Are there people they should see or they shouldn’t see? Are there resources that are available form practitioners or you kind of the only person in the world that does this?

Dr. Buhler:               Well, I’m teaching _____1:02:50 programs now. There are 10 positions that have been certified to use this technique. But there are a lot of  different great body treatments out there. _____1:03-06 talks about active release techniques. There are_____1:03-12 practices  all over the country _____1:03-14 teaching this for years. _____1:3:17 painful treatment has done but it’s a great technique. It entails _____1:3:23motion, it _____1:3:25                                                                                                              adhesion; it’s a tool, and when you apply that, when you apply any kind of body works, you’re going to get value. Like the advanced muscle integration technique because it integrates about 17 different disciplines and it goes a lot deeper than these other techniques go. But not everybody needs the deeper work. That if you’re dealing with a chronic problem, a lot of times, you need to go deeper, to find out why and where it’s coming from because muscles can become _____1:04:01 for a lot of reasons. _____1:04:02-06 emotional stresses, dehydration, neurological issues in the spine, local injuries and there’s a lot of things that go into the next. So you know, there’s a lot of techniques out there that are valuable. People just need to access what feels comfortable for them but I know I wouldn’t be able to produce the results, but I produce through the years with _____1:04:33 football players _____1:04:35 and the Jazz. If I hadn’t had the tools available to me that I used 1:4:42 model, but if people want to look for practitioners, they can go to my website and there are number of practitioners listed. But again, they’re might not be easy to _____1:04:57 to another state and have people flying from all over the world. _____ 1:05:03 because there are _____1:05:05many practitioners yet.

Ben:                            Well, I point link to your website in the show notes, and for those who are listening in, Dr. Buhler is located in _____, Utah. Correct?

Dr. Buhler:               Yes, sir.

Ben:                            He’s located in Utah. Let’s say you’re going to find practitioners in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Illinois and Colorado and I will put a link to that in the show notes and I’m sure that if you’re somebody who wants to fly in and see Dr. Buhler, you contact him via his e-mail as well as hi website and I’m certain that he can speak with you about that. I’m sure you can call up to his office as well. And I think it’s quite interesting and it makes lot of sense, and I want to thank you for coming in on the call today and tell us a little more about it Dr. Buhler.

Dr. Buhler:               My pleasure.

Ben:                            Okay folks, that’s advanced muscle integration techniques, AMIT, you can call it, and this Ben Greenfield and Dr. Craig Buhler signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

                                   Well, folks, that’s going to wrap up today’s podcast. Please be sure to go over to iTunes and leave a ranking or a review, interesting review recently accused me of being puny and weak-looking. I got to kick out that one. But if you want to go for iTunes and leave a review or ranking, it’s pretty easy, just go to iTunes and search for bengreenfield. Everything that I talked about today is of course available in the show notes for this podcast, podcast #137. Coming down the pipeline, a ton of great interviews, I mentioned one, coming up next with Tim Noakes, great interview with Casey _____ 1:06:53 and also I did recently release a rather controversial interview on fluoride. It was suppose to be for this one. We didn’t get the chance to hear that. _____1:07:06 fluoride. Be sure to check that out. And there will also another inner circle podcast coming out in a couple of weeks on healthy brains and healthy kids. So, I’m trying to bring you guys as much content as possible. Thanks for listening in. Let me know if I can do anything for you by contacting Ben at BenGreenfieldFitness.com using the free iPhone or free Android App which you can also get in the show notes to this episode to ask me a question or even calling toll free to 877 2099439. Okay, until next time. This is Ben Greenfield signing out. For the next podcast, I’ll be coming to you most likely straight from the Caribbean. See you then!

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