November 21, 2012
Podcast # 218 from
[0:00:00.0]
Introduction: In today’s podcast, how to recover as fast as possible after a triathlon or a marathon? Also: losing weight with type 1 diabetes, how to get bones to heal fast, how to train and race with an ITB injury, how important is hamstring flexibility, and is the herb Jiaogulan good for you?
Brock: Hey Ben!
Ben: Hey Brock!
Brock: You know what today is?
Ben: What is today? November 20th – 2 days before lots of people eat lots of turkey.
Brock: It’s that as well but I was actually referring to…this is my one year anniversary on the show.
Ben: No way.
Brock: Yup!
Ben: You’re freaking kidding me.
Brock: I’m not.
Ben: It’s pretty amazing because you and I are off to spend an intimate vacation together in Thailand after just one year’s of a podcast relationship.
Brock: What’s the first year anniversary’s at? Paper?
Ben: I guess.
Brock: I’ll bring you some paper.
Ben: All right. Thanks. I’ll try and remember to do likewise, although I’m kinda laid up right now.
Brock: What happened?
Ben: Well, I had a tennis match last night and I literally am just like covered in ice on my hip right now and just doing some cold laser on it this morning. I did it – a pretty narrowly lunged. I was actually proud of myself. I put away a decent volley but yeah, potentially gave myself arthritis in the process.
Brock: It’s not good timing ‘cause also today, and I think you’re leaving tomorrow. I’m leaving today but we’re off to Thailand to do 2 back to back races so, that’s bad time to keep yourself for arthritis of the hip.
Ben: They’ve got crutches over there. I’ll be fine.
Brock: Perfect.
News Flashes:
Brock: All right. You can get all of these news flashes hot off the presses if you follow Ben on Twitter and Google+ and facebook and if you follow him down the street, he’ll probably yell them out to you but this is the time of the show where we go through a few of the favorites and talk about them a little bit. What do you wanna highlight?
Ben: I actually avoid bringing stuff like this in public or at parties. If you ask my wife, I even rarely mention anything closely resembling workouts or nutrition to her ‘cause it’s like being an accountant and talking to people about their taxes. It’s just like bringing your work home. Anyways though, my twitter feed may not make that appear to be true. I do keep my eyes on stuff to tweet and Brock himself happened to bring this study to my attention. It was in the Annals of Internal Medicine about how after subjects were placed into experimental sleep restriction impaired their insulin signaling. The adipose sites, the actual fat cells that they collected from biopsy samples after they had one group go through normal amounts of sleep – meaning around 8.5 hours which is above normal for many folks…
Brock: That’s delightful, in fact.
Ben: Yeah. That’s great! And the restricted sleep conditions of about 4.5 hours and they looked at the insulin concentrations in these fat biopsy samples and it was found that indeed, there were some really impaired insulin sensitivity when insufficient sleep was present which suggests increased risk for everything from overweight to blood sugar fluctuations to energy fluctuations to lack of the ability to use carbohydrates efficiently to risk for type 2 diabetes even. Related to this though, fortunately, if you’re listening in and you want to get better sleep, I just wrote kind of an Epic Sleep hack post over at bengreenfieldfitness.com. You should definitely check it out – video, pretty much everything that you need to be able to toss your valium or your ambien or whatever else in the trash.
Brock: Awesome.
Ben: That was one thing. Another thing was I tweeted about one of the best upper body exercises that exist. You’re gonna guess this. What’s this?
Brock: Chin ups.
Ben: Close! Those are really good also. This was a study in the Strength Conditioning Research that looked into muscle activity and strength development with the gold shoulder press and literally just taking something heavy and pushing it up over your head.
[0:05:09.2]
In terms of chest, biceps, back, core, legs, triceps, shoulder activation, that exercise blows a ton of stuff out of the water – just the basic freeway overhead press preferably in a standing position. When you looked at the electromyographic activity of the actual muscles, it’s pretty cool what happens when you take something and push it over your head. You wanna work even more muscles, pick it up off the ground, deadlift overhead press. You wanna introduce some bilateral component, do a stand on your left leg, lift with your right arm, left arm deadlift to right arm overhead press (which is a mouthful). But ultimately, what I’m getting at is include some overhead presses in your routine into fantastic exercise.
Brock: Yeah. Sometimes, I actually just grab the cat and pick her up and push her over my head a couple of times. She loves it.
Ben: Must be a Canadian thing. Another study, finally, that I wanted to note was if you feed your kids a high fat diet, basically, that is associated with (I shouldn’t say that a high fat diet is associated with lower body fat) but low fat intake in early life is negatively associated with body fat (if you wanna put that correctly). And if your head’s spinning now…
Brock: Yeah. Wait. So, if you feed your children low fat diet at an early age, it has negative effects later in life.
Ben: It increases their susceptibility to both get overweight and also to develop what’s called leptin resistance which is essentially the inability to respond properly to hormones that regulate your appetite. In other words, you could say that feeding your kids to high fat diet would put them in the position to better grow up to be leaner adults due to better leptin sensitivity. And lower amounts of overweight propensity. So, high fat diet is super easy. You just gotta start kids early ‘cause they’ll turn their noses up a lot of times at stuff like avocados, sardines and olives and a lot of these things that aren’t great little lunch package items for kids but if you got young kids including as many full fat components and as few low fat, fat-free components as possible in their diets, is gonna just give them a step up when it comes to staying lean for life.
Brock: And then combine that with the first study and get them to sleep more in around 8.5 hours and they’re gold.
Ben: Yeah. What I do is I actually put my kids to bed with little ice cream curtain full of lard and just lock them in there for 10 hours, let them sleep and I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that good things will happen.
Special Announcements:
Brock: If you like podcast, you’ll likely enjoy audio books and this podcast is sponsored by Audible, fine purveyor of audio books and you just need to go to www.audiblepodcast.com/ben and sign up and you can claim your very own free audio book just by going to that URL.
Ben: Dude, have you read the secret race or heard about it?
Brock: I have heard about it. I haven’t read it yet but I think I’m going to download that ‘cause I’m spending a lot of time on planes as are you in the next little while that’d be a great listen.
Ben: Crazy, crazy book but a click goes into just like this complete shadow world of all these doctors and team directors and athletes and how they pretty much did like anything to win the Tour De France and it kinda goes into how Lance Armstrong was basically a ring leader and it was written by Tyler Hamilton. Anyways, I’m not sure who reads it on audiblepodcast.com/ben but if you don’t have time to actually read words or perhaps you just can’t read words due to something else going on with your biology or your life, audiblepodcast.com/ben, grab The Secret Race and speaking of not being able to read, not having time to read, I just put a plug-in what’s called the plug-in over at bengreenfieldfitness.com if you over there and you scroll down to the bottom over near the posts, you can actually download any of the articles and listen to them read by a sexy robotic male voice. And that may seem kinda cheesy to some people but what I wanna do is put it on there. If you like the ability to be able to just listen to articles via audio, regardless of whether or not they’re read by slightly computer, just type a voice like being on hold on a voice mail type of voice, then check it out. Leave us a…what’s the number for this show, Brock?
Brock: It’s 218.
Ben: Okay. So, Episode # 218 over at bengreenfieldfitness.com. Leave us a comment if you like the Insta MP3 capability I’ve got over there.
[0:10:08.0]
Brock: How do you have your sleep, beat insomnia and get into a deep sleep phase…
Ben: Brock, we don’t want people to know that’s actually you.
Brock: Yeah. It’s actually me. That’s my job these days. I just read web pages.
Ben: We’d figured it would be incredibly time-efficient to just have Brock read robotic with voice. A couple other things real quick and we’ll get into the meat of the podcast, I promise. I want to feature you on the podcast – you the listener. And as you know, for every podcast that we do, we create what’s called the MyList which is a list of all the things that we talk about on this podcast that you could get your hands on. You could try, you can get a convenient list ‘cause I know a lot of you are running or biking or doing things like that and you just need a quick convenient place to go and look like scroll through some of the resources and we do that over at the Ben Greenfileds facebook page at facebook.com/bgfitness but what we use for that is MyList. And it’s such a cool app that allows you to come up with a particular list of the things that you like and the things that you use and then share them with your friends. What we wanna do is take any of you listeners who put together your favorite MyList on the topic of Health, Cooking, Fitness, Nutrition, Alternative Medicine, Fitness Gear and Tools, whatever. You make your list and you share it over at the Ben Greenfield Fitness page or even just shoot us an e-mail or let us know or somehow ping us. Let us know that you got your MyList up and running. We’ll go check it out and we’re gonna pick one listener a month. I’m gonna personally call you on the phone and interview you for 10-15 minutes about your MyList, why you picked what you did, you’ve got to tell a little bit of your story and we’re gonna feature you on special podcast episodes that we’re gonna come around once a month. You can check that out. We’ll put a link to MyList in the show notes. We’ll remind you of the instructions of how to do that so, get MyListing away.
Brock: Speaking of getting away, make sure you plan to get away to Spokane, Washington on March 8th and 9th for the Become Super Human Live event.
Ben: I’m gonna put a video on the show notes for everybody but here’s the deal. There is gonna be epic amount of learning and discovering that takes place at this live conference that I’m putting together on March 8th and 9th. You can listen to the audio that we’re about to play on but basically, here’s what it comes down to. You could pick this stuff up on the internet, you could pick up on Google, you could get podcasting away and facebooking and twittering but we’ve lost what it means to actually show up and be in the same room with people and not work with people and connect with people on that very cool physical way and nothing replaces that. Not all these online summits that pop up where you interact online with people and you watch the powerpoint presentations on your computer – not any of these podcast or audio books or anything like that replaces actually being there in the flesh and blood and interacting with people live. The amount of inspiration that happens and the amount of motivation that happens and the relationships that you form showing up in something like this are invaluable. We’ll put a link in the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/superhuman and here’s more details.
Wanna get personal access to all of Ben Greenfield’s secret life? This March in Spokane, Washington, Ben is bringing the world’s best speakers straight to you. You’re going to get step by step blueprints for performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, brain, sleep and hormone optimization and get insider access to private parties special sessions for podcast listeners only. And of course, delicious locally grown organic meals. The conference is called Become Super Human and it’s already filling up fast. But you can get in now at bengreenfieldfitness.com/superhuman. You’ll come away from this live 2-day event completely set for life to achieve everything you want for your body, mind and performance. Whether you wanna maximize fat loss, achieve an Ironman triathlon, or push your body and mind to the absolute limits of human performance. So, visit bengreenfieldfitness.com/superhuman and we’ll see you live and in person March 8th and 9th, 2013.
Listener Q & A:
Bee: Hey Ben! Have you ever worked with type 1 diabetics? Really tough to lose weight. If you have any advice, I’ll appreciate it. Thank you.
Brock: All right. Yeah. Weight loss for a type 1 diabetic. It’s got to be tricky.
Ben: Yeah. And type 1 diabetes is (just to clear it up) technically, here in America, it’s actually the semantics or we’re supposed to call it insulin dependent diabetes mellitus now or IDDM.
[0:15:13.2]
And that’s a more fitting description because it does put you in a state of being dependent on exogenous insulin. In type 2 diabetes, you can still produce your own insulin. Your pancreas can still churn the stuff out until you poop it out if you’re following the typical American Dietetic Association recommendations for a high carb whole grain diet. But in type 1 diabetes, you generally (because of a genetic susceptibility or a genetic trigger or in some cases, exposure to an environmental factor like an antigen or virus that destroys your pancreatic beta cells) you can’t produce insulin and so you have to have some kind of a source of insulin coming in. And that makes exercise kind of tricky. I did an interview with the captain for this team, Triabetes, which is a cycling and endurance team that does triathlons and stuff like that and they are type 1 (you also have team type 1 that is a professional cycling team) and these are folks who literally have portable insulin pumps that they carry along with them to make sure that when they need these doses of insulin injected even when they’re exercising for very long periods of time at a very high intensity, that they’re able to get that hormone circulating in the blood stream that’s able to deliver energy into tissue because if you don’t have insulin circulating in your blood stream, you’re not going to be able to deliver and drive glucose into muscle and in many cases, even if you’re eating a high fat diet and you’ve got a lot of ketones in your blood stream, you can even have difficulty driving ketones because of the lack of insulin so you can go into, basically, ketoacidosis. So you’ve got to even be careful with high high fat ketosis type of DO2 or type 1 diabetes. Ultimately though, there are some ways that I recommend that you go after controlling it. This would be coming from both the nutrition and an exercise standpoint. The first is that it’s really important that there is a lot of linkage between celiac disease and antibodies to components in wheat. And the development of type 1 diabetes especially in children – kids with celiac disease are literally ten times more likely to develop type 1 diabetes than kids without celiac disease. And you find a lot of the antibodies to wheat in something like type diabetes. And it’s important to remember that in many cases, your body has destroyed your own insulin-producing cells in the pancreas and that would make diabetes what’s referred to as an auto immune disease. Very very similar in the way that we’ve talked about on the show before how gliadin (the protein portion of wheat) can actually damage thyroid tissue and how consumption of wheat in many individuals especially people who are genetically susceptible or unable to properly handle proteins including not just wheat gliadin but also glutens and lactins that those can all be immunogenic and that can cause thyroid issues and they can potentially cause some pancreatic damage as well. So if you have type 1 diabetes, obviously, you’ve already gotten to the point where your pancreas is fairly damaged but consumption of wheat is definitely not going to help that issue. It’s not going to help continue destruction of any type of pancreatic tissue and if you don’t have type 1 diabetes but you’ve got children who you know are gonna to be genetically susceptible to or who you are concerned might be genetically susceptible to it, I’d really keep wheat out of the diet. To get the 4 research and the skinny on that so to speak, go read Dr. William Davies’ book Wheat Belly, for sure. There are people out there though, who are successfully managing type 1 diabetes with some dietary protocols and some exercise protocols that go above and beyond simply cutting wheat out of the diet. We’ve had Dr. Art De Vany on the show before and he actually has, I believe, 2 children with type 1 diabetes and I know that he and many people in the Paleo community had a ton of success in terms of energy stabilization, weight loss, and blood sugar stabilization following essentially a low carbohydrate diet that cuts out a lot of these lactins and glutens and gliadin-based proteins. But one book that’s really really good that delves into this stuff is written by a guy named Dr. Richard Bernstein and it’s called The Diabetes Solution book.
[0:20:05.0]
I’ll link to it in the show notes for you. Dr. Bernstein is a doctor who has type 1 diabetes and he has this private clinical practice in New York that’s devoted solely to treating diabetes and pre diabetes and he’s fairly well respected. Basically, his program, what it comes down to if you wanna look at some of the highlights of his program and you don’t wanna read the book, (even though you should if you have type 1 diabetes) is that he advocates a very low carb diet to allow you much tighter blood sugar control. And when I say very low carb diet for a regular adult, the allowed amount of carbohydrate are 6 grams for breakfast, 12 grams for lunch and 12 grams for dinner. And for those of you who…
Brock: So some 30 grams.
Ben: Yeah. That’s like 120 calories worth of carbohydrates which is not that many at all.
Brock: That’s like a banana and a half.
Ben: But a ton of success to do this and obviously, that strongly poses as the dietary guidelines from the American Diabetes Association for both type 1 and type 2 diabetics ‘cause they all eat lots of carbs to stabilize your energy levels and keep your bold glucose up and lots of whole grains and blah blah blah… But Dr. Bernstein is getting awesome results for this diabetes solution which is basically that – 6 grams for breakfast, 12 grams for lunch, and 12 grams for dinner. You avoid all foods with added sugar, all foods with starches and all fruits just because even though most people can handle fruits in terms of the triglyceride and the cholesterol and the way that fructose interacts especially when there’s absence of insulin in the body, all fruits are out. Blood glucose testing, getting to know your own body, having blood glucose monitor and using it up to 8 times a day is highly recommended in his book like literally just tracking and tracking and tracking and targeting activities that keep you and the blood glucose levels that are constant for the entire day so you’re trying to avoid blood glucose fluctuations as much as possible. And then he recommends something called (we don’t want to get into it too much) basil and also bolus dosing for insulin dependent diabetes. That’s basically just using single large doses of insulin at some point throughout the day which a lot of folks are doing already. That’s the Bernstein diet and If I were gonna recommend one diet to you, that would be the one that I would say is going to be the most successful when it comes to weight loss and I don’t wanna sound like I’m giving out medical advice because I can’t. I’m not a doctor. That is not medical advice. I just recommend that you read his book, check it out and listen to some of the stuff that he has to say. So that’s Dr. Richard Bernstein. Dr. Art De Vany, he really is a fan of not engaging in activities that are going to really deplete your storage carbohydrate significantly or place you into a state where you’re getting really really hypoglycemic. Brief bouts of intense cardio, brief bouts of weight lifting, yes, those use carbohydrates but tend to be depleting and the hormonal adaptation to many of those activities actually can help with your blood sugar stabilization. I would recommend that you avoid long runs, long bike rides and stuff like that even though you can do it. I mean, if you enjoy doing that stuff, then do it. It’s not like there’s this hard and fast rule that you can’t. When it comes to weight loss, you’re gonna get more bang for your buck from the high intensity weigh training and the higher intensity cardiovascular intervals. He’s also written an interesting article on type 1 diabetes could’ve possibly developed as an adaptation to cold environment. Basically, the whole idea behind this is that when humans are exposed to intense cold, they shed body water by peeing more or through diuresis and that causes your blood sugar to rise and just like in any solution, when you increase the solution or you increase the amount of compounds in solution that access an anti freeze – it lowers the freezing point of any solution like if you have salt water or sugar to blood. That lowers the freezing point of serum and it lowers the freezing point of tissues and also reduces the propensity for sharp ice crystals to form that could tear the tissues open right if your blood froze. And this is why we still can’t just like freeze people to whatever, keep them alive or something like that. It’s that once everything freezes, you get all these ice crystals that form and that tears open cells and tissue and you just toast. When you look at a hibernating animal, they actually have elevated blood glucose to keep themselves from freezing as an adaptation to intense cold. And so there’s some suggestion that ice ages or periods of intense cold or having genetic heritage that involves your ancestors being exposed to intense cold could potentially introduce genetic factors into your life that could put you at high risk for type 1 diabetes and then you can pull that trigger with something like wheat consumption or as you mentioned some interesting studies on milk consumption and also baby formula consumptions as being some of the triggers that can cause type 1 diabetes in children.
[0:25:30.6]
Anyways though, what I’m getting at here is that when it comes to blood sugar regulation, it may be that some cold exposure and some exercise in the cold could have a positive metabolic effect on weight loss with type 1 diabetes basically, shivering now and then and burning energy using your brown adipose tissue. What you do need to be careful with is plunging into an ice bath ‘cause that can really rapidly raise your blood sugar and constrict your blood vessels. And if you already have issues with your blood vessels, if you already have issues with hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia (either one which you often do have with type 1 diabetes), that type of cold exposure is not recommended but doing like using a cool fat burner fast and using limited cold exposure to a certain basis, that’s something I’ve seen Art De Vany recommend and I know it’s something that he certainly does. That’s another strategy that you can use. These are some of the main things. One of the website that I point you to because it hit the mainstream last year was the website that got banned. I was wondering a few blogs that essentially got censored because they said that the guy was giving out medical advices. His name is Steve Cooksey. He’s got this website called diabeteswarrior.net. It’s entitled Diabetes Management from a Paleolithic Perspective. I’ll put a link to his website in the show notes but very very interestingly, his website got shut down because he went from being a drug and insulin-dependent, crankly sick, obese type 2 diabetic and he went to being completely drug and insulin-free with normal blood sugar and he logged how he did is using this whole primal paleo approach and yeah, got shut down.
Brock: Who shut him down?
Ben: I think it was the FTC or something like that. If you to his website, he’s got this whole thing about investigation but he receives some kind of a letter that advised him that he needed to basically shut down. I think he was in North Carolina and it was this Board of Dietetics and Nutritionists or something like that. The state board opened an investigation into his blog and told him he had just to stop posting posts and it was kinda controversial ‘cause it was like the government vs. free speech type of thing. Check that out too and I hope some of these resources help you and again, not necessarily giving out medical advice here but those are some of the things I would certainly bear in mind.
Brock: And it sounds like the original question was really about weight loss advice but it sounds like you sort of nailed both sides of things like controlling the diabetes or not controlling it completely but definitely helping with the diabetes as well as doing some weight loss as well so hopefully that is awesome for Bee. You know, a lot of the time, this show does focus on getting lean and getting fast and doing better your Ironman and healing your broken bones and stuff but it’s really cool when listeners gain a little more insight and do some remarkable things in their lives. Let’s listen to what Cheryl did.
Cheryl: Hi Ben! I don’t have a question but I just really wanna thank you for addressing the issue of osteoporosis and the female athlete triad and secondary amenorrhea in your podcast. fell into marathoning by accident a couple of years ago, I had no idea how to fuel myself and went from 140 to 100 lbs in a few months, I’m 5’4’’. And at that time I thought it was great since I was running faster and had a friggin 10-pack but then I also stopped having menstrual cycles and I thought that was great too. Little did I know then that that was not good. Fast forward a few years and I was diagnosed with osteoporosis at age 35 years old – total shock. I had already stopped running marathon but I was in the military and I’ll still do extreme exercise routines and still not eating enough, not eating enough with fat, not eating enough protein, everything. I was still happy with not having cycles and I had no idea that was also tied with bone density issue so I had to go through a ton of blood tests and medications and it wasn’t until I upped my good fats (ding! ding! ding!) and proteins and added in interval and plyometrics that I fixed my health basically. Without having to go on fast marathons, in fact I increased my bone density. I don’t have a 10-pack anymore but I’m well with that 123-124 lbs plus that makes me so super athletic and I just wanna thank you.
[0:30:00.5]
Not a lot of running magazines like favorite ones that we know of or other podcast really talk about this and I really wanna thank you. It’s super important to other women out there. They really have to pay attention. Get the test, don’t be in denial not having a cycle is not a good thing and basically, you could be one other chick like me at 35 years old with osteoporosis and it’s horrible, horrible, horrible. So please, take heed to what Ben and Brock say and I just wanna give you guys big kudos. Thank you.
Ben: I think this is awesome, what Cheryl has done. Congratulations, Cheryl. It’s always cool to see that folks kinda take some of the advice that we give out on the show and get good results so, keep up the awesome work and we do eventually talk a little bit more about bone in this podcast as well. Right, Brock?
Brock: I think so.
Bill: Hi Ben, Brock! This is Bill from Pennsylvania. I want to do a half Iron April 6th 2013 in North Carolina and follow up with a marathon May 26th. I’m 55 and I have done one sprint and one half marathon last year. guess my question is I just don’t know how to structure the swim and the bike work that I should be doing at the same time, trying to get ready for the marathon. Maybe this is too ambitious but I think I can do this stuff and I need to be adequately prepared and I just don’t wanna have injury also. If you could give me some sort of a general guideline to know what I’m really getting into as far as that bike and that swim. How much real work do l I have to put in to that? Appreciate any insight you can give to me. Thanks a lot.
Ben: This is actually a question I get a lot like how you combine training for a marathon with training for a triathlon because a lot of….
Brock: I’ve never asked you that.
Ben: You’ve done it 3 times since I started coaching you in the past year. Brock’s a triathloning marathoning junky. I do have some rules, Bill that I would suggest that you follow. And it will take a little bit of tweaking every program but here are my rules. First of all, during the time that you’re training for your triathlon, that you’re gonna be doing a few weeks before your marathon, I recommend that you reduce your running to no more than 3 days per week. And this is because of all of the reasons I’ve given in previous podcast about the risk of chronic cardio self-destruction and inflammation. It’s also because there’s a pretty cool cross over effect from cycling to running. Generally, cycling helps you to become a better runner. It doesn’t happen vice versa. If you pull a top canyon marathoner off the street and have him time trial, they’ll do all that hot but then you can take somebody like Lance Armstrong and throw him into a marathon regardless of how much testosterone they’ve taken and they do okay (maybe I used a bad example) but cycling can help you to become a better runner so you need to realize all the cycling that you’re gonna be doing in your triathlon prep will help you and you can reduce your running quite significantly and still stand good shape for marathon. I mean, you look at a lot of these folks who are top age group or Ironman triathletes running marathons staying at Ironman and pulling anywhere from 3 hour to 3 hour and 30 minute splits and many of these people are running 3 days a week and then also cycling 3 days a week. That is the first rule. The second thing would be if you can arrange your schedule, try and do your swims on the day after your run days so you’re basically using your swim as a recovery from the run. The movement in the swim and some of the capillary pressure and tissue pressure that occurs when you get into water will actually help you recover a little bit more quickly on the day after a run day. If you do your swims on the same day as your run days, you might find that your calves cramp and your form’s off a little bit but the day after your run day, try and do your swim days then. And then another schedule tweak that you can do is if you want to get a feeling for what it feels like to run on fatigued legs as you may be doing during your marathon, do your bike rides earlier in the day on the same day as you run. So, a typical scenario might look like Mondays: you bike and run; Tuesdays: you swim; Wednesdays: you bike and run; Thursdays: you swim; and then Fridays: you bike and run. And maybe you have an off day on Saturday and your long run on Sunday. Something like that. The next rule that I would tell you to do is just to pull out all the stops when you do get in to that triathlon that you’re gonna be doing a few weeks before your marathon because inflammation from something like a half Ironman triathlon can stay in your body for over 2 weeks up to 3 weeks if you’re not careful. What I mean by recovering properly is shutting down inflammation so you’re gonna have all these creatine kinase in your blood stream from muscle getting broken down and interleukin 6 and HSCRP and all these inflammatory bio markers.
[0:35:14.5]
There are things that you can do to decrease those. You can use natural oral anti inflammatories. I like one called Capraflex. I like another one called Phenocane. You can literally do 9-12 Capraflex a day, 4-8 Phenocane a day. That’s a really good stack for a post race recovery. I’ll be doing that in Thailand probably after our first race to help me recover for the second one along with lots of coconut water and electrolytes to mitigate the effects of alcohol. Ice combined with compression is really good. I just did a big article for this in the Lava Magazine basically debunking the notion that ice somehow inhibits recovery. It’s very very important that you combine ice preferably with a compression and with elevation because what can happen if your don’t do that is you can get a little bit of what’s called lymphatic vessel leakage when you get a vessel really really cold but you don’t get some pressure in there at the same time so it’s important if you’re gonna ice that use compression at the same time and elevation so you can do something like everyday you put on some compression tights and you get some ice packs and you get them on your calves and your quads and your hamstrings then you just sit there with your feet elevated for 30 minutes and whatever, listen to your MP3 player, watch some TV, something like that. But doing a session each day that combines ice and compression can be super useful to speed up recovery. Last couple of things would be get some topical magnesium (you’ve heard me talk about Transdermal Magnesium on the show before, probably), I recommend that you do that to speed up your recovery and then try and use something as a fuel during the event that is going to provide you with amino acids so that your body breaks down its own lean muscle less. So we’re talking about using a gel that has branch chain amino acids on it. Look on the label there for leucine, ice leucine and valine. Those are the 3 that you wanna look for in your gel. You can take branch chain amino acids if you’ve got the extra money to spend. It works even better to take whole amino acids like Master Amino Pattern is really good for that. And those would be some of the main things. Antioxidants, I would also look into. There are some really good antioxidants out there too. Lifeshotz is a good one, Solar Synergy is a good one. These are just powders that can help to shut down inflammation. I’m writing a note to myself, I need to add this stuff to our MyList for the show, for sure. So, those are the main things. What do we need to include on there? MAP, antioxidants, topical magnesium, ice compression like the 110% pants that compress you that you put the ice into, and then Phenocane, and Capraflex. So that’s your stack for recovering super fast. And then the last thing is so you’ve got that half Ironman under your belt and you’ve got 4-6 weeks that looks like before your marathon. That’s when you switch to your run block. Okay, so you get in your recovery after the half Ironman, you’re probably gonna be anywhere from 4-7 days of just light activities – some yoga, some walking, some swimming, that kind of stuff. Then you switch into a run block where you actually are running 4-5 days a week, cycling becomes less important, swimming becomes less important and you’re just focusing on becoming a better runner and working on your running economy and efficiency. But up to that point, up until after your triathlon, you just run 3 days a week and then afterwards, as you lean up to your marathon, then you switch it to 4-5 days a week of running. And that’s it. That’s what we do.
Tony: Hi Ben! This is Tony from Maine. I’m calling in because about 16 weeks ago, I broke my 5th metatarsal, a stress reaction from running and it broke in half and so I was on crutches for 10 weeks and a walking cast for 6 weeks and despite that recovery time, my bone is still only 70% healed. So, I’m calling in to ask your advice on aiding my bone healing. Either nutritional or any other you may have. I will appreciate you taking my question and I really enjoy your show. Thank you very much.
Brock: Okay. So, first of all, I just wanna explain to anybody who’s wondering out there. If you look down at your barefoot, your metatarsal is the bone or the bones that run from where your toe starts up towards your ankle but not all the way to the ankle. So we’re talking like sort of mid forefoot. And when Tony says that he broke his 5th metatarsal, that’s on the farthest outside, so your pinky toe, basically.
[0:40:12.6]
Ben: And this is Ben. Another episode with Dr. Brock.
Brock: Thank you all for tuning in. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about your femur.
Ben: Brock’s got it. He’s on podcast. It’s called Your Private Anatomy Instructor. Actually that sounds kinda bad.
Brock: Actually. Yeah, that could go both ways.
Ben: Maybe just Anatomy Instructor. Basics of healing a broken bone faster. Okay, I’ll give you the basics first and then we’ll jump in to how to really hack it. First of all, don’t smoke. Smoking alters blood flow to your bones. That blood flow is gonna deliver all the necessary nutrients and cells to let your bone to heal that just start off right there. So, if you’re smoking, don’t smoke.
Brock: I think you could just say that to serve as a blanket statement. Just don’t smoke.
Ben: Yeah. Just don’t smoke if you’re living in general unless it makes you happy. I wanna completely act like Nazis on the show and tell people whatever.
Brock: I do.
Ben: Okay. So, eat a balanced diet. That’s preferably anti inflammatory that doesn’t have lots of sugars that can also lead to calcium so be careful with that. That also means caffeine and alcohol you need to be careful with. Just pay attention to “no smoking”, “no alcohol”, “no caffeine” and eat a balanced diet that’s low in starches, low in sugars, low in soda, stuff like that.
Brock: Wait. Didn’t you just say you didn’t wanna sound like a Nazi?
Ben: Don’t worry, I’ll get to the stuff that you can do. It’ll be lots of fun. Make sure that if you’re taking calcium, that you also use magnesium. It is true that calcium is needed to help heal bone faster but taking excessive doses of calcium is not as important as making sure that you just get adequate calcium in your diet. Eat full fat yogurt, kale and spinach and sesame seeds and stuff like that. But make sure that you’re also getting magnesium preferably 2:1 ratio of calcium to magnesium because you’re gonna need magnesium as a co-factor for calcium to work. You could use…in Episode # 217, the last episode, we totally geeked out on magnesium so just go read the transcript for that. And by the way, if you’re listening every single episode is transcribed. I pay good money to get that done so use it. It’s pretty much the donations from listeners that they get this podcast transcribed.
Brock: It’s kinda hilarious to read the transcriptions ‘cause sometimes it’s not exactly what we said but it’s more interesting than what we said.
Ben: Yes. That’s because it’s done by human being and sometimes you get stuck you know, when I get rolling, sometimes it gets tough to understand everything you say. Calcium with magnesium. Let me get into some of the stuff that I think can augment fracture healing even better. From the supplementation standpoint, I love lactoferrin. I talked about Capraflex before when I talked about healing from half Ironman or Ironman or marathon more quickly doing 9-12 of those per day. I swear it seems to double my ability to go back from injuries. I popped 12 of those this morning. Just pop them in my mouth and chew them and have a glass of water ‘cause of this hip thing I did last night. I swear by Capraflex for that kind of stuff. So I’ll be doing Capraflex and then when it comes to actual modalities that you can use, electrical stimulation. Basically, electrical stimulation can cause bone cells to proliferate because you get these electrical currents that have the cellular effect on the bone that accelerates healing. You just wear skin electrodes, you can get any electro stimulant that’s traditionally used for muscle repair and recovery and you can use it. In this example you’d have a couple of electrodes in the bottom of the foot, a couple on the top of the foot, under the ankle or the back of the Achilles or the back of the Achilles and you just run an e-stimulant on there. So that’s something that you could get for your house or you could do at a physical therapy clinic but electrical stimulation has some good research behind it for speeding up bone healing. That’s based on an article back in 2003 entitled The Use of Physical Forces in Bone Healing. That appeared in the Journal of the American Academy for Orthopedic Surgery. There is another modality called ultrasound that you’ve probably heard of and ultrasound basically can cause temperature changes in the tissue to even increase genetic expression of the factors responsible for bone healing. That’s been shown to have some beneficial effects in fracture healing as well and that’s another one that you would have to get done at a physical therapy clinic but it could be pretty useful for you as well. And then finally, you could look into magnets.
[0:44:57.6]
There’s no scientific evidence that show that the use of external magnets can alter fracture healing or help to heal a broken bone but the only reason I bring it up is just based off of anecdotal evidence in terms of magnets potentially having the ability to improve circulation and increase blood flow used in Asian medicine a little bit more than over in the states but there’s these big companies like Nikken – that sell magnets that I know they’ve got one because I used to do personal training for the guy who’s like Nikken is a multilevel marketing company and I think he listens to this podcast but he’s at the top of Nikken. It got started 30 years ago or whatever when it first came to the United States and he gets million dollars a month just for being alive. That company sells a lot of stuff but he’s given me some of their magnets before to use and I’ve used them before with injuries and I feel like they help. This is just anecdotal stuff and I’ve talked to a lot of other people who swear by magnets for bone healing and soft tissue healing and stuff like that too but they’ve got these little magnets that are attached to adhesive fabric, almost like a band aid and you can just put them in certain spots over the body and you could try something like that too. From a scientific standpoint, probably not gonna be as effective as ultrasound or e-stim but it’s something that you could try. So e-stim, ultrasound, magnets, get your hands on some lactoferrin from Capraflex, anti inflammatory, low sugar diet, no caffeine, no alcohol, no smoking, and yeah, that’s what I would do.
Brock: All right. Let’s move on to the next question from Mark. Mark says, “I’m in a problem hole and I need help.” I don’t know what a problem hole is but it doesn’t sound pleasant. “I’m 5 weeks out from my first marathon. I’ve done a bunch of half marathons in 2 seasons of racing Olympic and sprint distance triathlons. But at 5 weeks out, I’ve caused a previous ITB injury to flare up and bring my run training to a grinding halt. It’s been a week, I’ve still been riding, swimming and doing gym workouts and tried some water running and been icing my knee but I ran 10k today and the knee was iffy. If I keep up the aqua jogging and all my other training, am I just setting myself up for creating a larger injury that will cause more problems or is it possible to keep this up and actually run the marathon? Also, is there anything else that I should be doing to keep myself on track?”
Ben: Roller skating while doing the marathon. That’s legal, right? You can roller skate.
Brock: Oh yeah. That’s all the guys are doing like 2005, they all wear roller skates.
Ben: For me, it’s less efficient than running. There you go. Yeah. It’s iffy when you’re injured and you’re going to race and you still wanna race ‘cause you’re registered and everything. Men, it’s iffy! You could get injured. First of all, I’d pull out all the stops in that IT Band fortune syndrome and here’s where I’m gonna get all sales and markety but just go to bulletproofknee.com. I wrote a fall on program for healing IT bend injuries as fast as you can. So go check that out at bulletproofknee.com as of all my programs comes with 24/7 support group from me. So if you ever have questions you’re going through, you can just ping me and I’ll help you out. So bulletproofknee.com, check that out. But also, as you’re going through that, and you decide that you still wanna go run this marathon, I can tell you exactly what I would do, what I planned on doing for the New York marathon until I decided not to go and be it got cancelled anyways, would be a run-walk stretch protocol. There’s 2 guys out there that have really fantastic run-walk protocols. I’ll put links to them in the show notes but it’s Bobby McGee who has a run-walk method and then also Jeff Gallaway who has a walk-break method. Both methods are fairly similar – you break 26 miles of the marathon down in 2 segments and there are even sub 3-hour marathoners who are using run-walk break type of scenarios. And basically, what you’re doing is using walk breaks in most cases up until about the 18 to 20-mile mark of the marathon at which point you just break into a survivalist 10k type of protocol. But it is anywhere in the range of a 4-minute run to a 35-second walk to do 8 minute miles down to a 30-second run to a 60-second walk to do 16-minute miles. Again, I’ll put a link so you can kinda look at your target mile scenario. This would be on Jeff Gallaway‘s website and kinda see based off how fast you wanna run the marathon, what you run breaks would you want to look like. But that will help you a lot if you’re not able to do the conditioning where you’re gonna be actually ill to do your marathon training exactly as you want to, as your program calls for.
[0:50:04.4]
Those walk breaks are gonna save you but you’re still gonna get a ton of soft tissue tightness going on just if you’re not use to pounding the pavement because you’ve been staying off of your legs doing elliptical trainer or aqua jogging or whatever. That’ll keep you fit for a while but it still is not gonna train your muscles and your tendons for literally pounding the pavement for the period of time you’re gonna be doing so in a marathon. So a couple other things I would do: when you do your walk breaks or at least once every 3 miles (1, 3, 5 k), stop and do a hip flexor stretch and an IT bend stretch minimum (lunging hip flexor stretch or your lunging and reaching towards the sky, IT bend stretch where you’re doing like the yoga pigeon pose or just like the standing IT bend stretch). There’s a bunch of different IT bend stretches out there but I’d be stopping and doing those frequently throughout the marathon. And the other thing I would do is really take care of your fascia leading into the marathon. Do lots of foam rolling, just get yourself as on adhesed (if that’s the word) as possible before you go into that thing. So, lots of foam rolling, trans squeeze and a few massages, and just make sure that your fascia is really really good to go when you’re starting that thing out. If you’re gonna run it, that’s what I would do.
Brock: Yeah. I’d probably, I’ve mentioned it on the show before but quite often, I’m asked to be coach on the marathon course during the race and I often get put sort of, because I like to run a long way, they usually make me the sweep, so I’m following the very last people. And when they’re out there for like 6 or 7 hours to finish a marathon, there’s a lot of IT bend prompts that happen and one thing that I found that really works well for certain people and myself included, is when you are taking those walk breaks, if you walk sideways and do really big crossover steps, you actually get a bit of a dynamic stretch down your IT bend and you also keep that forward momentum so you don’t feel like “oh man, I’m totally screwing my time ‘cause I’m pulling over to the side of the road and stopping” but you can actually get a good stretch, keep the forward momentum going just do really big crossover steps.
Ben: And it just makes you look great in those photos that they send you after the race when you’re the guy explaining to your family about why you’re walking sideways.
Brock: Where were you going? Everybody else was going that way? All right. Our next question comes from Dave and Dave says, “I recently recovered from a back injury and my physical therapist thought a lot of it was caused by lack of flexibility particularly in my hamstrings. At the time, I was only able to get to about 45 degrees.” (I’m assuming that’s from a standing hamstring stretch.) “I’m better now after several weeks but I still can’t get to 90 degrees. I’m a hobbyist triathlete and my lower back is often sore after a long ride or a hilly ride. I got to wondering whether my hamstring flexibility is getting to me on my down stroke. A friend recently noticed that I wobble a little in my seat while pedaling. Coincidence? My physical therapist has me doing compress-relaxed hamstring stretches against the wall. I was struck by your podcast about flexibility where you said it’s only required for the range of motion you need and also how dynamic beats static. Long story short, I’m wondering if you can recommend dynamic stretches for hamstrings.”
Ben: Yeah. This kinda confuses especially lot of cyclists. This is something that I’ve certainly been in the air of preaching at one point or another in my life of how I really work on yoga and your flexibilities that you can get into the right position for cycling whether you could into a low time trial position or you can ride more aggressively. That’s not why hamstring flexibility is important. The reason that hamstring flexibility is important is that if your hamstrings are tight and your seat is high enough to be able to optimize power for you on the bike, what’s gonna happen is that at the point where those hamstrings attach in your pelvic bone, it’s gonna tend to cause you to tilt your pelvis back. Okay? When you tilt your pelvis back, that collapses your diaphragm and it robs a lot of your breath control. It puts a lot of strain on your low back and it keeps your quad muscles and your hip flexor from getting up over the pedal at the top of the pedal stroke. So it’s not…
Brock: So you’re talking about a pelvic tilt forward, not an arching of the back, right?
Ben: I’m talking about what would be referred to as a posterior pelvic tilt which…
Brock: Yes, you’re holding forward.
Ben: Yeah. It would technically be similar to basically rotating the hips around clockwise.
[0:55:02.0]
Now, all the listeners are cross-eyed. Basically, what it comes out is you don’t need a ton of hamstring flexibility in order to keep your pelvis from tilting backwards and causing this type of issues if your bike fit is dialed in properly. So, the main thing you need to make sure of first of all is that your seat is not too high. Make sure that your seat is not too high that is should put your knees somewhere in the range of 25-35 degrees but that’s really important especially if you’re wobbling in your saddle. If you’re wobbling in your saddle, it’s not because your hamstrings are inflexible, it’s because your seat is too high. Now the next thing that I would look into is regardless of how flexible your hamstrings are, if your pelvis is immobile, and it’s not moving properly, you’re gonna tend to posteriorly rotate your pelvis from one side to another and it’ll be locked in place unable to move properly and so, you’re going to wobble no matter what if that happens. And the way that you fix that is you can go get your sacroiliac joint adjusted. You can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and do a search for “SI joint” because I’ve talked about it with my personal chiropractor on the show before in the importance of sacroiliac joint adjustment combined with glute strengthening specifically to keep your pelvic aligned properly. Super important for endurance athletes. The next thing is make sure that your sacroiliac joint is mobile and you can work with a sports chiropractic physician to do that. It’s not gonna be a chiropractor who does little pushy thing that pop or _____[0:56:44.3] and put up and down your… We’re talking about a back cracker. Somebody has to mobilize you. They have to mobilize your SI joint and it requires a great deal of force. You want someone who’s gonna work on you. And that’s I say sports chiropractic doctor ‘cause they’re usually aware of this type of things. And now let’s say that your hamstrings actually are inflexible, you’re right that there are ways to stretch them that are better than static stretching especially in terms of making sure that you don’t elongate the muscle to the point where it’s gonna reduced your force production or your power production capability which is important. You can get too flexible. I like that stretch contract-relax method where you’re leaning against the wall or your leg is against the wall and you’re lying at your back, contracting against the wall and then relaxing and pulling that hamstring into a stretch. There is a style of stretching. Those made very popular back into 2008 Olympics when Dara Torres was making her run – the 40-year old phenom swimmer. And she had a style of stretching called Resistance Stretching. I’ve got the Resistance Stretching DVD. I interviewed her therapists and her stretchers on the show. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Basically, resistant stretching is very unlike static standard stretching because what you’re doing is you’re using your own body to resist the stretch and you’re allowing the muscle to both contract and lengthen at the same time so you get strong as you’re doing it and it’s based off of the same idea as this contract-relax type of system that you’re using for stretching that your physical therapist gave you, Dave but I like this DVD. It’s a 20-minute stretch protocol and I still throw it in and do it every once in a while. It’s Dara Torres leading you through the protocol and she’s easy on the eyes too so that doesn’t hurt or she looks like a freaking Russian machine – that guy from Rocky 3 or Rocky 4. What’s his name? Ivan Drago?
Brock: Yes.
Ben: Female version of Ivan Drago. She’s an extremely impressive physical specimen. She’s leading you through that workout and it’s called Resistance Stretching. I’ll put a link to the DVD and also the interview that I did with the people who invented Resistance Stretching in the show notes ‘cause that’d be a really good one for you. So look into the Resistance Stretching, and then look into your hip mobility by getting SI joint evaluation and SI joint adjustment if you need to, look into your seat height and then finally, if you’re gonna stretch your hamstrings, do something like resistance stretching and as I mentioned in my response to Mark about running that marathon, take care of your fascia too. Do some firmerling on the hammies, do some stick work on the hammies or get some deep tissue work on the hammies just to make sure you don’t have any fascial adhesions going on there as well and that should help.
Brock: Hammy yams! Okay. Emily asks, “On a whim, I bought an interesting plant from a local nursery called Herb Jiaogulan ( at least I think that’s how it’s said), brought it home and transplanted it, then did some research, turns out it’s Gynostemma Pentaphyllum and it appears to have many potential benefits – cholesterol reduction, antioxidant, adaptogen, just for starters. Do you have any experience or thoughts on making the most of this plant? The nursery suggested adding the fresh leaves to a stir-fry and of course, you can make tea from fresh or dried leaves.”
[1:00:26.6]
Ben: You’re in trouble reading today, Brock.
Brock: Jiaogulan, Gynostemma Pylophyllum.
Ben: Jiaogulan. Yeah. It’s an interesting herb. I’ll get into that in a second but I just realized something that I wanted to mention to people. You, not being able to read, made me remember this. When we’re going over to do these races in Thailand, I’m trying to raise money for the Phuket Learning Center over there which basically travels around to these rural areas in Thailand because there’s a huge problem with illiteracy in Thailand – 20 million people. 20 million and one people one Brock gets over there, can’t read literally. And there’s this major need in Thailand to help people to read and to overcome this illiteracy. And I basically haven’t told this Friday to be able to raise as much money as possible for this. My goal is $3000. Here’s the problem: I’ve raised so far 200 and so I would love for podcast listeners if you’re able to even give just 10 bucks, we’ll put a link right there smack dab in the show notes. We’ll just put it up at the top of the show notes for people, Brock.
Brock: I’ll make it as easy as possible.
Ben: Top of the show notes for Episode # 218. If you can just give a few bucks to help, it’s gotta be by this Friday but it’s for the Thailand mobile learning center. So that being said, let’s jump in to this herb which interestingly is an herb from Asian medicine, from Thailand and also it grows wild in China as well but is used in Thai, Vietnam, Korea, Japan. Jiaogulan, also known as Gynostemma. It does have some pretty cool cholesterol lowering properties that have been studied. It increases the levels of an antioxidant called super oxide dismutase which is one of the more powerful indigenous cellular antioxidants that you have which can also act as a tumor inhibitor, interestingly. It is an adaptogen. We talked about Chinese adaptogenic herbs before in the show so that can help with your adrenal glands and it’s even been shown to be useful for things like jetlag and altitude sickness. And the biggy in terms of the studies were shown to be most effective is its ability to lower cholesterol which I don’t really think is quite as important as the fact that it can lower triglycerides and raise HDL which means that the actual cholesterol reduction effect is clinically significant when it comes to reducing risk of heart disease because high triglycerides and low HDL put together are really kind of a big red flag when it comes to heart disease risk factor. They’ve studied it in randomized control top trials in type 2 diabetic patients and it may have some potential as a hypoglycemic treatment or blood sugar stabilizer. And so, yeah, it certainly has some cool things going for it. I personally haven’t done a lot with it. The studies that have found it to have some cool medical effects were using about 10 mg of this stuff 3 times a day, so 30 mg a day and you can use it in tea, I know. You can make tea out of it just like any herb. I do not know how to cook with it. I could not tell you how to make spaghetti sauce with Jiaogulan or anything else for that matter, just because I personally don’t have experience with that. However, with the research that I’ve seen, I would vouch for it as something that could be useful for high cholesterol or for high blood pressure or potentially just increasing resistance to environmental stress like jetlags since it is an adaptogen. Those of you who have heard me talk about this blend of adaptogens that I take everyday that should be illegal because of its mental performance enhancing effects. It’s called Tianchi and that’s just powder that I personally use everyday and add to water. Throw in some into my bag and I really hope that they let me bring it in to Thailand because it’s got such a cool effect. It’s almost like a smart drug. It’s crazy. It’s called Tianchi.
[1:05:01.3]
Anyways though, this Jiaogulan stuff, yes, I would vouch for the benefits but I don’t know how to make stir-fry with it or anything else. I would just make tea from it and as far as making tea from dried leaves, and growing those type of herbs in your home, we’ve got all sorts of resources on stuff like that in like in the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle, you can use Dr. Google to learn how to make tea from fresh or dried leaves so I may have to leave that one up to you. I can’t get into the cooking part of it too much. But yeah, so hopefully that helps point you in the right direction a little bit.
Brock: Once you’ve made the tea from it, you’ll definitely get a taste for it and you can probably make some good guesses of what it would taste good in from that point. I mean, start throwing it in whatever you like.
Ben: Yeah. And it may taste just nasty as hack in which case, I apologize. So you have it.
Brock: That wraps it up.
Ben: That does and I’ve got a podcast coming out this Saturday for those of you who wanna know what muscle activation is, muscle activation technique is that thing where they curled at your arm and people pushed on your arm to tell if you’re sensitive to this stuff.
Brock: Oh yeah.
Ben: I personally thought it was complete bonk for a while.
Brock: You don’t anymore?
Ben: No. I looked into it quite a bit and I got this guy on and I interviewed him and he’s one of the world’s leading experts on muscle activation technique and then I interviewed Dr. David Minkoff who I’m doing an interview with on heavy metals that I’m releasing the week after. This guy’s been using this stuff and they’re putting me to some resources that I was pretty impressed with in terms of the potential for it to build the highlights specifically on your muscular deactivation or activation in the presence or absence of certain compounds or emotional trigger and stuff like that. We’re gonna geek out on that with Dr. Ken Best and that’s gonna come out this Saturday so listen to that. and there’s also a huge Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal coming up this week that you’re gonna wanna stay tuned to. I am gonna release as early as Thursday for my VIP text club members in the US so, if you text the word “fitness” to 411247 and you’re gonna get my Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal on Thursday.
Brock: On Grey Thursday.
Ben: Grey Thursday. Is that really a thing? Grey Thursday?
Brock: No. I just made that up.
Ben: So if you got any last minute Christmas shopping to do or early bird Christmas shopping to do, stay tuned to that. I’ll also be releasing it on facebook and everything and also in that Dr. Ken Best post on Saturday but still the last Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Thursday through Cyber Monday for my VIP Text Club people and it’s pretty much something I’ve got that I’ve only got a hundred of that I’m gonna be hooking a hundred lucky people up with. So check that out, stay tuned. What do you think, Brock? Will you be going on the plane?
Brock: Absolutely! I’ve got, well, 4 hours before I have to fly to Thailand. Awesome.
Ben: All right, man, I’ll see you on the flipside in Phuket.
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
Nov 21, 2012 free podcast: How To Recover As Fast As Possible After A Triathlon or Marathon. Also: losing weight with Type 1 Diabetes, how to get bones to heal fast, how to train and race with an ITB injury, how important is hamstring flexibility, and is the herb Jiaogulan good for you?
Ben needs your help BY THIS FRIDAY to raise money for teaching kids to read in Thailand.
Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right side of this page, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, Skype “pacificfit” or scroll down to the “Ask Ben” form.
Please don't forget to leave the podcast a ranking in iTunes – it only takes a minute of your time and it helps grow our healthy community!
—————————————————–
News Flashes:
To get these and other interesting news flashes every week, follow Ben on Twitter and Google+.
- Lack of sleep impairs your insulin sensitivity …fairly significantly it appears.
- One of the best full body exercises that exists: stand & push something heavy overhead.
- The more fat you feed your kids, the less likely they are to be fat when they get older.
—————————————————–
Special Announcements:
Want to get featured on an exclusive 15 minute feature in the next BenGreenfieldFitness podcast? That's right – I'll personally call you and interview you to tell YOUR story for the podcast. Here's how:
Step 1: Create your own “MyList” list that targets your passion in health, fitness or nutrition,
Step 2: Share your MyList right here by leaving a link to it in the comments,
Step 3: I'll choose the best list, and get you on for an interview about why you chose the items on your list – from gear to tools to supplements to anything else!
OK, get MyListing away! Here's the link to add MyList to your page or profile (did I mention – it's free).
“Become Superhuman” Live Event With Ben Greenfield Coming To Spokane, WA, March 8 & 9, 2013.
If you like podcasts, you'll love Audio Books! – Go to www.audiblepodcast.com/ben and sign up to claim your very own free audio book from Audible.
—————————————————–
Listener Q&A:
As compiled, edited and sometimes read by Brock, the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast “sidekick”.
Audio Question from Bee @ 00:14:47
She wants to know if you have any weight loss advice for a type 1 diabetic.
~ In my response I mention Dr. Richard Bernstein's “Diabetes Solution” book, my interview with Daniel Vincent from Triabetes, and Steve Cooksey's website.
Testimonial from Cheryl @ 00:28:44
I fell into marathoning by accident and had no idea how to fuel myself and went from 140 to 100 pounds in a few months and I thought it was great since I was running faster and I had a friggin 10-pack. I was also thrilled I stopped having menstrual cycles! *rolllling eyes* Little did I know then (and that uber famous running mag which I was using as my “coach” didn't touch on it that much). Fast forward a few years and I was diagnosed with osteoporosis at 35 years old. I had already stopped running marathons but I was in the military and still doing extreme exercise routines and still not having cycles (and still happy with it because I had no idea it tied into the whole bone density thing!). I had to go through a ton of blood tests, bone tests, various meds and it wasn't till I upped my good fats (ding ding!) and gave myself rest days (imagine MANY years without rest days/rest weeks). I FINALLY pulled myself out of secondary amenorrhea and my bone density started increasing as well since I added in more plyometrics and my body weight is back at about 123 (I'm 5'4″). I no longer have a 10pack, and I no longer care. It's so much tied into being addicted to the social praise/reward for being a female and having a washboard stomach (without drugs), and yet when I finally woke up to the fact that for majority of females, it's NOT that healthy to be constantly super lean. If I hadn't had some doctors to “baby shake” me into realizing the amenorrhea was NOT an awesome thing to have and that it DID tie in to my bone density health — I might have kept going and eventually being a chick in her 30's who breaks a hip bone falling off a sidewalk curb. I really applaud the fact that you've addressed these kinds of female issues in your podcasts.
Audio Question from Bill @ 00:30:56
Wants to do an Ironman 70.3 on April 6 and a Full Marathon on May 26. He is looking for advice around how to structure the swim and the bike training around his marathon training.
~ In my response I mention: MAP, Antioxidants: Lifeshotz or Solar Synergy, Transdermal Magnesium, 110% Compression gear, Phenocane, and Capraflex.
Audio Question from Tony @ 00:39:06
He broke his 5th metatarsal (in half) while running about 16 weeks ago. He was on crutches for 10 weeks and a walking cast for 6 weeks and despite that, the bone is still only 70% healed. He is looking for advice on how to get the bone to heal faster/better.
~ In my response, I mention Capraflex and magnesium.
Mark asks @ 00:46:40
I'm in a problem hole, and need help! I am 5 weeks out from my first marathon, I've done a bunch of half marathons and 2 seasons racing olympic and sprint distance triathlons. But at 5 weeks out, I have caused a previous ITB injury to flare up and bring my run training to a grinding halt. Its been a week (I've still been riding, swimming and doing gym work, also tried water running and been icing my knee), but ran 10k today, the knee was iffy. If I keep up the aqua jogging and all my other training, am I just setting myself up for creating a larger injury that will cause more problems or is it possible to keep this up and run the marathon? Also, is there any other thing else I should be doing to get myself on track?
~ In my response, I mention www.bulletproofknee.com. I also mention a “run-walk-stretch” protocol from either: Jeff Galloway or Bobby McGee.
Dave wrote @ 00:52:31
I recently recovered from a back injury and my physical therapist thought a lot of it was caused by a lack of flexibility, particularly in my hamstrings. At the time I was only able to get to about 45 degrees! I'm better now after several weeks but I still can't get to 90 degrees. I'm a hobbyist triathlete and my lower back is often sore after a long ride or a hilly ride. I got to wondering whether my hamstring flexibility is getting to me on my downstroke. A friend recently noticed that I wobble a little in my seat while pedalling. Coincidence? My PT has me doing compress-relax hamstring stretches against the wall. I was struck by your podcast about flexibility where you said it's only required for the range of motion you need, and also how dynamic beats static. Long story short, I'm wondering if you have recommended dynamic stretches for hamstrings?
~ In my response I mention my Podcast on Resistance Stretching by Dana Torres and the DVD.
Dara Torres resistance stretching video:
Emily asks @ 00:59:45
On a whim, I bought an interesting plant from my local nursery called Herb Jiaogulan. Brought it home and transplanted it, then did some research… turns out it is Gynostemma Pentaphyllum, and it appears to have many potential benefits: cholesterol reduction, antioxidant, adaptogen just for starters. Do you have any experience or thoughts on making the most of this plant? The nursery suggested adding the fresh leaves to stir-fry, and of course you can make tea from fresh or dried leaves.
~ In my response to Emily, I mention TiaChi.